Page 14 of Challenged

The females talk rapidly between themselves, Liv looking frustrated, a little angry, Lorna chewing at her lip and glancing at the door every so often, while Brooks scratches at the back of her neck, something akin to guilt in her expression. Meanwhile, Shemza recounts what he saw to Maldek and Gregar.

“She did not seem afraid of me,” he says. “More… unimpressed.”

“She has encountered our kind before then?” Maldek says.

Gregar and Shemza both have half an ear on the females’ conversation, and both shake their head.

“It sounds as though Angie is having difficulty believing the truth of her situation,” Shemza says.

Maldek makes a sympathetic noise, but my headspace snags on something else. Angie. This is my female’s name. I test the flavour of it on my tongue. Angie. I like it. It suits her.

The urge to go after her, to find her and make myself known to her, comes over me again, but I push it down. Force my body to relax. It is not a good idea, my headspace knows that. She has walked away because she does not wish to be among company.She desires time alone to untangle her thoughts. Besides, I cannot speak her words and she cannot speak mine. There is no comfort or reassurance I can offer her that her sisters could not do better.

It is a sharp thing to think. My heartspace - new in its infatuation - does not want to believe it. But sometimes the headspace must rule.

Shemza speaks briefly with Lorna, and I know he will be clarifying with her what is happening with my Angie, so I take a step closer, ready to listen.

“It seems she does not believe that it is possible to have slept for nineteen years,” Shemza says. “Or to have travelled between worlds. She thinks that this must all be an elaborate trick.”

She might want to think that, I think, but the fear in her voice and manner says that part of her is not so easily convinced that all of this is not truth.

“And the sight of you was not enough to persuade her?” I say, the teasing tone automatic, falling off my tongue without thought.

Shemza smiles, but shakes his head at me. “Apparently, humans have special paints and other tools that they can use to make themselves look quite different. It is not entirely unbelievable that I could be a human in disguise.”

I take a moment to be surprised once more by the ingenuity of humans. From travelling in ships across the stars to changing the shapes of their faces and features, it seems there is little they cannot do that they put their cleverness to.

“Special paints?” Gregar says. “I could believe they could mimic our colouring, but our height, our size?”

“If they had chosen you as their example, perhaps,” Shemza says, inclining his head to our chief.

“You are smaller than me, yes, but not so small that it would be possible to believe you were human underneath, surely?”

“Belief is not a thing contained by logic and reason,” I say. “It is perhaps far easier for Angie to believe that Shemza is painted than it is to believe that she has been taken so far from her home.”

“I expect that is the root of it,” Shemza says.

Gregar’s grimace shifts to sympathy. My heartspace beats a sympathetic rhythm of its own. I wish I could fix her hurts with a gentle touch or embrace, but I do not think either would work right now.

“Time,” Liv says to Gregar.

“We need to give her some time.”

“Anspayse.”

“And leave her alone for now.”

I nod, and her counsel so closely matching my thoughts makes them easier for my heartspace to swallow. Liv is wise, and if she thinks these are things that my Angie needs, then she is probably right.

Still, there is no part of my linasha being left alone with her fears that I like. Some of this must show on my face, for Lorna pats my arm.

“Angie be okay,” she says, using raskarran words the way many of our sisters are now able to - awkwardly, but with enough clarity that their meaning is plain. “She is angry because she is afraid. She know soon we give her safe.”

“She is lucky to have such kind and patient sisters,” I say.

Lorna gives me an indulgent sort of smile, as if she thinks I speak flattery and not truth. And though I am inclined to flatter when it achieves something, in this I am telling the truth. It amazes me how kind my sisters have the capacity to be when their world has shown them only cruelty.

“She is lucky that raskarrans are so-” Her nose wrinkles as she struggles to think of the right raskarran word. In the end, she turns to Shemza, speaks to him in human words.

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