“Be. More. Careful. You. Are. Poking. Our. BRAINS”

Pylo huffed to herself. It wasn't her fault that the terrans were apparently so fragile that a slight adjustment in her ‘tone’ would make them violently ill.

Or that unless she tiptoed around their delicate little squishy cortices that it would tangle up two out of the three individuals sense of who they were, where their limbs where or what they thought they wanted.

It’s like they didn't have any self control or critical thought at all!

Pylo had never had to be so delicate and careful with her speech with any other species in the reef.

Terrans were apparently big squishy babies who would pass out or throw up or cry about how she was making them feel icky but somehow also lovey feelings with how she thought words in their head.

Except Quarti.

She was nice and polite and complemented Pylo on her poetic vocabulary.

But the other two.

Ugh.

She thanked her mother’s fertility that the Terrans had to constantly go back to their little metal can and do wierd can things so often.

She let them ride the legged orb back to their can.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take Tunie, they are so fragile, they can’t handle any acceleration, I can’t even talk to most of them without making them sick, or upset, or offending them, or getting laughed at”

“◮⑇▂▆▄▂▃▁▃▃▂”

“Yes I know you’re busy, I’m sorry I just needed to talk to someone who won’t be upset with me over every little thing. This is exhausting”

“◍◎⎌ ◍⌓↷”

“Yeah I know it’s only till we get to their destination but I think I might need more help to deal with this. They are really stuck on keeping to their canner can. But it’s not even a proper can! It’s leaking! Not a lot, and they have extra but it’s leaking enough I can taste whiffs of nitrogen in your cargo hold!”

“⌔↺?”

“I’m trying but they don’t seem to trust the nice bubble I made them as anything but a way to get around, even though it has better gas retention then their stupid can”

“▂▃▁▃◎?”

“Oh... Yeah that is a really good idea... Thanks Tunie! Sorry to bother you”

“◮⑇!”

This is why Pylo and Tunie were friends. They strengthened each other where one another fell short. Tunie with ship things, and apparently habitat things too! Pylo with talking things! She had always known tunie was good at spotting good uplift candidates from distant reef gazing but this was something new.

She was such a clever friend.

Pylo had the best ship.

Now to see if she could scrounge up enough of that left over bio-archive packaging.

It might take some hunting through several of the scrap holds. But it was for the contract and by proxy that meant it was for Tunie!

The materials were a bit harder to find then Pylo expected.

She really should try and organize these holds some time, everything just drifting randomly into clumps was very inconvenient.

...​

“Aleph is staying in today”

Omega sounded angry, her face was grim and tight. Crunched up kind of.

Pylo paused in the process of getting the oxygen hookup to play nice with a bit of packaging membrane she had scavenged, the filtering worked properly, but getting the flow to cut off when the membrane stopped accepting more oxygen was causing problems.

“Again? Why is that? She seemed to like the tours...”

Quarti began to speak gently.

“The young one is still out of sorts from-”

Omega cut in, vehemently, the snarl on her lips.

“She can barely stomach food! She can barely stand to breath without retching! All because you thought it would be a good idea to replace pervy innuendo and slightly consensual mind fuckery with absolute revulsion and disgust so intense she shut down and had a seizure!”

Omega’s eyes and face were starting to bubble over with water sticky globs of water. Pylo hoped she hadn't started leaking in a lethal way.

“She can barely stand to be touched by ANYTHING and I just had to sedate her so she did not cut open her spine to get at her resonance symbionts! The SYMBIONTS make her so revolted she tries to scratch them out of her skin and cut them OUT! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?!”

Pylo flinched, now they were just being unreasonably mean.

“I made sure that I only touched the parts of her brain you said were okay! And all of you would not stop teasing me about how your stupid brains take perfectly normal conversation and I don’t even know what with it! Even after I work so hard to not upset you!”

She could taste how she was not really being understood and it made her want to express more strongly, but she held onto not touching any more of the Terran’s brain then was strictly ‘allowed’.

“I’m sorry I never had delicate squishy toothscum people as passengers before!”

She was starting to lose the focus needed to speak ‘properly’ to omega and felt a burn in her oviriticuli trying to spore even though their roots were still regrowing and raw.

But... one of them was hurt?

Aleph, the nice kid that was so brave?

Calm was required.

She curled up and huffed, shedding waste gases then for good measure taking a deep breath from the hose to scrub cleansing oxygen through her body.

Omega was fuming as she waited for Pylo turn back to face her.

But before she could get the words forming Quarti tapped her on the head and spoke up.

“Fair Courier Pylo, Although we are all grateful to you and personally find your voice beautiful... in our own ways. It is very much not our custom to speak as you do. We are thus extremely fragile, your words can cut and hurt where Aleph has never learned to protect herself.

And she is young enough her soul is not as independent as in I or Omega.

If you truly wish to honor the agreement of being our fair courier you must be more careful of us. Aleph might never recover fully from this ordeal.”

Omega scowled at Quarti then pylo and sighed heavily.

“I also ‘apologize’ for offending you...”

Quarti jabbed Omega in the ribs hard enough to shove them both off of each other and drifting into the membrane.

Omega scowled a bit and rubbed at the spot before sighing.

“I also wanted to ‘thank’ you for trying to change your tone with us for our comfort... But please don’t do anything like that again? Never EVER again! Aleph could be permanently damaged from this! She could be scarred in her soul and crippled forever!”

Pylo stopped puttering and grew still.

“She’s hurt that badly?”

Omega laughed without a hint of humor and nodded. Her throat sounds sounded creaky. Like strained metal.

“She can’t put anything in her mouth without throwing up and gags on her own saliva... She can’t stand to even feel her own skin... She’s disgusted by herself, by the space around her. By everything”

Pylo shuddered, This was much worse than they had suggested the last few times she asked.

And it definitely was severe enough to void her contract.

“What do you need?”

Omega blinked and tilted her head to the side.

“What do I need? She’s just had an Alien Rape an association with utter foulness into every corner of her brain! I don’t even know where I’d start! She needs a neurological medical examination, a psychogram!”

“Probably things I’m not even primed to think of... uh I could maybe get the requisite skill suites from our colonists but this is significantly more advanced than the basic medical triage I’ve got on tap. And I don’t have any of the equipment to do the necessary rituals even if I did... we didn't expect rare disorders and specifically trained to avoid major head or spinal trauma. ”

Rituals again, equipment, stupid canners, needing things pylo could do since she was borne.

Wait.

Sirens could sometimes be doctors.

“If you had all the equipment you needed to do your uh... brain tasting thing you just said the word for... could you help Aleph? Terrans have a treatment that can help with this?”

Omega’s face was concerned but at least the scowling hate had faded.

“Uh maybe if I could get an idea of what got associated wrong I could MAYBE shock her out of it. But I don’t have the room or the facilities. Without them I would be likely to do more harm than good... and I’d have to dig deep just to find a store with the right skills. I’m good as a medium but I can’t do miracles.”

Quarti watched as Pylo turned to her a bit hopefully. The elder had shown wealth of experience over her two juniors.

“I am just an old weaver of words and songs and a survivor of the wild hunts... I am not a shaman or caller of souls... I don’t have the right flexibility for it. I will defer to my companion her expertise”

Pylo liked Aleph, brave kid. And she had hurt the poor girl not once but twice.

And possibly crippled her the second time.

She hummed wordlessly and somehow that still made Omega shiver and slap her own cheeks. Scowling at pylo.

But she ignored it, she needed to find a way to help Aleph.

“What would you need to be able to help her? What facilities?”

Omega’s scowl softened as she thought then looked back at the can where aleph was sedated and asleep.

“I need a real imager, Something to show me how her brain has been effected so I can compare it to her scan from before we left. I’m not good enough to just do it by feel and song. And I’ll need a few shifts to find and call up the diagnosticians I’ll need to read it. Then if we can find a way to stimulate the affected areas... I’ll need another shift or two to call up a psychologist. But I think that would be the best”

Pylo tilted her head.

“Is that all? I can do that without any tools at all”

Omega blinked and tilted her head to stare at Pylo, a slow dawning realization bringing wonder and horror to her face.

“You can do that?”

“Uh, that? Probably yah, easy... now if it was something hard you’d want my sister Lahso. She’s a very good doctor... but You just need to know what her brain looks like and what parts are doing something different? Then stroke other parts so that it looks more like how it was before? Yeah I can do that”

Probably, she probably could do that, but Aleph needed help.

But Pylo was no Doctor, and she honestly was not much like her sister at all.

Lahso was exceptional. Weird and prone to getting downshifted if she thought too hard, or got to into inspecting a patient. She also was the best Doctor that the Family was aware of.

The best that the Family could find with all it’s connections across the reef.

Pylo was definitely not Lahso.

But it’s not like Pylo was trying to cure a disease no one had ever seen before or diagnose and treat a species unknown to all known civilization.

This wasn't that complicated.

She just needed to provide some perspective to professional of the right species.

It was practically the same thing as talking.

Pylo didn't NEED to be Lahso for this.

Probably.

She hoped.

Omega still seemed unconvinced.

“Even if you could see the things I need to know I don’t think I’m going to be able to interpret your lewd speak into the kind of specifics I need to figure out what’s gone wrong with her”

Pylo laughed, not mocking but gently and with a friendly surprise. Relief that Omega kept on picking at problems she COULD solve without being her amazingly talented, socially stunted, crazy, genius, doctor, Mother liked the younger freak better sister.

She kept forgetting how sheltered these terrans were.

“Who said anything about me tickling your language bits for this... Hmmm you people primarily use touch and sight right? Hmmm yeah your mostly a looks kind of girl...It’s pretty strongly ground into your head from those ‘eyes’ to the back of your skull. Should be easy to just show you what I ‘see’ ”

Omega’s face stopped receiving any blood in its outermost layers.

“Uh you can do that?”

“Sure I do it all the time with Tunie”

“The ship?”

“Yah And her eyes are way bigger than yours”

“The ship has eyes?”

“Yah, how else would she see where she’s going?”

“And you’ve mapped the visual system of the ship and yourself so you can share perception?”

“Sure, although your brain is a lot smaller too... so should probably practice... ready”

“Uh I guess... Wait what are you going to-”

Pylo decided to try something easy first.

So she showed Omega how she experienced light.

Oh wait looks like there was nowhere near enough brain for that. Better cut it back a bit.

“You okay Omega? I’m sorry I didn't mean to make you see so much... Did that work?”

“I need a moment to calm down... and try and track down a diagnostician skill suite to channel”

Omega was, moving kind of funny but seemed to at least not be mad.

Quarti however was beaming at what she seemed to have figured out.

“While we wait would you perhaps allow me to partake of the artistry of your sight dear pylo?”

Pylo shrugged.

“Um okay, but I mostly wanted to make sure it would work so Omega can help Aleph. I feel like I might not have done it right”

“Oh I’m sure it’s fine! Now show me how beautiful the world you see is”

So Pylo showed Quarti what would fit in her terran brain.

She seemed to like it.