A/N: I'm sorry for the puns! (Except I'm totally not. Come on, how amazing was the Gorn one?)

Morita pulled Lorca free from the pond and dragged him away from the water, which was no easy feat given that he weighed about fifty pounds more than her and was soaking wet. She let him cough up water and checked his pulse. Serot stood nearby on top of the moss as if it were perfectly solid and rinsed the blood from her spear.

"Gone," he coughed. "Lalana."

"In the water?" said Morita, looking back at the field of moss and the gaping holes in the surface. She pressed her hand onto Lorca's shoulder in reassurance. "I'll get her."

"No!" Lorca pulled himself upright, water dripping down his nose. "She was – in there – now—" He shook his head. "I don't know what happened."

Serot strode across the moss towards them. "I saved your life. I believe you owe me an explanation."

"The transponder," said Lorca, ignoring the request. He stumbled to his feet and set off in the direction Zark had thrown him, Morita and Serot following.

The big green corpse was still there, its silver eyes staring lifelessly skyward. Morita carefully took in the sight of the wide, red stain of blood across the ground.

Lorca picked up the transponder. The chassis was bent to almost a 130-degree angle. He handed it to Morita for inspection. "I don't think I can fix it," she said after a minute. "Do you think the Triton got the signal?"

"We're in the Briar Patch," drawled Lorca. "I wouldn't count on it."

Serot pointed her spear back in the direction of the pond. "Look!"

Something was rising from the water. It shook off the brown moss with a familiar vibrating motion, revealing a coat of purest white beneath. Giant green eyes stared at them. For a moment, Lorca's breath caught in his throat, but something told him that was not Lalana. Serot let out a small cry of alarm and drew Lorca's attention back to the clearing. The Shkef was looking up this time.

The trees around them were alive with movement. Bark slid and shifted, branches bent, and shapes emerged from the camouflage. Colors shifted from natural tones and textures to the bizarre. Bright crimson, orange, yellow, lime green with stripes of black, pale gold. The translator came alive with dozens of overlapping whispers, snippets of words and phrases emerging from the many voices:

"Unusual – water – the merciful one – human scum – looks like – not going—"

The white lului from the pond was still approaching, its strides long and graceful, torso swinging back and forth as its tail waved in sync. "Be wary," it said, "the merciful one is not to be trusted." It came to a stop a few meters away and sat back on its haunches, regarding them.

Lorca raised a hand slowly in greeting. "I'm Captain Lorca, of the—"

As the translator put this into lului, the response from the trees was immediate. All the myriad shades vanished in the blink of an eye and suddenly the clearing seemed totally abandoned. It was possibly to make out shapes, if you knew exactly where to look, but hard to tell where those shapes began and ended.

The only lului who did not react was the white one. "I know who you are," it said. "Lalana provided much information about you. It is not a threat, lului."

The shades of color returned. Most of the lului had not moved very far, they had simply matched themselves well enough to appear as branches, leaves, and bark.

Lorca's eyes widened. "Then, she's—"

"In my pond," said the white lului.

"She didn't drown?" Relief flooded his face.

"Drown?" repeated the while lului, as if not understanding. It was not that the translator had failed them. Kerrigan and Lalana had perfectly translated the term, as they had every term and phrase needed, no matter how alien to the lului. It was simply that some lului were more willfully obstinate about foreign concepts than others. "How can a lului die in water? What a strange thought."

The bright orange lului who had ventured further down than the others said, "Air-breathers. Air-breathers drown in water."

"Breathing," said a lului with purple fur perched in a high branch, "is such a strangely inefficient method of respiration. All species should use their skin. This willful obstinance..."

All the lului suddenly seemed to start talking at once, their voices overlapping one another, and the translator produced nonsense until the white lului's voice gradually rose from the din and the others fell silent one by one.

"...generations of star-travelers, that we may endure in the manner which we have chosen and return to more pristine days." A ripple passed across the white lului's surface from head to tail.

"But they are with the merciful one," said a brown lului the color of mud.

Lorca realized the merciful one didn't refer to him, flattering as that would have been, it referred to Serot. "Serot won't hurt you," he informed them, glancing at her and finally registering the full breadth of her unclothed form. She had the same sort of slender athleticism as Billingsley. "Will you?"

"I only kill, I do not hurt," said Serot, as if this were a point of pride. Morita looked confused. She had seen Serot spear and drop Lualel from several hundred feet up.

"Serot can't hurt us," said the orange lului, and finally hopped down to the ground so it was standing not far from Lorca. Its tongue clicked in amusement.

"When will your ship arrive?" asked the white lului. "You will take the hunters with you? All of the hunters? How will you prevent more from coming? There are many hunters."

Lorca thought about how to break the news to the lului that the transponder was broken and he had no way of knowing if, in fact, the Triton was coming at all, but then another plan surfaced in his mind. "About that..."

The lului heard him out, to their credit, but when he was done proposing what amounted to a massive battle to overwhelm the merchants and steal their ship, the orange lului smacked its tail against the ground and said, "Absolutely not!" The other lului smacked their tails as well. "As if we would ever do that, or even touch filthy weapons to give to you."

"I don't know what to tell you," said Lorca. "Transponder's broken. We don't know if our ship can even find us."

From high up, the purple lului called out, "Umale!" The other lului began to chorus it in response. "Umale! Umale!"

"Umale," said the orange lului.

"Umale," said the white one, and the chorus died down.

"What does that mean?" asked Lorca.

Now it was his turn to be ignored. "We will stay around you, so the hunters cannot find you on their scanners." Apparently they understood the mechanism that kept them hidden from scanners well enough to know that if they encircled the humans and the Shkef, it would provide the same effect over the area.

Lorca tried a different question. "What about Lalana?"

"What about Lalana?"

"We want to see her," said Morita.

"Linali, come and assist me merge-heal with Lalana," said the white lului to the orange one. "And you, Lelala." The bright green lului with the black stripes hopped down. Three lului. Finally. They departed for the pond.

"What now?" asked Morita.

"I guess we wait," sighed Lorca, using a tree to help himself down to the ground with a grimace. Everything hurt. He hadn't just gone all-out killing Zark and trying to find Lalana in the pond. He'd completely overdone it. Morita crouched down next to him and Serot took up a position in front of them, folding her legs into a pretzel. Lorca raised an eyebrow and smirked in appreciation.

"I knew you two were not married," said Serot.

Morita elbowed the captain, which only widened the grin on his face, and said, "How could you tell?" She thought they'd done an excellent job at the charade. There wasn't anything in her mind they had said or done that would have tipped anyone off.

"Your scents don't match. On your clothing. Married people have the same scent on their clothes. You clearly don't live together."

Lorca smacked his lips. "Didn't think of that one."

"Unbelievable," said Morita, shaking her head.

The lului in the trees around them ignored them entirely, preferring to keep their own company. Lorca noticed how they tended to sit together in groups of two or three, pressing up against one another, their filaments mingled together. Physical contact seemed to be an important part of their social interaction. Helped explain why Lalana sometimes seemed to get so "handsy" with her tail.

He could feel stiffness setting into his joints and lifted up his shirt to admire the spread of purpling skin across his side. It looked he could expect a bruise like no other. Amazingly, none of his bones had broken, but he had torn some of the cartilage along his ribcage and every breath was excruciating now that the adrenaline had worn off.

"Captain." Morita scrambled to her feet. Lorca looked over at the pond. Shapes were emerging: orange, white, green, and a familiar blue-grey color. He gasped and tried to get to his feet despite the pain, but only managed to get one knee up.

"Gabriel!" She would have run, if she could, but apparently she was still wobbly, leaning on Linali for support. She half-dragged Linali forward until she was close enough to hop the remaining distance and almost threw herself against his chest. He bit his teeth through the pain and wrapped his arms around her. Linali and the white lului sat and watched them. The green lului, Lelala, returned to the lului in the trees.

Lorca pressed his cheek against the top of her head. "I thought you were dead!"

"I am so sorry, Gabriel. I did not mean to lelulallen and cause you this much trouble. I was supposed to help you on the planet and instead I destroyed your plan."

Morita touched a hand to Lorca's shoulder and asked, "What happened?"

Lorca released Lalana from the hug and she sat back on her haunches and explained. For the majority of the time inside the crate, everything had been fine, but when the crate was moved into the shuttle, it had gotten jostled. The transponder piece on the right side of her neck had slid out of place, shifting her brainstem – one of the few specialized internal structures she had. "It was like I was no longer there," she said. "There was no inner me. But, when you picked me up, I could sense you. My outer me could still sense you."

"Outer you?" said Serot, listening in.

"All lului are of two selves," said Linali. "Our inner-self is who we are. Our outer-self is the rest of our awareness."

"Because all your cells function like brain cells," said Lorca. Linali's hands spun.

"My brainstem was no longer signaling the rest of me like it should have. Without the feedback and control it gives the rest of me, my cells were confused and no longer understood their place in the whole." Which was why she had seemed like a crumpled pile of laundry. "But what happened to you? You look terrible!"

He laughed, wincing in pain as he did. "I feel terrible!" He relayed the details of his adventure.

Lalana looked over at Zark's corpse. "I can't believe you killed the Gorn!"

Lorca's eyes went wide. "That's the Gorn!?" he said, incredulous. He had written it into his initial Starfleet report, but like the Ferengi and so many of the other species Lalana had mentioned, he'd had no idea what it actually was until this moment. Lalana clicked her tongue.

"You did not know that was a Gorn?" said Serot. "No wonder you were brave enough to fight it."

The white lului spoke. "It was very surprising when you fell into my pond. In all three cycles of hunting, no one has ever found me in there."

"I was beginning to think you had been hunted yourself," said Linali. "Your presence in the air was missed, Lalaila." They pressed their sides together, mingling their skin filaments.

Morita remembered Lualel's recognition of Lalana. "Do all lului know each other? How many of you are there?"

"At present? Four hundred eighty-seven million, six hundred and sixty-three thousand, five-hundred and ninety-one," said Linali.

"Do you not know all of your species?" asked Lalaila.

"Humans only live about a cycle," said Lalana. "And there are billions of them. They do not live long enough to meet each other, and they do not merge."

"Well obviously they don't merge," said Linali. "They have genders! Why do they seem to think you are a female?"

"Oh, their translation machine mistook present and past pronouns as male and female when I came aboard their ship. I decided to keep it. It made things easier for them, linguistically."

Lorca stared at Lalana. "You're not... This whole time?"

"What sort of primitives do you think we are!" objected Linali. "You're the primitive species."

Lalana pressed her tail over Lorca's hand. "I like being female. Please continue to think of me as such."

Linali trilled his tongue. "You are still like a tree in a grassland, Lalana."

"Better a grassland than a forest, Linali."

"But trees belong in the forest!" wailed Lalaila, covering her eyes with her tail.

The three lului descended into bickering about what it was like to be a tree and whether or not a tree belonged in a grassland. Finally Linali and Lalaila withdrew, the argument far from settled. Lalana scooted herself over besides Lorca and pressed against his arm. "I am very sorry my people are so rooted." Lorca wondered if the pun was intentional or just idiomatic given the significance of trees. "Also, I must thank you, you have saved me again."

Lorca winced, this time not from the physical pain. "I almost killed you."

"Yes, but if you and Reiko had not insisted on seeing me, they would not have restored me, they would have left me in that state until the next cycle."

"Explain."

"Absent my motor control, I would have had no choice but to undergo a Great Merge when the comet arrived."

Lorca shuddered. Even if he did not completely understand, he understood enough to register a sense of dread, especially in light of Lualel's attempt to do something with Lalana back in the tent. He quickly changed the subject. "Do you know what we're waiting for? They said something. Oo-ma-lay?"

"Umale is the oldest lului, the preserver of our legacy." So it wasn't a term, but a name.

"How old is..." Lorca almost said "he," but now knew that to be entirely wrong. "It?"

"Eight hundred and fourteen cycles."

Lorca swore in amazement. "Anything else I should know?"

"Nn, the other lului wish you would remove your clothes like the Shkef, and eat the Gorn. They are very upset about that."

Linali's overt superiority complex had ticked Lorca off. So had Lualel's attitude, and the jury was still out on Lalaila, especially in light of the fact they would have left Lalana a vegetable for twenty-five years to force her to merge against her will. He no longer cared what the lului at large thought. "And what do you think we should do?"

"Whatever the Hell you want!"

"Ha!—Ow! God damn it."

"Please do not laugh, Gabriel!" said Lalana, tongue clicking.

"Then stop being funny!" He grinned through the pain and put his arm around her. She spun her hands in happiness and did not tell any more jokes for at least ten minutes.