“Sure.” Rose didn't mind at all. And if it kept everyone happy, why not? She picked up one side of the tent, Jia picked up the other, and they placed it in the inner circle that was forming.
Rose then set about putting her pack and her sleeping mat and smooth, soft sleeping bag inside and sorting through the pre-made food she'd brought with her.
Since she'd been accepted into Grihan society, she'd had a lot of bad luck with food, but Sazo had made a point of finding things she liked to eat, and between them, they'd created a menu that she actually enjoyed eating.
The days of going hungry because absolutely nothing appealed to her were over, thank goodness.
They settled in as the sun sank down, with some of the group gathering up wood and creating a fire circle with small rocks and stones.
Rose went to help them, keeping close to the clearing as she foraged for sticks.
As she stepped over a very large branch beneath a giant tree, she heard a small, high-pitched squeaking on the ground. The gloom made it difficult for her to see what it was or exactly where it was coming from.
To her ear, it sounded distressed.
“Where are you?” she crooned, crouching down.
The branch looked like it had snapped off from the tree recently.
“What's going on?” Sazo asked.
“I can hear something squeaking. It sounds hurt or afraid.” She shuffled along the length of the branch on her haunches. “Oh, wow.” The little nest she found was an intricate weaving of thin sticks and long, tapering leaves, a fully enclosed oval with a small hole in the middle. “Are you in there?”
“You found it?” Sazo sounded a little worried. “Be careful. It could be dangerous.”
“There's a nest. I think it's inside.” She didn't know what to do. Was it better to not touch the nest?
The one side of the intricate structure was slightly crushed under the branch, and she carefully lifted the branch up and pulled it away.
A little face popped out, so cute, so tiny, she just blinked at it, and extended her hand.
The little creature extended two tiny limbs, grabbed onto her fingers, and then climbed up onto the back of her hand.
They stared at each other for a moment.
“I'm just going to check to see if you were alone in there.” She slowly, gently, turned her hand, and the little ball of fluff scrabbled for purchase until it was sitting on her cupped palm. She lifted the nest, and the little baby started its distressed squeaking again.
Inside, she saw a bigger version of the baby, dead.
“Mama got killed, and you've been trapped in there with her.” She put the nest down and stood, her hand out to look at the baby more carefully.
It wriggled on her palm, she could feel its little feet flexing, and then, suddenly, it jumped, stretching its arms and legs out wide as it leaped for her chest and hooked tiny claws into her shirt to hang on.
She managed to swallow her squeak of surprise. It was like a glider, or a tiny flying squirrel, with flaps of skin that flared as it jumped. A tiny, furry flying handkerchief.
She ran a tentative finger down its back, and it seemed to tuck in closer to her, so she cupped it with her hand, bent again to pick up the sticks she'd gathered, and made her way back to the camp.
“Looks like I've found an orphan,” she told Sazo.
“Like me,” he said.
She grinned as she thought of darkly menacing Sazo, and this tiny bundle of cuteness, having anything in common. “Yes, just like you.”
3
“I don't know what it is,” Kila said. She was trying to get a good look at the baby, but it kept turning its little face against Rose's shirt and shivering in fear.
“It looks a lot like something from Earth called a flying squirrel. Only much smaller.” Rose soothed it, gently stroking it from head to tail, and it made a chirping sound. “It has to be hungry. What should we feed it?”
Kila shook her head. “Nothing, Rose. We don't interfere with the wildlife on this planet. If it can survive on its own, it will. You need to put it back where you found it.”
Rose had half-expected this response. “I understand that, but its mother is dead. I can't put it back in that nest with a dead body.” She tried to put the baby down on the ground, but it wouldn't let go of her shirt. She sighed and looked over at Kila. “I get your point, and I agree with it, but at the same time, I'm not going to hurt it, or force it to do something it doesn't want to do, and right now, it wants to hold onto me. I won't stop it going whenever it wants to, but in the meanwhile, it might be too weak to do anything else but cling to me. If we feed it something, that might help it leave when it's strong enough.”
Kila looked at the baby again, the hard line of her mouth softening. She sighed. “All right. I don't know if it's been weaned yet. How big was the mother?”
Rose showed her with her hands, and Kila tilted her head from side to side as she thought about it.
“It might be weaned if the mother was that size in comparison to it. Look for small insects to feed it.” She walked away, toward the fire that was starting to look like a really nice campfire.
Huh.
Rose narrowed her eyes as she watched Kila go. You think I'm going to balk at catching bugs.
She gave a snort.
Kila thought wrong.
She moved after the explorations officer and crouched beside the pile of wood everyone had collected. The flames cast an orange glow over the sticks and branches, and she caught the gleam of a hard insect shell.
“How does this look?” she asked her orphan, holding the wriggling bug out to it.
It let out a strange, hissing squeak and grabbed at the bug. Tiny sharp teeth bit down on it, and Rose heard a delicate crunching sound.
She felt ridiculously pleased with herself.
“I fed the baby,” she told Sazo.
“What did you feed it?”
“Some dark brown insect with a hard shell on its back.” She looked around for another one, but the baby had fallen asleep on her palm, the bug completely consumed.
Time for her own dinner.
The Grih had taken seats around the fire, and Rose could see they were obviously enjoying the change from being inside the Barrist as much as she was. She went to fetch one of the meals she'd brought, found a place next to Dara, and put the baby glider next to her in a nest she'd made from one of her t-shirts.
“It's very sweet,” Dara said, peering at it. “If it doesn't leave in the night, we can have a good look at it tomorrow.”
Rose ate her food and listened to the others talking. She often felt an outsider when she was in a group of Grih, something she knew would change over time. She hadn't been part of their society for half a year yet, and these things took time. Still, she sometimes found it hard when her main sources of contact were Dav and Sazo, and the occasional comm conversation with one of the three other Earth women who'd been taken at the same time as she had been.
The conversation fell into a natural lull. She tilted her head up to look at the sea of stars stretching above the high tops of the trees. When she looked back at the fire, its light flickered and glowed on the faces of the Grih around her. It reminded her of the camping holidays she'd taken as a child, the fun she'd had sitting around the fire.