A large Terran walked out from the back of the shop, smiling at them as he wiped his hands on a rag on his belt.  Kitten didn’t even notice him, since she was busy looking around the shop.  There were various things, she guessed that they were tusks and horns all over.  Many of them were displayed on ornate stands, and as she took a closer look, she could see that there were scenes carved into them.  some were painted, little splashes of color that illustrated what was going on.  She had her nose three inches from one when she heard someone clearing their throat behind her.  Jumping and letting out a little squeak, she turned, and blushed.  “Umm…sorry.  I..umm…I was busy looking at this.  it’s…umm…what is it?”

“Scrimshe”, came the reply, the Terran grinning at her.  “Bjorn Dralinkruna, Eighth Floret, He/Him, nice to meet ya.  And you are?”

“Gladialis Dulcisa, Fourth Bloom, She/Her.”  Gladialis smiled, gently bowing her head to the Terran.

“Umm…Kitten.  She/Her”, Kitten whispered, blushing.  

“Well, it’s nice to meet ya”, Bjorn said.  He was well over six feet tall, blond and had a beard that was braided down to his stomach, Kitten could see, along with tattoos on his arms and what looked like an eye of pure green that stared at her out of scar marks on his face.  They ran down his face, down his neck, under the collar he wore, and continued downwards.  Something, Kitten realized, had made a good effort at trying to claw this man's face off.  Instantly the injuries and treatment flashed in her mind, how she would have stabilized him, what antibiotics she would have used to stave off infection, and how many credits it would have cost, and the length of time it would have taken him to recuperate.  Then she did the next thing that every nurse she had ever met did.  She looked at his arms, noting the veins in his antecubital fossa, and the back of his hands.  

He grinned at the little Terran that was looking at him, eyes flicking first over his scars, and then his arms.  “See that tusk up there?”, he said, pointing at a three foot tusk, banded with what looked like silver and resting in a place of honor on the wall.  “That belonged to the one that did this.  Good fight, but I won first place.  You’re the one that messaged me about learning to make stuff”, he said to the Affini.  She nodded, and he grinned.  “Anything in particular you had in mind?”

Gladialis shrugged.  “I’m not particularly artistic, so something a bit simple.  As for Kitten…do you want to make something, little one?”

She turned, blushing.  “Ummm…I’d like to.  What..umm…what do you recommend, Mr. Bjorn?”, she asked.

“Hmmm….how about drinking mugs?”, he said.  “Those are fairly easy, and it’s only gonna take about three hours from start to finish.”  He watched as the Terran smiled, and then looked up at Gladialis.  “And call me Bjorn.  Not a Mister, I work for a living.  Well, you know, before the Affini came and made things better.”

“Umm, that…I don’t have money to pay, Gladialis”, she said, and then blushed.  “Oh yea.  No money.  Umm…is…is there anything I can do for you?  I..I..don’t…I don’t want to just take up your time.”  ‘I don’t deserve it, not when you could be making artwork like this’, remained unsaid.

Bjorn considered, and nodded.  The Terran was clearly new, and wanted some way to feel like she wasn’t stealing or taking something that wasn’t hers.  “Well, you’ll be doing me a favor, actually.  These tusks are imported from my home in Fenra.  The animals that these belong to shed them yearly, so they’re a sustainable resource, but I have too many for me to carve by myself.  So you’ll be taking two off my hands, and…hmmm.  If you clean up after yourself, then we’ll call it even.  Deal?”

Kitten nodded.  A lesson and an item for cleaning?  She could do that.  “That’s…umm…that’s a deal.  Fenra?  I’ve never heard of it”, she said as she and Gladialis followed him into the back.  She looked around, seeing racks and racks of tusks.  All different sizes and colors, some yellowed with age, some shiny and pure white with a hint of gray to them.  Some curved, some not.

“Fenra is a small out of the way ice planet.  Nearly got called Hoth by some of the original settlers after a similar planet in some old sci-fi movie.”  He snorted as he began to pull out tools and clamps, small pots and brushes, some small hammers and nails.  “But the person in charge of the first settlement was also a huge nerd, but of a different type.  And HE thought that the planet was just like one from this series that he liked, something about eight foot tall Space Marines and walking mushrooms and Dark Elves and what-have-you.  Nonsense, all of it.  But he didn’t feel like paying Amazon for the licensing fees to name it Fenris, so he called it Fenra and the name stuck.”

Choosing two horns, a smaller one for Kitten and a larger one for her, Gladialis watched as Bjorn set them down in front of each of them.  He handed them each safety glasses, and told them to wear them for their own protection.  “Safety first, right?”  He put what looked like a respirator down in front of Kitten while he put one on himself.  “You’re gonna put this on, and then use this tool.  It’s a rotary saw, but it’s similar to what they used to use for cutting casts off, so it doesn’t cut skin.  See?”, and he demonstrated, turning it on and pressing the blade into his hand.  It didn’t leave a mark.  “Gonna cut like this”, and he grabbed a pen, and marked off where they should cut.  “Umm…Miss Dulicsa, you should stop using your sniffers.  I mean”, and he blushed.  “Whatever you have for a nose, or even mouth.  Make them go away.”

Gladialis cocked her head in question, watching as Kitten slipped the respirator over her mouth and nose, settling it as if she’d worn one every day.  Which, she realized, Kitten MIGHT have if she was taking care of someone with a communicable illness.  “Whatever for, little one?”

Bjorn grinned.  “Because this stuff tastes, and smells, like a wet fart that’s been sitting in a puddle of shii….sewage in the sun for five days.  Trust me, you REALLY don’t want this stuff in your mouth.”

Gladialis chuckled, then laughed even harder as she saw Kitten press her mask tighter to her face.  “Very well”, she said, and concentrated.

Kitten watched and squeaked as Gladialis’s mouth and nose just….vanished.  Her nose just sunk into her face, and a wooden mask rose up as her lips disappeared, settling right under the bridge of her nose was.  She blinked, blushing as Gladialis turned to her and winked.  

“Well, that settles that”, she said, and giggled as Kittens eyes widened.  

“Wait..if…if you don't have a mouth, how can you talk?  Or breathe?”, Kitten asked.  Now she REALLY needed to learn more about Affini biology.

“Because I ‘m not talking right now using my mouth”, Gladialis said.  “And I don’t have to use my mouth to breathe, or even HAVE a mouth.”  She cocked her head.  “If you listen carefully, you’ll hear that my voice sounds a bit different.  That’s because I relocated the ‘voice box’ to somewhere different.  Think about it, Kitten.  What is the voice box but an arrangement of cartilage and small muscle bands that vibrate as air is passed over them, creating sound.  Right?”  And when Kitten nodded, Gladialis continued as some of her vines picked up the power tool.  “So who says that needs to be anywhere near my mouth?”  She started up the tool, and began to slowly and carefully saw the tusk over the markings.

Kitten blinked, and nodded.  It made sense, especially since she’d seen Gladialis turn her legs into a pile of vines.  She began to saw, having had the forethought to putting the tusk in the clamps that were by the workstation.  Small short strokes, making sure she didn’t overstep.  Soon enough, the piece came off.  And she had to admit, Bjorn was right.  Even WITH the respirator, some of the smell seeped in and it was horrendous.  Probably one of the top five worst things she’d smelled in her life, which was saying something.  

The rest of the time there was a good experience, Kitten thought.  Bjoirn regaled them with tales of his homeland as he showed them how to use a heat gun to soften and bend the tusk that they’d cut down, forming a handle. He showed them how to use a different tool called a rasp to round the edges so they wouldn’t be sharp or jagged.   He showed them pictures of the glaciers as they sanded the inside and outside, then polished the outside with some type of  oil.  He cut circles of wood for them that just fit for the bottoms, and then used the heat gun to mold the horn around it.  

“When it cools, the horn will shrink around the wood, making a watertight seal”, he said.  “Kind of the way that you make a spear head stay on the shaft by heating up the metal and then putting it on the shaft of the spear.  When it cools, the metal shrinks, binding them together.”

“You used to hunt with a spear?”, Kitten asked, wide eyed as she sanded the inside a bit more.

“Oh yeah.  All sorts of things.  Had to, since some of the animals had skin that could shrug off a bullet.  It’s all about the cutting edge.  Or you’d scare off the rest of the herd with the noise.  Or worse, attract a predator who heard the gunshot as a dinner bell.”  He smiled as he buffed a different  drinking mug, remembering.  “Used to use a compound crossbow as well.  Me and my buddy, we’d go out into the forest.  Fenra had these massive forests that spanned acres.  And sometimes we’d get lucky, and we wouldn’t have to go far.  Sometimes we wouldn’t and we’d have to make it a day or two day trip.”  He smiled.  “There's something about the crisp air and the smell of the trees that will always remind me of that.  But then the Affini came, and my life went differently.”  He smiled, and rubbed his collar.  “VERY differently.  But different doesn’t mean bad, you know.”

He reached into a warmer and pulled out two pots, each with a brush in it.  “Food safe varnish, almost like a beeswax.  Not only gives some luster, but will prevent your drinks from tasting like this.  So go ahead and paint them on the inside.”  He nodded approvingly as each painted their mugs, and set them to dry.  “Once they be dry we’ll give them a final polish, and then you’re done!!  And it only took 3 hours.”  He smiled at them.  “Smells gone, you can take off the respirator now”, he said to Kitten, who took it off gratefully.

She let out a sigh, massaging the skin of her face, exercising her jaw, and then Gladialis handed her the water bottle with an admonishment to stay hydrated.  After drinking, Kitten grabbed the brush, painting the inside and outside of her mug with the varnish.  The fumes from that made her consider putting the mask back on, but that passed in a second.  Once she was done,  she looked up, found what she was looking for, grabbed the broom and began to sweep up the horn chips and dust from around the table.  Once it was all disposed of, she sat down and listened as Bjorn pulled out pictures from his home.  Massive things he called Elk with antlers that were three feet wide, wolves that were four feet at the shoulder.  A sunrise and sunset from the top of a mountain that nearly made her cry from the sheer beauty, and shifting ribbons of light that he called an ‘aurora borealis’.  “That’s cause of the magnetic poles pulling these charged particles from space.  But because of the atmosphere and the fact that the Poles are so strong, you can see them almost every night”, he said, as she breathed out a ‘wow.’

“We didn’t have anything like that at home….we were underground.  The atmosphere up top was…was  too thin to breathe, so we stayed underground.  But we had mines that went for miles.  These huge caverns called chambers that we had also turned into housing.  Some of the chambers had these crystals, massive geodes full of different kinds of gems.  Veins of gold that glittered in the light”, Kitten said  to Bjorn.  “Believe it or not, that wasn’t what the traders wanted.  They wanted the lithium, the platinum and niobium.  THAT one was worth it to the traders, since they…well, niobium was used in making ship hulls.”

Gladialis watched all this, smiling as Kitten got lost learning about this new world that she hadn’t known existed.  Truly, this had been a good idea, getting her out of the hab, helping her learn new things.  Pulling out her tablet, Gladialis fiddled with it, surreptitiously taking a picture of Kitten.  She had a hand under her chin, supporting her head, and had a rapt expression as Bjorn described what something called a “polar bear” was.  Looking at the time, she decided to give Kitten a little more time, since she was clearly enjoying herself.  It was only when Kittens stomach started making the same noises that a polar bear would make that Gladialis stepped in.  “This has been a delight, Bjorn, but we need to get Kitten here some food, or her stomach is going to growl so loud you’ll think one of your polar bears snuck on board.”

He laughed, and nodded.  “Well, your mugs should be dry by now.  If you’re looking for a good place, there’s a pizza place three stores down.  And some kind of sushi-fish-soup place next door.”  He led them back to the front of the shop, each holding their mug, and pulled a cloth bag from underneath the counter.  Putting them in carefully after wrapping them in some sort of wrap covered in bubbles, he handed it to Kitten and smiled.  “It’s been a pleasure.  Anytime you want to make something else, just come on by.  Oh!! Remember, handwash these only, and no hot liquids inside them.  If it’s too hot, it can make the horn stretch, and you don’t need that much heat to bend a horn like this.”  

Kitten shyly smiled, blushing, and thanked him.  She watched as Gladialis shook his hand, then asked if she could give him a hug.  He nodded, smiling.  “I had wondered when you were gonna ask, and if you were gonna ask.  You can”, he said with a smile, and then she knelt down and gave him a hug that he returned.  

“Thank you for a most wonderful day, little one.  Please give my regards to your Affini”, Gladialis said with a smile.  Then she got up, and smiled at Kitten.  “Well, Kitten, let's go get you something to eat, yes?”