rickgriffin

A Vast And Endless Sky 7

Added 2022-03-16 05:54:46 +0000 UTC

Endless Sky 6

Absolutely needed to show movie night with a ssarith, it's one of the scenes that's been in my head since this story was Snakes Conquer Earth. Comments appreciated!

The holo projector managed to use its ability to make the room appear larger than it was by creating the illusion of a large movie theater screen, which was pretty awesome. But the movie night wasn’t exactly as Rees had expected. Besides the dearth of snacks—Thassiter promised to source some for next time—the snakes also had a habit of asking questions in the middle of the narrative rather than just taking it all in. And yes, snakes, plural, as some of Thassiter’s designation turned into their personal quarters near the last one third of the movie, and emerged to observe alongside in the lounge, only to flood Rees with more questions about how he was experiencing the story. Rees, at the very least, got them to shut up for the last twenty minutes and just save their questions for the end—by which time, six ssarith had gathered in the lounge and started to take up all the space, their tails overlapping one another without much concern for personal space.

At the end—and they sat through all of the ending credits, because the snakes needed to observe the whole thing—Thassiter rewound the movie to places of particular curiosity. The ssarith all seemed to be stubbornly unwilling to understand what editing cuts in a movie implied.

“He’s looking at the fruit,” Rees explained.

“This is what is meant by this cut, then?” Thassiter asked. “The fruit is not in frame. I am looking at the fictional character Jeero who is staring into the camera recording him, and then I am looking at a fruit laying upon a stone. I am to imply that this is the object of Jeero’s gaze?”

“Yes!” Rees said. “You have to pretend that the camera isn’t there.”

“Oh yes, that is true,” Thassiter said. “But it is difficult to understand how these things are recorded for our observation if they are not recorded by a camera.”

“You don’t ask the same thing about the music,” Rees said.

“I was going to ask about the music,” Assußar said. “In some of the scenarios, we clearly see it being played by nearby musicians. At which points are we to assume it is not being played by characters present at the scenario?”

“Some things can just be ambiguous,” Rees said. “Besides, most of the time the music is just there to make it feel more dramatic. It’s not being experienced by the characters, it’s just for the benefit of the audience.”

“The audience that the movie is pretending is not a present part of the scenario,” Thassiter said.

“Yes!”

“You have to forgive everyone,” the dark-colored Sþor said, “We have had researchers study the fictional methodologies of other species, but none of us in this room are experts.”

“I suppose if none of you have ever watched a movie before…” Rees said. “But you know, guys, kits aren’t born knowing this stuff either. Movie editing and story shorthand and all of that are their own language. You pick it up by observation.”

Thassiter’s expression display got a curious look. He turned to Trssl and spoke something in his own, strangely articulated language. Trssl flexed his scales and scratched at his chest before responding.

“What? What are you saying?” Rees asked.

“If editing is a language,” Thassiter said, “then it is translatable, just as body language is. In that case, the AI can translate it for us. We are looking to see if there has already been any comparable program developed to understand lio cinema.”

“It would be nice if you guys could just try… you know… taking it all in,” Rees emphasized. “Do we have time for another movie? I’d like everyone to just try sitting and watching it and reflecting on it internally.”

Thassiter and the other ssarith discussed this briefly, which returned as a cheerful smile on the emotion translator. “Certainly,” Thassiter said. “Experimenting this way may prove enriching. What movie do you propose now?”

This time Rees selected a movie he had a hard time believing anyone could misunderstand—Murder in the House of the Sun. It should have at least appealed to their logical sensibilities. The ssarith were good to their word and remained silent through the whole, and Rees could have sworn he caught some getting caught up in the emotion of the moment when the big twist halfway through the movie occurred. Detective Aurra, who was the star of eleven stories up to that point, was herself murdered. It was a shock to the reading public when it was published fifty years ago, and despite public outcry, the author stuck to her guns. She made the dopey sidekick, Agent Cor, take up the mantle of detective instead. It was a move of shocking artistic ingenuity that worked for exactly one book before the franchise died, and then later revived when Aurra somehow turned up alive again.

Of course, the ssarith didn’t know any of that. It was difficult to find a montrose on Ar who didn’t know the twist to this story, so Rees felt at least a bit of ownership in providing some genuine reactions to a crowd of aliens.

During the final reveal, when Agent Cor gathered all the suspects together to unmask the killer—it was the reporter who didn’t seem otherwise involved in the crime—Thassiter suddenly snatched Rees up off of his tail.

“Hey!” Rees exclaimed.

“My apologies, Rees,” Thassiter whispered—or at least his voice synthesizer was set to low. “Your tail has been ticking my backside for the last twenty minutes.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Rees didn’t realize how hard he’d been wagging it. The thing was like a feather duster when he was happy. And it was kinda weird that he was.

Thassiter held Rees in his claws for the remaining moments of the movie; while Rees wasn’t quite hand-held size for the ssarith, he was perhaps both-claws size, as Thassiter could wrap and entire palm and fingers around Rees’s chest. At first he just held Rees properly, but soon his thumbs and fingers just started rolling up and down Rees’s arms and back in soft, steady motions. Rees should have probably told him otherwise, but the gesture was intensely relaxing, like one of those coin-operated full-body-massage machines you found at the mall. Despite his size, he was very careful not to press harder than he needed to. Rees found himself biting his lip and pressing into Thassiter’s open palm.

When the movie ended, the ssarith continued to keep their promise of not asking too many questions, but they talked among themselves. Rees didn’t mind. He was rather tired of answering questions, and Thassiter treating him like a desk toy was a new experience. Thassiter would have probably stopped if Rees said so, but he didn’t want to try.

After more long moments of discussions, the ssarith said goodnight to one another, as Thassiter explained, while they pressed their noses together one after the other. Then Thassiter took Rees into his quarters, where he wrapped his prodigious tail around the pole in the center of his bed.

Thassiter took a length of soft wooly cloth from a drawer and tied it up to the pole in the center of the bed to a hook on the side, creating something that was like a bed for Rees to sleep in. He kinda wanted to sleep against Thassiter’s chest, but Thassiter probably didn’t even realize how nice the fur-stroking felt. Just as Thassiter ordered the lights out, Rees gestured for Thassiter to bring his face closer. Rees bumped him on the nose with his own.

“That is only a formality for my designation,” Thassiter said.

“I like it anyway,” Rees said. He was probably blushing very hard. But he’d hardly still had much time to sleep—he had no idea what time it was at home, he was probably ruining his sleep schedule. Regardless, Rees curled up in his makeshift hammock and yawned.

“Rees?” Thassiter asked.

“Mmm?”

“Why didn’t the detective know the killer was a male montrose from the start? It seemed obvious from the camera view.”

“…oh my Goddess, Thassiter,” Rees chuckled to himself. “She wasn’t present for the stabbing.”

“But we saw the stabbing, and then the Detective’s face… and you said—”

“You can bother me about it tomorrow,” Rees said, pressing his face into the cloth. “I need to sleep…”

—

Rees woke up some time later, to a sudden start. For a long moment, he’d forgotten where he was, and in in jolt he twisted in place and fell out of the makeshift hammock onto Thassiter’s tail. The giant didn’t seem to notice, he was cozied up against himself into the edge of the round bed. Apparently, ssarith didn’t close their eyes when they slept, but the slits that contained their shining irises sealed up rather thin.

Again, Rees had no idea how long it’d been. Could have been asleep for six or eight hours or more. But he did finally feel mostly rested.

Goddess… how long am I going to be here? My mom’s worried sick about me, I’m sure… she probably called the police, thinks I’m a runaway now…

As frustrated as Rees was with his mother—he’d complained about her a lot—there was still a part of him that held out eternal hope that she could just be better, because he’d seen it in her from time to time. He really needed to give her a call.

“Thass?” Rees asked quietly, stepping over to his enormous shoulder and giving it what could charitably be called a shake. “Hey, Thass… it’s morning, I think…”

“You should not wake him yet,” said a voice from behind the bed, much different than any of the ssarith he’d heard before. “Ssarith sleep eighteen hours at a stretch and are awake for forty-two.”

Rees peeked over the top of the bed to the floor below, his ears risen in a perk, and he gasped at the golden-pelted alien. A lio? She certainly looked like the image that Thassiter had shown him, though she wore a shiny white mask that concealed her face, though had another painted on it. She was at least as tall as Rees’s own mother, though a goodly portion of her height seemed to be made up of her unusually long legs. She even had the enormous braid that hung down to her rear, and the long thin tail.

“Montrose,” she said, her face mask doing the AI translation as it had with Thassiter, though her voice seemed more natural. “You said your name was Raar Rees?”

“Yeah, that’s my name,” he said. “What’s… yours?”

“I’m Assistant Ambassador Velk,” she said. “Please come with me.”

Rees shrank back, looking to Thassiter. “Am I in trouble?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” the lio said. “But your accidental abduction had caused a stir, and the lio embassy wishes to speak with you.”

“There’s a lio embassy here?”

“Most of the ssarith people are here. Having the embassy within the fleet is not a long stretch to make.”

“I suppose that makes sense.” Rees looked back to Thassiter, and his slowly rising and falling chest. “You’ll bring me back, right?”

“That depends on how the meeting goes,” Velk said. “We have some disagreements with the ssarith command on your role here during your stay.”

Rees’s ears sank.

“Don’t worry, I have their permission to fetch you,” she said, holding her paw up. “I would not have been able to enter this room otherwise. We have no intention of tearing you away, but I do insist you come. We’ll even get you some facilities in your size so you can clean up.”

Rees pulled back. “I… I just got here, I don’t want to be yanked around.”

“You don’t exactly have a choice in the matter,” Velk said. “You’re a representative of your people now, whether you intended it or not.”

“That’s a heavy thing to put on an eighteen-year-old.”

“It happens in war.”

Rees thought about it more. Thassiter was going to be asleep for at least another ten hours, and he didn’t exactly have permission to wander around anywhere else. But even so, he didn’t know this lio other than her demanding tone.

“I’ll go with you on one condition,” Rees said.

“What do you need?”

“I want to call my mom.”

The lio considered this a moment, then nodded. “I think we can do that for you, Rees.”

Rees nodded too, then carefully climbed his way over the edge of the bed and followed the lio out through the large doorway.