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The way zha says the last word sounds like just what I have come to expect from humans. No respect for history and an obsession with ugly things. I grind my tusks, opening my mouth to argue again, then shut it.

I keep trying to think of different ways to explain to them, frantic to convince them, my middle segment twisting in pain at the idea of losing another hoard. I can’t do it again. I can’t…

“I need your help, Kroaicho,” Olivia grits out.

Zha is trying to keep a bundle of weapons from shifting off zha’s back, but even with zha’s newly enhance strength, zha is too small to effectively carry it. I look down at my collection of beautiful items clutched against me, then back to the ugly mass of metal and hand-woven grasses keeping it all bundled together and my middle segment hurts even more.

My upper limbs tremble as I slowly, painfully, place my treasures on the grass, chittering out my pain as I do it. Then I exhale a long breath and move over to help.

It’s no trouble to carry the weapons, but I can’t move my eyes away from the pile I’m leaving behind, careful to not think of the mounds of similar items deep in the caves beneath us.

“I can carry one of them,” Olivia says in a soft voice. “Which one?”

How will I decide?

I choose hastily, knowing that if I linger, I may not make myself move. Instead, I use one of my middle limbs to touch one of the crystals and then start following the rest of the group out of the valley, my skin lit fully pink as I trudge along.

The journey is long. Long enough that I have time to think, especially since everyone is being carefully quiet. Even the argila somehow know to not let out their usual braying, though Rin’s constant fussing is likely the cause.

Olivia seems worried about me, skin lighting up with blues and reds when zha looks over. Zha asks me to tell zha stories of my lost treasures back in the cave behind us and I comply in a low voice. Each one I tell makes it feel like the treasure is not lost; the story remains.

After the fourth story, I realize zha knew that all along. Zha’s skin is lit up white with amusement and that inner whisper lets me know this shift in zha’s story.

At first, my skin thrums purple at being led in such a way, but then I decide that I have been ignoring too many of the signals and whispers.

It’s always been a bad habit that my zhann liked to point out. Whatever doesn’t fit how I want to think about the world, such as gender in other species, I ignore.

Life is far less confusing that way… but it isn’t going to help me right now. I already left my hoard—which is the source of the tight feeling in my middle segment—I should try to shift my thinking so the decision is worth it.

I start looking around at the group, paying far closer attention than I ever have to other beings.

I remember how differently I saw Olivia earlier and try to apply the same new vision to the rest. To the way the dappled moonlight moves along Drasuk’s blue hide, signaling just how confusing zha always finds Kira. Then to the shifting orange and green fur that wafts from Thivoll’s long mane, also fitting for how playful and completely absorbed zha is with Ree, zha’s purple, orange, and black treasure that rides on zha’s back, issuing silent commands to the group.

Then to the black and green of Kuret, a fitting combination to how focused zha is on Rin. The lightness of green, mixed with the pure black a zhann would signal for a zhannel… except in a new orientation. One I’m still beginning to appreciate as I think of how to become two with Olivia.

Except… we aren’t just two, are we? I look around at the dizzying array of colors moving around me, opening my vision up to catch more details in the dark… and I finally see it. What Olivia has been trying to communicate. A glittering, living hoard.

My middle segment leaps as orange lights up my skin, but then red quickly takes over. A living hoard means a mobile hoard, I realize in horror. A hoard that is easily lost. That won’t stay in one place, just like Olivia won’t. That can be… killed.

How could I ever, possibly protect a hoard such as this?

How?

My skin pulses red and blue as I think of all the ways each of the bright treasure beings around me could die. No, no, no. This is far worse.

“What’s wrong, Kroaicho?” Olivia whispers to me, skin lighting with concern.

After a deep breath, I settle my middle segment, reminding myself that the greatest treasures are the hardest to keep from being stolen. That a zhasie just has to fight all the harder, be all the more vicious to keep those treasures safe.

I move my head back and forth in the human gesture as my skin settles back to a dull blue and orange. “Nothing,” I chitter back softly.

Olivia moves zha’s head up and down, and doesn’t speak again.

I spend the rest of the long trek thinking of ways to protect this new hoard. I’m so engrossed in my thoughts that I don’t realize we have exited the forest until I stumble on rocks and plunge into the water. After a small moment of panic as I sink into the water—which is never a place a zhasie should ever be—strong tentacles wrap around me.

Eli is once again yellow in zha’s pride as zha holds me aloft. I light up purple for a short moment as Olivia asks if I am alright, but then sink back into my thoughts, skin lit blue as I strategize. The soft laughter of the humans after Eli deposits me back on the shore barely registers on my mind.

I don’t even balk at being carried in Wroahk’s tentacles after everyone points out that I will sink to the bottom of the lake, incapable of swimming. After we move across, I only cast a quick glance at the glittering rocks on the shore and don’t complain when the cave they offer smells of some foul beast.