“It is clear that Harrison does not wish me to remain. I do not wish to be the cause of fighting. I will go see what repairs my ship needs. With good fortune, I shall be able to leave in a matter of solar cycles. If it is also too much trouble to feed me, I shall subsist on the rations in my ship.”
I turned to exit, but a soft hand on my arm stopped me. Leigh’s imploring eyes appeared in my periphery, glistening wet with tears.
“Don’t go,” she said softly. “Please, T’raat. Don’t go.”
Curious. She expressed a strong emotional response to my departure. It was unexpected, though not wholly unwelcome. I stared at her for a long moment, drinking in the details of her appearance while I still had the chance.
Leigh was pleasing to look at, if one overlooked her lack of teats. From what I understood, human women were not as blessed as Xalanite women in that regard, something I could hardly hold against her. The smooth, unscaled skin of her human body intrigued me, as did the light-colored golden hair. Xalanites as a people were all the same purple hue, with the same dark black hair and yellow eyes. We differentiated ourselves by gender and facial structure, by physique, but in my limited experience with humans, there seemed to be quite a bit of variety in their coloring and shape, which seemed consistent with the stories that came from our emissaries.
Where Leigh was all slim, soft lines and taut, toned muscles, her father was taller, broader, with more bulk to his muscles, though his midsection bulged while hers was pleasantly flat. His coloring was darker, both hair and skin, though the tone differential was less for their skin than their hair. Hers was gold, but his was a deep brown threaded with white, a product ofaging that was common to Xalanites as well. Their eye coloring differed greatly, too, with hers a brilliant blue while his were brown, matching his hair. I wondered how such variation could exist between relatives. My understanding of human genetics was rudimentary at best, but I had thought that human family members generally favored each other. Perhaps even with the tonal and structural differences they are still considered similar by human standards.
I patted Leigh’s hand to reassure her that I held her blameless in this. “I am … unwelcome. It would be wise for me to leave.”
I had barely made it to the door when Harrison spoke up.
“Wait.”
His command, though softly spoken, bade me to stop. I turned back to see him standing by the table, his head bowed, hands clenched in fists at his sides.
“You should at least stay for breakfast. Eat Leigh’s omelet. Then maybe we can find somewhere for you to stay while you’re here. Maybe the feed barn. We could put you up in the loft.” He gave a shuddering sigh. “It’s not much, but you’d have a place to sleep. Put some blankets on the hay bales, and it’s not really so bad. Better than quarantine, and you’d be free to come and go to fix your ship.”
I opened my mouth to relay my gratitude, but Harrison raised a hand to stop me. “This is temporary. Just until your ship’s repairs are done. After that, I don’t much care where you go, so long as Leigh stays here with me. And God help you if she winds up pregnant with some alien baby. I’m not ready to be a grandfather, and my sister would kill me if I let that happen.”
His jumbled words confused me. I tried to let the nanites do their job, but it seemed I was understanding the meaning of the words correctly. They were just in an odd order, with disconnected statements rambling together. For instance, whatdid his sister have to do with me? Why would she murder him if Leigh became pregnant? I did not know if it was his syntax that was the issue or if it was related to a glitch in my nanites.
“I am grateful for your offer of hospitality,” I said carefully. “I … appreciate a place to sleep in the hay. My thanks.”
Leigh snorted and crossed her arms over her chest. “It would be more hospitable to offer you the guest room. Like a person.” She shook her head and returned to the cooking box.
Harrison’s face turned a pinkish hue at this. Odd.
Not wishing for them to resume arguing, I interjected. “The hay is good. I do not require more than that.”
Within minutes, the egg dishes were done. We all sat around the table, and I watched how Leigh and Harrison ate. They seemed fond of using the metal utensils placed on either side of the ceramic plates, so I followed suit.
The omelets were an interesting combination of textures. The yellow bits were soft, while the orange inside was chewier, and the colorful parts—the veggies—had a pleasant and flavorful crunch. Altogether, it made for a unique dining experience, quite different from the food on Xalan. It amazed me that my people had not considered combining foods of different flavor and texture profiles like this. Truly a masterwork of culinary engineering, and I commented such.
Leigh and Harrison exchanged strange glances, and Leigh dabbed at the corners of her lips with a cloth from the table. “You don’t have to use such flowery words for it. It’s just breakfast,” she said, her cheeks pinking similarly to when her father’s tone changed, though not as deep a hue.
Harrison chuckled. “She’s just being modest. Leigh’s a great cook. Someday she’ll make some lucky man a great wi—” He paused, and his expression changed to one of anger. He shook a finger at me in warning. “But you never mind about that.”
I blinked and sat back farther in my chair in an effort to distance myself from the mercurial man. His moods varied greatly, and I could not begin to guess why he had become so angry. I looked at Leigh in an attempt to understand, but she merely shrugged in response.
“Ignore him. He’s always like that.”
Chapter 3
Leigh
After Dad sufficiently humiliated me at breakfast, I led T’raat to the feed barn to show him where he’d be staying until his ship’s repairs were done. I helped him rearrange some of the hay bales in the loft into a makeshift bed and gave him some flannel sheets and a down comforter to make it less itchy. T’raat flashed a dazzling grin at me as he took the bedding.
“My people are well insulated against extreme temperatures,” he said while he laid the blankets out, “though I am humbled that you take my comfort into consideration.”
Getting his ship into the barn and out of sight was another matter. I wasn’t strong enough to help him heave-ho it, and the thing didn’t have wheels. Somehow he managed to shove it across half an acre of grazing fields and into the barn, leaving massive divots in the fields along the way. I cringed at the thought of Dad’s face when he saw his land trashed like that,but there really was no other way to move the ship. T’raat apologized, but I told him not to worry about it.
“That field was due to be tilled in the next couple of years, anyway. You … did us a favor.”
T’raat laughed. “You speak falsehoods.”
