Itxaro couldn't stop herself from laughing along with Nellara; it was a strange sound, and until now, the doctor hadn't been certain Nellara was even capable of laughter. Either the Castigator was loosening up, or Itxaro was beginning to get used to her formality. Or she was getting drunk.
"I can't speak for life on Mars, but in my country, a party that doesn't have meat, music, and plenty of booze isn't really a party at all," Itxaro said cheerfully as a passing Glen, barely able to stand, still managed to refill her mug to the brim from a leather pouch. She watched, giggling, as the drunken soldier immersed his entire muzzle into his own mug and took in great, heaving gulps before emerging with a soaked snout. She turned back to Nellara. "A universal truth, maybe? Eh, I guess the Glen and Iriad would disagree," she considered with a shrug, remembering they were vegetarian, or close to it.
Itxaro grew more serious, though no more sober, when Nellara talked of humanity.
"Yeah, we're all the same species, but that's where the similarities end. Different languages, cultures, religions, values, planets, all that shit. There's some idiotas who say we're not the same species, but they're just, ya know, racist," Itxaro said with a scowl. She remembered reading in one of Vigdis' reports that, on KA, only the S'tor killed others of the same species, and briefly imagined human history if humans were more like the Tekeri. She wondered if killing your own kind was simply a condition of being the sole dominant species on a planet. Tekeri certainty didn't have any qualms about going to war with Glen, if Nellara was any judge.
"Humans have been killing each other since the beginning of recorded history. Not like your people. Maybe it's our nature, but I don't buy that. I think, deep down, we're fundamentally good. But we've created this violent culture out of necessity from our history of scarcity, only now it's a poisonous cocoon that we've wrapped ourselves in. We've outgrown it, but we can't figure out how to escape it, can't create the utopia we already have the means to inhabit," Itxaro said, feeling herself rambling, but no longer with the inhibition, nor the desire, to stop herself.
"But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, even without this culture, we're still just the most savage group of monkeys that ever spilled out of the jungle. Only now, we have engines and bullets and explosives." Itxaro nodded towards the Jotunheim. "That ship? Impressive, sure, but don't fool yourself. It's a weapon. We use them all the time to kill each other. This one just had some special toys on it stolen from some refugee aliens by very greedy people." Itxaro was growing almost angry, her voice rising.
"Let me tell you something about ships like that. 800 years ago, three wooden ships, cutting edge technology at the time, arrived at my homeland. Within a few generations, 95% of my people were dead, and the rest enslaved by the newcomers. All for money. Humans can do horrible things when money is on the line."
Itxaro paused. She'd said too much.
"You know what? Forget I said that. Nobody wants to talk ancient history at a party!" Itxaro said, trying to inject some joviality into her tone, not that it would translate. She hefted up her mug to a passing Tekeri in salute and drank while she thought of some way to turn the conversation away from her favorite topics.
Music. Talk music. That's safe.
Unfortunately, Itxaro didn't really have a great answer for Nellara on the origin of metal. "Death metal, its like... Eh... They sing about death because it's cool? It makes them look strong?" Itxaro grasped, trying to explain such an abstract concept to someone with no point of reference.
"Honestly, I don't get it. Vigdis might have a better answer. She's Norwegian maybe. Or Finnish. Swedish? Nordic, at least," Itxaro said with a shrug. Too bad she didn't ask about Trova music. She looked over to the band and saw, with a frown, that they seemed to be setting up some sort of improvised speaker system gutted from the ship's trashed escape pod, and the solar engineer stowaway was utilizing panels from the same wreckage. "I think you're about to find out where the 'death' part comes from though."
Mercifully, or perhaps not, the conversation took another turn, now towards KA politics.
Itxaro listened with an intense focus possessed only by those not entirely sober, as if they could compensate for their intoxication through sheer force of will. Her intense stare was almost immediately broken by a nearby Tekeri who drank by dipping their beak into their mug, pulling it out, and tilting their head back to let the beer drain down their throat. The image of an old childhood toy her mother had given her came to mind and she desperately held back a laugh, instead snapping her attention back to Nellara.
The Castigator's description of the tension between the two nations was startlingly familiar to Itxaro; she could think of a dozen instances of rising tensions between the old order and the new in human history. She thought of the Napoleonic era, of World War One and the death of the old empires. She wondered if this planet would follow the same trajectory, or if the bloodshed could be averted. The only political or anthropological theories focused on humans, though the the Yenge provided an interesting new landscape for theories, and that field was a muddled nightmare full of misinformation. Itxaro decided to stick with what she knew.
"I hate to tell you this, Castigator, but religions and monarchies? A real bitch to get rid of. We still have some of those dusty old bastards back home, for some reason. People just hang on to tradition, I guess, even if it harms them," Itxaro said, realizing with a slight wince that religion had been brought into the conversation, yet another human faux pas. She pressed on. "Now, my country, we've moved on from both, but unless you can burn them out root and stem, you'll just have to get along with them for now. Kick the can down the road for another, oh, maybe 400 years or so." Itxaro wanted to say more, but managed to stop herself.
The conversation turned to their poor feathered friend Kerchak, running into the bushes with his body rapidly morphing. Nellara seemed unconcerned, explaining simply that mages and alcohol didn't mix. It was then that Itxaro noticed Nellara wasn't drinking at all, and was totally sober.
"Ouch. A life without alcohol? I hope I'm not a mage. Let me check..." Itxaro mimicked the full-body, flowing motions she'd seen Shirik display for them, sloshing her drink on the dirt, before directing her "flame" towards Nellara to no effect. She did slightly stumble in the process, though. "Hmm, nope. Guess I still get to drink!" Itxaro laughed. The engineer hadn't had a serious drinking session in many years, and was beginning to realize that her alcohol tolerance had dropped dramatically. She set her drink down on a nearby table, realizing perhaps she'd had enough, but no sooner had she abandoned her beer did a passing Glen press a new mug into her hand.
"Well, proud or not, I wanted Kerchek to help me look for some lost gear at some point, and I can't do that if he's turned himself into a pile of goo or something. I'm gonna go check up on him." Itxaro eyed the retinue that followed Kerchek's path into the grass and grew anxious. Four S'tor guards, another local, Zey, and even more worrying, Darnell and Ezra. The last two were likely to get someone killed, and Itxaro didn't want to see her newfound alien friends gunned down by a lowlife mercenary and a corporate stooge. Maybe we'll get really luck out and he'll turn them into a cockroach.
Itxaro set her second drink aside and turned to leave. She paused and studied the crash site, as if with new eyes. A colorless streak of wire and crepe, ash and cinders in an otherwise verdant and vibrant world. Freshly dug trenches and turned up earth cobwebbed the surrounding untouched countryside. Scorch marks from the fire reached out from the Jotunheim like the first stage of a malignant cancer extending creeping tendrils out to engulf the planet.
She turned back to Nellara and locked eyes with her, now in a hushed but deadly serious tone.
"One last piece of unsolicited advice. I normally wouldn't, but I think I'm a little drunk, so I will. Make peace with Mythadia. Or at least try. You have more in common than you think, and your world is big. Bigger than you can imagine. Someone could be sailing across the sea right now, some nation with better weapons, better soldiers, looking for a new home and willing to kill you all for it. They might arrive today, they might arrive 100 years from now, or hell, they might not ever, might not even exist. But you'll all be better off if you make peace. Don't make my ancestor's mistakes. Don't get caught up killing each other over border wars when there might be someone more dangerous out there."
Itxaro cleared her throat and returned to her earlier conviviality.
"Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go look after a drunk wizard."
She turned and ran towards the brush.
