Things Better Left Unsaid
···•••·•••·•••·•••···
“Wow.”
Xander looked out from the edge of the canopy toward the Chlom Sea. Bright afternoon sunlight glinted off the green
waters, making the body of water look like a sparkling emerald. Saelen crept up
next to Xander, peering out with him.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” He said quietly. “Prettier here than in Ieccra, and calmer, too.”
Xander nodded silently. He was completely exhausted from
the additional five days of travel it had taken to get from the border to the
coast. They had completely bypassed the freehold, avoiding the delays that a
stop there would cause. Getting to a safe settling place was Saelen’s top
priority.
Saelen took pity on his tired companion. He lifted Mai’zi
off Xander’s shoulders, cradling the little girl safely. Once she was off him,
Xander leaned back against the tree he was on and fell asleep. Saelen left him
there to go find Pairdra. There was much to plan, but before that could happen,
they all needed rest.
···•••·•••·•••·•••···
“How is this going to work?” Xander asked as he, Saelen
and Pairdra gathered with the other refugees. “Are we just camping out here for
a little while, or is the Avrel mak staying in
Shaen?”
Saelen grinned at Xander’s question. He liked that the
young siv was considering himself part of the Averal mak; for a long time, he
had kept himself oddly separate from the rest of the siv, feeling like an
outsider. “That’s what we’re here to decide.”
After a few more stragglers arrived, one of the surviving
Ieccra elders began the meeting. “We’ve got a decision to make, and quickly at
that. Y’all know what happened in Ieccra,” The elder began, pausing a moment at
the mention of their former home. “And now we’re here. This is a fine place,
one that Shaen has let us have for our own. Are we to stay here, or try to
regain Ieccra?”
Immediately, voices clamored from the trees, arguing for
both sides. Xander watched in fascination as the discussion raced around the
group. “Why wouldn’t we go back to Ieccra?” Xander asked Saelen.
“Because it’s a foolhardy venture,” Saelen responded.
“We’re outnumbered. Most of what’s left of Ieccra can’t fight, and won’t be
able to for decades. There never were that many of us to begin with. And, Shaen
has more resources. There’s a strong push to just settle here. There aren’t many
Avrel mak in Shaen, and that’s pretty much what
everyone here is.”
“What about the other holds that left with us?” Xander
inquired. They had been scattered throughout Shaen.
Saelen shook his head. “There aren’t enough of them to do
anything. They might join with us, if we tried, but I doubt we will.” He sighed
and sat back. “In truth, any historian, be they military or economic, will tell
you that we kept Ieccra for as long as we did because no one seriously challenged
us. Yeah, we can fight, but there aren’t that many of us, and the land isn’t
that productive.”
“It isn’t? I didn’t notice anyone going without,” Xander
replied, confused.
“We didn’t go without the necessities, but you haven’t
seen a hold in this region. They’re completely different from Ieccra. Did y’know that here, siv farm the land?” Saelen said.
“They do? I got the impression that siv didn’t do that at
all, that we just lived off of what the trees provided,” Xander exclaimed.
“In Ieccra, that’s the way life was. Humans lived below
us, but the land didn’t produce much. The floods brought in topsoil, true, but
not enough, and there wasn’t enough sunlight. Water was pretty scarce—just a
few small streams here and there,” Saelen explained.
“Oh,” Xander murmured. He watched the negotiations for a
while. At one point, he noticed Pairdra joining in, arguing that they should
stay in Shaen. He was surprised; he’d have thought that the siv warrior
would’ve wanted to go back home. Instead, though, Pairdra was arguing that they
should settle here, where there was protection, resources, and opportunity.
Xander couldn’t disagree with him; if even half of what Saelen had said was
true, this region was a far better place to be than Ieccra—particularly considering
the t’kth-vaali that occupied his former home.
Eventually, discussions wound down. Saelen roused Xander
from his nap so that he could vote. That had surprised Xander; he hadn’t
expected to be allowed to. After all, he’d only been siv for a few months.
Saelen had just smiled.
Xander thought for a long time before casting his vote to
stay in Shaen. While he saw all the advantages to simply settling down here, he
wanted to make sure that it was the right thing to do; from what he gathered,
it was a little like moving to a new country. He watched as the rest of the
refugees cast their votes, one by one. Counting the ballots didn’t take as long
as he’d have thought; the results were obvious from the beginning. They would
be staying in Shaen.
“Well, the easy part’s over,” Saelen murmured as they
clambered off toward their chosen resting spot.
“That was the easy part?” Xander inquired, curious.
Pairdra appeared next to him, grinning.
“Yeah, now that we’ve decided to stay, we’ve got to build.
There’s nothing here but trees,” Pairdra said. “We get to trade in hyoels for hammers.”
“At least I know how to use a hammer,” Xander muttered.
“That’s right; you said you used to build things. That
could come in handy; most of us are trained as warriors. I’m sure the freehold
will send someone to help out, but we’d prefer to do it ourselves,” Saelen
replied.
Xander smiled, wondering if he’d just gotten himself in
over his head. What did he know about building things in trees?
···•••·•••·•••·•••···
Later that evening, after the kids were asleep and Pairdra
had polished off the last of the blueberry-banana flavored geeskah
fruits, Xander broached a topic that had been bugging him for a long time. He’d
have asked about it before, but there never seemed to be a good time to do so,
between fighting, traveling, rescuing, traveling and yet more traveling. This
was the first time in a while that they had, as a group, spent much time doing
anything but moving or sleeping.
“Um, Saelen?” Xander said quietly, so as not to
wake the sleeping children. The elder siv settled down across from him.
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask y’and Pairdra a
couple of things?” Xander asked.
Pairdra sat down next to Saelen and shrugged. “Sure.”
How to approach this? Well, direct is always best…except when
it’s not. “Why did y’call me Parvala?”
Saelen and Pairdra looked at each other. Parvala?
Why was Xander asking about that? “As opposed to what,
Xander?”
“Habra,” Xander replied. “At the last
warriors’ meeting in Ieccra, y’called me Parvala. It means, um…” Xander’s voice faded off.
Realization hit Saelen. “Oh! Well, we thought that y’would want that. After all, y’did stay with us,” He
said. Pairdra nodded his agreement.
“Huh? I stayed…wait a minute. Y’thought that…what did y’think, anyway?” Xander questioned, his voice
rising unconsciously. Hainien stirred, so Xander settled back down.
The two siv looked at each other again. This was really
starting to confuse them. “Y’chose to remain with us,
in our house, well after y’could’ve
left. We told y’ that y’were welcome to do so, and y’did. That’s not what someone who wants to be Habra
usually does, Xander.”
Oh shit. They thought… “Y’thought
I wanted to…um…sleep with y’?” Xander squeaked. “Just because
I stayed with y’? Why didn’t anybody tell me that staying with a siv
meant y’wanted to screw them?”
In his growing excitement Xander began to mix siv and
English, using expressions Saelen and Pairdra didn’t understand. Their meanings
were fairly clear, however. Pairdra scowled and backed up a few paces, while
Saelen fidgeted nervously.
“We thought y’knew, Xander. It
wasn’t supposed to…” Saelen started to say, but drifted off.
“We didn’t know you objected that strongly to us,” Pairdra
finished sharply. Xander managed to see though his anxiety that he’d offended
the siv couple.
“It’s not that,” Xander said quietly. “It’s just…I didn’t
know that everybody thought I was shacking up with y’. It’s not good for y’, I
mean, y’re together. What do they,”
Xander said, waving toward the other siv, “think about the two of y’taking me in? I’m not a home wrecker!” Xander exclaimed,
shutting out memories of his relationship debacles.
Confusion wrinkled Pairdra’s face. “Home
wrecker?”
“Y’know, getting in between the
two of y’,” Xander said, wincing at how that could have been taken.
“How would y’have done that?”
Saelen asked in confusion.
Xander sighed. This wasn’t a hard concept. “Ok, in simple
words. Y’ and Pairdra are together. ‘Married’ is the word for that where I come
from. Well, it is if y’re
not both guys. Me, I am the ‘other’ person. Not in the relationship.
Relationships are two people, siv, whatever. I am the person, siv, whatever
that does not belong in the picture.”
Pairdra scratched his head. “Oh, so your humans only take
one mate?”
Xander’s jaw dropped. “Huh? One mate?”
“Can humans only have one mate, or more than one?” Saelen
repeated. Xander must not have picked up on much in Ieccra. Sometimes, the
former human could overlook a lot of details. Apparently, the fact that siv
relationships regularly contained three individuals had completely eluded him. “Because siv can have more than one mate. Actually, it’s
pretty common.”
Oh. “Y’ mean…everyone thinks I’m
part of some sort of Saelen-Pairdra-Xander thing?” Xander squawked. Ugh.
Everybody thought he was married, or at least sleeping with, not one but two
guys?
“But we’re all guys…” Xander said. He got the alternative
lifestyle thing, but surely somebody would have commented on the whole three guys thing. And he wasn’t gay!
“So?” Saelen said. What did it matter that they were all
male? His parents had both been male, and Pairdra’s
had both been female. It was pretty common.
“What, nobody cares about gays?” Xander shot back.
“Gays?” Pairdra said. “What are ‘gays?’”
Xander banged his head against the tree trunk. “Two guys or girls getting it on. Gay?”
“There’s a word for that?” Saelen murmured. “I know where
you’re from is weird, but that’s just odd, Xander. Look, whatever it is that
you’re talking about must not be important here, if we don’t even have a word
for it.”
Xander continued to bang his head against the tree. Just
when he’d gotten comfortable here, in this crazy monkey world, something had to
happen. Apparently, everybody thought he was involved with his two companions,
and nobody gave a damn! Well…to tell the truth, he’d never gotten as much in
real life as every one around him thought he was getting right now.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like Saelen and Pairdra. Nah,
they were cool—they treated him like family, like… Well, Xander didn’t want to
go there. Maybe that was the problem. He’d become so comfortable, so casual
around them that those neat, invisible lines between friend and
more-than-friend had been blurred.
Cause he wasn’t actually involved with them, nope. He was
just living with them, sleeping with them, raising
kids with…Ok, new subject, please? Let’s just not think about that right now.
“Xander?” Saelen finally said.
”Hmm?” He murmured, still thinking.
“There are others y’can stay
with, or y’can be alone, if y’d
rather,” He said quietly. Neither he nor Pairdra wanted to see Xander go.
They’d grown attached to the youthful, inquisitive siv in the few months he’d
spent with them. But if he wasn’t happy or comfortable, he’d be better off
somewhere else.
Xander didn’t know what to think, or to do. In a way, he
and the others were already a family. All that was missing was,
well…yet another place he didn’t want his mind to wander. Maybe he could put
this off for a while.
“Um…get back to me on that, ok?” Xander said, closing his
eyes. “I need to think.”
···•••·•••·•••·•••···
The next day, Saelen and Pairdra were a little distant.
Xander knew it was because of what they’d talked about the night before. He
purposefully went up to them when the kids woke up, wanting
them to know that he hadn’t abandoned them.
Mai’zi was already calling out for Saelen when he got
there. “Sae! Here!”
Saelen took up the little girl, swinging her around a
little before settling her on his leg and feeding her breakfast. “Y’ok, Xander?”
Xander nodded. “Yeah. When does
the building start?”
“Right away. First off, those who know how will
draw out where everything will be. Then those of us who are just hands and feet
will start the building. You get to help design,” Saelen replied.
Xander snorted. Yeah, right. He’d be just great at that.
Pairdra came up to claim Hainien so that Xander could go to the first of
several planning meetings. It was clear he’d be busy for a long time.
And he was—planning turned out to be a non-stop venture.
There were three siv from Shaen freehold there to help out. The Avrel mak had decided to take advantage of Shaen’s greater
resources to build a more enduring hold than what had existed in Ieccra, so
considerably more planning was involved in its construction.
Xander watched the discussions for a few minutes before
jumping in. He was sure the more experienced elders knew what they were talking
about, but he had some ideas, namely in the placement of things. The Ieccra siv
liked to lump certain things together, housing in one area, bathing in another.
That was all well and good, but it would be better to spread things out a
little—housing, bathing spots, markets, all along the hold. That way, when one
area was damaged, due to any of a number of causes, all of the hold’s housing or
storage areas weren’t demolished in one fell swoop. Besides, it would create a
nice community within a community effect. He also wanted to suggest putting
private bathing areas in some of the homes. That way no one actually had to
trek across the hold to bathe unless they just wanted to.
It took quite a bit of discussion, but Xander’s idea won
over a lot of the elders. A couple of them mentioned that that was how some of
the other species’ cities were laid out, and in fact was a plan used in some
siv holds. The siv from the Shaen freehold certainly agreed that it was a
novel, and hypothetically superior, concept.
Unfortunately, that was the extent of Xander’s
contribution to the discussions. He didn’t have any experience with siv
building techniques, so he was in the dark when they started discussing those
areas. Instead, he sat back and listened, trying to pick up things. After a few
minutes, Xander realized just how much about both his new people and home that
he didn’t know. What had he been doing all these months?
To Xander, all the trees looked pretty much the same.
Yeah, he knew the names of several types, and could identify their fruits and
leaves, but that didn’t really mean much to him. A tree was a tree was a tree.
As it turned out, that wasn’t true. Some trees were really good for base
support—they were great for bearing a lot of weight. Others, however, would
break at the first sign of strain, obviously not a good choice.
It went further than that, however. Xander quickly learned
that some trees could be used to cut boards, while others would be harvested
branch by branch. Those branches would start out very pliable and could be
woven together to form pathways, walls, roofs, and the like. Once they dried,
however, they became like stone. And that didn’t even get into the many types
of leaves and how they could be used to make thatch, flooring, bedding and
whatnot. It all made his head spin.
Fortunately no one seemed to expect him to know all of it.
No one there did, since they were mostly warriors. Everyone knew something,
though, and instead of just jumping into the project, they started by amassing
all they knew. That way, they wouldn’t run into serious problems halfway
through building their new home.
To Xander’s surprise, he found himself greatly enjoying
following along with the planning of the hold. He didn’t even notice how late
it had gotten until Saelen came to him, carrying a fussing Hainien. Xander took
the infant with a smile, noting how the babe quieted immediately. He loved the little
kid already and was glad that no one had suggested that he give him up to
someone with more childrearing experience.
“Hungry?” Saelen asked tentatively. Xander nodded and
followed Saelen to where Pairdra had gathered some food.
“How did it go?” Pairdra asked as they ate dinner. Mai’zi
busied herself trying to peel some fruit, making a big mess all over Pairdra’s
lap. The siv just picked off the mess, ignoring the little girl’s giggles.
Xander grinned. “Quickly. I think
they’re going to start assigning jobs in the morning.”
“We’d better get some sleep, then,” Pairdra said, noting
how Xander was yawning.
“Probably. This is going to take a long
time,” Xander replied, curling up to sleep. He was looking forward to it. As
much as he liked sleeping under the stars, having an actual bed and blankets
sounded like heaven. He could barely remember what comfort felt like.
···•••·•••·•••·•••···
“Damn!”
Xander looked down toward the ground, where his hammer was
probably lying right now. Waving to the siv across the tree from him, Xander
clambered down the tree, going to fetch it. They couldn’t afford to lose many
of their tools, since they had no operational forge yet. That would have to be
built on the ground, somewhere easily defended. Xander had found out that that
was another weakness of Ieccra’s structure—no good place to build things that couldn’t be put in a tree.
Once he retrieved his hammer, Xander got back to work
constructing the frame of the house he and four other siv were working on. It
was going to be a nice one—several sleeping chambers,
a couple of front rooms, and a generally perfect view. Xander had had the
support of a surprising number of Avrel mak when it
came to considering the aesthetics of their new home. In short, nobody wanted
to live in an ugly hold. To that end, the visual appeal of each structure was
being considered carefully.
One of the things Xander had found out was that some parts
of siv buildings were alive—beyond the tree bases, of course. Living vines were
used in places to hold things together. As a group, the builders had decided to
use some of the flowering vines along with the traditional ones. As long as
there was sufficient support, there wouldn’t be a problem. The end result was a much more attractive hold
than Ieccra had been.
The work was fascinating for Xander. He got to use his
hands again, and for the first time he really felt like he was a part of what
he was building. This wasn’t office buildings, or even the Magic Box. The
shops, houses, and meeting halls he was helping to design and construct would
be his home. It gave him a nice, warm feeling. The only thing he didn’t really
like was that he didn’t get to spend much time with Hainien and Mai’zi. They
were with a bunch of other kids during the day, when every able-bodied adult
was working on the hold. Saelen and Pairdra didn’t get to see them very much
either, since they were busy cutting raw materials all day long.
Xander felt more than saw midday come. The breeze coming
off the sea shifted, cooling the workers off a bit. He stopped his work for a
lunch break, climbing to the top of the canopy. Up there he could see for
miles. The only thing he looked at most days was the Chlom
Sea,though. It fascinated
him, the way it changed colors during the day, from purple to blue to green,
then back to blue and ending the day nearly black. Some days, though, it stayed
one color all day, just to confuse him. He never got tired of watching it, or
the birds that seemed to fly over it ceaselessly.
By the time night fell, Xander was exhausted once more.
Each day was the same; he got up and worked all day, then found wherever Saelen
and Pairdra were keeping the kids and went there to collapse. At least the
construction was going along quickly. That meant that he wouldn’t have to keep
up this breakneck pace forever. Xander liked working,
but he’d appreciate a little vacation now and then. After all, he’d earned it.