Featherkisser

Epilogue

Kel Yn Gor huffed at a line she did not like. She used her wrist to scuff out the mistake, and set to work scribbling in a replacement.

The Pinelurch trees were difficult to capture through charcoal, but that had been part of the reason why she had taken to drawing them so much. It was a challenge, something new, something different. She was never one to shy away from that.

Accuracy didn't really lend credence to the pursuit of what she was doing, but that was okay. Kel had one night gotten the idea to instill a new craft into her life to even out the daily grind. She liked sketching in the notebooks. She liked sketching trees the most, even if holding the charcoal was a bit of a struggle sometimes.

The stick whispered against the paper, and some songbirds chirped in the distance to compete with a serene breeze of temperate feel. Kel finished a few touches and sighed, leaning the book back into her folded legs beneath her to view the finished product at a distance. The black and grey paper-tree didn't look half bad, but it didn't look half-good to her either.

She decided that she'd have to draw another one later. Self-satisfaction was the kiss of death, after all.

Folding the book closed, she plopped it on the garden table beside the house's door and sighed, watching out through the porch slats at the expansive farmland surrounding the property. It was just miles and miles of green and pink grass, stitched with some unpaved paths, and a few power-mills that peaked over the woods to the north. A trail of dirt rose from a distantly passing tractor, and all was still besides that.

Horizon was a beautiful planet, and, as an added bonus, it was tolerable to her in a social sense.

Kel smiled as she spotted a distant racket of bodies on one of the farm paths. A Kig-yar trekked down the road with three of her tiny chicks scampering and hopping after her. She clucked when the tractor passing by got close, and they hid behind her legs. Her and the human operator of the vehicle shared a brief wave before she went one way and he the other.

Horizon was a mixed world in the near-center of Alliance space. The local government needed fresh families to fill out all the developing countryside, since the terraforming process had been completed two decades ago. Money was evident but not urgent. It still left plenty for them, even after the house, the cars and the wagons for the haul.

Kel Yn Gor took her view off the developing sunset in the distance when the door to her home squeaked open. She watched as Talner, clothed in overalls and sandals trotted across the porch, and bent low to her for a moment to peck her in the center of her forehead.

"Evenin', darlin'." He said.

"Husband." Kel greeted. A chair on the other side of the little table squeaked. Talner sat down and scanned the grasslands and the fields, lost in a moment of silence with her.

He pulled out a dataslate and started scrolling through it. Kel chewed at some of her feathers on her elbow and bristled underneath her robes, reaching gingerly for beside her notebook where a cup of tea sat plainly. She pinched the tip of her snout around the straw and slurped quietly.

"What are you reading?" She asked after putting the glass down.

"Oh, nothin' worth the time I suppose." Talner shrugged, turning off the pad and putting it on the table too. He dusted his pant legs and looked at her. "Did you draw anything?"

"Yes." Kel handed him her notebook. He flipped it open eagerly, and slowly started to go through the pages. He whistled.

"You're amazing." Talner said, making her snout flush. "I told you that this is something you were meant to do. It ain't all just gotta' be one thing."

"In that, you are correct." She let her legs sink down to the floor, and she arched her hunched back in a quivering stretch, slapping her fangs. "Was it a long day?"

"Naw', all's well in the Hundred-Acre-Wood." Talner handed her back her book and smiled at her. "You really like these trees."

"They are different from so many others I have seen." Kel said. "They are a proper muse."

"Mmhm." He stole a sip of her tea, and she crooned playfully at him, reached over the table and snatched it back before greedily slurping on the straw again. She cawed and he laughed at her. "That's good tea there."

"Get your own."

"But I made it."

"-And relieved ownership to me. Get your own." She licked her teeth at the taste, arching a brow at him which made him laugh more.

Five months. It was all it had taken since Cohesion. Horizon didn't have the bustle, or the prejudice of that world. They had sold off their last souvenirs from Tg-66- all those ore drums –and had used the funds to purchase the little house and the few acres of property. It effectively meant that Talner and Kel had found their way out, and neither of them were keen on rebuking that freedom.

Out.

It was done. Talner hadn't suffered a nightmare in a long time, having another warm body in the same bed as him. And an actual bed, not a cot, or a bag, or the ground. An actual sheeted bed, with blue blankets and green pillows.

Talner smiled happily and waited for Kel Yn Gor to put down her tea again, before he snatched it and sipped it a second time, making her trill and leap off her chair.

"Can I help you?" He grinned as the Kig-yar hopped into his lap, her robes fluttering and laying like blankets across his knees and lap. She arched a brow at him and grabbed her tea from his hand, sipping as she sat on him. "I'll make another pot tomorrow, I guess, seeing as you're three-quarters through this one."

"It's good." She defended, sipping until it was empty. She slapped her chops and put it back on the table. "Besides, it is best to have a husband who can provide as much as the female may nurture."

"Nurture." He scoffed. "You're a bit too feisty to come off as the nurturing type."

Kel cawed and leaned forwards, sandwiching his nose between her cleavage popping out the top of the robes. She spread her thighs and sat even more squarely on him, rubbing her body and cooing against him.

"I can be so when you wish me to be." She purred.

Talner muffled an affirmative into her chest. The Kig-yar hopped with laughter.

"I am going inside." She told him, getting off his lap, collecting her cup and book. "Are you preparing sustenance this time, or am I?"

"…Uhm," Talner was focused on something out in the fields for a second. He dusted his pants off and smiled up at her. "I'll make it tonight, darlin', just… gimme' a second. I need to sit for a moment, after all the wagon-trawlin' and…"

"I understand." Kel licked his cheek playfully and sauntered into the house like a crane. He reached over and smacked her ass through her robe, making the Kig-yar skip through the doorframe with an excited trill. Talner's laughter was quick and cut off. He grimaced as he recentered his eyes on the fields ahead, his eyes narrowed, and his boots spread on the porch.

After a few minutes, he stood up and approached the stairs, scratching at the stubble on his chin. He glanced once at the house's door and grunted.

"Ya' don't strike me as a local there, stranger." He called out softly over the path winding to their house. "Folks around here don't like it when you saunter on up to their doors unannounced. Isn't that how it is where you come from?"

"Something like that, yes." A deep-throated voice responded. The darkly skinned man reached the precipice of the path and stood just ahead of Talner and Kel's porch, his hands innocently placed in his fatigue pockets. "A fine evening to you, Talner."

"Howdy'do, Kuhaga." Talner nodded.

"May I sit?"

"I don't see why not."

Kuhaga walked up the steps and met Talner face to face. For a long while, the two of them stood in each other's noses and said nothing. Kuhaga's eyes were sunken, and there were scars that hadn't been there before all over his face and his exposed arms. One of his eyes had turned white, and lacked a pupil. The obvious signs of nanite-reformation were present all over the entire left side of Kuhaga's head.

"You wanted to sit?" Talner smiled.

"Yes I did."

Kuhaga allowed himself to be led to Talner's chair. He sat in it with a creak, and Talner took Kel's. Kuhaga sighed and tapped his boots on the porchwood. Talner watched him.

"This is a fine piece that you purchased with the ore money." Kuhaga stated.

"I appreciate you saying."

"I assume times have been good?"

"Better than they were." Talner shrugged. "We don't smoke here."

Kuhaga froze as he reached for a lighter, and smiled politely. He plucked the cigarette out of his lips and stowed it away in his pocket.

"Did Tollen survive?" Talner asked.

"Oh yeah." Kuhaga hummed. "He isn't happy."

"Fuck him."

"I wasn't happy until pretty much fifteen minutes ago, when I just got here, and found your new little life." The former officer let his eyes wander to the path he'd taken. "I was thinking the entire time; how would I catch a sharpshooter, like you, unawares. Then I was thinking, how would I catch two sharpshooters, like you and that bird, unaware."

"Her name is Kel Yn Gor, you stupid, sumnabitch'." Talner growled. "And if you call her a bird one more time, I will beat you to death on my porch with my bare hands, without pause for thought or mercy."

"Apologies." Kuhaga quivered and did his best not to clench his fists. "As I was saying, it was all just single-minded up until then. I was going to come here and… I don't know, shoot you? Shoot at you? With what, I don't know. I didn't bring any guns, or guys."

"You still have guns and guys?" Talner jabbed. "That in and of itself is a surprising and quite lackluster example to define your dwindling intelligence."

"Don't sit there, on your garden chair, under a roof with an enemy of the human race, and tell me that you don't want to go right back to what you were doing." Kuhaga looked at him over the table. "Do not lie to me about that, please. Have you still been having nightmares? I bet you have."

"The only nightmares I have are the ones I didn't step on back at that rock." The sharpshooter shook his head. "They keep crawlin' back like the roaches they are."

"I'm glad our working relationship left itself on a positive note."

"What the fuck do you want?"

"Like I said, I don't know." Kuhaga shrugged. "I looked at this little house of yours and realized that there wasn't any point. The money got split three ways. It was always going to do that anyhow, get divided between interested parties. I wasn't greedy. I was ready for that."

Talner had to control himself at the audacity of that last statement. Not greedy? After he kept them there too long, and things went wrong and-

"Kuhaga, we all at our darkest depths are lost men. Every single one of us." Talner observed, glancing back at the front door to his house. "The point to prove our strength comes from our ability to leave well enough alone."

"You don't have to worry about me." Kuhaga laughed. "I suppose I owe you, for saving me from those hinge-heads, even if you abandoned me to die right after. I'll admit, you and that bi-" Kuhaga flinched. "-Kel, not going out of your ways to purposefully execute me, was mightily appreciated. Aren't you even going to ask me who survived and who didn't?"

"Shoot." Talner leaned back in his chair.

"Shackie and the boys you saved. Tollen even let the Kig-yar live when we parted ways. He lost his entire band. Lost an arm too, to the Kaidon of R'ha." Kuhaga said.

"Shit, that guy was there?"

"Indeed he was. I would say he has it out for you too, seeing as that Elite in the black armor you and your… significant other killed, was his wife's uncle."

Talner looked at Kuhaga incredulously.

"Word's been spreading around, and I'm in hiding technically." He shrugged. "I just… I don't know. I wanted to see for myself. What my best, most ruthless pathfinder had carved out for himself with all that money and ore. I guess I found it."

"I guess you did." Talner snorted. "And does it suit you?"

Chsk-Chsskk~!

"Leave."

Both men looked at the front door. Kel Yn Gor was standing there, and in her claws was a projectile hunting rifle, aimed right for Kuhaga's face.

"Leave." She repeated, her beak appearing to not even have moved.

"She's really quite lovely." Kuhaga smiled at Talner.

"She's certainly a keeper." The sharpshooter chuckled. "Now do me and favor, and stop upsettin' my wife, or I will have to call the local authorities about a trespasser on my rightful property."

"They'll be coming to arrest a corpse." Kel said very nonchalantly. "Leave."

"I'm gone." Kuhaga stood from the chair and started to walk off the porch, still wearing his polite smile. "Just think about what I said, Talner. There's a game you left behind, and I'm just warning you. Not everyone's willing to walk away like I am."

"Walkin' is exactly what you should be doing. Not flapping your gums." Talner reminded. "Goodnight, Kuhaga."

"Goodnight, Talner."

Talner and Kel watched Kuhaga walk off, until the man was nothing but a distant, black speck gathering at the summit of a hill in the blaze of the brilliant sunset.

By the time the sun had vanished below the horizon, Kuhaga could no longer be seen, and would never be seen again. Yet, somehow, his presence lingered like that of an angry ghost's, and so Kel did not let go of the hunting rifle for several minutes. Eventually, though, she became disgusted and threw it inside the house, holding the door open and cawing for her mate.

"Talner." She sounded pleading. "Come inside with me."

"I'm coming." Talner finally ripped his eyes from where Kuhaga had wandered off. He picked up his tablet from the table and opened it up as he stepped inside his warm house, managing to swipe-close the tab he'd been reading before Kel saw it.

The top of the paragraph label read CLASSIFIED.

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Fin