Arev and Arutulf were pretty adventurous if they said so themselves (Which they often would, cheekily), and one would have to be if they picked “Earrthuh” as an anniversary getaway. Considering how hard it can be to get away afterwards.

Arutulf concluded that much from what the digital pamphlet told her. “They’re supposed to be smart, huh? These humans.”

Arev reread the informative digital pamphlet Invading the Idiots: An Informed Guide to the Uniformed Humans twice now, so she had no problem responding to her lover’s remark.

“Yeah, they’re capable of deep and critical thinking.” Arev dug further and further into her trunk as she said this. “It’s just that-” Arev threw the extra wrench she grabbed up and away- “A lot of them are so boring that they’re stuck in a sort of ‘bubble’ of what’s normal, and they freak out if anything pops it.”

Arutulf turned away from the tablet, speaking only with a stare.

Arev sat up to look at her and shrug- “Pamphlet’s words, not mine-” before funneling back into the trunk.

Why Arev packed so much tish, Arutulf half-hoped the pamphlet would know. Perhaps it could answer other questions she had even a year into their relationship.

But at the moment, Arutulf’s most pressing question was, “Do you even see those stupid specs yet?”

“No, ironically enough…” At this point, Arev recruited her tail in the search.

Arutulf took her smile off Arev to sneer at the blistering bastard of a sun above them. Arev parked their rental in the shadiest of caves, and yet the sun and its heat still peaked out and into Arutulf’s eyes.

Using her tail to block it out some, she let out a murmur of, “Why are we here? A place where the light and climate’s nothing like Nilbaa’s?”

“Because it’s a place where the light and climate’s nothing like Nilbaa’s!”

In that moment, Arev finally found the Distance Scoping Spectacles her mother had gifted her. The mother that said she could have them if she dumped Arutulf.

Now, did her mother really give Arev that ultimatum? Yes.

Did she send the gift with it? Yes.

Did she send the gift and the ultimatum before Arev sent a response to either? Yes.

So, logically speaking, could Arev have simply ignored the prerecorded message, take the specs, and use them to see Arutulf’s shimmering smile up close? Ding ding ding!

Although Arev wasn’t hooked into her mother’s bulltish disapproval of her girlfriend, she had to admit she picked out a pretty good bait. She had an eye out for a pair of specs for quite some time. Enough to accumulate the money that instead went to this current vacation and then some.

Speaking of that “and then some”, Arev put the little box back into her pocket before Arutulf saw it as she approached her.

It took Arutulf little effort to pull the specs up and off Arev’s horns and on then below her own. She still held Arev’s lean and scaly face, and Arev savored the fact that Arutulf would rather struggle to put the specs on singlehandedly than let the love of her life go.

‘That’s what I am to her,’ Arev told herself. ‘And that’s what she is to me.’

Once Arutulf finally pulled it off (Well, put them on), she looked up and around and asked, “Why’d you pick this place as an exploration spot anyways? Not the planet itself, but this area. It’s so hot, and dry.”

“And different, yeah.” Arev swallowed a lump in her throat as Arutulf looked around some, and the former reached into her back pocket. “Life is full of different stuff. Stuff that’s different to us but familiar to them. Stuff that’s familiar to us but different to them. Different kinds of them, whoever ‘them’ is and who ‘us’ is. But that’s what I’m trying to get at here.”

“Yes, I see…” Arutulf looked out into the “deesert” while Arev leaned down a smidge (She would’ve kneeled if it wouldn’t force Arutulf to bend in half).

Arev held her lover’s hand as she said, “I am, so, very happy that you could come with me here, that you could be with me, that you are with me. And I was hoping it could stay like tha-“

“Hold up.”

Arutulf withdrew from the other’s touch and adjusted the wheels on the specs, adjusting the clarity of the sight before her. Arev gulped, shakily stood, and meekly asked, “What’s uh, what’s up?”

The taller of the two was lost in thought, mumbling her confusion and adding to Arev’s.

To reach Arutulf’s eye level, Arev jumped up again and again to ask, “Arutulf? Nilbaa-to-Arutulf. What’s going on? You see something?”

“Something alright,” Arutulf mumbled as she took off the specs and shoved them onto Arev.

The latter didn’t protest this as she turned to Arutulf’s line of sight and looked far out to find hundreds of figures. Figures that made her gasp and her tail spike. “Humans…” She breathed out. “…Actual humans! But what are they doing so far out here in the deesert?”

“You wanna get up close and find out?”

Arev had many responses to that.

"Can I propose to you first?"

"Sure, let me just get my proposal out of the way."

"I'd actually rather ask you to marry me."

But in that moment of realizing she could see some cool tish up close, Arev simply said, "Sure."