Perhaps Urkot could turn around before they saw him and go another way…
Guilt sliced through his hearts, making his muscles tense, yet he could not suppress the urge to flee. Were anyone to have called him a coward right then and there, he couldn’t have disagreed.
Ketahn spied Urkot and lifted a hand in greeting. Akalahn raised all four of his chubby little arms in an exaggerated imitation of his sire, bouncing in Ketahn’s hold.
Urkot’s mandibles rose in a smile. A bit of that pressure lifted with them.
But as Urkot neared his friends, Ketahn and Rekosh’s mandibles sagged, and the two humans frowned, the dark strips of fur above their eyes—their eyebrows—drawing closer together.
“Are you all right?” Ketahn asked in English. “Did something happen?”
For all the jokes about Urkot’s head being full of rocks or his hide being more stone than flesh, Urkot felt as though Ketahn saw through him as easily as he would’ve the waters of a shallow stream.
“I am fine,” Urkot replied. He did not care for the taste of such lies upon his tongue, but this burden…it was his alone to bear.
“You’re covered in dust,” Diego said, brown eyes raking over Urkot from the tips of his legs to the peak of his headcrest.
“Covered,” Will echoed. “I almost didn’t recognize you. You’re almost as white as Garahk.”
“You okay?”
Spreading his arms, Urkot glanced down at himself. Most of his black hide was hidden beneath a veil of pale dust that must’ve made him look more like a spirit than a vrix of hide and bone. He chittered. “Delving is dirty work.”
Rekosh folded his arms across his chest, drumming the fingers of one hand on his upper arm. “This is much more than usual.”
Akalahn wriggled in his sire’s arms, and Ketahn sank down, placing the broodling on the platform boards.
“Urkot…” Ketahn intoned as he rose.
“Stone fell, but none were harmed. Only dust.” Urkot patted his abdomen, sending up a tiny white cloud.
Will leaned back, waving a hand to disrupt the dust as it neared him. “Breathing that stuff in can’t be good for you. Not for humans, anyway.”
“Doubt it’s good for vrix either,” said Diego with a frown. “You ever have problems with your breathing, Urkot?”
“No,” Urkot replied. The strain in his chest now was different, wasn’t it?
Both Ketahn and Rekosh were studying him closely. He knew that just as water could wear down stone over time, his friends’ weighty gazes would wear down his resolve.
Urkot dropped his eyes to Akalahn, and again his troubles briefly receded. With a blend of vrix and human features, the broodling was unlike anyone or anything else in the world—or any other world, since the humans claimed there were uncountable worlds hidden amongst the stars in the night sky.
Little Akalahn moved on six wobbly legs, walking around and beneath his sire with all four purple eyes wide and bright.
Ketahn also glanced down, and his gaze softened. When the broodling wandered toward the platform’s edge, Ketahn extended a foreleg, hooked it around the broodling’s middle, and gently guided him back.
Akalahn chittered in delight, smiling not only with a lift of his little mandibles, but by curving his mouth, which was more flexible than that of a full-blooded vrix.
“Ivy says it is too soon for him to walk and climb,” Ketahn said.
Diego chuckled. “Normally, it would be. He’s only two months old. A human baby wouldn’t even start crawling for another five months, much less walking and climbing.”
“Perhaps it is because your kind only has two legs?” Urkot asked. “More easy to walk with more legs.”
“Might be on to something there,” said Will.
Urkot couldn’t be sure what the human meant. The only thing he was on was the platform, and there was no question about that. Whymight?
Akalahn latched on to one of Ketahn’s legs and climbed a handspan off the platform. Chittering, Ketahn lifted that leg, plucked the broodling off, and set the little one down atop his hindquarters. Akalahn settled against Ketahn’s back, tiny legs spread to the sides.
