Work Text:
Memory Transcription Subject: Tiz, Former Pirate and Smuggler
Date [standardised human time]: June 15, 2140
The bed was soft and the pillow plump, but I couldn’t bring myself to sit on it.
Even though it had been years since I escaped the facility, I still couldn’t help feeling like I might be dragged back at any given moment, that the Farsul would escape their planetary prison and it would all start over again.
Despite everything that happened there, the place was very clean.
Sterile.
I looked around my bedroom and saw none of that bleached-white cleanliness amongst the unswept floors and small forest of mugs on the desktop by a window. There were real, physical books strewn across the room with all manner of things being used to mark pages, and I had run my hands over the artifacts in wonder.
It smelled so distinct, and yet like nothing else I had ever smelled. I wanted to drown in that scent.
“Sorry about the mess,” my host apologised from behind me, towering in the huge doorway and eclipsing the light from the other room.
“It’s wonderful,” I breathed, allowing myself the smallest moment of comfort in the surroundings. “I’ve never seen real books before,” I admitted, avoiding any talk of where I would sleep.
“Oh yeah, lots of people think they’re primitive, but it’s something that my grandfather used to do to honour his grandparents. Back in the old days, that’s how my family used to make money.”
I looked up at Krax and saw his ears flick nervously.
“So you do it to honour him now?” I asked. I was being presumptuous with the question, I knew, and likely was risking being kicked out before I had even slept a single night there. The scientists at the facility never liked me asking questions, and I had learned from the various pirates and smugglers I had survived alongside that such an attitude was not uncommon even amongst regular people.
“Yeah.” Krax reached down and pulled a book off of a small stack by the door before brushing some of the dust off of the cover. His eyes gazed with a tenderness that I shied away from.
“You don’t need to tidy them away,” I said, breaking the small silence that had grown between us. “I can see you have some kind of organisation, even if I am not able to glean it.”
“Thanks, it’d probably take me an hour anyway, and I need to get started on dinner.” Krax put the book back in its place and stepped back awkwardly. “What do you want?”
“I have already eaten.” I was slightly confused at the offer, as the Diani was already sharing his ‘study’ with me as a place to sleep. Why would he offer me additional resources? Besides, I had eaten plenty of meat before visiting Fahl for a fake galactic passport, and the scientists had made sure that my biology was suited to only needing occasional meals.
“You’ve been with me since midday, when did you get a chance to eat since you got off the ship?”
“I haven’t.” I was patient, even if Krax was a little slow. To my surprise and trepidation, he bent down to get on eye-level with me and fixed me with a concerned gaze.
“Have you only been eating once a day?” His voice was level, but held an edge I was unsure about. That insecurity made my muscles tense, and I found myself trying to figure out where Krax’s major arteries would be under his wool, sparse as it was.
“Of course. When I began my trip here from Fahl I moved down to lowered rations to conserve credits.”
“By the bloody blue dusts, that trip takes nine standard days!” Krax exclaimed. “You’ve been having one meal a day for a whole galactic week?!”
His outburst was strange, sudden, loud, and it did nothing to ease the fight response I was experiencing. I had survived by living a brutal life amongst convicts and outlaws since escaping, and shouting almost always preceded physical violence.
“Tiz, what’s wrong?”
Krax reached out to me and I flinched back, curling my claws into a promise of bloodshed if he came any closer.
Thankfully, he stopped.
“Sorry, I was just.” Krax’s voice faltered, and he pulled his reaching paw back. “I just get worked up when I hear about things like that. I get that my brother is a smuggler, and it’s a dirty job, but fuck, he didn’t have to shave you like that.”
“Shave me? I don’t have fur.”
“It’s an old saying, lots of Diani used to sell their wool when they had nothing else to make money with, but cutting it all off makes it harder to thermoregulate and survive. Back in the day, our wool used to be a component for making moisture-farms.” Krax stood back up and shuffled apologetically. “Look, I’m making food now, and there’ll be enough for you as well. You don’t have to eat it, you don’t even have to eat with me, but it’ll be there.”
When he closed the door behind him, I sat down where I stood and tried to soothe myself from the terrible high of the stress hormones that flooded my system.
I imagined the sands of Fahl and how it was to bury myself in them, to feel the sun warming my body almost from the inside out. However, I couldn’t help remember how I heard so many others around me doing the same and how much they would have screamed and ran if they knew what was sharing the basking area with them.
In the sands of my ancestors, I was not safe.
I was not welcome.
My breathing became faster and faster, and my eyes flicked open in a desperate bid to find something to ground myself. I stumbled to my feet and grabbed the bookcase to steady myself, considering what to do next.
I could run into the wilderness and live out my days in the yellow dust that covered the ground in the local region. I had gotten extremely good at killing even without a gun, and I enjoyed it as well, so that wasn’t too bad of an idea.
I knew I couldn’t stay here for long, eventually they would come for me, and so I should start making plans for that day as soon as possible. I would need credits though, and for that i would need a job.
To get a job, I would regrettably need contact with civilisation. To stay in contact, I would need to stay here in this house for as long as Krax would host me, as I would undoubtedly need his brother’s services again when I fled from here.
I would stay here for at least a week if I could, and then secure somewhere stable for the next month, and then work from there.
With each step of the plan worked through in my head, my breathing became more and more stable, until I was finally able to look around the room properly.
My eye landed on a book in the shelf that looked especially worn, and I removed it carefully. If it was beloved, I needed to make sure Krax didn’t find out I was reading it and throw me out of the house.
The cover had a faded illustration of a gigantic insect being faced down by a lone Diani warrior wielding only a spear of some kind. It was written in the circular, twisting script of the local Diani dialect, and I had to pull out my half-broken datapad to use the visual translator in order to read it.
“The Dust Child,” I read aloud to myself. Opening to cover, there was an inscription so cramped my datapad had trouble translating it, but I eventually pieced together what it said. “To Krax, my favourite and only grandchild. My father read this to me, I read this to your father, and now I give it to you so you can read it to whomever shares your hearth in the future. May it bring you warmth, water, and lead you to luscious red grass.”
I looked up from the book and took in the wealth of knowledge and stories contained in the pages around me. It was minuscule compared to how much information was available on my datapad, but I understood there was something else here.
This was where Krax came to be warmed from the inside out.
I turned the page, and began to read to myself.
“Once upon a time, deep in the great wilderness where beasts survived and men went to die, there was born a very special child.”