“Obviously not. Learn her people’s courtship rites and perhaps you might have a chance. Humble yourself before her.”
“You know something, don’t you S’kasia?”
His clutch-sibling’s expression soured. “Myla has flittering lips. The other females have been talking about her plans to mate Eleri with Minio. They say she has shown him favor in the way of the kyrot and he would be happy to have her.”
S’samph hissed. “Eleri is a human; she can’t be expected to adhere to their traditions. Besides, the kyrot never mate outside their species.”
S’kasia trilled her annoyance. “I know this. You know this. But if you do not act soon, they may have grounds to remate her. There may not be a female kyrot willing to mate Minio. And you know forthem, an unmated life is a dire fate.”
“This is Myla’s scheming.” S’samph made the statement plain. She was a meddlesome female, but it was no small secret she had brought her brother here after he disgraced himself on Brasnia Prime.
“It does not matter who is behind the operation. You will not let this troublesome male get in your way.” She glanced at the basket of inert eggs. “There aren’t many of us left, you know.”
“What about K’kaen?” S’samph reminded her.
“K’kaen has about as much sense as atriocedrunk onj’jejeberries. You would entrust the continuation of our species to him?”
“We are not the only ones who survived the incursion,” he reminded her gently. S’kasia wouldn’t meet his gaze. She had lost her mate on Latilla and barely escaped with their eggs. It wasn’t until many revolutions later she had finally admitted the eggs were inert. They’d never hatch, but she clung to them with an insensible refusal to give them proper burial rights. S’samph would never dare call his sister mentally fragile, she had been an honored priestess on Latilla, but any mention of what to do with the eggs brought a change in her to make her almost unrecognizable.
“We are the only ones who matter.” She placed a protective hand on her basket of eggs. S’kasia stared hard at him. “I chose Eleri for you since we no longer have an egg mother to choose our mates for us. She is the right one. Do not let another take her.”
S’samph knelt beside his clutch sibling. “I will try. She may no longer want me.”
“Then you will make her want you. Prove to her you are a reliable male.”
“I was once a reliable male. That description no longer fits.”
“You may be one still. If you stop feeling sorry for yourself.” S’kasia stood from the hanging seat and hefted her basket over her shoulder. “Come inside and eat with me then. It is a miserable fate surviving onvelabeans this whole time.”
After a tense meal with his clutch-sister, S’samph returned home, determined to fight with his datapad long enough to learn about human courtship rituals. The device hummed to life after long months of disuse. S’samph realized with a grimace that the last document he’d opened was the file with Eleri’s IA profile. He had intended to read through it at some point before she arrived, but he’d never been able to bring himself to do so. Now was too late by any metric, but he had to start somewhere. He flipped open the file to the first page, finding a grainy holo of Eleri that did her little justice. She was dressed in a baggy medical uniformwith dark wells beneath her eyes. Her hair was thrown back in the familiar tight braid she preferred.
He moved past the holo into her biographic file. Most of the information was about her demographics. Female. Blue eyes. Yellow head fur.Hair. He corrected himself. She had passed her health check and received all required vaccinations. Her education was standard, aside from her years of training as a nurse for humans. She had left the section about pastimes blank. She’d listed a brother and a mother as living family. S’samph’s frill rippled in annoyance at the lackluster information. There was no way to get a picture of a person from such a sparse description.
The next section included an optional audio file. He jabbed at the interface and her soft voice filtered through the datapad.
Hello. I’m Eleri, I’ve lived my whole life in Sector Nine on Gaia, and I work as a nurse for humans. My work takes up most of my time, but I really like my job. This is actually difficult to describe myself. One interesting thing about me is I can suture well, but I’m hopeless at sewing clothing.
She paused, and someone spoke in the background, encouraging her to describe what she was looking for in a mate and what she brought to a mating. The audio paused for a long moment before Eleri started speaking again.
I’ll start with myself. I’m hardworking and practical. I won’t waste your time or make a nuisance of myself. Now someone for me. Sorry, I haven’t spent much time thinking about this. I think I could be happy with many different people. Mostly, I would like to spend my life with someone kind and reliable. Someone who is a good listener would be nice. I’m not picky in most other ways. Thank you for taking the time to listen to my application.
The recording turned to static, and S’samph switched off the datapad, feeling sick to his stomach. He understood why S’kasia had chosen her application. She would have wanted someone honest and without pretense. Eleri matched the requirements. He’d listened to a few other application audios before, after S’kasia made a profile for him on the IA MateMatch database. Most of them listed physical requirements, monetary demands, or material requests. Eleri’s voice was sad and unsure, her motivations, while opaque, did not come from any place of greed or malice.
S'samph forced himself to skim through the rest of the bio, but he stopped when he encountered themassive data packet on human culture. Reading was one of his least favorite activities. He’d find some videos on the intelewave to get a quicker perspective.
The intelewave could have a lot of misinformation, but he cross-referenced a few sources for some of the stranger practices until he was able to determine their legitimacy. S’samph decided he would start with the familiar ones and work his way up from there, depending on Eleri’s response. There were many things for him to collect. In the meantime, he would keep an eye on her from a distance. He wasn’t entirely sure of his motivations beyond trying to smooth things over with his clutch-sister, but the human was compelling in a way he didn’t quite understand.
CHAPTER 8
ELERI
Eleri had survived her first two weeks on Laurus. She wasn’t sure how, but somehow, she’d managed, and things were looking up. They’d fixed the damage on Pyo’s farm caused by the raviks and reinforced the fences to prevent them from getting back in. Her training was progressing well with Aglao in the clinic. S’samph had even stopped bothering her. Despite all the improvements, she was the least excited about that one for some reason. Perhaps it was the indignity of everything surrounding their meeting or the way she was infuriatingly attracted to his steady, gruff demeanor, but she couldn’t get him out of her mind.
She rubbed a gloved hand across her forehead to swipe away some of the sweat dribbling down her hairline. Sun high was fast approaching, and she was more than ready to stop pulling fiddlyywesberries off bushes and get back to the clinic. Eleri covered her basket with a clean cloth and went to bring it to the storage shed.
“I’m leaving for the day,” she called to Pyo and Minio.
As she finished packing away her things, Minio came over to join her in the storage shed. “You sure you don’t want to borrow the levibike?”
