The brush and comb had probably been heirlooms, maybe the last things of true value that the woman had owned. Sarah had left them behind in the temple the previous day, and hoped they would be returned to their place in the museum. The woman deserved to be remembered, even if the human world had long ago forgotten her existence.
“This display is a most interesting one,” Farona said, pointing to the duster. “Look upon that garment! It has holes in it, and our experts believe they were caused by human weapons. Can you imagine? How does a human male survive in such a world?”
The duster did appear to have some bullet holes at the bottom of it, and the edges were ragged and torn. There were dark stains as well that suggested blood had been shed by someone near the coat.
“Well, it wasn’t called the ‘wild’ west for nothing.”
Farona looked confused and Sarah realized that once again, she had switched to English when saying some words. “Wild West” didn’t have a yan-kanat translation.
She turned to Farona, sweeping her hand out to indicate all the contents of the table. “It’s not always violent everywhere on Earth. I’ve gone my whole life without ever being shot at, or struck by a weapon, or physically attacked. At least, not until I went into a dark and scary abandoned mine.”
Although living in her van, stealth camping in parking lots or parks or campsites, had often been terrifying. She wasn’t the only one living like that, and some of the other people out there in isolated areas—away from law enforcement who would have sent her back to her parents—had frightened her. The human world was not a safe one. Given her own knowledge of that, she could understand why the yan-kanat saw humans as unrelentingly violent and dangerous.
32
Jotaha’s steps sped up with his eagerness to see Sarah again, after spending most of the cycle held up in meetings with the other guardians, as well as scrying with the guardians from other skilevs. Even after those meetings finished up, he had much to do in the temple, making arrangements for the sata-drahi’at. He wanted to have it as soon as possible, given that his need for Sarah was causing him physical pain whenever he was around her, and the further he moved away from her, the more the seal began to burn, leaving him uncomfortable even out of her presence.
He also wanted to bind her to him as soon as possible because he still worried that she would change her mind and demand he take her back to her home. Even if he wanted to do that, the elders would never allow it. If a mating didn’t happen between them, she would be sent away to somewhere else on Theia. A place where those with nixir blood were less rare—and perhaps less resented.
Unless Arokiv could find a solution for her to return home that the other elders would accept, but he intended to have her bound to him before that elder returned from the nixir world.
He stopped at the communal cooking pod on his level to pick up food for both of them, selecting items he thought she might enjoy, given what she’d liked in the past. She was not a fan of anything made with blood, so he passed over all the kirev dishes.
Others who lived on his level tried to engage him in conversation, but he was too eager to return to Sarah to spend much time speaking to them. They were always curious when they saw him return to Draku Rin from the urvaka, and ever since he’d returned with Sarah in tow, his neighbors wanted to ask a thousand questions of him.
Finally, he escaped the evening crowd and headed towards his own pod. His mind returned to the conversation he’d had with a housing matchmaker that morning, and that recollection dimmed his excitement. He wanted Sarah to have a home that suited her and not another female. The other male had informed him that he had no properties available for Jotaha to consider in trade for the one he’d had built for him and Farona.
Jotaha knew the matchmaker was lying. There were many vacant homes available in Draku Rin, as the population had been declining over the past two generations, with higher nestling mortality rates and lower fertility, even with Seta Zul’s blessings. There had been many choices when he’d selected the property he owned now, and the population had not grown since then.
Normally, stakeholders in any district would be eager to welcome a Jotahan into their neighborhoods, sometimes offering better trade deals on properties, as they had when he’d traded for his current home on the out-terrace.
The matchmaker probably knew he’d have a difficult time convincing the stakeholders in many of the districts to allow a nixir to live among them, even if she was mated to a Jotahan—even though she had the blessing of the chanu zayul herself. The enmity ran far deeper than Jotaha had expected, and that made things far more difficult. If he couldn’t convince a neighborhood to accept Sarah among them, he would have to consider remodeling his existing home so that it was more to her taste.
Walking into his pod erased his sour mood, because the sight of Sarah waiting for him filled him with happiness. She sat beside the shrine of Draku Rin. When he entered the pod, her gaze instantly shifted from the statue to the door. Her lips spread in a nixir expression of pleasure when she saw him. She jumped to her feet, revealing that she wore an elegant wrap in colors that complemented her pale skin and dark head fibers and eyes. The design of the dress concealed some of her lush curves, but he could picture them beneath the swaths of silk fabric, and his salavik was already awakening as his tongue flicked out to taste her scent.
“I brought our evening meal,” he said by way of greeting, carrying the fragrant wrapped bundles to the table.
She joined him there, and her arms wrapped around his waist as soon as he set his burdens down. He returned the embrace, pulling her close against him. Her head only came to the middle of his chest, but it didn’t make her feel like anything less than a perfect fit for him.
He shivered in pleasure when her warm hands burrowed beneath his tunic to stroke the scales at his waist.
“I missed you,” she said, turning her head to look up at him, her chin resting on his chest.
“And I you, drahi.” He brushed her head fibers away from her face, allowing the silken strands to spill through his fingers before he released them.
Then, in a mercurial shift of mood, she slapped him on his abdomen as she pushed away from him. Her expression took on a fierce frown, but a slight up-tilt still lingered on her lips. “You didn’t tell me you were sending Farona to visit me! That caught me by surprise.”
There was a light tone to her voice that differed from the times he’d seen her truly angry, telling him she was mostly pretending outrage, but he didn’t doubt that his failure to inform her about Farona visiting her probably did irritate her. He’d been distracted, mostly by her, and Farona’s promise to call upon her had slipped his mind.
“I’m sorry. I should have let you know she’d made the offer to stop by.”
Sarah crossed her arms. “Well… I suppose I can’t be too mad. She did help me a lot today.” She held out her arms, one hand waving at her dress. “She actually bought me this dress, and more clothes, and found me someone to make soap and shampoo and conditioner for me, and took me out to eat for breakfast and lunch. It was… sweet, but a bit overwhelming. I don’t think there’s a single woman on Earth who would do so much for the woman who took her man from her, even if that woman never intended to.”