Hey everyone, a bit ahead of schedule right now thanks to being caught up on almost everything in my life (which is a nice feeling I have to say). This was a bit of an unplanned chapter originally, but many were asking what it was that Jar-hidda was thinking, and I realized it had been a long time since we got a Jar-hidda chapter, so I wrote this one ahead of the originally planned chapter. Hope you all enjoy!
It was quiet, almost as quiet as his ship had once been, when he was traveling through space alone. Hannah was asleep, opting for rest during the last stretch to the Resh'skama before they would be docking on the atoll. It was a good choice. He had no doubt that Hannah would be having a difficult time with the other yautja on the ship. The memory of how she had embarrassed one of their clan was likely still very fresh in their minds. He could only hope that the specific yautja in question would be away for their visit.
To pass his own time, Jar-hidda kept busy, training and purposefully straining against the wound in his side to become accustomed to the pain. He didn't want the wound to interfere with movement, and since it wasn't going to heal any faster than it already was, enhanced by every medication that wouldn't kill him, the only thing left to do was learn to be able to ignore it. An easy task for him.
What he was not looking forward to was testing the wounds under the strain of mating.
It had been a stupid mistake, having been unprepared to be attacked by a predator for the prey he had caught, having only the dagger he was using to clean his kill to defend himself for most of the fight until he managed to retrieve his glaive from the ground. It didn't help that the beast was a blazing ball of heat to him, making its movements hard to read. While he would have been able to handle it, Hannah's intervention prevented further injury.
Hannah had said that to her the skin of the beast had been black, and mentioned that it had been difficult for her to see entirely also. Clever adaptation for a beast. Jar-hidda had kept the skin of the creature and tanned it. He didn't have a use for it yet but had determined that it would likely ultimately serve one of two functions: an item of trade, or a suit for Hannah. Having skin that made movements hard to read to two very different sets of eyes would be a valuable advantage for the human riddled with disadvantages.
But they did need items for trade. What Garv had accepted in return for the repairs to Jar-hidda's ship, and the creation of Hannah's specialized mask and ba, was the last of what he had taken from Hannah's home. Except for her dam's gun.
He internally cursed himself for the thirteenth time; how foolish he had been to think she would not be fond of the weapon. Hannah had overreacted and put him in a very difficult position with her outburst, but she was not yautja, did not think like he did. Or at least, the way he was supposed to. The gun to her was like his ship; a shameful attachment neither of them should have, gifted to them by their parent.
With a rattle, he stopped his practiced swing of his glaive and looked over at the gun, where he had put it next to Hannah's mask. The ba he had still not given her. Not yet, not while the mistake with the gun was still fresh in her mind, and not with the threat that lay ahead.
Chul-yaun's clan was there at the time and place of Hannah's dam's death. Three unblooded on their chiva, to which the humans were sacrificed for the hunt, so that the unblooded could begin their Path as sain'ja. It was an incident that saw the death of two unblooded, and one freshly blooded but disgraced, warriors, the destruction of the temple and the baiun, the blooding of a human female, the destruction of the return ship after the abomination erupted out of the disgraced warrior's chest, the call to Halkrath-th'syra to clean up the resulting mess, the destruction of a human city, and Jar-hidda's mission to recover his friend's weapons.
Which ultimately resulted in him crashing into cho't on Jh'uda-tjauke and meeting Hannah.
This was surely a path guided by the goddesses. He had no other explanation for all the pieces falling into exactly the correct places to bring about this life he now had with Hannah. It was too many coincidences to be considered pure chance. But it was possible now that that path was about to become dark and the ground unstable.
There were only four ways that Hannah's dam could have died during the chiva: she had been killed by one of the unblooded for interfering with the rite, or being one of the ones that had reportedly gotten a hold of the yautjan weapons; she could have been killed by the kainde amedha, either outright or as a tesdae, as Fireblood had suggested; she could have been killed by one of the other humans for any number of reasons, though it was unlikely; or she had died in the explosion, which would still be in the hands of the deceased blooded but dishonored yautjan youngblood, Mahnde.
As much as it was not an emotion he was supposed to feel, he was worried about what answers Hannah would find, if any, and how it would affect her, or change how she related to him.
He stared at the weapon for a long time, then glanced at the mask beside it, the small odd shape with the yautjan design. It reminded him of another misshapen mask, one much larger, and he rattled.
If it came down to the worst, Jar-hidda knew Hashi would take Hannah in.
Growling at irritation at the thought, and the truth and likelihood of that outcome, Jar-hidda put his glaive back on the wall, pausing a moment to look at his human trophies, before moving out of the training room. He paused to watch the black spot of the lizard crawl casually down the hall, past him and to wherever it was his small brain led him.
Spoiled lizard.
Jar-hidda in turn moved to the back of the ship opening the door to the engine room and jumping down. Noting that he should install a ladder of some sort eventually, he moved to the engine, unhooking his mask and placing it on to get information and readings. The new pieces were running perfectly, starkly new compared to everything else. Everything was holding together as well as could be expected for the ship's overall condition, but the likelihood that there would be another failure due to him running with the incorrect output of air—no, not a likelihood, an eventuality. It would be wise to get the parts needed for such repairs for when it happened, so that he could fix it himself. Again though, any spare parts would require items in trade.
He had been a bit spoiled with the amount of weapons Hannah had in her home, he would have to get back to hunting for pelts, bones, collecting metals for trade. The small detail things needed for things like clothes and decoration that most never needed, but appreciated having. He had a feeling it was work Hannah would not mind doing, given how she had once lived on her mountain. Though this was basically eta work, he was sure Hannah would feel very normal about it.
Taking his mask off again with another rattle of frustration, he put it back at his hip, jumped out of the engine room and moved to the cockpit.
He bent to capture the hissing lizard on his way, and set the angry creature on the arm of his chair as he sat down and looked at the screens, checking the distance between them and the Resh'skama. He was restless, he knew it, nervous. He poked the head of the lizard and ran his claw down the creature's scales, making him angrier. Jar-hidda then moved his finger to the lizard and didn't retract it or even flinch as it bit down and chewed on the yautja's thick skin. It made him bleed only a little, but it would be enough. If Hannah had to go to Hashi, she would need the lizard to go with her, and keep her company for a very long time. He was all she had left of Jh'uda-tjauke, of her home. Smaug and the gun.
"Little warrior," he growled at the creature as he continued to fight with Jar-hidda's finger. The lizard did not respond, only eventually giving up and sitting with an inflated neck as he rested on the arm and glared at the yautja.
Or at least, Jar-hidda assumed he was glaring. The little lizard had been aggressive to him ever since the yautja had appeared in Hannah's home. Jar-hidda was his rival, a danger, knowledge he had from instincts humans had long forgotten. Something Hannah was proof of. She had no fear, or rather the wrong sort of fear when it came to Jar-hidda and other yautja and sain'ja. That was perhaps folly, but for Jar-hidda it was a very honorable, very yautjan trait.
He wondered if Hannah had perhaps been mistakenly born as human on the wrong planet. If her soul had originally been destined for the life of a hunter rather than prey, to walk the path of a sain'ja. He had to remind himself also that if that had been the case she was also mistakenly born into the wrong sex. He could not picture Hannah sitting on expensive furs and cloths, garbed in decorative metals, content to contemplate her way through life and order slaves to labor for her.
Hannah would have had to have been a male yautja, in which case, if her birth was a mistake, then the goddesses really erred.
Jar-hidda chuckled to himself. Such thoughts were blasphemous. The goddesses were perfect, supposedly; flawless, all knowing, all powerful, immortal. Annoying. He and many other males had no doubts that the goddesses were often embellished and used to the benefit of females to maintain their iron grip over males by twisting the will of the goddesses to their want. There was simply nothing that could be done about it, not without being marked a traitor and a bad blood.
A lesson he knew all too well.
Jar-hidda was taken out of his thoughts by the movement of the lizard as he turned and hopped off the arm of the chair and moved quickly away, vanishing back into the interior of the ship. The yautja looked down at his bleeding finger, moving his thumb to press on the tiny wound to put pressure on it and stop the flow. His thoughts again turned to the task ahead.
The chiva was a source of great shame to Chul-yaun's clan. Asking to review the records was possibly going to be a problem, if they let Hannah do so at all. And if they did, he could not help but worry, but fear what would happen after.