Perdition's Child

Chapter 8

Mehk awoke ravenous from hunting vague shadows in his dreamscape for a dragging eternity. A glance at the clock confirmed his suspicions; he'd somehow slept for nearly five hours... That couldn't possibly be a healthy sign.

He said his wake-up prayers and stretched, feeling his fur stick uncomfortably. He hadn't taken so much as a roll in the sand for nearly a week and now nothing short of a long proper dust bath was going to rub off the grime sticking up his fur.

Problem was, he hadn't seen a tub of sand or dust anywhere. He'd had a cursory introduction the showers down the cramped hall, but he couldn't help but mistrust the concept of standing still while a bunch of water was dumped on you. How did you hold your breath long enough? It just didn't make sense.

Well, none of the aliens had gills, so maybe he was missing something obvious. His fur was beginning to smell a bit stronger than was fit for polite company so he'd have to give it a try. The skithtiri and humans didn't seem to notice, but he felt sure Bob and the nanurans surely did.

Shower, then food, Mehk decided. It'd motivate him to get it over with faster.

There was no one in the hall for him to interrogate about this risky-sounding cleaning method, so he stepped into the misty, tiled room with a sigh. He'd just have to mess around with the bizarre machinery until he succeeded or drowned. There had to be some kind of fail-safe built into the stalls, this just seemed so needlessly dangerous.

He tip-toed down into the closest of three depressed stalls with swinging doors. Said door didn't seem to lock, and a gap showed at the bottom in addition to the drain at the center of the stall. Mehk began to suspect he'd be able to avoid drowning.

A creak alerted him to someone else entering, and the pitter-patter of too many pointy legs narrowed the options down to Bob. Mehk hurriedly shucked his clothes and fiddled with the faucet to avoid having to make small talk with them, but it backfired with a sudden dousing of water that had apparently been kept cool in the near-absolute-zero of space. He yowled before he could stop himself, the sound ricocheting around the bathroom and probably the entire ship. The stream of frigged water had cut off his escape so he huddled under the tap away from it and dripped miserably while he tried to regroup. Aliens were insane, all of them.

Bob pushed the stall open and peered at him with something probably analogous to curiosity and Mehk tried to dredge up some embarrassment. He was too cold and confused. They ducked back out once they had determined he was unharmed and Mehk swallowed his pride in preparation of asking them for advise. Thankfully, they volunteered without any prompting instead.

"Foreign biological units usually prefer warmer temperatures, this one hypothesizes that the shower experience will be less traumatic if that unit turns the spigot further clockwise."

"Thank you, Bob." Although the synthesizer provided no tone, Mehk was nonetheless absolutely certain that the alien was subtly mocking him. Mehk followed the directions, but this time he put a hand under the stream first, adjusting the temperature until it was comfortable before taking a deep breath and stepping under.

It was actually not that bad. Mehk watched the water swirl down the drain, taking the sand and grime in his fur with it. If this were a dust bath he'd roll around on the ground, but there wasn't space for that here so he rubbed the water into his fur instead. Letting his head go under the stream ended up being a terrible mistake though, he could hear the water sloshing in his ears. Would it seep into his brain? Was this dangerous? No, lellians in the lake band could swim. If there were any serious dangers to getting wet he would have heard about it. He was just being paranoid. Probably.