#etalis

“It just means she likes you,” said Musa.

“I don’t even know her name.”

“That’s stopped you before? I mean, it’s never stopped me before.”

“Well, no, but it isn’t like we were eyeing each other across the campfire all night, either. And this isn’t anywhere near the same with the etalis being an etalis and not asari and therefore not anything I’d look at that way.”

“Her name’s Pebbles,” said Musa. “One of Jinan’s kids named her, so if you make fun of the name, Jinan will do something scary to you.”

Along with being the best archer in the settlement, Jinan happened to be the huntress in charge of the village’s pack of etalis, and wasn’t someone to mess with. Also, only a colossal jerk would make fun of any kids. Thaia was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a colossal jerk and kids were fun, besides.

“Got it.” Thaia reached up and scratched Pebbles’s muzzle. After Pebbles headbutted her another time, Thaia showed her the leather ball Jinan had given to her. “Jinan told me you like to play catch.”

And Jinan might’ve understated it because Pebbles responded by jumping backward and spinning around in blurred circle, wind from the etalis’s wings buffeting the tall grass growing at the base the fence. Thaia raised the ball higher and Pebbles spun around so fast that Thaia twice had to duck to dodge both of its meter-long tails.

As Thaia cocked her arm back to let the ball fly, she caught sight of someone she hadn’t met before approaching from the opposite side of the fenced area. The new person waved in the direction of the field beyond the paddock, where the other etalis were, and then she broke into a smile that stole the very breath from Thaia’s body.

Thaia wanted to see that smile every day for the rest of her life.

She also completely forgot about the eager etalis who didn’t understand that the smile had lit up the new person’s whole face and—

Despite leaving her skin striped and burning where it’d slapped against her bare forearm, the first tail wasn’t what got Thaia. It was the second, slightly longer tail with beads braided into the tuft of hair at the end that did her in, whipping right across her forehead and sending her straight to the ground.

The ball rolled out of her hand and into the middle of the paddock, where Pebbles happily scooped it up with her mouth.

“Ow, fuck,” Thaia said as she clutched at her head, rolling on her back in the beaten-down grass.

A dropped ball thumped on the dirt, then tremors shuddered through the ground. Tensing her body to roll back to her feet in case of danger, Thaia cracked an eye open just in time to see the blurry shape of Pebbles running toward her. 

Like she was coming back to finish the job.

One hand still clutching at her forehead, Thaia leapt to her feet only for a huge mouth to—gently?—grab her shoulder and—even more gently?—push her back onto the grass.

Thaia was pretty sure the etalis was Pebbles, despite her vision being slow to clear. She blinked a few times and her sight went back to normal just in time to see Pebbles’s face directly in front of hers, studying her intently.

“What the fuck, Pebbles?“ Thaia moved her hand away from her forehead and discovered it was slick with violet blood. Fuck.

“Etalis don’t like it when their riders are hurt,” said Musa, far too gleefully. “Even dumbass riders who haven’t ridden yet and got hit by both fucking tails because they were distracted.”

“Well,” Thaia said to Pebbles, “that’s kind of you.”

Pebbles licked her forehead.