Touchstone 1 - Stray

island, but they even planned on taking me outside KOTIS grounds.
    The island that the Setari use as a base is called Konna, and is about 20% military facilities and 80% supporting city. The city’s called Konna, too, and was here before KOTIS was established. It was really nice to get out to see atriums and shops, and people not wearing uniforms, and there were plants and advertising and snatches of music and scents of cooking food and everything that the Setari base is not. They even do fake skies, and internal parks and while it can’t entirely escape Huge Shopping Mall Syndrome, it was such a nice change.
    We went to an ‘outdoor’ plaza, with cafés (no coffee or hot chocolate!) arranged around a plant-filled square where kids were running about and someone was busking. Actually busking. Being stuck with the Setari had me convinced that this was such a totally controlled society, though my time with Nenna should have taught me otherwise. I’m guessing there’s little chance that they’ll let me live out here.
    The place we went to eat was called “Mimm” and Lohn sat me in the corner of a big booth and then he and Mara sat either side of me with a careful gap so that we didn’t touch. They bracketed me as we travelled through the city too, making sure people didn’t bump me. I thought that pretty funny, since it’s the Setari touching me which is the problem. Most ordinary people wouldn’t have nearly enough talent to hurt me. The food was near enough to fondue as to make no difference (though I’ve no idea what they make the cheese from, and really would prefer not to find out), which seemed hugely out of place on an alien planet, but very yummy! The rest of First Squad showed up just as it was arriving, and I was sorry to see that Maze’s hand was covered in a blue square of bandage tape, and that Zee was walking with a limp.
    Maze gave my shirt a quick frown – I’d forgotten about my mascot altogether – and then asked me lots of questions about Earth food and I ended up spending the entire lunch talking. About fondue and then Nordic countries and skiing, a thing they don’t do here at all, and then we swapped different sports that there’s no equivalent to on either world. Taren sports are mostly indoors, unsurprisingly, except for some kind of air races. There’s so many Earth sports that don’t fit well here. Golf and skiing and riding just for starters.
    They’d booked a Kanza court for after lunch. Kanza is a very strange game like hockey crossed with mini-golf crossed with Pac-man, except the pucks hover and skim and ricochet madly over the surface of three intersecting recessed circles. The court was in the centre of a grassy amphitheatre where people were eating picnic lunches and watching the games. You play in teams of three and you stand on the edge and hit your pucks all out at once and try and not go in any of the holes until you’ve passed over all the little floating balls of light. If you keep your puck in play you get bonus pucks. It’s tremendously fast-paced and silly and Maze is idiotically good at it so I was glad to be on his and Lohn’s team. Zee sat out because of her leg, and Mara, Alay and Ketzaren were the opposing team and Ketzaren turned out to be really dry and funny and made this hilarious commentary and Lohn really played up to her. I nearly fell into the rink a couple of times from laughing.
    After our final round, while Mara’s team was playing, Maze and Lohn went off to get everyone something to drink. I was really tired from all the laughing, and sat with Zee watching the growing audience cheering Mara and Alay playing a duo game when I noticed a couple of people I recognised. The Third Squad captain’s twirly hair makes her pretty hard to miss, even when she’s not in the black uniform. She was standing up the top of the small amphitheatre with another girl, staring down with a really fixed lack of expression. I wasn’t surprised that it was Maze she was watching – half the audience was panting over him or Lohn and most of the rest were drooling over either Mara or Zee. Really, there’s hardly any of the Setari who aren’t above average in looks. It must be a job requirement.
    I made sure to not be looking at the Third Squad captain by the time Lohn and Maze got back with the drinks, but I wondered if I’d earned myself an enemy because Maze handed me a drink and sat beside me and smiled and said I had to concede that this was better