of the beetle, holding it between his clawtips, “wouldn’t have harmed you.”
“Oh. Um, thanks for killing it for me anyway.”
Bash’s tail waves at the vines… What’s left of them. There’s still a lot—all things considered, it’s still a huge pile. Buuuut there would have been more if the bugs hadn’t scared me and Bash hadn’t reacted in my defense.
The fact that he did defend me was really nice of him. And, well? Kind of surprising.
Bash’s words are measured. “It’s common for grape beetles to infest vines. That’s why we have a wagon full of them; these aren’t pruned vines; they’re eaten vines. Our load will be crawling with these.”
I shiver. “Oh.”
“Don’t fret about it further. They’re burned now,” the other Rakhii says helpfully and holds up two more bug shells, the glitter of their backs not destroyable by fire, apparently. He peeks at Bash, then nudges him with his elbow. “Just think. You can sell the husks to Gryfala. They love to collect them.”
“Ugh, why?” I ask, horrified. “What the heck do they use bug shells for?”
Smoke is curling around Bash’s head. It’s coming from his mouth now, not the remains of the vines under his feet. “Jewelry. Is it common for humans to overreact to insects?” He’s staring at me like he’s not sure I have the sense God gave lice.
“Hey!” I protest. “It was really scary!”
“It was a vine beetle.”
The other Rakhii moves to the end of the wagon, making the frame of the vehicle shake with his heavy steps before he hops down. “Better check where we’re at on the fire’s circuit. Bet the flames are about ready to come back around now.”
Grimacing, I look to Bash. “I’m sorry.”
He grunts and his tail sweeps at a burned-black gnarled mess of vines… and we both watch the pile crumble into dust.
“I’m really, really sorry,” I add. When he doesn’t say anything, my voice squeaks as I try to joke, “Any chance this was all going to get burned anyway?”
Bash’s stone-faced expression appears somewhat menacing with the way his facial scales glimmer slightly under the sunshine. It gives him a real reptilian/dragon-esque look, a massively unimpressed one. “I don’t know,” Bash exhales on a contemplative breath, “what your planet is like, but here, there is a great difference between useful charcoal and useless ashes. This,” he flicks his tail to indicate the powdery dust under his alien toes, “was meant to be charcoal.”
“Hmm, actually, our planets might be the same in that way,” I muse, biting my lip. “Damn alien bugs.”
“Yes. Damned alien bugs,” he says flatly, his eyes fixed on moi. “They cause me all sorts of trouble.”
***
He lifts me back into the wagon and goes back to working, and hesitantly, I start ‘chattering’ to him again. When he doesn’t tell me to stop, I keep the verbal barrage rolling. I can’t tell if I horrify him or astound him with my inability to shut up.
Although, it’s entirely possible he’s feeling both those emotions at the same time. I catch a couple looks at me before he shakes his head, his eyes going a little wide.
I bet we work for close to twenty minutes in relative harmony until I make the mistake of innocently asking, “Hey, Bash? When do we get a break?”
My employer experiences a somewhat extreme overreaction, as far as I’m concerned. “Not you too!” he thunder-growls, like there’s a line of people who’ve been whining at him all day and me asking for a break is the absolute last straw. He digs his pitchfork into the tallest stack of vines—no, not ‘digs.’ He GUTS through the vine pile, stabbing the tines in. “You nanoscopic alien hassles and your desire for breaks!”
I blink at him. “That is the first time in my life I’ve ever been called ‘nanoscopic.’
His extremely grouchy face does not relax.
I readjust my stance in the cart and crunch my pitchfork into vines, so that it stands up by itself. “Maybe you aliens are different, but it’s completely normal for my people to need to answer the call of nature a couple of times a day, and guess what? It’s time for me to answer it right now. I gotta pee.”
Bash sends me an incredulous look when I mention answering nature’s calls and then he’s pointing a berating claw at my face. “You people are nearly incontinent.”
“Pah!” I scoff. “We are not. You’re exaggerating.”
My calm doesn’t have a huge mellowing effect on him. “I have never come across beings who have to void