Page 17 of Pulled By the Tail
“Three? Is that where you put all my cooking?” Bright poked Charl in the stomach but the large male laughed. “Now get out of my kitchen. Go on.”
“Yes,Talent, back to work,” Charl said in a sing-song voice.
Talen growled a warning but Charl ignored him, as always. He knew he behaved like a whining kit, but he loathed being called Talent because it was a stupid name. Only Bright called him that and he could not correct her without a lecture about how she smuggled him and Quil off Talmar at great personal risk and raised them as her own, with no money and no resources.
His name was Talen and he had gone by that moniker for years. It sounded like another word for claws and that suited him just fine.Talent, however, as a name, was remarkably uninspired.
Quil, short for Tranquility, was the epitome of ‘cranky baby christened by exhausted parents.’ The name reflected his parents’ mindset at the time and their desperate prayer for a bit of rest. What did his parents hope to gain with talent? That their youngest son would excel at something, but they didn’t particularly care what? Talent was a placeholder name, a kit’s name that no grown male should carry.
As an adolescent, he intended to change it. Every day was a new name, a new identity, but nothing suited him. Talent, as much as he loathed it, was one of the few remaining gifts from his parents and he found himself reluctant to part with the moniker.
His feelings were complicated and refusing to look closely at them did not make him an overgrown kit. He was a busy male with no time for navel-gazing. Quil could mope about their lost family and childhood; Talen had work to do.
He and Charl prepped the hallway for painting as they were stalled on the roof until Quil returned with supplies. Charl used his many hands to fill in any holes in plasters and sand the surface smooth.
The sun eased closer to the horizon and the shadows moved across the floor. Quil had been gone too long for a simple run into town and that made Talen nervous. The nearest town, Drac, was mid-sized and had no casino or gambling hall to lure Quil into temptation.
But it did have several bars.
Fuck.
Quil had to be at a card table, fleecing the locals. Talen knew it in his bones. They didn’t need that kind of trouble. If Quil’s starry-eyed notion of a bed and breakfast was to ever turn a profit, they could not afford to turn the local population against them. They no longer had the option of hopping in their ship and sailing away to another port.
Fucking hell.Could Quil ever think of anyone but himself? How could he be so selfish? Then, with dread tugging on his tail, how could he have let Quil go into town on his own? He knew better.
Talen needed to find Quil. He needed to get this situation under control. For one day, just one day, Talen would like his older brother to behave like a grown-ass male and not require constant supervision.
At last, just as they finished for the day, a vehicle arrived.
Back before dinner, he couldn’t have possibly gotten into too much trouble.
Talen ambled toward the vehicle, ready to unload the cargo.
Quil stood proud, the last rays of the summer sun casting a golden glow over him. Talen noticed what he had on his arm.
Double fuck and all the trouble in the galaxy.
“What did you do?”
Georgia
Tranquility,
Tomorrow’s the big day! I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.—Georgia
The shuttle landedon a raked gravel drive. The hatch opened and fresh air flooded the cabin. She breathed deep, enjoying how the scent of fresh-cut lawn overpowered the oil and engine aroma of the shuttle. Her day had started early with her ship landing before dawn. With hours to wait until she caught a connecting shuttle, she wandered the spaceport, choking on fumes and the unique scent of stale coffee and unwashed travelers.
She was tired down to her bones and nervous. She wrote faithfully to Tranquility, hoping to develop some type of relationship before they met face-to-face. Six months was a long time to travel, but her actual time spent aboard ships was only half that. The other half of the journey had been spent waiting at stations and ports to catch a connecting ship. She spent nine days at Aldrin One, which was technically still in Earth’s territory.
Fortunately, she had no shortage of interesting things to see or food to try. Once she made it on board, entertainment options were limited, but she filled her tablet with books and movies.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, she picked up a bug that morphed into an upper respiratory infection. She suffered for days in her cabin, congested and coughing, reluctant to see the ship’s medic. They weren’t human and the captain might want to ditch her at the nearest port like she carried a plague instead of the common cold. Once she put on her big girl panties and visited the medic, a course of antibiotics sorted her out.
The agency covered the cost of the trip—which explained why it was so slow with so many gaps in connections—and allowed a daily stipend. Her messages were filled with photos of the new and weird surroundings and short little anecdotes about the joys of traveling.
Tranquility replied initially but his responses slowed to an eventual nothing. She worried that he changed his mind or if he suffered an accident. He would have sent a message, something, even if only a brief, “In the hospital.”
If he was able to send a message. Corra was a dangerous planet. He could have passed away and no one thought to tell her.
