67

--Enclave--

Though they walked together, very few words were spoken between them. Out of the corner of her eye, Dassah saw that the white and purple garule seemed just about as fidgety as she was. They took turns trying to start conversations as they went, but most of them ended abruptly. Dassah wanted to speak with him; ask more questions — but she wasn’t sure what to ask, or how to ask it, and she was sure that her inability to form words was making him just as self-conscious about trying to ask her anything.

It didn’t help having conversations now, with both him and Bahena telling her different bits of their stories, that she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to mention, between them.

Thankfully, once they boarded the monorail, she was allowed to distract herself with the news, as Sav returned to his normal daily posture of reading his book as the train shot into life.

The usual blonde announcer talked about university announcements, entertainment news, and finally returned to the murders, the logo of the Enclave Police up in the corner of the screen. Dassah’s attention focused in closer as the woman mentioned the Virtual Crimes Unit’s presence in Io. Picking at the side of her finger, she watched as the announcer repeated some of the details she had already heard from Grim.

“Are you concerned?” Sav asked. Dassah snapped her head over to see that he hadn’t even looked up.

“About the news?” She asked. He nodded. Shrugging, she told him, “Not really, but this kind of thing is normal on Earth.” She wasn’t really sure that made it better, but she did feel disconnected from it all and felt she needed the excuse.

His brow furrowed as his orange eyes flickered over in her direction. “How long have you been on the Enclave?”

“Three months,” she said, looking back at the screen. “Almost four now, I guess.”

“Heh,” he went with a nod. “New things are still new, I guess, and the old is still familiar. I remember being that way, once upon a time.”

“You?” she peered at him. If he were a human, she would have tried to guess how old he was to judge the relevance of the statement — except he wasn’t, and, as she thought about it, she had assumed that he had grown up on the Enclave — or on Yidar, at the very least.

Except he didn’t. He told her as much in the class.

Dassah’s face fell. “When did you leave your homeworld?” she asked.

“Mmm,” he put a finger in his book and leaned on the car’s bar. “Many years ago. I was like… 30-something garuli years of age… closer to 20, 21, human years, I think.”

“You think?”

“I remember mostly what Bahena tells me. I stopped paying attention to passage of time fairly early in life,” Sathuren shrugged.

“Wasn’t that… lonely?” Dassah asked.

He winced. “There are worse things than loneliness,” he said. “What about you? Are you lonely here?”

“I… Guess I really haven’t much time to be lonely,” Dassah said and looked down at the floor. The plastic-y material of the floor looked brand new. No hint of age or wear wore or scratched it’s surface — but the same didn’t go for the people who walked on it. Sathuren was watching her. She could feel it; but she liked that what she felt from him now was curiosity, rather than judgement.

“Do you have friends or family here? From before?”

“No,” she told him. “Just the ones I made here. Or on the ship over.”

“Ah,” he nodded in response, then scratched the back of his neck. He looked out the window for a moment before he opened his book again. Dassah took to staring around the car.

“What did you do? Where did you go?” she asked abruptly, looking back up at him. When he turned his attention to her this time, he tried to meet her eyes, but everytime she did, she felt the dragon baring down on her. “Are there cities on your homeworld?”

“Not as you would define them,” he stated without hesitation. Dassah envied the ease at which he spoke. “Garuli are mostly nomadic, though tribes tend to have territories where they build structures they later return to. When I left, I didn’t have to just leave my tribe, but my tribe’s territory — but in doing that, there was a high probably I went into another tribe’s territory — which... Wasn’t always so great.”

“So, what did you do?”

“Why are you so curious about me?” he mused, though she assumed the little tail wiggle he did was meant to be seen as an encouragement. “I thought you didn’t like garuli?”

Dassah opened and closed her mouth a few times before saying, “I-I don’t know. I just… Am.”

Sathuren tilted his head and scratched his chin as he considered. Whether it was about her answer he was thinking about, or the one that he was trying to give her, she didn’t know, but she hoped it was the latter. Her answer, though perhaps not clear, was as true as she felt she could give.

“I… went to the mountains,” he settled on telling her, staring out the window of the car. “To the Mother Mountain, whose lands no tribe can lay claim to, and I… survived.”

There was an uncomfortable weight in the way that he said the word ‘survived’. Glazing over it, Dassah prompted, “And then you came here? To the Enclave?”

Sav shook his head. “I went to Yidar with a diplomatic envoy,” he said. “The Valkyrians offered scholarships to those who would share knowledge and culture in exchange for… well, knowledge and cultural education.”

“How did you manage that? Going from living in the mountains to… that?” Dassah asked skeptically.

“My mother, actually,” he said with a smirk. “When I said I was a special case, I meant it,” he explained. “Because of… how my life played out, I was sent to… treat… with the clans — my own, of course, being one of them. My mother had, at that point, risen to the rank of Matriarch of her own branch tribe. Being a more… Progressive? I guess you’d say — kind of woman, she was one of the clan leaders who had been dealing with the Yidarian Envoys. And so, at her will and mine, this is where I ended up over time.”

“And Bahena and your brothers followed after that?”

Sathuren grunted. “Without my input, yes. I’m sure mother wasn’t all too pleased, either. And it’s all gone to their heads.”

“You don’t think they should have left?” she asked. “Bahena seems happy.”

“I respect that this is the life they chose,” he sighed. “But at the very least, I think Bahena should have stayed and followed after mother.”

“Why do you say that?” Dassah tilted her head. “She seems so keen on… you,” she said simply, not sure how to word it. She realized that the statement sounded awkward, and quickly started to explain herself, but he seemed to understand.

Waving her second explanation away, he muttered, “I know,” then sighed, and said, “And that’s exactly why. I can’t just believe that she made this choice for herself; she made it with me in mind. She’s always been so trapped in this image of what we were as sisters, that she is blind to what is, or could be. She could have been Matriarch of her own clan by now; perhaps a more progressive one that could help our people progress beyond barbaric traditions. Instead she’s… babysitting me with the illusion that I am her rival.”

Staring at him, Dassah wondered if that were really the case. “I… see,” she said, honoring the sentiment of secrecy that Bahena had asked of her. “An unwilling one, I take it?” she added — but she was starting to make out the definition between their own relationship; forget the one that she had with either of them.

“Let’s just say I’m not really a… competitive person,” he told her. “I like my plants and my animals and quality time on my own. Bahena likes… people, and giving orders.”

Chuckling, Dassah said, “Well, at least we agree on something.”

“Which part?”

“Both!” she laughed. “Still, she’s pretty good at it. I wish I could have her patience.”

His eyes widened. “Bahena? Patience? Are we talking about the same person?”

Dassah held her hands up. “I have my opinions, but I am absolutely not getting involved in a sibling rivalry.”

“I guess that’s fair,” he snorted, looking her over again, but if he was thinking something he didn’t say anything. Instead, he straightened up and nodded to the door as the monorail voice told them that it was their stop.

Silence fell on them again as they strolled through the University grounds.