The door slid open, revealing the strange alien face.
"Uh, hello…" the boy shifted under her gaze, "I, we live there," he motioned behind him, to the room across the hall, a woman standing in the doorway. "We don't know if… are there rules about cutting off utilities at night? I mean, do you still have power?"
Riah shook her head, her eyes never leaving the boy's face. "No," she answered in a heavy accent, "The landlord on this level doesn't want to lift a talon or spend a credit on fixing the wiring here. Power outages are normal." The boy's eyes fell at that, before he turned to relay the information to the woman, who simply nodded that she'd heard.
"Are they…" the boy stuttered, and Riah wondered why he had such trouble speaking, "How long do they usually last?"
"Sometimes days," Riah answered, "We pay for what we get." She shrugged her shoulders. She was a little confused as to why the boy and woman seemed to be so surprised at the state of this level. "You might want to go to a hardware store or some pawn shop," she motioned further up the hall, off in the distance where the glow of several advertisement panels were barely visible, "There's a volus up there that-"
"Riah, who is it?" her mother called, her voice coming from the kitchen.
"It's the humans from across the hall." She'd answered back in Khelish, her translator turned off.
"What do they want?" her mother shot back.
"They are asking about the outages, I was telling the boy about Var-"
"Invite them in!" her mother cut her off, walking towards her as she wrung her hands with a rag. "Hello there!" she welcomed the boy, "Your power is out?" The boy nodded. "Oh, is that your mother there?" she asked before waving the woman over, "Please, come in, come in!" the boy and mother seemed to hesitate, unsure what to say. Riah nudged her mother.
"Why are you inviting them in?" she asked in a whisper, keeping her eyes on the two humans. "They are humans! They are da-"
"Extranet ghost stories don't scare me," her mother snapped in her native tongue. "Everyone is equal in the slums; we have to help each other."
Riah ground her teeth, knowing that that was that, her mother had spoken and made a decision. Still, she was wary as the boy and the mother walked into her home, their eyes darting around, the boy's eyes widening as he saw the bundle of cables and power generators stuck to their space-side window. Her mother introduced herself to the woman.
"Thank you for inviting us," the woman said, her voice musical and warm despite the awkwardness of the situation. "My name is Katja and this," she patted the boy's shoulder, "is Santi, my little brother."
Riah's eyes narrowed. In her state of alertness she seemed to catch the short moment of hesitation that her mother apparently missed. That woman, Katja, was not the boy's sister. She caught how quick this Katja was to change the topic.
"Welcome to our home," her mother went on, "My name is Yili and my daughter here is Riah. Please, sit down sit down. You're the new neighbors we've been hearing so much about, if you don't mind me saying, you two are the first Gaians we've seen in person. I thought your kind had horns and hooves?"
Katja laughed while Santi snorted, the contrast between the lyrical laughter and socially-awkward snort grating on Riah's ears.
"No," Katja smiled, "You're thinking of the forest people, or the satyrs. Us humans are just like you quarians or asari."
"You are!" Yili said, amazed as she looked Katja and Santi up and down, noting the facial similarities. "Except for the legs and fingers," she said, causing the humans to glance down at their hands and legs, "you are near identical to us! Amazing."
Riah drowned out the conversation that her mother made with the woman, angry that her quiet evening had been ruined by the appearance of these humans. Frankly, she didn't want them in her home. Who knows when they'd start proselytizing about their mother goddess or some other absurd cult? She looked over at the boy, catching him staring at her before he turned away, his eyes roaming every which way but on her. Riah grew angry, and crossed her arms over her chest, once again cursing her people's need for these suits, for the leers people would throw at quarrian females. She reached over the couch's armrest, pulling a small blanket and covering herself with it in an attempt to hide her figure from the boy. The boy seemed to notice her intent and kept his eyes off of her after that. She scoffed inside her helmet, wondering if all humans were as shameless as he was. He appeared to be around the same age as she was, if the similarity to quarrian appearance held true at various ages, maybe slightly younger, and furthermore was an alien, a human. How she could be attractive to him baffled her, and wished he'd kept his disgusting xenophilic gaze to himself.
Several minutes passed by where her mother conversed with the human woman, informing them that most of the tenants dealt with the power outages in their own ways, small power generators were sold by a volus merchant some ways down the hall, while people who lived against the hull like they did could try to rig up some solar generators. Her mother commiserated with the two humans, who hadn't been informed of the outages and had no way to deal with them yet. She commiserated with the fact that, as new tenants that had been mostly ignored due to their species, they hadn't had time to properly prepare for the outages, for the cold and for the lack of light. She nodded, before offering to let them stay for the night and -
"What?" Riah asked, looking at her mother as if she had grown krogan's crest, the same question coming out of Santi's mouth.
"Hmmmm," her mother hummed, her bright eyes visible beneath the blue visor of her helmet, "If you two want, that is," the two human visitors looked at each other, "We have space here, and our solar collector is still working, which means we have temperature controls." She leveled the woman with a stern gaze, "It will get quite cold at night. These buildings weren't well insulated."
The pair looked at each other, Santi's eyes flicked over to look at her before turning back to Katja, the two talking in some human language that the translators couldn't decipher. They looked incredibly hesitant to take her mother up on her offer, and she wished to all the ancestors that would listen that they'd refuse. Decent people would refuse. Finally, they answered and her stomach dropped.
"Well," the woman began, looking sheepish; "if it isn't too much trouble… we would appreciate staying out of the cold tonight."
"Wonderful!" her mother chirped, "You two dears can stay in the living room. And listen, maybe we'll get lucky and the outage will only last a few hours and you two can sleep in your own beds tonight…" her mother trailed off, both her and Riah knowing that the nights without any form of power were common. "Oh…" her mother suddenly looked crestfallen, and Riah hoped she'd remembered something that would mean the human's stay would be impossible. "I'm not sure if humans can eat our food," she muttered.
"We have our own foo-oh shit." The woman said, turning to Santi, "Go get our food some of our food out of the fridge, and something to drink." The boy stood up before she began again, "And some plates and napkins!" she called out to him as he left their home and walked across the hall. She turned back to look at her mother and smiled, "So… why are you two wearing space suits?"
What had followed had been a long, tiresome dinner and night spent with two complete strangers, the two women talking and easing themselves into something that Riah suspected would lead to the two beggars taking more from them alongside some cross-cultural exchange she'd expect out of children. Why do you wear those suits? What is it like being new to the galaxy? Why do you have three fingers? Why do you have five? Riah may have found it interesting to see and talk to two humans in some other time, somewhere other than in her home in her living room while cutting into her personal time, but presently found herself cursing the two people and her mother for inviting them in. Even discounting the fact that they were humans, they were still complete strangers; it was madness to invite them in to spend the night.
Sometimes her mother's bleeding heart made terrible decisions.
Riah looked around her house.
Terrible decisions.
"You are not going out tomorrow."
"What? Why?" Riah asked. "I was going to go buy-"
"I don't care what you were going to go buy, you were incredibly rude to our guests today."
"Why did you even let them in?" she asked, her voice a harsh whisper, "We don't know anything about humans, don't you know they are dangerous? It's not even legal for them to live here!" Her mother simply stared. "Citadel law hasn't been ratified on them, they haven't been cleared to live anywhere outside of a few systems and this isn't one of them. And what if they have some disease that hasn't been discovered yet?"
"Don't give me any of that." Her mother waved off her concerns, "And remembers that I'm your mother, I'm not as blind as you think I am." She threw over a blanket, which Riah recognized as her favorite. "We're quarians," her mother muttered. "Don't you forget that."
Riah pulled her blankets over herself, turning away from her mother.
"I know what we are," she whispered. "And how little we have."
Riah woke up earlier than usual that day, silently walking into the living room and looked around the room to check for any missing items. Nothing. The woman was sleeping on the couch, the boy beside her on the floor, her hand protectively running through his hair. It was a bit of an odd sight, especially since Riah was sure they weren't related. She wondered if they were perhaps lovers and frowned, disgust boiling in her mind.
It was so early in the morning and she was already angry. She walked into her kitchen, still able to keep her eyes on the two sleeping figures and searched for her favorite snack; that always calmed her down. Finding her sweets, she attached it to the custom made quarian food port, clamping the seals to her mask, a straw pressing against her cheek. She sat in the kitchen, drinking her favorite sweet, as she opened her omni-tool, searching for information on humans and hereditary appearance. From what she could tell, Gaians were similar to every other race in the galaxy with children that took after their parents.
She found another one of her drinks and attached that one to her mask, finding that a single one of the sweets was not enough to get over the irritation she was feeling. She glanced down at her omni-tool again, checking the station's internal clocks. Just before 0600. Riah found it rude that they didn't wake up as early as she did, that they hadn't already thanked her mother for allowing them to stay the night and heading back to their apartment. Instead they were sleeping in.
Third sweet should do the trick.
"If you were really worried about your weight you wouldn't be drinking those."
Sometimes Riah really hated her mother.
"By the way, you are still grounded." She reminded her, a yawn escaping her lips as she opened the refrigerator, searching for her own breakfast. "And you are going to help Katja and Santi connect their unit to our solar collector."
"What?" Riah hissed. "We are going to let them leech off of our solar power too? When will this end mother?"
"It will end when they have enough credit to buy a power generator of their own." She stated, clearly she was not in the mood for an argument so early in the day. "Keep your voice down," she added, "You'll wake them up."
"I am not helping them," Riah argued. "You can help them all you want, I won't share what meager things we have with these dirty-"
That was as far as she got before her mother slapped her, her open palm hitting the mouth of her helmet and causing it to bump painfully into her lips. She looked at her mother with wide eyes.
"If I ever, if I ever hear you say such a hateful thing again…" Her mother held her tongue, nearly shaking in fury. "You are grounded for a week and you will help these poor people hook themselves to my solar collector so that they can have power like every decent person does. Do I make myself clear?" she asked, the food pouch nearly bursting open in her tight grip.
Riah nodded. Turned on her heel and left, walking back into her and her mother's shared bedroom as she fought back tears and the pain her lips still felt, she cast a dirty glance over at the human pair, angry and ashamed to see the woman awake, their conversation probably overheard. She angrily punched in the keypad commands to close the bedroom door before taking to her bed and pulling the covers over her.
She angrily cursed the two humans, cursed the bias quarians faced, and more importantly, cursed her mother for bringing them to these slums in the first place.