Lost in Translation

Posted on Sat Oct 14th, 2023 @ 10:53pm by Lieutenant JG Irynya & Ensign Noah Balsam

Mission: Stardust and Sin
Location: Gravity Well Bar, Hukatuse Tagumik
Timeline: Mission Day 2 at 1900

[Gravity Well Bar]
[Hukatuse Tagumik]

Irynya and Noah had been amongst the last of the search groups to leave as Noah made sure that each group was armed with as much of his readings as was reasonable considering the uncertainty that distance and numerous decks added into the mix. Still, once the last group had slipped away, the two friends had waited for a few minutes and then made their way out of the hold and into the station proper.

"I feel like we're on a scavenger hunt," Irynya commented. They had just stepped out into the smoky poorly lit corridor that seemed to lead in only one directly--to the Gravity Well Bar. It had taken them longer to get there than intended. The map of the station was deceptively simple and it took several long moments of searching for the lifts, determining where the Gravity Well was, and then back tracking once because of the circuitous layout of the decks before they found their way in.

Noah smiled at his friend, a lingering and bemused smile. "Y-yeah," he agreed. He was still trying to get used to this whole, "being on the Away Team," thing. Most junior officers- especially junior engineers- didn't make that cut. Margarar he could understand. or Shelly, as a senior Ensign. Noah's yes were conspicuously shifting up and then back to his obvious piece of Federation technology- a sort of engineering PADD-cum-tricorder. He flicked his fingers at the three-dimensional hologram that showed a map of this... Hukatuse Tagumik.

He coughed- a lingering swell of some very strange, alien-tasting smoke in his mouth. It was almost like curry? "Um. That way," Noah said with a finger point that was at first hesitant, eyes on his device, and then more definitive when he looked up to confirm. "Xex's commbadge is-is faint but it's that way." His eyes lifted. And a very large being shoulder-checked him. Noah, like a reed, seemed to glance it off and the alien kept walking.

"Gapropraxe, Elomuaka," the being said.

Noah's eyes blinked and his brows furrowed at the back of the large, barrel chested being's back. "It-it isn't tiny....," he muttered back. "Rude."

Irynya's eyebrows lifted slightly. "What isn't tiny?" she asked, unable to help the curiosity.

"My uh, genitals," Noah replied. "It was roughly, 'out of my way tiny genitals.'"

It took more than a little effort to suppress the amusement that welled up in her chest, but Irynya managed to pull it off with only a slight lift at the corners of her mouth. Then, one corner of her mouth twisting higher into a teasing smirk she agreed. "Nope. It isn't." She delivered the confirmation airily, eyes ahead of her, as if she hadn't just commented on the size of her roommate's equipment. She was, uniquely, positioned to say so as she'd accidentally walked in on Noah in the shared bathroom very early on in their time as roommates. She'd gotten a look then, unintentionally, and knew he wasn't wrong.

Noah chuckled with a lip bite, "Uh, I-I guess you're the only other person in the room that can confirm," Noah said, rubbing his neck.

"Let's start at that end of the bar," she said, quickly on the heels of her agreement. "Maybe a bartender can point us in the direction of a regular who might notice if Kaldri came here."

"Y-yeah. Good idea," Noah agreed with a nod. His fingers drummed on the back of his device and a pensive, shy Engineer smile crossed his face. His eyes shifted to the bartender and then back to the pilot. "Uh, after you. I'm in engineering, not dih-diplomacy." He smiled.

"And flight controllers are?" she asked with a snort. She stepped up to the bartender anyway, waiting patiently at the edge of the bar for his or her attention.

Noah cracked a grin like the boy caught with hand in the cookie jar. "OK. You're the superior officer?" Noah said with a wince of an eye that seemed to raise that half of his face with an impish quality. "Rock paper scissors for it?"

"Superior huh?" Iry replied with a wink before holding out her hand in a fist to indicate her agreement with rock paper scissors as a way to decide who would take the lead. It was a funny human custom, but one she'd learned about while at the Academy. Whomever chose the better item got their choice. It was as fair a way to decide something when everything was equal as anything.

Noah looked sideways and back to Irynya.

"Rock, paper, scissors, shoot." The chant was done in unison, timed to the motion of their fists and, as if this was a more significant degree of competition, Iry kept her eyes fixed firmly on their hands, unwinding her fist into one plane, palm down. Paper.

Noah cursed under his breath, having chosen rock. He dropped his fist. "Okay," he shook out his hands. He popped his neck. "H-here goes." Noah strode up with far too much purpose to the bartender of the Gravity Well. He tried to tune out all of the people around him, all the distractions, all the smells, all the pure alienness around him. "H-hi," Noah began at the strange looking being. They- for Noah could discern no concept of familiar gender- resembled coral given a human form. Noah looked into the round, large eyes that didn't seem to blink.

"Uh, hi," he began again. "I was wondering if you could uh, h-help me find someone." Noah asked. "She's a Kazon."

The coral-like creature, despite all of the laws of science that governed solid states, appeared to shrug. Or at least something like it. "We get Kazon," they responded noncommittally.

Noah's wide mouth frumpled, his brows knitting. The unusual being's face was just so alien to any kind of Human-retatable kinesics. "H-have you seen one in the last couple of days?" He tried again.

Another shrug-like movement. "Sure. Probably," the creature asks. "Don't really keep track of who comes and goes."

Again the young Engineer's face frumpled. He felt Irynya coming up behind him. "Wuh-what am I doing wrong? I can't tell," he said honestly.

Irynya had followed Noah, standing just behind his shoulder as he spoke. She was equally perplexed by the alien-ness of the bartender, not quite sure if they were annoyed, disinterested... Perhaps this was the most joyful conversation they'd had all day. It was really hard to tell. She debated piping up; pressing for more details, but she wasn't sure if another person in the conversation would help or make things harder. Instead she stepped a bit forward, brushing Noah's arm with her own, a sort of quiet show of support.

Noah's eyebrows furrowed. He took a half step away from the bartender and the bar itself. "Maybe they just don't know." He said back toward Irynya. "I-I don't know." The engineer stepped back and sighed a modicum of acknowledging the setback. "DO I give them these," and he flashed some of the metal money strips halfheartedly. Noah half turned back, mouth open but then doubted himself.

Truthfully, Irynya wasn't entirely sure of the bartender's responses herself. Maybe this was just a race known for it's succinct and strangely unhelpful answers? Maybe the bartenders here were just cagey? She frowned, thinking, and then put her hand on Noah's arm to stop him.

"Let me try something," she said with a sort of uncertain wrinkle of her lips to the corner of her mouth. With a sigh she straightened her shoulders and stepped up to the bar, giving the bartender her best let's talk business face--which for Risian's wasn't necessarily the most alarming expression in the world.

"My friend and I are looking for a Kazon that came through here. We have something of hers and are trying to get it back to her, but can't seem to contact her. Think any of your regulars would have noticed who comes and goes?" she asked, trying her best to sound confident in her question and the lie that rolled, surprisingly easily, from her lips.

Another motion that Irynya felt surely had to be a shrug made her heart sink before the creature opened its mouth again. "Moritana might," it offered in the same non-committal tone it had used for the whole conversation.

It took every ounce of self control the Risian pilot had not to look like this answer excited her. Instead she leaned both elbows on the bar, trying her best to appear nonchalant. "Where could we find Moritana?" she asked.

With a strange throw of the joint that connected the creature's head to it's coral-like body the bartender indicated a direction. "End of the bar. No hair. Looking for someone who can help her with her incubator."

Noah's eyes swiveled to the direction that the strange coral-joint had indicated. There was a strange- to Noah's eyes- alien. She was a shade of periwinkle, her scaled fine. She was quite tall and thin, almost like nature had scaled and reptilianized a meerkat. She had large, expressive gold eyes. Her ears, unsettlingly, reminded of the old Nosferatu films Noah had seen in secondary school. A black, bifurcated tongue, slipped between her lipless mouth and tasted a sludgy looking drink.

"She-she needs an engineer?" Noah asked to confirm.

The coral-like bartender, somehow clearly done with the conversation, merely shrugged and moved off toward another patron who was glaring pointedly at Irynya and Noah for taking up that much of the creature's time without ordering anything.

"Umm... I guess we go ask her?" Iry said, a touch of hesitance in her tone. It was only a moment, though, before she squared her shoulders and glanced to Noah. "Let's go see."

Noah frowned at the back of the coral-being, at once folding his arms and catching himself to not do that. Instead he pushed out that tension with a breath and a quick close of his eyes. "Th-this place's hospitality is as warm as Titan in Summer." He murmured. Noah fell in line behind Irynya as they stalked toward this tall and spindly being. She- or Noah thought maybe she was a she and caught his own implicit bias- turned toward them. The being's tongue flicked out again, looking almost identical to the rigid double-tube fork of a snake. The alien's large, expressive eyes were not reptilian cold but had a warm. And the being's face bent into some kind of approximation of a smile.

The reptilian, Gecko-like alien looked briefly at Noah in scanning and then fixed gaze on Irynya. "Greetings."

Though there was a slight sibilance to the alien's tone, it still held warmth and openness; a surprising change after the nonchalant distance of the bartender. "Greetings," Irynya responded with a warm smile. Every bit of her upbringing on Risa--the ethos of what is ours is yours--came to the forefront within that smile. She inclined her head slightly and moved to stand next to the woman, leaning against the bar, body tilted to indicate the same sort of openness she had heard in that single word. "Would you happen to be Moritana?"

The gecko-like being smiled again, their eyes flicking horizontal eyelids that were milky blue and translucent. "This is an acceptable approximation," they said. "Do you offer fixing my incubator problem?" They asked. They pushed the metal rods that seemed to be money in Hukatuse Tagumik toward Irynya. The metal sung against the metal in various tones. Moritana blinked their milky lids again and looked at Noah and then back to Irynya. "You are she/her/female?"

The question struck Irynya as odd, but then so was the alien's dialect. The universal translator was doing its best, but clearly found the... woman? person? difficult to put into the type of grammatical structure's the Risian pilot was used to. "Yes," she answered. "I am a female amongst my species."

The look on the alien's face seemed enthusiastic to Irynya, perhaps even excited. And a light bulb from some deep Academy memory flickered to life. Matriarchal. Perhaps the alien's society was matriarchal. "You are also she/her/female?" she inquired, holding her answer to the question of the incubator.

Moritana shook her head, but the words she spoke were in agreement, "Yes I am a mother/she/female." She smiled wider at Irynya and Noah quietly looked on. Moritana gestured impossibly long, multi-jointed fingers that looked made for wrapping trees, or maybe grasping rocks. Noah noted she had two thumbs, but not in the same way as Benzites. "And this one is male, incubator/fix? You are his superior/master/guide?"

A glance at Noah gave away the tiniest bit of Irynya's unease. She was a pilot, not a diplomat, and much of this conversation felt like unsteady unknown territory. Still, the... woman... did seem to be looking for something they could give. "Yes, he may be able to fix your incubator," she responded, "but we are looking for an exchange... information for his... skills..."

Another glance at Noah, looking to see if he agreed. She didn't want to simply offer him up as an engineer, but if this woman could give them details about Kaldri and they could do something nice for her as well then... why not... it seemed as good an option as any other that might arise.

"I understand, you prefer a trade," Moritana replied while Noah tentatively nodded his consent. He too was beginning to piece together that perhaps this alien came from a matriarchal society.

"It won't hurt to, uh, to try and help? Right?" Noah said.

Moritana blinked her milky lids again and shook her head, "Oh yes, no pain for help. Helping no pain. Maybe pleasant." She studied the skinny, lankly engineer. "I take you to this incubation?" Moritana asked. her tongue flicked out toward Noah and then again toward Irynya. "What is for trade for his male service?"

Bolstered by Noah's agreement, however tentative, Irynya plowed ahead. "Information," she answered. "We are looking for a Kazon woman who would have come through here in the last week. We... need to speak with her."

The urge to glance at Noah... again... was enormous, but Irynya fought it back, forcing herself to stick with looking directly at the lizard-like alien woman. Information. If they could just get information they could sort out this incubator and be on their way. It occurred to her as she said it that the alien must be expecting if she needed help with an incubator. Or, if not Moritana herself, then someone she knew. That thought, alone, softened her unease somewhat.

"If you can help us with the information we can help with your..." she sought out the word she wanted, unsure of how this particular race might produce offspring, "... children." A squiggle of uncertainty made her stomach tighten and she hoped she hadn't overstepped in her assumption.

Moritana blinked and then blinked again. Her chin raised in what must have been an approximation of thinking and she stroked a loose sac along her throat with a flat of one of her thumbs. "Woman Kazon... yes I see yesterday. She came here. But I did not speak to them. They seemed hostile." She at once gestured to the bar, "Malik spoke to her," Moritana said.

"Malik?" Irynya asked, unsure who this might be. Another regular perhaps? "Who is Malik?" The question had more urgency to it than she had intended and she was quick to add, "We would like to speak with them." This time the urge to look at Noah was too strong and she glanced at him quickly, wishing she could somehow get his thoughts without disrupting the conversation they were in.

"Drink-maker/bartender/host," came a cautious voice from Moritana, "You are not local?" She asked with an inclined cock of her head. Noah had meantime looking at Irynya's cue and followed the alien's gesture.

"A waiter or a bartender. What does Malik look like?" Noah asked. Moritana seemed to hesitate again, her posture straightening. her tongue flicked toward the young man, tasting the air. "Are they here?" Noah added and again Moritana sampled the air. She seemed puzzled for a moment before she leaned forward toward the two incognito officers. "Your males are very inquisitive!" She said with a smile.

The sudden shift in discussion gave Irynya pause and a slight frown tipped at the corners of her lips. "He, uh... yes..." she stumbled, "the males and females of our group are all inquisitive. It's a core belief of ours. Exploration. Learning." She looked between Moritana and Noah, eyes widening slightly as she caught Noah's own gaze.

"I see," was the best approximation of Moritana's response, though the translator took it more as, "I sample," or "I smell."

Turning the conversation back to the question at hand Irynya pressed further on the question that Noah had just asked. "Is that Malik?" she asked, pointing to the bartender that had already sent them to Moritana, their coral appendages moving in ways that simply didn't compute, giving Irynya an eerie feeling, as if looking at something unnatural.

Moritana bobbed her head in a vague circle, almost akin to a practice found on the Indian subcontinent. "No. That is not Malik. That is Malik," the reptilain's tongue sampled the air while she gestured at a large and hulking figure. The scales along her spine and cheekbones rose and seemed to shimmer and she kept a straight, almost rigidly posed sit.

Eyes tracking the line of Moritana's entire posture, Irynya spotted the large man. Truthfully he was hard to miss. His height and brawn stood out amidst the variety of species dotting the bar. "Thank you," she told Moritana, turning back to look at the reptilian. "We will speak with him and see if he can help us."

Shifting so that she could angle herself toward Noah, Iry raised her brows in a question. "Do you think we can look at the incubator first? At least figure out what it needs and how much time it will take before we talk to Malik?"

"Grateful for you and your male," Moritana said with that thin, gecko-ish smile. She rose in a strangely lithe and serpentine way from her stool. Her hands folded delicately over each other and she began to lead. "Follow, grateful," Moritana stated behind her. Her eyes focused in a way impossible to Humans while she walked. "Tell me have you and your male made eggs/offspring/clutch together or is he untouched?"

Full lips parted to answer, pressed closed, and parted again as Irynya felt her cheeks warm with a flush. Eyes wide, she kept her gaze ahead on her path, suddenly finding the thought of looking at either Noah or their guide shockingly difficult. "He is, uhm, not my..." she trailed off, stumbling over her words. "We have no children together, no," she finally managed. Whatever this woman's culture might call for, Irynya wasn't about to speak on Noah's behalf about his sexual history. She wasn't even sure why that mattered. Was this what passed for polite conversation in Moritana's people?

"I see," Moritana said again in that reptilian approximation. "You are platonic/keeper to male?" She asked. They left the Gravity Well, venturing into the neon-stained and garish yet industrial feel of the station's corridors. There appeared to be many aliens- none of them even vaguely Human. The closest, vaguely familiar being they passed was a Xindi Insectoid which was busily gathering a syrupy substance as its mandibles twitched. Noah watched with wide-eyed and slightly overwhelmed interest.

They passed what could only be described as a bordello as a four-breasted being leaned suggestively against the door frame and coaxed them to follow with a finger. Noah blushed and passed it all by with a growing discomfort. This Hukatuse Tagumik wasn't like anything he'd encountered in the Federation. It was like the stories he'd heard about Freecloud or Nimbus III.

Unlike Noah, Irynya was less discomfited by their surroundings and more aware of the unexpected blush that was slowly fading from her cheeks. She never blushed. Never. And for Moritana's simple, and probably culturally reasonable, question to elicit such a response gave her pause. For a moment she considered telling the reptilian that Noah was closer to family than simply a co-worker, but translation was clearly an ongoing issue, so she opted to simply agree. "Yes," she said. "We're friends."

Even Irynya, however, couldn't help feeling a twinge of discomfort as Moritana turned them down a dimly lit corridor. They'd been walking for a few minutes and the corridor seemed to be lined with some sort of lodging. Or at least that was the Risian's first assumption as each door held a number and a key pad of some sort. A tall and impossibly thin creature passed them buy, nodding at Moritana in recognition as they passed. "So," Irynya said, breaking the quiet of their walk. "Where is the incubator you need Noah to look at?"

The reptilian looked back with one of those large yellow eyes, her nostrils closing and opening, "Male-Noah incubator inside," she said after a moment of cautious confusion. Moritana paused at a door and used her thumb to imprint her way inside. The room was small and spartan and felt a little bit like a longterm hotel dwelling. But it was hard to tell what might have been a decoration from such a place, or something that was a personal knickknack.

It was extremely dry within and uncomfortably warm. Noah immediately felt that spring of sweat in his glands which the thirsty air seemed to take away almost immediately. The lights were also notably of a warmer lean- almost hazy and orange. "Please wait here and to make yourself comfortable/loosen/disrobe of concern." Her fingers waved in the air. "You will stay to monitor?" She asked Irynya.

Stepping in just ahead of Noah, Irynya took in the space with the eye of someone suddenly rethinking a decision. The warmth was comforting to her. Risa's own climate was warm and she was used to being bathed in that warmth. The chill of space travel had taken some getting used to on her part. So even as the warmth seemed to settle into her, loosening muscles and bones molded into the shapes necessary to conserve heat on a cool starship, some part of her perked up with instinctive caution.

Moritana had seemed confused by Irynya's question. Until now she'd chalked that up to issues with the universal translator, but she suddenly wondered at that. Words could be misunderstood, but body language was much harder to ignore.

"I'm not going anywhere," she told Moritana, a bit more forcefully than necessary. "Is the incubator in there?" She pointed toward the door where the she deduced the reptilian was about to disappear.

The alien being seemed to catch the force of her meaning and paused. "You... are acceptable/pleased/comforted/alright?" She asked with a tilt of her trapezoidal head. "No, fertilizing jelly is inside," Moritana replied. "I will get one moment. Please make comfortable/loosen/disrobe concern."

Disrobe... disrobe... Irynya's expression turned from hesitation to concern. "We'll wait here," she said, suddenly eager for the woman to leave the room so she could speak with Noah alone. "Maybe if the incubator is in this room Noah could look at it while you get the... uhm... jelly?"

Moritana nodded at the pair and then slipped into the private room of the small domicile. Noah was meanwhile studying the few apparatus that seemed to dot the room. The first he observed was clearly some kind of communication device. It had a view screen of sorts. Next Noah moved on to something in the wall that radiated a dry heat and looked like a yellow, transparent tube. "This might be it," he said. But when he raised his tricorder to it, he frowned. "No, okay, that just seems to be sort of like... a-a space heater?"

"I should have asked her what kind of incubator she needed help with," Irynya said, half bewildered and half suspicious. "I don't... surely this is a device and not... like... a creature? Or..." she frowned deeply, moving to peer at the warm tube from slightly behind and to Noah's side. "Noah," she said, voice dropped to a low whisper, "something doesn't feel right to me."

Noah looked at Irynya with his own brand of confusion. "The bartender said she needed help with her incubator. How many incubators are alive?" He asked. He froze. "Wuh-what's wrong? I'm not detecting any weapons." Noah started to pace the room, holding up his tricorder. It never squeakled or squelched any kind of anomaly that suggested weaponry or power signature for such. "Didn't she say she needed an eng-"

Moritana reappeared. She had changed into something almost akin to a gauze dress, plaited like a Roman legionnaire's skirt. As Noah observed it, he realized the gauze was quite see through. And while his mouth opened, she sat and shouldered it off. "Please. Disrobe. I will spread." She held up some kind of glowing jelly in a dish that looked like neon blue tapioca. "Unless you wish to as I am strange and you are platonic and not bothered by his body/incubator/nudity."

"Wha-wait,. my body?" Noah asked, his eyebrows raised.

Oh skies above, Irynya found herself thinking with alarm as several pieces clicked into place. "Uhm... no... no, Moritana, I think there's been a misunderstanding."

The reptilian froze, her large amber eyes blinking first her milky lids and then a second pair. Her head cocked up and to the side.

Carefully she moved to angle herself between Noah and the reptilian woman. "Noah is an engineer. He... he fixes machines. An incubator... I thought you needed a machine fixed..." The comments were almost tri-fold in purpose. Even though she thought she'd figured things out the Risian had an almost painful need to confirm this out loud to herself. Equally she wasn't sure that Noah had caught on yet and if he hadn't she wanted him to quickly. And, of course, she wanted desperately for Moritana to correct her--tell her that this was some strange machine-fixing ritual of her people and not... something else...

Noah had caught on, "Wait uh... what's the jelly?" He looked at irynya, "Wait, is she try-trying to have sex with me?" To that, Moritana held back and stiffened. And a previously unseen ruff bristled about her neck as her scales rose and flexed. "I'm not an incubator, I-I-I just fix them."

Moritana, who was detecting the sudden shift of mood and the pheromones of fear, had assumed a somewhat defensive posture. "What is this word, copulate/sex/intimacy/coitus? He is platonic male you lead and offer service of, correct?" She paused and studied Noah, "He is over-inquisitive for a male," she blinked and looked back at Irynya, "But has a fine frame and a good shape for carrying. He produces excellent body heat." She looked between them again, "A male engineer? One who builds things?" She asked inquisitively.

"Wait, she's trying to get me pregnant?" Noah asked. He shifted a step back with his hands up, "Where does the jelly go?" He asked, a note of horror. Then, confusion, "Wait, y-your people don't have sex?" To this, again, the alien jerked back and bristled her neck ruff.

It was with a mix of alarm and sudden frustrated protectiveness that Irynya noted the raised ruff of the nude reptile woman. "Yes," she answered, taking in, but working hard not to react to Moritana's assessment of Noah. "He is my engineer. And he fixes things when I tell him to."

This was hardly true, but since it was clear Moritana wasn't going to deign to actually speak directly to Noah, Irynya doubled down on the matriarchal male ownership. "We will gladly assist with any mechanical devices, however, his..." she faltered ever so slightly at the statement, "body, is not available. It..." she wondered how far she needed to take this... "is mine. We do not share our males."

Several different religious beliefs from Earth alone along with numerous other races across the galaxy would all but open up a pit of torment for the depth of the lie she'd just told, but if it bought them even a bit more time to get out of this situation... preferably peacefully... then she would happily bear the consequence.

The reptilian sat there for a time with her head tilted, a look on her face only describable as confusion. Her eyes blinked and seemed moist. "I apologize/sorry/lament. I thought you were offering the service/abilities of your male." She looked at Noah with confusion. "Please fix... you are... sentient/intelligent/full-thinking/like-female?"

Noah, bewildered, blinked. "Um. Y-yes?"

Moritana's scales tinkled and flexed in surprise. "Apologies/sorrow/lament. I did not understand this. Hrs'unss/We/Our/The People males..." she made a gesture akin to her gesturing at Noah and then a missing being, "Are... not. Only... mimic/copy/trained." In what seemed like a universal sign, she quickly and bashfully covered herself, her chin low. "Incubator/male, for me, die/cease. Two cycles ago in violence/hurt/accident. Eggs/clutch saved but must find male."

"Oh," Irynya breathed as understanding seemed to peak in all of them. "I'm so sorry Moritana," she said. "Our males are equal to us in intelligence and purpose." She glanced sidelong toward Noah, a new blush forming on her cheeks--this one of mortified embarrassment over her mistake. "Some of them more so," she added quietly as the thought hit her. She twisted slightly to look at Noah, apologies written all over her features, before she turned back to address Moritana again. Her tone, now, was peaceful and gentle, soothing and sad. "We raise our young with them as partners. And it is the females, in many cases, who carry the children. Is... is there no option for you other than a living male?"

"Fascinating/enlightening/unusual," Moritana replied. "I have seen such things but the way you led," Moritana looked at Noah with fascination, "No-ohah... I thought... and bartender/drinkmaker/hardshell said they would send over an interested to help person." The alien flicked her tongue out and curled it back. "I flush/scalepop. Please go. Much humiliation/embarrassed/wish to hide." And with that, the slim and flexible alien rose, shouldered her garment and jogged into the room she'd retreated to.

It seemed as if, with Moritana's retreat, all of the air left the room, following on her heels. She was up and out before Irynya could protest or make some further attempt to fix the mistake she'd so clearly made. Instead she turned darkened chastened eyes on Noah. "Should... we should go... right?"

Noah looked very uncertain himself. "I-I guess. We still have to find Kaldri." Noah frowned, "Did that bartender, um, pa-pawn us off on this lady just to get rid of us?"

Irynya's eyebrows knit, creasing her forehead in a way that made her usually soft features look more severe. "I don't know," she said. "But you're right. We need to find Kaldri. And... I... I guess we should at least try the information she gave?" She moved toward the door as she spoke, stepping out into the dimly lit corridor with a sense of relief so immense that she immediately felt bad for it.

---

To Be Continued...

=/\= A side quest by =/\=

Lieutenant Junior Grade Irynya
Accidental Matriarch

Ensign Noah Balsam
Accidental Incubator