Braq, radji Cradle Ecologist.
Date [standardised human time]: March 18th, 2117
(19 years, 5 months before the invasion of the radji Cradle).
The baby had mewled all night long, and Braq knew that had they neighbours this façade would have died in the crib. The infant pyq was currently sleeping in a pen in the living room, but its calls would carry through the lodge, and only Turin’s protests had stopped Braq from keeping it with the vexise and monitors outside.
Not that Braq had been sleeping well regardless; Ki-yu was nearing its perigee. The Cradle’s second moon orbited in a wide ellipse that brought it close once every three or four years, exaggerating the seasons and tides. It was a time of hardship where winters were harsher, and the summer storms were more devastating. At such proximity the moon’s albedo bathed the forest in a pale glow that had not arced across this patch of sky for a score of years. The name Ki-yu was derived from an old tongue, now long forgotten. Braq thought the name must share a root with Kejdar, the local radji language group, but it had been some time since he last read his scripture.
Braq returned to the lodge after feeding the vexise and shadow monitors and repairing a trail camera that had been damaged in a recent storm. Both had also become more active and dangerous as the moon approached, but at least the monitors had continued to feed properly once they had been grouped up.
Turin sat at the table in the living room; the little pyq in front of her was surrounded by a pile of books of which it was in some capacity the subject. One of them always watched the little predator, they could not afford it running off. The pair had also set an audio warning using the surveillance cameras to alert them to any visitors. They were yet to think of a method more effective than hiding it amongst the pens should any appear, but they had not had any visitors since the day of the hatching.
The couple had decided to record as much information on this ‘experiment’ as possible and were cataloguing all the infant’s activities and anatomy in an increasingly full notebook. Turin did not trust recording anything digitally when it came to raising a pyq, and Braq was begrudgingly inclined to agree. He most definitely did not have the claws for an archaic art like calligraphy, so Turin did most of the writing, and Braq the drawings.
As much as the reptile was still being a thorn amongst the quills, he found it to be an entrancing subject for drawing, and he had already done several sketches.
“What have you learned today?” Braq asked, eyeing the creature as he set about brewing an afternoon tea. “Maybe why it was screeching all night?”
“She,” Turin replied.
“What?” Turin tapped a claw against one of the books, a look of disdain disturbing her features.
“That damnable v’rstatin Barudama was unfortunately quite an effective anatomist,” she said with a tutting sound. “But the ventral pelvic bone and cloacal plates are those of a female. She.” The pyq sniffed at the claw Turin had pointed at it- her, before a tiny tongue tasted its tip.
“Well, it’s more than we knew yesterday,” Braq said with a sigh.
“Narrows down the list of names too,” she replied plucking up a pair of callipers. The predator made a gurk! sound as she grabbed it around the middle, and measured the length, height, and width of the snout. The pyq, for her part, did not seem too disturbed by the process. How can she bear holding the thing? he thought as Turin returned her to the table and noted the measurements. Braq was yet to touch her. He still thought the whole thing was madness, as the pyq sat up again, smacking its mouth and shaking its head.
He finished making the tea and brought Turin a cup. The pyq looked up as he placed it on the table, and she hobbled over to investigate the warm flask. After collecting his notebook and pencils, Braq sat opposite his partner, and studied the creature.
It was only now, more than a week after hatching, that it —she— was starting to regularly walk on her four awkward little limbs. The hands fascinated him. In most bipeds, the forelimbs were dedicated to object manipulation, and in quadrupeds they tended to be less dextrous to bear more weight of the animal as it walked. The pyq hand, strangely, appeared to be dedicated to both systems at once. The central four digits of the hand were larger and longer, tipped with both longer claws and a thickened callus on the middle and distal phalanges. The proximal joints of these digits seemed to lock together when the wrist was in a natural resting position, meaning that no muscular energy had to be expended to extend those digits forwards. If Braq was to look at these four digits in isolation, he would think they belonged to a quadrupedal pursuit predator.
The inner and outer digits of the hand, the inner being the larger of the two, were fully opposable and sat away from the palm. Their claws were shorter, the distal phalanx more precise in its movement. These looked like the thumbs of a biped.
Strong tendons and muscles would brace the joints in adulthood, but for now the limbs were just stick thin with the soft flexibility of a baby’s bones. Taken together, the pyq hand was long and narrow, with a deceptively large span when all six strong digits were splayed. Braq could clearly understand how an adult pyq could grip the entirety of a radji head with one clawed hand. Braq shook himself at the grotesque thought.
This pyq was currently using its considerably smaller hands to prop herself up against the flask as she explored the ceramic with a dark wet muzzle. Turin was also watching the infant with interest, her small spiky frame dwarfing the tiny predator. He began to sketch the pair. Turin had a funny way of screwing her snout up when she was thinking hard about something, an expression Braq secretly found quite endearing. They sat that way for a few hours: watching, drawing, taking notes, and commenting on the infant as it explored the table.
It had become something of a pastime between the two of them, something to share when the days tasks were complete, and the intermittent DataNet did not interest them. Had it almost begun to feel normal? It most definitely was not comfortable being so close to the thing; Braq constantly felt like he had his paw in the stew and his parents were about to walk in. The thought almost made him snort, he had not thought about his childhood home for a long time. Braq’s parents had always been distant, and certainly never approved of his work as an adult. Was this what a family was? he wondered, looking at the curious alien between them. Just as the moment threatened to crystalise, it passed, leaving only the prospect of dinner in its wake.
Braq had once loved dinner time. Sitting down with his partner to enjoy a full hearty meal and discuss what they had achieved that day and what they might to the next. Now it had become a moment of great tension, a macabre display that they had to endure. Feeding a shadow monitor or a vexise was one thing, you could just throw the kibble into the pen and turn your back. Even when Braq or Turin was handfeeding them, they could look away. But this little pyq was still young enough that they had to feed it directly and watch it to make sure it chewed every horrid scrap, lest it choke. Braq found it hard to recall that the kibble was not actual meat. Wincing as Turin grabbed a ragged chunk with the tongs, Braq would watch as she would offer it to the infant. At first, the baby had treated the kibble with the same curiosity as the mug, making hearty snorts as she padded her paws all over it. Braq had put a stop to that before she left bloody footprints all over his table.
Like the monitors outside, the pyq had to be shown that it was being presented with food, but neither of them were likely to chew on the kibble of their own volition. Eventually, using the tongs as a proxy for a mother’s mouth, they had managed to get the point across. The tiny reptilian’s neck would S-curve as she shoved her face into a bloody morsel, shaking her head to slice with vicious little teeth.
Not for the first time recently, Braq found that he was not hungry.
When the trial was complete the pyq fell onto its back sluggishly, closing its dark eyes and falling into torpor. Turin took the opportunity to wipe the blood from the predator and place it into its pen.
“She can’t stay in here forever,” Turin said. “She’s not a pet, and she’ll outgrow it soon enough anyway.”
Braq had been expending a great deal of thought on the matter himself, trying to find the most equitable solution. On one paw, it made more sense to keep the predator close so that they could monitor her behaviour and interact with her as she grew. But on the other, it also made sense to keep her isolated away from any possible interlopers that may discover her. Or discover her predatory nature first-hand, he thought. As far as Braq was concerned, the longer they kept her in the pen the better.
~*~
Braq struggled to sleep that night. Ki-yu’s light was growing brighter, and it reflected down the hall into their bedding-room. His tossing and turning would also keep Turin awake, but in trying to remain as still as possible he found that he was left wide awake.
The pyq’s mewling came echoing down the hall.
Umph, umph. Umph, umph.
He tried to ignore it, but the sound became more insistent.
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Umph, umph! Umph, umph!
Pulling the blankets up over his head the radji tried to block out the sound.
No! he thought. I’m warm, and comfortable. It’ll fall asleep, then I’ll fall asleep.
Umph, umph! Umph, umph!!
Braq turned over and found Turin to be wide awake, looking him straight in the eyes.
“Your turn,” she whispered and turned her pelt to him. Shit.
Braq dragged himself into the cold living room. The pyq was sitting at the front of its pen, its snout pressed between the bars of the hatch.
“What do you want?” Braq hissed.
Umph, umph! It called up at him. The pen, he saw, had been left facing the window, and Ki-yu’s light lit it up like the dawn. Yawning, he swung the enclosure around, so that the pen was no longer in the light. “G’night,” he said sleepily, as he turned away.
Umph, umph! she called after him.
Umph, umph!!
I’m so tired of this moon, of this damn season. Of this silly little predator. Braq thought. Grabbing a thick blanket from the wardrobe, he threw it over the pen. The pyq kept umph-ing, but the sound was sufficiently muffled.
Satisfied, Braq crawled back into bed.
~*~
The following morning, Turin left to gather some roots and vegetables from the gardens to brew them a nice warm stew for dinner. The prospect of a good stew always raised Braq’s spirits. But when he went out to feed the shadow monitors, he was shocked to find that four of the recent hatchlings had died in the night. The other monitors in each pen were bundled together, often in a corner or against a wall with the sire’s serpentine shape wrapping around the living young. The dead were left dejected and stiff in the middle of the enclosure. They were all admittedly quite small for their age and clearly had not been eating enough. Perhaps they were the runts of the litter? he thought, perhaps the predators thought it better to feed the stronger young.
But when he checked on the vexise, he found that the normally unsociable mammals too had banded together in one great mass of fur. None of them had died, but they all looked quite distressed. Looking closer, he realised they were shivering. He returned to the lodge.
“We’ve lost some. They’re dying from the cold,” he said brusquely as he gathered his breakfast from Turin.
“Huh?” she replied groggily. She had not slept well either it seemed.
“The predators,” he said slowly. “You know the ones that stay nice and quiet outside?” He snarked gesturing to the still covered pyq pen. Turin sighed and rubbed her muzzle.
“How many?” she asked.
“Four monitors, all hatchlings I think. The other monitors don’t look too good. The vexise are better, but who knows for how long.”
“The moon will be at its closest tonight. We’ll lose more...”
“We could try giving them extra bedding?” Braq suggested. “Perhaps I could try and rig together some heat lamps?” Turin shook her head.
“No, there won’t be enough time for that, and we don’t have enough bedding for all of them,” she said, fidgeting with her breakfast in her bowl. An idea seemed to strike her as she went to take a bite.
“Unless…” she said returning her spoon to the bowl. “We brought them all in here.”
“What?” Braq said flatly. Oh, Protector. I let her keep one predator in the house and suddenly she want to raise all of them. “Turin, I’m barely sleeping as it is. I don’t want to be kept up by sharing a house with almost a hundred predators!”
“It’ll just be for one night. We’ll move them out in the-”
“No,” Braq insisted. This was too far. Turin seemed shocked.
“Braq. They’ll die.”
“I’ll die if I don’t get enough sleep,” he doubled down, but Turin just scoffed.
“You sound like a child. All we’ve worked for would come to nil, and you’re concerned about one night’s sleep? Since when were you so selfish?”
“Selfish?!” he snapped. “You’re the one who decided she needed to have a pyq as a kid!” He knew he’d gone too far. He didn’t mean it; he didn’t think it. He was grateful when she slapped him anyway, even when her claws cut deep.
Turin sat staring at him in shock and rage. They had never raised a claw in anger at one another. The pyq started making grumbling noises from its pen. Turin stood and walked into the storage room, and Braq looked down to see blood in his breakfast. When his partner returned, she brought an antiseptic balm and some small bandages. Braq tried to resist her fuss, but she wouldn’t have it, dragging him to a chair in the living room where she knelt in front of him. The balm stung as she rubbed it into the wound, hopefully it would not scar.
“I’m sorry,” he said gently. He meant it.
“I know, beloved,” she cooed. “I shouldn’t have struck you.”
“I deserved it. I didn’t mean it, any of it. But I said it anyway.” She nodded slowly, unwrapping some gauze.
“This is hard for you, I know. I have mixed feelings about it too,” she said as she cut it to size. “What if I’m wrong? What if we can’t change her nature and we’re raising… a monster. What if… we should have dropped it in the river?” With one paw she pressed the bandage where she had cut him, and the wound stung. He turned his head and leaned into it, placing his own much larger hand over hers.
“Then, dearest, we would have been the monsters,” he whispered. “It’s just a child.”
She smiled up at him and sniffled.
“Softy,” she laughed as they nuzzled. He laughed too.
They spent the rest of the morning feeding, watering, and penning up the predators, before bringing them inside. The monitors seemed the worst off of the two, so they penned them all in the incubator room where there was the most heat. The vexise they kept at the end of the hall where it terminated against the bedrock. The mammals for the most part seemed happier to be in separate pens again than to be inside.
The couple spent the cold afternoon enjoying their warm stew and endured another feeding. Once all the predators were settled, they retired to their chamber and enjoyed one another. It was not like they were going to get much sleep that night anyway.
~*~
Ki-yu’s brilliance was so bright that it seemed like an overcast day outside. The predators would occasionally hiss, or scratch, or move around which grated against Braq’s nerves. Just as he was finally drifting off there was a loud rattling noise, and he was dragged back to consciousness. At first, he thought they had left one of the windows unlatched. But as he lay abed and listened the sound grew louder and more urgent. Presently, there was a sharp clunk followed by the sound of plastic clattering to the floor. With a start, Braq realised that one of the predators was escaping its pen.
“Turin!” he hissed, shaking his wife by the shoulder. “Turin wake up!”
“Wah-?” she mumbled. “What now?”
“One of the predators has escaped!”
“Huh-? Oh, shit!!” They both threw themselves naked out of bed and rushed into the incubator room. They quickly scanned the rows of shadow monitors and found them all to be secure and unopened. Moving to the end of the hall they checked the vexise, but fourteen pairs of yellow eyes reflected moonlight from the inside of their pens.
“They’re all here…” Braq muttered.
“Perhaps, you imagined it?” Turin tutted. “Had a nightmare?”
“I was most definitely awake,” he grumbled.
They were startled by a scratching noise in the living room, and they both at once remembered that there was another predator in the lodge.
Walking into the kitchen, the pair found the pyq sitting on the windowsill, looking up at the moon. Braq wandered over and inspected her pen; she had somehow managed to unhook the latch from within.
“Guess we’ll need to find her a new den sooner than we thought,” he said. He was mildly impressed that so small an infant had managed such a feat. “How’d she even do that?”
“I don’t know but you can deal with her,” Turin said, turning back down the hall.
“But I dealt with her last night!” he protested.
“I don’t care,” she called, already back in their bedding-room. “You woke me up, you deal with it.” Braq scowled and looked back to the window, Ki-yu’s moonlight dancing across the pyq’s mottled dark scales.
Plucking up a tea-towel and his courage, Braq grabbed for the little predator. At the last moment, she rolled to her right along the windowsill. Braq chased after her, eventually grabbing her wriggling and hissing in his grip. The sensation sent his stomach into knots, his quills stuck out, and he dropped her back on the sill again. The pyq chirruped sharply at him, backing into the corner. She kept one eye on him and the other on the moon.
Braq sighed, partly at himself and partly at the baby. “I can’t leave you there all night,” he said. “You’ll have to go to bed eventually.” With a chuckle, Braq remembered his father telling him something similar as a boy. He had begged to stay up and go out catching the liten-bugs by torchlight. He had eventually conceded to his father, but not before catching half a dozen of the little insectoids. Not that your father would talk to you now, would he? He leaned against the windowsill and considered the little predator in front of him.
“How about a story?” he said suddenly. “Do pyq tell their children stories?” The baby blinked warily and tilted her head at him. “Well, since it’s keeping you up anyway, how about the story of Ki-yu?” He gestured to the glowing celestial above. The pyq tucked her tail around herself, and Braq took that for a go-ahead. He fetched a chair and a blanket and tried to remember his scripture.
“It begins,” he said as he sat by the window, “as all things do with a mother. This one was called Kay-ut, great Mother of the whole of Creation. She had two children. Ki-ra was the elder, wiser sibling. She liked order, life, and love. The younger was called Ki-yu, he was the rebellious one, fond of chaos, death, and deception. Together, the three guided life in the heavens, and there was balance.
“One day, Kay-ut decided that something was missing from Creation. Someone to be the fulcrum to order and chaos, to walk the veil between life and death. And so, she conceived a third child, who she called Ra-ji.” Braq had always liked that part as a boy, as the wave of understanding flowed through the congregation.
“When Ra-ji was born, Kay-ut placed her in a great Cradle and left her siblings to watch over her as she gathered wood to build an immense fire to celebrate and keep Ra-ji warm.
‘I’ll only be gone for a little while,’ she’d said, ‘keep an eye on your sister, and we’ll build a pyre to rejoice her birth when I come back.’
“But when Kay-ut returned, she found that Ki-yu, in a fit of jealousy for the fire, had knocked the Cradle. This had disturbed the balance of creation and allowed the first predators into the world, who attacked Ra-ji.” The pyq watched Braq with a level of intensity he thought beyond an infant. He swallowed and continued.
“Kay-ut was furious, and in her anger, she banished her only son into the void. Ki-ra, ever wise, reminded her mother that the world was still out of balance now that the predators were on the Cradle. Kay-ut held up her mirror before Ra-ji, and from her reflection stepped The Protector, who was charged with shielding Ra-ji from the predator’s harms. And there was balance.
But every few years Ki-yu returns from the void to rock the Cradle once more, bringing more predators into the world as he howls his anger into… into…”
Braq stalled. The infant’s dark, reflective eyes were twin radiant moons.
“… as he howls his anger into the night,” he finished quietly. The predator blinked slowly at him and rested her head on her crossed forelimbs.
“But perhaps…” he thought aloud, looking up at the silent demigod overhead, “perhaps he returns not out of anger… but sorrow. Regret. Loneliness. Perhaps he misses his family…”
They sat by the window for a while in the light of the abandoned son.
When the pyq opened her jaws in a squeaking yawn, Braq did not recoil. His quills flexed instinctively as he reached a claw toward the infant, but his paws did not shake. He gently patted the babe. Her scaly skin was smooth, but warm in the night’s cool air. She responded to his affection by slowly leaning into his paw and began purring softly. She slowly edged away from the sill, and Braq smiled as she closed her eyes and curled up beside him.
~*~
When Turin woke Braq with wide eyes in the morning, he found he was still sitting by the window, the pyq deep in sleep between his arms. Turin tutted as he smiled down at her.
“Looks like you both needed that.” Turin whispered. Braq chuckled, barely feeling the crook in his spine.
“I’ve thought of a name,” he said softly as he stroked Ki-yu’s scaly back.
---
“Ki-yu was not cruel– no wild animal is cruel, or kind for that matter. […] only man is cruel. And Ki-yu was pure animal.”
– Panther, R.L. Haig-Brown, 1946.