Tales of PulchraGea, Vol. 1

7: Afraid of the Dark (gold keystone)(final/2500)

The UTPod was in rough shape. It was laying at a cant where the spire it had landed on had caved in the Pod's floor. The left engine was strewn across the landing area, as it had detached on "landing" subsequently exploded.
"Any landing you can walk away from, right?" Doug had said.
Quite out of character, Robin quietly and angrily snubbed him for several hours while we set up camp.
"I can't fix this," she admitted around the campfire that night. "I'm a Law Officer, not a mechanic."
"We'll just have to be sure that whoever picks us up is informed enough to counter the weather," I assured her. "For now we can just focus on finding this stone."

We didn't bother to break camp the next morning. It wasn't like we were going anywhere, or as if there were anybody within a thousand miles to touch it. Doug, Robin, and I split up to search for clues, and boy could I have used a Scooby Snack. I was incredibly on edge, nervous, and very much not sure of what I was doing.

I watched the others from my peripheral vision. There was a dynamic I wasn't aware of to be sure: I'd known Robin long enough to know that she'd been acting out of character all day. Her ceaseless cheer and energy were usually so prominent as to be downright infectious. Doug was completely oblivious to her, but Robin avoided him like the plague.

I sidled in that direction.

"What's up with you today?" I asked her. "You're not your usual cheery self."

Robin sighed and turned away.

"You haven't been here that long," she said. " I guess you don't know about him yet."

She walked over to some rubble that gave mild shelter from the constant spray of water from above. her skirt and hair hung limply, and water ran down her leg to her already soaked sock. She sat and patted a relatively dry spot next to her.

"So things with Doug are... complicated," she admitted. "How much do you know? About him, I mean?"

I shrugged. All I really knew about him was what she'd told me that morning. She nodded as if she knew exactly what I meant.

"So, when I said he was an orphan this morning, that wasn't exactly true," she said. "Doug's family, they don't exactly belong to any of the tribes of PulchraGea."

"What does that mean, are there, like, tribes outside of PulchraGea?" I asked. Robin shook her head.

"Except for our people, there aren't any people on the planet," she said. "Unless they're super good at hiding from satellites. No, what I mean is that his mom was from a very mixed tribe, and his dad just appeared one day without a trace or a record. His mother died in childbirth of some very rare complications, and his dad was mauled by a mountain gryphon just a few years later. Some people think he let it kill him."

That was a very grim thought.

"So why don't you like him?" I probed. Robin shook her head again.

"He's not very intelligent, he's always in the way, he inevitably ends up saying something incredibly rude, he doesn't do anything to be a productive member of society... the list goes on for miles.

"I mean, he's not exactly a bad person, but he's annoying and lacks tact," she said. "The way he is just really gets under my skin as a Law Officer. Plus, I always get an off feeling about him whenever he's around."

I considered it.

"I suppose that's a good reason," I said. "He annoys me too, a lot even. I just think maybe I'll give him a chance."

"I'll admit that without him we wouldn't have thought to even bother to look here," she said. She tried unsuccessfully to wipe the moisture from her face with the palm of her hand. "Let's just find this key."