Starfish

Thirty-Three

"Ardus! Come look at this!"

Standing, Ardus winced at the twinge in his lower back. New man or not, his body still protested occasionally at the new source of overexertion. I may feel forty again, but I am still nearly three times her age. Nevertheless, the urgency in Nina's voice brought him up and across their shared office with speed. 

"Look!" She pointed at the screen, a tiny fingernail painted coral-pink tapping where a flicker of motion blurred a frozen screen. "What is that?" Ardus knelt by her desk, pressing his shoulder against her side to look at her screen. She was pointing at something near the ground, something quite small and blurred by the poor video quality in the shadows of the forest. "Do you see it? Down there by that clump of grass. Hang on," Nina reversed the video and started the clip over. With her stylus she drew a circle on the screen, "Watch that spot." Ardus tracked the area as Nina advanced the footage frame by frame, a sense of excitement building as the circled area cleared slightly, the camera lens focusing on movement. She'd seen something that made her cheeks flush, and Ardus wanted to know what it was.

Just then, a form detached itself from a branch at the corner of the view. A flying creature, the Dreenai analog of a bird, spread its wings and hopped down from the tree and landed in a patch of shade at the bottom of the video. Behind its miniature-dinosaur body trailed two long streamer-like feathers, each ending in a split that gave the illusion of two additional trailing feathers. "Ah, a long-tailed hopper," Ardus told her. "Not exactly a common species in that area, but not so uncommon as to cause alarm."

"Are you sure? It doesn't look like the one in the guidebook."

Ardus squinted. There was a slight difference in the color pattern on the creature's neck and shoulders, and the manner in which it bobbed its bare-skinned head did seem modified from other specimens he'd seen before – rather that three successive nods this one bobbed twice, paused, and bobbed twice more. "A subspecies, perhaps, or a variation. The males do occasionally invent their own habits. They tend to mimic their parents for the first few years before coming up with more individualized quirks." He pointed to a subtle movement in the underbrush. "There, a female. Now watch him, if he raises his streamers that would mean he is interested."

Nina's fingers flew over her keyboard, taking down notes as fast as she could. She paused the video a few times to capture the moment when the male suddenly dipped his head, nearly laying his chest on the forest floor. Spreading his claw-tipped wings on the ground, the long-tailed hopper raised his hind-feathers and spread them into a wide V-shape. From there he alternated between twitching first one feather then the other, and flicking both up at a right angle to the ground. "There he goes," Nina grinned, isolating the behavior into a separate copy of the video to attach as a reference later. Her summary of their trip was going well, though coming on eight pages of notes and bibliographical citations alone. But Ardus could tell she was enjoying herself – the night before he'd had to peel her away from her tablet and coax her into bed. Just like I was at her age.

As far as relationships went Ardus had few complaints, and the ones he had were of a minor nature. He would have to acclimate to Nina's size and therefore her walking speed, make a few adjustments to his living space so that she would have access to things like the sink and other appliances, and he had to watch himself at night in case he turned in his sleep and rested too much of his four hundred and fifty pounds on her. Ardus was quickly learning just how much of his strength she could handle, and wondered that such a small woman could make him appreciate just how powerful he was now that his pores had returned. Nina seemed to have no trouble acclimating to his size, an agile climber and avid problem-solver in her own right. That he could so easily lift her, position her any way he wanted, or prevent her from moving at all gave him a new perspective on his identity as a Dreen, as a male of his species, and the disparity between their people. More than just science, he hoped that his experience would further the Dreen and human coexistence. It is not hard to adjust, it merely takes some consideration and awareness.