Scene suggestion—anup and sourang 4 (Patreon)

I promised that when we got toward the middle of the month, I'd poll you guys' input on where this thing is going. So let's do that now. Lunsdie and his alien gal are becoming fast friends and Lunsdie is showing more spine than when the story began. So where to next? Should they fight? Should they become lovers? Perhaps she should take him offworld somehow? Maybe he should show her around Anuptec? What would you guys like to read?

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Keeping careful track of every surface he touched, Lunsdie rushed home. He scrubbed himself clean, then scoured and sanitized everything. He paced around his home, too tired to function, too worried to eat, too stressed to sleep. He fretted endlessly until he finally collapsed from exhaustion.

His sleep wasn’t restful though, and nightmares of third wave haunted him. He saw bodies lying in the street; strangers, customers, Sbarrie, and the alien gal too. He awoke in a sweat and stared out at the peaceful dawn, waiting for his pulse to slow.

Did she survive? Lunsdie wondered. Did she get inside soon enough? He didn’t really understand what she had meant by “stayed out too long”, but it must have been serious. One look at her lying in that alley, and he knew she was dying.

He rolled the memories around in his mind for almost an hour before managing enough energy to get out of bed. Lunsdie headed out to his car, then turned back around half a dozen times, but he had to find out if she’d made it. Eventually, he drove back to town—then keeping as far from everyone as possible—he returned to the hatch and pulled on the handwheel that sealed it closed.

Locked.

Not knowing what else to do, he left a flat of dragonberries in front of the steel door. He used a second, empty flat turned upside-down to act as a miniature table so that the plastic container didn’t have to sit directly on the alley’s floor.

After a whole new day and night of worrying, he returned to the alley for a third time. The door was still locked, but the berries were gone. Had she taken them? Perhaps someone else had? Or one of the city’s vermin creatures? Or maybe someone had tossed them in the trash?

But maybe she had found them.

Maybe she had ventured out in a weakened state to scrounge some food and had spotted his gift. Maybe they had been exactly what she needed, and he had saved her from having to scavenge a meal.

Maybe he had saved her life a second time.

It was all conjecture, of course. For all he knew, his offering had been wasted, but he rather enjoyed this new possibility in his life—that he, of all people, could have helped someone … twice.

He left two flats this time: another of dragonberries and a container of dried cuview pods.

Though careful to keep some extra distance, Lunsdie worked the whole day with a spring in his step and a smile on his ears. He felt better than he had in a long time. The alien gal didn’t visit him, didn’t haunt his stand and frighten away customers, and his sales were better than they had been for the past month. He slept great, and in the morning, he left another offering at the steel door.

Why isn’t the trader caste allowed in the temple? he wondered. Why can’t we make offerings? Being on the bottom of anup society hadn’t bothered him overly before—it was the only life he knew, after all—and he had always felt a little smug superiority to the other castes and how they were expected to tithe a proportion of their earnings to the orthodoxy, but over the weeks that followed, Lunsdie felt increasingly embittered about it.

Donating food to help out had felt good, so why wouldn’t he be allowed to do it?

One day, the crowd drifted away from the anup’s booth and his ears slowly widened into a grin. He lifted his chin and without looking behind him, he asked, “Feeling better?”

“Yes, thanks to you,” said the alien. That made him smile all the wider. “I thought I had finished acclimating to your atmosphere, but it seems I was premature.”

He listened to the clicking on her claws on concrete as she walked over beside him. She took a seat on the ground—perhaps a bit closer than two meters away, but it didn’t seem to bother him today. He glanced at her and tapped the tip of his span against his own forehead in greeting. “Acclimating?”

“Yes,” she said. “Your atmosphere is really horrible. It has taken me months to adapt to it.”

He sniffed the bromine-laden air but noticed nothing peculiar about it. There was always a little more pollution in the city than out in Asyut, but he wouldn’t describe it as “horrible”. “I’m Lunsdie,” he said. “I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself earlier.”

“You may call me Ckkkrt,” she said.

His eyes widened at the strange mix of sounds. To him, it sounded more like she had cleared her throat, rather than had told him a true name. He repeated it back four different times with her correcting him each time before she finally conceded, “That is close enough.”

“So, what brings you to Anuptec, Ckkkrt?” he asked. He leaned back against his span with a smile.

“I am looking for opportunities to trade,” she said. She turned her head and peered over the top of his cart, at his wares.

“Really? You’re a trader?” he asked, his head cocked slightly. “How could you ever afford to travel?”

She looked back at him, but her ears remained static, not showing any hint of emotion. Her long whiskers drooped. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Anuptec is a poor world. We’ve never really bounced back from the Collapse,” he explained. “The higher castes can still afford to travel occasionally but not us traders. Perhaps your world is wealthier than ours, so that even the lower castes can visit?”

“Your words,” she said, “they make little sense.” With that she stood and circled around to the front of his cart, studying his wares.

Lunsdie shrugged, not sure what else to say. “Can I interest you in some fruit?”

“You are not very good at selling things,” said Ckkkrt, finally looking up at him. “And your cart … it does not encourage shoppers to buy.”

“Oh. Well.” He stared at her in stunned silence. “Perhaps you could give me some tips—just between us fellow traders?”

She stared at him; ears still stoic but whiskers twitching. “You would not survive an internship with me.” She waved a paw in front of him, dismissively, and he shuddered at her ugly, alien ways.

“An internship?”

“Yes, Lunsdie,” she said. “On my world, those wishing to become traders must intern with one who is already successful. She takes him in—like a pup—for as long as it takes until she can be certain that he will be a success. Only then does she release him to do business on his own.”

“Uhuh,” he muttered. He rolled his span back and forth between his fingers, thinking. Could she be serious? “A success like yourself?”

“Correct,” she said. She ducked her head beneath his cart, taking a moment to study the underside.

“And how long would I have to intern?” he asked with a grin. “If you were going to make me a success, I mean.”

She turned her long flexible neck and peered around the cart’s edge. “Years, maybe decades? It depends just how quickly you could learn.”

“Decades?” he gasped.

“But first we will need to make modifications to your cart.” Turning her attention to it once more, she added, “We need tools, raw materials like metal and wood.”

“I… I…” he stammered, not sure what was happening and what he had agreed to. “I have tools at home but not here.”

“Very good,” said Ckkkrt. “We go now.”

“No…” said Lunsdie, drawing out the sound. “I need to sell what I brought. Perhaps you can explain what needs to be done—”

She dismissed his suggestion with another vulgar wave. “No. You would do it wrong. Take me there and I will instruct you.”

He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere until the market closes. Unless I sell off my stock…”

The creature walked away without another word, circling wide around the market to the far side. He watched her out of curiosity, one ear raised in a smirk, as she walked from vendor to vendor, picking up fruit with her bare paws and bringing it to her nose for a sniff. Occasionally she would offer the selection to other shoppers, standing far too close to them, holding the fruit beneath their noses. He could see her muzzle moving but was too far away to hear the words she said. “Does this smell ripe?” he figured she was asking. “Should it smell like this?”

She picked up fruit from one cart then set it back down before wandering off to the next, leaving vendor after vendor in distress and chasing the shoppers away from the far end of the market. Then she turned about and visited the same carts again, herding more shoppers his way.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Lunsdie whispered as the customers headed his way in search of some untouched fruit.

———

So where to from here? Please leave your suggestions in the comments, below.

And as always, thank you for your support!

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wk_bTKiFHE_rwRTcTIsypuLHXxnPykkc6bPttm191Cw/edit?usp=sharing