Time flies when you are having fun. Their stay was almost over. Ames and Ktak had spent most days of their stay in her brood-home. Only Ktag who tended to the brood-mother and Kran, who tended to the gardens and the house lived there full time. Rest of the brood came and went and Ames was yet to see an unlikable Tamare amongst them.
Ames had noticed an intense rivalry between the brood-sisters and decided to get to the bottom of it. He fished out a bottle of wine he had picked up and convinced both of them to try it. After a bit of proding and directing the conversation, beans got spilt. They were each jelaous of the role that had been placed on the other. Ktag felt envy for the freedom she had to travel the galaxy and even find herself a consort as a Commander. Ktak in turn was envious of the preccious time Ktag could spend with Mother tending to her and later her sapling. They cried, the cussed out the downsides of their lives and they made up.
Ames could understand Ktag's lonelyness in tending for Mother. So at parting, she reminded to her that she too was First Generation and could take a consort if she wanted. Humans went everywhere these days. One could come to her, even if she could not leave Mother...
Ktag smilled. She was considering his words quite carefully.
Only a week before they were due to leave, notice arrived that Ames was to appear at the Tamare brood registry for his rank assignment the next day. Consort rank assignment was a public ceremony and the crowd that gathered to watch it was quite impressive. There had not been one at least three millenia. Most were Tamare, but there were surprisingly many humans as well. Ames just prayed he would not fall off his stilts. He did not. Many Tamare commented that his movement was exactly to form and protocol. When the consort ribbon was attached to his robes the humans in the crowd cheered. That was not to protocol, but they were humans, so ... expected.
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They had a farewell party at the brood-house the next day. Ames tried out the insult-greeting Oran had taught him on Ktam. The burly Tamare laughed himself silly, he was quarter-human and laughing was very much a thing for him, and taught an even more insulting greeting to Ames in return. Ames understood it to be in the class of "Yo, m****f*****!". One had to be quite careful who to perform this at. You could definetly get thrown in the brig for it.
Soon they were back in their ship, getting settled in after upgrades and renovations. Ames was sad to go. Ktak's brood was like the family he had always dreamed of having. Ktak hoped for an uneventful round trip, because the last one had been quite eventful.
Stella felt a nagging feeling that she had forgotten something. She had spent her layover either getting her gene treatments or laying on a beach resting. She had seen the broadcast of Ames's ranking ceremony and noted like Ktak once had, that the little grubby greasemonkey cleans up quite nice. She was proud of him and hoped Oran was watching too. Ames's stellar performance was mostly his doing after all. She remembered what she had forgotten three weeks into their journey when she ran into Ktak outside officer's mess urgently looking for a bucket. Whoops. Well, better late than never.