Chapter 2
Ship life
Zara was cooking her meal. Gaion would return soon, and the computer would take over the ship, so she wanted to be finished when he arrived.
She'd spent the day cleaning the quarters she shared with Gaion and his daughter, Zhuli. Zara stretched her shoulders and tried to loosen the muscles that had tightened up from scrubbing the floors. Her knees told her they weren't happy either, and that she was no longer the young woman she once was.
Once dinner was over and Zara cleaned everything up, she thought that she might set up a bath for herself and soak her tired body. Yes, that sounded like a good idea. Gaion would fall asleep, and Zara would make sure Zhuli was safely tucked into her nest, and she would fill the water pool with hot water and let the worries of the day dissipate.
A whoosh from the doorway, followed by a shriek and a giggle, told Zara they had returned. She glanced at the timekeeper on the wall. Hmmmm, they are early.
She rubbed her hands on the towel she kept close by, and dropped it on the preparation space.
As she turned, Zhuli nearly knocked her down by running up to her and embracing her around her legs.
"Guess what, Zara?"
Zara smiled. It was good to see Zhuli so happy, but her enthusiasm could be overwhelming sometimes.
"Father said…" The rest of her statement was cut off. Gaion covered her mouth with his paw.
"I said not to tell until after dinner."
"But I'm too excited to wait!"
Gaion chuckled. He knew there was no stopping her. "Go on then."
Zhuli poured out the words as fast as she could, and bounced on her feet. "And afterwards, he said, we could play in the green wood nearby."
Gaion had planned a planetary stop for rest and fun, and Zhuli was very happy. She knew little of planetary life, having spent much of it onboard the ship, so whenever an opportunity came her way to take leave planet-side, she loved it.
Gaion chuckled again, and steered his offspring away from the cooking smells so they could prepare themselves for dinner.
As usual, Gaion tried whatever Zara had been cooking. He gave her a toothy grin, nodded, and swallowed the morsel. "Interesting flavor."
Zara smiled at his polite gesture, but she knew him well enough by now to know that he was only being polite this time.
Zara pulled apart the meat she'd cooked, while Gaion and Zhuli swallowed their dinner of live fish; a treat for them. Gaion frowned as Zhuli splashed the water around; her paw snaking around the bowl in an attempt to catch the last one.
"Like this." Gaion demonstrated.
In a concentrated effort, Zhuli plunged her paw down into the water. As science knows once space is taken up by something, the water had to go somewhere else; displacement was a fact of physics. And it did….all over Zara!
In a rare occurrence, Zara let out a startled yelp, as the cool water doused her. She jumped up, and knocked over her plate.
It was a sight to behold; Gaion aghast with his mouth open, Zara stood dripping water and Zhuli with her dark eyes wide open.
Zara stared at Zhuli for a second. Zhuli looked about as embarrassed as she could get, and extended her mitt to Zara, with the fish still squirming around in it.
Zara started to laugh, which set the others off too. Zara waved off the offer of the fish, so Zhuli plunked it in her mouth and swallowed it whole.
Well, I wanted a bath! Zara thought ruefully. But not like this…oh well..
The hot water felt good. Hopefully, it would remove the fishy smell from Zara's skin. The heat melted the knots in her muscles, and she relaxed.
The air was cool, as it always was when the ship entered the night cycle, but Zara didn't mind. She was used to it.
When she'd had enough, she set the water to drain, and emerged from the pool. She dried off as the water swirled downward. It would be recycled by the reclaimer and used again. On the ship, water was too precious of a commodity to have it lying around and wasted. Everything was recycled.
As she dried herself off, her mind drifted off to the past. She had vague memories of being at a lake. Some fuzzy images of people and the water in the background, loud voices, and feeling scared. She shook it off. Was it real? Or was it a dream? She didn't know.
She pulled on her underwear and then her nightgown. It was warm and soft against her skin.
Gaion had burnt the rags she was clothed in, and sent the ashes out the airlock. He had literally nothing to dress her in when she first arrived, so she spent the week wrapped in an old blanket Zhuli had discarded.
The nightgown was the first actual clothing she had received in over a decade. No one cared enough to buy her anything, so she remained in the rags she wore from her previous master.
Shaking off the memories, she slipped out the door of Gaion's quarters.
Recreation
Zhuli scowled at her father, and then looked down at her paws. "Like this?" She raked her claws over the soil so fast the dirt went flying behind her.
Gaion was teaching her to build a burrow for the overnight sleeping.
Zara sat on a fallen tree and watched.
All those not assigned to guard duty would burrow underground to sleep. It was a welcome diversion from space travel.
There was a lake nearby, and plenty of fresh fish and prey to eat. Some had gone off to hunt and bring back some food.
Zara would not sleep underground. The fear in her eyes when Gaion had suggested it had squashed all further conversation on the subject. On top of that, she was not built for the task of crawling on her belly, whereas Gaion's people could navigate the tunnels on all fours quite efficiently.
Bipedal and upright by day, they retained the capability to revert to fours like their distant ancestors, for the acts of mating, and burrowing.
Sighing, Zara slipped off the log, and began making a fire pit to cook her dinner. She wandered only as far as she needed to gather some wood. She arranged the wood inside the pit and set it ablaze using a tool Gaion purchased for her.
She sat down to cook the fish she'd caught earlier.
A couple of days here would do everyone's soul some good.
Tomorrow the crew would change places and allow those standing guard tonight to have time off. It was the routine and Zara knew it by heart.
She sat back against a rock, one leg folded, and the other stretched out. Her right leg had never seemed to be quite right after the two surgeries she underwent. The leg just wouldn't straighten out without some discomfort. She never complained, except when the pain was so sharp she couldn't contain a small yelp. It didn't happen often, and so she hid it from the others. She was grateful just to be alive.
She rotated the stick she held to cook the other side of the fish. Gaion had had the lake and fish tested before he had let her go off fishing. He wanted to make sure it was safe for her to eat.
She'd gathered some things and made a make-shift fishing pole to use. Gaion had laughed when he saw it, and then dove into the water from the bank, followed by others. They caught fish by hand.
Once the group had emerged with fish, and the water settled down, Zara was rewarded with two fish!
Gaion hid his smile, but secretly he was proud of her survival skills. She was a strong female, and she reminded Gaion so much of the mate he'd lost. They shared many of the same traits.
Dreams
The crying and screaming went unheeded as he dragged her away from her parents' dead bodies. She twisted and tried to free herself from the grip that held her arm fast.
Tears streaked down her little cheeks, but she ignored them as she beat her tiny fist against her captor.
"STOP IT!" He shook her, but she continued to cry.
"They are dead, you hear me? Dead! You're mine now."
Zara woke up in a cold sweat, shaking and shivering. She peered into the dim light that came from the other room. It took her a moment to recover from the dream.
Finally, her breathing slowed and she got up to get a drink from the cold storage unit. She sat on the nearby chair and let out a deep breath.
It had been a while since she'd last had a bad dream, but she knew it was because she was alone tonight. It felt lonely without Gaion there.
Her mind drifted back to her slave girl days, when she and all the other girls would cuddle together for warmth and the illusion of safety at night. Master could, and did, burst into their room in the middle of the night, grab a girl at random, and haul her away. She shivered at the memory. Sometimes, it had been her. She failed to hold back another shiver.
She didn't want to go back to sleep, so she slipped out and walked the ship. It was going to be a long night.
She soon found herself sitting by the fire outside, her head dipping and then springing up. Her body needed sleep, but her mind was still fearful.
She watched a guard walking the perimeter. No one would get by them. They would die to protect each other. It made her feel better, but still she could not rest.
Dawn was imminent. Her eyes detected the subtle change in light. Reluctantly, she stood, and went back to the ship. Her body could not be denied any longer.
The Woods
Gaion lead the two females into the woods. The sun was bright and it was warm. Zhuli stomped on the shadows made by the tree leaves on the ground to amuse herself. Zara just walked leisurely, letting her gaze fall on whatever there was to see.
After walking awhile, the trio came to a clearing. Gaion and Zhuli headed straight for some large rocks protruding from the soil. They got into the weirdest positions and let the afternoon sun warm them.
Too much sun was no good for Zara however. She'd been forced to spend time out in the heat, and under the merciless sun. So, she quickly took shelter under the trees.
When it became apparent that neither Gaion nor Zhuli were going to get back up any time soon, Zara got bored and began to wander around. She didn't stray far, she never did, but today something caught her eye, and she wandered further away. What is that? She ventured further to get a better view.
She eased her way through some bushes, but because of the denseness she didn't see the drop off. Her foot found nothing but air, and down she slid!
Her cry for help froze in her throat, and by the time her shocked mind processed her situation, she had gone all the way down.
Dazed and confused, the world around her slowly came back into focus.
She had scrapes and scratches all over, some even tearing her clothes and leaving ragged edges. She was lucky that it wasn't worse.
Painfully, she rolled over and began trying to make the climb back up. She got so far and stopped to rest, only to slide partway back down.
She kept trying but she'd only succeed in gaining a few feet at a time.
Meanwhile, back on top, Gaion and Zhuli awoke to find her gone and a feeling akin to panic blossomed in Gaion's heart.
"ZARA!" He called out, hoping she would just appear out of nowhere. She did not.
Down near the bottom, Zara could hear the shouts, but every time she tried to raise her voice, her throat constricted. Her mind flashed back to horrible punishments, and she tried to shake them off. She desperately needed to get back up the hill.
She clawed as the soil frantically when she heard Gaion call again. It seemed farther away! Her breathing shot up, and her heart rate skyrocketed.
The scream she'd been trying to let out finally came….and she collapsed onto the ground.
Her eyes opened slowly. Gaion was looking down at her. She sat up too quickly and felt a bit dizzy. Her hand flew to her forehead and she turned pale at the nauseous feeling.
"You sat up too fast, now relax and let me take care of you."
Gaion had been the only creature to treat her gently, kindly, and with respect. She had come to care for him, as he nursed her back to health. He was here now, taking care of her once again.
During three years he kept her, he had tried to find doctors who would help to heal her body, help erase the scar tissue from her flesh. Some procedures were more successful than others, but she finally begged him to stop. She didn't want all the scars to go away. She knew it was the ones that couldn't be seen that would be the ones that stayed with her, and she wanted to keep some that she could see, as a reminder of her survival.
She had learned to cook, and often did so in Gaion's cabin. He would try her offerings even though he felt doubtful, (but he would never have admitted that to her.) He brought her to marketplaces when she had attained enough courage to face up to them. (Crowds frightened her.)
He'd walk her by booths and tell her to pick out whatever food she wanted. He then paid for it.
Gaion's people rarely cooked their food, but she didn't learn that until much later.
When Gaion lost his mate, he was in a terrible state of grief. She had given her life so that her youngest child would survive. She had defended her nest against the predators that had attacked them. The ship had been boarded and all of her brood had perished in the fight, save one, a female.
Gaion had no way of returning her to a colony right away, so he did his best to carry on. By the time they were close enough to a planet, he had already begun the process of learning how to raise her, and even he felt surprise in his decision to keep her.
The burrowing portion of his people, those who scorned leaving their native soil, scowled at his decision. It wasn't natural, they said. Give her up. Do the right thing. Males aren't capable of raising young, especially female offspring. It was unheard of, but Gaion was steadfast in his decision. It had started him on the path to the four hardest years of his life.
His grief was raw at first, as grief always is, but in focusing first on his young daughter and then on the fragile human female he had bought, cared for, and freed, he learned much more about himself than he could ever express.
So, when the day finally came that he laughed for the first time, he was surprised. Zara had turned his grief and pain into laughter and joy. Zara had overcome her own painful past and she had healed him, without him even realizing it. He sat then stunned by the revelation, and tears leaked out of his large, dark eyes.
Zhuli ran to her father in distress to find out what was wrong. He assured her that he was fine, and he picked her up and spun her through the air until she squealed with delight.
That night as he put Zhuli to sleep in her nest, he told her that he loved her. It was the first time he had spoken those words to any of his children, and in his heart he felt all of his mate's love for him. It was all he could say before emotion choked off further words.
As he crawled into his own nest, he pulled Zara to him, and relished the heat of her warm-blooded body. How fortunate he was indeed.
