Page 19 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded

“Thanks,” I managed to say, feeling stupid tears pricking at the back of my eyes. Bloody hell, no way was I crying over a fucking omelette. I grabbed the bottle, relieved to find that it was brand new – it must have been part of Aiden’s delivery today – and squirted a streak across the food, smearing it around with my fork. It tasted better after that; it still wasn’t going to win any awards, but at least the salt and the tomato gave it a bit more flavour.

Halfway through the meal, I picked up the glass of water Dax had so thoughtfully set out for me… and saw the pill sitting behind it. “Aiden told you about the pills, I take it?” I asked, though the answer to the question was obvious.

“He said that you were not well,” Dax replied demurely. “He said the pills would help improve your health.”

It was impossible to know how much Dax really understood about my condition, but I supposed it wasn’t really important anyway. I took the pill, washing it down with some water, then went back to eating.

After we’d both finished, Dax got up and cleared the plates away. He started washing up, and for the first time since I’d brought him home, I didn’t feel a wave of guilt at watching him clean up after me. Aiden had said dimari took satisfaction in looking after their masters. And my best course of action was to let him.

I headed back to the sofa, intending to turn the Sand Relay back on. But then it occurred to me to wonder if that was it? Was that my full interaction with Dax for the evening? He’d cooked for me, we’d barely spoken to each other while we ate, and now I was going to try and distract myself from my hideous life by watching sports, and he was presumably going to go and sit in his bedroom, like he usually did.

If Dax had been a dog, I’d have been arrested on animal cruelty charges by now, for the sheer neglect of how I’d been treating him. Not allowing him to exercise. Not making sure he ate properly. Not even noticing that he hadn’t set foot outside the fucking apartment in a goddamn year.

I stood up and went to the kitchen. Dax tensed as I arrived, and I wondered what the hell he was expecting me to do. Hit him? Scold him? I thought frantically back to all the convoluted instructions Aiden had given me during the day. What were the things that could upset a dimari?

Fuck, I was too tired to figure it out now. “I just wanted to say… come and sit down with me once you’ve finished here,” I said, feeling unbearably awkward about it. “We can watch a show together.” Fucking hell, I felt like I’d just asked him on a date.

I was completely unprepared for the beaming smile that lit Dax’s face. “Yes, sir,” he said, before swiftly renewing his efforts to tidy the kitchen.

I felt a little spark of relief at the form of address. It was so much better than ‘master’. Master had always made me feel like some seedy dictator.

I wasn’t sure what I’d actually achieved with the invitation, but at least I had bought myself some more time to actually… I don’t know… have a conversation with Dax? He’d never taken much of an initiative in talking to me, so I’d ignorantly assumed that it meant he had nothing to say. What Aiden hadexplained today was that he’d been waiting formeto start the conversation. I was supposed to be the leader. He was the follower.

But I wasn’t good at conversation. Not since Ixralia. All the important things were too hard to say, and none of the easy things mattered. I could drop some cool-sounding sports banter into the silence between us; ‘Oh, that Denzogal’s a great player’ or ‘That team won the competition last year, they should do well this season’. But it was really just empty noise.

But how was I supposed to say the stuff that actually meant something?

I dread going to bed at night, because I wake up alone from my nightmares, and I can’t remember if I’m at home, or back in that hellish pod in the creature’s lair.

I think about the ones I left behind. I couldn’t rescue everyone. But I know not everyone we left was dead.

I wonder what they did with the piece of me they took out. What if they used it to make a new version of me, one who’s still there, trapped in that place, with no idea how he got there and no way to get home?

This was why I drank. To stop these thoughts, this noise. This was why I kept the screen turned on, so that its noise could drown out the noise in my head. This was what I wanted so fucking badly to get away from.

The couch dipped beside me, and my eyes snapped open, my body jumping an inch off the seat before I realised that it was only Dax.

“Sorry,” he apologised, eyes wide as he hastily retreated up to the far end of the sofa.

“No, it’s okay,” I said, as I forced myself to relax. As much as that was possible, at least. “I wasn’t paying attention.” I stared at the blank screen, with no idea what to say next.

“What would you like to watch?” Dax asked. He looked less happy now than he had in the kitchen, sounded less certain about this half-baked plan of mine.

Well, fuck me, but I hadn’t even thought about what we were going to watch. I didn’t want to listen to any more of the sports commentators’ drivel. I would have liked to see a decent action movie, but Rendol 4 was a bit of a backwater, and we didn’t generally get great licencing agreements. Too small a population to get much other than the mainstream blockbusters, which I’d either seen, or were complete rubbish.

“Um…” I said helpfully, scrambling for an idea that wouldn’t put me to sleep instantly.

Dax pulled up a holographic screen on his comm. I could see the symbols he was looking at, but none of them meant anything to me. “What language is that?” I asked, then felt like punching myself. How had I got through a whole fucking year without realising he read in a different script from me?

“Eumadian,” Dax replied. “We’re taught the Eumadian, Fortusian and Basubian scripts as part of our wider education. Everything else is just translated via comm.”

He could read three different scripts? Fuck me. We were only ever taught Alliance Common.

“There are a couple of different documentaries, if you’d like to see one of those?” Dax suggested hopefully, once he’d scrolled through a couple of pages of options. “There’s one on the history of the Sedgegeds and how they developed space travel. And one on the five most accomplished Fortusian sand artists. Or there’s one about the native fauna of Rendol 4. According to the trailer, it has some very interesting research into the role of land-dwelling reptiles in the disbursement of seeds.”

“Uh… let’s have a look at the art one,” I said, picking that one more by a process of elimination, than because I actually wanted to see it. I knew plenty about the history of the Sedgegedsalready, having taken that as an elective in high school, and if I spent too much time thinking about seeds travelling through a lizard’s digestive tract, I was going to have nightmares. There were too many other things that had been eaten and shit back out again that should never have been eaten in the first place…

Dax activated the wall screen, and we were treated to a burst of soothing music and fancy swirls of colour as the documentary began, before the image slowly, slowly zoomed in on a piece of art. Delicate lines were drawn into a bed of coloured sand, impossibly intricate details carved out with tiny implements. And then the commentary started up, about how this particular artist had begun learning the art of sand drawing at the tender age of seven years old.