The brochure said they would work with her to find a good match, and they had not been lying. The first day they had eased her into her new life with a gentle hand. She had met the humans, but had not been forced to interact with them. She had been given a room based on her request, somewhere quiet and away from the agitation of too many people.
This was the least amount of panic she had experienced in several cycles, but that was almost to be expected. Now that she was able to relax from traveling, at least the fear seemed manageable rather than crushing. She had been given an intercom that would connect her to the outside world if she wished, and it would flash if someone wanted to speak with her. Sometimes it simply flashed a few times before announcing something, giving her a good warning beforehand rather than startle her.
It was a nice change of pace.
Everything seemed to be within her control.
The light blinked to let her know it was mealtime. She had the option to go to the cafeteria with everyone else, or she could take a meal in her room. Of course, the doctor let her know that option would not always be available. Her treatment plan would eventually encourage her to interact with people again.
But that might be a long time in coming.
So she accepted something to eat in her room, cringing away in the corner when the slot in the door opened up and her tray was pushed through on request. She wasn't stupid, she knew how much it resembled a jail cell, one in which she had self imprisoned herself, but she couldn't bring herself to be bothered by that fact.
At least now she was safe.
She didn't sleep very well, her dreams marred by sporadic nightmares of overcast red sky and falling ash heralded by choir of the damned raising their screaming voices to the sky.
It wasn't something generally conducive to sleep.
But the following day, her light blinked with a request for the doctor to enter her room. She sat with him for a long while. He urged her to talk about her greatest concerns, outline what made her worry, what her fears were. It wasn't an easy discussion, and there were still some things she couldn't tell him, but they made headway. She didn't have it in her to go to lunch, her emotions were to scattered for that, but she did feel well enough to continue treatment after the mid day meal.
The next phase of treatment began with a small room with a door on either end, each half separated by a partition of glass cutting its way down the middle. She was able to sit on one side, while on the other different humans were brought in to sit on the other side of the glass.
Again she noted the soft shoes, and the mittens.
The doctor might not have known this, but this wasn't the first time she had seen a human, but it was the first time any human she had known had ever attempted to look unintimidating.
The last humans she had met, seen, had been predators. They had greeted each other by showing their teeth and slapping each other, either hand to hand or hand to shoulder. They had wrestled in the dirt and openly mocked each other for fun. They had been aggressive, and violent.
And then on that horrible night, they had come, encased in metal and whirring with the roar of machines, pulled apart and put back together again. The thought brought her back to a panic, and they had to halt the treatment for a moment as she hid under the nearest chair and shook in fear.
It wasn't the humans that scared her though, not really.
The humans had saved their lives.
It wasn't even the Drev that scared her.
It was an amalgamation of a bloody sky and the screams and the blood that had spattered the ground. That day she had seen something she could never forget, a cruelty in sentient species that seemed impossible to escape from. How was she to feel safe when she knew what the other species were capable of, what she was capable of, her and her own people. There was something deep down inside all of them that could lend itself to something so horrible, something so violent.
But still she had chosen this, and eventually she was able to sit up again, to meet the humans face to face.
To talk with them a little.
She met the woman with the curly hair and the golden eyes. She spoke with a slim man with dark hair and brown eyes. These were all the ones she had indicated a liking for, and all of the ones she might be wiling to work with. The psychologist had told her to tentatively choose two or three she would be comfortable working with, two or three she might rotate through when the others were on eave or busy with other clients.
"Fiem, how are you feeling?" This human's voice was't anything special as far as human voices go. Generally speaking all human voices have a sort of cadence to them, a sort of sing song quality that isn't present in most other languages. So, in most cases, human voices tended to be very soothing, neither too high or too low, at least in her mind.
"Honestly," She said softly, "not well."
"I'm sorry to hear that, would you like to talk about something else?"
She paused in confusion.
No one had asked her a question like that in a while. Everyone always just wanted to talk about the war or how she was doing or what she was doing or where she thought her life was going.
Some of them even tried to tell her it was okay and she was safe, but that never helped her to feel better.
"What would we talk about?"
"What do YOU want to talk about. If you want to talk at all." The human rested his mittened hands on the ledge in front of him smoothing out the white fuzz on one mitten before doing the same with the other hand. He didn't make direct eye contact with her but still she could see his human irises, the little black dot at the middle expanding and contracting to allow for the amount of light in the room.
Human eyes were jumpy, she had noticed that before.
They were very good at tracking moving objects. They had to be as predators. During the war, she had once heard a rumor that humans used to run their prey to death. She was almost sure that was an exaggeration, maybe even propaganda to make the humans seem more intimidating, but it had at least partially worked, she could admit that.
There was a small closed window in the side of the window. If she wanted, she could open the door from her side. Touch the human if she wanted to. But she ignored it for the time being.
"We can talk about humans." She said softly, not sure why she had said it, but she had to admit she was curious.
He seemed surprised, "What do you want to know."
She paused and shrugged, "Tell me something.... Happy about your species."
It was an odd request, and she thought maybe he might lfind it stupid.
She saw the sides of his mouth twitch. He was trying not to show his teeth.
Sh had to remember that was a good thing for humans, most of the time, "Something happy about humans..... Well there's a lot actually." He sat back in his seat and thought for a moment, "You know what music is?" She did sort of, the Tesraki had it to some degree, but she had learned, in her time spent with humans that their understanding of music was far more complex.
"I know of music, yes." She had even heard some human songs before, but she didn't bother to mention that. Not yet.
"Well sometimes we humans get together and we dance?"
The word was unfamiliar, "Dance."
"You know how music has a beat? Right, a pattern."
She nodded.
"Well, we humans, our brains are designed for pattern recognition, and when we hear music our brain likes to move our bodies in ways that match up with the musical beat. Scientists don't know why we do it, but it might be that our bodies like trying to create a movement that it believes would create such a sound." It was hard to imagine, but when the human began to hum softly for her she tried her best to hear the beat, to pick out the pattern.
As he hummed the human began to sway softly, moving his head from side to side, and patting his hands on the table in front of him. The mittens made a dull sort of thud, soft and insistent when he did, and he drummed out a small rhythm for her. His head swaying back and forth, his shoulders moving up and down.
She watched quite mesmerized.
Eventually he stopped and she watched as the skin of his face suddenly changed color. It was a subtle change, the red tones in his face brightening a little, "That wasn't a very good demonstration. If you do it right, its your entire body, your hands and your feet. We get together in big groups and sometimes we just dance together and it doesn't matter, sometimes we come up with dances where everyone does the same moves. Sometimes two people hold hands and dance together. Sometimes we hold hands and dance in a circle." She closed her eyes and tried to imagine that, and found that she couldn't
But the thought somehow felt nice.
"What else?"
He paused, "Humans like fuzzy things." he held up his mittens, "If we can't find them, we make them, and when we sleep at night we make a nest out of them."
She had seen a human sleep on one or two occasions, but it had been a soldier leaning up against a rock, or on a thing roll of fabric. The thought of a big scary human cuddled up in a fuzzy little nest was amusing to her.
"We like to make up stories and tell them to each other."
Tesraki had books of course, and they had stories but she had a feeling that the human meant something different.
"Make up?"
"Yeah like we tell stories that aren't real?"
"You lie."
THe human shook his head, "No, not a lie, when you tell a story, a fictional story, everyone knows it isn't real. Its simply for entertainment. For thousands of years we have had humans whose job it is to make up, or record stories that can be told simply for entertainment. There is no other purpose. We just make things up, even things that don't make sense, just to make other people happy."
Those were some nice things about humans, a side of them she had rarely seen during the war.
It was that thought that made her feel brave, and with hesitation she gently opened the little window. A part of her was well aware that the human could grab her, and slam her hard against the glass if she did this, and her heart pounded as she slipped her hand through the opening and rested it atop the humans mitten covered hand. Soft fibers brushed softly against her fingers.
Under the mitten she could feel his hand, thick and heavy, but warm. She could feel the bones pressing up against her hand through the fabric. It was hard to describe the sensation.
She looked up at the human, catching his eyes for the first time since they had begun their meeting, but this time she didn't look away.
"Maybe you can tell me a human story?" She asked
Again the human's mouth twitched, concealing a smile, "Okay..... " He paused to think for a minute, "If you have some time I can tell you a story about something that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.... "