Review Response
God Dragon King
Thanks for the comments!
OrionAstro
What you wish for is going to be a major plot line of this story, but maybe not in the manner you are thinking of. Cheers for the comments.
Illusive Girl 0
Cheers for the review and I hope you enjoy this chapter!
30 minutes prior
Teor awakens slowly; her head feels like it has been thrown around by a Biotilark that is having a bad day and then maybe trodden on by a Krogan just for the fun of it. Unconsciously moving a hand to her head she rubs slow circles and attempts to find the will power to open her eyes and get up, but with her head in the state it is, she would rather just fall back asleep. After rolling over onto her side she feels a cold wall and instantly places her forehead onto it, she does not know where the cold wall has come from as her home's walls are constructed from wood, but she does not care, a cold wall on her forehead feels wonderful and that is all she needs to know.
Teor drifted in and out of consciousness for a short time before a single question forced the young Asari to open her eyes, the question she asked herself is 'what did I drink last night'. It is after asking this question when it all comes back to Teor, one minute she was taking off in their shuttle from successfully completing their mission planetside and the next their shuttle was spinning wildly out of control down to E561. Opening her eyes she half expected to come face to face with the cockpit of the shuttle, but instead, she meets a darkened room.
Confused at what she is seeing she sat up from her laid down position and looks around, and then the horror of the situation starts to hit her. The first thing she notices is the odd fashion of the room, while everything looks well kept and even 'new' in a way that it is not hundreds of years old, it looks old fashioned.
Wanting to open some strangely ugly curtains covering a window to let more light in the room Teor started to move her legs to hang them off the side of her bed, and that is when she feels a stabbing pain in her thigh. After throwing back the quilt that has been covering her in panic she looks down to her leg and notices her suit has a gaping hole in it, and through the hole she can see a significant cut that has been stitched back together. With stitching to close wounds having long since gone out of fashion in all but utter emergencies, Teor's mind starts to race even faster, is this the work of another survivor from the shuttle crash? Ignoring the pain in her leg she almost jumps out of bed and opens the curtains, revealing a white woodland.
It took Teor a second to adjust to the bright white light that found its way into the window, but when her eyes did adjust she slowly steps away from the window, she needs to get out of here, wherever here is.
Turning from the window, Teor moves quickly to the door of the room she has awoken in and opens it, revealing a small corridor with one door on the right, and one door on the left, her room is at the end of the corridor. Moving past all the doors Teor shot down the stairs at the end of the hallway and enters what looks like a living room, again not caring for the room she walks through it, all in her search for a door to leave whatever building she is in. After passing through the living room, she comes across the kitchen, and alas a door which leads outside.
After opening the door Teor's idea of running quickly hits a snag, outside is cold, so cold she knows that she will not survive for long in her torn and tattered environment suit. Starting to panic some more she walks backwards till she hits a wall in the kitchen, and her breathing becomes rapid.
Knowing that panicking is going to do anything but help the situation, she closes her eyes and asks herself, 'what would father do?' Her father being an Asari trained from birth to be a Matriarchs most trusted guard. The answer hits Teor almost instantly, and she takes a few deep breaths in the hope that it helps calm her. After a minute of taking deep breaths, she moves onto what she believes her father would do next, that is to take stock of the situation.
The first thing that comes to mind for the Asari is her large laceration; it would not take long for her to become fatigued and want to stop if she did run off, and running will be of little help as for where would she go? Furthermore, the wound has been crudely treated, and she has awoken in this building which means that someone knows she is here, she should find out if this person is friendly or not, but from how they have treated her wound and given her the ability to escape in the form of an open door with no obstructions they must be somewhat friendly. Finally, she needs to consider her needs, in her panic at waking up in a strange place she has completely overlooked the fact she is hungry and more importantly thirsty. Not knowing how long it has been since she has had water Teor knows she needs to intake liquid sooner rather than later, that way dehydration will not cloud her decision making if it is not already as her bad head could be a symptom of dehydration.
Looking around the room she is stood in she notices something that looks surprisingly like a sink, so she beelines towards it and is quickly able to get some hot water to flow from the tap, and after playing with the faucet some, she got cold water. After searching a few of the cupboards near the sink she grabs a cup and fills it to the brim, only to down the water and fill another cup. She completely overlooked the fact that a few items in the cupboards bare human text.
With her thirst quenched she moves onto her next objective, find out who has brought her to this place. Leaving the kitchen as it has served its purpose Teor re-enters the living room and notices a few things she missed when walking through earlier, most notably what looks like a compound bow and a broken arrow laying on a table with a few tools neatly stored nearby. It looks like whoever is repairing the arrow is waiting for something, what that is Teor is unsure of. Approaching the only cupboard in the room Teor opens one of the doors and notices only stationery, such as pens, pencils and notepads, and this time she does see the human text.
Just as Teor opened the second cupboard to look inside she hears a 'pitter patter' behind and turning as quickly as she can she realises she is a meter, maybe less, from a Varren like creature, it's mouth open and some large carniverous teeth exposed. From the fur substance the animal is covered in Teor concludes that it is most certainly a species from E561, but her mind only managed to figure this much out before jumping backwards in shock, hitting her back off the wardrobe she was looking through and creating a rather loud crash.
With her mind in a panic Teor quickly manoeuvres around the furniture in the room and grabs the broken arrow, all the while the creature follows her, it's teeth out, breath fast and ears forward. With the arrow firmly secured in her hand Teor turns to face the furred thing following her and holds the arrow out in hopes it would back off, but it doesn't.
As the animal fails to give Teor walks backwards slowly till her back hits another wall, trapping her in the room with the thing. Unfortunately for Teor the arrow does not seem to be working as the deterrent she hoped it would be, as the four legged creature is more than happy to approach and try to attack her, but it stops after only a moment to look towards the kitchen.
Looking up from the furred beast Teor notices a native with shoulder length black furr and heavy scarring on its exposed skin starring at her with a small tilt to its head, and it quickly comes evident as to who 'saved' her from the shuttle.
Present
Pebble opened the door and sighed heavily as she leant against the door frame and loosely crossed her arms, as she suspected Cerberus had knocked on her door, but more worryingly is the fact it is her old squad that have come knocking, and her old squad are not known for house calls. "What do you want?" She asked the now leader of the group with no efforts made to hide her disdain for the man.
"Is that how you greet old friends?" The man asked before adding, "And Iceland, really?"
"It's slower pace of life suits me," Pebble shrugged and then added, "And you shot me in my kneecap with the N's on our tail, what do you want? A sloppy kiss? You're lucky I don't shoot you where you stand."
"As I said at the time," Dom replied, "Orders are orders."
"Ah yes, I forgot you're TIB's bitch."
"Namecalling..." Dom never finished his response as a hand went to his helmet where his ear would be, and after a second he turned to the rest of the squad and gave a single hand gesture, and most of the men in the squad started to move out. Before leaving along with the rest of his squad, Dom turned back to Pebble and stated, "I'll be seeing you around."
Pebble watched him go with an uneasy feeling that this would not be the last time she would see Dom. With a thankful sigh her living room does not have a window at the front of the house Pebble turns around and goes back inside.
/.../
Returning to the living room with the alien Pebble sat down in her chair and looked at the alien, it is no longer pointing the broken arrow at her but it hasn't dropped the arrow either, and is stood like it is watching a ghost. With time to think when talking to her old squad Pebble sat down and immediately got to work, grabbing her notepad and pen she drew a large green tick and a large red cross. With the notepad turned around so that Teor could see the newly drawn images she spoke, "Teor, Asari, Yes." She tapped the large green arrow, "Pebble Asari No." She then tapped the red cross. "Teor Asari Thessia Yes. Pebble Asari Thessia No. Teor Human Earth No, Pebble human Earth Yes."
With the Asari giving her a few blinks Pebble guessed it had a basic understanding of what she is trying to convey, so she tried something new to see if it had sunk in. Tapping the old stick image of a dog Pebble said, "Russel, Thessia..." and left a blank, hoping the Asari would speak up.
Teor did, "No."
Pebble allowed a small sigh of relief, the alien understood or so she believed. "Russell Earth."
"Yes."
This furthered Pebble's relief that the Asari had understood what she had tried to convey. "Excellent." She muttered to herself before she gained another bright spark. Moving to the draws where she got her notepad and pen she grabbed another spare half used notepad and single colour pen before returning to her sofa. Pebble placed the new pen and notepad on the empty chair with the still to be touched fruit for Teor before sitting down. Pebble then gestured to the notepad and pen while saying, "Teor yes." She also tapped her own phonetically spelled words with the hope that the Asari would understand what she wanted her to do.
The Asari still looked hesitant about being in her presence so Pebble is most surprised when it accepted her offer and moved to sit in the chair. Before it sat it gingerly moved the food aside, but Pebble could tell from how it eyed the fruit as it moved them aside that it is tempted. When the alien is sat and with the notepad opened and ready Pebble repeated her last few words, while also tapping on the cross and tick. The Asari drew them down while keeping one eye on the human, and when it finished jotting them down it lowered it's notepad slightly, allowing Pebble to see the text it had written, but the 'text' appeared to be nothing but exquisite swirls and squiggles to her, she assumed her own writing must look somewhat similar to the Asari.
Slowly reaching forward Pebble took a few grapes and strawberry's from the collection of fruit she had brought in, gesturing to a grape she said, "Grape." And then moved it to her mouth, where before consuming it she said, "Eat." She then ate the grape. Next came a big strawberry, "Strawberry, Eat." She made the same gestures as she did for the strawberry. Pebble then motioned to her mouth and made chewing motions, but was careful not to show her teeth, knowing that some animals, such as dogs and apes, could take seeing teeth as a show of aggression. "Eat."
The alien blinked before gesturing with an open palm to the grapes, and saying "Teor grape eat." As it spoke 'eat' it's tone got noticeably higher in pitch, but not by a lot.
"Yes." Pebble replied and tapped the green tick. Teor did not waste much time and took a few of the grapes. With the Asari now fed, somewhat, Pebble now needed to work out how to tell it outside is dangerous beyond its comprehension as Cerberus would be unrelenting in chasing it down, but how do you tell an alien who has only just grasped the words 'yes' and 'no' this?
While she knew she should ideally try and build up an understanding with the alien, she also knew the last place the alien wants to be is here, sitting in front of her, so she needs to tell it that it is not safe outside quickly, before it tries to run.
/.../
Alright chaps, I promise this isn't going to be a story about two aliens trying to understand one another in its entirety. (although this will be a big part as this story is going to be about the two alien cultures learning to live with another). Next chapter you will get an understanding of what is going to be the drive this story forward and onward.