Page 10 of Cozy Prisons (Human Pets of Talin: Origins #4)

Nataly

After a night of not sleeping, Nataly spent most of the morning fixing mistakes instead of doing any real work. For every problem she attempted to solve, she made it worse and had to start over at least once.

All the tea she’d drunk trying to wake up only made her feel shaky and wired, not focused. No matter how hard she tried, her thoughts kept going back to the night before.

Daxus staying by her side. The sound of his purring. The feel of his hand held in hers. With him at her side, the night air had smelled even more crisp and sweeter than normal. The smell of him lingered long after he’d left.

After her mind wandered onto the topic of Daxus again, causing her to mess up for the fifth time in a row, she threw up her hands and looked up at her ceiling.

“Fine! I give up!”

What she really wanted to do was go for a long walk, or even better, a hike. She’d wanted to do that for days, but the moment she opened the door the outside world felt overwhelming and she retreated again.

She didn’t feel trapped; she loved her little domicile too much for it to feel limiting.

But she missed the way long walks would help her clear her head and feel more centered.

Back when she’d lived on stations she would walk the perimeter of one of the levels.

The scenery wasn’t as nice but the walk still had the same effect.

“I need to figure this out,” she grumbled, looking over at the door again. “Obviously the way I went about it last night isn’t going to work.”

Standing up, she stretched and headed for the food preparation area. Her body probably couldn’t handle any more tea, but soup out of the reconstituter sounded good.

“Maybe I need to handle this like an endurance test,” she mused. “You don’t run an entire race on the first day. You work up to the distance.”

Yeah, that sounded good. Each night she’d work on only walking to one spot. She’d make the trip back and forth until she didn’t feel scared or panicky anymore.

That sounded like a scientific way to handle an emotional mess. It appealed to her!

Her door chimed at the same time the reconstituter pinged. Ignoring the machine, she called for the door to open. It revealed four friends with excited faces.

“Nataly, the supply ship is here early!” Dalia said, doing a little happy dance in place and bumping into her sister Riff.

Riff gave her a little shove that did nothing.

“They have the new stationary comms array assembly,” Sima said. “And more domiciles.”

“I can’t wait to have a place of my own,” Decard grumbled. “I’m tired of Cassius complaining about my snoring. He’s got a room all to himself. How can my snoring get through that many walls?”

Everyone ignored Decard’s complaint. They were very aware that Decard and Cassius wouldn’t live apart, even if there were hundreds of empty domiciles.

The friends had started rooming together when they were young.

They competed and sometimes fought, but given every opportunity, they never moved.

There was a running joke that if they ever found a long-term relationship, they’d share the woman too.

“They’re landing now. Come with us to meet the new arrivals,” Dalia said, stepping into Nataly’s domicile. No one gave a second look at the mess. They were all used to the way she liked to surround herself with work.

“I should probably try to finish fixing the clearing bot,” she said, pointing to the “head” of the bot that contained the logic crystals and computing matrix.

It had stopped following the designated path input by Massium.

The Talin had become so annoyed that she almost ripped the head off to get it to Nataly.

When delivering it, Massium said that if the bot couldn’t be fixed, Nataly should set it on fire! Then the Talin left, her frustrated rattling loud and constant.

Riff made a dismissive noise. “Don’t worry about it. More clearing bots are probably in this shipment. We’ll need them if they want to set up that array on the nearby mountain.”

“Besides, no one will be doing any work until after we get all the new supplies stowed,” Dalia pointed out. “Come with us to meet everyone. There’s supposed to be a human!”

“Really?” Nataly asked, abandoning her soup and letting Dalia grab her hand and lead her out of her domicile. “I guess I can spare a little time. They might need my help.”

Riff scoffed. “As if they’d let us help. It’s hard enough to be allowed to do anything when they really need us; there’s no way they’re going to let us shift a single unit while other Talins are watching.”

Nataly stopped moving, bringing Dalia up short. “Shit, do I need my collar?” She looked around the mess. “I’m not even sure where it is!”

“Nah,” Decard said, getting her attention so he could point at his own throat. No collar. “The supply ship is Progress. We don’t need to pretend around them.”

“Oh, right,” Nataly said and let Dalia finish dragging her outside.

She had a moment of disorientation as the bright sun blinded her after spending so much time in her domicile.

She liked to keep the lights dim when she worked so when she tested crystals she could easily see any impurities and trace problems.

Shielding her watering eyes with her free hand, she let Dalia lead her away from her dwelling. There was a little apprehension and mild anxiety, but nothing like she felt when she tried to leave by herself. Being surrounded by familiar people made it easier.

“Do we know anything about the human?” she asked.

“They’re nonbinary," Decard said. “And their name is Hale.”

“That’s it?” she asked. “We don’t know where they come from or how they ended up with the Talins?”

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Riff said. “Hale might’ve been found at a slave auction. I want to say I heard someone say they’d been purchased.”

Nataly shuddered. “I hope not.”

They chatted about how horrible slave auctions were and often they were a death sentence.

After about twenty minutes they got to the large area they’d cleared of trees for ships to land. The size of Progress always took Nataly’s breath away. It wasn’t a large ship compared to most, but it seemed bigger than life when it was planetside.

Perspective could be a funny thing. Ships and space stations never looked that big because there wasn't anything nearby to compare them to. But Progress appeared enormous because she could see individuals standing under it, and like the trees, they looked tiny.

“Oh wow, are those agri-bots?” Dalia cried, then dropped Nataly’s hand to sprint down the slight decline to the ship.

“Ah, to be young,” Riff said.

Nataly snorted. “You’re only two years older than her.”

“It’s not the years, it’s the wear and tear,” Riff responded with a grin.

“I guess,” Nataly said, exchanging a look with Riff’s wife, Sima.

Riff liked to think that she’d done a good job of shielding Dalia. She liked to think of her younger sister as more innocent. The truth was that Dalia was as traumatized as the rest of them from their time on Dandilow II, but she was better at hiding it behind cheerful exuberance.

There were a few times Dalia came home with credits and refused to explain how she got them. Everyone was well aware of what she must’ve done, but Riff was good at ignoring what was right in front of her face. It helped her sanity.

Nataly could appreciate the approach. They’d all had to do something similar at one point. Sometimes survival wasn’t pretty.

“I’m surprised they sent the agri-bots,” Nataly said, moving closer to Sima. Without Dalia holding her hand, the anxiety had started to creep up. Once she was between Sima and Decard she relaxed a little.

“It’s a good idea,” Riff said. “With only a few agri-bots we could grow enough to maintain minimum calorie requirements if we’re cut off.”

“I’m not arguing that,” Nataly said. “I guess it’s because Talins are so quick to spend their wealth, it doesn’t seem like we’d ever need to grow the bulk of our own food. But now that you mention supply chain interruptions, it makes more sense.”

She and Riff kept talking about how much land they’d needed to clear as they all kept walking. By the time they got to the bottom of the incline, the ship’s ramp had descended from its belly and moving bots were unloading under the watchful eye of the crew.

She saw Iris and Damascus standing near the far side of the ramp, talking to Palathum.

Utharium was walking three moving bots up the incline toward the village.

As they came to a stop out of the way of the bots, she saw Daxus checking a data display on a large box covered in warnings to treat it gently.

She cast her eyes around looking for Hale, but she didn’t see any unfamiliar humans.

“I don’t see—” she started to say, but was interrupted by Sima’s squeal of delight.

“They found a tailor machine!” she cried and dragged Riff away.

They rushed to where several bots piled high with packages were waiting to be led away.

Nataly couldn’t hear them anymore, but she could tell by Sima’s body language that the woman was describing all the things she was going to have the machine make the moment they had it set up.

“I bet Sima’s going to try to have them install the machine in her domicile," Decard joked. Nataly forced out a chuckle, even as anxiety grew in her chest. She didn’t like that she only had Decard with her.

This is fine , she told herself. I’m fine. Everything is fine .

Nope, her body said. Nothing is fine!

She dug her fingernails into her palm until it hurt enough to help ground her. She let her breath out with a little whoosh. Decard didn’t notice; he was too busy guessing what was in some of the massive packages.

“Decard, were you the one who wanted the sonic bot?” Riff called out, pointing at a heavily laden mover bot slowly making its way up the hill toward the village.

“Yes!” Decard shouted and rushed off to follow the bot.