Touchstone 1 - Stray

even comes close to how dumb I sound to the Tarens.
    Anyway, Maze answered right away. “Something bothering you, Caszandra?”
    “Is visitor,” I replied, and sent him an image of the Ionoth cat sitting on my lap. Then, before he could respond, I quickly went on: “If capture what happen her?”
    He paused a long time before answering, then said carefully: “They’ll find a way to scan for it. Then I’ll personally return it to the Ena, since I suspect you’ll accept nothing less.”
    Maze really is the nicest guy on the planet. “Is big thank you,” I said, and he laughed.
    “I’m out in the city at the moment, but I’ll send someone to you. You’re not feeling any negative effects?”
    “Purring cat good thing.”
    “Won’t be long.”
    He left the channel active, in case I started screaming about evil kittens, and I took the opportunity to play with my temporary pet a little more. I’ve decided to call her Ghost, which definitely fits. I didn’t absolutely believe that no-one would try and kill her, but I trusted Maze to do his best to make sure that didn’t happen. I wasn’t entirely sure she would cooperate at all, but I figured that if I stayed calm and no-one made any sudden moves, she’d probably at least not run off the second anyone showed up.
    I wasn’t expecting Ruuel, and reacted all out of proportion, stiffening so that Ghost stopped purring, and probably going pink beneath my bruises. What Mr I-Have-Every-Kind-Of-Sight-But-No-Visible-Sense-of-Humour made of my expression I couldn’t tell, but he took the container the two greensuits were carrying and shut them outside.
    “Place it in here,” he said, moving the container so it was flush with the bed. It was an ominous-looking box, metal and plastic with a rare physical control panel on one corner. And warning signs about containment fields.
    I didn’t move immediately, carefully stroking Ghost, who hadn’t scrambled off, but mightn’t like me after this. “Come back and visit me again,” I told her in English. “I’m only going to turn you in this once.” Scooping her up with a hand beneath her chest, I carefully lowered her into the box, saying, “Her name Ghost.”
    Ruuel just turned the containment field on, which made Ghost look upset. She vanished, but I don’t think she was able to get out. At least, he didn’t act like he thought she had, turning and opening the door again and handing the box to the greensuits.
    I busied myself telling Maze that Ghost was safely in a box, expecting Ruuel to go away again, except he didn’t.
    “I had a question for you,” he said, when I looked at him. “You referred to the aether as ‘moonlight’. Was that simply your ineptitude with our language?”
    I could have lived without ‘ineptitude’. Ruuel doesn’t dance around shortcomings.
    “Is because aether look feel like moonlight Muina when building make liquid,” I said, as clearly as I could manage, and had the satisfaction of making his eyes open to more than halfway.
    “Building make liquid?” he repeated.
    “When moon rise Muina building light…” I had to search around for a word which fit. “Draw? Focus? Become? Thicken? Look feel same aether.”
    “The buildings on Muina turn moonlight into aether?” I nodded and was given a full-on ‘captain look’ in return. “It didn’t occur to you to tell anyone this?”
    “Is your planet,” I said, struggling to keep annoyance out of my voice. “How know what you not know?”
    “Wait,” was all he said back, developing that gaze-into-nothing look people get when they’re talking over the interface. I took the time to remind myself that these were life-and-death issues, and that there was no point glowering at him just because he’d made me feel in the wrong. I did wish that I hadn’t given him a starring role in so many daydreams, or at least wasn’t sitting in bed dressed in a flimsy patient gown, looking so damn ugly.
    Then I was added to a channel with about ten people already in it, a bunch of names I didn’t know, as well as Ruuel, Maze, the Third Squad captain Taarel, and the bluesuit, Selkie.
    “Devlin, please explain your experiences with aether on Muina in more detail,” Selkie said, all brisk and businesslike.
    “Is…moment.” I hadn’t expected to be dumped into some high level meeting, and reached for my diary as the simplest way to handle it without sounding defensive. Flipping through a few pages, I said: “First time saw