He ignored K’kaen’s barbs, knowing the other male would do the job admirably despite his poor sense of humor. “Then I will let her know of your decision.”
“No, I will. If you’ll have me be her clutch brother, then let me do the job properly. She’ll have questions that I can answer better without you lurking around.”
S’samph grunted his acknowledgment. Better for them to establish their own connection directly than for him to get involved. He should let K’kaen take the lead. “You’ll speak with her soon?”
“Later today. Some of us are working, you know. I doubt Eleri would appreciate me bothering her during her clinic hours.”
“I’m patrolling,” S’samph grumbled in response. He retreated to his levibike and adjusted the holster of his pulsar gun on his waist.
“Could’ve fooled me.” K’kaen pressed a node in the ground to activate the irrigation hoses for the temperamental sawa flowers. Although S’samph was loath to admit it, he’d spent far too much time away from his responsibilities. Eleri was hard at work, and he was doing his best to become a male who deserved her attentions. The harsh light from both suns beat down as he patrolled Laurus’s boundaries, but he enjoyed the dry heat on his scales. The climate in this season was one of the few similarities Cassiaq-IV shared with Latilla. Each time he cut the engine to listen for the unmistakable din of a klatch of raviks. Nothing yet. The silence of the open fields pressed against his hearing auricles, interrupted only by the faint rustling of blue grasses in the sparse, hot breeze.
He was halfway through his circuit when he noticed a thin plume of smoke rising from Laurus’s southern quadrant. His tongue flicked out, tasting the air. Fire. Mixed with the faintest hint of feathers. The top half of his frill rose instinctively as he revved the engine and sped toward the source.
The smoke thickened as he approached, until he could see flames licking at the edges of Ailairi's picharienclosures. He covered his face with the collar of his shirt to try and protect his nostrils. The old giradey farmer was desperately trying to herd the fat, flightless pichari away from the advancing flames. But pichari were prized for their beauty and not their intelligence, as such it was proving to be a losing battle for one lone giradey.
S'samph cursed audibly and placed a call to S’kasia on his wrist console, praying that Laurus’s notoriously patchy service didn’t fail this time. Through a bit of luck, her voice crackled through on the other end of the line.
“S’samph?”
“Alert K’kaen and the other patrols. Ailairi’s farm. We need a water line.”
“I will send an alert.” She closed the line. His clutch sister had enough sense not to draw out the conversation. S’samph dismounted from his levibike and hurried toward the old farmer.
“What happened?” He asked.
“Raviks,” Ailairi responded in a raspy trill. “Help me get the pichari to safety.” The farmer grabbed two birds and shuttled them toward a more distant enclosure, where the flames hadn’t reached, with surprising alacrity. S’samph was dubious about his own bird wrangling skills, but he surged forward and gathered three of the fat, wriggling creatures in his arms. He moved with long, purposeful strides to the far enclosure and left the pichari with Ailairi.
“Stay here. I will get your animals.” Giradey were not heat or flame resistant like latil’e. Better for the older male to stay with his livestock and keep them calm under the circumstances. S’samph hurried back to collect the next batch of pichari. He was attempting to corner a particularly frantic creature when K’kaen, Arz, Dynzol, and S’kasia arrived. It wasn’t lost on S’samph that S’kasia rode on the same levibike as his friend.
"Raviks?” K'kaen asked, his frill raised in alarm. "Where is Ailairi?"
"With the rest of the pichari.” S’samph handed two of them to K’kaen. “Get these to the far enclosure.” K’kaen’s frill raised in annoyance, but he kept his thoughts to himself as he hurried off with the animals. In the interim, S’kasia and Dynzol had started a supplemental water line spraying over the smoldering pichari enclosures, which quenched the flames but also served to send the creatures into even more panic.
With the flames doused, S’samph and Arz made quick time in rounding up the remaining pichari. One of the irritating creaturesmanaged to defecate on his boot which S’samph realized with grim amusement was the same boot where Eleri had vomited. As they were carrying the last of the pichari over to the enclosure where Ailairi was waiting, S’samph realized that a small crowd had started to form on the outskirts of the farm. He recognized Pyo and several of the others clamoring to try and get a better view of what was happening while K’kaen and S’kasia tried to hold people back from getting too close to the charred remains of the pichari enclosures.
S'samph noticed a familiar flash of blonde hair inside the last remaining enclosure, which meant that Eleri was already seeing to Ailairi. As much as he wanted to stop by to greet her, he knew there were more pressing things he had to see to first. He joined K’kaen and S’kasia near the head of the crowd, where his clutch sister was already trying to quell the rising panic he could smell in the air. It was a distinct coating of salt and stress hormones coating his tongue when he flicked it forward.
“What about the rest of our farms?” Someone shouted from the back of the crowd. Several other voices rose to echo the sentiment.
“Is it safe for our children to be out?”
It was only when Pyo snapped his wings open and shut that the chatter died down. S’samph noticed Eleri slip into the background of the crowd in the quiet interval before Pyo began to speak.
“Well? Head of security, what’s the plan?” Pyo addressed S’samph, dropping the full weight of his official title directly on his shoulders. It made only a small difference; he’d been acting in the role’s capacity if not name for a time already.
“We’re running regular patrols around the town perimeter.” S’samph paused. “But more eyes to help would mean greater safety. For the moment, there are only five of us actively patrolling Laurus and that’s not to mention the roads between here and Indras.” He glanced at S’kasia and K’kaen and then at Dynzol and Arz, who had come to join them in a grim line before the crowd. He turned his focus back to the crowd and noticed he didn’t see Eleri, even though he could have sworn he saw her join them only a few standard minutes before.
“If you need more patrols, I’m sure we can round up some volunteers.” Pyo regarded the crowd as if daring them to disagree with the plan. “But what about Indras?”
S’samph refocused on Pyo to answer the question. “K’kaen will go to Indras and coordinate with their securityteam to help us monitor the road.”
For a brief moment, K’kaen tail flicked with annoyance, but he quickly straightened and gave an affirmative hiss. “I’ll head out shortly then.”
“Good.” S’samph looked around again, still seeing no signs of Eleri. He leaned toward K’kaen. “Go check on Eleri first. I’m not sure where she went.”
For this, the other male needed no prompting, and he set off to the other end of the smoldering remains of the pichari farm in search of his sister. The tension eased slightly from S’samph’s tail, knowing that Eleri was looked after in his absence. After the plan to collaborate with Indras and increase the frequency of patrols seemed settled, the crowd began to disperse. S’samph turned toward S’kasia.
“I do not like this uptick in ravik behavior.”
