Meme: Orphan!verse (Patreon)

I am on chapter eight of my tear up and fix Aberrant Magic 7 project, but I had a snippet that refused to leave me alone.

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Liam blew out a breath. He had no idea what he was supposed to say to any of these Grandmothers, so he turned his back on thousands of years of experience and sat on the floor in front of a nine or ten year old boy with impossibly blue eyes. 

“Hi. I’m Liam.”

The boy nodded, but his gaze kept darting around the room. Liam imagined that all these huge Grandmothers must seem overwhelming, especially for someone who had lost his whole ship—his whole family. For him, they must look like dinosaurs. Personally, Liam was noticing how much smaller these Grandmothers were—they looked more like Tuk-status women than millennia old Grandmothers with the wisdom to rule a ship. Maybe that’s why they had to ask the Calti for help.

“What’s your name?” Liam asked the little boy.

He finally looked at Liam. “Chad,” he said softly. “Is Alison okay?”

Liam looked at this ship’s eldest Grandmother. She gazed back without showing any emotion, so Liam looked to Ondry. He had paled. Liam closed his eyes and tried to find the words to explain death to a child who had already seen too much of it. Liam knew a lot of people flew in old ships—the war had redirected too many resources to the fighting. But that had been a distant problem up until this moment. Now this ship had a dozen orphans and no consensus about how to handle them. Maybe Ondry held Liam up as some expert on humanity, but Liam didn’t know either.

“She’s not okay, is she?” Chad hiccupped in the middle.

“I’m sorry,” Liam said. “The Grandmothers didn’t reach her in time.” Even if they had boarded earlier, she had gone into the radiation zone too many times to survive. All the adults had. Until the end, they’d tried to fix their broken old ship to save the children. That had made an impact on the Grandmothers, no matter how much they tried to look stoic now. They probably didn’t want strangers from the Calti to see their distress.

“Why didn’t they come?” Chad looked around as if he was surrounded by monsters.

“Rownt see the world differently,” Liam said, and that was the worst explanation he had ever offered to anyone. He took a breath and tried again. “They move slowly, and they didn’t understand what had happened.”

“You mean they were afraid?” Chad wrinkled his nose. 

“They didn’t want to make a mistake. They were afraid they didn’t understand people or why your ship that was so damaged.”

“There was an explosion.” Chad’s eyes shone with tears, and in the background, Liam heard Ondry whispering. He was probably explaining human tears, but for once Liam didn’t have time to pay attention to what he might be doing. 

“How long ago?”

Chad shrugged miserably. “Alison asked them to help.”

“But they didn’t know Alison, and Rownt don’t believe in talking to strangers.” Liam knew he’d made a mistake the second tears ran over Chad’s cheeks. No doubt some parent had given him the same advice. “But Rownt always take care of children,” Liam quickly added. It didn’t stem the flow of tears. “And they like to spoil their friends. I have a friend and the Grandmother brought his dog on the ship.” Liam prayed for all he was worth, and some god listened.

Chad blinked, clearly too shocked to continue crying. “A dog?” he asked softly. “A real dog like they have on Earth?”

“A real dog from Earth,” Liam said. “That’s where Zach is from and his parents bought him a dog, and he brought it with him.” Liam felt a little guilty about volunteering Zach for this shit show, but he had almost no experience with kids. Sure, he had siblings, but he didn’t have a great track record at mainlining relationships with them. He was just now starting to think that Luke might not hate him. He had no way of dealing with actual children.

“Really?” Tears still slid over his cheeks, but at least something had distracted him. That was Liam’s goal for now—distract the children until they figured out what to say to a ship full of youngish, agitated Grandmothers whose instincts told them to care for children who flinched away from them. It would help if some of the Calti Grandmothers would cover over, but Grandmothers were stubborn creatures who avoided others’ territories.

“Ondry?” 

Immediately Ondry knelt down behind him, staying as far back as he could while still touching Liam. He’d learned a lot about humans in their years together, so he would be able to explain to the Grandmother why they wanted to steal his palteia. 

“Could you ask the Grandmother if Zach is available to come over with Duke?” Liam asked.

Ondry gave a distressed trill and then he was hurrying away.

“Can he understand English?” Chad asked. He was an observant one. 

“He can. When I was first learning Rownt, he learned English so he could help me. These Grandmothers started studying English when they first picked up your ship’s transmission. They understand most of what you say now.”

Chad looked around again. “Why won’t they talk to us?”

“Because they can’t say English words. Their lips and tongue aren’t the right shape.”

“One of the older boys was born with ears the wrong shape and he couldn’t hear,” Chad said with great seriousness. “Is it like that?”

“A little,” Liam said. “Only it’s normal for them to be born like that. It’s why their language sounds so different.”

Chad chewed on his lower lip and then he got up. “I should go see the others.” When he turned to leave, a half dozen Rownt scrambled out of his way. The image was almost comical, only nothing in this situation was funny. Liam had no idea what to tell these Grandmothers. Human children needed human love and care, but Liam couldn’t promise they’d receive that on Earth. If he’d known why they wanted to know about orphans, he would have told Zach to edit the information a little more carefully.

Several Rownt followed Chad when he left, probably to ensure his safety. For Rownt, a seven year old was still clinging to a parent’s leg.

“How many children did you save?” Liam asked. Only then did he stand and look at the eldest Grandmother. She was the only one old enough to look the part.

“Twelve,” she said. A younger Grandmother trilled in distress. None of them could take revenge against radiation, so at least the Grandmothers weren’t about to declare a vendetta. Maybe Rownt didn’t war, but they sure as hell knew how to fight.

“Did you allow them to stay together?”

The Grandmother’s nose twitched as if she wanted to close the nostrils. “Yes,” she said. “We are unable to care for the youngest.” 

It would hurt a Grandmother to admit that. 

“How old is the youngest?”

“Young enough to be unable to walk.” The Grandmother could no longer control her expression, and her nose closed. Liam wondered if she was disgusted with herself for not reacting to the distress call earlier or if she was disgusted with the humans who had flown a dangerously under-shielded ship with such young children.

“Are any of them sick from radiation?”

A younger Grandmother, but one who often communicated scientific information, spoke up. “The children’s area was well-shielded. The eldest child followed the last adult to the upper deck and has some minor tissue damage, but we have counteracted the deleterious effects of the radioactive exposure. The other children are unaffected.”

Liam closed his eyes.  If the whole crew had stayed in the shielded area, they might have survived longer, but they’d chosen to leave the shielding and work on the engines knowing they could never go back into the protected area. Their very flesh became so irradiated that they contaminated everything around them, and they died trying to save their children.

But Liam didn’t know how those people would have defined “save.” He didn’t even know whether the crew had been aligned with Earth or the rebel colonies. He felt wholly inadequate to handle the situation.

The eldest Grandmother stepped forward. “What would you recommend?” she asked, her eyes wide as she waited for some great wisdom Liam didn’t have. Normally Liam would have tried to maintain some illusion of wisdom by remaining silent. But children were at risk. 

He looked at the Grandmother and slowly climbed to his feet. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

More than one Grandmother paled. 

“If I could see their records, I might be able to tell if the parents had family who could take the children in.”

A tuk-ranked male with an eggling clinging to his leg spoke up. “The mothers did not survive to choose the parents for these children. Another must.”

Liam rubbed his face. That was so damn logical that he wanted to agree. However, humans were as touchy as Rownt went it came to kids. “Human children have human needs, especially when they are emotionally in pain.” Liam mangled the Rownt language, but he hoped that they understood that for humans pain was not strictly a physical experience. Liam had no doubt they felt loss and grief and fear, but for them, those were emotions separate from pain. Maybe they did understand because more than one trilled and a younger female fled the temple.

“How do we ease the pain?” the eldest asked.

Sadly, Liam had no answer.