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She is a tough little thing. As I perform this scan with her awake for the first time, I remember when she was brought aboard. I scanned her then too, as there was nobody else to do it. I would not call my brothers irresponsible, and yet they are. Since the passing of our father and the desertion of our mother, all matters of organization have fallen to me. Arkan maintains his position as eldest, theoretical head of the family, Zain can do as he pleases in his eternal role as renegade, and our other brother is lost entirely in the woods. That leaves me to be the voice of reason, the responsible one. Always the responsible one.
“Am I alright?”
She asks the question in a slightly worried tone, distracting me from my self-pity.
“You are strong,” I tell her. “And you are, against all odds, healthy.”
“Yeah, I am!” She grins. “I knew it. I feel great. Hungry, though. So hungry. And thirsty.”
“You may come with me,” I tell her. “We will go to the kitchen.”
I help her down from the medical table, take her by the hand, and lead her through the ship. It is a large vessel, and it is easy to get lost here. Plus, I cannot trust her out of my grasp, even for a moment. Humans can scamper surprisingly quickly, and once out of sight she would be close to impossible to track down if she decided to hide. My brothers and I used to play hide and seek around this ship all the time — which explains why my twin brother Rake has managed to disappear into the Euphorian woods entirely.
The kitchen I choose to use is the one reserved for family only. We had a secondary mess set up when we found ourselves transporting soldiers and villagers in the lower decks, and those facilities are still operational, but I would rather starve than eat shoulder to shoulder with our rough passengers.
Arkan has decided it is for the best to bring a pack of human soldiers back to Euphoria in hopes of using them as security for our interests. I believe they have their own interests and will never be anything even slightly resembling under control.
But that is the least of my worries in this moment. For now, I am in the cozy space kitchen in which meals were prepared for us when we were small. There is a refrigerator which I keep stocked with human-class foods. There is also a machine that takes essential minerals, vitamins, proteins, starches, etcetera and prints food onto a plate. I tend not to use that. It is possibly a technically superior way to eat, but I think something is lost in not eating food that has undergone the formality of being born, growing, and then dying.
The walls of the kitchen are a lemon yellow. The plates and other accoutrements are blue ceramic designed after the style of the old Euphorian ways, when settlements were small, before the major city dominated the landscape and the lives of our kind. They look like they could be antiques, but having fed a family of four boys, they have been reconstituted and replaced many times.
“Sit down,” I say, once again lifting her up into a chair. These are stools that sit at the counter and of course they are all too high for her. Nothing on this ship was made with human proportions in mind.
“I don’t want you touching anything, except what I feed you.”
Humans are filthy little things sometimes, and though this one is quite neat, she is undoubtedly dirty with the simple effects of being human and having laid in one bed for quite some time.
Her hair curls quite wildly but is hanging heavy around her face. She needs to be bathed after her long convalescence. That will be my next task, once she is fed.
“You’re mean, you know that? And rude.”
“I am much meaner to young ladies who do not do as they are told.”
She lets out a little snort. “Did you just call me a young lady? You’re so old-fashioned. Also, what the fuck are you?”
I respond to her curiosity, because that is something I do encourage. “My species are called Euphorians in your tongue. In case you do not remember, you are aboard our ship after being wounded in an altercation on your planet. You are safe here and will be taken back to our world.”
She ignores the information about her predicament and instead continues to focus on me as I search through our stores to find a suitable meal for her. I have quite a softness for hamburgers, and I know many humans consider them to be a comfort food. She deserves a little comfort, perhaps.
“You look like a cross between a vampire, an orc, and an elf.”
“I am sure our appearance has contributed to the lore of your world over the years. We have been visiting for a long time.”
“Yeah? What the fuck were you doing with the cows? You know how much creepy stuff you guys have been doing to cows? Removing their assholes? Seems to me you’re assholes enough?”
I was reaching for the ground meat when she made that particularly crude comment, but upon hearing it, I withdraw my hand and close the refrigerator. Bending down, I take a bowl and a bag from beneath the counter, filling one with the other.
“I would appreciate it, and you will be much happier, if you speak when you are spoken to, and do not indulge in casual disrespect. I am very busy, and I do not have time for an unruly human pet.”
“Pet?”
I put food in front of her in a shiny metal bowl. She looks at it, and surprisingly for a supposedly starving human, wrinkles her nose at it.
“What is this?”
“It is a pelleted nutrition containing everything a human needs in order to be healthy and have a shiny coat.”
She looks at me with those rebellious dark eyes. “The actual fuck is wrong with you.”
