Chestha

Kohric tied a thong made of braided grass around the base of the redeka tooth. He insisted I keep it with me, but he couldn’t articulate why. He just didn’t have the vocabulary. He did clutch it to his throat, perk his ears, and threw his head up and back and forth.

I figured he wasn’t trying to say the tooth would improve my dancing. I think he was trying to tell me that it will give me energy, or perhaps vitality.

Or extreme raver powers.

Regardless of the reason, I was grateful for the gesture. I was so shaken from the attack that I spent the rest of the afternoon jumping at every sound around us. Kohric didn’t seem as concerned, but I did notice he would rock back on his haunches and scan the horizon with an intensity he hadn’t shown since I’d met him. Maybe he was a little rattled too.

My canteen’s top had broken from my lucky redeka sucker punch. I lost about half its contents to spilling, but I didn’t want to go near any more water sources to fill it. By late afternoon my head was starting to ache from mild dehydration. I was also starting to cough a lot.

Minervan air and water is rich with chemicals that are very rare compared to Earth, and they aren’t that good for human health. Chlorine is one of them. There isn’t more than a trace of it in the air, and it isn’t enough to cause you problems from immediate exposure. But human physiology doesn’t really like chlorine, and long term exposure messes with your respiratory system. And it makes your eyes itch like hell. Fortunately my life support kit includes medications and reagents that protect me from long term exposure to chlorine, and the other nasties in the water and air. About two thirds of my entire pack’s contents are taken up with my life support kit: anti-toxins, vaccines, antibiotics, and testing equipment. Minerva was never meant to host human life. We need all the help we can get.

During our next rest stop, I took the opportunity to do a quick diagnostic on my vitals, dosed myself with my tri-daily hit of anti-chemical-death-juice, and waited for my lungs to stop itching. I’d been an idiot and not dosed myself this morning like I was supposed to. Laziness punished. I wonder what the Azu-nah have that protects them from chlorine.

We had chosen a high hill to take our rest. I only needed two pit stops today, instead of my four yesterday. Hah! Improvement! Anyway, the hill gave us a really nice view of some of the surrounding territory. Kohric pointed to an area near the horizon where the trees became a little denser. Nothing you would call a forest, but enough that it really wasn’t what you’d call open.

“D’Keda is there,” he said, his ears were high and his lips curved up a just a bit at the corners, with his mouth open just a little. (This was an Azu-nah grin, I discovered. We’d had a grunting, gesturing exchange on our walk, and he’d managed to explain it to me a bit that ears play a bigger part in Azu expressions than the mouth in most cases.) Tomorrow mid-morning we’ll reach D’Keda’s current encampment.

Between our hill and the distant camp was a herd of creatures I hadn’t seen yet. I sketched one after a good long look through my binoculars. Kohric calls them “chestha.” Apparently they are “good food” and “very fast-turning”. I think that probably means “agile.”



These things have three sets of legs. They move like nothing on Earth. The only hexapods we have are insects, and their leg structure is sprawling; totally different from the chestha. These guys have a long, rolling gate. They have at least one foot on the ground at all times, and the legs on one side move one after the other, in a row. Front-middle-back on one side, then front-middle-back on the other. I only saw one of them run, and only for a second, but it was incredibly fast. I’ll bet they’re hard as hell to catch.

We watched them for several minutes and then continued on. We made another couple kilometers before it started to get dark. Now I’m sitting awake, bundled in my sleeping bag, and staring out across the hills into the night. Minervan creatures are making their alien sounds again, and every once in a while there will be a flash of blue-green light somewhere out in the darkness. Kohric is sleeping next to me. I've got the redeka tooth in my hand. It's soothing to run my thumb across while I'm thinking.

I wonder if I’ll be welcome in D’Keda. Will I ever get enough vocabulary under my belt to communicate better than a two-year-old? I’m going to be depending on them for so much. I’m literally the only one of my kind within a thousand kilometer radius. It’s exciting, usually. But tonight, I feel naked and alone.