CHAPTER EIGHT
It was easy, so easy, to lose track of the days in the constant blanket of amber-tinged darkness inside R'chnt's huntship, the K'ojol.
Without a sun and moon to rotate through darkness and light, it was nearly impossible for K'Shai to tell what portion of the day she was in. She ate when she was hungry and slept when she was tired, without consideration for time of day.
The Yautja, she noticed, did mostly the same thing as well, though with less frequency on both accounts than her human physiology demanded. K'Shai had become comfortable in the heat and dim illumination inside the K'ojol. She grew more familiar with the way of the Yautja Path that R'chnt diligently and unwaveringly taught her.
Each day was full of a simple, yet rigid program of lessons and training. He would start out with teaching her of prayer, meditation, and the Path of the hunter; the lessons of the gods.
R'chnt utilized the temple for these lessons. She enjoyed her morning lessons through the texts of the gods, sitting cross-legged on the temple floor, like a child in kindergarten listening to her teacher with total enrapture.
K'Shai quickly learned that such practices were performed and observed daily by all hunters and most of the working castes, too. The only Yautja which R'chnt identified as not following any path of the gods were the 'eto. This was a caste that fell even lower in rank than 'aseigan.
The 'eto, she learned were such as the ones who had caused the destruction of Earth. They were the ones who turned away from all paths of the gods and honor to which the Yautja adhered so strictly to. Thus, they became the worst type of creatures, not even worthy of being called Yautja. They were hunted and killed. They were bad blood.
'Eto were always referred to as such, as K'Shai could not help but notice the bitter snap in R'chnt's words any time the name came up. She could understand why, especially after he began guiding her through the spiritual beliefs of the culture.
The Yautja were a deeply spiritual race, with a powerful religion that guided their every move. She knew she had much to learn, but she felt grateful that R'chnt was an immensely patient teacher.
His slow and methodical guidance of her through their ways and religion would sometimes easily take up hours of the day, the two of them just sitting cross-legged on the floor of the temple, with a large hide-bound book in R'chnt's lap, slowly working their way through not only the difficult to read language full of pictograph symbols that seemed strikingly similar to hieroglyphs, but also through the meaning behind the words; the driving force being the Yautja culture and life.
They would remain in the temple for so many hours that they had taken to simply eating there, while reading through the texts. K'Shai fumbled her way through page after page, and listened to R'chnt, as one explanation would start him off about something else that spawned from what they were reading.
He filled her head with stories of hunts on alien worlds and prey, or even the mechanics of the armor or the methods behind a particular kill. He explained rituals and rites to her, though she did not fully understand all of them.
A section of the text that defined who the god of the hunters, Centanu, was and how he came to be, would spur R'chnt off into stories of great battles of Yautja history and he told them with a tremendous sense of pride and even admiration.
It was obvious, K'Shai realized just a few days into her tutelage, what drove R'chnt to pursue the honor of being a hunter over any other choices he could have had. As he recounted tales of his own hunts, or conquests of great hunters before him, he spoke with pride and admiration.
"How did you break your tusk?" She asked him in a quiet whisper, reaching to stroke his lower left mandible with the cracked tooth.
R'chnt watched her curiously as she caressed his jaws. It was considered highly rude to touch a hunter's tusks, or any Yautja's for that matter.
This included grabbing them during a fight, friendly or otherwise. Even the most savage of opponents locked in a death match, when injuring another's tresses or gonads was not out of the realm of possibility, would still refrain from grappling another's tusks.
Yautja female during mating, likewise never touched the tusks of their mate, although it would be for difficult for her to do so, R'chnt quickly thought, as they would always be buried into her shoulder and neck during breeding to remind her of why she should hold still.
He never minded K'Shai touching his tusks, though. One of the first actions she did when she touched him for the first time was run her small and soft fingers along his jaw line and trace his tusks and quills.
She seemed to be particularly drawn to the cracked one; it was almost habitual how she would grope his chin and that particular tusk. He had come to understand that humans, that K'Shai, needed and preferred intimate physical contact, and understood that K'Shai certainly meant no offense.
He had noticed, through lengthy observation that humans always seemed to touch one another, holding them in both arms, or caressing the head, especially with their lips. It was a normal gesture for her kind and he rather liked the feel of her gentle touch gliding across his calcified skin and bony prides of well-aged tusks, although he was torn on the idea of allowing her to touch them in public view of others.
She watched his eyes flicker in the dim amber glow of the heated backlighting as he recalled the hunt.
"It was my chiva, K'Shai."
She smiled and settled back a bit to listen to the story. It never occurred to her for some reason, that the fractured tusk would have happened on his Blooding hunt.
She tried to envision what he was like when he was young. She imagined him with darker, deeper coloration and black tresses, just as tall and sturdy and screeching a warrior's death cry. He was, no doubt, proud and probably slightly boisterous, confident and maybe even cocky; certain of his absolute power, she imagined with a small grin.
"I had tracked a rhy'u-than for four nights. Do you know what they are?"
K'Shai stared at him blankly.
"No, I can't say I do." She laughed lightly.
He pointed to a skull hanging above the massive window. Centered between a series of carefully laid out spears and swords was a single skull above the viewing portal. The skull was somewhat elongated, though not as much as a hard meat.
To K'Shai, it looked more like that of a horse, perhaps. It was wide, and heavily plated, with three massive tusks on each side, two from the bottom jaw and one from the top, along with a series of horns running in symmetric pairs long the entire ridge.
Although she could not imagine the body to which the skull would have been attached. The fierceness of the trophy itself broadcast a certainty that the rest of the animal it was attached to would have been no easy kill.
"They are cunning creatures, capable hunters themselves. Worthy Blooding prey."
"Are they… on your home world?" K'Shai asked with a bit of reservation.
R'chnt shook his head.
"No, they are on a moon of a firey world two months of rotations from Yaut. That is where my Leader took us for our chiva."
"A group of you hunted that?"
"No, K'Shai. My Leader required us to hunt alone for our chiva. I tracked the creature for four nights. The world was fierce. It had stormed almost the entire time, fire streaking across the sky. The rain poured so hard it would stab my skin as I moved through the rocks.
My Leader required us to hunt with only a spear and body armor. Not even dah'tke blades. We had none of the weapons that the youth today use to make their chiva so easy. The rhy'u-than had made its way far from the ship and I was determined to be the first in my group to return with a kill. I found it in a canyon and moved in to make my kill."
"I was impressed with myself," he said proudly, notably puffing his chest and drawing back his shoulders a little bit.
"I had successfully tracked it through the difficult terrain with only my senses. I was muddy, fatigued, but absolutely certain of my kill. It saw me and turned, roaring a mighty call as it flared up its crest and lowered its head ready for the charge. I howled back, raised my spear, calling it on, telling it I was ready to earn my mark."
K'Shai listened intently. "And you killed it?" She urged at his pause.
"No. I was so certain of the one I tracked, I never even noticed the other one charging into me. It slammed into me, drew first blood from my side, and I hit the ground so hard against the rocks that my tusk broke. I did not let go of my spear, though."
"Did it knock your helmet off?" K'Shai asked quickly, interrupting.
"No, K'Shai. My Leader was wise, brutal, but purposeful. He was not like the younger leaders of today. He was nearly the age I am now when he taught me. He insisted on chiva hunting the way it should be; a true test of warrior's mettle. A true way to etch your bloodlines into the Clan or die trying. Spears and body armor only. No helmets."
"Don't Leaders try to …." K'Shai questioned, trying to come up with the right words. "Protect their students to make sure they survive chiva? Wouldn't that make them better leaders?"
"K'Shai!" R'chnt protested with a humored retort.
She did not see what was so funny about the question. She tried to imagine any school teacher not trying to do all they could to ensure their students the best chance of passing.
R'chnt continued on.
"Chiva is to prove you are strong enough to bring honor to the clan. The best leaders protect the clan and push the students to be the strongest. My Leader taught us true strength. Surviving is only the beginning. We learned to hunt with only hand held blades and spears. He would not allow it any other way."
K'Shai could not help but start to grin at the oddly familiar conversation.
"So you never trained in awu'asa?"
"We trained with armor, sometimes more armor than any Yautja would normally wear, making it even harder to move, or stopping us from being able to climb or jump. None of it actually functioned, though.
We learned to track with our senses, not our technology. So many of the youngsters today come out of the mei'sa looking to make a name for themselves any way they can. They want the best technology for the hunt. Some of the youngsters even get to hunt with sivk'va-tai on their blooding hunt!"
The distate in his voice was clear, and K'Shai understood the sivk'va-tai was the shoulder mounted cannon. She found it all a little amusing that R'chnt protested the youngsters having such weapons available to them on their first official hunt, and could not help but twist the corners of her lips into a smile.
"I rarely teach youngblood anymore. Brute strength, no brain."
At that, K'Shai laughed loudly and R'chnt drew his tusks back into an amused grin himself.
"So what happened after the rhee…"
"Ree-u hutan," R'chnt assisted with her pronunciation.
"Right, him." She said with a smile nodding to the skull on the wall.
"It flung me so hard to the ground, my tusk broke on the rocks. I was down, winded. Trying to catch my breath and yet, I knew the spear was still in my grip; I hadn't lost it. The animal moved in to pierce me again, certain that it was going to kill me, as I had been mistaken that I would kill its mate. It dropped its head and charged.
Instead of driving its horns into me, I jumped up and used its own head to thrust me onto its back. Raised my spear to make the kill, right between the shoulder blades. The strike was perfect, and the beast was down before it finished its breath.
The first one I had spent all that time tracking had escaped during the attack."
K'Shai giggled softly at R'chnt's dismissive gesture and reached in again to stroke his face, running her fingers over his cracked tusks. He tilted his head more firmly into her touch and she got the unspoken idea that he rather liked how she touched him, though he never said so for sure.
"When I returned to my Leader with my kill, he carved my Blooding mark into me and said that I should always bear the broken tusk as a reminder to respect the prey. To never be so sure of the kill before me that I forget my place. Small mistakes cost hunters their lives. I learned a valueable lesson that day, K'Shai, one that I bear openly as a reminder to my students."
He paused again, and eyed her directly.
"Never underestimate your prey or overestimate your skills as a hunter, K'Shai. And that includes my newest lesson:" he said as he glanced to his goring injury. "Thinking the prey is dead when it is not."
K'Shai lowered her eyes and carefully ran her fingers over the fresh scars. She moved in to him, placing her hands along his abdomen as she pressed her lips into his cheek. She felt his strong and warm hands wrap over her as the low rumble he produced turned to a purr. He shifted uncomfortably, obviously in pain and K'Shai withdrew.
Once they were back in his chambers she injected him again with more painkillers and they slipped into the bath. K'Shai moaned smoothly as the effervescent-like additive to the water fizzed and soothed her body, which was sore from half the rotation sitting on a metal grated floor and the other half of the rotation working on kv'var, training exercises with R'chnt.
"I feel like I'm melting in here. Today, it isn't so bad," she laughed, and lightly stroked her belly. "I wonder if the baby likes it?"
"I am sure," R'chnt agreed.
K'Shai looked at him and smiled softly.
"You Yautja do love the heat. You are lucky to have your own soaking tub like this."
R'chnt snorted in displeasure. "Luck?"
Eyeing him widely, K'Shai clarified her meaning. "I just mean no one else on your ship as one, right? I noticed that on the atoll, they all seem to be community pools. Did you buy this or something?"
He gazed at her quizzically, trying to understand her words. Her Yautjan was improving day by day, but she still sometimes threw in words of her native tongue when she was not sure what to say. Buy? He wondered what that meant, so he questioned her.
"You don't have… money?" K'Shai asked. "It's used to buy things. People with more money can buy more things, and so, they are more… enviable. Like famous people. Like A-list actors. Everybody wants to be like them, but not many really can."
"I do not understand."
K'Shai raised her eyebrows and thought about how exactly to explain, while R'chnt, clearly waiting for her answer, kept himself occupied by eating small fruits off a platter nearby.
"Well, money is what a human works for in order to get things they want. And everybody wants to have more of it…"
"What does this money get a human?"
"Anything but happiness…." K'Shai answered with a loud laugh, which apparently only she thought was amusing. She pressed her lips back together as she eyed R'chnt blankly staring at her and tried again.
"Well, you can use it to buy anything you would like. A house, a car… a hot tub." Her eyes glazed over for a moment as she scanned the bathroom around her, well appointed in all its luxuries, that apparently R'chnt did not need to actually buy.
"Although I suppose maybe Earth will change after this. Maybe money won't be so important anymore. I don't know."
"And this money of yours," R'chnt asked curiously, trying to understand the almost nonsensical ideas that K'Shai presented. "Where does it come from?"
"Well, not tre…." K'Shai started, amusing herself once again, but stopped. "Nevermind." She waved dismissively.
"Ok, so you don't have money, so how did you get this ship?"
R'chnt tipped his head, notably lifting his chin slightly. "The Clan provides."
At that, he received back as curious of a gaze from K'Shai as he had just been giving her a moment before.
"So, you just get a ship from the Clan? It doesn't cost you anything?"
"Yautja that have hunted and proved their worth, and choose to continue the hunt as a Leader, are granted ships. The K'ojol was built for me for that purpose. This hot tub as you call it, was installed as my preference."
K'Shai tried to work out the idea aloud. "You had to hunt to earn the ship? Like you hunted to earn your rank and improve your status?"
R'chnt nodded.
"I guess it cost you blood. But I don't understand what you mean, the Clan provides?"
He clarified her confusion.
"Hunters support the Clan. The Clan supports the hunters."
He watched her obviously trying to continue to understand, although he was not sure why. He explained it as succinctly as possible.
He found himself wondering once again if the human way was really just so different that K'Shai was having such difficulty understanding the nature of the Yautja. She then proceeded to begin to explain the Yautja culture in human terms that she could understand, although R'chnt found himself completely perplexed by what she explained.
"…So, the workers are pretty much the working class, and then the Elite hunters, like the ones who become Leaders and get their own ships are pretty much like millionaires. Which makes an Elder Leader like you, pretty much like a billionaire. Only instead of money, it's rank and status, and things like ships, right?"
She looked at him waiting for confirmation that her explanation was correct.
"K'Shai, I have no idea what you just said." R'chnt said concisely, drawing out a hearty laugh from her.
She soon departed the soaking tub and he joined her shortly after, clicking softly as she wrapped herself against him and shared her warmth with his in the comforts of the bed. K'Shai smelled his skin, freshly scented and clean from the long soak and pressed her eyes closed as she moaned and stretched in next to him, still trying to understand the complexities of the alien culture she was now living in.
At first glance, it seemed such a simple culture based mostly on survival of the fittest.
The hunters were the backbone of their clans. No clan, as L'ruch had said, could thrive without strong hunters, so the best hunters made for the fittest Clans. That much made sense to her, but there was so much more than that to the Yautja culture.
It was more complex than she ever really considered, but she was starting to get an understanding of just how deeply woven into the very fiber of the species their strength and power and aggressive nature was embedded.
The strongest have power over all the rest. Yet within that simplicity, there were subtle layers of separation that were rigidly observed, and it made K'Shai a little queasy as she began to understand further just how many of those strict values that R'chnt had spent four centuries diligently observing and adhering to with unquestioning devotion he disregarded and overrode when he allowed himself to mate with her.
Though she had been purposefully keeping herself inside the K'ojol and out of Neh'rti's sight, she started to begin to understand Neh'rti's attitude towards her and why it was all so unusual of R'chnt, as everyone constantly used that word to describe their situation.
For days, K'Shai remained tucked away out of sight with R'chnt in private aboard the K'ojol. It was only after five rotations he had even begun to allow the 'aseigan back into the ship to bring them food, rather than leaving it just inside the door to the kehrite. Their isolation drove curiosity, and curiosity led to gossip.
Of course K'Shai understood the gossip chain, and it came as no surprise to her to learn that the Yautja's version of a grapevine worked equally as well, if not better than the Earthly version. By the time a week had passed according to her watch that was tucked away in a small pile of her Earth possessions she no longer really needed, she had become aware that every living Yautja had apparently learned of her presence, her pregnancy, and her acceptance into the Kaunte Dar'een clan, the single most powerful Clan of them all.
Every time she happened to be in a room with a view of the docking bay, she could not help but to notice that there always seemed to be some new gaggle of hunters or workers glancing over the ship, as if they were waiting to get a view of her. It made her a little nervous, though R'chnt seemed to be indifferent to their almost celebrity status. He assured her to disregard it all, sure that eventually it would pass.
The Clan itself, she learned had a long and rich history of powerful hunters, and R'chnt was not just a "lucky one" that managed to survive through four centuries of blood-filled hunting.
He was a well-bred example of a long heritage of powerful hunters on both sides. He had skill and grace and natural aptitude for weaponry bred right into him. He was more intelligent than she had realized, and while he did have obvious skills as a teacher and a diplomat, he maintained that the only thing that concerned him was the hunt.
Males paid particular attention to who their sires were, while females followed their maternal lineage instead. R'chnt proudly recalled his sire, his sire's sire, and back and back for ten generations, covering a spanse of over fifteen hundred Earth years, telling K'Shai stories of their hunts and their accomplishments and which trophies in the Clan city were of hunters in his lineage. He added in some of the hunts of his progeny, too.
"How many offspring do you have?" K'Shai asked, not so absentmindedly caressing her stomach.
"I have sired two-hundred-forty-seven…" he tipped his head towards her abdomen. "Two-hundred-forty-eight offspring."
That was a large number for her to process, and she took a moment to absorb the reality of Yautja reproduction.
"And you said males are just sires? You really don't have any contact with your offspring?"
"It is not in Yautja nature, K'Shai. We do not form permanent bonds and raise offspring together in mated pairs as you have described."
"But, then, how does the child know who its father is? How do you know who your own baby is?"
R'chnt stiffened slightly, tilting his head curiously at K'Shai and her questions of a perfectly natural existence. He supposed that as unusual as it sounded to him to raise offspring as a mated pair, it sounded equally as foreign to K'Shai for a mother to raise the offspring with other females.
"Offspring learn of their sire's bloodlines from the mother, and the mei'sa teachings. Only if an offspring does something of major significance might he cross paths with his sire at all, assuming his sire still lives." R'chnt explained.
K'Shai thought about it for a moment. If the sire goes off back to hunting after mating with a particular female, she supposed it made sense that he could be killed. This was the main reason females lived in a community and remained quite separated from males. Any male could be killed at any time. Long term bonds were not natural to the Yautja, nor were the emotions that prompted them.
Once bred, females turned to life inside the mei'sa, committing themselves to not only rearing their own offspring, but also assisting in raising others' children in a community environment where adult Blooded males were not welcome.
"What about your female offspring? Do you ever meet them?"
"Sometimes. They also learn of their bloodlines from the mei'sa mothers."
K'Shai eyed him widely, a thought crossing her mind that caused her alarm. "Do you mate within your own bloodlines?"
"No, K'Shai. Bloodlines are taught to us all. Mating within your own bloodlines is eg'nyk."
She looked at him quizzically, and he understood the gaze meant she did not understand the word. He thought about it more and clarified.
"Forbidden." He said.
"Oh. Well, that's good, I suppose. But you and I are going to raise this baby. I can't do it without you. It's just not how humans do things." K'Shai whispered. "The father just mating and leaving…."
She continued on. "No offense, but that's how animals do things."
R'chnt harrumphed deeply, spreading his mandibles in amusement.
"K'Shai! On my world, it is the animals that reproduce multiple times and remain in mated pairs. Higher life takes longer to grow, mature, and reproduce."
Stunned, and just a little embarrassed, she immediately regretted even bringing it up. To the humans, she considered, the Yautja seemed like animals- uncivilized, barbaric, and driven by a hormonal need to reproduce. To the Yautja, she realized, humans seemed exactly the same, and it was not the first time she had been compared to an animal.
For the Yautja, there was no marriage, no raising a family together, no family vacations, or scrapbooks, or posting photos online to share with extended family and friends.
There were no parents doting over their children to teach them to ride a bike or nurse a 'boo boo', or see them off to their first day of school, or fret over them when they got home too late from senior prom, or cry on their first day of college, or hold birthday parties.
There were no similarities at all between the Yautja way and common human customs, and K'Shai felt more than a little nauseus at the idea of such a distinctly separated existence. As she tried to process the way Yautja society worked, it just made her that much more sick to her stomach. R'chnt had just as hard of a time processing the way human society worked, of course.
It was the way R'chnt explained Yautja mating practices that suddenly made a confusing yet simplistic culture make sense. All the nuances of their society, the privileges and the pursuits of the upper castes, the drive, even the pressure to follow the Path of the Hunter, and the status of the workers, and certainly the 'aseigan, all boiled down to one, simple, biological function. Mating.
The Yautja culture truly followed a survival of the fittest plan. The strongest survived. The strongest thrived. The strongest reproduced.
As K'Shai pieced together the structure of Yautjan society based on all that R'chnt had said, despite how complex some of it was, it all came down to who was the best and most worthy of breeding. Females chose males that impressed them, as they would only ever breed once in their lives. Thus, the drive to be the best male, the strongest male, the most dominant, with the proudest kills, was powerful.
If any male hoped to breed with a female of a powerful lineage, a strong member of the clan with notable bloodlines, he would have to make certain he had hunted prey worthy of catching her attention and put on quite a public show to court her. With potentially deadly consequences, it was a surefire way to eliminate the lesser skilled Yautja and promote only the strongest bloodlines.
In the mei'sa, training of a Yautja offspring would begin from the time they were able to walk. Mothers would teach youngsters all that they would need to know about Yautja life, and then once they were of age, they would be placed with a Leader.
Males ready to undergo the final steps of training, the chiva, would be selected by a male Leader for that training. Juvenile females would be trained by female leaders, and Yautja genders, as far as K'Shai was coming to understand, lived quite separate lives.
After blooding, when a Yautja had earned their right to be part of the Clan, they also earned the right to breed, or at least attempt to breed. Unproven males were discouraged from breeding, either by other, stronger and more experienced males fighting them for the same female, or by the female themselves, challenging the males to prove their worthiness. It did a clan no good to breed incapable bloodlines.
Females, naturally more aggressive in nature, used their larger size and generally sour attitudes to keep unproven males at bay, spurring the males to fight bigger, harder, better, to prove themselves most worthy of breeding or die trying, and in that way, still bring honor to the Clan.
Males who heard the call of the hunter after surviving their chiva would continue on hunting, either under the guidance of a Leader to improve their rank further, or on their own, to risk death or success their own way. Females, in selecting a male that instigated her for breeding, would challenge the male's worthiness further.
As if their hunting skills, trophies upon display, scars, or status in the Clan were not proof enough, it was common for females to get into physical, and as R'chnt described, public, altercations with suitors and males who found themselves outmatched by a larger, stronger, and moodier, not to mention unimpressed female, would often find themselves with broken bones or severed genitals, assuming they lived through the experience at all.
R'chnt had horrified K'Shai with details she had a hard time processing. He told her of his own injuries from mating; a broken arm, a severely severed thigh. Even more horrifying to her than his tales of being thrown, bleeding, and broken during intercourse, was the tone in his voice that displayed pride and enjoyment of those experiences. She could not imagine such a violent ritual over something that should be pleasant and full of thrilling sensations.
She began to realize why R'chnt seemed reluctant to be touched the way she touched him, at first, until he realized she was not going to attempt to hurt him. She had no idea that what she considered normal and arousing was probably intimidating and alarming to him, and as he explained more about Yautja mating, she realized he was probably showing massive self-restraint to mate with her as carefully and gently as he did. She was sure he liked it, yet she wondered if she was fulfilling enough for his natural instincts.
"I guess we really are very different species. I mean, humans are … well… just different." She repeated, unable to clarify further, but R'chnt none-the-less, wanting to understand more of her species, urged for a better explanation.
"I don't know. It's just difficult to really explain. We have all kinds of different beliefs, I suppose. Some people remain together in pairs, sometimes those pairs just don't work and they go their separate ways. It's difficult for the children when that happens. Some people believe in one thing, while other people believe in something entirely different. It makes us fight amogst each other."
"Yes, wars you call them?" R'chnt nodded. "This I have seen of your world. Your history is full of violence."
K'Shai eyed R'chnt widely, a little flicker of anger welling up in her, but it was quickly snuffed out by the realization that he was actually right. The Yautja had incredible differences in beliefs but it became considerably harder for K'Shai to explain the varying views throughout her own planet.
Whereas most Yautja customs were fairly universal, even their language was universal, on Earth, as K'Shai tried to explained, everything was different everywhere, from state to state, country to country, people to people. There were almost no continuities, and K'Shai never really realized it until she tried to explain the culture of Earth to an alien. There was no "culture of Earth."
"Chaos." R'chnt said with a noticeable hint of detest. "How your people manage to thrive at all is incredible."
She had a hard time disagreeing with him. Yautja beliefs might be tough and include a questionable compassionless moral standing on murder, but it was an incredible thing for her to process that the Yautja Way was universal.
"So you are telling me your people have never had a war? They've never fought for… territory or... over religion?"
"Why would the Yautja fight over the gods, K'Shai? There is only one Way. One Way we all share. Territories, yes, Yautja fight for territories every day, but wars like your world? Nothing. I have seen your wars. I did not realize they were as damaging to your world as you explain. It is barbaric."
K'Shai took a moment of silence to absorb the conversation. There was something gut-wrenching humbling and oddly ironic about being called barbaric by a member of a species who displayed skulls and spines on the walls in order to show off to gain a chance to reproduce, and yet everything R'chnt said made sense to her, his beliefs were unwavering and it all made her a little queasy.
"Wait," K'Shai paused, recollecting. "Yesterday you told me that the Kaunte Dar'een Clan earned its place as the strongest of all the clans by winning a great war. So you have had wars."
R'chnt nodded, although a bit dismissively.
"But it was not a war against other Yautja. As this Earth war has been a cause for Yautja to band together to fix a disgrace to the honor we all value, the Great Dar'een War was a time many eons ago when the Yautja banded together against a mortal enemy."
"Worse than the kainde amedha?" K'Shai questioned with surprise, certain nothing in the universe could possibly be worse than the bugs.
"They are animals, K'Shai. Tarei'hsan," R'chnt said smoothly, dismissing the hard meat as little more than beetles, despite the horrific wounds he had endured. "There are things far more deadly."
"Tell me."
She had yet to learn the full history of the Clan to which she now belonged, but R'chnt had told her it was a strong, proud, and rich Clan that had achieved its great status after a war.
She did learn that the words Kaunte Dar'een translated essentially to white dragon, although the Yautja meaning of dragon was not the giant fire-breathing winged reptile of human lore, rather, it was more like a demon.
She listened intently, still cross-legged on the floor in the temple, as she retrieved another fruit from a bowl next to her and peeled it while R'chnt started telling the story of his Clan.
"It was over five thousand generations ago, more than fifty thousand Earth years, K'Shai. The Yautja people were not as advanced then as we are now. We were a strong and proud people, though, even then," he assured carefully, not trying to imply that the Yautja were ever weak or poorly developed.
"We did not travel the stars, but others did. Others found us. They were the kaunte dar'een. They arrived slowly, coming to our world in large ships, bringing us new revelations of the universe that we had never known.
We too, at one point, had no idea there was life beyond Yaut. The kaunte dar'een promised my ancestors a chance to travel the stars, to learn. They taught our people how to improve weapons, engineer ships, but they did so by enslaving the Yautja.
They took many off world, never to be seen again. Stories were told of horrific experiments, mutilations. The kaunte dar'een were vicious and dangerous. They tortured Yautja for centuries. Our people slowly banded together against the great enemy and the war began.
For one thousand years, our race, nearly killed off completely by the terrible tortures of the kaunte dar'een, fought against them. The war was led by a powerful hunter, who also had skin as pale as the kaunte dar'een themselves.
He fought against them his entire life, following the path of many others who had died trying to defeat the brutal enemy. He banded our entire people together. He led the Yautja to the greatest victory we have ever known.
We had learned so much from hundreds of years as slaves to make their ships. We took control. Used all that we had learned to destroy them."
K'Shai tried to imagine a species capable of enslaving the Yautja. Her mind filled up with images of a great battle against a white demon and as she processed what she was being told as best as she could, she asked him in a light whisper, "The Yautja destroyed their entire race?"
R'chnt nodded.
"I suppose it is possible some escaped the slaughter, but our people were determined. They secured a place in the universe for the entire rest of eternity. The Yautja are the strongest, the best. We destroyed the ones who tried to destroy us and none has ever challenged our existence again.
Yautja die. That is a truth of life, but we follow the Path before us with honor. We will never be overruled by another race again. We would rather kill ourselves than be captured."
K'Shai nodded with wide, acknowledging eyes. She had seen the after-effects of what an incapacitated Yautja would do with a self-destruct mechanism embedded into the computer panel of the awu'asa. It assured that nothing would survive. She had never realized why the hunters would destroy themselves and all around them, but now, their actions made more sense.
When K'Shai and R'chnt were not engrossed in the history and religion of the Yautja life inside the temple, they spent the other portion of their days hidden away on the K'ojol working slowly through sparring techniques.
While R'chnt was a patient and methodical teacher of Yautja texts, K'Shai could tell that his strongest forte was certainly from within the kehrite. At first, they utilized the personal training space in his chambers, but as he grew stronger, they utilized the main kehrite in the ship for their training sessions.
Between text book education and foundation exercises for the sparring training K'Shai would eventually begin, she and R'chnt kept their days full of activity. They ate, drank, soaked and slept, and R'chnt gradually used less and less pain killers and grew stronger as each new rotation passed.
He guided K'Shai through slow paces of training exercises and performed the moves himself as he began to carefully find his strength, figuring out how to move and compensate for the missing or heavily damaged muscles in his abdomen that no longer worked the way he expected them to.
Each day consisted of routines of particular formations, holding stances, building stamina and performing slow motioned maneuvers.
He began to teach her how to stand, how to move, how to circle and sway her way around the kehrite. He would guide her by his own motions or sometimes press his body against hers, sliding his hands across her frame as he physically directed her in certain postures while she took in his soothing warmth and scent.
K'Shai found the similarities between the motions he was teaching her and Yoga or Tai Chi quite astounding. Though she was not terribly familiar with either, the basis behind the methods was the same, as far as she knew.
As the days passed, she could not help but notice how R'chnt sheltered his injured side from some of the exertions as he positioned himself, though she dared not say anything. It was obvious enough that he was having a hard time dealing with being incapacitated and he had only refrained from running off to certain death to prove how strong he was because of her imploring request.
She shifted her weight and balanced herself, trying to hold the positions he directed her into rather cumbersomely, but slowly as she figured out how to hold her body and work the muscles necessary for each position, it became easier.
Likewise, she did notice that R'chnt was doing much of the same; rebuilding his body and reconditioning muscles to compensate for damaged ones. Whatever he directed her to do, he did himself, and the two worked in mirror unison.
R'chnt had noticed how attuned to his actions she was as he began teaching her. It was a quality he noticed in her from the very first time he saw her.
She paid closer attention to his every action, and tried to mimic them at first sight, than some of his Yautja students over the years had. She learned without him speaking or touching her, and was readily receptive to his direct touch when needed.
She was actively trying to absorb all that he could show her and though he knew she lacked quality training or skills in physical combat, it was clear she was ready, willing, and amply able to learn.
He watched her as she shifted her small body into motions unfamiliar to it and pridefully noted how she remained quietly determined to correct errors and master what he was trying to teach her. Although her efforts were sometimes overdone; her eagerness to improve actually resulting in more errors, he began to understand more of how she learned and what her mannerisms were.
Like with the spear hunting he taught her, he noticed during the quiet and slow training sessions in the kehrite, that K'Shai seemed to expect the moves to come to her immediately, and she would quickly agitated if she lost balance or struggled with a certain maneuver. He reminded her again and again for patience, telling her that her development would take years, not days.
He had already planned out lessons for her well into the future; shaping up her training over the next few decades in his mind, while she seemed intent on mastering moves in hours. She reminded him just a little too much of young Yautja in that regard. It seemed to him that one commonality between the two species was the impatience of youth.
"Hul'tin-de," he would remind her to focus as her position lapsed.
"Your mind, your body, K'Shai. Channel and focus them into the motion. Be patient. It will come with time."
The exercises were slow and performing them was exhausting, especially considering he would often have her hold certain positions for extended periods of time. She could feel her muscles fatiguing just trying to hold still, and on this particular day, the bustling of the 'aseigan striding through the ship with tools and equipment kept drawing her attention away.
"What are they doing, R'chnt? It sounds like they're taking the ship apart."
For hours, K'Shai and R'chnt had been working on kv'var while the 'aseigan were apparently working on the ship. There were metal on metal banging sounds and whirring noises that had gone on almost the whole time they were in the kehrite and an almost endless parade of 'aseigan hurrying through the ship, trying to get past R'chnt as quickly as possible.
K'Shai couldn't help but notice how he kept her positioned on the farthest side of the room away from the slaves headed back and forth. He remained suspiciously quiet on the matter, telling her only that she would see what they were doing soon enough.
Working in the heat of the vessel for as long as they had, K'Shai was exhausted, pasted in sweat, and hungry when he finally stopped her, not too long after the last 'aseigan headed out, closing the exit door behind him as he left.
They exited the kehrite and returned to his chambers and K'Shai looked around, certain that by all the banging and apparent welding they were doing, judging by the equipment they had carried back and forth, his chambers had undergone some kind of major makeover.
She curiously glanced around, then to him looking for more answers, because nothing looked different, or maybe she just was not noticing anything because she was too hot and tired to perceive it.
She headed towards the bathroom, passing a tray stuffed with food that had been placed on a table in the living room and picked up some fruit first, stripping off her sweaty leather garments with the fruit locked between her jaws, as R'chnt moved in behind her, likewise undressing. When she turned into the bathroom, she noticed the difference there.
The bathroom had been redone; a new seating ledge had been installed in the soaking tub so she could sit without submerging and two additional shower heads were installed on the opposite wall, both just about a foot above her head and on an extendable cord. Something else caught her attention, too. There was an additional water control handled installed right near the other one.
Yautja existed in one temperature zone and only one – hot.
The Clan ship was hot and dry, like a desert. Some of the rooms accumulated humidity and felt more like a sauna; especially the bath houses. R'chnt's ship was in a constant state of hot-as-an-oven and clearly he basked in it.
Even the bath and shower water was hot. The water control had one purpose- to turn water on and off. There was no turning the knob just right to make it a little cooler or a little hotter. The water was always hot. The soaking tubs were hot. The ship itself was hot. Everything was hot.
K'Shai eyed the secondary control panel and curiously looked at R'chnt who had said nothing, letting her discover the modifications on her own. She pressed the panel and the water in her own, lower shower heads popped on.
"OH!" She exclaimed with a brimming smile. "You had cold water run into the ship! Ooooohhhh!"
She moaned in absolute delight as the cool water ran over her head and down her body, rinsing away the sweat and cooling her body. R'chnt watched her with a curious expression as she took ecstatic pleasure in the feeling of the water. He moved in behind her and allowed the water from one of the shower heads to pelt against his chest for several moments.
"How you can enjoy such frigid water, I cannot understand."
"Frigid?!" K'Shai chuckled through her glee. "This is perfect. Thank you so much!"
The cool water felt wonderful against her skin. She couldn't help but feel amused by R'chnt's comments.
She supposed, as she quietly thought about it while basking under its flow, that for the Yautja who thrived in ambient temperatures in excess of one hundred-ten as the Farenheit scale she was familiar with measured, she imagined how her need for cooler temperatures could seem cold to him.
Yautja need the heat; they thrived in it. Humans needed to remain cool in order to thrive best. The Yautja had a higher body temperature, and preferred basking-heat type conditions.
She imagined to the Yautja, the difference in temperatures that she preferred would be a little like taking one of those arctic polar bear plunges that she had heard about, jumping into frigid water to prove how daring a person could be. It seemed a little strange to her that a Yautja might consider her version of normal water "daring", but R'chnt clearly took no pleasure in exposing his body to the cool water for too long.
He moved away and sunk into his hot pool, watching her lather and stroke her body and hair with a pleasured smile on her face. K'Shai, relaxed and cooled returned to the bed and dozed off while R'chnt finished soaking in his hot bath before he joined her, laying next to her with her soft body pressed against his, the scent of her wafting into him as she relaxed against him.
He caressed her smooth skin and she cood a little in response and shifted closer into him, letting him caress her. Her body emanated familiar scents of the Yautja bathing soaps and lotions she preferred, and her pregnancy added to the Yautja-esque scent that filled his nasal passages and aroused him as his chest rumbled into a purr while they lay in the warmth of the bed sheets.
He found it difficult to restrain himself from mating with her, pleasuring himself in her warm tract the way he wanted to. K'Shai seemed to know that he was not strong enough for such exertions, but it did not seem to bother her. She turned into him and caressed him, encouraging him to relax, rubbing her hands over him, massaging him into both suppleness and stiffness all at the same time.
She used her tongue and lips and hands to soothe his body and stimulate his erection. As if she was rewarding him for remaining in the ship and recuperating, she would thrill his body in this way twice a day, locking her lips over his shaft, grappling and pumping and sucking until he exploded into her as he lay on the bed or stood above her in the shower.
Installing the cool water for her brought her pleasure and she returned the favor by pleasuring him twice that night. She had an amazing ability to ensure that he was too fully relaxed to stand up for quite some time afterwards, forcing him to remain restful and distracted by her pleasuring touch.
He was grateful for the stimulation and release and the lingering feelings of ecstasy she could create in him and K'Shai quickly taught him that not only could she satisfy him without mating, but that he could also bring her pleasure in much the same way.
Once she showed him what to do to elicit such ecstasy in her without penetration, R'chnt offered it to her again and again, arousing himself as he pleasured her and getting the favor returned by her lips over him. It was a sensation he enjoyed tremendously, and it was clear by her heightened response to him that she also found his stimulation of her with his hand equally as enjoyable.