Author's Note: All characters are of the age of consent for their respective species.
*
"What do you mean he's in danger of flunking? He's already in your class, isn't he?"
Mai took a deep breath, willing herself to keep her voice down on the crowded bus and not make a scene. She leaned back in her seat, her fingers curling around the hem of her satchel. With her other hand she brushed a lock of her blond hair out of her face. The communicator earpiece felt like it weighed a ton all of a sudden. "Miss Vanyassen, like I already explained. Nazda didn't do well enough in my class during the normal term year, so he was placed in my summer make-up session to try to bring him back up to speed."
"I followed that," the female kessa on the other end of the line snapped.
"But now he's in danger of losing his spot in the make-up session as well. He obviously hasn't been paying attention in class, and his assessment grades clearly show that." Mai glared out the window. "If you don't want to take a human's word for it, message Professor Killita. I'm sure she'd be more than happy to tell you the same thing I am."
"Perhaps I will," Vanyassen snapped, killing the connection. Mai huffed and removed the earpiece from around her ear, snapping it back into place on the side of her wrist computer. It bipped once, then folded into place. At least, Mai thought glumly, she didn't feel the need to bring my species into this. So many of the other aliens on the planet had a tendency to. Then again, technically she was the alien on this planet.
The automated bus pinged her seat, signaling that her stop was coming up. Mai got to her feet and gathered her things, throwing her bag over her shoulder. As she did, she caught a glimpse of herself reflected in the bus's window. Was it just the city beyond the glass, or were there a few more gray hairs among the brown?
The bus stopped, and she made her way to the front. Mai took a deep breath as she stepped off the bus, her sandals slapping on the sidewalk. The bus's hoverjets hummed behind her as a few other passengers disembarked. They brushed past her in silence, all of them having some place or another to be. Mai turned and walked down the block from the bus stop, hitching her bag further up her shoulder. Her flat was on the second floor of a small apartment complex, next to a nice orak couple that she'd taken to sharing wine with on Saturday nights.
Din'caela's summers were much different than Earth's. Owing to it's distance from it's twin suns and different atmospheric composition, the maximum temperature only ever hit about thirty degrees Celsius. The planet was mostly covered in water, and cool breezes blew over much of the planet's landmasses. The aquatic kessa were the dominant species on the planet, having colonized it some 500 years prior. As far as she knew, she was the only human in the district where she lived, maybe one of ten in the whole city. This far from Earth, humans were a rarity.
Mai hiked up the steps to her flat, passing by the first door in the hall. There were three apartments on her level, and the only reason she was able to afford the one she lived in was because of her high-paying job as a teacher of human history at a local university -- well, the kessa equivalent of a university. They worked a similar schedule to how humanity did, with classes held over the winter and spring with the summers free, and classes had finished a couple weeks ago. However, she still went to the campus three days out of the week to help with the make-up history courses. It was better than sitting at home bored.
As she went to her door, Mai heard a few coquettish giggles and glanced downward over the railing into the center courtyard. She saw a pair of young kessa sitting by the fountain, heads bent towards one another, speaking in low tones. Their different body structures marked them as a male and a female. The male she recognized -- Synd, a young male who lived with his family down below and had taken her class at the university during the year. Mai had never seen him with a female of his species before, though.
Nor without a shirt on.
His skin was somewhere between coral pink and off-white, lightening in color on his underarms and palms and around his neck, and deepening around his eyes. His eyes were like most kessa's, inky black through and through unless you looked at them at a certain angle, where the light would highlight the colors of their irises. Kessa bodies were similar to humans, with a few differences in bone structure around the chest and upper back. Synd had a fairly top-heavy physique born of a lifetime spent swimming, with a broad chest and strong arms. Between his fingers was thin, translucent webbing, and up the length of his sides his skin turned spongey and ridged. Like most kessa, his head was crowned not with hair but with a tangle of tendrils that hung down over his ears and along the back of his neck, an evolutionary leftover from when kessa never left the water.
As if feeling her gaze upon him, Synd looked up at her. He smiled and waved, and she returned the gesture. The kessa had been a good student, always on time with his work. Didn't speak much during class, though, just seemed content to absorb information. The female kessa looked up at her, then at him, saying something in their native language, too far away for the translator implanted in Mai's ear to pick it up. Synd shook his head at her question, his reply lost to Mai. She tapped the railing and moved onward to her apartment.
A thumbprint scanner was her only lock. Din'caela was a relatively stable planet with little crime. Plus the oraks next door had dealt with a burglar once by the both of them, husband and wife, beating the snot out of the enterprising thief. They'd never had trouble since. She hung her bag on the hook by the door and shrugged her jacket off, laying it over her arm. Since she lived on her own, her apartment was the small one out of the lot, the floorplan containing only a kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom.
Ever since the summer had come she'd found herself feeling the same sense of personal limbo that she had even when she taught in humanity's home system. After her divorce, she hadn't felt the need to pursue a relationship again, focusing only on her teaching. The only problem with that was when classes were out she often had to busy herself with something just to pass the time. She'd taken up unvulb, a kessa variety of yoga to help kill the time.
Plus it kept her looking good at forty-nine, her body slim with just a faint amount of thickness around her waist that all the yoga in the world just couldn't seem to evaporate. Not that she minded too much -- it wasn't as though anyone other than herself had seen her naked in almost a decade.
Mai changed into her workout clothes and queued up the unvulb videos on the wall screen. After limbering up, she hit play, and let her mind wander as her body went through the motions. The only thing she had difficulty with were the handstands -- the kessa had an innate sense of balance far superior to a humans. So she simply did as best she could, using a wall for balance while the kessa on the screen did it in the center of an open space, using one hand.
"Show off," she muttered, a bead of sweat running down -- or rather up -- her nose to disappear into her hair.
Then her doorbell rang.
Mai started. She'd heard that doorbell ring all of three times in the year she'd lived in the apartment. Most of her colleagues contacted her on the communicator, and it wasn't like she had any gentlemen callers. So who could it be?
She eased herself down, trying her best not to fall on her head. The doorbell rang again as she paused the video and hurried to the door, grabbing a towel to wipe herself down as she went. She put her eye up to the peephole. Synd stood outsider her door, rocking back on his heels. He still wasn't wearing a shirt.
Curious, Mai slid her translator over her ear and opened the door. "Synd," she said, panting slightly. "How are you?"
The young kessa beamed at her. "I'm fine, thanks." He nodded at her. "How are you?"
"Good. Did you need something?"
