Kozen clapped his hands loudly and called, “Gosef? Teezle? My friends, I have need of your help!”
In a moment a short, burly H’raken with a broad chest and green skin came to the door and smiled at Kozen.
“Kozen, my good friend!” he cried, clapping the other male on the back. “What can I do for you today?”
“Well, actually, I am hoping you can help my new friend, Commander Bravik.” Kozen gestured at Brav. “He is the emissary from the Kindred people who has come to visit us and learn our ways but alas, he has no proper clothes to wear to tonight’s feast. Do you think that you and Teezle can help him?”
“Well…” Gosef looked Brav up and down, a considering frown on his face. “He is certainly a large one, for all his head is so small. But you know Teezle and her flying loom—I am certain she can come up with something. Come in—come in!” And he threw the door wide and beckoned them in.
Inside the dwelling there were children running here and there, laughing and shouting and playing.
“Forgive this madness,” Gosef said, smiling fondly at his children. “The young ones get excited right before the feast, you know.”
“It’s all right—doesn’t bother me,” Brav told him.
Actually, he liked kids and had always wished he could have some of his own. The last female he had tried to bond to him had wanted them too—desperately. She had been willing to stay with Brav, even after their failed bonding, but he had let her go. She deserved to be with a male who could give her what she wanted, he thought. And he never could, because it was nearly impossible for a female to get pregnant by a Kindred warrior unless she was bonded to him. Of course, there were a few rare exceptions but Brav hadn’t been willing to waste the female’s time hoping for a one in a thousand shot.
They passed through the busy house into a back room where an immense loom was set up. After a moment, Brav realized that—like almost everything else here on Soluu Four—it was not manmade but had been grown. The frame was made of living tree branches and the white linen-like fiber that was being woven was using a thread spun from the same giant puff balls Navii had thrown on the guest house bed to make a mattress.
“This is Teezle, my beautiful wife—the other half of my heart,” Gosef proudly introduced the woman who was working on the loom. “My lovely one, come and meet our new friend, who comes from the Kindred to learn our ways.”
“Ahh, I would be pleased to, my darling,” Teezle—who was a short female with purple skin—replied. “Only let me cut this last thread…”
She picked up a long, dangerous-looking piece of metal that appeared to be some kind of straight razor and lifted it to the loom. But at that moment, there was a loud thud in the other room and the sound of siblings fighting.
“Oh!” Teezle gasped in surprise. The straight razor twisted in her hand and gashed her palm, creating what appeared to Brav to be quite a deep, serious wound.
“Shit!” he muttered when he saw the blood dripping from the H’raken woman’s palm—it was dark pink rather than red. “We’d better get her to a Med Center,” he remarked to Kozen, who was watching with a frown as Gosef ran to his wife.
“A Med Center?” he frowned up at Brav. “What might that be?”
“You know—a place where she can see a doctor? A healer?” Brav amended, thinking he didn’t understand the word. “That looks like it might need stitches or at the very least some really strong wound glue.”
Kozen shook his head.
“I do not understand any of what you are saying, Friend Bravik. Why should we take Teezle to any healer when she has her spouse right here with her to heal her when she is injured?”
Indeed, Gosef was kneeling by his wife’s side, cradling her hurt hand in both of his. Gently, he blotted the blood away with a piece of the cottony puff ball.
With the blood out of the way, Brav could see what an extremely deep cut it was.
“She might have sliced some tendons,” he muttered to Kozen. “Are you sure her husband can handle that? Is Gosef a healer?”
“Why of course he is—he is a healer of his own spouse, as we all are,” Kozen said, frowning. “For who else should a man or woman turn to but their loving wife or husband to heal them when they are injured? That is the way of the Mother Stone and the reason her power flows through us nightly—so that we can heal each other.”
As Kozen spoke, Gosef bent his head and began to tenderly kiss his wife’s palm. Brav might have been imagining it, but he thought he saw a kind of pinkish glow centered on the hurt hand. Gosef continued to kiss with a single-minded kind of devotion—his attention didn’t even waver when there was another loud thump from the other room.