***This wasn't part of the original tale. I wrote it and added it because it was a little fun to write, trying to imagine the little scenes.
Besides, I realized that Abi was going to need somebody to do the wrenching on that thing. 0_o
***
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Ouna walked into the galley and Pob set the breakfast she'd made before her. Ouna said thank you and Pob nodded.
After a few minutes of silence, Ouna leaned forward and said, "You're not speaking to me?"
"I'm speaking to you," Pob said quietly, "I'm just not speaking to you much. You had your fun yesterday and then you gave me a song about one of your headaches. I can take a hint."
"Pobby," the larger one said, "I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I didn't mean to. I just wanted Reed to myself for a little while. I told him that he'd have to fit with us. He liked the idea."
Pob smirked as she cleared up her dishes, "Well you told him a lie then. He's all yours. I'm moving my few things in with Sandy and the T's."
She tossed her half-eaten slice of toast into the receptacle, "None of them have hooves.
And don't call me that anymore."
Ouna stared, "Hey, come on, ... we've been together a year."
Pob shrugged, "I'd rather invest a year in what we had and ditch it now than feel worse after ten.
I'm gonna fix those bad light fixtures out by the main bay. Sandy said he'd let me stand on his back to reach. That way, you can rest your back." She snorted to herself as she walked out the door.
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Florida
He watched them as they came, the girl and her large dog.
He'd seen them sometimes and he knew that she was here for flight lessons. In his line of work out here at the inner city field, he tended to see a lot of people come and go for similar reasons. He paid most of them little attention for the most part. She was different. She didn't look right through him. They had enough of a relationship to chat in a friendly way whenever they were within twenty feet of each other.
He liked to see her because she looked very pleasant to him, as though her coming here was a feature in her day which she enjoyed when she could. She was always smiling. He'd heard her voice often by now and he found the sound of it pleasant because it reminded him of some of the girls that he'd known back in Siberia.
Her blonde hair and her facial features didn't match his memories, since he was from a very small place where those things were seen rarely because it was way out there where blonde Siberian girls don't often go, unless they're doctors or social workers for the government, but the tone of her voice was pretty much there – if you discounted that she was speaking English. Living here placed Balna pretty far from home.
It was a better life, but it was very lonely. He had no friends and he knew no one. He thought his features made him look like a cross between a dark-haired Finn and a lighter-skinned person from Burma, and the Russian that he'd learned in school just confused everyone when he spoke English. It tended to make him shy. That tended to make him even lonelier. His sex life?
Thank God for Kleenex and the internet.
There were no others like him here, at least none that he'd ever seen. He didn't expect to see any either. He was a member of a dwindling minority population even back home. If you counted only the ones who still spoke the language and followed the old shamanistic ways, you'd be looking at about 1200 people, give or take. Worldwide.
But this finding a better life had taken him far from his origins, first to learn aircraft engineering on state-sponsored scholarships aimed at the minority indigenous groups and then to work his way here – only to find that his credentials weren't recognized. He worked here as a line boy.
He watched her until she stepped in through the glass doors of the flight center. He also watched as the dog went inside with her. He could plainly see that the animal was a male, but that didn't stop his errant thoughts from coming to him.
The sight reminded him of the strange dreams that he'd been having, though in them, the beings were females, and not dogs either. The overall shape had been what was evocative to him, that was all. He always recalled the smoke of a fire in the darkness as he worked his way to it. He saw them as they turned around him, large females as long as he was tall when some of them stretched themselves out before him. Longer even. He heard them as they asked for his touch.
They weren't built like humans, but he could speak with them. Every motion that they made seemed foreign to him, and yet incredibly sensual and wildly erotic to him at the same time. They'd slink around him so that he could feel their warmth against his hips as they sidled past him sultrily on their four long legs. They'd murmur to him in ways that excited him in those dreams. There was one that he'd see every time in each dream. She was always so happy when he came to the fire, and she spoke to him of hope for them. And then, ... once she'd seen that her magic was working, she'd –
"Is this gonna take ALL fucking afternoon?" the voice of the fuel truck driver asked, and it snapped Balna's head around as his reverie left him.
"Sorry!" he called over, "Almost finished," he fibbed, "Pretty girls, you know?" he smiled with a helpless-looking shrug. "Girls here come only if you have money. I don't have money. I can only window shopping."
The driver, who was Abi , made his answer with an 'oh-how-much-longer-can-this-workday-last' sounding grunt as he waited.
After a minute, he said, "I'd say that's the smart way. You're saving a ton of money."
Balna finished the fueling two minutes later, closing the lid and wiping the wing nearby carefully with a clean rag, though he hadn't spilled a drop. He got up to step down and handed the driver the fuel nozzle. The driver took the nozzle and held out a clipboard with a pen, "Sign here, buddy."
Balna looked up and saw the man's name embroidered over his breast pocket. The tag on the other one was the name of the fuel company. He signed and handed the clipboard back, "Thanks Harry."
The driver smirked a little, "I didn't have a clean shirt the last time that the laundry truck delivered. Harry's a little pissed at me for swiping one of his, but I don't give a shit."
He held out his hand good-naturedly, "I'm Jake."
The gesture took Balna by surprise, since most people here barely recognized his presence. He grasped the hand and shook it, "Bobby," he smiled.
It was the closest American-sounding name that he knew so he used it to get past the way that the people whom he interacted with would get hung up on his real name.
