by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Ursine Exchange Officer, August 2025
Grawf sharpened her ceremonial knife until it gleamed like a crescent moon. Then holding the curved blade lightly in her heavy ursine paws, the bear-like alien slowly, carefully sliced off a wafer-thin edge of honeycomb from the bustling, buzzing hive of bee-like insects in the corner of her quarters. She placed the deliciously thin, sticky wafer atop a steaming slice of crusty bread, fresh from the real, clay oven in the other corner of her quarters. She’d had to get special permissions to keep a clay oven onboard the starship Initiative, but it was essential to these weekly religious rites.
The gods had to be honored; it had to be done by tasting the flavor of the zumble-bee’s honey; and that could only be done properly on fresh-baked bread.
Certainly, the synthesizers that could render food from thin air in a sizzling fraction of a second were one of the great marvels of the Tri-Galactic Union, and Grawf enjoyed the convenience of one in her quarters as much as any of the regular canine and feline officers. But bread from such a machine was not suitable for honoring the gods. That would be an abomination. Grawf had suffered dreams filled with buzzing of angry gods before. She was not interested in risking them again.
Grawf took a bite of the warm bread, sticky with honeycomb. Its flavor was light and flowery, made from the zinzinar shrub growing in yet a third corner of her quarters. Grawf tended the shrub carefully, and it rotated over the course of several months through its several phases of flowers — tiny pink blossoms that folded outward into drooping red blooms which then lost their petals leaving behind prickly white star flowers. Every stage was beautiful, filling the air of her quarters with a somnolent scent of perfume.
Grawf chewed the sticky, sweet bread carefully, running her mind silently over the prayers to each of the Ursine gods — the honey golems, the hive queens, the trickster rivers, and the great bear warriors who had ascended from mere mortality to join the great and extensive pantheon.
Grawf may have been the first of her people — the first Ursine — to serve on a Tri-Galactic Union ship among all the little cats and dogs, and she might have come to truly believe in the idealistic tenets of the Tri-Galactic Union; she might even have been considering pursuing becoming a member and not just an exchange officer, but in spite of all of that, deep in her heart, she would always be a bear. And she would never forget to worship her people’s gods. In fact, perhaps, Grawf had become a little more obsessive about observing the daily rites of tending her zumble-bees and zinzinar shrub while chanting the names of her gods as a reaction to the seemingly godless ways of the cats and dogs around her.
Sure, many of the dogs claimed to worship the hairless apes who had uplifted them and then disappeared long ago, but they did it in an awfully secular way. Where was the ceremony? The ritual? The daily spiritual connection to the deep, incessant, background buzzing of the universe?
Grawf respected and enjoyed her fellow officers, but she often did not understand them.
Savoring the final bite of her honeycomb sacrament, Grawf concluded that the honey had a slightly stronger tanginess this week, and she resolved to adjust the mineral levels in her zinzinar shrub’s soil accordingly. However, that would have to wait.
The Initiative was currently in the process of docking at Ouroboros Station where many of its officers planned to take a short, refreshing shore leave. Grawf, however, had been assigned a particular duty: another Ursine had been found stranded nearby and needed passage home. The captain felt that a familiar-looking face would be the best way to greet their passenger, so Grawf was to meet with the fellow bear on the station, shepherd him aboard, and show him around the ship.
Grawf had mixed feelings about this task. She loved her people and their ways, but she knew they could be… well, in feline and canine terms, curmudgeonly. Set in their ways. And she had also come to love all of these funny little dogs and cats with their sometimes misplaced idealism. Grawf was afraid of finding herself caught between the two cultures while acting as a diplomat between them. She’d found a place here on her own, and a second Ursine aboard the ship — even for a short while — might upset the balance, leaving her unsure of how to behave. Nonetheless, it was her supreme duty to follow an order from the captain.
Grawf placed a decorative silken, gold-colored sash with a honeycomb pattern over her usual Tri-Galactic Union uniform as a gesture to her own culture. Sometimes, she wore one made from chainmail, but if she was going to be engaged in diplomatic duties, then the silk was more appropriate.
Then before leaving her quarters, Grawf held out a heavy paw toward the zumble-bee hive and let several of the buzzing insects alight on her thick brown fur, humming their goodbye song to her. Their fuzzy amber-colored bodies with their glittery iridescent wings looked like jeweled drops of honey come to life. Grawf growled goodbye to her tiny wards before shaking them gently off her paw, and the zumble-bees flew back into their hive, eager as always to get back to work.
The cats and dogs of the Tri-Galactic Union could have learned a thing or two from the zumble-bees’ industriousness.
* * *
As Grawf wandered the halls of the starship Initiative, the bear found herself joined by more and more Tri-Galactic Union officers. Some of the larger canine officers onboard were nearly her height, though generally thinner. The cats, however, and many of the smaller dogs were barely more than half her height. Grawf felt like a giant among them.
The crowd of officers flowed toward the temporary skybridge, connecting one of the Initiative’s larger airlocks to their assigned docking port on Ouroboros Station. The skybridge was made from transparent material on its sides, so as Grawf walked down the middle of it, she had a wonderful view over the heads of the officers around her of the station they were approaching.
At first glance, Ouroboros Station looked like a somewhat standard ring station, designed to spin around a central axis, creating artificial gravity through centripetal motion without having to rely on artificial gravity generators. However, as Grawf stared at the cluster of rings, the bear realized that one seemed to flow into the next. Instead of a collection of separate spinning rings, this station was, in fact, constructed from a single, long spiral. Like a condensed helix, the spinning ring of Ouroboros Station circled around and around before tucking back inside itself — connecting beginning to end, exactly like the concept it had been named for.
Grawf wondered how long it would take to walk the full length of such a station. And then, she wondered, what kind of station would her own people construct when they invariably advanced to that level.
Ouroboros Station was the sole Tri-Galactic Union station built, run, and operated by Xophidians, a race of reptilian snake-like beings who had been part of the union slightly longer than the Ursines. Invariably, though, someday the Ursinse would build their own station, and Grawf imagined it would look quite different. Perhaps constructed from hexagons like honeycomb. That shape was strong and balanced, instead of confusing and twisty like this one.
Lacking in arms and paws, the snake-like Xophidians had been forced to develop mind-controlled robotic prosthetics arms and paws for themselves as part of their natural societal evolution, leading to them having become absolute experts in robotics. This was immediately apparent upon exiting the skybridge and entering the central, grand, curving hallway of their space station.
Automated, robotic limbs were everywhere, providing all kinds of services — serving foods, opening doors, fetching and rearranging wares upon shelves. Even chairs were equipped with robotic legs that allowed them to step back from a table, allowing space for someone to sit on them, before scurrying back closer to the table to put everything on the table within more convenient reach. It was a simple case of, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail,” on a society-wide scale.
The Xophidians had built beautifully articulated, smoothly jointed, highly dexterous metal robot arms for themselves, and with such an exquisitely high-quality tool, suddenly every aspect of their lives seemed best handled by attaching a robot arm to it.
The effect of all of these gleaming, metal limbs everywhere was kind of claustrophobic and intimidating to an outside visitor. At least, to Grawf. Bears don’t like to feel so hemmed in, unless they’re settling down for a good, long hibernation.
With a disdainful sniff, Grawf concluded that a well-trained hive of zumble-bees could easily replace most of the robotic limbs she saw all over the place in this station. Regardless, she had a job to do here, and she intended to do it.
Grawf had studied the layout of Ouroboros Station before coming aboard and knew where she’d be meeting the stranded Ursine — a bar aimed at visiting mammalian species. So, instead of wasting time on dubious recreational activities, the no-nonsense bear charged straight through the crowds of snakes and other aliens until she arrived at The Rattler’s Tail — a name that the Xophidian proprietor had derived from a cultural misunderstanding regarding what the clattering sound of a rattlesnake’s tail implied to Earth creatures. In this case, the term was meant to sound welcoming.
A single Ursine sat at an otherwise empty table, large paws wrapped around a small drink, in the middle of the crowded bar. He was wearing a simple, standard Ursine outfit — tan shirt and pants with a burgundy brocade pattern around the neck, cuffs, and other hems, and his fur was a thick, bushy, pale brown. He was a handsome bear, but his features were a little unusual — his eyes particularly wideset; the end of his muzzle particularly square; and his rounded ears smaller and furrier than most Ursine’s. There was simply a kind of uncanny quality to his features, but then, perhaps he was from one of the tropical regions of their world. Grawf hadn’t encountered many Ursines from there as she herself had been born and raised in the icy flats of the northern polar region of her home planet, Ursa Minuet. She was a tundra bear with the obsidian tipped brown fur to show for it, designed to make her blend in with volcanic outcroppings way back before her people had evolved to sentience.
It was a point of pride among Ursines that they’d evolved sentience entirely on their own while the far more technologically advanced Earth mammals had needed to be uplifted by some furless primates in their distant past.
This particular Ursine, seated in the middle of the bar, looked somewhat fidgety and uncomfortable, casting glances around nervously. Grawf couldn’t blame him. Even in this bar aimed at specifically at mammals, it was impossible to deny as an Ursine that this was a strange, foreign place. Most of the mammals in the bar were far smaller and more delicate than Ursines, and the servers, of course, were Xophidians with robot arms, balancing platters of food and drink as they carried them to the tables. Their presence was enough to make any bear twitchy.
Grawf walked right up to the other bear, crossed her paws over her chest, and bowed her head in a traditional greeting. The bear returned the gesture, looking discomfited. Perhaps he felt strange performing such an Ursine greeting ritual while surrounded by so many cats and dogs from the Tri-Galactic Union. Hoping to ease his tension, Grawf held forward a paw in the more traditional Earth gesture of offering a handshake. The bear took her paw and shook it, looking relieved.
“I am exchange officer Grawf from the Tri-Galactic Union starship Initiative, and I am here to guide you onboard, give you a tour, and then show you to your quarters for the journey.”
The Ursine nodded, gesturing for Grawf to sit down at the empty chair across the table from him. “I’m T’di Braklaw,” he said. There was a slight twist to his voice that suggested Grawf’s comm-pin was performing an automatic translation for her. So, he really must have been from an obscure tropical island region to speak a dialect that had been isolated enough from the dominant Ursine language to require translation. “Won’t you join me and have a drink before we go? They make one here with sweetened fish eggs at the bottom that’s quite delightful. You slurp them up with a straw!”
Grawf acceded to T’di Braklaw’s request and sat down. He ordered her a drink like his from one of the serpentine servers who brought it over right away.
“You have an unusual name,” Grawf said, stirring her tiny drink with its straw.
It was also unusual that Braklaw had shared his private, personal, familiar name with her so readily. Grawf decided to chalk it up to Braklaw’s relief at being with another Ursine again. However, it did make her all the more curious about what kind of ordeal he must have undergone to have ended up lost and alone, stranded in Xophidian space.
Braklaw looked startled by Grawf’s statement regarding his name. She supposed it had been an impertinent comment and shifted tacks: “Allow me to apologize for my impertinence. Obviously, both halves of your name are quite common in their disparate regions. I simply haven’t heard the two halves combined before, and it caused me to be curious about your personal history. But I should have known better than to be so forthright. It is my role to serve you, make sure that you get settled comfortably on the Initiative, and nothing else. So, please, allow me to withdraw the implied question.”
Braklaw laughed, a plain and honest sound. Open in a way that he hadn’t seemed before. “You are correct. My history is… unusual. But I appreciate your restraint. I do not wish to discuss my past right now.” A metaphorical shadow crossed Braklaw’s face, twisting his muzzle with something akin to grief or regret. But he shook it off quickly, trying to return to the simple, sunny demeanor he’d been performing before. “I’d rather focus on the future.”
“The future?” Grawf inquired. She took a sip of her drink and found she had to agree with the other bear’s assessment of it — the way the sweetened fish eggs burst when she bit down on them, mixing their inherent salt flavor with the honeyed sweetness of the drink was truly delightful. Perhaps these techno-happy snakes had more in common with bears, deep inside, than she would have expected.
Grawf lifted up the drink and looked at the gelatinous bubbles clustered in a heap at the bottom. It certainly wasn’t the kind of drink that the cats and dogs on the Initiative seemed to choose. They mostly seemed to like their drinks milky, as if they were all still cubs suckling away in preparation for their first big hibernation.
“Well, maybe not the future,” Braklaw hedged, fiddling with the dainty straw in his own drink. “I guess, I mean, I’d like to hear about this starship I’ll be traveling on and the Tri-Galactic Union.”
“Ah,” Grawf said begrudgingly. This was what she expected — needing to figure out how to explain her present life surrounded by finicky, persnickety little cats and dogs with their fixated idealism to fellow bears who were still rooted in good, solid, traditional Ursine ways. Bridging between the two societies was an inherent part of the job, being an exchange officer, but it wasn’t something she relished. She liked learning about and experiencing Tri-Galactic Union culture directly. She didn’t really want to have to explain it.
“Well, I think you’ll find the culture aboard the Initiative somewhat… sterile. But their ship is a marvel technologically.”
Braklaw waved a paw dismissively. “I don’t want to know about the technology. I want to know about the people. What they’re like–” He looked around the bar, glancing at the other officers on shore leave from the Initiative who were seated at nearby tables, sipping drinks and chatting with the Xophidian servers. “–these cats and dogs. Are they all cats and dogs? Aren’t there any other animals?”
What a strange question, Grawf thought. Most planets that evolved sentient life seemed to end up with one primary, dominant sentient species. The Xophidian snakes didn’t have any sibling sentient species on their world. Nor the Ursines, of course. However, Earth was an unusual case where the primates who’d evolved sentience first had then uplifted a bunch of their fellow species. Perhaps that was what Braklaw was getting at — if there were two different sentient species, perhaps there were even more? And of course, he was correct.
“Well, yes,” Grawf answered. “In addition to the cats and dogs, there are also a number of squirrel officers aboard. They’re smaller and have very big, bushy tails. And there is one rabbit on our ship — she has extremely long, floppy ears like a Morphican without their computer implants. Then there are the otters with long spines and short legs, and I’m told there are also mice back on their homeworld who are small enough to sit on an Ursine’s outheld paw. Though, personally, I have some trouble believing it.”
Braklaw smiled in a way that made absolutely no sense to Grawf. A wide, beaming smile on his long, square muzzle. Perhaps he didn’t believe in such a silly legend either and was simply tickled by the idea of such tiny, midget animals being sentient. It was an amusing image, like something out of a fairytale where an isolated zumble-bee learned to talk and be an individual person, separate from her hive. Fun to think about, but really far too fantastical to take seriously.
“So… you don’t sound like you know very much about the squirrels, rabbits, otters, and mice then.” Braklaw sounded unaccountably disappointed. “And I suppose there aren’t any… um… you know… bears. Like us.”
“From Earth?” Grawf laughed. A good hearty laugh. “What an excellent joke.”
Braklaw smiled, but there was a touch of sadness in his eyes. Apparently, he was really curious about the non-feline and -canine species from Earth. So, Grawf tried to oblige his odd curiosity. “There don’t seem to be any squirrel officers in the bar right now, but I’m sure we’ll pass by a few on your tour of the ship. And while there aren’t any otter officers aboard, I’m told they look a lot like cetazoids but with brown fur.”
“Cetazoids?” Braklaw’s face twisted with confusion, and so Grawf pointed out Consul Tor — the Initiative’s exchange officer from Cetazed who was standing at the bar, chatting with a Xophidian merchant who seemed to be selling her a leafy vine-like creature that had draped itself in a clinging way around her green otter-like shoulders. The Consul seemed quite pleased with the little pet plant.
“Are you really not familiar with cetazoids?” Grawf asked in surprise. The empathic, photosynthetic, otteroid aliens were relatively close neighbors of their own Ursine world.
“Oh, cetazoids,” Braklaw said staring steadily at the green otteroid as she cooed over her new leafy pet. He looked strangely bewildered. Though, Grawf supposed plant-based sentients were kind of bewildering, and the idea of one adopting a plant-based pet even more so. “I must have misheard you before.”
Grawf nodded, uncertain as to how Braklaw had managed to repeat her word so perfectly if he’d misheard it. However, it would have been impolite to press the matter. Instead she slurped up the remainder of the fish eggs through her straw. Finished with her drink, Grawf said, “Shall we go to wherever you’ve been staying and collect your things? I can help you carry your zumble-bee hive.”
Braklaw’s eyes widened, and he looked away before saying, “I don’t have any things.”
Grawf’s wide muzzle dropped open, aghast. His zumble-bee hive had been lost?! No wonder this bear was out of sorts. She’d had a very difficult time adjusting to life aboard the Initiative before she’d managed to convince the captain to allow her to bring her own zumble-bee hive aboard and keep it in her quarters. It had been very hard to sleep without their gentle droning. All of her daily rituals had been fake and hollow without the fuzzy little insects performing their half. It simply wasn’t the same to generate a piece of bread with honeycomb on top in the synthesizer. Bread is meant to be freshly baked, and honeycomb is supposed to be a sacrament between zumble-beekeeper and zumble-bee.
“My deepest condolences,” Grawf rumbled sympathetically. “My hive is strong enough that I think we could cultivate one of the worker zumble-bees into a second queen and start a new hive for you as soon as we get aboard. And we can take a cutting from my zinzinar shrub and graft it onto some appropriate roots taken from a compatible plant in the ship’s arboretum. It won’t be the same as your own shrub and hive, but it’ll be a start.”
Braklaw’s muzzle opened uncertainly. He didn’t seem to know what to say in the face of Grawf’s generosity. Though it was only what any upstanding Ursine would do for another. Even so, perhaps he was overcome by the memory of his own lost zumble-bees. He certainly seemed to have been through a lot to have ended up here, rattled and tongue-tied, without even a hive accompanying him. So he simply nodded and thanked her.
* * *
The walk back through the crowds of Ouroboros Station to the Initiative was quiet, and so was most of the tour that Grawf gave Braklaw of the ship. Just two bears wandering side by side through the humming halls of an interstellar spacecraft as one of the bears occasionally pointed at and named things for the other. Braklaw mostly nodded, asking surprisingly few questions.
Grawf couldn’t tell if it was awkwardly quiet or companionably quiet, and she began to wonder if her calibration for understanding others of her own species had been thrown off by spending so much time with dogs who liked to bark and cats who routinely read too much into silences with their skewed ears and twitching tail tips.
Bears have small ears, short tails, and prefer straightforward communication. Any species that hibernates for a full year, every seventh year, has to have a much greater capacity for enjoying silence than Grawf had seen any of the little mammals she worked with on the Initiative ever display. Many of the dogs and cats seemed to get twitchy if even a whole minute passed by without one of them yapping or yowling away.
Grawf decided the silence between her and Braklaw was refreshing. And once she’d showed him all of the essential parts of the ship and brought him to the quarters where he’d be staying, she asked if he’d like to participate in the grafting and hive-splitting ceremonies. He grumbled a terse, “If you think that would be best.”
“It will help the zumble-bees and zinzinar shrub to acclimate to a new keeper if we perform the ceremonies together,” Grawf said, standing in the doorway to Braklaw’s temporary quarters. She was confused as to why he would show any reticence.
“We can go to my quarters and do them now,” Grawf added. If there was something to do, it was best to get it done right away, and besides, if Braklaw had been stranded in Xophidian space, he might have been away from his own hive and shrub for a long time. Certainly, he should be eager to rectify that situation. Even so, he still seemed reluctant, standing in the entryway to his quarters, shuffling his stance from one heavy hindpaw to the other.
Grawf wracked her mind to imagine what could possibly be bothering this other bear. “If you’re worried about disrupting the hive and shrub too much, you needn’t fear. The trip from here back to the nearest Ursine settlement will take several weeks given the Initiative’s other duties along the way, so both will have plenty of time to settle into your care before you’ll need to move them again.”
Braklaw’s face clouded with an emotion Grawf couldn’t make any sense of, and he glanced away from her, his gaze traveling over the quarters around him in a shifty way, as if he wanted nothing more than to be away from this conversation.
Did Braklaw feel guilty about whatever had happened to his previous hive and shrub and therefore unworthy of a replacement? Or perhaps, just fearful that something terrible would happen again, damaging or destroying these new ones, thus leaving him reluctant to embark upon the journey of zumble-bee stewardship again? There were Ursines who bonded so deeply with their hives that if anything happened to their zumble-bees’ queen, they’d simply never keep another hive again. A tragic turn of affairs.
But perhaps, Braklaw simply needed more time to adjust to the idea of receiving a new hive. Clearly, the bear’s sense of safety had been deeply shattered by whatever he’d been through. “If you need more time to prepare yourself for the ceremonies,” Grawf said, “I can leave you to your own devices. However, for the bee’s sake, I don’t recommend waiting too long. The sooner we do the ceremony, the better it will be for the new queen.”
A weight looked like it lifted off of Braklaw’s broad shoulders when Grawf offered to leave him to his own devices. “Yes, yes,” he rumbled, eyes brightening. “A little time to prepare. That’s all I need.”
“Very well,” Grawf rumbled back. “I’ll go see Lt. Unari about getting appropriate roots for the grafting, so they’ll be ready whenever you are.”
“That’s very kind,” Braklaw said. “She was the black cat who showed us around the arboretum, right? Please thank her for me.”
“Yes, of course,” Grawf said. Then with a sudden, ignoble spasm of jealousy, she added, “I’m actually surprised that you don’t seem to have trouble telling cats and dogs apart. It took me the longest time to be able to reliably distinguish them, and there are still a few officers who I’m unsure about.”
Braklaw took a half step back, almost as if Grawf’s words had been a challenge to him. Then he laughed — well, a guarded sort of half-laugh — and said, “Oh, she was a cat then? I was guessing.”
Grawf narrowed her eyes. She didn’t believe that he’d been guessing, but she also didn’t want to believe that the first Ursine she’d seen in many months was lying to her.
“I’ll show you how to use the ship’s computer to contact me through my comm-pin whenever you’re ready for the ceremonies,” Grawf said guardedly. “It’s somewhat different from our computer systems, so I can give you a quick tutorial if that would be helpful.”
Now Braklaw’s entire face brightened. “Oh, yes, thank you,” he said. “I’ve always been… well… clumsy with computers, so that would be very helpful. ”
Grawf had never heard of anyone being clumsy with computers before, but she was too troubled by the other oddities in Braklaw’s behavior to worry too much about that… until she tried to teach him how to use the computer access panel inside the door to his quarters.
Grawf couldn’t put her clawtip on it, but there was something wrong about the way Braklaw learned to use the computer panel. He adjusted to touching the little lights and tiny words on the panel with his big, wide paws as if he wasn’t trying to unlearn years of habits designed for working with a computer that had been built by bears, for bears, instead of by some twitchy little mammal, for another twitchy little mammal.
By the time Grawf had left Braklaw alone in his quarters, she couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that the Ursine wasn’t who he claimed to be. She halfway wondered if he might be some kind of spy. But if so, who was he working for? And who, exactly, was he spying on? If he were spying on the Tri-Galactic Union, shouldn’t he have shown more interest in the tour — perhaps asking questions or displaying more curiosity about the ship’s design and layout? Or maybe, that was part of the deception. By pretending not to care, he kept himself beneath suspicion. Except, she suspected him.
Grawf found her brow wrinkling as her thoughts turned into a pair of mirrors pointed at each other, bouncing the same idea back and forth, back and forth until it made no sense at all. For all that an exchange officer’s job was fifty percent or more diplomacy, Grawf hated diplomacy. She simply wanted to explore the unknown, and serving aboard a Tri-Galactic Union vessel was the best way of doing that.
But today, the captain wanted her to see to the needs of a stranded member of her own species. So she would do what the captain asked.
Grawf acquired a root bulb from the arboretum with Lt. Unari’s help and synthesized a nice glazed pot to keep it in, awaiting the grafting ceremony. She dropped the pot off in her quarters where her zumble-bees took an immediate interest in it, and then, she went to the viewpoint lounge, one of several places aboard the Initiative that were set aside as informal spaces where officers could congregate and relax.
Like the Constellation Club, the viewpoint lounge had tall, wide, floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on the glittering expanse of space. However, unlike the Constellation Club, the viewpoint lounge didn’t have a bar with a very social bartender, and so it tended to be quieter. A less crowded, more contemplative space to spend time while staring at the stars.
And right now, Grawf wanted quiet contemplation.
Unfortunately for the troubled, preoccupied Ursine, the one Earth rabbit who lived aboard the Initiative and served as the bartender in the Constellation Club was enjoying a break from her usual duties by hanging out in the usually quiet viewpoint lounge. Galen was a loquacious, gregarious bunny, and she liked to get to know everyone aboard her ship. But since Grawf avoided the Constellation Club in favor of the viewpoint lounge, Galen rarely got a chance to see the Ursine and wasn’t going to miss this opportunity.
As soon as Grawf had seated herself at an empty table and begun to relax, staring at the view of the stars twinkling around the spiraling ring of Ouroboros Station, Galen came right over and helped herself to one of the empty chairs without asking for permission.
Galen wore a silken gown in shades of plum and purple that draped elegantly over her brown fur, and her long, floppy ears were adorned with looping braids of matching silken ribbons. “You don’t have a drink,” Galen observed sharply, looking at Grawf’s large, empty paws laid on the tabletop.
Grawf narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow. Talking to one of the most notoriously talkative animals on the ship was not what she’d had in mind when she’d come into the viewpoint lounge. “And you don’t have a bar here,” Grawf rumbled wryly, hoping it would inspire the rabbit to go away.
Galen shrugged, causing the flowing silk of her robes to shift like a waterfall breaking over stones. “There are synthesizers in here, and I’ve never had the pleasure of discovering your new favorite drink for you. A challenge I enjoy with every officer. So, tell me, what do you think you want to drink?”
Resigned, Grawf sighed and described the sensory delight that had been the drink with fish eggs served in The Rattler’s Tail. “I was planning on teaching the synthesizers here to make it.”
Galen held up a paw and said, “No need.” Standing up, she added, “I’ll improve upon it. Be right back.”
True to her words, Galen returned in mere moments with a large glass held in her small paws. This drink had a much darker color than the one Grwaf had enjoyed in the Xophidian bar — dark brown with a light purplish tinge. Galen handed the drink to her, and the Ursine took a tentative sip from the wide straw, genuinely intrigued. The liquid was thick and rich, less sweet than the other drink, and when the fish eggs burst between Grawf’s teeth, their sweet-salty flavor brought out a complimentary aftertaste from the purplish liquid lingering on her tongue.
Surprised, Grawf held the drink between both paws and stared at it, as if trying to puzzle out how it could manage to be so good.
“You love it, right?” Galen asked, sitting down at the table again, across from Grawf.
“I do,” the Ursine admitted. She didn’t want to encourage the rabbit to stay and talk to her, but Grawf couldn’t pretend not to love the drink. That would have been dishonest and therefore dishonorable. She was better than that. “How did you program the synthesizer to make it so fast?”
The rabbit shrugged and smiled enigmatically. “I’m a bartender. I have a lot practice with synthesizers.”
“What’s in it to give it that…” Words failed Grawf as she tried to think of how to describe the flavor.
“The base is a blend that includes several juices from Earth fruits — leaning heavily towards plum,” Galen said. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about what kind of drink might be favorable to an Ursine palate while waiting for you to come to my bar.”
Grawf shifted uncomfortably at the implication that her avoidance of the Constellation Club had been noticed and possibly taken personally. “I was not avoiding you,” Grawf rumbled, sounding more defensive than sorry, even though she actually felt sorry for having possibly hurt this rabbit’s feelings. “I simply don’t do well with crowds. They make it hard for me to think.”
“And what, pray tell,” Galen said, folding her small paws under her round chin, “do you like to think about?”
Grawf shifted uncomfortably in her seat. To be fair, the chair she was sitting in had probably been designed for a medium sized dog, in order to be comfortable for most cats and dogs, which meant it was rather small for the weighty girth of an Ursine. Regardless, her discomfort had more to do with the idea of trying to either put her thoughts into words or find a way to avoid doing so that wouldn’t simply lead to even more uncomfortable questions from this overly friendly rabbit.
“Perhaps my question was too broad,” Galen said. The rabbit leaned back, as if she could sense that her questions were making the bear feel crowded and wanted to allow more space between them, physically if not conversationally. “What did you come here to think about today?”
Begrudgingly, Grawf said, “The Ursine passenger who I’ve been assigned to welcome aboard the ship. There is something strange about him.” The bear looked a little surprised by her own answer, as if the question had tricked her into revealing her private thoughts, because what can you do with a question but answer it honestly, even if you don’t want to?
“He’s been lost in Xophidian space for some time, hasn’t he?” Galen asked, sounding genuinely interested in the topic. “The only Ursine on a space station populated primarily by reptiles and other aliens?”
Grawf nodded. She supposed that the ability to sound genuinely interested in whatever topic presents itself is part of being a good bartender. It didn’t change that Grawf didn’t really want to be talking to this rabbit. She wanted to be pensively pondering her own thoughts alone. Or, as some of the other officers aboard the ship had accused her of before: brooding.
Galen started talking about a famous poet from ancient Earth who’d written extensively about what it was like to be isolated from others of his kind, and to Grawf’s horror, her cheerful chatter seemed to draw other loquacious little mammals to the table to join in with the conversation. A conversation that Grawf had never really consented to and found herself trying to tune out.
“Are you talking about Teddy Bearclaw?” Lt. LeGuin asked, taking a seat without invitation at the table between Grawf and Galen. The little orange tabby cat wore techno-focal goggles that completely covered his eyes, but his ears stood tall and his whiskers turned up with excitement. “I love Bearclaw’s poetry! The Saga of Sentience got me through some of the roughest parts of my kittenhood.”
Before long, Cmdr. Wilker had joined them as well, opining on how this ancient Earth poet had started an entirely new genre of music when his poems had been reworked into musical form. The collie dog first officer had to be one of the most overly friendly and garrulous creatures to serve aboard the Initiative, and Grawf cringed inwardly at having her solitude further intruded upon by his presence. And yet, as the collie, tabby, and rabbit gushed at each other about how meaningful this poet’s work had been to them, Grawf found there was space for a different kind of solitude to be found inside their conversation. None of them expected her to participate, and so she could listen, while also letting her mind wander. It was actually rather pleasant. Their cheerful chatter of barks and meows reminded Grawf of the droning sound of her zumble-bees — companionable, consistent, but not overly taxing.
When Grawf’s comm-pin buzzed her with Braklaw’s voice, letting her know he was ready for the grafting and re-hiving ceremonies now, the Ursine officer actually decided to invite the traveler to join her in the viewpoint lounge instead of using him as an excuse to escape. A few minutes later, Braklaw wandered into the viewpoint lounge looking vaguely lost until he saw Grawf, and his large face brightened.
Braklaw came up to the table just as Lt. LeGuin and Cmdr. Wilker were arguing over whether the Animal Voices epic or A Cup of Tea Alone in My Room was a better poem. The Ursine’s muzzle twisted up and his brow furrowed at the sound of their argument. His spine noticeably stiffened, and Grawf chastised herself internally for exposing him to this kind of noise so soon after coming aboard. Ursine conversations were generally much slower paced than the kind of conversations that cats and dogs had aboard the Initiative. She should’ve introduced him to the culture here more slowly.
Standing herself up, also stiffly, Grawf cursorily introduced Braklaw to her fellow officers and then immediately but politely apologized for needing to leave.
“Braklaw, huh?” Cmdr. Wilker barked. Then with that wide grin that could only fit on a long collie face, he laughed and added, “That’s awfully similar in sound to Bearclaw, the poet we’ve been talking about.”
Lt. LeGuin purred and added with one of those enigmatic feline smiles, “Wouldn’t that be nice — to actually meet the poet whose words still echo in my ears almost every day. That’d really be something. Anyway, it’s nice to meet you, Braklaw, and I hope you have a lovely time onboard the Initiative.”
Galen also smiled, but the expression was prim and precise on the rabbit’s face. “Teddy Bearclaw died a long time ago,” she said, staring directly at T’di Braklaw, whose own large face had turned hard and stony in response to all this talk of a long gone Earth poet. “But I hope I’ll see more of you when you’re settled. Now, off with you bears–” She made a shooing motion with her small paws that caused her purple robes to flutter. “–I’m sure you have important Ursine business to attend to.”
Grawf and Braklaw exited the viewpoint lounge together as Consul Tor entered with her new pet — the leafy vine-like creature she’d purchased in The Rattler’s tail — draped over her green shoulders like a scarf. Its emerald leaves complimented the otteroid’s grass-green fur perfectly.
Continue on to Part 2…
Read more from Ursine Exchange Officer:
[Next]