Milo on The Earth

8: Illness

Alex, Milo, and Kazutlru all worked in a large brick building, which had recently been transformed into an office building used for keeping records on the relationship between humans and extraterrestrials. Chloe also made the occasional visit in order to fix any plumbing issues that happened, but the majority of the staff consisted of Stlrakl and a species that were very new to Earth called the glunsuk.

One brisk winter day, everyone was quite excited, as the Stlrakl leader of philosophy, who among other things, represented the stlrakl during meetings with the head of The Intergalactic Community, would be having a meeting with them via video conference. They would mainly consist of solutions for recent incidents with faulty immunotherapy ending with several humans being hospitalized, but the glunsuk' s recent arrival would also be discussed.

Milo sat at their desk, looking over a paper they had written for the occasion. They had caught a bad cold a few days ago, which seemed to be getting worse as the day went on, and was considering having Alex take over, much to their dismay. They sneezed as another chill ran through their body, and reluctantly gave in.

Alex sat at the other end of the room in a messy cubicle, so over run with paper the top was nowhere to be seen, yet he hardly seemed to notice and was typing happily at a keyboard, not even noticing Milo was there until they knocked on the side of the wall, not exactly sure how to show you were in someone's cubicle.

"Yeah Milo?"

They thought for a moment. "Would you please present my report for me?"

He frowned, "Why me? You worked really hard on it."

Before they could answer, a coughing fit took ahold of their body, forcing a sharp pain in their chest. Alex rolled his chair closer to them, preparing to help them if it lingered for too long.

"I was only supposed to dictate, but I could probably find tons of other people to do that. Isn't Kazutlru the organizer for this?"

"Yes."

"In that case I'll drive you home real quick and do your speech, and I think one of the new Glunsuk interns will be happy to do my job."

In the car, Alex twiddled his thumbs on the steering wheel "So, uh, have you ever met this guy before?"

"Briefly, when I was training to work for the community," they said hoarsely.

"And?"

"He was lovely, Alex, don't worry."

"Hey, I'm not, it's just that politicians can be weird, at least on this planet, and I find it's better to know their beliefs before trying to convince them something."

"You'll be alright, he's known to have an open mind about these matters."

When Milo got home, Tsunclrek was there waiting for them. As they sat them down on the couch, hacking as politely as they could, he felt their forehead, muttering something worriedly before bustling off to the kitchen, returning with leftover medicinals bought to relieve immunotherapy side effects.

"It's just tseka leaves." he said, handing Milo a glass of water and a small purple ball, in which contained the plant commonly used by stlrakl to relieve coughing. They swallowed it and laid down, curling into the fetal position.

"Can I get you anything else?"

"No thank you," Milo whispered, "And don't concern yourself, I'll be alright in a few days."

When they awoke, Tsunclrek sat on the floor next to them weaving a basket, as they slowly sat up, he turned around and smiled softly, as to say 'I see you're awake, are you feeling better?" He always seemed to have a way to say all the simple things without speaking a word.

Milo started to push them self to an upright position, leaning on various pieces of furniture for support, to which he responded to by putting his arm around their waist.

"How about we get you to bed?"

They sighed softly, "Thank you, but I was hoping to be able to walk there myself."