---Recovery---

“Two therapists. on. the. SHIP! What are the odds!?” I exclaim.

“When you consider the number of refugees and vulnerable individuals we had aboard… fairly good, would be my guess(!)” smirks Emiko, walking beside me, before continuing “Though, I have to say… the odds of coming into the system, right as an emergency was unfolding, that lead to tens of thousands of noncrew being aboard, in the first place… pretty low(!)… As soon as their background checks come back, I’ll have no problem signing off on their hire.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come to the medical room? You may not have been asked for but…”

She waves her hand and shakes her head “I’ll leave the praise to the brave heroes and gracious Captain. I don’t wish to receive praise for having simply stood nearby(!)”

“By that logic, I shouldn’t be going either…”

“On the contrary, you’re the one who most deserves to go! She asked for you, specifically! Without your ship and your agreement to use it to evacuate, the others wouldn’t have been in a position to perform any heroics at all!… She’s a clever girl for understanding that much…” she smiles.

I affect a Terran shrug and answer “If you’re sure, I’ll see you later.”

We part ways and I move toward the medical room.

I arrive and see Gato’s desk, unmanned.

I pass it, round the corner and see him stood at the bed I’m heading for.

I approach and hear Gato giving her a bored lecture “…I know that’s what your films depict but, in reality, the Human head is not a magic on/off button that can be activated by hitting it hard enough… if you have hit your head hard enough to cause unconsciousness, then you have caused brain damage. You’re lucky we had a regen tube on hand, you might have died otherwise… It’s quite incredible how delicate your species’ brains are, when compared with the rest of you.”

I chit to catch their attention, which I do.

“Is it alright for me to speak to her, Doctor?”

“Yes, Captain. I’ll leave you alone.” he says, indifferently, before walking off, on all fours.

“So, Ms Havika, I presume? Captain Tcakqaal… a pleasure to meet you.” I smile.

“Please, call me Ke’ala…” she smiles back “…I understand my sister and I owe you our lives! I really hope I’m not being a nuisance, right now. I just really wanted to meet the people she’s told me about and thank them properly.”

I think about objecting that she doesn’t owe me her life, then recall Emiko’s words “My crew and I are happy to lend a hand. As to you being a nuisance, the rest of the refugees are now gone so we don’t have much else to do. If you’d asked to see us this time yesterday, it would have been a different story!”

She nods, reassured, before asking “So my parents know where I am and what’s happened to me, right?”

“Yes, Ms H…Ke’ala. Your boyfriend, too. They’re going to meet you off the boarding ramp later.”

Her mouth falls open and her face goes red and hot.

“Is something the matter?” I ask, with concern.

“…I-it’s… it’s just that… my parents… I hadn’t told them about him yet… I suppose, this will be interesting(!)” she says, nervously.

I cock my head “Is there some reason to be ashamed of him?”

Taken aback, she answers “Well, no… there’s not.”

“Then what are you worried about?… This will certainly be an… unorthodox way for him to meet your parents… but if you’re not worried that they’ll disapprove then there’s no issue, is there?” I say, trying to come across both compassionate and logical at the same time.

She looks upward, thoughtfully “Huh!… What am I worried about?… I’ve just survived a tsunami and I’m worried about my parents and boyfriend not getting on(!)… I suppose it’ll make for an… interesting story, at least(!)”

At this point Victor, Tuun, Ms Hunter and Mr Nulgynet enter the ward, accompanied by the minuscule, translatorless sister of the one on the bed.

“’Ike iā, Keke? Ua ha’i aku au iā ’oe! Ua ha’i aku au iā ’oe ’o Kupua lākou!” babbles the small girl, excitedly, gesturing to my crew.

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The girl on the bed bursts into laughter “*Hahahahaha*… I’m still not convinced… *hahahahaha*… Lani!”

“What’s she tryna convince you of?” queries Victor.

“She thinks you’re Kupua…” smirks the girl on the bed.

“What’re [Kupua]?” frowns Victor, mirthfully.

“Ah… Uhm… little difficult to translate…” she ponders “…sometimes gets translated as ‘Demigods’ and it’s… true that they’re like half way between Human and God but it’s not the case that they need to be the child of a God and a Human. ‘Spirits’ captures the fact that they’re usually associated with some phenomenon or aspect of nature… but Kupua are corporeal… ‘Superhero’ would be pretty close to the mark but they’re not necessarily heroic… They’re just, like, Humans+++, you know?”

Here, I chuckle “It seems your species has no end of beings you’ve imagined which can be described thusly… It’s as if it simply isn’t enough that you’re already the most powerful beings in the galaxy, you still want more(!)”

“Yeah… well, Cap…” Victor smiles, crookedly “…you gotta remember; the knowledge that Humans are the galaxy’s Viltrumites is only a little older than I am… we’ve got thousands of years of stories recorded from eras where we thought we were weak! Culture ain’t had that long to adjust to the new normal(!)” he turns, back to the girl on the bed “What’s she think we’re the [Kupua] of?”

“Well you, Mr…?” she says, expectantly.

He smiles “Taylor, Hunter, Nulgynet, Tuun.” gesturing to each in turn.

She nods, appreciatively “Well, Mr Taylor, you and Ms Hunter she seems to think are a brother and sister set of fire Kupua… this is despite knowing what Europeans and Neanderthals are…” she says, turning to her sister.

“Ina ’o lākou ’o Kupua, ’a’ole pilikia!” says the small girl, visibly defensive.

The big sister chuckles and continues “I’m guessing Mr Nulgynet is the one she told me was the Kupua of silence…?”

“’Ae!” confirms the small girl.

“That would make Ms Tuun the Kupua of twilight and wife of brother fire(!)” she chuckles.

Tuun’s face turns a vivid shade of purple but, before she can start her typical, lightspeed, flustered gibbering, Victor puts his arm around her waist and kisses her cheek.

“We… ain’t married… yet(!)” he smiles, mischievously.

The girl on the bed flashes her brow up, bemused, before saying “Well… I didn’t expect that(!)… I assumed that this was another strange conclusion she’d come to, like ‘they must be siblings, because they’re both muscly and have green eyes and red hair’(!) I didn’t think there’d be anything to it!”

“’A’ole ’oe i mana’o’I’o ia’u! Akā he ’oia’i’o!” cries the small, Terran child, triumphantly.

“Nearly… but not quite, Lani.” grins her sister before turning to Victor and continuing “Sooo… I’ve had a version of events, from Lani, as to what happened while I was out cold… would you mind giving me your perspective?”

Pulling over some chairs, the group sit and begin recounting the tale of how they rescued the two girls.

“We weren’t really expectin’ to find anyone in the forest… figured everyone’d’ve made it to the evac point… I just wanted to make sure… we were just about to turn ’round an’ go back to the ship when Tuun shouted that she’d found a girl…”

---later---

The group of us stand in the rear Loading Bay, the two young Human girls at the top of the ramp, facing back towards the five of us.

“Thank you again! We can’t thank you enough!” affirms the one at the cusp of adulthood.

“Mahalo iā ’oukou a pau!” grins her much younger sister, waving in seeming agreement.

“Any time!” beams Victor “Though, hopefully, it’ll be less nailbitin’ly close to a violent, watery death, next time!” he winks and there’s a chuckle.

“There’s our ride!” observes the elder girl.

A transport capsule, differently style to those I rode in on Zanzibar Mpya or the ones I saw on Xīn de Qín, sweeps into the clearing and settles down a few [dozen metres] from the base of the ramp.

Two adult humans and another boy, around the same age as the elder girl step from the pod.

“Those would be…?” I start.

“My parents and boyfriend, yes…” she interrupts, distractedly “…the capsule company must have got their hails close together enough to matchmake them into a single transport…” she adds, nervously.

“’A’ole au i ’ike he ipo kau, Keke?!” says the child, indignantly.

“I know you didn’t, Lani… I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you so soon…” answers the elder sister without taking her gaze from the trio at the foot of the ramp.

There follow a few moments more of hesitation before I decide that a little prompting is in order.

I walk to the young woman’s side and look down the ramp at the three who seem to be standing, talking and not to have noticed that those two whom they’ve come for are standing watching them.

“You know…” I start, hopefully sounding casual “…at some point, they will notice you here… or, if they don’t, you will need to move for some other reason; looking after your need for calories, sleep or other bodily functions… even if you put complete and total faith in your ability to stand rooted to this spot forever more, I will need the ship to take off eventually… why don’t you… what’re the Terran expressions? Rip off the adhesive bandage? Chew on the projectile?”

She laughs (evidently, at least one of those were not the correct idiom) then she turns to me and says “You’re right!… Time to chew the projectile(!) Come on Lani.”

The two girls join hands and walk down the ramp. The trio, at the bottom of the ramp, quickly notice the two girls and break off their conversation.

The two, which I infer to be their parents, positively sprint up the ramp. The inferred boyfriend, hanging behind (despite, from the look of him, easily being capable of outrunning the pair).

The family (even the small girl) crash into eachother with the *boom* of solid, deathworld bodies on solid deathworld bodies, unnervingly audible even at this distance away!

There are tears, hugs, rapid, indecipherable words exchanged.

“So…” says Victor, stepping to my side “…she was worried about her parents meetin’ her boyfriend, I gather?”

“She was…” I affirm “…she just needed a little reminder that anxiety lies and that reality is rarely as frightening as our fears whisper it will be…”

He raises his eyebrows, contemplatively “Well done for pickin’ up on that!”

“Yes, well…” I turn to him with a wry expression “…when you’ve spent as much time as I have around Terrans, you do start to pick up on certain… patterns. Things it’s helpful for them to hear, things it’s not, etc.”

He looks at the girl stepping from her parents and putting her hand on the arm of the boy gesturing from the pair to the boy and back, the meeting that wouldn’t have been possible without him, Tuun, Nulgynet and Hunter risking their lives to make it so, and chuckles “Seems like it! Perhaps you should write some sort of care guide(!) You know… for other gardenworld Captains with Terran crew… ‘The Maintenance and Provision of Humans’ or somethin’(!)”

I smile back “Perhaps, indeed(!)” before turning back to enjoy the scene.