mine, and I haven’t failed to consider that I’ve never invited anyone to my home.
Not until now.
Not until Isla.
“I’m Stands with One Fist, and you're obviously Growls a Lot.” She flicks a meaningful glance up at me from the corner of her eye. “Or your Lakota name can be Silent Glare. It’d be very you.”
Without more than a reproachful snort at her for breaking the silence—again—I slow my pace next to her, letting her stay abreast of me for the sake of her non-Rakhii legs. And by that, I mean short. “I'm beginning to get used to the fact that I can essentially speak the same language as a human, yet have absolutely no understanding of what she says. It should be maddening.”
“But it isn’t? That’s good.”
“I suppose. Let us say that I find that some part of me more than mildly enjoys her. How twisted.”
“Downright wild,” Isla agrees. I think. “Hey, do you know what I just realized?”
“I couldn’t guess. Yet somehow I suspect you have every intention of sharing another of your alien thoughts with me.”
She reaches up and boldly flicks the ribbed underside of my horn. “It’s cute how you keep referring to me as an alien. But here’s my revelation, ready?”
“I’m riveted.” We’re nearing the entrance to my den.
“You’re an RRF sufferer: you have resting Rakhii face. You poor guy. All this time your scowl has really been a smile.”
I force myself not to rear back when she pokes me in the lip, but all my muscles tremble to do it as her flesh forces mine to rise in a facsimile of a smile.
“See? This is what it would feel like if you smi—”
I catch her hand in my mouth.
“AHHHH!!!!” she shrieks—followed by the swiftest pregnant pause—then she’s whooping with laughter. “Whew! I thought you’d finally snapped and you were gonna eat me there for a second.”
“I’ve calculated it would take me more than one of your seconds to eat you,” I tell her.
She pauses, blinking. “Wait, you’ve contemplated eating me in a nom-nom-crunch way or a dirty-awesome way?” She frowns, something vaguely dangerous entering her expression—an interesting look on a human. “Or are you insinuating that I’m fat?”
...What?
I recognize a topic pratfall when I see one, even if I don’t know how we arrived here. “I did not insinuate any such thing.”
“Hmm. Hey, wow your quarry really held onto the water, didn’t it?” She indicates the mid-quarry line, where the rock is dark, still dampened from the floodwaters that sat soaking it all night.
“As soon as the sun came up, it burned a great deal of it away. You can see it gathered more near my cave’s entrance.”
When we near it, I show her the temporary lake that surrounds my home.
“Wow,” Isla comments with no small amount of awe. “That is a lot of water.”
The quarry walls tower three Rakhii high, and the water sits at about halfway up towards the farthest end. What Isla said is true: there is an abundance of water. Which is not an entirely unwelcome thing. “It will allow us to harvest a good amount of clay once it dries some.”
Cloaking the entrance of my home, the waterfall in front of my door is pounding—deafening and powerful and swollen with rainwater, which it empties into the ephemeral waterhole beyond us. Thankfully, there is still a fair enough gap that we can step behind them without passing through the active spray. I lead Isla past the curtain of the falls and open the door to my cave, gesturing her inside.
I wasn’t certain how I’d feel if Isla entered my space.
The eruption of more bumps across my tongue tells me that I enjoy having her to myself too much. Thus my first order of business once I step in behind her involves me applying a generous amount of anti-bonding spray to my person.
Although the spray isn’t truly anti-bonding. It simply prevents the more dangerous effects. Like holding the female of interest captive until she agrees to commit herself to the male solely and forever.
I prepare a meal with her help, which mostly involves her never-ending commentary on the strangeness of the vegetables here, how free from arachnid webs my cave’s ceiling is (I demonstrate how I keep it web-free by blowing fire along the speleothems, killing any insects that could be hiding behind stalactites. It thrills her and surprisingly, it amuses me). And she even exclaims over the design of my sink.