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k_a_webbBrooke didn’t want to go with them, but she couldn’t stay in the room with the two-way mirror either, so she stepped into the corridor. It meant she was standing next to Cassian, who suddenly seemed very real. Their eyes met again as they walked, all three together, further along the corridor, away from all the other humans and the green man. She didn’t know what he could see and all she could do was hope that they weren’t showing the fear she was feeling, because she didn’t want any of the Thearans to know that she was scared of them. Especially as they were so like humans.
“You’re lucky,” Sophia said, making Brooke jump. “When the other ships arrived they went to different parts of the country, so the girls who were within them would have been forced into arranged marriages. Here in North Square things have been arranged very differently, because we knew that this wasn’t something any of you wanted, and we want to give you time to get used to Thear.”
It was hard to work out how to respond, but in the end Brooke decided to ask some of the questions she’d had floating around her mind ever since she’d read the info pack. “Do all Thearans speak English?”
“No, they don’t. We have our own language, but some of us chose to learn English when we heard that that was the language all the new arrivals were most likely to speak, and we were told about three moons ago that we were one of the families chosen to host a new arrival. My brother is also hosting one of you, although I won’t know who until we leave the docking station.”
“Does that mean I’ll have to have one of you with me wherever I go, so you can translate for me?”
“At the beginning, yes, but I’m hoping it won’t be too difficult for you to pick up our language.”
“How is this going to work? I mean, I know I’ll be living with you, but I don’t know anything more than that. The info pack we got was rather vague.”
“For your first year, at least, you’ll be enrolled at the local school, so you can learn Thearan history, geography, religion, and our language. It’s going to be a crash course in all things Thearan, basically, and will be taught by three of the local priestesses. My elder sister is one of them. After your first year here you’ll have more choice in what you want to do, although it seems most likely that you’ll go on to get a job. We’re hoping you’ll fall in love with someone here and want to get handfasted, but that’s not something we’re going to force on anyone.”
“I thought the whole reason for us to come here was because you were having a problem with the number of female children that were being born and you needed is to breed with your males in an attempt to solve the problem.”
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.