Deleth paused to wipe sweat from his brow and then scowl. The heat of this jungle must be driving him mad. That was his only excuse for why he decided to bring the Cardassian woman, Efet, with him on this trek to the great wall. She could not keep up with him on a march, she had no provisions left, no stamina, no weapons and no military training, and she loved to prattle on and ask him irrelevant questions. Deleth had never studied Cardassians in depth; few Romulans bothered to, as the Cardassians were not among their top priorities. Mostly he had been told they were petty and inferior, with a reputation for loving the sound of their own voices. So far, Efet had proven that last one correct. Deleth had, from a cursory glance at a holo or two, vaguely thought they were rather ugly. Their scales and sickly complexions were not pleasing to the eye, not that Deleth had any taste for alien women. No, he had never wanted to dishonor his bloodline by introducing an outsider. He had heard there were some Rihannsu who had mated with Vulcans, humans, even a handful of - ugh - Klingons, but he'd never associated with any of them.
Efet sighed deeply and leaned herself against the trunk of a tree. "Can we stop and take a rest? I'm exhausted."
"We'll never get anywhere if we stop every couple of hours," Deleth said. On his own, he could make it to the rock wall in a day, but with her slowing him down it could take three times as long.
"I don't see any rush," Efet told him, as she began fixing the braid in her hair. "As far as we know, no one's coming to find either of us, so what does it matter if it takes us a little longer to get there?"
"It matters to me!" Deleth pulled a face. He had wondered at first if Efet was some kind of spy, captured while on a mission with the Obsidian Order. But the longer he spent with her, the more it seemed that she was telling him the truth about being a civilian engineer. He couldn't imagine the Obsidian Order sending out an agent with no survival skills. He really should just walk away and leave her to her fate.
"It matters to you," Efet asked him, looking him in the eyes.
"Yes," he said irritably.
"All right. If it matters to you." She shoved herself off her resting spot and resumed her march with what seemed to be a great burst of will. She was now walking side by side with him, despite her obvious exertion, and he found himself glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. Deleth was a little impressed. She had resumed their trek without further complaining, which he had not expected.
"What's the Romulan word for hello?"
"Why do you want to know?" Deleth's suspicion flared back up. Is she a spy after all? Perhaps she was simply a very good actress.
"We're going to be stuck together for who knows how long," Efet said. "We might as well get to know one another. That requires conversation. Thus, I am making conversation."
Deleth pondered this. He was not a linguist or a teacher, but he could see no harm in humoring her request. It could even be called sensible. "We say jolan tru. It is a standard greeting for hello, goodbye, good day, good night..."
"You don't have a hand greeting like Vulcans?"
Deleth bristled. "I am not a Vulcan!"
Efet made a gesture with her hands that he presumed was conciliatory in intention. "My apologies. I know you're not Vulcan. I just thought, since Vulcans and Romulans are so similar -"
"We are nothing alike," sniffed Deleth.
"Ohhh," said Efet, pausing to climb down a rock jutting in their path. "Nothing alike huh? You certainly have the ears. Don't you have green blood? Do you also only mate every seven year-"
That did it. Deleth vaulted over that rock, landed on his feet, and twisted around so he faced Efet. "I told you, we are nothing like Vulcans! We don't repress ourselves and go through that ridiculous pon farr. We mate when we choose to mate! Nor do we betroth our children in infancy like barbarians."
Efet made a soft humming sound and thrust out her lower lip. "Judging from that flush on your face, you do have green blood."
Deleth, annoyed, stalked ahead of her, not caring if she were falling behind. She called out "Jolan tru", and he stopped short.
"Did I pronounce it correctly?" Efet asked him, trying to catch up and mostly failing due to the mud hindering her. "Jolan tru, Deleth."
"You are emphasizing the wrong syllables," Deleth started to say, then caught himself. "What am I doing, you don't really care about learning Romulan. I shouldn't be bothering."
"You're wrong," said Efet. "I do care about learning Romulan, and I don't know what gave you the impression I didn't. If I'm stuck here with you, I might as well put the time to good use. Very few Cardassians study Romulan."
"No one on Romulus studies Cardassian," Deleth told her haughtily. As he anticipated, she stiffened a little. The implied slight to her species had hit it's mark. But then Efet drew herself up and her shoulders seemed to relax.
"Then we shall exchange languages! And you'll soon be the first Romulan fluent in Cardassian! So, the standard Cardassian greeting is salmakt. It's considered appropriate for virtually all situations-"
"Why in the world would I want to learn Cardassian?"
"Please don't interrupt," said Efet breezily. "Don't tell me you don't think you can learn an inferior tongue like Cardassian. Why, I'll be horrified by the state of the Romulan educational system if so. You seem like an intelligent enough fellow, I'm sure you can pick it up with minimal effort. As I was saying, salmakt is the standard greeting..."
Deleth's first Cardassian lesson went on for the better part of an hour, by the end of which he was comfortable with their pronouns, the regular verb endings, and he was confident he could order a glass of kanar anywhere in Cardassian space and, as Efet put it, "scare the bartender". She kept up with him, despite the increasing look of discomfort on her face, from what Deleth assumed were her aching feet. Their lesson was only interrupted when Efet spied something and cried out, "My sack!" and ran a couple of meters into the underbrush.
She emerged holding a woven sack, which she held like it was her most precious possession. "I thought it was lost forever!" Efet told him. She looked about hopefully. "Do you think we can find my firestarter kit anywhere near here?"
"We won't need it," Deleth assured her. They hiked up to the highest ground in the nearby environs, and Deleth climbed a tree to find just what he was looking for - the dense, dry moss that grew on one side. Efet watched curiously as he broke off some stalks from a flowering plant, then scratched them with his nails to reveal the ribbon-like fibers. He dug out a shallow depression on the ground, placed his moss within it, and gathered his bits of wood as well as the two flattest rocks he could find. He rolled the bits of fiber into a small tubular shape, then placed it between the two rocks. Efet's eyes grew huge with wonder as he rubbed the two rocks together, with the bit of fiber trapped between them, until smoke was pouring out. "This is miraculous!" she said.
When Deleth was sure the fiber was hot enough from the friction, he dropped it into the pile of moss and blew a soft breath over it. A fire sputtered to life, pouring out blue smoke. Efet ran to find some twigs, and they fed the fire until it crackled pleasantly. "I've never seen fire made like that," Efet told him. "I've heard of the 'banging two rocks together' method, but even then they have to be the right kinds of rocks."
Deleth soaked in the praise. "This method works even in humid conditions, like this jungle."
Efet looked around and asked, "I don't suppose you know what's safe to eat here as well?"
Ah, that's what you want, food. Deleth showed her where to dig to find the little tubers that grew under the flowering plants with the fuzzy yellow stalks. She was so hungry she wanted to eat it raw, but Deleth took the tubers and shoved them in the coals of the fire, let them cook for a minute, then used a stick to push them out. Efet snatched one up and began to gnaw at it frantically. He took his and began devouring it somewhat more calmly. It didn't really taste like anything in particular - he had no spices and no means of making sauce - but Deleth had been eating them since he came to this planet so he knew they'd keep at least a Romulan alive.
After she'd eaten her second tuber, Efet must've felt good enough to ask him, "How did you know what was safe to eat here?"
"I experimented," Deleth told her, explaining the Romulan custom of trying just a tiny bite of an unknown plant, chewing it while keeping careful track of how their bodies responded to it. They'd start with the tiniest flake and work their way up to an entire mouthful, and if the plant did not produce an allergic reaction or poisoning, they knew it was safe to consume. This was how his people had found new foodstuffs before they had sensors that could analyze a plant for any nutritional or poisonous qualities.
"Oh." Efet looked concerned. "I suppose many Romulans have died of trial-and-error doing this over the centuries."
"Of course. But they died so that our people could learn and survive, and thrive. That is not a worthless death."
She pulled her legs in close, wrapped her arms around herself and stared into the fire. "Do you think we'll die worthless deaths here?"
Deleth had asked himself that question a thousand times. He had stared at those sheer rock walls until he feared he'd go mad and throw himself against them, beat his fists on them futilely until he exhausted himself. He had wondered if he would grow old here, increasingly mad from isolation every year, until he withered away as a gibbering animal. In his worst moments, he imagined his people finally finding this place, searching for survivors, and finding his skeleton and identifying him with dental records, the devastation of his family as they learned how he died, forgotten and alone, in this remote hellhole prison. He looked at Efet and saw some of those same thoughts reflected back at him in her eyes. He wondered if there was anyone out there waiting for her safe return; he thought there must be.
"I don't know," Deleth said at last. He poked at a tuber cooking in the coals. He'd have to teach her what more she could eat, he thought. In case the Klingons ever came for him and she was left alone. He wondered why the Klingons had even bothered imprisoning her here, when she was so weak and helpless. Surely she could've been held for ransom instead? The only thing he could come up with was that perhaps one of the Klingons had a sadistic streak. He doubted the Klingons had any respect for Cardassians, and perhaps her being female was part of it - a means to humiliate the enemy by capturing their women. He even wondered, horribly, if one of the Klingons had expected that Deleth or another prisoner would kill or abuse her. Was her suffering entertainment?
"Deleth," she said softly. "Deleth, I can't pull my boots off."
"What?" he was so confused for a moment he just stared at her.
Efet tugged at her boot. "I think - I think my feet are swollen! I can't pull off my boots." Snorting softly, Deleth rose and went to her, stilling her with a hand on her knee, before kneeling and grasping her boot and giving it a hard tug. It popped off, and he sat it beside her, then turned his attention to the other, which joined its mate in moments. He then released her feet and sat back down. Efet's neck scales were curiously flushed, which he took to be embarrassment.
"Ah, thank you." She stretched and wiggled her toes, warming them by the fire. Deleth ate his last tuber while watching her comb out her black hair with her fingers. Her hair was quite long and very dark and silky - hair like that would've been the pride of any Romulan woman. It was so shiny and looked so clean he assumed she must have natural oils that kept it in such good condition. She let it fall loose about her face, then balled up that little woven sack and arranged it into a pillow, stretching out next to the fire as though ready to sleep. The sun was setting, and the shadows grew deeper. Deleth reached in one of his pockets and found some of the little mint sticks he enjoyed so much, offering her one.
"What is this?" Efet examined it curiously.
"It's for your teeth." Deleth showed her how to chew on it to clean her teeth. It tasted delightful, and she made a pleased sound as she set to work.
Deleth made himself a little nest from the extra moss, settling in for sleep. Unlike Efet, he didn't want to sleep right next to the fire, which was dying down now to a dull red glow. It was now dark enough that it was difficult to see anything more than a meter away. In his old life, he always liked to stay up late, but here, where the darkness made it almost impossible to accomplish anything at night, he had gotten accustomed to falling asleep early and waking with the dawn.
"Deleth, thank you," murmured Efet. She sounded half asleep already.
"For what?" he asked, mostly to hear her voice again.
"For everything. I would be lost without you..."