I bite back a sigh, because this man is trying to be nice but he’s also not listening to a thing I’ve said. “I’m really fine,” I say, glancing at the waves in the hopes of finding my corpse with the egg sac before it washes away entirely. It’s gone, though, and I fight back my disappointment. “I’m going to keep walking,” I tell him, eyeing his net with curiosity. It’s got a few fish in it, and I really want to examine them but it’s been made clear to me that food is not to be messed with, so I stick to the stuff that washes up on the beach. “Thank you, though, S’bren.”
He nods at me, and then looks over my shoulder, curious.
I turn, too.
There’s an entire group of people coming down to the beach. I see Tia, and Raven, Steph, Flor and Sam walking with R’jaal, Raahosh, and a few of the Tall Horn clan. All of the women are carrying baskets and the men have large rocks and the biggest pieces of driftwood that we’ve been using as seating.
“What is all this?” I ask, bewildered, as they set up a short distance away and start unpacking their baskets.
“Games,” S’bren says, slinging his net over his other shoulder. “The hunter games. We will be mixing them with human games and all will happen on the beach. It will make many exciting days.” He grins, all teeth, and I can tell he’s excited.
I am…not.
They’re going to be trudging all over my beach, ruining any chance I have for scrounging up new specimens, and they’ll be so loud and noisy that I won’t be able to think straight. “But why games? Why here?”
“Everyone at camp is at each other’s throats,” S’bren says, shifting on his feet. “B’shit and C’lie have made all the males on edge so we must find new ways to impress them so they will listen to reason.”
I frown up at him. “I’m not sure how this is their fault…” When he snorts and gives me a disbelieving look, I decide I’m not going to win that conversation and bail out. “Thanks for the heads up, but I think I’ll go back to camp.” Since I won’t be able to do anything here anyhow. Even now, Tia’s looking over at me with a curious expression, and I know in a few moments I’m either going to be roped in to helping out with the set-up or I’m going to be teased mercilessly because S’bren’s talking to me. “Thanks for your, er, help,” I say to him, even though he didn’t help me with a thing.
S’bren just nods at me. “I will feed you if you need it, female. Just ask for S’bren.”
That won’t be happening. I cast one last longing look at my beach o’ specimens and then head back toward camp. I gravitate toward the main fire, just because I see Liz there with her baby in her arms.
I’m not normally much of a baby person, but there’s something about that tiny infant that I love. Maybe it’s that she’s such an obvious hybrid of two distinctly unrelated species that my brain is trying to figure her out. Whatever it is, I adore the sight of Liz’s Ahsoka or Harlow’s tiny Daya. Fat, plump little Glory is interesting too, but I get to see her less because both Vordis and Angie tend to monopolize her.
Liz is all too happy to pass her daughter off when I move to her side, arms extended. She offers me little Ahsoka and then moves to the fire, dipping her cup into the simmering bag of tea over the flames. I beam down at Ahsoka, admiring her smooth blue brow, small horn nubs, and tiny human nose. Her dominant features remind me quite a bit of the islanders, actually. They have blue skin and dark hair like the sa-khui, but they lack the body plating and large horns, so those must be recessive traits when paired with another species. Harlow’s little girl has black hair, but it’s soft and curling instead of thick and bone-straight like her mate’s. When I don’t have time to poke around on the beach, I should really get one of my skins out and start marking all the traits that the babies have from each parent. Maybe I can even get Veronica to take me to the other tribe for a while, since there’s a ton of children there, and I’ve even heard rumor