I’m not above sneaking off with a stranger at a party to get out of the crowd. Getting to know someone new where the noise levels are lower is a lot easier.

And this someone is definitely someone interesting. Dinosaur costumes are not exactly popular, but here he is in a vintage meme costume. It’s extremely silly, and I can tell he’s struggling to move normally in it. He’s really committed to the bit.

Intellectually, I know that this event is an enormous risk for any known rebel such as myself. I could get captured, tortured for information, or just plain killed for my part in the utter devastation of the fortress that is being celebrated. But this guy did me the favor of picking our own ride as a place to hang.

It’s one way to make me feel much more at ease with him.

The other way is by speaking so softly. I’m still not sure if I heard him correctly. Did he really say his name is Tromeo?

In the quiet of our little bit of seclusion it feels extremely silly to be talking to the inflatable dinosaur’s face. I know that his face should be somewhere around the chest, but the lighting is not good enough here to see through the screen that covers his face, but his voice seems to come from closer to the inflated dinosaur’s actual mouth.

“So the liberation of the city is at hand,” Tromeo says in his low, muffled voice. I cannot place his accent, but it doesn’t seem local.

“They say it is,” I give him a smile. “I guess this place was too small to be forced to resettle and they’re now confident that they will not be.”

“You don’t sound most wholly convinced?” The dinosaur’s head tilts at me in a way that is most convincingly realistic, though it wiggles at the end of the movement.

“I just can’t say I’m sure that it’s true.” I shrug. “What guarantee does anyone here have that they are protected from getting shot just for having declared the place to be liberated now?”

He tilts his head the other way, as if considering my words very carefully.

“And what if they’re ultimately correct?” he asks, sounding very curious. “What if the war could end with a truce in the most near future? I know that it’s possible.”

I consider his words as carefully as he contemplated mine. And he lets me - he doesn’t try to talk over me or fill the silence. It’s so comfortable that I could almost forget that I haven’t already known him for years.

“A Troo Truce? A Troose?” I grin at him and he laughs. It’s a musical laugh that sounds like singing. But I sober quickly from the mild hilarity. “I don’t know if that would be accepted, honestly.”

“No?” he asks, “you don’t believe the rebels would dare agree to it, or?”

I shake my head sadly.

“No. Some hardliners will never accept anything that concedes anything to their enemy. The Troos are invaders, and plenty of people will refuse to be invaded.” I look sadly to my knees. “And on top of that, history says that when you give up territory to appease a military from conquest, they just come back and take the rest later.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” His hands rub together with what looks to be nervousness. “Do you think there is any way to end this miserable war at all without a complete genocide?”

It’s a depressing thought.

“Integration?” I try to picture what it would look like to have the Troos just be part of our daily life instead of constantly at war. Is that what the collaborators imagine? “What do you think?”

“I hadn’t considered integration to be a possible outcome.” Tromeo shifts on his seat, sweeping the inflated tail along behind him. “I wonder if the royalty would lower themselves to be just a small part of a larger whole?”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“I hardly know how the Troos conduct themselves,” I confess. “Are they really a monarchy? I wasn’t sure I really believed that they could possibly still have such an outdated government and have managed to make the journey across space to get here.”

“It’s complicated,” he says in that quiet, musical voice. A long whistle escapes as though a sigh. “There is a hierarchy, and at the top are the royalty. But as I can explain it, this isn’t based on family lineage alone, but on their actual feather color and aptitude. It’s complicated and maybe not as egalitarian as other ways to structure a society. But that might be necessary. When people fight each other for power nobody wins. An arbitrary way to determine who is in charge of all the power makes it equally unfair for everyone.”

“That’s hardly a system of government,” I laugh. “They can’t possibly maintain any kind of consistency or merit based leadership that way?”

I hear a muffled clicking noise from somewhere inside the dinosaur. Is he snapping his teeth at me? What kind of weirdo is this guy?

“No, I suppose it doesn’t reward people for their merit to have anyone selected for leadership based on the color of their plumage. Would that instead someone could be chosen for the role who actually desires it.”

The dinosaur turns away from me and looks into the small crowd around the bandstand. I suspect that he’s looking for someone there. Did he come alone? I did not see.

And there, dancing freely among my comrades, are several Troos.

I don’t know what to think. I hardly know how to breathe. We’re celebrating the town’s liberation from their control, and here they are among us, appearing to be actually also celebrating our liberation from their control. Is this what integration looks like? How are they here to celebrate among us when we have left so many of them dead in the ruins of the fortress?

And I can’t help but express the same confusion to my new friend. He looks back at me and it is impossible for me to read his face behind the mask. Mindful of my makeup, I touch my mask to make sure that the angry tears that well in my eyes do not loosen anything and ruin the affect of my costume.

The dinosaur looks at me with his comically tilted head again and then reaches up to my face with one stubby little arm. He touches the feathers on my mask with the back of one finger. It is so gentle, and so tender, that it does not even seem like an imposition.

“Do you hate…” he mumbles something else, but I don’t hear the rest of the word.

“There is enough hate in the world already, isn’t there?” I mournfully kick my heels against the side of the log we’ve chosen to sit on. “I can’t hate them. I just - would it be telling to admit that I know how many of them likely died in that fort and I wish it had been none.”

“I wish it had been none too.” His entire posture droops. It’s hard to describe a person as appearing to deflate while wearing an inflatable costume, but though it is whole and unpunctured, he slumps forward as though it were losing air. “I was there. I wish I could forget it.”

I look back at the Troos dancing among the humans in the crowd. Their red and gold feathers flash brilliantly in the twinkling fairy lights. The band’s enthusiastic fiddler pulls off a dramatic solo, and the Troos trill with enthusiastic enjoyment of the music. We don’t have to hate each other. It isn’t our natures that draw us to conflict. It is something far less foundational than that. It is no different than the conflicts we have suffered among our own kinds.

I hop off the log and smooth my tutu around me briefly.

“Would you like to forget it for a few minutes?” I gesture broadly at the crowd.

“Yes,” he answers, nodding the dinosaur’s head and sticking to the character very well. “Yes, I’d like that more than anything in the world.”

I lead the way and he follows. Normally, a guy would do the leading for me, but I do not want to force him to have to make any hard decisions while clearly mourning. If we can have just one night together before he returns to whatever collaborator garbage of a life that let him both survive the destruction of so many people in that fire and also know so very much about Troo systems of government, then I suppose I have done my public service for the evening. And maybe, just maybe, I’ve begun to accomplish exactly what Mom may have had in mind. Maybe we can declare this area liberated and just integrate those willing to agree to its liberation.

Tromeo’s hand catches my elbow when we have gotten to the grassy space in front of the bandstand that has been claimed as a dance floor. It seems difficult to dance close while he’s wearing that ridiculous costume. And it’s made more so by his insistence on keeping control of its head as if it really is a genuine dinosaur, not even a diminutive one such as a Troo.

The frantic and quick fiddle gives way to a slow, sweet song. The woman singing launches into a rendition of the classic about strawberry wine. And though I have had only ginger ale to drink, I feel such compassion for this man who opened his soul to me.

He pulls me close to him.

I wrap my arms around the costume and find that his shoulders are not where I expect them to be.

The dinosaur’s face lowers and a very much not inflated cheek presses gently against mine.

Just to confirm what I am slowly realizing is true, my hands wander downwards across what should be a man’s butt.

I find a tail.