Page 9 of The Twelve Nights of Halloheen

“No.” That one word was delivered with sharp finality. After another deep breath, she spoke again. “I can’t be inside right now. I just can’t.”

He refused to leave her alone, even for the short time it would take him to sprint back to the building and grab her an omnie. Ifhe couldn’t take her inside, he needed to find a source of warmth out here.

Then he remembered the fire pits. He’d spend the early evening setting up the fire pits, flame lanterns, and fire stands for tomorrow’s Night of Fire. Everything was ready to light and some of the bigger fire pits had seating around them.

“Let me take care of you,” he soothed. “I won’t make you go inside or hold you without permission. But let me make you warm and comfortable.”

Isla blinked a few times as she processed his words. Finally, she nodded her head in agreement. Relief filled him as he interrupted his soothing cadence to rattle out a sound of encouragement.

Moving slowly, he rose to his feet. He had to fight the urge to take her hand in his. “Will you walk with me?”

She nodded but kept her eyes focused on the ground. He wished she’d look at him.

Walking side by side, he guided her to one of the many fire pits. Tisuran encouraged her to sit in one of the human-style chairs. It took him only a few sub-marks to start a roaring fire, then he sat next to her on the ground and watched the flames. The crackling fire and rustling of the forest beyond was all they could hear.

To keep himself from pushing her to talk before she was ready, Tisuran mentally recited the components of a field-shock cannon. Even if it took all night, he’d sit at her feet and wait.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but he’d finished with field-shock cannons, mounted swing arm guns, and was starting in on the triple-load strafer by the time Isla spoke.

“I haven’t heard of a single human colony that’s doing really well,” she started. “It was hard for humans to find jobs in the universe before the Final Cataclysm, but after Old Earth couldn’t support life anymore, we had to leave. That meant we had totake any job offered. There were people who basically ended up being indentured servants. They worked for room and board, you know?”

“I’ve been told this, yes,” Tisuran agreed. “Was it like that on Wimol?”

“No, we were some of the lucky ones. The Ugarians were pretty fair. They let us build a village on one of their colony planets, Wimol, and set a minimum that the Ugarian farmers had to pay us for our labor. The minimum was way lower than what the average Ugarian would earn doing the same task, but it meant we always had jobs.”

Tisuran had to fight an explosive war rattle. Wimol might not have been as bad as other places for humans, but they were still exploited. He took a few breaths to make sure he could speak calmly.

“Zia told me the work never stopped,” Tisuran observed gently.

“That’s true, but we didn’t all have to work. Unlike a lot of other human communities, we had elderly,” Isla mused. Her simple statement was significant—humans had the luxury to grow old on Wimol, but they couldn’t anywhere else.

A sad rumble sounded from Tisuran. “You’re all safe here,” he reminded her. “No one will be worked to death or neglected. If you’re worried because we’ve all been laboring so hard, let me reassure you, it’s temporary. Once basic infrastructure is established, the colony should sustain itself with minimal labor. Humans will have time to create, innovate, and prosper. We will have elders here too.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she rejoined, finally looking at him. The pain and fear were gone, but the tight line of her mouth indicated she was still dealing with anxiety. “I’m not worried you guys are going to work us into early graves. I wanted you tounderstand that, compared to other human enclaves, Wimol was pretty good but still poor.”

“Consider me informed,” Tisuran acknowledged with an upbeat, teasing rumble.

Isla grinned briefly, but it wasn’t a true smile. It didn’t reach her eyes and disappeared when she returned her gaze to the dancing orange flames.

“When Zia’s family moved to Wimol, I was super excited. Zia and her sister lived on a space station before Wimol. They’d seen so much already. I idolized and stalked them with the ferocity of a bored adolescent. Zia was nicer to me, so I ended up focusing on her. She taught me so much, even before she got her first implants. We were all using a sign language we’d cobbled together from the few Old Earth information vids the colony shared. It wasn’t great, but we made it work.”

She went silent, prompting Tisuran’s next question. “What happened?”

“Zia was developing too quickly,” Isla said in a soft voice. “If we didn’t get her a set of implants soon, her neural tissues might reject the hardware because of the hormonal changes in an adult. Even the cheapest implants would work because she could get them switched out later, but that was more than her family could pull together. Then the whole community saved to buy her implants. We were all so scared we’d miss the window.”

A feeling of dread built in Tisuran’s chest. “What did you do, Isla?”

“Ugarians are sexually compatible with humans,” she whispered. “The males will go into a rut. Usually, it isn’t an issue. Ugarians often form mating groups of up to two dozen individuals. That means there’s always a willing partner available. But, um, this Ugarian named Yesith got caught stealing.”

“And Ugarians use shunning as punishment,” Tisuran concluded.

“Yup,” Isla said. “His sentence wasn’t even that long, but he was due to go into rut. He was scared he’d become so needful he might commit a much worse crime. So, uh, he came to the human colony and offered money to anyone who would see him through his rut.” Her breathing got quicker. “It was a lot of money.”

It took all the willpower Tisuran possessed to keep from plucking Isla off her chair to settle her in his lap. He longed to hold her, sound a constant soothing rumble, and promise nothing would ever hurt her again.

Fighting his instincts, Tisuran kept silent and still. When Isla turned her face to his, her eyes were deep pools of unshed tears.

“I’d never done anything before,” her voice broke. “I mean, I’d messed around a little with Bennie, but nothing super serious. Mom had given me the sex talk. I knew basically what was going to happen. She’d said it might be a little uncomfortable the first time. But, um, it was way worse. It hurt. It hurt a lot.”

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