Star Side

Chapter 35

Stellar date (Earth Time): 04-25-2914

Having one drinking party had made us brave. My birthday served as the perfect excuse for Levi to bust out his new creations, one of which was done in a fancy bottle I have no idea where he got and done up with a bow. I didn't know where he got the bow either. It would have had to have been specially ordered months in advance. But it also wasn't like we had anything else to spend our money on.

Even so, how was I supposed to say no?

"So, apparently, our bosses aren't happy we're keeping an alien on board."

"No work talk. It's my birthday."

"But their message just reached us this morning. Don't you want to read their response to Gilrack?"

"Oh, thank you for congratulating me on my birth and not talking about work! You're so kind."

"That includes a precursory response on all the data we sent on Gilrack's biology—"

"Naomi," said Levi after a half hour of silent alcohol sipping. "She said shut up!"

"Maybe not in those words," I said, but nodded.

There was cake on my plate and my special ultra-sweet and tangy birthday drink. I was pleasantly buzzed and not wanting anything that could remind me of home to set me off into the depressed, lonely drunk. Only happy drunk Jo was allowed on her birthday.

Naomi pouted enough to make her lips wrinkle like a granny's and stabbed her fork into her third slice of cake.

"Just thought you'd want to know," she muttered.

"I'll listen tomorrow," I said, then smiled towards Gilrack who was still eyeing the cake sadly. "Did you finish your cake already?"

Naomi had downloaded a recipe for a low-sugar, gluten-free, high-protein carrot cake just for Gilrack, who we had discovered late in the game got sick if he ate too much sugar or glute. He had inhaled it in a moment and now looked rather forlorn.

"It...tempts me." He said, pointing to what remained of my birthday cake.

Buzzed me laughed, both at his rounded pupils, which was the only way I knew he was looking at the cake sadly, and how much smaller he made the room look with his seven-foot tall bulk and massive wings. They'd only grown bigger over the past month and a half.

"You probably shouldn't test your luck with more cake," I told him. "By the way, how old are you?" I'd already told him how old I was by rotations of our 'land' (as he understood planets as) when I'd led him into this low-key birthday party.

His tail curled and his spines rustled, a tell tale sign of him thinking especially hard. He glanced at the window in the lounge, where his planet turned quietly. We'd explained to him what a year was according to his planet the moment the language barrier was thin enough. Vetas years were just under double the length of Earth's. Its axis, however, was just barely crooked, so not only was the seasonal changes much milder where they occurred, but those changes lasted twice as long.

"Two ten," he said slowly. "And six."

"So twenty-six in Vetas years and in Earth years...dang, man, you're almost fifty?" Naomi grinned.

"Forty-eight, to be exact," I said, not even aware that I had calculated it already. "No fair, you're older than me!"

His pupils narrowed a bit when he looked at me, and his hair seemed to rise a bit.

"How old is Nay-oh-mi?" he asked. Even when he spoke gently, his lava and smoke quality of his voice made the floor vibrate.

"Too old to count after drinking this much," though she'd only had a cup of Levi's much weaker 'Jo's Cocktail' as he called it.