Other Trails Chapter 2

[random_xtras]

"Two looking for passage, Captain," said Pohle quietly.

Agassi Jones lifted his eyes from the battered computer pad he was working on and frowned at the white-robed man. "I thought the port was empty of offworlders other than us."

"It is." Pohle pushed back his hood and lifted one blond eyebrow over the piercing grey eyes that tended to give him a slightly arrogant look. "These are locals."

Agassi squinted one eye, and then frowned even more deeply as he turned his attention back to the broken piece of electronics in his hands. "No way. Those guys never leave the planet."

"They're girls. Teenagers I think. Two," came the calm and precise retort.

That stopped Agassi short, and he gaped a bit at his friend. "Did you check your translator?"

"It's up to spec. These girls want a ride on our ship to leave the planet. The black one even has some honey wood branches to pay for the trip."

"Honey wood." Agassi felt his chin quiver just slightly as he wistfully thought of how many repairs he could make on the Nothing Yet with the money from selling even one foot of the rare and coveted wood. Scraps, he could even get himself a new computer pad! One of the unbreakable ones! "Where are they going?"

"Away from here." Pohle's mouth twitched slightly at the corners. "The black one said she and her sister want to explore other trails."

"What's up?" Agassi's sister and CO2, Angelina, poked her head out of the quonset that he was leaning against as he sat on the bench by the door, her blonde hair standing up from the effects of the towel she'd just applied to it after her shower.

"Two native girls want a ride off planet." Agassi winced as the computer pad sparked slightly and turned it over to make sure that he'd taken the battery out.

"How're we going to handle the anti-nudity laws?" Angelina reapplied the towel to her head. "And how're we going to explain to Heather that she'll have to cloak for however long they're aboard?"

Pohle shook his head slightly, smiling. "They're dressed, anyway. Some kind of strap around their body just in front of the rear legs, and then a strap under the tail from that. And a wool blanket wrapped around their upper torso and then tossed over one shoulder from behind."

Agassi snorted. "They don't even have busts."

"You still need to cover any non-mouth and hands body part used to feed offspring when you're in mixed racial groups." Angelina pulled off the towel, and then looked up as a very large grey hand came out of the quonset to touch her hair. "And those guys aren't human. I'll smooth it down, Karc. Stop fussing."

"That's another thing." Agassi frowned. "How're they going to react to having one of the forbidden on board?"

"The black one said that as long as he doesn't try to eat them, she doesn't care. I don't think they really know what a 'forbidden' is." Pohle grinned just slightly as Karc snorted at the idea of eating another sentient. "Hey, you would have tried it once."

The massive grey man shrugged, his upper set of arms moving slightly as he signed. [Was crazy once, too.]

"Anyone that willingly stays with this crew is crazy," muttered Agassi, his attention wandering back to his computer pad and the news feeds that he was missing because of its failure to operate. Then he gasped and flailed as cold water trickled down the back of his drab ship suit.

"You asked for that." Angelina laughed at her brother, then buttoned the sleeves on her own ship suit and turned to hug her husband before slipping past him back into the quonset to comb her bob in front of one of the cracked mirrors that sat hazily behind discoloured and dusty sinks.

Karc watched her go, his crimson and orange, reflective eyes holding a quiet light.

Then he turned back to his male crewmates. [Good idea to ask Heather, Chief.]

"He's right." Pohle nodded, smirking just slightly in what Agassi knew was good-natured teasing but still felt annoyed by. "Better ask the engineer."

"You ask her. You're her husband, and I've never seen her throw anything at you yet." He scowled at his cook.

"It's not like she actually curses when she's throwing words at you." Pohle chuckled.

"It's not the vituperation I'm worried about. It's the wrenches and ship parts." Agassi settled more firmly onto his seat and made a big show of checking over the computer pad's guts.

Karc grinned, then glanced over toward the edge of the port's paved area before stepping out of the quonset and straightening to his full ten and a half foot height, the muscles in his bare torso and arms rippling as he moved. Exposed to the sunlight the reflective orange of his eyes became even more noticeable, making the deep-set organs appear to be flicking with fire as he thoughtfully frowned and studied whatever had caught his interest.

Then he looked down. [Girls know what forbidden is now. Pale nearly ran away. Black offered to fight.]

"Offered to fight?" Agassi looked up quickly, surprised out of his facade of busyness.

Karc nodded. [Reared and punched the air with arms and front legs.]

"I've never heard of a girl from here doing that." Agassi blinked and then turned his head toward the direction that Karc had been looking.

"While you two work this out, I'll go talk to Heather." Pohle chuckled at his friend and Captain's expression, and then turned in a swish of white to go talk to his fiery wife.

"Thrrpt," said Karc absently, his overhanging brows lifting with interest as he saw the two native girls now trotting across the worn rubber paving toward himself and Agassi.

"You hand talk!" said the black girl, her golden amber eyes wide with innocent interest as she stared up at the forbidden man and moved her own hands quickly. "I saw your hands moving!"

Agassi couldn't help grinning at the sound of the girl's soft, husky, alto and thinking that her voice was as fuzzy and cute as she was. There was a reason that he'd shelled out the credit to get a genetically engineered cat for his ship's navigator and that a Carondian beaver was laying under his bench right now, its fluffy fur moving gently as it slept. And that reason was that he had a severe weakness for fuzzy things, be they plush animals or toys, or plush people. "It's probably a different kind of hand talk than you use. I don't recognize what you're saying there."

"Oh." She stopped and drooped slightly, but then lifted her flower-adorned head again. "That makes sense."

"He speaks Galactic sign, but he can hear just fine." Agassi set the computer pad down, his brows lifting slightly as he leaned forward a bit. "Why do you talk with your hands?"

"My sister's ears are broken." The black girl signed as she spoke, turning slightly so that her hands were visible to her snow-white companion. "They've never told her anything, so she uses her eyes instead."

"Profoundly deaf," said Agassi with surprise, realizing that the condition was probably connected to the pale girl's colouring. Then he lifted his hands and carefully signed a greeting and the sign for himself.

The white girl perked slightly, then glanced at her sister before hesitantly repeating the greeting and the name sign. Then she carefully signed something else.

Agassi shook his head, his expression apologetic. "No. The language is too different."

She turned to her sister and signed decisively.

"Mist says that she wants to learn your signing, so that she can talk to you too. She thinks it will be a good thing to learn how to talk to as many people as she can," said the black girl.

"Well, if she learns this language, she'll be able to talk to most of the space ways. They teach Galactic sign right along with the Basic in schools, because not everybody can use a translator." Agassi smiled, being careful to keep his mouth shut because he didn't know the taboos about teeth or mouths for the centaur people. Though now that he looked at these two he could see that they didn't really look like the half human and half horse creatures from the old stories. They had four legs and two arms, sure, but their lower bodies resembled those of some big, leggy deer, with slender limbs, cloven hooves with two dew claws, and a short tail that wore the same kind of fur as the rest of their body. Upper bodies, and even faces were also covered in the sleek, soft looking fur, and the girls had ears not unlike standard human ones except for the points at the upper tips, lack of lobes, and the tendency of the black sister's to twitch occasionally. "Hey, if she's Mist, what's your name?"

"Shade." She glanced at her sister and signed rapidly, then trilled softly as Mist replied. "She wants to know if someone on your ship can teach us this language."

Karc pointed to himself, nodding in the human fashion. [But why? You can hear, and talk with your mouth.]

"He wants to know why you want to learn, since you can hear, and speak Basic."

"If a lot of people speak it, it can probably talk about a lot more things than the language that Mist and I made up," came the practical answer. "And you said sometimes people can't use the translators." Then she glanced at her sister briefly. "Mist needs it most, though. If something happens and I can't be there to talk to her, then she'll have this and be able to have people know what she's saying."

Mist watched as she signed along with that last bit of wisdom, then grinned and nodded, showing dainty and even teeth with no trace of incisors.

"Well, even if we can't give you passage I'm sure my crew wouldn't mind giving you language lessons," said Agassi, grinning back and feeling relieved to know that it was alright to do so.

Shade frowned. "Why can't you give us passage?"

"One of my crew members is a Taloran. They believe that their Holy Bible tells them that a woman should only wear her hair," explained Agassi. "And there are laws against nudity in mixed racial groups to make sure that nobody gets offended by an eyeful of something they didn't want to see."

Shade looked at her sister, and a rapid exchange of hand talk commenced. Then she nodded before turning back to the captain. "We won't tell anyone that we saw her in only her hair. Our people believe in keeping our butts covered, but we know that some people want others to hide their tops, too, so we wore these covers to make sure we didn't offend anyone." She gestured to the blanket she was wearing, then quickly caught a flower as it fell from the braid that pulled back the mane which grew from her forehead to between her shoulder blades before trailing down past her lower shoulders.

"What's with the flowers?" Angelina pointed from where she now stood beside Karc, watching the conversation.

"Food for the journey." Shade put the fallen one into her mouth. "Our father was worried that we'd be hungry, so our birthing mothers thought of braiding our manes as a place to carry the flowers and bark."

Angelina frowned slightly. "I don't think you've got enough there for the whole trip."

Shade shook her head. "No. This is five days' worth of food. When it's gone we'll have to find more. You can trade honey wood for it, right?"

"Yeah..." It was Agassi's turn to frown. "But you have to be careful to not get ripped off. That stuff's worth a small fortune in credit."

"Really? Many people want it?" Shade looked down at the roughly constructed woolen pocket that she wore around her lower shoulders. "Maybe we do have enough for our journey, then."

"How much do you have?" Agassi gaped at the pocket, which was large enough to hold a lot of two foot long branches and which bulged slightly to show that it probably did.

Shade lifted her hands as though weighing the air, her expression thoughtful. "Ten pounds? Maybe twelve. Mist and I made as much as we could. And we have some wool things too. Some of them are made of that new plant wool that the convertors sent to us after the big sickness, like our blankets are."

"Big sickness?" Agassi hadn't heard this.

"Yes. A ship came here, and someone was sick. They gave it to one of the sons from another herd, and then it started visiting all the herds. It didn't come to mine because my dat and brothers heard about it in time and hid everyone, but we still got some of the plant wool to weave so that we could buy medicine for the people who needed it. They couldn't weave very well then themselves, but my brother Sunbeam said that he heard that the convertor people worried about taking away our way of life if they didn't let our people do something to work for the medicine."

"But it's gone now?" Agassi frowned, then winced and looked down as the screen on his pad cracked completely in half.

"Yes. Weaving the long plant wool's a hobby now, though it's nice to have a blanket of my own. We weave and give the blankets and hats and pockets to the convertor agent, and then she gives us more wool." Shade grinned, her fingers running along the border of stitched decorative Xs that went along the edge of the blanket that she wore for a top.

"You make the stuff and then just trade it for more wool?" Agassi felt brain broken, but then growled and pressed his arms to his sides as Karc gave him a light poke in the ribs.

"What else do we usually need?" Shade bubbled with soft laughter. "There's more than enough food and shelter and pretty things right here, and they fit in better than the stuff from other worlds."

"You know you're going to need more stuff if you live off planet, right?"

The dark-furred girl nodded. "Yes, I know that. And I was wondering about it, but then you told me how good this honey wood is. I think with it and with the wool things we've got that Mist and I should be alright. And we can both work, too."

"Wow. You guys aren't just stupid tribals, that's for sure," said Agassi without thinking.

"Ffft!" came the quick response. "The wool agent says that we're hippies."

"Whoa! What was that sound? My translator didn't translate that." Agassi tapped on the device pinned to his collar, frowning as he twisted his neck to try and see it.

"Sound?" Shade stopped and looked at him, but then understood and grinned again. "It means I disapproved of what you said. If we like what someone says we do this..."

Karc grinned slightly as she gave a soft trill, then glanced toward where the ship sat propped up on three landing legs and a large shipping container that someone had left at the port for such uses. [Pohle coming back.]

"They say they won't tell anyone that they saw Heather in only her hair," said Agassi as the white robbed former Vessel of Light approached. "And they've got some woven and knit stuff. I bet they could get you one of those little tchotchkes that Heather wanted. What was that again?"

"The little crochet flowers?" Pohle paused next to the sisters and nodded to them politely, then lifted his hands and exchanged the Galactic sign greeting with Mist as she spoke to him with the only sign in the language that she knew.

"Yeah, and don't confuse her. That's all the Gs she knows yet." Agassi sighed and started taking the dead computer pad apart, guessing that a few credits worth of salvage was all he could hope for from it.

"Alright." Pohle smiled at Mist and offered her his name sign instead. "Oh, and Heather said she'd just stay in the engine compartment if wearing her cloak all the time started to get to her. So having these two on board wouldn't really make a big change in her life."

Agassi gave him an absent stink eye for the reminder of just how much care the ancient engine needed, but was ignored.

"Do you two realize how tight quarters are in a scow of that make?" Pohle signed along as he spoke, pausing to jerk a thumb toward the Nothing Yet as he mentioned it. "I think you'd be able to access the rear hold and the mess, but to get anywhere else you'd have to crawl through access tubes."

"We can crawl." Shade shrugged her lower shoulders. "And small spaces are alright."

"Really? What about small spaces that sometimes get too hot, and that rattle and bang and make so much noise that you can't hear yourself think?"

"She can't hear anyway."

"Wait, what?" Pohle stopped and blinked at Mist.

"Why did you think she's trying to learn your hand talk?" Shade's mouth twitched as her eyes twinkled.

"I don't know. I guess I thought it was because she didn't have a translator and wanted to use something familiar." Pohle gave the frank grin that was the redemption of his aristocratic and slightly self possessed demeanor. "I'm not sure I actually thought anything about it. But seriously, our ship came from a junk yard, and not the part where they have the ships that have been put back together. The captain got her for a thousand credits and then spent ten years getting her to work. And I hear she nearly blew up the first time she lifted off."

"But you live on her. I'm not going to worry. I'll give Heather little wool flowers and not look at her when she's only wearing her hair, and you guys will bring me and Mist out into the trails between the stars." Shade nodded and finished her signing with a little flourish.

Mist nodded, her own hands echoing the flourish, then added a few more quick gestures.

"Yes, and you'll teach us the Galactic signs." Shade turned to Karc, her demeanor fearless now despite her first reaction to him.

[I will.] He nodded, smiling slightly. [I'll give you wire too. Wire nice woven.]

"He says he'll give you some fine, coloured wire to weave," translated Agassi, then chuckled. "We're going to have tchotchkes laying around all over the place."

"We don't leave things laying." Shade frowned slightly, but then perked. "Oh, I want to learn to weave with that new stuff, though. Will we need to pay more to do that?"

"Nope. That's part of the package. Doing stuff like that helps fight off the space demon," said Agassi, pocketing the remains of the computer pad.

"The space demon?" Shade blinked at him uncertainly, one front foot half lifted as though to stamp.

"Yeah." He grinned and got up to lead the way toward the ship. "It's called boredom."