---Disclaimer: This issue depicts a character, shortly post trauma. It also makes heavy allusion to assault, slavery and cannibalism. It may be triggering to those with simple/complex PTSD---

---Starbound Season---

---Yetta’s Perspective---

My contusions are gone, my leg and ribs are mended, my fur is back to its off white lustre…

I sit in the Canteen of my saviours’ ship… there’s a very vague twinge of guilt about denying them their communal area but they’ve assured me that ‘eating in their dorms for a while is a nonissue’ compared to what I’ve been through… they’re right… it’s strange, the silly things my mind focuses on...

The things I saw, the things they did to me on that [abattoir] (one of the few terms I heard them use before they took my translator)!

I used to like being the boys’ favourite, back on Pahada. When Sasqa threw me against the compacted snow of the corridor tunnel, at university, and pressed his lips to mine… it was thrilling!

Now I know what being someone’s favourite can mean… the whole idea is poisoned!

I look at that pretty tree… or… tree-representing analogue. It looks like a tree from the snowy mountains of home, only, as if they’ve cut it down, brushed off the snow, dragged it inside and draped it in strings of multicoloured LEDs and fragile looking ornaments.

This is apparently some holiday, for Terrans, and the tree is an important part of it. Warding off the coldest, darkest, deadest time of year with warmth, light and life.

It’s very pretty…

They presented gifts to all the survivors, earlier. It made me feel quite guilty taking gifts from them after everything they’ve done already. Though, it’s not as much guilt as I feel for the fact that they still terrify me.

They rescued us… delivered us from that [abattoir] and still, being around them makes my skin crawl… just because they’re the same species as my captors? Because I know the furious, ferocious strength they would turn on me if I incurred their ire?

Is it perhaps because some part of me suspects that I haven’t really escaped? That this is all some elaborate practical joke? These Humans are working with the others and just letting us think it’s over? Then they’ll throw us back in cages, as soon as that spark of hope has rekindled?

They have an awful lot of nonHumans in on it, if it is a cruel joke! And… the green one did an awfully good job of pretending to have his head blasted apart!

I’m safe! I’m going to a planet where I’ll debrief with Terran authorities and then I’ll be given very generous [reparations] and allowed to go home…

Why did I ever leave? I wanted an adventure among the stars and now I want nothing more than a good sleep in my parents’ quinzhee!... but I’ll never really belong there again, will I?… some part of me will always remember the [abattoir]… I feel like there’s a bit of me missing… something I won’t ever get back…

I should have died a thousand times in that hell… the shock of my leg breaking should have stopped my hearts, the malnutrition and dehydration from the meagre rations should have killed me, the despair from seeing what they did to people they weren’t interested in for… other purposes… And, in a way, they did kill me.

I feel that the part of me, that’s missing, died on that ship… the one that we’re towing… mere [kilometres] behind us… it still exists… looming through space like some sort of lurid oceanic predator.

I’m briefly struck by the image of it charging through space to tear into the safety of this ship and reclaim me.

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Focus on the pretty tree, don’t think about it!

That warrior woman is animatedly telling some of the others the story of how, when they had been fighting the fight that delivered us, and on the verge of breaking under the weight of our captors' numbers, they were rescued by the arrival of their Captain, sat astride the ship’s a’Teksian mirkbeast! Of course(!) Why not(?) Why not fill the ship with all the galaxy’s most dangerous species(!?)

“I thought the ship had been struck by... an asteroid? A meteorite? A comet?... Whatever! Space debris, when Fluffy came down and knocked them over like bowling pins! Took me a few moments of her tearing them apart before I clocked what she actually was! Tuun says she knew it was Fluffy before she landed! Just in time, too... Tuun was about out of stamina and I was on the verge of getting surrounded!” explains the warrior, with forced cheer in her face. They’re trying, so hard, to make everything feel normal for us… it isn’t working but the effort is touching.

Across the room some of the other Humans and ‘roughworlders’ have brought in a trolley with eight furry, animated… somethings… five blue, one black, one purple and one white.

The man who lay, with his hand severed, on a stretcher as I came off the [abattoir], the one they tell me killed the green one, spots me sitting alone. He picks up the nearest fluffy thing and makes toward me, then hesitates… he obviously notices me flinch.

I feel shame wash over me. I should be so grateful to the man who suffered mutilation to free me and slay my chief tormentor… instead, I’m scared of him… that height, that build, that species… he reminds me too much of them…

Rather than approaching me, he taps the smallest one on the shoulder. She turns queryingly. He speaks, gestures to me and hands her the fluffy thing. She needs two hands and, even then, a moment to right herself from the weight… it must be much denser than it looks!

Cradling the mass of white fur, the brown haired Human approaches me. I feel so ashamed that, not only did the lead Human notice but adjusted for my discomfort with him! He sent the least threatening one to see me with this fluffy thing… another [present]?”

She’s so tiny! She can’t be much more than half my height… but I wouldn’t like to venture what proportion of my mass she is.

“Hey there!” smiles the Human “We’re doing an informal therapy animal session… these sweeties always cheer us up and we thought they might appreciate the opportunity to make friends with all you guys… would you like to have a go at petting him?”

“Petting?”

“Yeah, like this.” she demonstrates, placing her hand between the white thing’s ears and stroking backward, repeatedly, in a way that… seems to be enjoyed by the creature.

Hesitating, I extend my hand and gently stroke the creature in the manner she demonstrated. He’s so warm… and solid!

“May… may I hold him?”

She seems to size me up for a moment before saying “Suuuuure… just… be careful, though. He’s heavier than he looks. He’d land on his feet if you dropped him but he might scratch you on the way down.”

She grips the creature between his first and second set of forelimbs, a space where my hands would not fit, and proffers him to me, clearly not quite confident on fully extending her arms…

I, very carefully, grasp him below his second forelimbs and begin taking his weight.

If I had been unprepared, the mass would almost certainly have overbalanced me and caused me to tip off my seat.

He feels as dense as lead!

The small Human does not let go until she’s confident I can and am taking all of his weight.

Once I am able, I bring him to rest against my stomach.

He kneads at my flesh with those little, symmetrical mittens but the frightening claws stay retracted.

He turns those vivid red eyes up at me and I have a brief flash of the blood of some of the… ‘tastier looking’ species after they’d been... processed, but then it’s gone! The memory has been utterly replaced by that trusting white furred face… looking up at me in a way that melts my hearts!

My hand, as natural as anything, strokes down the back of this little avatar of warmth and trust.

“Does he have a name?” I ask.

“Yeah, he’s called ‘Snowflake’.” the small Human responds.

“Very apt...” I smile “…What is he?”

“He’s one of the litter of a’Teksian mirkbeasts our Dorm Liaison’s pet birthed unexpectedly. We call them ‘mirklets’. We’re taking him and his sibs to Zanzibar Mpya, to give them to a university, to see if they can be found loving homes.”

My mouth hangs open for some moments.

Eventually, I manage “A mirkbeast?! This!?” I gesture at Snowflake.

She nods her head.

“This isn’t some of that Terran humour?”

She shakes her head.

“Why is he white? I thought they were supposed to be dark colours to blend in, in half-light?”

She nods “They are. His siblings and mum are… he’s an albino.”

“[Albino]?”

“It’s a condition where creatures don’t produce the pigment they should. He never would have survived in the wild, he couldn’t blend in enough to hunt, being that colour. Luckily, on this ship, he has access to all the lab grown chicken he wants!” she smiles.

I look at the bright white ball of warmth, light and life, on my lap.

“He’d have no problem blending in on my planet! Pahadan women would give their teeth for fur this naturally white!”

She nods, she might be interested, she might be pretending to be interested for my sake.

I look at the heart healer, called Snowflake, and then at the Human woman.

The amount of money I’ve been told I’ll be getting as [reparations] would be enough to keep me going for years, even after I pay my way home… I’m sure I could spare a bit for orders of lab grown [chicken]…

I look again at that pretty tree.

“Did you say these guys are looking for loving homes?” I ask the brown haired woman.