Language and party plans

The conversation with the station’s leader had gone well, to no great surprise. Dustin and the others had been warmly thanked and also to Meli and Emely’s delight rewarded with a sizable trade credit from the owners of one of the doomed vessels. Apparently, the crew had contained several members of family of the chief of the trading company that owned it, and they were ensuring everyone involved in the rescue knew their gratitude. After a brief discussion with his comms officer, Dustin had requested that half of their reward be donated to charitable causes on the station, much to the delight of the commander who now seemed to view Dustin as some kind of saint. The remaining funds were more than enough to cover any bills the crew of the Solar Ascent could run up during their stay, as well as top up any deals for supply trading that the Velca and Feliax women might make.

For her part, Rye had taken her share of the credit as soon as she was made aware of it and darted off to the trade district, stating that she had some personal purchases to make - alone - and then needed to do a deep dive on the shield generators to make sure there weren’t any issues from the damage to Sola’s hull. Unsurprisingly, the Rabyth-adjusted shields weren’t something Sola could accurately directly monitor; a lot of their function was currently a Rye special, and while she was working on getting the AI up to speed it was a long term project. In any case, Dustin was happy enough that she was happy double checking their main ace for survivability hadn’t been damaged in any way by the dip into the atmosphere of a world that had left Sola’s hull pockmarked and potentially was responsible for the damage to one of the thrusters.

Trading took up most of the first two days they were on the station, with discussions about their ongoing plans in light of the downtime needed for repairs taking up most of the third day. The fourth day was spent working on their garden, Rye having taken advantage of the additional power and environmental links provided by being hooked into the station grid to finish the primary construction work on plumbing in the additional supplies needed. That day had ended with four dirt stained and very sweaty bodies taking a joint shower that had rapidly led into mutual stimulation, which had led to Dustin and Rye leaning into each other while Meli and Emely got them both off. The process of which had then led to the Velca and Feliax needing to take yet another shower, and Dustin had fallen into a work-tired and post-orgasmic sleep with Rye curled up next to him and the gentle moans of his other two lovers echoing through from the wash room.

Waking on the fifth day, Dustin found himself alone on the massive ambassadorial mattress. Dressing quickly and heading out to the ready room, he found the others busy eating breakfast. “We’re going to the jam night later, Dusty” Rye informed him as he sat down, adding “Emmz is getting antsy that we haven’t been yet.” Glancing over, he didn’t think the Feliax woman was stressing - her tails weren’t flickering at all, but he nodded anyway. “Yes. Sola should be back up and ready to fly in a day or two, so going out tonight works - if we leave it much longer then there’s the risk a hangover might make our first jump a not-very-fun affair.” Rye seemed about to say something at that point, half opening her mouth before clearly changing her mind, closing it again and standing up. “Well, I’d better go make sure my instrument is good to go, just in case I decide to play along. Percussion’s usually in demand at these sorts of nights.”

Without looking up Meli caught the bunny girl on her way out of the room, pulling her down for a kiss and whispering something in one long ear. Rye blushed and nodded, before coughing to cover whatever embarrassment Meli had caused her and adding “you’re right Meli, I should just bring sticks - no sense dragging the whole kit over there, whatever they have for drums I can make work.” Dustin caught Emely rolling her eyes at the clear fib, but neither of them opted to say anything until the Rabyth had left and the door closed behind her. “She is terrible at that” Emely mused, before catching Meli’s stare and returning her attention to the remnants of her food. Dustin glanced between the two and the door. “Do I need to know what all this is about li’ah’a?” he asked, smiling to himself as Meli’s ears flickered briefly into happiness before she replied.

“Not significantly, Dustin. Rye is still working out for herself what she wants. Besides us, of course.” That last comment had all three of them smiling for a moment before the Velca woman stretched her arms above her head and both Dustin and Emely’s thoughts were derailed into daydreaming about the dark haired woman’s chest. Standing up and shaking her head at the pair of them, Meli walked around and leaned down for a kiss from Dustin before heading towards the doorway. “I’m going to go and double check all the transfers from the trading are concluded. I do not want to have to argue about already agreed trades if I’m hungover tomorrow. Emely…” and here the Velca paused for a second before nodding to herself and continuing “…if you and the captain decide to do anything, make sure that you’re both clean and ready to go out later on. I know both of you, and if he’s having fun playing with his kitten he’ll lose track of time - and you’re not likely to say something without a reason.”

Despite Meli’s words, Dustin did not in fact spend the rest of the day playing with Emely. Instead, they spent the bulk of the day working on his language skills in Feliax, Velcan and Rabyth; while he had been studying before with two native speakers, having someone with formal training acting as a teacher was speeding up his studies significantly. Although he did cause her to burst out laughing shortly after lunch by getting two seemingly identical chirps in the yelping Feliax language the wrong way around. When she’d calmed down from her giggling fit, Emely apologized. “Sorry, sir, I shouldn’t laugh when you’re trying so hard. It’s just that what you were trying to say was very romantic and what you actually said was… not.” Dustin raised an eyebrow, then tried again, this time to the fox girl’s nodding approval.

“That’s right, yi-ip not ye-ip. I still find it incredible that you actually love me the way I am sir, and that’s a very sweet expression.” Dustin scratched one arm and replied “If I got it right, that should roughly be ‘You light up my world and I want to fill yours with love’?” At a nod from the Feliax woman, he relaxed a little. “So what did I say that made it so funny when I got it wrong?” Emely blushed at that before giggling again. “You know that Feliax is context and tonal right? Well, yi-ip tonally indicates aesthetic or emotional connotations in the phrase. Ye-ip on the other hand indicates crude or base connotations. Even if you meant what you’d said you wouldn’t use ye-ip anyway, you’d use ye-yp…” As his lover gave a third almost imperceivably different yelp Dustin cringed internally at the thought of how long it would take him to get to be even passable in her language, before blinking as she concluded her translation “…but roughly speaking the best I could translate it would be ‘You set fire to my home so I want to use you to hold my cum’ - that’s hold in the context of store like a jug rather than in a sexual sense, just to be clear sir.”

Terrible linguistic attempts aside, the rest of the day passed rapidly and it didn’t seem long before Dustin found himself in the back of one of a handful of automatic taxis that plied their trade ferrying passengers from the docks to different areas of the station. Meli had taken the seat next to him without comment from either of the others and was currently curled up with his arm around her, while Rye fidgeted with the top she was wearing in place of her normal dungarees and Emely gazed out of the window at the passing storefronts and structures. Larger stations like this one were closer to floating cities than anything else, and even in the taxi it took them a fair while to reach their destination. Stepping out and offering a hand to each of his loves in turn, Dustin finally closed the taxi door and turned to survey their chosen venue of the evening. “Looks nice enough” he mused, unable to read the writing above the door but from the external décor and what he could see through the window of the tavern it looked cosy and more like the sort of place you’d expect smooth jazz and poetry slams than heavy metal or Rabyth beat music. “Shall we?”