“Be careful,” Regi called out a warning. If the dop chose to fling quills, his warning would be useless, but he couldn't stand still while Dante put himself at risk.
Instead of reacting as a sane creature might, Dante gave Regi an almost amused expression. “Hedgehogs are about the sweetest creatures ever. If he wanted to do harm, he would have given warning chirps. They don't like to throw those quills. Do you?” Dante asked the dop.
Regi felt as if reality was cracking and he'd entered some dream where the laws of logic had been suspended. He looked around and found other Kowri with their mouths agape as they watched. The exalted of Gavd had his sword halfway out of its scabbard, but he was frozen as if he had forgotten how to move. The exalted of Setir sat. There was no chair behind her, so halfway through the gesture, she fell gracelessly on her ass, but she didn’t appear to notice.
Regi turned back to Dante. “You know dops?”
“Of course I do,” Dante said. “The pirates sure weren’t going to milk them.” Dante ran his finger along those poisonous spines the way another might pet an ulept. “They’re sweet-tempered creatures, but they want to know a body before letting them get too close. Those pirates were always too impatient to work with animals. My horse would've kicked the shit out of them the way they rushed about, so I can't blame these critters.”
Dante gave Regi a quizzical glance. “Who did you think were feeding the dops on the ship?” Dante sounded the animal name out in Kowrese.
This was an alternate universe where logic was irrelevant. “What dops?” Regi stared at Dante and Dante stared back. Long seconds passed and the hairs above Dante's eyes drew downward in the middle.
“Are you telling me that nobody has been feeding the hedgehogs?”
Regi opened his mouth, but he could not find any words that would fit into this nonsensical conversation.
“Well shit!” Dante turned and took off at a sprint, Regi's dop still in his hand.
“Wait!” Regi raced after him. Behind, he could hear feet slapping against the ground as others followed. For a creature with constrained breathing, Dante had remarkable speed in the open. He reached the ship before his pursuers could catch him. Vk and Cota were standing outside the pirate ship, and Dante didn't even slow as he closed in on their position.
“Move, move, move, move, move,” he shouted as he raced up the cockeyed gangplank. Regi wanted to cry out a warning that the dop could accidentally kill one of them if Dante were not careful, but just before Dante collided with them, Vk jumped off the side of the gangplank, landing in the dirt next to the ship.
“What's going on?” Cota demanded.
Regi followed Dante, his lungs burning. “Later,” he snapped without stopping.
He followed Dante to the left, and behind, footsteps stormed the metal plank, the sound ringing through the narrow corridors of the pirate ship. Running in the halls was difficult since the floor was at a thirty-degree angle, and Regi kept pushing off against the wall as he stumbled. He expected a cry of pain as the dop getting jostled in Dante's hand reacted, but Dante reached the first ladder and started climbing.
He was at the top of the ladder when Regi reached the bottom, and Regi saw the dop clinging to Dante's shoulder. The animal was facing backwards so he watched Regi as he grabbed the bottom of the ladder and gasped for air. The dop showed no concern at all in the second that Regi could see it before Dante was sprinting down another corridor.
Cursing the huuman’s unnaturally long legs, Regi climbed to the next level. This was one of the cargo areas, and Regi raced to get to the first junction before Dante could turn another corner and disappear into the maze. Instead, he reached the junction and found an entire section of the bulkhead had slid open.
Here was a hidden room. Along the back wall, plants grew under an artificial lighting system. And in the front part of the room cage after cage after cage of dops lined shelves.
“I am so sorry,” Dante said. “If I had known they didn't find you, I would have been down here in a heartbeat. You guys are the sweetest things on the ship, I told you that before, though, haven’t I?” Dante was plucking leaves of the plants and feeding the dops through the bars of each cage. “Thank God we didn't spend another couple days wandering around space. I would have hated myself if you guys died.”
He stopped at one of the cages and crouched down. “Oh, Peaches, I'm sorry girl. I feel just awful. It never occurred to me that these idiots couldn’t find a door.” He opened the dop cage and reached in. A large female with her darker quills climbed onto his hand, and Dante brought her to his face. She laid her quills down, and he rested his cheek against her. “These guys know where you’re from. You’re going to have a much better life now.” The dop Regi had taken from the temple climbed down Dante's shirt and nestled next to the female.
Regi could not get his mouth to close. Others stopped near him, and Regi glanced toward the exalted of Gavd and the exalted of Setir. They stood in the opening, staring at the tableau in front of them.
“The dops are poisonous,” the exalted of Gavd said slowly as though speaking to an idiot.
Dante had a contented smile on his face. “Now don't you hold that against them. They’re sweet creatures, and if you try pushing them too hard, then it's your own fault if you wind up dead. I have no sympathy for anyone a dop kills, because they only kill when they have to.” He raised his hand to look the female in the face. “You’re sweet, aren't you, Peaches?”
The translator offered an image of a sweet-tasting fruit. Peaches. Dante had named a dop peaches.
Epilogue
Regi was unsurprised to find Dante in the dop room. The cages were gone, and when the exalted of Ectipic had offered resources, Dante had gotten bedding areas for himself and the dops as well as a complex dop play area.
Regi never would have guessed that dop played, but they did.
Peaches rolled onto her side when one of the smaller dops collided with her. The small one tried to dart away, but Peaches grabbed the small one’s tail and they rolled around on a low platform before they both fell off the edge. Peaches recovered first, and she slipped the smaller dop onto his back. Peaches. Regi was still attempting to recover from the idea that one would give a dop such an irreverent name.
“The crew should be moved out into their temporary quarters within the hour,” Regi said. He still worried that Ter would offend someone enough to inspire murder, but he had to hope his people had some patience. It would work to their advantage that the Kowri expected poor manners from outsiders.
Dante looked up from his dop-watching. “I still don’t know why we couldn’t carry the dops out.”
