Page 23 of Devin
"Hello, mother." Devin said.
"And who have we been slaughtering today? That does not look like Suhlik blood."
Devin looked down at his chest. It was covered with the lifeblood of the Kave monster. He hadn't even noticed.
"Dinner. You look nice," he said.
"The Grand Admiral is having a party tonight and his wife is obsessed with crystals that match your eyes. Grenata went as far as buying those new color changing contacts and synced them with laser embedded crystals so she looks like a holiday light display. Simply ridiculous. Tacky."
"You are well," Devin noted.
"You are not," she surmised.
"I am quite well."
"You only call me when you have news. Good news, and you blurt it out. Like your current post. I was on the screen for all of five seconds before you blurted out that you were designing an entire planet."
"That is not what I said."
"Well, that's what I've been telling everyone around here. My son, the Mahdfel warrior, has been promoted to building entire planetary colonies. That's close enough to the truth, anyway. If it were good news, you would have already told me. So, what? Have you been fired? There's no shame in being fired. I'll just tell everyone that they don't respect your artistic vision."
"Mother, I have not been fired."
"You're pregnant."
"Mother, I think you have a better grasp of biology than that."
"No, I mean you secretly got a mate without telling me, and now she's pregnant, and you're afraid to tell me because you know how much I want a grand baby and yet my stubborn son has his mind set on some pie-in-the-sky idea that he shouldn't give me a grandson until I'm a hundred and two and can't parade him around town, like ALL of my friends. All of them. They all have pictures of little warriors or grand babies. And I have to reply with, ‘Oh, my son is building a city.’"
Devin's lower lip started bleeding from where his teeth punctured it. This was not how he pictured this conversation going.
"What?" his mother prompted.
"Nothing," he grunted.
"Nothing?" she asked.
"Mother, I hope you are well," Devin said, perfectly ready to disconnect.
"You haven't told me anything," she said.
"There is nothing to tell. Someone suggested that I call you, and I thought it would be a nice gesture."
"Who, someone?"
"A Terran," Devin said.
"A what?"
"A small puny race that lives on the edge of the galaxy. They're quite backward."
"And she told you to call your mother, and you followed her directions."
"It was a meaningless-"
"What's her name?"
He'd fallen right into that trap by not denying that it was a female that had suggested it.
