---Dogs---

---Ngngomg’s perspective---

My wife sits in the pilot’s seat of the ambassadorial craft with myself in the copilot’s chair, Ms Arran, Ms Tuun, Mr Nulgynet, Mr Kelly and Ms Pereira and 24 excitable Twigg sitting in the back.

Once the Bright Plume and it’s shuttle are gone, this vehicle and my fighter craft are going to be the only transport we have for possibly over a year until another expedition can be mounted!

My fighter won’t be any good for more than two humanoids (my size or smaller) so any ferrying around of the Vrakhand or large numbers of Twigg will have to happen in this craft.

“Viig?” calls Lhamo, shortly followed by a pair of tiny, digitigrade feet pattering toward us from the back.

“Hello?” pants the breathless, sweaty girl from between me and my wife’s seats.

“Could you take a quick look out of the window to make sure we’re in the right place? I’ve taken us to roughly where you described but I just don’t want to put any of you or your friends off in a place where it will be difficult to find your way home.”

The small Twigg scampers around me, to the left side of the front windscreen, and grunts, fruitlessly trying to raise herself high enough to see out.

Suppressing a laugh, my wife requests “Would you help her, darling?”

I reach out with my left hand and wrap my thumb around the left side of her waist and five fingers around the right side.

“Oh!” yelps the little, green skinned woman in surprise, as I raise her high enough to get a view out of the shuttle.

She’s perhaps [10kg] and, with my size and deathworldified biceps and forearm muscles, lifting her is quite easy for me.

Looking over her shoulder, she flirtatiously observes “If you weren’t holding me at arm length, I’d think you wanted a face lick, manhandling me like this, big boy(!)”

I sigh as my wife chuckles.

“Your species is going to be dethroned from the title of ‘galaxy’s most promiscuous’ with these guys around, you realise(!)” I deadpan to Lhamo.

“Fine by me(!)” she returns, immediately.

“There!” says Viig, pointing a clawed finger at a depressed clearing “Put us down in Gob Hollow…” then she thinks and turns to the motley crew of other Twigg of various tribes in the back “…Everyone knows the way back home from Gob Hollow, right?”

A chorus of agreement returns.

“Alright, ‘Gob Hollow’ it is then!” smiles my wife, banking the ship to make for the treeless patch.

We land and Lhamo opens the rear door.

The throng of Twigg spill out of the craft into the fern covered clearing, surrounded by forested slopes on all sides.

The contact team follow behind them.

We watch as they spend some time saying some heartfelt goodbyes to eachother.

Fortunately, none of them decide to mark the separation any more intimately than by embracing before they break into five separate groups, each group heading in a different direction.

The largest group, including Viig, Grriv and those triplets heads away to the Northwest.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that is the direction of their village.

They did explain that even if we had been willing to land directly in their settlement, they wouldn’t have been willing to tell us where it was yet.

When they told us that, Mr Kelly nodded and sagely observed that it was ‘The Partisan Code’.

When prompted to elaborate, he explained that groups of partisans tell one another as little as possible about their locations and movements to keep one group’s compromise from creating a domino effect.

It was only when he said that that it occurred to me that the man comes from a Terran world that spent nearly the entirety of the War under occupation!

You would never guess that he had lived through such trauma, given how jovial he generally acts!

I tear my mind from that to observe “This is… surprisingly tranquil and idyllic, for a deathworld.”

A snicker goes around the rest of the (all Terran with the one exception of the deathworld raised roughworlder) group.

“Were you expecting for there to be an earthquake or volcanic eruption every five minutes?” smirks Ms Pereira.

“Or to be infected with a deadly disease straight away?” chuckles my wife.

“Or to get attacked by twelve different kinds of vicious predator, right away(?)” joins Mr Kelly.

“Ah, now… in fairness to him, have you seen the Spider people!?” defends Ms Arran.

“The Vrakhand, Samus… and I think you may be letting personal bias run away with you(!)” corrects Lhamo, mirthfully.

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“I don’t!” insists Arran “Nobody has any business having that many eyes, that many different types of dentition or that many…” she shudders “…legs!… Not to mention how fucking Spartan their whole social structure sounds!”

“Regardless, they are one of the species we’re here to make contact with, so you will need to get over it and be respectful.” says my wife, more sternly now, using the tone she spoke to our children with when they misbehaved.

“Yeah, yeah…!” says the blonde woman in the same tone my children started using when they got into their teens.

“Y’ever wanna get over your fear, just let me know!…” says the animal handler, cheerfully “…Got some biYUTiful tarantulas in my room!… Super friendly!”

“Hard pass!” grimaces Arran.

The New Australian shrugs “No worries!… Suit yourself!”

---Mek’s perspective---

I’m too old for this!

Since Viig and Grriv apparently got taken by ‘Strangers’ (people neither Folk nor Monster, just like Grriv was musing about the other week) coordinating all of the villages in this war has fallen to me!

I’m just… I’m not clever enough for this!

All I am is old!

Being old doesn’t make you cleverer… all it means is that you’ve seen more, often letting you give an illusion of cleverness!

Being worldly wise is no substitute for the kind of head Viig has on her!

But Spirits only know where these Strangers have her right now and whether she’ll ever be back!

As I sit with Folk from the nearest ten villages, trying and failing to understand the map scratched into the floor of the hut and ignore the twisting stomach uneasiness about the fate of all the Folk carried away by Strangers, along with a lone, gigantic Monster, to a building of metal that, then, flew away, I find that age is more of a hindrance to understanding than a help!

The mind, like both hands, has weakened with the years and simply can’t grasp and hold details, like it used to when I was a young man!

Viig! Where are you?!

At that moment, Keor bursts into the tent.

“They’re back!” he shouts.

Everyone is standing up and following him out without asking him to explain who he’s talking about.

It could be no one else.

There’s a slight crush as several of us reach and try to get through the door too close together but I barge into the back of the blockage, breaking it, and we all tumble outside.

It takes me a few seconds of scanning around before I see them.

All nine of the Folk taken from this village are coming back from the East.

Yor, Lor, Mor, Mif, Tem, Mreg, Pwik, Grriv and Viig!

All of them safe!

All of them alive!

I sprint at them, faster than I’ve moved in years, and crash into the boy I probably put into the belly of Pon and the girl that Lof probably put there, and throw two arms around the pair.

“Grriv! Viig!” I sob, head between shoulders “You’ve come home! You’re OK! You’re alive!”

“We’re home, Mek…” chuckles Grriv, patting a hand on the back of me.

“All safe…” reassures Viig, doing the same.

I push myself away from them and turn the eye that still works from one to the other, holding each by the shoulder, before saying “You two have some explaining to do!”

“We’ll tell you all about it but then you and ever…”

“Please!” interrupts Bvim, a Folk from the Dith Village “Jiy of Dith!… Is she safe?!”

Viig bares four fangs in a reassuring smile and answers “Jiy, Nlot and Mpog are on the way back to Dith right now but please wait here because…”

Bvim does not wait, scrambling instead toward the stablekennel and reemerging moments later riding the same [stallionhound] he brought here, in a gallop out of the village.

Viig sighs “…suppose we’ll have to explain everything without him here, then(!)”

---Lhamo’s perspective---

We’ve been sitting in this wide clearing for several hours when I spot movement through the trees.

Streaming down from the slopes, I see dozens of fast moving shapes.

That lope is far too fast for Twigg, even ones moving quadrupedally!

The tide of animals plunges into the bracken at the edge of the clearing and begins washing toward us at high speed.

It’s unnerving enough that Samus and Tuun are coming into postures of readiness to fight, in spite of themselves!

Bursting from the ferns, around 7m away, comes the first of the creatures, allowing me to get a good look at them, finally.

It’s… a dog…

With the exception of it’s ears and long muscular tail, with a bright blue brush at the end, that creature looks, straight up, like a large dog that has been the victim of a small child with several different colours of hair dye at their disposal(!)

It’s fur is dark green with a few small patches of light blue and a countershading of purple on its underside.

Besides the colours, the tail and the ears though, they’re… just dogs!

Convergent evolution is a hell of a drug(!)

On the dog’s back is a saddle, in which rides a Twigg.

Not one of those who we returned from the Bright Plume, this one is quite significantly older looking.

He’s the first I’ve seen with a full beard which, along with his hair, is mostly grey with only the slightest tinge of green to it.

Across his left eye, from his forehead down to his left cheek, is a long, deep scar that has left that eye without sight.

Despite the warm weather and in contrast to the relative lightness of the clothing worn by all the other Twigg I’ve thus far interacted with, this man is rather heavily dressed.

He hops down from his canine mount which, now free of his direction, immediately passes by him to begin a very energetic and playful investigation of us.

“Aww! Puppy!” croons Samus, immediately before the ‘puppy’ tackles her backwards off of the log she just sat back down on and begins boisterously sniffing and wrestling with the large, laughing woman.

More of the dog mounts appear with more unfamiliar Twigg hopping down from them.

A veritable crowd of tiny humanoids now stand staring at us with various shades of curiosity and alarm on their faces as a dogpile of their mounts forms atop the delighted blonde, behind me.

My husband and I stand to greet them.

Being so tall, Ngngomg instantly draws every eye.

Then, Viig steps forward and (in a way that in almost any Terran culture would be considered quite rude) reaches up to me and demands “Give them…”

I smile and pull a box containing several metal discs from my belt, placing it into her hand.

Wordlessly, she takes it and turns back to her gathered people.

“I’m going to put talking coins they made on you!” she explains “You’ll shiver a bit!”

One by one, her nimble clawed fingers dip into the box and withdraw translators, placing each on the temple of one of her kind and activating it with an unfaltering deftness that suggests a lot more practice than I know she’s had!

I make a mental note of the fact that procedural memory seems to be a particular strength of this species.

Each Twigg shudders and shakes as the translator jacks into their nervous system, a couple even lose their feet, but none need more than a few moments to recover.

She runs out of Twigg capable translators long before everyone present has one.

Let’s just hope our message doesn’t get too garbled being passed from the lips of those who heard it directly to those that didn’t and on from there.

I raise my right palm to the height of my head and speak “Greetings, good people of this world… My name is Lhamo ‘Crane’ Yeshe… and I have come here from beyond your stars with a mission of peace.”

The greybeard steps forward “Greetings, Lhamo ‘[dragonbird]’ Yeshe… my name is Mek, oldest Twigg of Miw Village, here in the Southlands… I welcome you and the peace you bring to our world, Graom.”