The frozen precipitation melted quickly, so the pod's information on weather truly had been within normal margins. The season was, in general, warming. Serd had pulled a comfortable seating platform in front of the large window and Een spent much of the daylight hours there, fascinated by the birth of new life outside the dwelling.
All sorts of nila broke through the ground, green fingerlings reaching for the sun, the sheer exuberance of sudden life making Een wish he had his instruments to measure the soil composition, the growth rates, the electrical activity… The pain under his skin flared, loss and isolation. He would never have anyone to annoy with his excited trills about new species again. A short triad of pain escaped that he choked off self-consciously, glancing behind him. His chords and scales of pain seemed to upset Serd. Better to try to keep them quiet.
Lacking his instruments and the strength to go outside, Een could only speculate regarding the sentience of the life he assumed was photophagic outside the window. No observable parenting behaviors manifested in any of the larger, established life forms, so sentience might have been limited to defense and reproduction. Perhaps the huge, looming beings set back from the dwelling were more complex, thinking beings, merely dormant in the cold. Would their young sprout after they emerged from hibernation? What sort of communication system did that imply? Possibly the larger beings didn't begin reproduction at all until the cold season ended.
Serd slid onto the seating platform beside him to offer a container of water and join Een in his observation. The soft alien hand slid against his to hand over the water and Een closed his fingers around Serd's naked ones in a gesture of gratitude. How Serd interpreted it was unclear, but he wasn't obviously disturbed, sitting quietly beside Een and stroking the back of his hand gently. They sat together in near silence until Serd got up for his midday nourishment, and when he returned, he had brought another species manual, this one specific to the larger, many-branched beings.
After some fumbling about with the pages, Serd read a word underneath one of the beings, then pointed out the window at the one closest to the dwelling. He repeated it several times, obviously waiting for Een to try it.
The word was a single beat with familiar consonants. "Ferr."
Serd's lips tipped up on one side, a facial expression Een couldn't parse yet, and repeated the word. Een fixated on his mouth, the way his throat moved, the quality of sound.
He adjusted and tried again. "Furr."
This time Serd bobbed his head up and down, a gesture Een recognized by now as approval as well as affirmation. Another few pages on, Serd pointed to a being of a different shape and appendages. The word for this one was another single beat but ended in one of those strange sounds Een couldn't puzzle out.
"Ooa."
Serd shook his head back and forth and repeated the sound. Frustrated, Een stabbed repeatedly at the image with his finger, hoping Serd would understand that he should keep repeating, while Een put a hand on either side of Serd's face. Tri-color eyes widened, the black centers enlarging. Surprise? Fear? But Serd didn't pull away. He moved Een's hands gently, sliding them to where his jaw met his throat.
The strange sound, a sort of click, originated in Serge's throat. No. At the back of his mouth.
Een placed the back of his tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to imitate the sound. "Ooad."
Again, Serd repeated the syllable, opening his mouth farther for Een to observe. Farther back, that last sound. A sudden shiver raced through Een's faiina. This close, Serd's heat was astounding, almost better than the sunlight. His scent was a strange mix of his cleansing solutions and what must have been the natural scent of his species, warm and complex, not at all unpleasant. Een's lim reached forward before he was conscious of them moving, the tendrils yearning toward Serd, attracted both to his soft vibrations and to the enticing particulates of his scent. No. You react because you are alone and desolate. Your biological makeups aren't in any way compatible. Stop this.
His notes still trembled as he tried again. "Ooag."
Serd inclined his head once. Apparently, that had been closer to the correct sound. Troubled by his body's reactions, mortified by how he struggled with the language, Een pointed to the page, his implant parsing some of the symbols into sounds for him. "Wide Ooag."
Eyes wide, Serd leaned in to look at the page and repeated both words before he leaned back to stare at Een. His sudden departure from the window startled Een so badly that his lim nearly twisted into knots atop his head. Offended? Angry? Upset? What had he done?
When Serd came back, though, he appeared calm and clutched a gray rectangle in both hands. He reclaimed his spot beside Een and demonstrated that the rectangle split, one half opening perpendicular to the other. Lighted images appeared on the vertical screen.
"Data?" In his excitement, Een had forgotten again that Serge wouldn't understand. "Is it a data interface?"
Serd tapped on the device's symbol board until the screen showed a row of images, more of the planet's life forms. He showed Een how to open the entry for each image and then, most wonderful of all, showed him how to prompt the device to verbalize the writing, lighting up each word as it spoke. Overjoyed, Een stroked Serd's face with his lim, forgetting once again that he dealt with an alien culture. Serd jerked back out of reach, so it was a mistake, but either Serd was an extraordinarily accepting member of his species or the error was a small one. He patted Een's shoulder and left him with the tech device.
The data storage was everything Een needed since it contained both language in text and extended examples in conversation, stories, presumably, and other interactions. He found it fascinating that they spoke with rhythm and melody when they held various tone instruments, but without those, they spoke in the tuneless way Serd normally used. As his implant processed, comprehension increased bit by bit. Structurally, the languages were accessible, with some irregularities but for the most part governed by clear rules. His struggles were all in the imitation of language, many sounds made by alien mouths and throats that he found impossible to replicate.
When Serd wandered back in from whatever chore had occupied his time outside the dwelling, Een tried a bit of the alien language.
"I am Een. I am Aalana."
Serd stopped blowing on his poor naked hands and stared. Then the corners of his mouth turned up. Smile. The expression was called a smile. "I am Serge. I am huemon."
Huemon… Een tapped on the symbol board and the data device corrected him. Human. He brought up images of more natives like Serd…Serjeh and pointed to the screen. "Humans?"
"Yes." Serjeh still smiled, nodding. "All of them."
Confirmation of successful communication—they had exchanged species names. Serjeh sat down with him again and exchanged other words. The thin strands on his head were hair, as was the strange, patchy faiina on various parts of his body. Humans had no lim, and their hair had none of the lims' sensitivities. Neither, Een discovered when Serjeh accessed information on human anatomy, was the hair in any way involved in reproduction.
Two-gendered reproduction wasn't a new concept for him, of course. Neither was internal embryo development. Serge conveyed through images that he was a pollinator. Een managed to explain that he was also a pollinator, though his language skills weren't complex enough to explain Aalana genders and reproduction especially since human anatomy was so puzzling. The placement of the human pollinator gender's reproductive organs seemed problematic and though Serjeh wore coverings, the organs still seemed dangerously exposed.
However, all evolutions had some logical impetus. Een simply didn't understand the environmental pressures and ecological history of the planet well enough yet. He was pleased that he had the means to learn now. Serjeh had understood and had provided the tools, and Een began to feel that it was quite unlikely he would be eaten.