But what galled Francesca was how the Hunter ambassador treated the children - it would not be stood for! After urinating in the central fountain that decorated the front reception hall, Chang had gone right up to the ambassador that first night, and KICKED the brute on the armor-plated shin - he was only being friendly! The ambassadorial entourage's masked faces swiveled in her precious son's direction, weapons raised as the ambassador lifted Chang up by his emerald hair and held him at eye level.
The translator dropped his clacker, face white in the sudden, tense silence.
The Hunter ambassador, who loomed above his staff by more than a head, gave out a few languid clicks, dropped Chang to the floor with its antique pre-pacification Moroccan tiles as the entourage lowered their weapons, clicking and grunting among themselves. Though Afaf did nothing, Francesca gathered all of her children and fled to the nursery she had so carefully set up three years before when they'd first been assigned this prestige-less Hellhole after Ai and Lana had innocently set fire to the Arcturian ambassador's house, sealing all doors behind her.
That night Francesca examined Chang as she breast-fed him. He was uninjured, not one hair of his green spotted pelt out of place. Afaf interrupted her diapering Alita, age ten, with bad news: the Hunter ambassador wanted her children to meet them in the garden before sunrise the next day - the morning the Hunters stole her children.