“A female who has too many egglings is always looking for a responsible adult to raise young ones. I am a Grandmother, and you are a palteia of the highest rank. Any female would feel blessed by the non-existent gods if we showed an interest in raising her egglings.”
Rownt did tend to live in small communities where females already knew whether others were the sort who could be trusted with children. Zach smiled slowly. He thought of watching a baby grow up over a century. Their child would still be strong and fighting for status when Zach’s body finally yielded to age. That was the way life should work. The children should outlive the parents.
“Let’s go compliment some egglings.” He put his hand in hers so she could pull him up. He was going to be a father. Now that Zach considered the possibility, he found it soothed his soul. Some people never wanted children, and he respected that. However, he had been in a different situation. As an asexual officer in the middle of a civil war, he had given up on children. But the yearning had always been there.
Zach stopped his Grandmother before she could lead them toward the public areas. “I love you,” he said. The word didn’t mean in Rownt what it did in English, but he knew she would understand.
The skin around her eyes tightened even more and she wrapped her arms around Zack. “I care so much for you that reasonable creatures would believe it useless to say it out loud.”
Zach laughed. It was such a Rownt thing to say, but then his family was Rownt.
The Choice
Liam rested his chinon his hand and watched an eggling—a literal eggling with a stumpy little tail—hold on to a parent’s leg. Liam had trouble believing the small creature riding on his or her mother’s foot would one day be an aloof Rownt. Right now the babe was clinging for dear life, but every time the mother stopped, the baby would reach out to grab anything close by: an adult’s leg, a table, a twig off the ground, a shiny stone.
The mother finally chose a food vendor and settled down, shifting the child to her lap, and Liam remembered his manners. He shifted his attention back to Ondry.
“The fruit tastes different than I remember.” He took a segment of bulfa fruit and wrapped a thin strip of meat around it. While the fruit had more sweetness than most Rownt food, Liam had still remembered it as more lemon than tangerine.
“It is just as overly sweet as always,” Ondry said. “However, many find that taste or smell can undergo alterations after spending significant time on a ship.”
Significant time. That was an understatement considering they’d travelled with theCaltifor nearly three hundred years. Every general they’d met on that human planet so many years ago were all dead. Hell, every baby born the day Ondry had walked down his first human-built street had died of old age long ago. Most of the time, Liam didn’t think much about that. His life was full of discoveries and trade and figuring out ways to outsmart Grandmothers, so he didn’t have time to think about how other humans measured normal.
An older child ran between the tables, stopping for a moment to consider Liam, his eyes wide with curiosity. Liam wondered if the child had seen other humans. Good manners dictated that he allow the child to set the pace of the conversation, so Liam nibbled his bulfa and waited to see what the child might say. Instead, the eggling ran back to a father.
“Do Rownt have cycles in their reproduction?” Liam asked.
“Dry years can lead to eggs that fail to hatch.”
“There are far more children around than I’m used to seeing.”
The edges of Ondry’s eyes tightened.
“Make fun of me at the risk of your dignity,” Liam warned.
Ondry’s eyes tightened more, but then Ondry knew that Liam would not follow through with any threats. Rownt had discovered that humans engaged in mutual threats the way Rownt enjoyed mutual insults, and that had resulted in a shift in the way Rownt used language. However, as much as Ondry appeared to enjoy trading threats with others and appreciated Liam’s talent, he never threatened Liam in return.
