“Not exactly the reaction that I expected, but I’ll take it,” Sathuren Sul said, leaning down to offer her a hand. Dassah stared at him, her mind and heart racing as she acclimated to his sudden appearance. His grin twitched as he retracted his hand and knelt in front of her. “Ah, right,” he muttered, scratching the gray feathers on the back of his head. “Anyway, are you all right?”

“Ah—” she started, her hand going out slightly from her face in his direction, but her voice seemed lost to her. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Of course, he would misunderstand... She hadn’t meant to offend him again, but it seemed like she was very good at it.

She sat up and brushed her hands together to get off the dirt and wood bits that had stuck to them when she had fallen back. A stinging pain shot through her hand and up her arm. Brushing more carefully revealed a small gash from some stick or stone or something of the like when she had fallen. With a shuddering breath, she rubbed her hands on her skirt and pushed herself up.

“Hey,” he went, looking up at her with furrowed brows. “Did you get hurt?”

Dassah shook her head, “I’m fine,” she managed to say somewhat cordially. “It’s just a scratch.”

“...That plant you fell on is poisonous,” he informed her, pointing at the place where she had fallen.

“What?” she exclaimed, looking at the mild growth around her feet and then at him with wide eyes. His tail wriggled as his straight face turned up into a grin. “Oh, shut up.”

Chuckling, he stretched like a cat, digging his claws into the dirt before standing back up and crossing his arms. “So what brings you here, miss, ‘I’m not hurt, but my hand is bleeding’?”

With a frown, she looked at her hand again. It really hadn’t been much, but the blood around it was beading up more than she thought it should have. With another sigh, she said, “It’s really nothing,” and blew on it. “I was on my way to see you,” she told him, then looked down sheepishly. “If you have time, that is. I was heading toward your office, but I, uh...”

“Got lost?” he mused. Dassah ducked her head but heard him laugh a little. “Come with me,” Sathuren said, gesturing toward the trail that she had been walking on earlier. “I at least have time to get that scratch seen to, and then you can tell me why you’ve gone so far out of your comfort zone to come to bother me at work.”

“Where...?” She started, following as he started walking.

“There’s an outpost near here,” he told her, waving his hand without much care as to the exact location of the place. The rocky ground of the patch crunched under her feet as she moved to catch up.

Guin I most certainly am not, she thought to herself, wearily watching as Sathuren’s tail moved behind him like a snake in the grass. If she had been Guin, she would have ignored that detail and just walked up beside him. Dassah, as she was, just held her hands tightly as she shuffled, suddenly increasingly aware of the fact that she was in a strange place to meet a creature she hardly knew. Let’s start by not referring to him as a ‘creature’ from now, okay? She scolded herself.

Angling his head to see her behind him, he chuckled. “I’ll admit, I am surprised that you took the initiative to come here,” he told her. “I guess I’ll have to re-evaluate you, at least a little bit—though maybe you should have worked on your resolve.” She knew she looked at him like a small, frightened animal; she couldn’t help it. She also couldn’t help feeling a little guilty as he frowned and scratched his chin. “So, how did you get to be my sister’s friend?”

Dassah paused at the question. “Friend”? Did Bahena see her as a friend? It was true that the garule woman had worked with her and played with her, but they had only known each other for such a brief period of time that the word just didn’t ring true. She could have been Guin’s friend, but even when they were fighting Ibraxis, Bahena’s stance and words seemed more of a reaction than a meaningful pronouncement. Her heart sank as she realized that the answer she had to give was ‘no’—But... I wish it were true... still, she dismissed the thought and shook her head. “She’s just my roommate. We aren’t really... friends...” she told him.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

She cowered back as his smile turned down into a taut, fake-looking thing.

Not terribly happy with the answer herself, she looked into the greens of the jungle around them. Rubbing her fingers together as her hands trembled, she pressed down on the gash in her palm. As her wound burned with the sensation of the stinging pain, her eyes burned with tears. You idiot, she scolded herself. Why did you even come here?

“Miss Graydon?”

When she opened her eyes again, Sathuren was staring at her with a look of concern. You want to be Bahena’s friend, the voice in her head admitted as she looked at him. You want to be his friend too, she thought bitterly. You are just too much of a coward to accept it if it were even offered. And what right do you have to be? You’ve spent half the time you knew them— him—making all sorts of assumptions.

“Are you... all right?” he asked her, tilting his head. His eyes flickered to her hands, which she hid behind her back. At the motion, he raised his eyes to hers.

“Sorry,” she said, pushing her hair behind her ears. “Sorry. I just... I’m not sure... What do I call you?”

Twitching, he said, “You avoid my question, I’ll avoid yours.”

Blinking, she answered, “That’s... remarkably childish.”

“So is hiding your pain.”

“I’m not hiding anything.”

“Tell that to someone who hasn’t spent most of his life hiding. They might actually believe you,” he told her, his tail wrapped loosely around his feet.

“I am not obligated to tell you anything,” Dassah told him indignantly, her face flushed as she brushed past him and went along the trail in the general direction they had been heading.

“Well, I can easily guess that I’m not your friend either,” he said, following her.

Stopping in her tracks, Dassah turned and looked at him in astonishment. “How in the—in what universe would you and I be friends? With our history?” she asked, stupefied. “Let’s leave aside my general, obvious... d-distaste? Fear? Of your kind—you just killed me last night! For no reason!”

“In a video game,” he pointed out, dismissing most of what she said, it seemed, though she could tell her logic wasn’t lost on him.

Scoffing, she said, “Like that makes it any better. Friends. What friends.”

Sathuren scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I guess that’s... a bit fair,” he said, holding his hand out, but he took it back quickly and placed it on his hip. “I guess we really haven’t formally met, either. I’m Sathuren Sul. You can just call me ‘Sav’. It’s nice to meet you, Miss Graydon.” He bowed.

“You—” Dassah bit, then sighed. “Dassah,” she said simply, eyeing him over. “What is going through your head, exactly?”

“I guess it wouldn’t help for you to know that I knew exactly what impression you had of me from the start and just let you run with it,” he snorted at her with a smirk as he stepped around her with his careless, cat-like grace. Words failed her as she watched him fall on all fours and hop soundlessly up steep stone cliffs that lead up to a small outcropping. The bemused expression on his face as he laid down his head in hand to watch her sent a twinge of annoyance running through her. He had been screwing with her the whole time. She was almost impressed. Almost. “You coming or what, awkward frightened human?”

Annoyance turned to anger. “You... You big jerk!” she yelled up at him.

Sav laughed out with his strange bird-like chirping before putting his head down on the rock face. “You are not wrong,” he gave her. “But let’s at least admit that it’s kind of your fault.”

“How is it my fault you never told me anything even when I asked!” she shouted, making her own way up the rocks. It was steeper than it had looked. Cursing as her foot slipped, she managed to find her footing again and pulled herself up. When she got to the top, Sathuren was kneeling, looking at her with sad, tired eyes. As she huffed and puffed from the climb, her resolve to argue with him started to fade.

“You are free to say whatever you like about me,” he told her, offering her a thick stick to grab onto. “But, Bahena obviously thinks of you as her friend. It would be nice if you at least didn’t dismiss that.” Dassah took the stick and let him help her up. Breathless, she sat in the dirt and took a rest. Feeling more ashamed than she had before, she folded her hands and stared at the ground. As he threw the stick back into the forest, she watched his broad back with apologies that she didn’t know how to voice. “Ah—!” Sav suddenly exclaimed, turning. He scratched the back of his head, looking flustered. “Sorry, is your hand okay? I should have taken the other path...”

Her heart constricted as she pulled her legs in and hugged them. “I-It’s fine.”

His feather rose slightly, but if he was going to say something, he stopped himself. Folding his arms tight against his chest, he said, “Come on. We aren’t far from the outpost now.”