Page 41 of Taken to Nobu
14
Kiki
He’s a crueler trainer than Jaxal, but he’s a good one — even I can admit that. He pushes me hard — but not too hard — and it hurts — but not enough to stop me from training with him the next solar and the next solar and the next.
My whole body is sore and achy but the stinging pain doesn’t last. I start to firm up. To remember what it was like to do hard work every day. To go beyond that and push myself, using new weapons and machines and stances and techniques I’ve never seen before, honing new muscles that I never even knew I possessed.
Kuana tries to gently coerce me into letting her repair the tear in my okami, but I’m obstinate and fuss over it myself until two males enter our space carrying four huge metal pails between them. Steam whicks off of their glimmering surfaces and I’m transfixed by the sight, as I am every time. Kuana directs them to a deep basin built into the ground by the kitchen area and even though I try to get Kuana to wash first, she’s possibly as stubborn as I am and refuses.
I sink into the hot water, letting my aches and pains become one with it. I close my eyes. It’s been sixteen solars. Sixteen solars living with aliens and already it’s hard for me to remember any other life.
“Xhea?” She asks, hesitation in her tone. Even though I asked her not to call me Xhea, I don’t hate that she does. What I hate is her reticence to ask. It’s been a too many solars living together now for her to still be afraid of me. For me to still be a bitch to her.I’m no better than Kuaku. Except Kuaku was only being an ass hole tomeand I’m already an ass hole. Now I’m being an ass hole to Kuana and she’s nothing but nice. I’m worse than Kuaku by three and Kuana is paying the price.
“Yes?” I try to say it nice and even look over my shoulder at her while my hands continue scrubbing at my skin in efficient strokes.
Naturally, she’s in the kitchen busy scrubbing something that is undoubtedly already clean since cleaning is all she’s done since she arrived. It makes me wonder what she did before. I want to ask her, but I…I’ve never asked her anything personal before.
“I would be pleased to lend you my assistance.”
“In the bath?” I balk, “I’m okay, thanks.”
Her forehead sizzles yellow — a color I know by now is something like shame. And the only reason I know that is because she’s perpetually yellow in the face around me. “I would offer assistance only to help you since you seem to have strained many muscles these past solars training with the xub’Okkari. That is all.”
Stars. She’s got a point.“I’ve got it. All good.”
She turns back to the clean surface and takes her rag to it again while I finish up, wondering what mama would think if she could hear me and see me now.Wouldn’t know a kind word if it slapped you,she’d say. And she’d be absolutely right.
I finish quickly and let Kuana do the same. She finishes combing through her hair — an act that takes her about two seconds — and while I continue working madly to detangle the smallest lock of my hair, she goes back to cleaning that same imaginary mess again.
I laugh humorlessly and actually slap my palm to my face. “Kuana,” I snap, harsher than I mean to.
She straightens like I’ve stuck her with a pin and meets my gaze in the mirror I’m seated in front of. It’s a well-polished piece of black stone, very unlike the silver mirrors we use back home. Because of that, the color of my hair and skin blend in with it and my hair floats around my head now like a mane with a will and mind of its own — a thicket impossible to get all the way through…without help.
“Hexa, my Xhea. I am here.”
“We both know you’re not cleaning anything.”
She sets down the gamma radiator and the wipe she’s been using and turns to face me fully. “Nox,” she sighs, “I am not.”
“Well stop it then.”
“What else would you have me do?”
“Come help me with my hair.” If there was ever a point at which I wanted all aliens to suffer, it’s time to backtrack now, because sheissuffering and in the greatest feat of irony the universe has ever delivered me, I’m suffering too because of it.
Brilliant white and blue flutter across her forehead and down the center of her nose. She trills, “I am pleased to do this for you. Do you need help with combing it?”
“Yes…hexa,” I say and her face lights up even more, bringing heat to my own.I should give her more tasks and more regularly. I’m responsible for her.“And braiding it.”
“Braid? I do not know this word.”
“It’s fine then, I…” I’m just about to tell her I’ve got it when the colors in her face change again, shifting back to that grotesque and tormented yellow. I catch my own tongue — something I’ve never been very skilled at before — and offer her a weird smile of my own. “I’ll teach you. I know my hair is very different from yours but it would be a huge help to have someone help me braid it…”
Surprise. “I would behonoredto learn.” She bows deeply and I feel myself flush all over again.
“Oh quit it, would you? Just come over here. None of that bowing crap.”
A smile still on her face, Kuana takes a pillow and plops it down beside me and together we comb through my hair and separate the mass into smaller chunks. I show her the movements with my fingers and am not surprised at all that she makes a quick study of it. With just a few practice braids that she afterwards undoes, she’s already better at it than I am.
