The Nature of Predators - Gojid Refugee (9/9)

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Memory Transcription Subject: Talpin, Gojid Refugee

Date [standardized human time]: April 3, 2140

For all that happened in the days that followed my departure from Skalga (then called Venlil Prime), I couldn’t process it at the time. Berna and I never expected to be caught up in the greatest scandal to ever rock the Federation. In hindsight, it was the very news that made the organization’s collapse inevitable. Collecting my thoughts as I worked on a novel about that confrontation was difficult, since I remembered so little of it through the jaw-dropping shock. It dwarfed the betrayal I felt, learning that my hero, Sovlin, was a sadistic fiend that tortured a human. My sister and I had each other to lean on, but we found ourselves running back to Skalga—eager to hide away on the ship as that realization rocked us. I’d wanted to know what my predator friend would say.

“Sometimes, bad people deserve to live with what they’ve done. It’s the greatest punishment of all.” Lily’s words, as she installed last minute updates to my translator meant to decipher Kolshian words, were all that stuck out in those moments. I could see her fingers coiling, with a few gestures that I had begun to retain; she was answering a question about the torturer I’d be traveling with. “We don’t stoop to a cruel person’s level. If we do, we’re no better than them.”

The human might’ve been referring to Sovlin, but I’d taken those words to heart as I waged a years-long battle. As the Federation smeared the name of my endangered species, and as my own people mocked me, I kept fighting. The Mazics took in a multitude of refugees, and after deciding not to return to an isolated Gojid colony, I enlisted Lily’s help in bringing aid to anyone with disabilities—bringing the accommodations that were standard on Earth to Khoa. The United Nations eventually brought forth the “Talpin Act” during last year’s Sapient Coalition summit, establishing accessibility requisites for a variety of conditions. It was a sign of how much my life, and the galaxy, had changed; they wouldn’t let us be seen as burdens to the herd, unable to live as a full sapient.

I fired off a text message to Lily, wondering if talking it all through with her would bring the memories back; I knew where she worked, but I didn’t want to intrude on the embassy too often. My friend was quick to agree, inviting me to travel the few blocks toward the Terran chancery. Berna was light-years away, as she’d decided to return to the cradle with the rebuilding—it was rising from the ashes, just like Earth had tallied their losses and begun reconstruction in the same breath. Humanity had the fortitude to heal glassed worlds where we couldn’t. Smaller Gojid villages like Blessed Fields would be among the last to be resurrected, but I wasn’t sure if I’d want to go back. The memories I had of our hometown weren’t positive, and ended with a graphic raid, where I’d thought the humans would eat me.

What a laughable notion, I mused, as my translator filled me in on a primate reading love sonnets to an unimpressed Mazic selling teia wind chimes. I didn’t know how anyone took Terrans seriously as predators.

“Your trunk is sturdy, don’t look a day over thirty?” I imagine that rhymes in the human tongue, but Protector, that’s still shit. I know the Mazics love poetry, but I don’t think they cherish this debasing of poetry.

I imagined the Mazic, who was more than capable of punting the human away, wasn’t getting rid of the fool for the entertainment value; it was gold, as the Earthlings said. My translator had gotten more in-depth, thanks to the hard work of the Terrans to perfect this technology. They’d included every language in the SC, Duerten Shield, and hundreds of their own—I wasn’t sure why they had more than all of us combined, but that was neither here nor there. The device had gotten better at inferring tone, and also helped relay certain noises through vibrations, such as emergency signals, train whistles, or screams. Given how large the Mazics were, I definitely didn’t want to step in the way of one because I couldn’t hear their footsteps.

I’d learned a lot about Mazics in the last year. On top of my activist writing, I had a job at the first school for the deaf on Khoa, teaching children a form of sign language Lily and I had adapted for their trunks. The human was available as a substitute at the institution, but she spent most of her time raising awareness and trying to train sign interpreters for Cupo’s government. President Cupo was a popular figure in large part due to his traditionalism, and for disagreeing with the predators on many issues. I couldn’t complain too much about it, given that the Mazics were always among the first to shoot down the Arxur’s restrictions being relaxed. After what they did to my home—I saw one with its jaws inches from my sister’s face—they should never roam among us.

As long as that’s in living memory, I doubt the Sapient Coalition would ever agree to let them loose. Nikonus colluding with the Arxur makes the Kolshians worse, but it doesn’t make the grays any less monstrous. They chose to remove all empathy from their society, and they should live with that.

The guards at the UN embassy recognized me, and had learned the sign for “Hello”; while my translator could understand spoken words, it was little secret that I thought it was empowering for deaf people to use our own language. That was doubly true for the Mazics, since with their large, floppy ears, hearing was a greater part of their toolkit than with most other species. Most of their emotional cues came through trumpeting their trunks, the way a human’s lips moved in time with their feelings. How could a deaf Mazic mesh with a society built on loud declarations of passion and soul—a species who could hold conversations across a sprawling room? When the institute’s math teacher, Rinio, voiced those concerns to me, I’d never felt so heard.

I wished I’d found ways to get in touch with other deaf sapients sooner, because the shared experiences made me feel like a part of something. While I’d started with Terrans on Earth, I’d expanded my circle to include many deaf and hard-of-hearing souls who’d gone through similar struggles to me. I was unsurprised to see Rinio in Lily’s office, quite eager to help with one of her side projects, captioning old Mazic films. While subtitles were required by law on new works, it was difficult to persuade filmmakers to add such things to historical treasures. My friends were working on one called Lost in the Forest, about a family who couldn’t find their daughter.

Some variant of getting separated from the herd was a common conflict in Mazic media. However, I thought Rinio was more interested in the braids Lily clearly wove into her hair for him than the intricacies of the film. Berna had suggested that I write a note for each of them, pretending to be the other, scheduling a date at the botanical gardens. That was overstepping in my mind, so I’d resigned myself to let their relationship play out at their own crawling pace. Just like improvements for the deaf, some things took longer than they should. Still, it was wonderful to see that Lily had rebounded from the broken mess I found in the rain all those years ago, turning back into the determined warrior who wanted to help others.

“Talpin!” Rinio signed my name with his trunk, and I lifted a bulky paw in greeting. “Come in. Don’t tell me you have the dreaded writer’s mud on your first book?”

Lily laughed a bit too easily, although the Mazic hadn’t said anything amusing. “We call it writer’s block back on Earth. I hope Talpin doesn’t have too much stress on his mind; that’s usually an inspiration killer.”

“I only talk through writing, so I’m sure I wouldn’t be dragged to a crawl by day-to-day worries. It was my only way to communicate for most of my life. It’s like speaking is to you; as far as I know, words don’t just die in hearing people’s throats,” I hammered out in a hurry.

“Oh, that’s not true. Lily stumbles on her words, or loses her train of thought a lot. More than other humans I’ve encountered,” Rinio signed.

“Really? Does she?”

The human’s cheeks turned beet red. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

“I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad.” Rinio’s trunk curled up, as he realized the predator felt ashamed. It was impossible for her kind to hide, with that weird tendency for the physical coloration of their face to deepen. “It’s cute when you’re flustered. Like now.”

Lily’s face turned even more red. “That’s…you don’t mean that. Talpin, was there something I could help you with?”

I like humans, and I think they’re sweet, but I don’t get the souls who find them cute. They’re not the visage that petrified me when I first saw them in person…still, that doesn’t erase the fact they’re furless aside from patches, and have binocular eyes.

“I’m the first person, aside from Cilany, who was there on the day Nikonus told us that we were omnivores, and is willing to go on record about it. There’s interest, so that’s what they want me to write about.” My claws hovered over the keyboard for a few seconds, as I weighed how to phrase it. “The thing is, I don’t remember much of it. I was hoping you might remember how I reacted when we got back to Skalga. Maybe something I said about what it was like in there.”

Lily drummed her fingers on her desk. “You were inconsolable. Nikonus had you dragged out of the room, returned to the ship before the reveal, just because you were asking for help. Sovlin came back in shambles, insisting that he was a monster, while the Harchen reporters had to explain what he meant. None of that rings a bell?”

I thought back to the last thing I’d seen in that room; it was the final moment that I’d believed the Federation were our friends. In spite of the fact they hadn’t done anything to aid the cradle or refugees, I believed they would’ve heard us out, or shown some sympathy. Instead, Nikonus had humored us for all of a minute, before we were removed like we were unworthy of an audience. The next thing we’d heard was that Gojids were once flesh-eaters, the same things that’d made us afraid to approach Lily in distress. Only predators would eat that kind of food! Either all predators were monsters, including us and the sweet Terrans, or that dietary quality wasn’t monstrous at all. My stomach flipped at the thought that we chewed carcasses.

As if I hadn’t struggled with not feeling like a full sapient enough, without knowing we’d do something so unhallowed—oh, that was right! Nikonus, the thoughtless blabbermouth, had told us our entire religion was invented by the Federation. I could only imagine how crushed my father would’ve felt; we were taught predators were cursed so that we wouldn’t want to be them again! My thoughts had been racing over what I might become, with how easily I’d acclimated to humans. The darker parts of their culture could’ve rubbed off on me, especially if ones like Lily decided to stop eating salads around me. The guilt—the feeling that something demonic had been lurking beneath my skin—was paralyzing.

“You told me you tried to stay strong for Berna,” Lily continued, as I slipped back to the moment my brain had tried to bury. “You wondered if other Gojids were cruel and lacking basic kindness, because they weren’t aware that they had predatory thoughts.”

Rinio flared his trunk in irritation. “I’m sure that changed when you saw Mazics, herbivores through and through, were the same.”

“I suppose we should be grateful that the humans got Khoa to agree to take us in. Our whole species saw what it was like to be a burden to the herd, unwanted,” I responded. “We also got to see what it was like to be a repulsive meat-eater: how it felt to be in the predators’ place.”

“Well, you don’t have binocular eyes, though I appreciate the sentiment. It must’ve been difficult to realize your whole life was a lie, in more ways than one. You might not remember the finer details of Nikonus’ infamous admission, but you could start there,” Lily gestured.

“I guess. Maybe I could write that it was like the cradle was destroyed all over again, except that it was everything we knew that was knocked down. Our memories. On that day, I realized we were all invisible to the Federation, and that…they don’t do the empathy that supposedly separates them from predators. There was one species that actually cared, whether it was about Gojids or about me.”

Rinio flexed his ears in protest. “Nice of you to lump my entire species into a single weave. We crossed paths because I wanted to meet the deaf Gojid who confronted Nikonus. That was brave. And to think after our introduction, you and Lily freed me from my prison of silence. History might consider you a footnote, but to people like me, you’re not.”

“That’s the bread and fruit mash. It was always about people like you, without a voice—the millions they forgot. Not letting the stigmas define us; believing there’s nothing that can’t be achieved. Lily taught me that.”

“I just knew you deserved better. Everyone deserves to be seen for who they really are.” Sadness flickered in the human’s eyes, and I knew her well enough to know it was despondency at how individuals like me were treated in the past. “We’re more than our challenges, more than our differences. Eventually, I hope to see a galaxy that’s free of judgment.”

“Me too,” Rinio agreed. “That’s proving more difficult to overcome than the conspiracy itself. Their legacy is still hurting all of us.”

“While humanity brings us all up, the Federation holds us back.  The Kolshians thought they knew what was best for us, and who we were.” I wiggled my claws, knowing I needed to go through the transcript logs later; this had given me the exact lens I needed to look back on Aafa’s horror with. It was time to overcome the grip that their meddling had on me, and the pain that legacy had caused the world. “What defines you is how you treat others. How Nikonus acted was a prime example of what compassion meant—or didn’t mean—to him. I’ll never forget realizing how much better the world could be. That’s the book.”

Lily flashed her teeth. “I take it you got the spark you need?”

“Yes, thank you! I won’t interrupt your time together. For what it’s worth, I think you’d make a good couple.”

“…I beg your pardon?”

“It’s just an opinion. Come on, you two might work with the deaf, but I know none of us are blind. Rinio looks like he wants to drink your hair.”

The Mazic pulled his trunk back like it was singed. “I don’t! I just…like the smell of flowers, and the shampoo she uses is…nice. Heavenly.”

“Oh? It’s lily-scented, like my name. I, um, just like that flower,” the human stammered aloud, since her hands were busy covering her face. “It’s from Earth. I assumed you might like Khoa’s flowers more—”

I hurried to interrupt with keyboard clacks. “Okay then. That is definitely my cue to head out. You both have a lot to talk about. I appreciate you making the time for me; it’s so nice to not be alone.”

“Later, Tal. I’ll have you know, this herd will never abandon you.”

I raised a paw at Rinio, just like I had learned from the human soldier long ago, and ducked back away from Lily’s office. To think how afraid I’d been outside their makeshift base in Blessed Fields, while now I’d walk around their permanent embassy like I owned the place. How differently would my life have played out, if the Gojidi Union or even the Krakotl had succeeded in wiping out these gentle beasts? From sonnets in the streets to blubbering about flower fragrances in shampoo, it was apparent how harmless they were; back then, we’d been so deathly afraid of them that we wanted them dead. Without humans to force changes, there would’ve been many experiences that would’ve sat out of my grasp forever. That was the story that I wanted people to hear, much more than the shock on Aafa.

I was determined to take full advantage of my new opportunities to bring about positive change, following the example of the species that believed I was worth helping. Humanity saved me an awful fate in more ways than one. While I would be mute for the rest of my life, I was no longer without a voice in a galaxy led by predators.

A/N - The final chapter! Talpin reflects on the Chapter 67 reveal years in the future, and we see how he took the news of Gojids being meat eaters with a falsified culture. We also learn about the Talpin Act, bringing accommodations to the Sapient Coalition in light of his story and advocacy. We also see life on Khoa for the Gojid refugees, and how the changes have impacted deaf Mazics; Talpin has kept in touch with Lily, who rebounded and kept her promise to fight for deaf awareness.

What do you think of the improvements that have come about for people like Talpin, in the form of accessibility, technology, and societal attitudes? What do you think of the Gojids’ current state, along with the first glimpse on the ground of Khoa?

As always, thank you for reading and supporting! This series has been fun to write, exploring bits of NOP that didn’t get past expansions; I love this time period, and having the freedom to go past 2137 for a reflective ending. This is one of my favorites, and it’s given me a lot of momentum for the upcoming series about a Kolshian asylum seeker named Kelvanis!