“Yes,” Sissix said. “He’s just laughing.”
Vush’s eyes were wide and worried. “Did I do something bad?”
“Oh, no, tell him it’s okay,” Rosemary said. “It’s really not a big deal.” She was laughing herself by now.
Sissix patted the boy’s head. “You didn’t do anything bad, Vush. Humans just have more rules about people touching their bodies than we do. I think it would be best to avoid any part of her torso that’s covered.” She tugged gently at Rosemary’s shirt to illustrate the point.
Vush looked at the ground. “I’m sorry.”
Rosemary reached out to touch Vush’s forearm, as she’d seen Sissix do in moments of empathy. She took his hand and placed it on top of her head, inviting him to explore. Vush brightened, and Sissix gave her a fond, approving look.
“Her feathers are different than [unknown],” said Vush as he ran his claws through Rosemary’s hair. The hud did not recognize the last word, but Rosemary did: Ashby. Vush’s attempt at the sh in his name lingered for far longer than it was meant to, and he had stumbled on the b.
“They’re not feathers, stupid,” Teshris said. “That’s hair.” She looked between Rosemary and Ashby. “You’re a different kind of brown than she is.”
“That’s right,” Ashby said.
“Aandrisks are like that,” she informed him, as if he, too, were meeting a new species for the first time. “We have lots of different colors. I’m blue-green, Vush is green-blue, Sissix is green-green. I know all my scale colors. Skeyis says I’m the best at them.” She folded the top of his ear down toward the lobe, over and over again. Ashby bore it patiently. “Do you come from a moon?”
“No, I…” Again, he struggled, and looked to Sissix for help.
“He’s a spacer,” Sissix said. “Many Humans are born [literal translation: body-hatched] on homestead ships.”
“What about her?” Teshris asked.
“She grew up on a planet called Mars.” Sissix was starting to sound bored. Rosemary found their current companions adorable—though she wouldn’t have complained if Vush tugged her hair with a little less enthusiasm—but Sissix kept gazing over her shoulder toward the homesteads. She looked anxious to see her family, and these kids weren’t it. Not even the one that had her cheekbones.
A cry rose up as they walked up the path toward the homesteads. “Sissix!” an old voice called. Several others joined in: “Sissix! Sissix!” All at once, a flood of Aandrisks came pouring out of the open entryways. There were a dozen of them, maybe more. Rosemary hadn’t had time to count before they piled on top of Sissix, who had gone running to meet them. They tumbled down in a tangle of tails and feathered heads, hugging and squeezing and cuddling close. All their attention was focused on their long-absent daughter. They nuzzled her cheeks, tugged her feathers, pressed as close to her as they could. Rosemary was taken aback. Even though there was nothing overtly sexual in the way they were touching each other, Rosemary had trouble seeing a mass of writhing naked people any other way. It looked more like group foreplay than a family reunion.
Sissix, on the other hand, was happier than Rosemary had ever seen her. She melted into the embraces of her family. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back as one of the Aandrisks touched her feathers. Rosemary had seen that look before—not on Sissix, but on the old woman they’d encountered at Port Coriol. It was a look of profound gratitude, the sort that comes at the end of a long wait, at being able to exhale after holding your breath until your lungs burned.
Rosemary thought of Sissix on the Wayfarer, how she’d always seemed so affectionate, how cuddly and sweet she was. But now Rosemary saw it from the flip side. What counted as affection in her book was holding back for Sissix. The laughing, snuggling heap on the ground was her baseline. Rosemary imagined herself and her Human crewmates from that point of view. A bunch of stiff, prudish automatons. How could Sissix put up with that every day? She thought again of the moments in which Sissix touched them, the genuine fondness on her face when she nuzzled Ashby’s cheek or hugged Kizzy and Jenks in tandem. She thought of how much effort it would take Sissix to not tumble down with them as she was doing now with her hatch family, to push back her need for a more tangible form of connectedness.
“Ashby, Rosemary,” Sissix called from within the heap. “Come say hello.” She wriggled one of her hands free, and pointed a claw toward all the elderly heads (Sissix’s feathers were by far the brightest of the bunch). “This is Issash, Ethra, Rixsik, Ithren, Kirix, Shaas, Trikesh, Raasek, and—and a few I don’t know.” She laughed and switched to Reskitkish, addressing the old woman hugging her the closest. “You’ve added some faces since I was last here.”
The old woman—Issash, Rosemary thought, though she knew she’d never be able to keep them all straight—said, “We stole a couple of them from the Sariset family at a frolic last winter.” She leaned toward Sissix conspiratorially. “It’s because everybody knows I’m the best looking elder in the region.” The other Aandrisks laughed. One of them tugged her feathers. She grinned with mock arrogance.
Sissix laughed and nuzzled Issash’s cheek. “I’ve missed you so much,” she said.
One of the male elders wiggled his way free of the pile. His eyes were sharp, but his feathers drooped with age, and his scales were dull. Rosemary got the impression that he was very old. “I’d ask you to join us,” he said with a smile. “But I know that’s not your way.” He reached out his hand to shake Ashby’s. “Ashby, how are you? I am glad to see you again.”
Ashby cleared his throat and answered as best he could. “Glad to see you, Ishren. Thank you for the… for being… welcome.”
Ishren’s smile grew wider and he touched Ashby’s forearm. “Your Reskitkish is very good,” he said.
“Not very,” Ashby said. “I speak less than… than I know. Than I know to hear.” He spoke in Klip: “No, hang on…”
Ishren laughed. “You understand more than you can say. See? I can understand you just fine.” He patted Ashby’s arm, and turned to Rosemary. “Do you speak Reskitkish?” he asked as he shook her hand. Rosemary shook her head apologetically. He pointed at her hud. “But you understand?” She started to nod, but then remembered the curved gesture Sissix had shown her down by the creek, hand speak for yes. Ishren was delighted. “See, you are learning fast. And I am like Ashby. I understand Klip, but I am not confident in speaking it. So as long as you are wearing your hud, we can each speak what we’re comfortable with and understand the other just fine.” He put one of his hands on Rosemary’s shoulder, and did the same to Ashby. “I enjoy seeing Humans here. When I was a little younger than Sissix, I crewed aboard an Aeluon cargo carrier. Aeluon-run, that is. It was a multispecies crew, like yours. We even had a Laru woman, believe it or not. Damned clever species, the Laru, never saw anyone who could play tikkit like her. But—ah, what was I saying?”