been mated long enough to raise a litter well into adulthood.
I glower down at the alien.
Her smile does not dim. She waves her short arm to everyone who is converging protectively in her direction. “It’s fine. Bash digs my mane.”
‘Digs?’
Easily, a dozen hobs cock their heads. An eerie sight, it’s so near to being choreographed.
I catch Isla by her half-arm, ignoring the disapproving commotion that results. Apparently, no person present (not to mention openly gawking) feels that I should be touching Isla by her smaller limb.
“Does this hurt?” I question.
Isla shrugs with ease. “No. It’s pretty common for people to wonder if it causes any pain, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t hurt at all, because—”
She chitters a lengthy explanation… and doesn’t stop. I find a small pool of patience I normally never possess, and I wait for her to run out of words…
Except she doesn’t. She maintains a steady commentary over a surprising number of subjects, linking them endlessly, growing further and further away from the original topic.
She resumes working, so I allow her to continue speaking.
Oddly, her endless twittering doesn’t sound nervous, despite the fact that in my experience, a babbling speaker is a nervous one. Surprisingly, my ears don’t mind the sound of her ceaseless nattering either.
I decide to keep her with me a little longer. Any other human, and I would have walked away by now to prevent myself from popping her under the jaw to silence the source of the noise. Instead, with this human, I find myself drawing her along with me to a quiet spot along the canyon wall, one that hasn’t been worked hard for stone yet. On the way, I pick up a chisel and swing a mallet to rest over my shoulder. At no point during any of this is there a normal opportunity for a second speaker to break in, so I press my tail to the female’s lips—
Her eyes get wide and she goes completely silent.
My ears flick at the abrupt change. I now know what it must feel like to be struck suddenly and temporarily deaf. I gaze down into the moonlit sand color of her eyes. “Does it offend you if I touch your short wing?”
Isla wiggles her limb in my loose grasp. “Did you just call this a ‘short wing?’” Without warning, she grins. “I don’t know why, but I just got the mental picture of you scarfing down chicken wings.” Silver pools of color flash up at me fast. Mischievous-looking, too. “Just how do you see my little ‘wing?’ Do you feel hungry?”
I nudge her, guiding Isla in front of me rather than towing her behind me. The scales along my nose ripple as I voice my confusion. “What are you even saying?” My grip keeps her limb in the air but she’s not fighting my hold on her.
She waves her hand. “Never mind; if that’s not where you’re at, no need to give you ideas. Hotahn is that Rakhii over there,” she points to the Rakhii (the one Gracie calls Akita) who adopted two human children to be his pups after he rescued them from Earth. I admire him for taking pups on, especially ones not of our species. I wonder if he looks at them like I am Isla, feeling a little sorry for her tail-lessness and lack of horns, and her puny ears. Isla’s ear size, though, does not affect her ability to make conversation whatsoever. She’s still chittering about Hotahn. “...and he thinks we’re all really nice because we bring him food. He loves to come to the human compound to be fed, and Doc, his woman? She thinks it’s funny because back home we have this saying about why you shouldn’t feed strays.” Her gaze slants to me. “You probably have something similar here. ‘Don’t feed strays or they’ll keep coming back.’” She shrugs and glances ahead and opens her mouth again, and it’s only then that I realize she allowed the smallest pause for me to answer if we do or don’t have such a saying. My window of opportunity to speak was so small I missed it. “There’s no danger of him leaving her for us or anything but he sure doesn’t miss an opportunity to visit when we’re baking treats. Anyway, we feed him so much because we’ve all been warned not to let him get too munchy around people. Apparently, he’s voiced some curiosity when it comes to the way humans taste.” She shrugs again, which