as far as I know,

   What? He could… make warmth? 

   He could make light, so — perhaps that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. But still, it was a bit like magic, to feel heat radiating from hands outstretched. She reached out, put her hand above it. It felt… good. The numbness in the tips of her fingers burned, in response to the ebb of energy, but she didn’t pull away. Not until a question came to her mind. 

   “You don’t need to be warm to make this heat? If not from you, where does the heat come from?” 

For a few minutes, she stood like that, hands over the warmth until they stopped searing painfully. She wiggled them, experimentally... then leaned her face towards his warm hands.

We’re both trapped. If she could just get this stupid field down—

❝Anywhere!❞ It is as descriptive as she can be when she has no idea where in the galaxy she is, where this ship is going, how far they are from her home system by now. For all she knows, she could be on the other side of the galaxy, lost forever with stars she’s never seen before and languages that are so strange and different she would never be able to talk to anybody ever again.

Ly throws both arms out to the side, indicating here, there, everywhere.

❝It’s better than being trapped here. My dad started to teach me about ships and how to fly them.❞ Starships have been her second home, what with her father’s position, and just like with the preparations for First Shift, he’d begun to teach her a little about what he did for when she eventually was to succeed him.

She’s far from a trained expert, but in the moment, it’s better than nothing. All they need is the chance.

She looks at the PADD in Sirise’s hands and growls a little, frustrated once again by this barrier to communication that is thicker than the forcefield keeping her trapped in the cargo hold.

Ship. She taps at the floor and gestures to the walls and the air around them. I, she jabs a clawed finger toward her chest, will fly. Ly puffs out her cheeks and acts out sitting in the pilot’s chair, grabbing the manual controls, and makes a loud sound that may or may not supposed to be the sound of a ship jumping to warp.

‘You, me, go,’ she signs, looking pointedly toward the door.

❝And if they try to stop us, I’ll fight.❞ Ly snarls at the door, looking every bit the wild animal her kind have been likened to, baring fangs and claws toward an invisible enemy.

❝What if we wait and they know somebody there? That’s dangerous. Bad.❞

And how can I talk to anybody there?

❝If you can…❞ Ly shifts her attention back to the forcefield. ❝Ah…❞

'This,’ she signs. The forcefield. 'No.’ Off. Turn it off. Break it.

The words are clear enough with what she’s taught her. Ship, I, place— no, move— no... drive, obviously. And Sirise smiles, all mirthful amusement at the thought of driving the Rigel J’hordak. You really want to get us killed, don’t you? she thinks, entertained enough with the consideration.

But, of course, Sirise doesn’t want to get killed. She didn’t come talking to the prisoners to get killed. Neither did she do it to break out. That’s the plan, eventually, of course — she has to get out of here, one day. But today? Tomorrow? That’s impossible. Naiycuh still narrowly wins when they scrabble. There’s no way she could beat her — no way she could figure out how to— no way to —...

But... having an accomplice would help. With her new friend’s claws and teeth along with hers, she may actually... win.

Hm...

Sirise stares at her PADD, trying to decide what to say. O.K., she types, and looks at it for a moment. Should she really commit to this? Will she actually go through with it? Does it actually matter if she doesn’t? After all, if she doesn’t save this girl, she’ll just be sold off. It won’t tarnish Sirise’s reputation, or anything.

Better safe than sorry, though. She erases the O.K., writes something else.

This is how you sign “leave”. She teaches, waits for repetition, enough that she feels good moving to the next word. This is how you sign “take”. Another sign, another moment of teaching. This is how you sign “kill”. Perhaps a menacing sign to learn, but she wants to give her new wolf friend all the options, of course...

If we break out the rest of these people are going to get caught up in it some way or another. They may alert someone or be found and get us caught. What do you want to do with them?

And she watches.

I’m finding it difficult to find memes for nonverbal characters ( be they mute, or just not fond of talking ) so I thought I’d make a few!

Neutral

☝️ Tap my muse on the shoulder

👉 Point to something for my muse to see

🤙 Bump into my muse

😊 Sit down next to my muse

🤨 Sit down across from my muse

📓 Push/Slide [an object] across a table to my muse

✍️ Pass my muse a note

🙄 Roll their eyes at my muse

🚪 Tap on a table/door/wall/chair to get my muse’s attention without speaking

Aggressive

🐺 Growl at my muse

😬 Snarl/show teeth at my muse

😠 Death Glare at my muse

🙌 Push/Shove my muse

👊 Punch my muse

👖 Kick my muse in the shin

👠 Stomp on my muse’s foot

😵 Knee my muse in the gut

💀 Knee my muse in the groin

🔪 Point a weapon at my muse

🖕 Flip my muse the bird/a similar gesture

👔 Roughly pull my muse down by the collar

💢 Bang on a door/wall/table to get my muse’s attention- angrily

Angst

👩‍⚕️ Put pressure on my muse’s wound

🌡 Push my muse down to give them medical attention

🥣 Bring my muse soup/medicine when they are sick

🤢 Hold my muse’s hair back/Rub my muse’s back while they are sick/throwing up

👐 Hold my muse when they are badly wounded/dying

👁 Wake my muse up during a nightmare

🐱 Hold my muse after a nightmare

😭 Hold my muse when they are crying

😢Touch my muse’s shoulder while they are crying in secret

💧 Wipe away my muse’s tears

💥 Try to calm my muse during an overwhelming emotional moment

⛈ Find my muse after some kind of trauma

Soft

👕 Tug on my muse’s sleeve/shirt/skirt

🐈 Lean against my muse’s side

🤝 Hold my muse’s hand

🤗 Pull my muse into a hug

🐕 Rest their head on my muse’s shoulder/knee

🐶 Nuzzle my muse with their nose [specify a location]

✋ Touch the back of my muse’s hand

🤝 Reach for my muse’s hand to hold it

👗 Fix/Straighten my muse’s clothes

😴 Stand by the bed to see if my muse will let you under the covers with them

🛌 Crawl under the covers with my muse

🥪 Set a plate/tray/bowl of food down for my muse

😚 Kiss my muse on the cheek

Playful

🌸 Put a flower in my muse’s hair

✨ Playfully shove my muse’s shoulder

💃 Pull my muse onto a dance floor/up to dance

🤞 Come up beside them and tap the shoulder opposite where they’re standing

😈 Jump out of the shadows to scare/startle my muse

😛 Stick their tongue out at my muse

😱 Make a silly face at my muse

🤭 Tickle my muse

👃 Poke my muse’s nose

💪 Pick my muse up

Sensual/Sexual

💘 Pull my muse in for a rough kiss

💕 Pull my muse in for a tender kiss

💞 Pull my muse in for a messy/desperate kiss

💖 Lean in to give my muse a sweet/chaste kiss

❤️ Lean in to give my muse a tender kiss

🔥 Pull my muse down by the collar/by their clothes - in a sexy way

😉 Pull my muse in by the hips

😲 Smack my muse’s butt

💋 Kiss my muse’s neck

👌 Push my muse down and give them a massage

👙 Pull [an article of clothing] off my muse

👀 Push my muse down on the bed

   Sirise’s new friend makes a noise that sounds like an utterance of shock, and Sirise smiles, because things are so similar, even when so different. She’s grumbled in awe, too, more than once. They are from totally different planets, in completely different systems, with lives that were never meant to even cross. And now they have, and they’re so similar, so alike. 

   It gives her hope, perhaps, that people out there will be forthcoming to her. That people will see themselves, in her, enough to trust her. 

   Even so different — maybe there’s something in her that’s like others, too. 

   I want to know, her friend says, and Sirise watches, head half-tilted, in curiosity at what could come next. The door. Naiycuh. I want to know how Naiycuh speaks. 

   And then she points to both of them, and the door again.

   Sirise’s come to understand the door as meaning them — and the sign is the same, so it makes sense, both in the context of the conversation and in the way she understands Signs. But what she doesn’t understand is exactly what her friend wants. To know how Naiycuh speaks, yes. But… what was that part about the both of them and them? 

   There’s only one conclusion Sirise can come to in her mind, and it is absolutely ridiculous. 

   You want to speak to Naiycuh? She hates how her hands shake as she types it, and she forces them steady, eyebrows furrowed in frustration. Are you crazy? If she finds out we’re talking together, she’ll kill me and you. We barely have worth to her. You don’t want to threaten that and make her think we’re utterly worthless. It’s part of the reason why Sirise keeps working. She’s worth something, now, as a janitor — if Sirise ever lost that small amount of value she’d gained, Naiycuh’d absolutely go back on the promise she made to Vattu and kill her. Probably in front of him. 

   And I can’t speak so I can’t teach you how to speak like her anyway. And don’t even think about asking my father for help. He’d rat us out in a heartbeat. Do you know what pheromones are? Naiycuh uses hers to keep all the people on her ship completely devoted to her. They’re in love with her. They can’t even think of betraying her or doing something to hurt her. My father won’t help. I’m the only one immune to her. You’ve only got me. 

   It’s only after she shows that message to her that the pattering of her heart eases out from her ears, searing hot anxiety crawls down from her throat, and she realizes how she sounded. Probably controlling, and harsh, and all the horrible things she was but she didn’t want people to know. 

   I’m sorry, she types next. I didn’t mean to be so rude. It’s just a very very VERY bad idea. 

     She knows there’s the very real and likely chance that her words will be misinterpreted—she knows only so few words in this sign language and she has to speak as if she’s just a child learning to talk for the first time—but that knowledge doesn’t stop the frustration from finding its way back to her face. Sirise was good at guessing her words before, but she must not have been clear enough.

     It’s still frustrating, going from knowing so much and being able to get her point across so easily to talking in broken words like she’s never had a conversation before in her life.

     This time, she adds a huff to that look of frustration and shakes her head so fervently that her hair flies up, forming a cloud of fire around her head. A few wavy strands catch on the points of her long ears.

     “No!” she exclaims, but in her excitement does not miss the way Sirise’s hands tremble on the PADD, the different way her nails click against the screen when she types. “I don’t want to talk to her.” No, talking to the woman is the last thing on her mind, even if she knew whatever language Naiycuh knew—what she would do goes far beyond the realm of talking.

     It’s something far more instinctual and primal, something sharp and hungry shaped by fear and defiance, anger and a want for her life back. It is that want to live at all costs, that natural feeling all Kovans her age are warned about as they reach the age of maturity—to come of age means to accept and learn to live with all of themselves.

     She has never felt anything quite like this before. When the time came, she thought she’d be navigating more of these feelings in a familiar environment with some sort of backup, but here she has only herself and whatever grip on control she can try and latch onto.

     She thinks, for the first time, about what it would be like to tear someone apart with nothing but her own strength.

     “I don’t trust those people,” she says with a shake of her head, knowing that’s the only thing Sirise will understand, but she finds she needs to talk anyway, to at least say what’s on her mind. “I don’t want their help either. If we’re stuck here, I need to understand.” Her hands fly to her ears again—listen, she tries to convey—and know.

     “We can’t stay here and wait for her to kill us.” Or whatever they plan to do—she doesn’t know yet which exactly is the worse fate, being sold or being killed, for the way she sees it, they end the same way. Here or there, with these people or someone else, she gets hurt or dies. “We need a plan.”

     There are so many other things she wants to say about those messages, things that spring to her tongue that she ultimately forces herself to swallow down because there’s no point—without a translator, she’s wasting her breath. She knows. But if nothing else, from this misunderstanding, she’s learned a little more about this ship and those people, reaffirmed that anything that could even be remotely considered a friend is in short supply.

     Maybe that was the reason for Sirise telling her all that, she thinks momentarily, to reaffirm how pointless it is, how alone she is.

     But then again⸺Sirise is there, isn’t she?

     “Then what do we do?”

     ‘We—what?’ How can I get out where you are? she thinks next, points at first to herself then gestures aimlessly to the room they’re locked in, the space beyond the buzzing forcefield. ‘I want—there.’ 

Frustration again — understandable, because it seems Sirise’s really misunderstood this time, by the amount of nos she gets. Her fingers flash an “O.K., O.K.,” before she remembers that she doesn’t know what those words mean — and she’d probably find it somewhat patronizing, had Sirise explained.

It’s fine, though — there’s more to be said, to be gleaned, to be read.

Hear, know, she says. And Sirise understands — truly, she does. She wants to know what Naiycuh and the others are saying. If she doesn’t want to talk to Naiycuh, then it’s a survival instinct that’s grabbing at her. A very similar one taught Sirise Federation Standard and Orion. (It wasn’t as if her mother sat cross-legged on the ground with flash cards for her!) It makes sense — and more than that, she can almost see herself now, in this similarly aged girl sat across from her.

Sirise doesn’t have too much time to ponder that, though. There’s more to say— the prisoner (well, the other one) — continues.

We what? I want here.

It’s almost a perfect here — but it’s the small differences that make up Sign, and life itself, too.

The other follows it up with a scratch at the forcefield, which intrigues Sirise far too much. She looks for injury, but, to her disappointment, the new signer hasn’t injured herself — even if it was clearly painful, by the shrill noise she released.

She wants to get out. That’s what she’s saying. Anyone could read it, even without Sirise’s sharp eye.

You and me both, she writes and shows. A stab of regret, and Sirise turns the PADD back on herself quickly; it was there long enough maybe for the other to’ve read.

When the PADD is turned towards the other again, the previous words are wiped clean.

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