---Party---
---Alchyinad’s perspective---
I sit on a chair, having to be at a much closer distance to my client than I was able to be on the ship.
Space is at rather a premium in the habitat, so I ought to be grateful I was able to secure a room of any size!… Otherwise, the only options would have been to have turfed my husband out of our house or to have conducted sessions out in the forest… and I somehow doubt that this woman would find the atmosphere therapeutically conducive out there(!)
At my strong suggestion, the door to the cupboard sized room is locked.
There are a lot of Twigg running around and knocking (or in any other way requesting entry to a room) does not seem to be a feature of their culture.
“So, Waqa’arc… it has been a little while… I don’t think we’ve had a session since before we evacuated the ship. Is there a reason you suddenly wanted to see me?” I ask, knowing full well the answer.
“Yes… There is…” she responds, sullenly.
“And what is that?”
She sighs and rolls her head before saying “I… You saw… *sigh*… Yesterday, after I received word that the terrorist assassin had met his end at the hands of the local monarch, I had assumed the mood would be rather more… jubilant among those returning here!… I made preparations among the Twigg and the remaining gardenworlders to throw a… surprise celebration…”
“Yes, I saw you directing decorations, drinks and snacks to be laid out, once we got the news. Tell me; how do you think your party idea was received?” I ask, trying to be gentle.
“It was received with a mixture of outrage and disgust… but I can’t understand why!… The man tried to kill us! Multiple times!… He successfully killed the Terrans’ representative and this planet’s last monarch! Yet, from the sombre attitude of those who witnessed his end, you would think they had just returned from the funeral of a loved one!… Should they not have been laughing and joking, more than they normally do!? Should they not have been happy someone had thought to preprepare festivities for them?! I mean, it certainly didn’t help that the monarch came back with them to have her foot repaired and her eyes tended to!… She seemed the least amused by what she called my ‘poor taste’!”
“Right, so…” I start, about to deploy the most clichéd question in therapy “…how did that make you feel?”
The woman’s avian face twists and pulses brighter and dimmer as warm blood flows through its flesh before answering “Hurt… angry… humiliated… but, most of all, confused!… Why should deathworlders take any less pleasure in the removal of a threat to their existence than anyone else?! Do they have some kind of… I don’t know… affinity for him, just because he was a deathworlder too?!”
“Do you think that’s what it is?” I ask, gently. Therapist speak for ‘That’s not what it is, try again.’
“I don’t! But what is it?!… You know deathworlders!… You know Terrans at least! Help me understand what I don’t! What dynamic am I not appreciating here?!”
I’m silent for a few moments, thinking about the best way to lead her to her answer.
“Try to think, Waqa’arc, about what might have been necessary for Terrans to survive the adversities of their cradleworld, besides mistrust and hatred of anything that might threaten them? Would they have been able to build a society if those feelings were all they ever felt?”
Her four eyes narrow as she thinks hard about that.
“I… suppose not… You can’t cooperate with those you hate and mistrust… They must have the capacities to love and trust others as well… Even those who’ve proven they don’t deserve it?”
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
She’s not quite there… this is still progress though!
“I don’t think any of our Terran’s loved or trusted that man … Waqa’arc, do you remember the event you told me first brought you to therapy? Mr Taylor saving that child?”
“Of course.” she frowns.
“Do you remember what we concluded was most likely to have motivated that action?”
“It… was…” she struggles for a few [seconds] before recalling “…empathy! The understanding and sharing of another’s emotions!”
“Exactly… and do you think empathy is an impulse that Terrans have it in their power to turn on and off at will?”
“I… Nooo… I suppose not?… So that’s it then? They’re unable to disable their sympathetic disposition even to one so undeserving of it? That, by treating this as a moment of celebration, they felt I was disrespecting their vicarious feelings of pain for having watched a man die?”
“I would certainly say that’s more likely than it being because they cared about him or were sad he was dead.” I confirm, neutrally, containing my triumphant feelings at the breakthrough she’s just made.
She continues “And you think the Vrakhand share this empathy of theirs?”
I briefly give a Terran headshake before answering “I couldn’t say the extent to which Vrakhand feel empathy, only that it definitively seems like more than none, based on what I’ve experienced of them so far… I think Khr’kowan may have had her own reasons for not being in a particularly festive mood after losing two eyes and having an appendage shattered in putting down her father’s killer.”
“That does make sense.” she nods, paying unusually high attention to me.
Her [gears keep turning] “Do you think…? Does this empathy of theirs have anything to do with the relative leniency of the Peace?”
“Do you think it might have?”
Her frown deepens as she looks away to consider the thought that’s just occurred to her.
“I had always thought that the reason they didn’t push for a more punitive settlement was mostly that they were almost as spent as we were!… They worried that, if they’d offered terms that were too harsh, they might have been rejected and the War might have recommenced… That they were… that they were putting up a front of magnanimity to cover for their position of toothlessness at the time but… could it be that they actually empathised with us? That they actually understood the fear and mistrust we’d felt for them?”
“I’m no diplomat… I’m sure the exact reasons for why the Peace offer looked the way it did were myriad… but I think empathy probably played a role, yes.” I answer.
Her face twists in the way of one who’s reassessing a core belief.
I don’t interrupt.
Eventually, she gives an exaggerated sigh and simply turns her beak ceilingward “*sigh*… I don’t know what to do! If I just hadn’t been openly hostile at the start, they wouldn’t all have come to hate and mistrust me! Everything I do to try and [extend an olive branch] to them is wrong for reasons I don’t understand and, because none of them trust me, none of them will explain why! I wish I had someone who could simply tell me how to make amends!… I want to be better but how can I if there’s no one willing to tell me things like ‘deathworlders find celebrations of death distasteful’!?”
“Well…” I hesitate “…wasn’t there someone?”
---Tcakqaal’s perspective---
The door opens on the small, 3D printed house I have set up for me in the embassy grounds.
On the outside stands my Clansister, looking suitably humbled after her execution party-fiasco yesterday.
“Well, well, well, Sister.” I smirk “Come to…?”
“You were right, Tcakqaal. You were right and I was wrong.” she interrupts.
“Come again?” I ask, genuinely flabbergasted by hearing those words from this old bully.
“I was wrong about the Terrans. They’re not the monsters I took them for… Even hating me, they’ve proven that much!” she answers.
“Al…right? Well I’m happy you’ve realised as much, Sister. Was that all you came to say or…?”
“No! I need your help!” she pleads.
“You want… my help? With what?” I ask, suspiciously.
“You like Terrans! You know Terrans!… You understand Terrans! Teach me how to make them like me too!”
My two biological eyes narrow appraisingly at my Clansister “Waqa’arc, if this is some sort of ploy, if you think that getting close to them will get them to let their guard down and show you their true selves…”
“It wouldn’t work, I know!” she interrupts, impatiently “I’m not a good enough actress to fool a suspicious Terran and, even if I were, there’d be nothing to see. No aspect of themselves that they’d share with a friend that I haven’t already seen as their enemy!… I’m sincere, Tcakqaal! I want to make up for [35 years] of intolerance… I’ve been seeing [Dr] Fischer about it… The Spelvuk one, not the Terran, obviously. After what happened yesterday, she suggested that soliciting your help might be a good idea… So here I am… asking for your help. How do I make them like me?”
Trying to contain my glee, I say “Alright then, Sister! Come in!” ushering her inside.
The door closes and I turn to flutter onto one of the living area’s perches.
She follows, taking a perch facing me.
“So, the first thing I need to teach you is that you can’t make a Terran like you! They are just about the most stubborn and oppositionally defiant species in the galaxy and, if they feel like you’re trying to force them to do or not to do something, they’re extremely likely to do the opposite out of spite(!) Getting them to like you has to be something they want and you’ve not exactly given them a lot of incentive to want that, have you? I think, where we should start would beeeee…”