***There's always the point where a man has to, ... I mean uh, ... gets to meet the parents.
Remember that this has gone on in a single freaking day. They both know that they're needy. They just seem to be on a roller-coaster made of it and it presents some interesting moments of introspection.
Taela comes off sounding a little immature or at least very young in this chapter. In fact, it's because she's had no one, though inside of her, she's really hoping for something magical to happen between Ryan and her. In human terms, she's about 28, long on hope and painfully short on experience by her own admission.
Oh, and there are some reeeaaally odd things about her family, just saying.
0_o
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He stared all around him at intervals of a few seconds as she led him down a gently sloping hillside. They were inside a volcanic crater on the back side of the mountain, below and out of sight of the flat peak. He hadn't seen any of this when he'd landed. It was very warm and a little humid. The black soil of the crater supported countless forms of plant life.
It took him a couple of minutes to notice some details. Their feet crunched in the loose particulate which made up the soil, but every once in a while, they made no noise as they walked, and looking down, he saw that there were pathways here through and around the vegetation. What he noticed after that was that he could see groups of plants, in bunches which looked a little orderly to him.
"This looks like a garden," he said.
"It is, "she nodded, "in many ways. We care for what is here, and remove what is not wanted or what chokes the plants that are wanted. In return, we have this place to enjoy all year. There's heat from the volcano, and a spring and stream. The water is warm and that helps the plants to grow. Look up," she said, and he watched her raise her face smiling to the rim and the sky above.
When he did, he saw the meshing of countless wires across the opening of the rim. The spacing allowed the small birds and the insects to pass through fairly freely, but nothing large could enter.
"My father made this roof," she said, "It keeps things out which shouldn't be here. It took him years, but this place feeds us in winter. We always have fresh greens to eat because of this. Even if it's howling outside and laying down enough snow to cause half the jungle to fall down, it's warm here, and the snow that falls just melts before it hurts anything.
If you look, you'll see that the plants which like the most sun are arranged in a long wide line. That is where the sunlight follows for most of the year.
Here's your place to wash," she said, "I'll be back in a few minutes. I've got some things to do before I forget."
"What about the others?" he asked.
"You're safe here, Ryan," she smirked, "A warrior like you? I think you worry too much." She walked away with a chuckle.
He looked at the ledge on the rock face above him and saw the steam rise from the hot spring there. The water fell from that in a thick cascade to a pool before it wound away out of his sight as a warm stream with wisps of fog rising from it. A look around showed him that he was alone, so he took off the rest of his clothing and stepped in.
It was all that he could do not to groan in pleasure.
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Taela found her mother on her way back to the crater. "Why are you wearing that?" she asked.
"I heard you coming up the passageway from the stream outside, and I was pretty sure that you weren't talking to yourself. It's alright to be running around without anything on while there's just us here, but if I might be seen by a human, then I want to wear something, at least.
Humans are just like that with each other, I can't just hide myself like you can. I don't think that you ought to, by the way. I'd really hate the thought of you suddenly developing the shame that humans have always had about their bodies and from a practical side, there's no real need for clothes here at this time of year, and we'd only be wearing out the little that we have left." Her mother grinned as they whispering while they watched Ryan shower in the cascade.
Taela related what had happened.
"Well that's my girl," she smiled, "I tell you to go have a look, and you come back with what's just got to be the best one. He's something, honey, I'll give you that. You picked out a cutie."
"It wasn't a choice," Taela chuckled, "He's all there is. The others are all dead. He landed the craft by himself. There was only the pilot alive on the main ship when it crashed. He says that she tried to leave him here.
I wanted to ask you something.
He has writing on his face -- little letters right here," she said, pointing to her own cheekbone. "It's only on one side, but I saw the same thing on his arm, the same small size. It's hard to read, and there are tiny symbols too. Here," she whispered as she drew what she remembered in the dirt with her finger, "I think this is what I saw. I can read human as you taught me, but this makes no sense to me."
Her mother looked and nodded, "It makes sense," she said. "He's a soldier alright. They mark their ground forces this way so they'll know who they were when they're dead. It'll be on his body in a few places. His left cheekbone and his left arm, as you saw, and likely there'll be another one at least on his right leg."
"Why so many places?" her daughter asked.
"In case he gets blown up with some others and they have to figure out what part belongs to which body," her mother said. "I was never a part of that part of the service, so I never got that. I guess they must have figured that when somebody like me crashes, the pieces tend to be too small to leave ID tattoos on."
"He has three names, "she said, "That's normal for humans. His name is Ryan McCallum and his middle name begins with a B. It might be Bertram or Barton or something like that. The rest is his blood type and his serial number.
If he can fly that shuttle, then I'd guess that he's a warrant officer at least, or he'd never have been allowed near the front of that big bird to even see the controls, never mind learn to fly it. By what you have here, he's a little above that, since he's a chief warrant officer -- or he was once. If you say that he's handy with a battle rifle, then he was a line trooper once and he transitioned to flight training. It shows that he's got more than just rocks in his head and can probably count down from a hundred backwards," she smiled.
"He can speak Morgaron," her daughter said, "He took lessons in the war to learn because he wanted to."
"Do you like him?" she asked Taela.
"Him?" her daughter asked, before making a dismissive little snort as she put up a proud front.
When her mother said nothing in reply, Taela looked over and shrugged with a little grin as her shoulders slumped a little, "Yes. I can't help it.
I want to say what they say in those stories that you always read to me, about how I've never met anyone like him, the way that it sounds so silly in those books."
The older woman chuckled, "Well it's true, isn't it?"
Taela nodded and they both knew why.
"What can I do to help, honey?" The older woman asked, "Do you want me to make an appearance? Talk to him? Invite him to dinner, or just hide?"
"I do not know," her daughter replied, "What is a bi-bik, ... a bikini?"
Her mother stared for a moment, "Where in the world did that come from?"
"He mentioned the word twice," Taela said, "as a joke, I think."
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Ryan didn't think that he was particularly stressed, but from the good that this was doing him, he surmised that there sure must have been something building up in him. Well, he thought, it's a little hard to wake up out of cryo, find everything messed up beyond belief in a place where normal carries the soundtrack of the average tomb.
Add to that a pilot who might have gone cracked, a crew who'd been ghosted by somebody, and an off-course condition pulling the whole thing down into oblivion with not a peep out of the alarm system -- the very same system that he was supposed to check and that had worked and tested out flawlessly for the six years that they'd tested it. He smelled a rat, but wasn't sure who it might have been, not that it changed anything.
Then to get dumped here on a world where things either didn't much care or they were wanting to eat you or at least scream at you in the darkness. That might add a bit, he reasoned.
And then there was Taela. He shook his head as he stood up to his waist under the stream of very warm water. This was looking as though it might get interesting pretty soon.
He tried, but for the life of him, Ryan couldn't come up with a reason why somebody like him could ever deserve something like this. He knew that he liked her, and was about to wonder why he did -- as much as he quite obviously did.
It came to him that he'd liked Morgarod females from the very first one that he'd laid eyes on. That didn't make much sense and he knew it -- he'd just liked them. The circumstances were beyond awful then; given what was going on at that base when they'd attacked it, but other than feeling the horror of what had been there, he'd found that he liked the way that they looked.
Something brushed against his calf and Ryan froze, looking down. There was something there, but then it seemed to be gone and he felt nothing. He wondered what sort of life form could survive in the almost hot water here to make it a home. It didn't make sense and he wondered if it had just been a plant, one of the ones bobbing at the edge of the pool and the steam. Maybe something had come loose and been swept downstream or something.
He felt it again, this time against his knee, but with the turbulence in the water from the cascade and the mist which rose from the surface here it was impossible to see what was going on.
