Page 42 of Taken to Nobu
I sigh, relaxed in ways I haven’t been in so long. I’m warm and dry and the soothing touch of her fingers against my scalp, pulling ever so gently as she makes box braids appear one after the other, is enough to make me forget that I’m living with aliens — or maybe even, to help me realize just how nice living with aliens can be.
“Xhea?” She says softly.
“Hexa?”
Behind me, I can feel her cool breath on my neck when she exhales just a little. “Is it acceptable for me to ask you a question?”
In the mirror’s gaze, I stare into hers, watching as her alien eyes blink. I tell her something I should have told her solars ago, the day that we met. A small crack of truth in the veneer of my hate, paper thin yet capable of unraveling the entirety of it. “You are my equal. You don’t ever have to ask.”
“It’s just that…you don’t often seem like youwantto talk to me.”
I cringe outwardly and even though it feels strange — alien in itself — I take her hand. It’s dry and rough in places I don’t expect for someone so delicate and soft.She works hard.Even in the little time I’ve known her, I’ve seen the evidence of that. “I know and I’m sorry. But I also know that you’ve seen the report from the Okkari about me and the human colony. A bad Voraxian hurt me very badly and I thought you were all like that. I know that’s not true now, I just…I need your patience.”
She bows to me slightly and her ridges flare blue again in pleasure. I turn to face forward and when she picks back up her braiding, she surprises me. “Who did thesebraidsfor you on your home colony?”
I smile and this time the expression comes to me effortlessly. “My mother.”
I take in a breath and with my eyes closed I’m back there, on the colony.Sand swirls softly around my ankles. My head tilts to the side onto mama’s thigh. I’d fall asleep if she wasn’t tugging on my hair something fierce. But every time she calls me brave, I’m reminded that I am and don’t cry.
I could stop there, but I don’t. Urged on by something I can’t give name to because I don’t understand it myself, I let her in. I tell her, “It was hot on our colony so a lot of the time, she’d braid my hair outside. It would take so much of the solar, but I was never bored. Jaxal would come by and we would play stones, or Miar…I mean, the Rakukanna would show me one of her newest inventions. At just two or three rotations old, I remember she once showed me this trap she built for sand rats. We were hungry, even back then, and later managed to even catch one but…we couldn’t do it. We couldn’t kill it. So we let it go.” I exhale and with her fingers on my scalp, pulling and teasing out the knots, I’m a child once again, safe sitting in between my mother’s knees where nothing can hurt me.
“You miss this moon colony,” she says and it’s not a question, it’s a fact.
“Hexa, I do.”
“Will you…return?”
Vocabulary fails me, which is a bit sad since I only know the oneso far,but I’m trying. All I can do is try.
I’m not sure what to say — not because I don’t know, but because I can’t decide what to tell her. I can’t tell her that I was hurt there once and that the memory of Bo’Raku haunts me and I never want to see the colony again because of it — not because it didn’t happen, but because it would be a lie.
The truth is that I don’t want to go back because when I was sparring with a warrior called Tra’Okkari the solar before, we ended up deadlocked — neither of us gaining any ground until eventually Ka’Okkari came by and broke us up.I’ll be pleased to have you watching my back on the first hunt of the season,Tra’Okkari said to me. I’d been too speechless to answer, but when he signaled me in a warrior’s greeting — both arms crossed over his chest at the wrists — I’d been proud.
The truth is that I don’t want to go back because on the colony, I lived in fear of the day they’d come back. But here, there is no fear because here, I am powerful.
“I don’t think I will.”
“You are pleased to be with us in the village?”
I swallow hard. “Hexa. I think so.”
She trills and exhales, her fingers working quickly now. So pleasant, the sensation, I give up on my own braid and just…sit. “Xhivey. This is good to hear. Some were worried that you would not wish to remain with us.”
“Some? What does that mean?”
Her fingers don’t pause, but keep moving surely. I wonder if she can feel the sudden tension in my neck and back — or if she can even read my emotions at all given that I don’t have the colors in my face that she does. “Hexa. When collecting supplies over the past solars, I have been approached by many of the females, curious about you and your humans in general. Some of them expressed concern that you are living in a separate residence as this is not common for Xiveri mates.”
“Comets on a cracker. What did you say?”
“I explained to them that this is not your culture.”
“And what did they say?”
“Most understood as everyone has read the guide provided by Svera, the advisor.” She keeps braiding in silence, as if that’snotan entirely unfinished sentence.
I scooch an inch to the left so I can see her in the mirror more clearly. “And?”
“Verax,” she says that untranslatable word again, which means that she needs further explanation.
