Several flinch but then inch forward, their faces full of curiosity.
“They don’t get many visitors,” Dante says. “Rosalie is your friend,” he announces.
“Are you in rut?” the older sarkarnling asks, somewhat aggressively.
“What would you know of the rut, Drak?” Dante responds, his tail lashing behind him.
“We’ve been learning about it, in our lessons you make us do.”
I look at Dante.
“We have an entire suite here dedicated to teaching. It is automated.”
“Is that why they don’t get visitors?”
“My crew…you’ve seen them. I can’t risk things getting out of hand.”
I gaze down at the little Sarkarnii girl who is now velcroed to my side, her tail around my ankle.
“They can’t survive here without company, Dante. Not on their own. They need to be around adults, around other Sarkarnii,” I say.
I find it difficult to imagine any children, Sarkarnii or not, surviving without adults.
“Which is why I’ve been pushing my crew to find and to make a cure for our mutation. Why we have the meltdowns and the alarms. They’re working every nova hour to make us better,” Dante growls. “So I can introduce them to the sarkarnlings, our sarkarnlings, and we can be whole again.”
ROSALIE
Of all the Sarkarnii on Vorostor, Dante is the most unlikely uncle to all of these young Sarkarnii. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he is the least likely adult figure I’d have picked.
But, as the sarkarnlings slowly start to surround us, inspecting me and questioning Dante, it would appear they have accepted him as their adult, so who am I to judge? They’re very curious about me in general, taking hold of my hand and my arms, looking at my skin.
Through all of this, the little female Sarkarnii has not let go of my hand. Instead she has hold of her tail, holding it to her face as she sucks on her thumb and watches the others with a pair of huge eyes.
Somewhere, something which sounds like a gong booms, and all the chatter around us stops.
“What’s that?”
“Lessons,” the sarkarnling who spoke earlier says. “They’re important.”
“Then food,” another one says.
“Also very important.” I smile.
“We have to go. Will you come back soon, Dante?” the bigger sarkarnling asks. “Will you bring your mate?”
“Yes,” I say emphatically, before Dante gets a chance to say anything. “We will be back very soon.”
I might not have spent much time around children, given I was an only child, but I’ve always liked them, with the thoughts always there I’d want my own one day.
Shame any fleeting relationships I had with men of my own age were frittered away in a lack of commitment, or with older men who were not willing to get ‘tied down’ again.
I thought my chance would never come.
As swiftly as they arrived through the plants, the little Sarkarnii are slipping away again. I look down to find my little sarkarnling has gone from my side, and as I look up, I see her disappearing behind a large leaf. She turns and shows me her open palm before she is gone.
“What did she do?” I turn to Dante and mimic the action.
His face becomes impassive. “It is an old Haisarkarnii gesture. Some of these sarkarnlings are from that particular class.”
