Memory Transcription Subject: Chiri, Gojid Refugee

Date [standardized human time]: November 1, 2136

I’d only seen two human homes before, but between David’s apartment being a two-level loft, and the sheer enormity of his cousin’s home, I was starting to suspect that humans were all slightly claustrophobic. A nice cozy burrow meant safety to Gojids, but maybe human psychology had different priorities.

Humans lack claws or fangs, and David’s mentioned guns almost automatically whenever the subject of hunting has come up, said the odd voice, beginning to generate ideas per usual. Humans probably want to see or hear any threats coming, then use their binocular vision for targeting at range. The best armor is to stay out of reach. Open space is safety; closed walls are a barrier to sight. This isn’t weird: plenty of herbivores find safety in open spaces. You’ve met Fissans before.

Hey, remember that time you had a few drinks with that Fissan at that one college party and couldn’t shut up about The Game-Changers? said the critical voice. I pretended not to hear her, and focused on what the odd voice had said.

The spatial preference thing was fascinating, but not terribly useful for surviving a social engagement with a predator. Sam set an electric kettle going and started rummaging around in his pantry for little boxes of presumably tea. I still couldn’t read… English, was it? Not Terran? But it smelled, even from a distance, like a stack of little paperboard boxes of some manner of dried leaves.

“What kind of tea would you like?” Sam asked.

I shrugged. “No idea what’s available. What do you recommend?”

“In broad strokes,” said David, cutting in, “do you need a bit more of a pick-me-up, or was the coffee sufficient?”

I quickly self-assessed. “I’m a bit lethargic still.”

David nodded. “Earl Grey, then?” he asked his cousin.

Sam shrugged. “Never a bad choice.” He set about placing little sachets of fragrant leaves into mugs, as he waited for the water to boil. Helena was getting antsy waiting. “Hey, go get mommy,” Sam said. “Tell her Cousin David’s here for tea, and he brought a Gojid who wants to know about visas.”

“Vee-zaz,” Helena repeated solemnly, as she dashed away upstairs.

Sam turned to watch his daughter go. “So uhh… anything broader-strokes that I’m missing here?”

David shrugged. “Not really. Most of my employees aren’t coming back, and with the city in ruins, it’s gonna take some doing, spinning operations back up at the restaurant to the point where I can start hiring new ones. Probably just going to be me and the bartender for a bit,” he said, nodding to me.

Sam stared at David incredulously. “Yes. The bartender.” Sam nodded in acknowledgement towards me. “I don’t mean to be impolite, Chiri, but like… David, come on, there’s like twelve Gojids left on the planet that weren’t evacuated back to Venlil Prime, and you just ‘ran into’ one?”

David shrugged again, “What can I say? I’m lucky. Did you hear the one about how my building survived an antimatter bomb?”

Sam visibly disbelieved his cousin. Humans were all exceptionally practiced at the art of lies and deflection. “Where did you even run into each other?”

I knew what a work visa was, and I knew I’d technically fled a refugee camp without first acquiring one, so…

“I’d like to speak to an attorney before answering any further questions, sir,” I said stiffly.

David laughed. “Never the wrong answer. But yeah, we’ll sort this out. In the meantime, Sam, could you let me know if you get wind of any grant or aid money that might apply to small businesses operating in bombed areas? It’s gonna be touch and go for a bit, financially. I had the idea of selling lunches to construction workers and Yotuls?”

Sam sank back into his chair, clearly unhappy to let the topic go, but realizing he had no good ways to proceed. “Yeah, I mean, it’s not the worst target demo to be aiming for, considering that there aren’t going to be any others for a bit. You think they’ll buy food from a human?”

David shrugged. “I think the kind of people who’d willingly come visit the Savage Predator Homeworld might be open-minded enough to try it. There’s a selection bias, you know?”

Sam looked at me, pensive. “So there is.”

The teapot dinged, and Sam got around to fixing tea and snacks while his daughter scampered back down the stairs excitedly. A tired-looking woman with fair hair followed her down. Sam’s wife, Erin, wore part of what I’d learned to recognize as a human business suit, heavily rumpled, minus the jacket, minus the two dark corded wrap things that went around the neck and waist, and with the dark shiny foot coverings replaced with pink fluffy ones. Loose and comfy, but able to be straightened out in a hurry for a video call. Even dressed down, she was pretty.

Effortless, said the critical voice. Lithe. Powerful. Are you ever going to look as good to David as a fellow human would?

“Good afternoon,” she said. Her voice sounded softer than the male humans. More melodic. Not growling, but purring. “I have a guest and a client, I hear?”

What does your voice sound like to them? the critical voice mused. Squeaky? Weak? Small?

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I waved awkwardly. “Yes. I have some visa questions I need to sort out.”

Erin nodded, and took a seat next to her excited daughter. “Erin Brenner, attorney at law. Pleasure to meet you.”

She has her life together, the voice continued. A family, a career… What are you, compared to her? A destitute refugee, a half-trained distiller, an heiress to ashes.

I nodded back. “Um, yes!” I said, slightly nervous. “Chiri Brenner, apprentice distiller. Pleasure to meet you as well.”

Both of the adults across the table had their eyes briefly go impossibly wide with shock, as David tried not to laugh. “No, no, that would imply we were married,” he reminded me.

“Sorry!” I said, my cheeks turning blue. “Gojids don’t have two names. I just assumed I had to put something there.”

You’ll always be an outsider here, said the critical voice. You don’t even blush the same color as them. Did you think fitting in would be easy?

“No worries,” said Erin, smiling politely if blearily. “There are a number of applicable types of visas if you’re looking to transition out of refugee status and apply for more permanent residence, and most friendly members of the Federation typically get to jump the line a bit. There’s a lot of political pressure coming down from the UN Department of Alien Affairs to welcome anyone who’s willing.”

David’s eyes narrowed, his face abruptly serious. “What are the odds of that goodwill lasting, after the Battle of Earth?”

Sam shrugged, as he set about serving tea and snacks. “There’s a lot of resentment boiling up,” he said. “And not everyone’s picky about which aliens did what. Even up at the top of society, more than a couple of political movers and shakers didn’t survive the attacks. Like sure, most sitting members of Congress survived, but the behind-the-scenes guys? The party majordomos, the guys with their own think-tanks…” Sam shook his head. “There’s going to be a platform and policy realignment over this like we haven’t seen since the Satellite Wars.”

You don’t even know what that means, do you?

“I’ll tell you later,” said David, immediately spotting my confusion. “Short version, though: which politicians stand for what is going to rapidly change in the next few months as people start filling power vacuums and feeling out popular sentiment from their supporters.”

“It’ll still be a few months before they change any laws if it comes to that, though,” Erin pointed out. “You should be alright if we sort out your visa status promptly. Do you know what kind you’re looking for?”

“Basic employment visa,” said David, answering for me. “I’m sponsoring.”

Can’t even speak for yourself.

Erin nodded. “Yup, easy enough. In fact, they usually handle it at the refugee camp. Did anyone explain the paperwork to you when you left? That should have been standard procedure.”

“No…” I mumbled. “Didn’t hear about any paperwork.”

You know, I bet that guard wasn’t even trying to stop you from leaving. He just wanted you to sign a few things before you did. And you just brushed past him like an impatient fool. What a completely avoidable fuckup.

Erin blinked. “Oh, that’s odd. Usually they don’t let you leave until you’ve been given an exit interview to brief you on things like this. I wonder how that happened?”

I demonstrated.

Some deep, instinctual part of me still assumed the predators would bolt after me when I fled their dining room, and that they’d outpace me on my stubby Gojid legs, but the humans had more than demonstrated that their instincts weren’t what I’d assumed, and running from a tea party was a social faux pas for the chased and the chaser alike. All told, I managed to get in a good solid minute or two of hyperventilating back outside by the docks before David strolled up slowly.

“You okay, buddy?” David asked, softly, casually, but his worries were bleeding through nonetheless.

I gave a--I gave a nonsense gesture that mixed nodding ‘yes’, shaking my head ‘no’, and shrugging ‘ignorance’ into a messy and incomprehensible ball of emotional tells. I flinched, in other words.

“Too many predators in a room together?” David guessed.

He was honestly so fucking wrong that I laughed through the near-tears.

“No,” I said, rubbing my face. “Nah, I’m just… Augh! I don’t even know how to explain it.”

You do. You just don’t want to.

“Can you try?” David asked.

I sighed. “Look, it’s just…” I took a deep breath. “I think humans are incredible.”

David nodded slowly. “Okay. I get that, given where you’re coming from. You want to get in touch with your omnivorous side, and we’re the only ones who’ve pulled that lifestyle off. Why is that upsetting you?”

I rubbed my face harder. If I rubbed it hard enough, it’d go away, and I could hide it forever. “Why would you ever even consider dating me, when you could just find a fellow human, who’s just… better than me in every way?”

Oh, let me guess, he’s going to blow some smoke up your ass about Gojids being just as good as humans, or he’s going to tell you that comparing people isn’t healthy. Predictable lies.

“Novelty,” said David, without missing a beat.

I blinked in shock, and turned to face him. “Wait, what? What the fuck?”

David sighed. “Look, I’ve dated humans before. They’re fine. But yeah, I’m currently single, and when you… presented the opportunity, I thought I’d give it a try.”

“That’s… that’s it, though?” I asked. “You just wanted to try something new?”

Didn’t you? the odd voice said softly.

David sat down next to me. “Chiri… that’s all it takes for a relationship to start. Romance movies like to play it up like two people getting together is the triumphant culmination of some kind of grand quest, but… no, that’s the easy part. It’s where you go and what you do once you’re together that matters.” He smiled, and he put his hand gently on my forearm. “I enjoyed last night a lot. I look forward to more nights like that, and even some fun days. I like you, Chiri, the person, regardless of species. You don’t need to feel inadequate just for being different. Like I said, I like different. And I like you.”

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding, and leaned over towards David, resting my head on his shoulder. “I like you, too,” I said. “You’re…” I paused, going down a list of words that would be too much, too soon, and settled on… “Fun.”

“Fun is what Carnivals are for,” David said, grinning. “Wanna head back in?”

I sighed. “Probably. How bad did I fuck up?”

David moved as if to shrug, but held back so my head could stay where it was. “Not too bad,” he said. He opened his mouth to say something more, then closed it again.

Nobody’s going to blame a helpless little herbivore for having a panic attack in a dining room full of predators, the critical voice said, filling in the blanks with the worst thing I could think of. Stereotypes were real, and little biases like these were going to be a part of my life on a foreign world. I was going to be better than that. I was going to be better.

“They’re family, and they’re good people,” David said instead. “Trust me, they won’t judge you. Wanna head back in? You still haven’t tried your tea.”

I hugged him, and nuzzled my face deeper into his shirt. “Minute more,” I said into his chest as he hugged me back.