Chapter Twenty-One

 

Wyst walked towards the bar, idly glancing into the windows of the shops he’d not made the time or felt the need to explore. He was early to pick up his pixie, but had been both bored and afraid Ms. Myrtle would renew her plea for him to join her in the office. Better to be outside and moving than stuck indoors with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company.

Dark thoughts about things he couldn’t accept nor change, mainly centering around a certain bouncy-haired sprite and the incomprehensible link of mind and heart they shared.

Stopping at the door to Dr’ala, Wyst paused to try and get a read on the emotions rolling off her in waves. Though it had only been a few hours since he’d first realized he could feel as well as hear her, he was still getting used to receiving so much information. And to know she felt so many divergent emotions at one time made him dizzy.

Were all humans like that? Did each of them have layers of feelings, one edging out the other as they went through their days? That wasn’t his nature, at least he didn’t think it was, preferring instead to fully experience one emotion before he shifted into another.

And it seemed she either couldn’t or wouldn’t control her feelings, something he’d been taught to do at a very early age with the learning reinforced at the academy to help mold him into a better warrior.

Deciding to delay his entry, Wyst walked past the door his eyes on the night sky as he tried to pinpoint the Picari sun which should have been visible as a star in the east.

“You’re looking the wrong direction, warrior,” came a rough voice from the shadows at the corner of the building. Strafing his eyes toward the sound, Wyst saw the face behind the voice in the glow of the cigarette the man held between his blue lips. The Basule!

Everything within Wyst went on high alert, his muscles tightening and flexing as his feet automatically shifted into battle stance. Reaching for his tresl, he turned his body to provide the smallest possible target as his thumb immediately punched in the code to turn the black electronic device into a weapon.

The Basule though didn’t move anything except his eyes as Wyst prepared for an attack that never came. “Why are you hesitating, Basule,” he asked, grinding his question out through clenched teeth as he spoke in a combination of Picari and old, formal Baspic.

Taking another puff, the large other male casually tossed the end of his glowing smoke to the pavement and used his shoe to extinguish it. “I haven’t heard that language in a long time. Maybe too long to truly understand the insult your tone indicated. Why don’t you try it again, only in English this time?”

Wyst blinked and stared at the Basule as he tried to make sense of the other man’s words. Finding no hidden agenda, he finally answered. “I simply asked why you hesitated to attack me.”

“And named me as a Basule as well,” the male countered on a deep sigh, his strange purple eyes roaming the street beyond where Wyst stood . “Is that what they still call my people? Are we still considered ‘rebels’ by the Picari governments even after all these years?”

Wyst heard a definitive note of sorrow in the male’s voice and found himself relaxing his pose in small measures.

But he needed to stay in defensive mode, didn’t he? The fracking Basules were the mortal enemies of the Picari, pirating and plundering their way across space, taking what wasn’t theirs and using it against the great people of the Picari for their own gain!

Tightening his grip on his tresl, Wyst brought it up to shoulder height and lifted his chin. “You know what you are and, yes, the label still applies.”

“Not for me, it doesn’t. And I can see you expect us to continue the battle our worlds have been fighting for a millennia or more by the way you’re aiming your weapon my way.” While pointing out Wyst’s aggressive moves, the man seemed totally unconcerned about them. “If you plan to kill me then do it. But do not name me as a Basule. On Earth I’m called C’ynyt. And I’m no longer your enemy, son.”

Shocked to his very core, Wyst didn’t know how to react or even what to think. But C’ynyt’s sincerity rang out with every word, especially those at the end. Could Wyst believe him?

“Since it’s colder than a witch’s tit and I’m fucking freezing out here, how about you and I take this inside?”

Wyst realized his hands and nose were feeling the chill of the night air as well, but even more, he was curious about what two alien males, strangers to the planet they found themselves on, would have to talk about. But if it helped provide him and the other warriors with strategic information, he would be a fool not to accept the offer. “This is not a trick?”

C’ynyt raised his palms in the air at ear level, much in the manner Pam had demonstrated when they’d been surprised by the thieves in the forest. “I promise. No tricks, no attacks. Just a couple of foreigners getting to know one another over a couple of drinks.”

Wyst studied the other male, trying to detect even the tiniest trace of dishonesty and in finding none, he disengaged his tresl and tucked it back into the pocket of his jeans. “I will trust you and agree to speak with you. But only until my Pam is off work.”

As the young warrior turned back to the sidewalk, C’ynyt stopped him with a soft touch on his shoulder. “I don’t go into the common area if I can help it. My coloring and size seems to scare the shit out of humans and disrupt business. Let’s go this way instead.”

Following the broad, muscled back of the male who’d admitted he wasn’t an enemy (although that had yet to be proven), Wyst tried to find one cohesive thought in the spinning circles of his mind to grab on to. But he still hadn’t found his center when C’ynyt opened a plain, unobtrusive door at the rear of the brick building. Nor had he when he was lead into a tiny room crowded with a desk, a chair, a long couch and upright metal boxes lining the length of one wall.

“Take a seat and I’ll have Dah’Ani bring us some drinks.” Making the connection between the name his pixie used for her boss and C’ynyt’s correct pronunciation of a Baspic female’s name, Wyst felt some of the tension leave his body. “I’ve also gotta check on my son to make sure he’s on track. You know how teenagers are.”

But when the man didn’t leave the room nor pick up receiver of one of Earth’s communication devices, Wyst frowned and took his gaze from the room to the male across the desk. As C’ynyt’s eyes lost their focus, Wyst realized he was communicating with his children in the same way he did with Pam-ah-lah. And that knowledge, more than anything else in the time they’d been in each other’s company scared him.

“You share thoughts with your children?”

C’ynyt nodded and sat back in his chair, propping his big boots against the edge of the desk as he crossed his arms across his chest. “I can and have since they were still in their mother’s womb.”

Just as Wyst was about to offload a barrage of questions, a knock on the door to the small office jarred him out of his thoughts.

“Your drinks, tra-pa,” the woman who manned the bar murmured as she entered. The fact she called C’ynyt the Picari endearment for ‘father’, sent Wyst’s senses reeling. And as her large, light lavender eyes rimmed in thick black lines lifted to his own, she continued. “Although I wanted to, I didn’t poison yours, Picari. According to my father, you are to consider yourself…safe here.”

Wyst didn’t know how to respond other than to utter a soft, but heartfelt, “Thank you,” at her implied threat. He wasn’t sure there were protocols of how to behave in the situation he found himself in, but could only hope to represent his people in their best light by responding with the utmost courtesy.

Just as she was leaving, a younger man shouldered her out of the doorway. “Pops? Dah’Ani said you had a Picari in the office! Is that true? Can I talk to him and get his take—”

Sliding to a full stop, the mid-youngling male ceased speaking and stared at Wyst in open mouthed surprise. “Are you him? I mean…ah. Are you really a Picari warrior, like the ones who shot my pop’s vessel down?”

Shooting a shocked gaze to C’ynyt and receiving a nod in return, Wyst looked back to the boy-male who he thought was in his mid-to-late teens, one that would be called ‘mid-young’ at the Academy. Not quite a man and no longer a boy, it was a difficult time for any male. “I am Wyst Sangyre Manrd, decorated and lauded warrior of the Picari Protectorate. May I have your name?”

“Reg,” the man-child replied on a swallow, his eyes wide and unblinking. And then, as if pulling himself together, he stood tall and strong before speaking again. “I am Ry’fryg C’ynyt Droos, first son of C’ynyt Treslyng Droos and Blythe Whitefeather of the Lakota-Sioux nation.”

Without breaking the confident gaze of the mid-youngling, Wyst took the high road and spoke to his father directly. “Your son has pride in his heritage. You and your mate have done well.”

C’ynyt nodded in a way that found Wyst holding back a smile before he dismissed his son with both a rueful grin and a wave of his hand. “You’ve still got a lot to do before you call it quits for the night, Reg. Better get to it. Mr. Manrd can answer your questions another time, okay?”

“Would you mind, sir? I mean, I’ve heard Pop’s stories a thousand times but to get your take on it all would be awesome!”

“With your tra-pa’s permission I would enjoy speaking with you, young...Reg.”

After the crestfallen boy left, softly closing the office door behind him, Wyst again looked to the male on the other side of the desk who held his drink up in salute. “Thank you for that. The kid’s curious and too smart for his own good. He’s already figured shit out regarding the Picari-Basule conflicts I didn’t realize until I’d been here a few years.”

Wyst reached for his own glass but stopped at what C’ynyt said, or rather, implied. “You do not believe our battles were just and true?”

The Basule tilted his head and pointed his eyes to Wyst’s untouched drink. “Let’s toast to our unlikely meeting first, all right?”

Fair enough. Wyst picked up his glass and brought it to his nose. He and his warrior-brothers found in short order the Earth’s versions of alcohol didn’t affect them in the least. However, the bubbly, fizzy drinks the humans called soda got them drunk faster than Byze-wad, one of the potent liqueurs the hooded and hidden Casticians traded in order to support their world.

The drink delivered by C’ynyt’s daughter smelled more of alcohol than soda, giving Wyst the internal approval to drink deeply.

“Why’re you here?”

Although C’ynyt’s abrupt words were stated plainly and without rancor or threat, Wyst still found himself tensing at how baldly they were stated. “I volunteered to come to Earth.”

“Sure you did,” the other male said with a half-canted smile and sharp gaze. “Volunteered to travel thousands of light-years in order to land on a rocky little planet with almost none of the technology you’re used to having, in order to stay in a dirty little room, in a po-dunk piece of shit town, so you could shack up with a human female on the sly? Sorry, buck-o. I ain’t buying it.”

“Why are you here, then? Is your tale any different, Basule?”

C’ynyt did the unthinkable by throwing back his head and allowing his blue lips to point towards the ceiling as he crowed out his laughter. Which went on for many minutes, at least in Wyst’s opinion. “No, shithead. My ‘tale’, as you call it, was totally different. I didn’t volunteer for nothing. I, like all of my kind, was pressed into service when I was only ten yons. Learned to fight, then learned about space flight before being turned over to a son-of-a-bitching captain who enjoyed coupling with young boys until he was tired of them. Fucking and sucking through his young harem as he planned his next raid to steal from the Picari pricks who’d enslaved us.”

If his host expected some sort of reaction to his story, Wyst made sure he disappointed the blue-lipped male by not showing any. “So you were a reluctant pirate?”

“Reluctant? Hell, yeah,” he bellowed. “Well, at first I was. Then one of the scientists took me under his wing and gave me the history of this whole…” He raised a thick, muscled arm, raising and waving it around the room. “Conflict. Told me things no one else talked about. But did I believe him when he whispered that shit in my ear as he shoved himself into me night after night? No.”

Wyst wasn’t shocked by the male’s admission because it was a common tale told by many of his classmates, especially in the all-male societies on Galaxia and Nutrol. Some younglings even at the time he’d been accepted for mission, were targeted by older men, offered up first as mentors before their true natures became evident. Although there were laws in place, abuse was still rife and all too true within even the ranks of the Protectorate. What was astounding though was the way C’ynyt offered up his debasement so casually. “What were you told that made you less…reluctant?”

Swiping off the knitted cap he wore, the Basule stared balefully into the young Picari’s eyes. “That yours and mine lived in a diverse society, our cultures meshing and adding to one another’s in harmony. That we completed one another as we worked, traded…and just fucking lived!”

Tipping the glass to his trembling lips, Wyst tried to cover his astonishment. He’d heard whisperings of the same when he’d been a recruit and scheduled on a lonely outpost, but he’d discounted it as yet another scare tactic to keep him in line.

Should he admit to the knowledge?

Or simply nod in understanding?

Letting his half-empty drink drift to the desktop, he gave a short, jerky nod.

“You know our history then? The one not taught in your Academy?”

“About the Basules?”

“Christ! Basule is the slang word for Basulari which just fucking means rebel in Baspic.” C’ynyt swallowed the last in his glass before slamming it on the wood in front of him. “Didn’t they goddamn teach you anything at that fucking, fancy-assed Academy?”

To Wyst’s mind, the conversation had deteriorated rapidly and made his body want to go back into battle-mode. Shooting to his feet and turning towards the door, he announced, “I need to collect my female and go back to the domicile we have rented.”

“Go on then. Run away from the truth just like you and your kind always have,” C’ynyt waved a hand toward the door Wyst opened. “Anytime you want to know what really happened to cause the rift between our kind, feel free to come see me.”

The Protector went to turn away, but was again stopped by the other male’s voice. “Heard you’ve got some trouble dogging your ass. As long as it doesn’t hit my doorstep, I pledge my help mainly ‘cause I like your girl and she seems to like you. Though Gyed knows why.”

Wyst chose to disregard the man and took a step forward only to come chest-to-chest with the diminutive female recently mentioned.

“Wyst! Oh hey baby,” she said, placing a small warm hand against his chest to steady herself while lifting her smiling face up to his. “Lemme just grab my purse and we can go. Did you meet C’ynyt?”

It was more than obvious he and his pixie were in different emotional states and he struggled to push the darkness of C’ynyt’s confessions away as he answered. “Yes. Did you have a good work?”

Giggling, she ducked underneath his arm before he could stop her and went to one of the metal rectangles and released one of the squares to reveal a drawer. “You betcha, although the way to ask is ‘how was your shift’.” Scrunching her nose, she snatched at her large bag and turned her head to the Basule behind the desk. “English isn’t his first language.”

“So I’ve discovered,” C’ynyt rumbled in reply. “Have a good night.”

“You too, big guy,” she shot back before turning to face Wyst fully. “You ready?”

Wyst didn’t like it. Didn’t like it one bit the way his pixie talked to his mortal enemy and a male who sought to undermine the whole of the Picari culture with lies and half-truths.

But he especially didn’t like that she’d named him in words she often called Wyst, one’s he considered to be her own for him. Rather than make a scene though, he grabbed her hand and with a quick chin-jut to the male behind the desk, Wyst stepped lively through the kitchen where Reg was rinsing glassware and out into the common area. Without any more words, he tugged on his pixie’s hand as he stalwartly strode past the bar until he reached the public door, only to yank it open hard enough that it bounced back against his shoulder. “Let us hit it, leca purvya.”

Standing up on the tips of her toes, his Pam brushed her mouth over the firm, tense line of his jaw. “You’re English is getting there, honey. Now, if I could only teaching you to use contractions more often.”

Casting a look over his shoulder, Wyst’s eyes caught the female hybrid-Basule’s. And as he watched, C’ynyt’s daughter dragged her thumb slowly and deliberately across her throat in a manner, and with such a venomous look in her eyes, Wyst couldn’t mistake it for anything other than what it was. A threat not to be missed.