Regi's Goddess, Chapter 6 (Patreon)

Chapter Six

The Kowri didn't seem to have any concept of suburbs. There was only a dense village with four and five story buildings that abruptly ended at the edge of an equally dense wood. If anyone ever started a forest fire, Dante figured the town and shipyard would go up pretty damn fast. But knowing Regi's people, they probably had some god of forest fires that they relied on to prevent that from happening.

The universe was a damn strange place.

Once they left the wide, empty space around the space port, Regi had chosen a path that followed the edge of the town, so tall trees shaded the lane on one side, and the backs of what looked like apartments lined the other. For one second, Dante considered making a joke about how alien worlds all looked a little like rural Canada, but he didn’t figure Regi watched much B-level science fiction.

A few Kowri faces watched from upper windows, but so far everyone had kept their distance. Dante still felt alien gazes on his skin as he tried to ignore his own discomfort. Still, the way some leaned against open window sills made him think about snipers. He wasn’t sure how Kowri would handle an alien diving behind a tree, but he suspected they would not appreciate his assumption that a Kowri would shoot him in the back.

And he didn’t even know if Kowri engaged in that sort of violence. They seemed like a knife-in-the-front kind of species. Even when Dante had gone to the temple during that first day on the planet, angry Kowri had tried to get in front of him to confront him. No one jumped him from the back. More than anything, that choice set them apart from the pirates. However, he suspected both groups were dangerous.

Like most of the Kowri, Regi was solidly made. His gray and black stripes reminded Dante of a monochrome tiger painted in velvet fur, which should be a warning that his people were historically hunters and designed to lurk in shadowed woods. Dante found those markings comforting on Regi. After all, Dante had always felt more at ease around animals than people. However, the idea of sapient alien predators wanting him dead made his back itch as though he could feel the sniper rifle dot tickling it.

“This place is amazing,” Dante said. As a conversation starter, his words were weak, but he needed to distract himself from the fear that had begun to make a return. He had thought the slavers had burned that out of him, but apparently not.

“I find most planets are remarkably similar. Life has certain requirements that even the gods cannot circumvent. However, I have missed worlds with large expanses of protected wilderness.” Regi didn’t hesitate in his easy stroll. Either he was not worried or he hid his emotions far better than Dante.

Dante angled his head toward the sky. “That is not like any other planet.” He studied the white and orange arches that glowed against the blue sky. Fluffy clouds drifted past, obscuring parts, so they were definitely above the atomoshere. Dante assumed they were planetary rings, but he had never seen a view from underneath.

Regi glanced up. “The planet where I grew up had rings. We lived so close to the center line that the rings appeared as a bright line that rose nearly straight up into the heavens.”

Center line. Equator. The translator did have some glitches.

Regi cocked one ear toward Dante. “I assume your planets do not have rings, but surely you knew that such planets existed.”

“Sure, I knew they could. Either Jupiter or Saturn has big rings, I can’t remember which, and I’ve seen pictures from space.” Dante turned to Regi. “But this… this is beautiful.” Dante needed more descriptive words. The arches glowed, no doubt reflecting the sun, and it cast an almost magical glow on the town, including the blue-hued temple where Alb had her office. It gave the edges an orange tint. Dante had assumed it was a lopped off pyramid, but as they walked around the side, he realized that the building was elongated, making it even more enormous than he had assumed.

“That temple is huge.”

“The cold-season temple must house the most dangerous and most territorial animals, so it is larger than either the growing-season or harvest-season temples.”

“So, those are the safe temples?” Dante wondered if they could visit those next time because the atmosphere around Regi’s temple had been less than friendly. He’d liked Alb and Sibja, but when they’d passed the entrance, Dante had thought some Kowri had attempted to murder him by glaring. The hostile temple bred some hostile parishioners.

“Iloxot, Lady of punishment, is a harvest-season god.”

“So, not safe, but safer,” Dante guessed. “And that makes sense since punishment is the harvest you get from your sins.” Dante hadn’t felt any sympathy for the bastard who’d killed his mother. He had harvested that sentence, and even if Dante had been against the death penalty before the trial, he couldn’t regret the jury’s decision. However, that was a detail Dante planned to keep to himself. He wasn’t sure how aliens saw capital punishment, and he didn’t want to either paint himself as a barbarian or give them ideas.

“The three-season temples are magnitudes larger.”

“Larger?” Dante stumbled. He couldn’t wrap his mind around a building magnitudes larger than something three or four times the size of Egypt’s pyramids.

“Just as Retav ships are magnitudes larger than Gavd ships.” Regi offered that detail in an almost bored tone.

Dante blinked, his brain going offline as he considered what that would mean. The Gavd ships surrounding the pirate vessle were enormous, and the pirate ship would dwarf human rockets. Earth was definitely losing the technology race.

“The stables should be near. Hopefully they have deactivated the security. The outlying stables suffer from the insatiable curiosity of children, so they secure the fence line.”

It was good to know psychology was universal. At one point, Dante had been one of those curious kids, begging to trade riding lessons for time mucking out stables. His parents had the money to pay for lessons, but his father had vetoed it unless Dante wanted to work with one of the English riding stables in town. He thought they looked smart in their suits as they went around the damn jumping course. Dante preferred shoveling horse shit. “I don’t see much technology.” Even the doorbell at Alb’s house had been the sort that could be found on old school houses: it swung and a clapper slapped against the dome.

“Kowri prefer to hide our technology so it doesn’t interfer with the forests.”

“Another god?” Dante guessed.

A small smile graced Regi’s face. “Lord Qis is the god of both old forests and secrets.”

“A good god to avoid angering.”

Regi touched his closed fists to his temples. “Most developed species eschew nature.” Regi stopped and put a boot off the path. With his toe, he dug a shallow line in the mossy ground. Overhead, huge trees spread their fingers, and the smell of leaf litter and dirt was so familiar that Dante suffered a moment of home-sickness so intense that his chest felt like he had a band tightening around his heart.

He leaned against a tree, the rough bark familar. “Plenty of humans do as well, but I like this, and most of my people would as well.” Even city slickers liked tree-lined walks and quaint villages, although most drew the line at the inevitable remains of nature. Let them see one crusted over pile of dog poop or a half-eaten crow and they shrieked and covered their children’s eyes. Dante had a vivid memory of a pack of reporters horrified at the horse poop littering a trail near the ranch. Range horses ate grass... which meant they pooped mostly grass. After a day or two, the manure disintegrated, but the reporters picked their way around it and loudly whispered about trail management. So Dante understood Regi’s frustration with his shipmates’ prejudices.

Regi toed the ground flat again, but a scar remained in the moss layer. “Humans are unusual then.” He drew out the “u” in humans so far that he turned the drawl into a new art form.

“Why? Because we’re similar to yours?”

“Yes.” Regi strode off, and even with his long legs, Dante had to break into a trot to catch up.

The fence was made of something that looked like long rods of rebar, and a far gate with alien script on a sign had a silhouette of an animal that looked like a cross between a unicorn and an emaciated rhinoceros. Regi touched the gate lightly, pulling his hand back as quickly as he touched, but then his ears pricked forward and he pushed the gate open. That was the reaction of someone who worried about an electric fence.

“This way,” Regi said. He strode toward a building painted obnoxious green with icy blue trim. The gables of the building were open and giant fans slowly turned, moving air through even though the day was still. Regi opened a narrow door in the end of the stable and entered the dimly lit building.

Dante had learned to judge people by their stables. A person who kept a stable with spotless concrete floors and the faint whiff of bleach cared more about appearances than the comfort of animals. One that stank and had deep straw clumped with waste had perfected laziness. This stable had the hallmarks of someone who cared deeply for animals. The warm smell of hay filled the air and the animals had enough bedding that the few in their stalls had kicked some out. However, he would never mistake these creatures for horses.

The animals had huge heads, and they were as tall as Percherons, although not as wide. Their faces looked like some bizarre combination of rhinoceros and horse and unicorn, but with none of the beauty of any of those animals. It had large eyes and a bare head with only a short Mohawk of mane on the neck. A wide, blunt horn in the middle of their skull looked ready to ram an enemy, and a pair of shorter and sharper ones flanked large nostrils.

“Welcome, exalted,” a large Kowri said as he came out from behind a rolling rack of feed. He propped his pitchfork against a round bale of what must pass for local hay.

“Greetings.” Regi touched his temples, and the new Kowri did the same. “I had hoped to show my friend the pebafri.”

“Ah, well you can see I have some of the best on the planet. I had a beautiful girl with white legs, but she wandered off toward the temple, and you know how it goes. The gods choose, and we are left with what remains.” His ears swiveled before going back to what Dante thought of as a rest position.

Regi changed the subject, so maybe complaining about the gods was rude. “Dante rode an animal similar to our pebafri on his home planet before pirates removed him from his world to care for the dops they had taken from Kowri worlds.”

The stable hand’s eyes widened, although Dante wasn’t sure exactly what part of the statement had surprised him. Kowri seemed as reluctant to get near dops as the pirates had been, but Regi acted surprised every time Earth had some similarity to Kowri worlds, so that could cause the reaction.

“I heard you had animals that you rode the way we ride horses, and I had to ride one.”

The new Kowri laughed. “Spoken like a true rider. I had not thought outsiders rode animals.”

This was the plan—Dante had to impress these xenophobic aliens. So he had to bury his own urge to hide his feelings behind a facade and let others see him as a person. “My people still debate whether anyone exists in the universe outside our own people, so I am too new to the universe to know what outsiders are likely to do. I only know that many of my people enjoy horse riding. Are your pebafri safe to handle?” Dante nodded toward the closest animal. Now that the shock had passed, he could see the beauty in the strong line of their muscle and the curve of their horns.

“No animal that large is safe, and Gavd chose a favorite who is more than capable of defending himself,” he said. “But one with a strong will can handle the animals.” He studied Dante, not hiding his doubt that Dante could handle an animal. However, riding was the only part of this plan that Dante was confident about. He’d gentled wild horses and trained rescue horses to ride trails. He knew animals. He knew very little besides animals.

“Can we hire a pebafri and hire your time as Dante attempts to reconcile his knowledge of horses and our pebafris?” Regi asked.

The stable hand wiped his palms on his pants—a gesture Dante had seen thousands of times in the stables. “I would not ask payment from an exalted. I am Siger. I own the stable, and when you called, it was I who spoke with you Regi a’Divashi.”

“The twin blessings, and thank you for inviting us into your stable.” Regi made that strange thumb touch gesture in front of his chest.

“Thank you,” Dante echoed. He didn’t want to offend anyone by wishing blessings on them, especially since Regi’s people considered bad luck the first blessing. Dante had been raised to avoid wishing bad luck on others. “I haven’t ridden any creature that large, so I hope you can give me some instruction.”

Siger hooked his thumbs into his waistband. “Those who have not ridden pebafri usually insist they know enough to ride one.”

“Or that Gavd will guide their hand,” Regi said softly. Dante looked over, and Regi wrinkled his nose. “I was a precocious child who overestimated how much the gods watched over me.”

“Most young people do,” Siger said. “I once cried after eating sweets because I was sure my mother’s god would tell her that I had broken her rules. I had not yet learned that the gods see little of what we do.”

“Their gaze is too large for this world,” Regi agreed. “However, I hope the Lady Divashi will continue to guide us as long as any dops or slaves are held by pirates who hide along our border.”

Singer’s ears dipped backward, which probably meant that he didn’t think Regi wise for relying on his goddess. Dante understood the concern. Any goddess named after poison seemed like a questionable choice as a patron, but it seemed like Divashi hadn’t give either of them much of a choice. Dante suspected the good lady had seen him before Regi and the Coalition crew had appeared. After all, he’d dropped his cleaning water, which had stalled him in the room as he desperately worked to fix the problem before any pirates caught him. And then the door had jammed, causing the locking mechanism to engage. Dante had been stuck in that room when he heard unfamiliar shouts and pounding feet. When Regi had triggered the exterior latch, Dante had promptly tripped over him and nearly brained himself on the far wall before Regi’s second in command had pinned him to the floor. In Regi’s terms, that would be an excess of the goddess’s first blessing. Dante hoped Divashi had lost track of him now that he was surrounded by so many Kowri.

Dante decided to change the subject to something he could discuss without offending anyone. “On my world, I cared for horses and took those with no experience out on rides. I know the danger of underestimating animals. Since I have never ridden a pebafri, I know I need the guidance of one with enough experience to keep me from making a mistake.” He offered his best Texas smile.

“You have passed your temple years,” Siger said with a huff.

Dante frowned and looked at Regi.

“You’ve finished your temple education. You aren’t a child who doesn’t know how the world works,” Regi explained.

“My father would disagree,” Dante said before his normal reticence could veto his mouth.

“Fathers,” Siger said in a weary tone. Apparently some experiences were universal. “A pebafri is a dangerous animal for one whose experienced is limited, and even with instruction and guidance, your safety is not guaranteed. I would not wish for you to underestimate the danger in falling off an animal or getting thrown off if your behavior annoys the beast.”

Dante looked at the pebafri’s massive legs. He doubted it could buck fast enough or high enough to get him off, and Dante hadn’t fallen off a horse in years. He’d had a couple of horses take spills and he’d gone down with them, so riding had it’s dangers. However, he would not fall off a horse. But he also knew that he wouldn’t impress anyone by bragging. “I will take that risk. I have been locked inside a ship for long enough that bruises or broken bones would be a small price to pay. However, I promise to listen to every instruction so I can minimize the risk.”

“Any rider who has been on an animal more times than they have fingers has experienced an intimate relationship with the ground. Pebafri have no patience for mistakes.”

So they were like riding a stallion or a mare just going into heat. Dante had been fool enough to do that a few times. It wasn’t as if the stable could allow horses to go without exercise just because they were hormonal on a particular day. “I will keep that in mind,” Dante promised.

“Follow. I will show you the equipment we use to tame these animals and give you a brief description of the guidance and control.”

“I hope that's a fancy way of saying reins.”

“That word did not translate. What are reins?” Starger asked as he moved toward the back of the stable. Dante followed close at his heels, and Regi trailed behind.

“A way to control horses,” Dante offered.

“Then I am likely going to show you reins.”

“Dante.” Regi put a hand on Dante’s arm, and a shiver when up his spine. “The wilderness is dense and you do not have a phone. Do not leave the road or lose sight of the town unless you have someone with you who can call for help if the situation arises that you need someone to assist you with those bruises or broken bones you may earn.”

That was a reasonable concern. “I promise,” Dante said.

Regi huffed. “And try to avoid breaking any critical or necessary bones.”

Dante had to school his features to avoid laughing. He hadn’t expected that sort of admonition. “I will do my best to keep any bone breaking to the small bones.”

Regi wrinkled his nose, and the hair along his nostrils fluffed up.

“I’ll be fine,” Dante said. And hopefully he would have a chance to hang around the stable and talk to the Kowri who came to ride. Alb was right that they had to change the perception of the average Kowri, and riders bonded over a shared love of their animals.

Besides, after months trapped in a tin can, he longed to get out into the open. Maybe pebafri weren’t horses, but it was possible Dante would never again see any horse, much less Marengo. Marengo and Blue had left a hole in his heart, but Dante had to move on. This was his life now. Peaches and some big horned bastards were what he had left, and he had to find a way to make his peace with that. It’s all he could do.