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“Thanks. That’d be really great.”
They smiled their human smiles at each other, and there I sat, sulking at the other side of the room. It did not matter if I kept company with Thorzi or with humans; I fit with neither.
CHAPTER13
LUCAS
Kaelum continued to pout for the rest of the morning, but I wasn’t sure if it was over my reluctance to have babies, or this tournament of his people’s, which he said he’d never won. Was that important? Was it the only way he was going to be allowed to have kids? Because that was kinda shitty, whether I wanted kids or not.
Maybe I didn’t want kids the literal second I was dumped onto an alien freaking planet, but no one should be able to tell Kaelum whether he was allowed to procreate except, you know, Kaelum.
Still, an afternoon snack seemed to improve his mood, and he turned into a big kid, bouncing on the bed as we tried a fruit he said was called “lotfi,” that tasted a little like a pineapple, but looked like a miniature dragonfruit, all red and spiky.
Kaelum pulled the tiny spikes off before handing it to me to eat, so when it was good, I eyed the plate of them with concern. “Is it poisonous?”
“I would never feed you something poisonous, my Lucas.” Kaelum sounded utterly scandalized, and I had to smile.
“I mean the pokey bits that you peeled off,” I said, pointing at the pile of them.
He glanced between the pile of fruit and the spikes, and then understanding dawned. “Oh, you desire another? They are not poisonous, but I did not wish you to damage your soft skin on the points. They can be painful.”
Okay, well that answered the question and also... didn’t, because what did painful mean to Kaelum? And did he mean painful to pitiful, weak little human me, or painful in general?
I decided to get the answer for myself, and picked up the next one, prying at one of the spikes with the single-tined eating implement his people used, that was like a cross between a fork and a chopstick. It was very much like a pineapple or a dragonfruit, sort of pokey, but not dangerous.
And Kaelum? He watched me like a hawk, like I was a five-year-old playing with a knife, but he didn’t snatch it away or insist on doing it himself. Yeah, maybe I accidentally almost ate a piece of one of the spikes, tasteless and hard as it was, but in the end, I managed to do it myself.
Maybe I would manage to make my own way on Thorzan after all.
Even if I had to struggle with a whole people who seemed to think I was an oversized child, it was kind of exciting. New foods and clothes and dinosaur birds and murderplants and aliens with magic tattoos.
I didn’t know about anyone else, but I’d never seen anything cooler than a magical tattoo that let someone talk to a dinosaur bird.
“Can you talk to all kinds of birds?” I asked, when I’d finished the fruit and lay back on the bed, watching him chew on some gamey jerky.
For some reason, the question made him light up like a kindergartener talking about their newest glitter-art project, grinning from ear to ear, exposing a bright white smile full of teeth sharper than any human’s that I’d ever met. “I can speak to any beast. All of them. Would you like to meet them?”
I quirked a brow at him. “All of them?”
Instead of correcting himself, he nodded eagerly, stood, and held out a hand. Not only did he want to introduce me to every beast on the planet, apparently he wanted to do it right that moment.
Well hell, did I have anything better to be doing?
Nope.
I didn’t have to get to the coffee shop, or clean the apartment, or continue my hopeless search for a job as a teacher—a job I didn’t even want, but was desperate to get, to free myself from my minimum-wage shackles. At least thirty-thousand dollars a year to teach bored high schoolers was better than twelve bucks an hour to serve coffee with no vacations and no medical insurance.
On Kaelum’s ship, the doctor hadn’t asked for my Blue Cross card and ID, just scanned me, declared me healthy, given me the interpreter shot thingie, and moved on.
I smiled and stood to follow him. “You know what? Let’s do it. Off we go to meet all the animals, Doctor Dolittle.”
“Who?” he asked, turning back to give me a confused look.
I just shook my head and waved him on ahead.
He took us to one of those giant floating disk things and climbed on. I braced myself first, took a deep breath, and stepped on, moving as close to the center as I could. It was quick and efficient, but sweet baby jeebus, why didn’t they have railings? I spent the whole time expecting to be thrown off and go plummeting toward the ground when the thing took a turn too fast, and since we were on top of a cliff, that ground was really fucking far away.
As much as I was cool with adventure, I wasn’t interested in learning how to fly.
