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I was starting to feel like the stalker now, it waswhacked.
Needless to say, I was ready to get off that ship and made it very clear when Lyv announced he had some errands to run. I didn’t know if he informed Arys of our plans, but I wasn’t going to ask. We were headed inside a floating city, and I was kind of excited to see something other than miles and miles of ocean.
“LYV!” A female shouted as our big protector tied off the little boat to the pier. She was much smaller than Lyv but still so much bigger than me. Tall and svelte, she wore nothing more than a thin garment draped strategically to hide her modesty. There was a whole lotta blue skin running over to us.
She skidded to a halt when Lyv shifted, revealing the three of us perched at the back of the raft. Her mouth popped open and closed a few times before a stream of garbled language came flooding out. Her voice was high and tight, and I got the impression she was anxious.
Lyv grimaced, glancing at the three of us over his shoulder before he replied to her. Whatever he said seemed to calm her but there was still a bit of confusion lining her face.
“This is my mate, Dyande,” he said, waving us off the raft.
Esther gasped in delight, rushing off the raft. “Oh my goodness, you have a mate! Why didn’t you say so?” She got all up in Dyande’s space, hugging the poor female without permission and everything. I felt the secondhand embarrassment from her breach of personal boundaries.
Dyande watched Esther with a mix of emotions, her stare churning with mild horror to be hugged by a much smaller—technically—alien.
Huh, how strange was it to be the extraterrestrial in this scenario?
The three of us stood back, slightly awkward, as Lyv greeted his lady love properly. They weren’t overly affectionate, but you could tell they had missed one another.
Lyv eventually got her to start speaking in a language we understood. It still surprised me that there was such a language here.
“I didn’t think I’d see you for another turn,” she was saying to him. Turn meaning turn around the sun… or in other words, a month. Lyv had haltingly explained some of their terms, like moon meant a full day. Andradelemeant fuck off. He used that one a lot when some other big blue guy came snooping around. His name was Rothe and Lyv would simply tell him,Radele, Rothe, and the guy would storm off in a huff.
I stored that one away just in case a certain somebody was caught looming over me in the middle of the night again.
I wasn’tat alldisappointed that he hadn’t tried it again.
“Change of plans,” Lyv mumbled, glancing strangled at me from the corner of his eye.He said something to her than that was in their language and so I didn’t catch it, but the way her eyes flared and locked on me with shock made me uncomfortable.
“Come,” Lyv murmured, waving us forward. Esther jumped at the chance to chat up Dyande, but Albert and I dragged our feet. For me, even though I was happy to be off the boat, I was wary about how our presence would be perceived here.
Since most of the males on the ship didn’t seem too fond of us, I did fear that it would be the same here. What surprised me the most was the lack of male residents as Lyv and Dyande led us through the streets of Lyessa.
The city was predominantly female. Everywhere I looked there were females. Very rarely did I cross paths with a male and when we did, their attire reminded me of the males on the ship. The same reptilian leather pants, same soft boots. Same beaded hair styles and that rugged look of someone that was worn out, a little sun burnt, and had a whole lot of weathered experience with salt water.
But after we headed further into the center of the city and left the pier behind, it was pretty much all females. But I stopped wondering about that once the sights became too amazing to ignore. Tall buildings made of some type of sandstone were scattered about on floating walkways. The paths themselves were wide enough for several females to walk in groups together or weathered wooden carts to roll though without shoving anyone into the water. Some paths had railings, some did not. But all of them sat directly on the water, wet as motion waves spilled on top with heavy movement. The larger structures moved much less than the smaller ones, their weight supported by thick wooden barrels that I realized held up pretty much the entire city.
I wondered how long something like this took to build. It wasamazing.
Lyv and Dyande lived in a small hut that was in a huddle of similar styled buildings. They seemed to share a center with three more huts, comfortable chairs and benches settled in the middle that seemed to be used as a gathering place. Three females occupied the area, peering at us with curiosity but they didn’t stand to greet us and Dyande didn’t acknowledge them apart from a jaunty wave.
Esther called out hellos—as she’d done to nearlyeveryoneon this floating city—and though they timidly smiled in return, they seemed startled that she would speak. In fact, one female even seemed mildly irritated afterward.
“They are confused,” Lyv said low in enough that they would not overhear. “You speak the Loyobv language.”
“We speak English,” I muttered back, warily watching the angry one.
Albert cleared his throat and Lyv looked back at him. The older man very rarely spoke much, especially not to Lyv, so the big guy was rightly curious. “The Loyobv?” He asked, testing the word in his mouth. “Are they not welcome here?”
Dyande snorted with dry humor as she opened the door to her hut for us. “No.They are not.”
Lyv winced apologetically, arm open to invite us inside. “The Loyobv are not welcomed anywhere on Vyessa.”
“Great,” I sighed. “And we’re expected to find one to take us home?”
Dyande had a strange reaction to my question. She halted mid stride, turned to her mate, and glared at him fiercely. “Whatexactlyhave you told them?”
Lyv winced, his cheeks flushing the color of an eggplant, all seven feet of him shrinking in the face of her ire. “Now, sweets. Careful, you do not want to anger the captain.”
