Ari & Milo

Chapter 6: Ari ~ Not Lost

"Chocolate's poison to them," the guy added.

"How do you know?" Ark asked.

The wexle made a gagging noise. The next moment, they leaned over the fountain railing and vomited the candy bar into the water.

"Point taken," Ari said.

The minnows, which had scattered in alarm, came back to approach the chunks of chewed candy bar. The wexle made a plaintive grunting noise and spread their fingers again for the fish.

"All right. Go ahead and eat some," Ari said. "What do I care?"

As the little wexle scooped up another minnow, Ari took the phone nub out of her ear, held it up and said, "Petri, switch to speaker. Volume up. Translate into and out of Wexle." Then she looked toward the wexle again and spoke slowly. "Where are your parents?" Her phone translated her words into a series of soft wails.

The wexle turned from the fountain, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and made another garbling noise.

A moment later, Ari's phone translated with its clear, crisp tones: "Parents gone."

"Your parents left you here?" Ari asked. That seemed unlikely. Her phone, meanwhile, converted her words to more garbling.

In response, the wexle's hands started to shake, and their yellow eyes went wider. Their next sounds were more like hiccups, and though Ari listened for a translation, her phone didn't tell her anything. She glanced toward the young man, who had come a few steps closer.

Ari covered the phone nub for a moment. "Should we get security?" she asked in a low voice.

"That'd be the sensible thing to do," he said. "But let's not. He's upset enough already." He crouched down beside the wexle. "Hey, buddy. We're just trying to help. Where are your parents now? Do you know?"

The wexle pointed a finger at Ari and spoke again.

"Go to library," her phone translated.

Ari spoke slowly. "I don't think there's a library here."

The wexle made a grunt of frustration and spoke again.

"Give me phone," her phone nub translated.

Ari smiled but shook her head. She reached back in her purse for a money chit and held it out. "I can't give you my phone," she said. "But you can buy your own. Can you call home?"

As her phone translated her words into singing noises, the wexle slowly took her chit in their small blue fingers and held it up to the light. An expression of cunning narrowed their big eyes. Only then did it occur to Ari that the wexle might be conning her.

"How much is on that chit?" the guy asked.

"A hundred feregs," she said.

The wexle sniffed audibly. A blur of blue flashed around her hand, and her phone nub was gone. Before she could react, a slurping came into her right eye, and the wexle's tongue sucked the contact lens off her eyeball. With a shriek, Ari covered her face, and by the time she looked again, the wexle was already speeding away between the trees. A high-pitched gurgling followed in his wake.

"They took my phone!" Ari said, shocked. She shivered in reflexive revulsion over the way the wexle's tongue had smeared around inside her eyelid.