to her, my instincts rear up, and if I were a weaker male, I would have spun around and lumbered back to her, panting for more of her attention, loyal and already besotted.
How can this sabotaging happen so soon? I want to rail… But this is the way of my kind. I grit my teeth as I accept that I got too close to this female. Something about her drew me and in the space of a blink, she’s conditioned me to nearly crave her—her and her verbal malfunctioning. I’ve virtually become her aural hostage. I want to hear whatever nonsense she has to say.
Which is utter insanity.
I take a detour to retrieve my anti-bonding spray. Rather than the recommended dose, I nearly empty the bottle’s contents on myself—and then I drink the rest of it for good measure. Where bonding repression is concerned, one can’t be too careful. Task of locating the Narwari wagon’s driver completed, I return to Isla and help her down from the bench seat, leading her to the rock wall that I intend to work next.
Isla, of course, fills every moment we are together with her endless waterfall of words. As if my ears are dry, crumbly sponges, they absorb the rush of her chattering, satisfied anew to hear her.
My mind though, is not as enamored with her lip-flapping trait. Although I can admit I am occasionally amused. And I’m oddly never bored. Certainly am never at risk for being alone with my thoughts, if being alone with my thoughts was something I ever thought to avoid. She begins discussing her-world’s paper dollars versus coins, and it’s madness, but I don’t shout at her, not once, while we work side-by-side and she prattles my ears off about things that will never matter to me. I just absorb her voice, and we work.
If it were anyone else, I would have killed them when they began babbling through an explanation of smoked mozzarella cheese. A cuisine that, I’m reluctant to admit, sounds appealing. But Rakhii are fond of all smoked foods.
Isla’s in the middle of telling me what a French fry is—some odd, probably unhealthy ration stick by the sounds of it—when I turn my head away from her to bellow, “I NEED THE HUMAN-SAFE ADHESIVE STRIPS!”
Isla pauses briefly in her explanation of what a drive-through is when a hob races between us and hands me the sterile strips designed to hold sections of human skin together or to cover a gash wound and keep the human’s wound clean should they be injured with no Rakhii around to spit-heal them.
Isla is explaining what an automotive vehicle is—it’s a ground transporter, but she’s describing her-world vehicles as if I’ve never driven my own spaceship, the brazen wretch—when I use my claw tips to carefully peel back the adhesive papers from the sterile strip itself.
And Isla is explaining what rubber tires are when I lift the adhesive strip, carefully line it up, and seal the top and bottom half of her mouth shut.
Isla’s shocked eyes fly up to mine. Her strange grey eyes look rather fetching in this startled shade.
Then she bursts out laughing.
***
“You could have just told me to be quiet!” she chuckles later, after peeling off the strip as if I placed it there in jest and not as if I put it there with purpose.
“I would have. You didn’t stop to take a breath; I had absolutely no chance.”
Isla chortles loudly, and the sound should grate on my nerves.
It doesn’t.
She even dares to question me, eyes dancing. “Why encourage me to talk all day if you’re tired of hearing me?”
That’s the mystifying thing. The whole of the day, to my surprise… I have not tired of you. Not the sound of your voice or the preposterous statements that walk boldly out of your mouth. I’m not even irritated by your questions that never seem to cease. I’m afraid I’m becoming desiderate of your very being. I nearly gulp as I try to keep the words forced down. What I utter aloud is, “Before you told me of your unfortunate condition—”
(Isla explained she was born with motormouthia, which is incurable, sadly.)
“—it occurred to me that I’ve heard many humans chatter due to pent up nerves, or what have you.” I toss a rock into the wagon, and Isla drops her smaller addition beside mine. “Therefore I thought that perhaps you simply needed to release your verbal energy in order to heal yourself to silence. Like a tire,