They caught a few odd looks leaving the university campus, but as Ardus paid no one any mind unless they greeted or nodded at him, Nina ignored the attention as well. Just going to a lunch meeting with my boss. My blue, eight and a half foot tall boss who just happens to have huge arms and a laugh that makes me shiver. Nothing weird about this at all. Once they exited campus grounds Nina caught her breath and enjoyed the feeling of warm sand and the seaward wind as it caught at her curled hair and pulled it over her shoulder, and she felt warm sun on her neck and cheeks. But the silence was getting to her, she had to say something. "Nice day, isn't it?"
Ardus nodded, the wind whipping a loose barbel across his forehead. "Yes, an exceptionally good one. This pattern should hold out for several weeks, which bodes well for our fieldwork. The coast where we are going is protected by a summer pattern that drives cooler northern winds farther out to sea - I would not expect any storms while we are camped."
"That's good, I wouldn't want to be caught in a hurricane in a tent."
"We will not be staying in tents," Ardus corrected, "there are semi-permanent shelters at the site, as well as access to fresh water. I hope you are not offended by cold showers." From the corner of his eye he gave her a wry half-smile.
"No tents? Really? That's better than all of my undergrad field trips. One time I had to share a tent with three other girls." Nina adjusted her bag on her shoulder, suddenly looking up. Oh no... "Ah, we won't be, um, staying in the same shelter, will we?"
Ardus laughed, the same deep, rumbling chuckle that had stunned Nina in the infirmary. He did the same head motion as then too, tucking his chin down while a real smile spread across his lips. When he looked up again, the smile stayed even as he shook his head. "I assure you, both of us will have separate shelters with locking doors."
"I wasn't worried about that," Nina forced herself to look calm. "Look, it was a stupid question. I should have thought about it before I asked."
"I am sure it would have kept you up all night if you had not asked." He strode on, steady and composed. Nina's cheeks burned. Why do I say the dumbest shit around him?
Hurrying to keep up with his long legs, she saw that they were coming up on the oceanside city with its matte pale walls, solar-paneled roofs and wide streets that let the salty breeze blow cooler sea air through open doors and windows, alleviating the noon heat. Dreenai's white sun poured down from the impossibly blue sky like sand from a pail, filling every space with gleaming light and reflecting off of colored glass windows and lamps and the stone-paved streets worn smooth and shiny in places from centuries of Dreen feet. The scent of alien flowers in a hundred colors planted in bowls on ledges and in sconces on the walls wafted up the path to Nina's nose and she stopped briefly to take in the sprawling city. Trees sheltering between buildings from the strong ocean winds looked like gnarled hands, their branches sharing that weather-beaten quality that only the very oldest coastal trees show - sun-bleached bark, worn smooth by sand blown up from the beach, and the twisted stance of holding up against strong storm winds for who knew how long. Strange birds in yellow and white and green rested along their branches, their bright bodies like flashing fruit between the trees' shiny dark green leaves, their soft cries echoing in the clear sky. "Sea gods, this place is gorgeous."
"I am glad you think so," Ardus called back from several steps ahead. He kept going and Nina trotted to catch up, wiping sweat from her forehead. How is he not hot in all those dark clothes? He's dark too, he ought to be sweltering. The stone streets looked ancient, worn by millions of feet to an almost perfectly even surface. She asked, "How old is this city?"
"Only about twenty thousand years. It is not the oldest on the continent by a deep dive, and compared to the cities on the southern continent it is young."
"Twenty thousand?" Nina gaped. "And it's not the oldest? How old is the oldest?"
"About sixty-five thousand years, if you include the time it was occupied by early farmers. Records of metropolitan activity start about fifty thousand years ago, before that our historians are not quite sure how the city began." He paused to let a vehicle carrying fresh goods pass. "How old is the oldest city on Earth?"
"Um, I think that would be Damascus, it's about twelve thousand years. But that's been contested - some people want to define what 'city' means and some want to count from the very first settlements. Are there any towns up near where we're going?"
Ardus shook his head. "No, this point is fairly isolated. It would be in both of our best interests to be vigilant - it would still take an hour to rally a rescue team should one of us have an accident." He threw her a look, a raised eyebrow and Nina bristled.
"Excuse me," she huffed. "The sand-skimmer was a fluke." Ardus made that deep, bassy laugh again. Even under the noise of the vehicles and the constant call and cry of birds and the crashing waves on the beach down below the city Nina could feel it in her chest, and it felt good. And she delighted in his humor. He's teasing me! They crossed the street and Nina realized with a start that they were heading towards the restaurant he'd directed her to weeks ago, on the same day she'd dropped her food on the path back to the university. "Hey, I've been here before with Athe," she said, "this is the place with the good eel you told me about."
He nodded. "We will not be staying, however. There is not a good view of the lagoon from here." They passed under a wooden arch so weather-beaten and bleached it looked like old whale bone, vines growing from recesses cut into the wood and twining up and over the arch to hang like a green curtain dotted with tiny blue flowers smaller than Nina's little fingernail. His comment stuck with her, though. Why does he want a view of the lagoon? Sounds like he's trying to distract me. Is he trying to make me feel better about the lockdown? He has been really attentive today. Nina looked down at her dress, which had worked its way down to what some humans would consider a scandalously low neck. The view from above was quite extraordinary, she would gladly admit. The contrast between the soft grey dress and her bronze skin glowed, and the pink coral around her neck glittered almost as bright as Dreen pores. Damn, no wonder he's taking me out to lunch. I'd take me out too. Her confidence swelled until the bright Dreenai sun felt less warm than the space between her ribs and lungs.
They ended up down by the city's retaining wall on the shore, on a rock ledge eight hundred feet above the waterline built into a wide shelf with a handful of long tables and a wall just low enough for Nina to see over. The view was incredible - a panoramic display stretching from the northeast to the southwest, the blue-green lagoon north of the city breaking up into bedrock cliffs just beyond the retaining wall. Nina pulled herself up on her elbows to look over the side, peering down the eighty-story drop and watching the waves slam against the stone, churning into white and blue-green froth and hissing with bubbles. If she stood on her toes and looked to the north she could see the university and campus housing, picking out her building by the green pennants strung along the seaward balconies. The wind blowing in from the sea beyond the grey and green archipelago along the outer edge of the lagoon smelled of salt and far off in the distance low on the horizon Nina saw thin clouds, probably a rainstorm at sea. She pushed off the wall and turned around, pausing as she saw Ardus was watching her from a nearby table with the slightest curve of a smile on his dark mouth. They weren't the only ones on the ledge, but he'd chosen a table at the far end where their conversation wouldn't be overheard over the pounding surf below.
Nina gestured to the sights - the ledge, the lagoon, the nearby sea - and brushed wind-blown hair out of her face. "Nice place." She trotted over and slid onto the bench seat across from him, acutely aware of his eyes on her while she wiggled into a comfortable position. He tugged his sleeves up past his wrists and Nina tried really hard not to stare at the few inches of thick forearm exposed when he folded the cuffs back halfway to his elbows. Damn... Like all Dreen, the underside of his wrists and arms were paler than the top, the blue-grey color spreading across the palms and underside of his fingers. "Any particular reason you brought me here? Seems like kind of a special place for lunch."
Ardus shrugged as he unwrapped their meal. Nina recognized yellow worm and a handful of the vegetables and fruits - overall it looked like the rice balls and sushi that were so popular back on Earth where the ocean was clean enough to raise fish, except the shapes were strange and the servings were huge. He said, "It is your first day back from your, shall we say 'unscheduled absence', and Nia is several steps closer to an antitoxin that could save human lives thanks to your help. Such discoveries are usually considered special occasion enough."
"Fair enough." Nina watched him bite into a pancake-shaped disk of kelp dough the size of a dinner-plate stuffed with steamed vegetables and fish, noting his enormous teeth. Jesus, they look like leopard seal teeth. She reached for a seaweed ball the size of her fist and bit into it like an apple; Ardus could have popped the whole thing into his mouth in one piece, with room to chew. She'd forgotten how unsettling he'd been the first week, all silence and darkness and his strange, penetrating eyes with their black corneas and grey nictitating membrane. Am I that used to him? No, he's changed some since I said something. He's friendlier, more open. He's more comfortable than he was the other day, and the first day, and pretty much every day up until he carried me home. She watched him eat, stealing glances between reaching for her share; he'd paid for it. "Thanks for the food."
Ardus waved her off, chewing. After he swallowed, "I was hungry. And," he eyed her pointedly, "I have cooked enough in the last two days."
"You could've said no, you know. You could've said you were too busy to come back, I wouldn't have thought anything of it."
He peeled the meat out of a crustacean with his claws. "It would have been rude of me, considering the circumstances." He laid out the strips of pink-orange meat on the paper the little shrimp-like creatures had come wrapped in, his black claws shining wetly as the steamed meat released its juices. He squeezed a slice of some orange fruit over the meat as Nina would have done with a lemon on a lobster tail and she stared as the juice ran from his fist, his forearm flexing and the fabric of his sleeve straining. Oh gods... "Furthermore, this is part of my continuing efforts to not repeat past mistakes."
"Well, buying me lunch is one of the best ways to be my friend. Making me lunch is definitely another. I meant what I said, Ardus. That baked eel was wonderful." As though it had become a habit, she ran her tongue out and tasted the lingering flavors of their meal on her lips. That tiny action was enough to make him freeze for a fraction of a second. Oh, you like that? She touched a drizzle of sauce on the next seaweed ball and sucked it from her fingertip. Ardus suddenly cut his eyes down to the table and Nina had to bite down on her seaweed ball to keep from grinning and giving herself away. Yeah, you liked it.
A chattering, twittering noise drew his attention to the balcony wall. "Ah, Nina, look." He gestured with a piece of crustacean pinched in his fingers. "We have an audience." Nina looked, smiling at the three small creatures gathered on the wall. They looked like lizards, or monkeys, or some kind of mix between the two, except they also looked like cats. Nina imagined someone had taken a rhesus monkey and gave it the claws and ears of a cat, the long hairless tail of a lizard, and a flat monkey face with a feline nose and eyes. Their forelegs looked like long three-fingered hands, and the short, sparse fur along their backs was a rusty orange-red, their round eyes brilliant yellow. "What are those?"
"Cliff climbers, red ones specifically. Cousins to the bluebacks, except these live on the rocky cliffs around here. They ought to be called beggars, that is what they are good at." He shot a warning squint at them. One of the creatures, its hairless legs sprawled on the warm stone wall, turned its cat-monkey head towards their table and bared its teeth in a lazy yawn. "Do not feed them, it would only encourage them."
"Wouldn't dream of it." Nina watched as two of them begin to groom each other, watching their table intently. The wildlife on this planet amazed her - Earth's ecosystems were still recovering from the climate crisis, some populations were strictly guarded and not all reintroduction programs had been successful. There always seemed to be something alive nearby on Dreenai, in the trees and skittering across the sand and drifting through the air. "So, do they spend their whole lives on the cliffs?
"They do venture into the city sometimes. They climb on our buildings and in the trees, looking for dropped food." Ardus turned back to his lunch. "They are harmless."
"They don't look dangerous. Not as cute as a blueback, but they're all right." One of the animals eyeballed her seaweed ball and Nina held it close. Nope, mine.
"At one point in our past we considered them pests, even food, but that was before we understood the link between insufficient waste management and the burgeoning local population of scavengers. When enough food is left out, cliff climbers reproduce at an alarming rate. Keeping our waste products to a minimum controls the population without the need for exterminating surplus creatures." Ardus began to wrap the remaining scraps in the paper they'd come in, and suggested Nina do the same. "We are not being swarmed right now because we do not leave anything out to attract the hordes."
Nina made up a paper package and tucked it into her bag - she'd probably snack on it later. The cliff climbers, seeing there would be no opportunity for an easy meal, clambered back over the side of the wall and disappeared from view. Looking back across the table she caught him watching her from the corner of his eye, his face unreadable but his eyes sharp. "Those worms this morning," she began, nonchalant, "I noticed you didn't seem to mind handling them."
"Of course not." He cleaned his claws, rubbing them with a soft paper napkin. "With practice, you will be as comfortable." Nina watched him flex his fingers, curling his hands into loose fists. I bet he's thinking about yesterday. She could still feel his enormous hands around her waist, his thick fingers pressing into her sides. "You know, as big as you are, I didn't expect you to be so...gentle."
He balled up the paper and clutched it hard. "I beg your pardon?"
"With the worms, I mean." His hand relaxed. Aha, you were thinking about it! Nina steeled her face against a triumphant smile.
"Mishandling any creature causes stress." He inspected the middle claw on his left hand. The way he glanced away from his claw, down at her in that strange, all-too-direct way, made Nina want to wriggle with delight. "The smaller ones can be...particularly tricky to handle"
Looking at his huge hands she wondered what else he might be surprisingly gentle at. Watch it, he's still your boss. And an alien. A really big alien. She paused, laying an elbow on the table and leaning on it. "I just assumed that someone your size would be, you know..." She shook back a stray curl, tipping her chin up to show off the coral necklace and the bronze skin below it - she'd seen Meem do the same thing a hundred times now. "Rough." She kept her face as blank as she dared.
Ardus cleared his throat softly and met her gaze, unblinking. "Doctor, you would do well not to assume that size necessarily translates to brute force. Even a large creature such as myself is capable of surprising delicacy."
"So I saw." And I want to see it again, as well as what else you can be delicate about, rules be damned. "And I'm sure that has something to do with doing everything to the best of your ability. I wonder what other things you do well." Though her face was a marble mask Nina could hardly suppress her amusement. She bit the inside of her cheek and heat flared in her cheeks and across her chest as his eyes narrowed at her. Sea gods, what a look! Until this point, his eyes had been cool, indifferent. Now they burned. Leaning forward on the table, one elbow propped on the sun-bleached surface, his other hand stretched ahead of him with its claws shining black in the sun, Ardus's dark mouth quirked. "You know, as small as you are, I did not expect you to be so ambitious."
Oh, we're playing that game? All right, big guy, let's see how delicate you can be. She toyed with a curl, winding it between her fingers and watching his eyes follow her hand. "I thought my ambition was why you hired me. I thought it impressed you."
"It does," Ardus nodded. "but I wonder if you are up for a challenge."
Nina allowed herself a sweet smile. "I could use a challenge. The bigger, the better."
"Is that so?" Ardus cocked an eyebrow. "I assumed someone of your size would be more cautious."
She shrugged. "I'm more curious than cautious."
"I see. Perhaps, then, you may want to exercise a bit of both in the future. Mishandling small creatures can be tricky, but mishandling the larger ones can be...rough."