For the first time in his life, Xant had woken up but didn't want to get out of bed.
He lay in luxury, on top of a soft 'doona' quilt, sprawled over a memory foam bed. He wondered how in the void he had ever slept on the gel mattress before. Tucked under his arm and happy to see him awake was a freshly washed and shampooed golden retriever. Her fur had become fluffy to the touch and the musty smell that followed her replaced with a delicious fruity fragrance that Jasmine called 'raspberry lime'.
"Good morning Xant," she happily wagged her tail but stayed curled up on the bed, "No nightscares this night!"
Xant reached for her head and gave it a good scratch.
"No nightscares Sieglinde, you did well,"
It had been nearly two weeks since his first 'dream', and he was still coming to terms with the addition to his reality. More than once he had woken up to the recurring trauma of his former station on Jothram but the dog had proven to be proficient in cutting it off in its onset. She had allowed him to even return to sleep after, something Jasmine had assured him would become normal in time.
Sieglinde rested her head on his chest.
"Sleep more friend?" she asked, barely able to keep her eyes open.
"You can sleep longer friend, I must get up,"
His body ached, his new work-out routine plus muscle stimulants were really putting his body through its paces. Since previously his knees and elbows were unused to lifting more than data slates and walking from his office to the elevator, but two things were getting him through, a moderate dose of pain suppressors, and hot showers.
Jasmine had managed to recruit some hovering engineers to fix the crude power generators aboard the yacht, while he worried the engineers were being called away from more important duties, they assured him they were there to help document and salvage the human tech so working on the yacht was still (technically) under their designation.
They now had lights, refrigeration, and hot running water, something Jasmine was adamant was essential to human survival.
After testing it Xant couldn't agree more.
He prefered the shower to the bath as he still wanted the jet stream to wash his skin, the only downside to the whole thing was having to manually move around in the glass paneled stall. His tail continued to get in the way and knock a wall, it broke the immersion of his meditation.
His clothes hung upon a coat rack, ready for him to wear, but he was noticing that it didn't quite fit him right.
His waist slackened while his arms became stifling, the novel thought of getting refitted brought him an unprecedented joy.
His body was changing already.
He'd definitely be keeping up the regime, even if it was relentlessly repetitive.
He checked in the master cabin down the hall and to his surprise, Jasmine was gone.
‘Well, already dressed and awake surely.’ His inner voice assured him. Neither Spades nor Kimiko were there and they were never too far from Jasmine's side, she was awake before him, another first.
He slowly made his way up topside, looking forward to a nice meal of waudress tauh when his ears were treated to the most delightful sound.
Jasmine was laughing.
Curious he changed direction and followed the conversation up to the bow of the ship.
"... I promise Rynard, I'll have your likeness painted on the side of my ship, riding a strawberry flavoured pop tart cat, rainbow farting through the stars while you fire an acid cannon," The human bargined.
"Done deal!" Came the captain’s reply, the large lizard sitting on the deck with both dogs in his lap, happily accepting the scratches round the ears his claw could reach.
"Exactly what kind of deal are you negotiating for now jasmine?" Xant announced his arrival with a jovial
"Ah, he lives! Sleeping beauty is awake!" Jasmine laughed and waved her friend over. "Xant! Wait-” the happiness turned to excitement as she stood from her seat and walked towards him carrying a large unwieldy instrument. “do you still have your freq recording tablet?"
The still groggy scientist stroked his ears.
"Maybe… But that would require me going back below deck when I've just made my way up. And I haven't had breakfast yet"
Jasmine rushed up, eyes bright and freq bubbling so much she threatened to explode with joy.
"I’ll tell you what, you go down and get your tablet and I’ll fix you something fancy for breakfast, deal?"
"you need to improve your haggling skills Jasmine, I can't really eat human food while I'm on stimulants-" Xant protested.
"It will be worth it, I promise!" the human insisted.
"Alright," Xant sighed in defeat and turned to go back down deck while Jasmine ran past excitedly to the kitchen.
His freq slate sat mostly unused since it had been gifted to him many months ago. Every day had been too full of regular work, and he was mostly exhausted at the end of it all. Plus, human reactions being as fickle and random as they were, you couldn't guarantee a reaction would be genuine when it wasn't 'natural'. She couldn’t summon the emotion when she needed it, only when she felt it, thankfully, she had been becoming happier and happier with every passing day.
When he returned topside Jasmine, Rynard and the dogs were waiting for him.
Rynard taking a plunging lazy position on several sunbeds stacked to take his size, the dogs lay just as lazily underneath the chairs while Jasmine waited with a perfectly white porcelain plate of seared waurdess, sliced in perfectly uniform pieces.
"Tahda! It's breakfast! And it's happy to see you!" To his delight, Jasmine had not tried to alter anything, but had simply arranged the pieces of his food into a human 'smiling face'.
Xant chuckled and accepted the plate.
"Thank you Jasmine." He plopped himself down beside the Captain, fending off his breakfast plate from th curious dogs, "Now what's got you so excited you needed the freq slate?"
She was beaming, which was always nice to feel but it was particularly jittery this morning.
"Well, Rynard brought me my next items to catalogue and well-" she pulled out three items from behind a chair "they found some guitars!"
"Instruments?" Xant guessed.
'Ah-huh ahhuh, I was going to just start playing but then I remembered you got that ‘slate, and I want to record me strumming it for the first time!"
A novel idea indeed, Xant handed over the freq-slate.
"Just connect the cable to your translator and when you’re ready it should record."
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"I forget how simple your tech is sometimes," Jasmine replied as she sat down and fitted the cable into her translator, it wriggled in her ear before melding into her translators schematics. "Ugh, cold" she shivered.
The guitar was a beautiful looking instrument, black and blue resin over a wooden handle, four strings, and was connected to its own black speaker box. "Are you ready boys?" Jasmine smirked.
"Are we ever?" Rynard laughed.
The air reverberated as Jasmine turned it on, taking a deep breath before she began to play.
"Feel good."
The tone of the base sent shivers up her spine, a warmth in her heart and blood rushed to her fingers as she played the simple six note tune.
"Feel good"
Her foot tapped along to a phantom beat repeating over and over on instinct, a learned skill memorised.
She repeated the phrase only a few more times before ending the recording.
"Ooooh that felt gooood!" she shook out the last of her nerves and strummed the strings a few more times. "Heh, a word about my problem, I'm totally addicted to base!"
"What was that?" Xant marvelled.
"The only baseline I can actually play," Jasmine replied, "Nah, just jokes, this, is a bass guitar, characterised by its four strings and it's well, baritone base, ‘the underrated part of the rock band’, as my dad used to say"
Xant looked at the glittering instrument.
"Can I try it?"
Surprised, Jasmine let out a squeal of glee.
"Of course!"
She took the strap off from her shoulders and adjusted it for the Zenthi. It was surprisingly heavy, and even more surprising that he could hold it without complaint. Jasmine stood behind and helped him place his fingers, guiding his arms with her own.
"Okay, so this is where you place your fingers and-ah, I forgot, you've only got three fingers…"
"Is that a problem?"
"Uhhh, maybe? We’ll give it a go anyway, it’s not going to bite.”
Jasmine guided his fingers to press down on certain strings, each position correspond with a different note,
“Now, if you play these notes in a loop,” she played the example “You got a baseline!”
Xant, understood and copied her instructions, perfectly. The entire instrument vibrated pleasantly to his touch and he could feel the notes through his fingertips as he glided over the strings.
Jasmine stood back astonished.
“Wow uhh, you already know how to play?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Xant replied continuing the loop, “You just taught me,”
“But, it usually takes longer than a minute to learn how to play.” she confessed.
“My learning centre is overcharged, and there isn’t a separate part of my brain for it to be lodged in,” Xant replied, quickening the pace of the base loop, “It turns out my knowledge absorption is good for more than just facts,” he was starting to get a ‘feel’ for the instrument, tightening and loosening his grip on the notes to understand how the pressures affected the sound.
It was surprisingly versatile.
“Huh, that’s amazing, you can stop playing that song now, I’ll give you another one, then we can play a duet,”
“Duet?” Xant’s ears shot up excitedly.
“Yeah!” Jasmine pulled out another guitar, only this one was different, it was made completely of wood, and had five strings, “They found an acoustic as well,”
She strummed quick and fast, her voice almost shouting the lyrics, throwing her entire body into the act of playing the song.
“Oh the dragon’s eyes were blazing as I stepped into his cave,
Then I sliced his giant head off, with a long and shiny blade!
T’was I who slayed the dragon dedal-ie say deda-loo
And if you try to mess with me then I shall mess with youuuuuuu!”
Xant may have been biased but the acoustic was rough and without the clear distinctions, nay precision of notes, it sounded messy to his ears and uncouth. A far cry from the sweet symphony of the tablet and closer to the roars of the vehicle.
“That was… different.” he replied diplomatically.
Jasmine burst into laughter, wiping away a tear, as the alien inadvertently told her a very human lie.
“Yeah, the original sounds better,” she admitted, “but has enough F-bombs to blow your head off, so, that’s the ‘cleaner’ version I was allowed to play at school.”
“I’m not sure if I were your superior I’d let you play it at all,’ Xant joked back.
“Oh har har, here, how about I actually play you an actual song?” she teased back.
She began to strum once again, reciting the notes for Xant’s benefit.
“And when you play them like this, its called a ‘four-chord song’ very popular back home.”
Xant looked on, as she delved into the simple tune, and sang along,
“When I was a kid I grew up in a house on a hill,
not the top not the bottom but the middle;
And I still remember where I cracked my head in the vacant lot,
there’s a row of tiny houses there now,”
As she sung the words her aura became clearer, the bright happiness became solid, it was tied to a memory that became more powerful with every note of the song.
“Now my father knew the words to a lot of different songs
and we always sing the harmonies when we’d sing along,
mum had cool cool hands when the fever hit,
and the noises that the trains made sounded like people in my head,”
He could feel she was at home, the different flashes of memory of earth, the titles of her benefactors, who did more than just bring her into existence but remained close to her throughout. One strong and creative, the other gentle, sweet yet firm, glances into people he would never meet, yet now knew.
“And the stories that the ceiling told,
through the pictures in the grains on the pinewood boards,
and would stay outside till the sky went red,
and I would cool my head on the concrete steps,”
Wooden boards like the ones he sat on now, he ran his hand over the deck and peered through the growth lines that marked its exquisiteness. Materials so rare in space he’d never seen so much before yet so common to her it was a longing memory.
“You can never really see the top from the bottom
I don’t pay enough attention to the good things when I got’em,
you can never really see the top from the bottom,
I don’t pay enough attention to the good things when I got’em no,”
The memories faded, the song ended on a bittersweet lamentation, what was in the past could never be reattained, but the memories would always be with you. While she had been so bright and happy before, the song drew in her glow, burning like old embers inside her.
The aliens sat there in silence as the human tried to hide her emotions behind a joking smile.
“Not your style huh?” she dismissed, tuning the instrument again.
“It’s just that, it doesn’t sound anything like the music you’ve played for us,” Xant explained.
“Well, I was playing those songs to impress you before,” Jasmine shrugged “popular songs can be a bit bombastic and overproduced, but they just don’t have the same heart as a garage band tune.”
She looked wistfully at the ceiling, a smile on her face.
“I know just the song for our duet,”
Jasmine slung the acoustic on her back as she gave Xant his instructions, her fingers overlapping his to set the notes.
“I think it goes like this,” It was a much slower tempo than the song before, “let the notes almost fade out, give them time to breathe,”
Xant rolled his eyes at the idiom, but followed her instructions nevertheless,.
“Perfect, now just keep it going,”
Jasmine sat back, found where her own fingers needed to go, and began strumming a melody, changing it at a rapid pace, singing under her breath to get the timing right.
“... hope you’re keeping well, its the 21st of December, and they’re ringing the last bell…”
She began pouring in her emotions as she always did with her singing, a deep memory, nostalgic joy, the presence of her benefactors, her family but those presences began to fade...
“Who’s gonna make the gravy? I bet it won’t taste the same, Just add flour, salt, a little red wine
And don't forget a dollop of tomato sauce for sweetness and that extra tang,”
When warmth returned, he could feel it not just in Jasmines chest, but in his own, in Rynards, even in the dogs. The emotion poured out directly and deliberately into them, connecting them and for a brief moment, Xant felt as if they were one. A big smile on her face as she played louder, raising her voice and poured her being into it.
“Give my love to Kimi! And to Spades and Sigi,
Tell 'em all don’t worry, I’m doing better this time,
And look after Rynard, I'll be thinking of him, early the morning,
When Xant’s playing this line…”
She made them all feel special, each of them were dear to her, drawing them into this new memory she was creating with them. She faded the song out, Xant followed as she silently wished it. They sat in silence for a moment, allowing the Freq to dissipate little.
“We used to play that song at Christmas, every Christmas,” Jasmine recalled, “my brother on piano, dad and I on guitars, and we’d always change the lyrics so it would fit with the family.” Jasmine explained, taking off the strap around her neck, holding the guitar tenderly in her lap, “figured there wasn’t a reason I couldn’t keep the tradition alive you know,”
“Do you have any other songs like that?” Xant asked, still spellbound.
“Well, how about we write some new ones together, new family, new songs.” Jasmine offered, eyes darting between him and the guitar, strumming some strings idly.
Xant felt his chest swell, he had always wanted to be important to her, and she just admitted she wanted the same.
“That sounds wonderful Jasmine, do you know any that might suit your new tradition?”
“I still don’t think you’ve topped that first song you sang,” Rynard sighed, grinning from ear to ear quietly, “it really was the greatest song in the world…”
“Oh, I’m sure I can find another!” Jasmine laughed, “Especially now since I’ve got a partner!”
‘A Partner’ his mind echoed happily. Jasmine laughed off the moment of vulnerability with a big smile, returning the strap around her neck and shoulders. “Now then,” she looked to Xant with a soft smile “time to give you a crash course in rock history!”