She seemed to mean it. But maybe I should still put a lock on her bedroom door anyway. She did not know me. I was not her trusted friend, or her husband, or even someone she had agreed to live with before today. She deserved privacy, and as much of a sense of safety as I could offer her.
I was dangerously close to letting my eyes go white.Again. It had been so quick during our human hug, that I wasn’t entirely sure it had happened at all. But outside, when she’d suggested stripping out of her clothing right in front of me, there had been no mistaking the sensation. That hot crawl of pulsing light in my skull, however brief.
“I will begin bringing in the boxes.”
As I retreated out the door, I heard her say that she would help, but I once again put stop to that. “No boxes in those boots.”
“Maybe the first box you’ll bring in will be my shoes and boots box! And then I can help after that!” she called, undeterred, after me.
I did not answer her that time. I turned my not-insignificant amount of focus and power to the task at hand, instead of letting myself be continually distracted by her. The boxes felt good and solid in my arms. I took three at a time now, instead of two, needing the heft of the physical work to ground me.
As I brought in load after load, Lualhati got to emptying them. This, for some reason, she did right in the centre of my kitchen instead of in the bedroom. Though perhaps the bedroom would be too small for her methods. Methods that seemed to involve ripping open each box and pulling out every item inside without a single thought as to where that item might go once she had it. By the time I brought in the last boxes from the wagon, she was nearly swallowed by the chaotic sea of humanalia all around her.
“Do not forget that more are coming,” I said, tamping down a sense of alarm at the near-instant destruction of my tidy domain.
“I know!” she said merrily, leaning over and unwrapping some kind of item. The item, once relieved of its protective layer, proved to be a mug, not unlike the large ones Rivven used in his saloon. But this one was not clear glass, instead opaque and pink. A darker pink shape was stamped on the front of it, with two rounded parts at the top, and a tapered point at the bottom. She seemed happy to see this mug, touching the dark pink shape with tender fingers.
“What is that?” I asked her. I glanced about, trying to locate an untouched corner to put down the final three boxes. Unfortunately, I found none, and put these three last boxes down on the table instead.
“It’s my mug! Mylolagave it to me for Valentine’s Day when I was a teenager.”
“Your grandmother?” I asked, clarifying the translation that came through for the wordlola. There was not, however, a translation for the specific day she’d mentioned.
“Yeah.” She spun the mug around to show me the shape again. “This is a heart.”
Oh. That was not a good sign now, was it? Our doctor did not seem to know what a heart was supposed to look like.
“Is it…some kind of animal heart?” I asked tentatively, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“No, no!” she said brightly. “It’s a human heart!”
I took a moment to consider how to proceed. Lualhati had so far given me no indication of incompetence, either medically or…mentally.
Though she really did smile a lot. And I was not always assured that excessive smiling was the surest sign of sanity in anyone.
I waited for her to explain further, or perhaps tell me she was joking. But she did not. She just held up the mug with the not-heart on it, staring at me expectantly. Unable to think of anything else, I simply said, “It does not look like the heart in the document you helped Tasha create.”
“Well, of course not,” she said at once. “It’s not an anatomical heart!”
“What other sort is there?”
If humans had some sort of second, misshapen, imaginary heart, I had certainly never heard of it.
“It’s a romantic heart.” She traced the shape of it with a slim finger. “And see? It’s even got Cupid’s arrow through it!”
She held it up once more, seemingly wanting me to take it. I did so, cradling it carefully, suddenly afeared that I should drop and break it.
I was not familiar with “arrows,” however, I soon saw what she meant. A pointed projectile of sorts seemed to have gone right through the dark pink shape.
“I still do not understand what a romantic heart is,” I grunted, handing the mug back to her.
“It’s a symbol,” she explained. “Humans talk about love coming from our heart. And this shape kind of represents that.”
Well, at least I now knew that she understood what a proper heart should look like, and that this shape was not it. Though Istill did not feel elucidated about the rest. Perhaps she could see this confusion on my face, for then she asked, “Do Zabrians talk about love differently? If it doesn’t have to do with your heart?”
“I would not know,” I answered. “You will have to ask one of the married men.”
Perhaps Rivven or Warden Tenn would be able to give her a more satisfactory answer on the subject. Though, for some reason, I did not relish the idea of her going to other men to get things that I could not provide her.
