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I hoped they had.
They didn’t deserve to be abducted and subjected to the whims of a random alien species.
Neither did I.
I wondered where Asshole was. Stinky must have shat out the rainbow-colored wrapper and its key by now. Maybe I’d get lucky and it wouldn’t come out. The creature had swallowed plenty of things over the past few weeks and they’d never been seen again.
I shook my head. It was no good thinking that way. Much better to assume the worst.
Asshole got the key and released himself. He was out there looking for me. And he would find me.
But not yet. Not before I saved the money I needed and got far away from him.
Considering just two days ago I was chained to his wall scrubbing his floors with a mop and wire brush, and this morning I was still traveling through interstellar space on my way here with no plan of what I was going to do when I arrived, and now I had a well-paying secure job and was on my way to buying my return ticket home, I didn’t think I was doing too badly.
Cleb shifted position on the hardwood chair and tried to get comfortable. He had a large book spread out before him on bugs and plants of Arcturon Prime’s natural world. Why was it so important for young Titans to learn this stuff? I didn’t know.
But Cleb clearly wasn’t a bookworm. He spent most of his time chewing on his pencil and doodling in the margins of his notebook. He would never get anything done at this pace.
I grabbed the book he was studying, snapped it shut, and tucked it under my arm.
“Come on,” I said.
I hustled toward the exit. He struggled to keep up with me.
“Where are we going?” he said.
“Outside,” I said. “It’s a beautiful day. If you want to learn about bugs and plants and flowers, it’s best to learn about them in their natural environment.”
“The other governesses never let me study outside,” Cleb said, clearly excited.
“But I’m not a governess, am I?” I said with a wink.
Once we reached the back garden, I opened the book to the flowers and plants section.
“Okay,” I said. “First, take a look at this Trachean flower. It looks like… tracheas? Weird. Go out into the garden and see if you can find one. Snap it off and bring it back to me when you do.”
Cleb ran around the garden, returning with various flowers. It took four attempts, but finally, he was successful. Then we read through the book together and identified all the key parts. We cut the flower open and peered more closely at its inner workings.
Cleb’s eyes glinted with excitement. He was barely focusing and he was remembering far better than he had in the stuffy old library. When we cut open other plants and flowers, I asked him to identify everything we already learned. He was thrilled to realize many of the flowers consisted of the same parts.
“We’re all connected,” I said. “Every plant and animal is linked. We might not look much like a plant but they have to attract each other the same way we do.”
“I’ll never attract a girl!” Cleb said. “They’re smelly!”
“Oh, we are, are we?” I said, and I grabbed him and tickled his belly.
He giggled uproariously.
After we went through the flowers and plants, we proceeded onto the bugs. I didn’t need him to bring them to me as I wasn’t a big fan, but he did anyway. We didn’t kill the bugs to look inside them. My fault again, as I had always been on the squeamish side.
We repeated the same exercise in the afternoon until Cleb could recite all the major body and plant parts off by heart.
“Right,” I said. “You’ve worked hard and I think you deserve your first mission. Do you think you can help me?”
He turned serious and sidled up close.
“What is it?” he said.
