A tiny ringing silence suffused Ktsn’s home for a short while.
“I’m sure I don’t have to clarify which of these players represents you - the creatures we call karkshes - and which represents us.”
Eihks showed his teeth.
Thumb went sideways on his forehead.
“I’m so very sorry.”
Then there was the snap of silence fermenting into something greater and more rancid.
“You - your people are guilty of creating in us a social caste of victims. You gave us a certain amount of assistance without asking or demanding anything in return. Why did you not simply abandon us to our fate?”
Eihks skinned the air with his fingernails.
“We are many things,” he replied. “Among them is not ‘a collection of truly amoral creatures with a vendetta against all thinking feeling entities unfortunate enough to not be one of us.’ We couldn’t adhere to that mentality, even if it weren’t totally abhorrent and detrimental on a level of personal integrity. The concept of ‘do unto others as unto yourself’ is one with very wide traction, across a wide span of cultures. When you become outed as a creature which doesn’t comply with the principle of reciprocation, then you become known as the sort of tolerable evil that must be jettisoned at the earliest opportunity. ‘Making an effort to better the world’ is a flavor of social survival imperative.”
Most of the lower half of his face was covered by a mask, formed with cupped fingers and palm.
“But that’s it, as far as you’re concerned. No need to admit to actual blood guilt. I assure you, within a handful of years, there won’t be a single person whose accusations that we were guilty of mismanagement and legalistic appeasement won’t be met with the argument that ‘Rhaagm was just doing the right and charitable thing!’”
A sudden change in timbre and skittering exaggerated gestures with the non-face-holding hand managed to convey something approaching disgust. Ktsn wasn’t sure if that was a vestigial sense left over from the rest of her Thomas-imbued grasp of human traits and quirks, or that was something she’d come to understand over the duration of her so-far brief acquaintance with Eihks Richard.
She steeled herself, and tried to reorient. A mental flip over, highlegs and fastlegs repeatedly exchanged in rapid succession, put her in a clean state of mind.
How did she feel?
Numb. That part was going to be around for a long while. She was less confused than she might’ve expected. She was also, oddly enough, vaguely happy at the civilized way the end of the world was progressing. Some of the non-confusion was probably directly resultant of her numbness. Other bits - actually, the majority - descended from how weirdly well her academic leanings prepared her to accept her current plight. These people from Rhaagm were being almost baldly forthright, she noted - with just one glaring absence, if Eihks was accurate. The problem was now learning which components of these aliens’ introductory moves were false and which were genuine.
What did she want?
Truth, for one. Or, rather, the ability to identify which bits and pieces of the big stage put together in front of her were legitimate. She’d ideally like to go back to the way things had been that particular morning, but that was far more of an impossible dream than her confrontation with… a Being of Old? She wanted people to listen when she asked for reasonable favors, especially when she was willing to exchange for other reasonable favors. In short, she wanted respect and all the things that came with it. She’d even put up with Rlgts hounding her for the rest of her days, if she could reliably expect a better resolution to the recent complications.
That brought up a related question. What degree of objectivity of perspective did she actually possess in her current mindset? Surely she, a ‘karkshesh,’ wasn’t being given much beyond what knowledge was necessary for appearances. She certainly didn’t fully trust the human sitting against her house’s dry floor, but his forthrightness led her to believe he was circumstantially reliable. Whatever that dream had done, or been, it inclined her to give him some benefit of the doubt. She wasn’t hardly ready to just sign herself away to his whims yet, though.
Just like that, it hit her; of COURSE she should be pressing for more data right now. Who cared if it was false? That alone would tell her something… in time, at least.
“So, now what happens?” she asked the human.
As he looked up into her own stare, Eihks made a small snort.
“In what sense?” he responded. “Are you asking what will have to be done to get an actual apology from those…”
He broke off and growled something half under his breath. Momentarily he rediverted his full attention to the farmer.
“I assure you that won’t be happening unless there’s very specific pressure applied from outside. Maybe from some lesser players in the government, but not those ultimately responsible. You and your people won’t be able to put that pressure in the right places, even if you knew exactly what needed doing. Any efforts in that direction would just get a general response that you poor distressed foreigners are poor and distressed and out of your element. This needs to come from…”
He stopped again. Muscles up beside his eyes strained.
“Look. All I can say is thus: you are going to have to let others stand up on your behalf for this farce. Not because you’re weak of will, or you aren’t worthy people. You don’t know how things work just ye-”
He stopped a third time, but in this instance it was to whirl around, shifting into a crouch, looking through the wall in the direction of her berry garden. Before she actually asked him what he was doing, she paused, listened, heard. A little breathy sound came in through the cracks and seams of her dwelling, indicating a close and unwelcome visitor. Very close, as a matter of fact.
That snuffling in the near distance could indicate one of several things. All of them happened to be gpsl-nuson-related.
“I assume you don’t want a… gpsl nuson, I think you call them… knocking around your yard, do you?”
The tall human was brought to a height where Ktsn could easily see his whole form without angling her skull at all. He held out one hand to the side, and she saw his head jerking occasionally, as though he was watching the intruder on her property with great care.
“I do not!” she said, whispering with vigor. “This is not good! I do not have what I would need to-”
Eihks interrupted her, speaking very quickly, and with an inordinate amount of the sounds coming from that neck box of his.
“Is it a problem if the creature dies?” he asked. “It’s pretty close, so this will get violent I’m sure, but I don’t know quite as much about them as I’d like to safely remove it without being needlessly cruel.”
She gaped at him.
“No, but… do you know what you are doing?” she pressed, as he began slinking for the door at speed.
Just before exiting, he looked over one shoulder. The distance his neck needed to turn in order to peer at her gave it an unnatural, crawling-creepy feeling.
“I’ve dealt with wildlife before.”
Then he pushed out into her yard, and the sound of a gpsl nuson protesting a contender in its territory filtered into her home.
Ktsn cursed everything she knew or thought or suspected might have to do with the way her day was collapsing, and followed at a short distance.
In retrospect not too many heartbeats later, she thought the confrontation lasted all of four or five breaths. In that moment of seeing the gangly spoke-riddled form rushing around her yard, though, time stopped. The bull was at least two body-lengths from end to end, and counting the forward-pointed sets of horns probably two and a half. It had gone through her land like a small half-thinking storm, and was now menacing the little plots at the far end of her house. How she hadn’t heard it before was a mystery, but it was a mystery that mattered relatively little. She’d gone rushing across the countryside, and almost certainly had attracted unwanted attention from her solicitor in the process. The rest was just cause-and-effect.
As it pawed through the dirt and clods trying to find something else good to eat, she saw how far up the beast’s horns the staining went, and realized that this creature was both very old and very good at digging up food. Those horns probably had done a great deal of disemboweling in their time as well. It had already destroyed most of her berry bushes, torn through her tubers, and gotten a start on marking up her better-quality orchard quadrant. She didn’t often harbor hate for animals - they were dumb creatures with little or less concept of “consequences” - but seeing the way her efforts at cultivation had been desecrated, she felt mad enough to start backing into the house once more, and perhaps pace a new rut into her floor.
Her soul cried out the instant that she saw what it was doing, and noticed the demolished bits of jars where it had unmade her experimental setup with appalling thoroughness.
To one side of the lanky form, another lanky form closed in with great speed. The way Eihks was sprinting made her wince inside, every step looking like it would put him over on his face. No wobbling newborn’s pace, this; it was actually on par with a swift trot on one’s fastlegs.
The gpsl nuson must have heard his fast-moving feet, because it gave a short bugle, then reared up and fell onto its opposite legs (highlegs, she thought) with its leading eye already trained on the man. The bull’s thin mouth showed both sets of teeth as it hissed, making very short twitches in the human’s direction.
The human in question took a running leap that by rights no two-legged creature should have been able to achieve. He collided with the growling form in a way that nearly left one ivory spear gaily protruding from his flank. The terrified creature started trying to flail and rip him apart as he pulled himself closer, right up until he came within reaching distance of its slender head, and touched it.
Then, it died.
One instant the thing was thrashing about with its large rhombus feet stamping the ground, the next it fell completely still and collapsed. There was no sound from it, no final expulsion of breath. It just stopped being alive and its flesh started being meat.
Ktsn watched, silent and unmoving, as the human made a little snorting noise and stepped back from his work.
Ktsn looked between the man who was going to his flat feet, and the detritus of her life as a farmer.
“Sorry about the mess,” began Eihks with that wretched tooth-baring happiness, looking around at her.
“What…”
Eihks cut off as he followed her gaze toward the upturned patches. He looked back at her, and knew. Not how bad it was, she felt sure, but some inkling.
“Ah. Here, let me…”
He stepped away, grabbing hold of the bull’s thickest horns, and made as though to start dragging the body off to the side.
“Where do you want this?” he asked. Then, when she didn’t respond, he let go and clambered closer. No closer than a body-length, though.
“What can I do?” he probed, soft like unstretched gauze.
“Nothing.”
The memory of a gaping hole where glass had sat, the thought that in the twinkling of an eye… she lay on the ground, legs splayed, eyes closed so hard they were almost gummed shut.
“I suppose that most of my life has been rendered moribund at a stroke,” she added, knowing that she was pathetic and feeling all the more powerless for it.
“Oh?” asked Eihks.
Something in his voice, and the fact that she heard him standing, made her open her eyes. He bent at the waist, leaning over her prone form, and his hands were clenched together into one ten-finger fist.
“If you think that, you’re very sadly mistaken.”
He pointed, and as she followed his outstretched digit, he started walking in the indicated direction.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said over one shoulder, “if that’s what you honestly think, then let’s put your leisure to good use. No, don’t bother refusing; I INSIST. I will show you… a wonder. If you’re still certain that things are just as bleak later, we can get into constructive discourse then. And when you’re feeling better, of course.”
The voice rose a bit.
“We can be back before the sun’s down, if that’s what you feel like doing. Maaaaybe a short time after, but not by much.”
Ten body-lengths away, he rotated. The clad shapes of his feet had disappeared into the churned soil, and it made her wince inside.
“Unless you have some obligation you need to take care of before leaving, of course,” he added, arms out in a cross. His head canted to the side, before he asked, “Well… are you coming?”
Ktsn thought of her family, and Cursog. She counted the countless faces spanning the sky of her now-alien home. She grew hot at the thought of her aborted treatise, and then cold as she saw the human’s twirling fingers gesturing outward. She grew numb considering the improbable tale that he’d recounted for her benefit.
Without even dwelling on why she did it, she thrust herself to her feet.
Not a word was spoken between her and her strange companion-keeper for quite some time, but then they arrived at the wonder of which he spoke.
“I do not know… it is… how can…”
“Yeah,” said Eihks. The suddenly-appearing halfway transparent world stretched out before them both, and that was all he needed to say.
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