“That’s whole roast mai,” said Jaaya, walking up to his side. “Would you like to try one?” She opened the lid and Rodney spied a hairless animal torso bobbing in some thin soup. It looked like…
The woman continued. “Laaro was in the party that caught them. These are the young of the hunter cats, so it’s very tender.”
He thought of the big lion-things that had stalked around them out in the grasslands and swallowed hard. “You’re saying that’s a roasted…kitten?”
Jaaya nodded, and McKay blanched. He had no doubt one of the feline beasts would have little qualms about eating him, but doing the reverse suddenly seemed unpalatable. “Uh… Could I just get a green salad instead?”
He left Jaaya at the server and found Ronan and the others in the shadow of a leafy branch. Keller studied her food with a similar look of doubt to Rodney, while Sheppard and Dex ate like they hadn’t had breakfast. Teyla sipped water and pushed her food around its bowl, looking distracted.
“You see Errian?” said the Satedan, around a mouthful of something. “Over there.”
McKay glanced over and followed Jaaya back to her table. Laaro was with his father, talking intently to the older man, but he seemed unaware of the distant look on Errian’s face. “He looks a bit… I don’t know, spaced out.”
“He’s not the only one. See the others? The Returned?” Sheppard indicated with the jut of his chin.
Chewing on a bit of rind, Rodney let his gaze wander across the whole distance of the oval, and one by one he picked out the people who didn’t quite fit. Here and there, men and women, some younger, some older. He thought back to what Jaaya had said. Twenty are taken, twenty are returned. All of the Returned had the same look about them, a weariness that seemed bone-deep, like each one of them had just come off a fifty-mile hike. Suddenly McKay became aware of something in the mood of the celebration. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but the more he looked the more he saw it; for all the smiles and jocularity, there was something strained about it all. Like the parties of his youth, it all seemed like a big show. For us? he wondered. Or are they just trying to convince themselves that everything’s okay?
Teyla sighed and drew back. “Colonel, if I may, I would like to turn in early.”
“Sure,” said Sheppard. “You okay?”
Rodney saw Keller pause in mid-bite, watching the Athosian. Teyla gave a wan smile. “It’s the heat. It’s quite tiring. And the food, it’s not to my tastes.”
“There’s ration packs in the gear back at Jaaya’s lodge,” began the doctor.
Teyla nodded. “If you’ll excuse me.” She gathered up her tunic and left them behind.
After a moment, Ronon leaned over and pointed at her unfinished meal. “Any of you going to eat this?” He didn’t wait for an answer, and helped himself.
When McKay turned to Sheppard, he found him looking directly at Keller. Jennifer broke off and went back to her food.
Ronon licked some gravy off the second bowl and set it down, missing the moment entirely. “So do we just get one helping, or what?”
Teyla walked back through the winding avenues of the settlement, having memorized the route on the way to the celebration. The lanterns were lit on every intersection, and warm glows spilled from homes on either side of the street; but there were few people around, and as she moved further away from the central oval, the sounds of life grew fainter until all she could hear was a distant murmur of voices and the chorus of some sort of insect life. The little nightflyer bugs haloed the street lights, settling now and then to make a chit-chit-chit drone before humming away again. The noise added to the drowsy feeling brought on by the close, humid air of the evening.
She frowned as she walked, the expression marring the pleasant lines of her face. Teyla did not deal well with weakness in herself, as much as she strived to, but in all truth she had been feeling her energy drop far faster than was usual for her. She did her best to make no issue of it, but privately she wondered how much longer she would be able to keep her secrets. Soon she would begin to show, and then… Then they would all change in the way they treated her. Teyla knew what would happen; John, Samantha, Rodney and all the others, they would mean well but they would treat her as if she were made from spun glass. And above all, Teyla Emmagan despised the idea of being treated like a invalid.
While at once she was elated by the prospect of a new life growing inside her, she could not help but be afraid of what changes a pregnancy — and indeed, a child — would wreak on her life. She remembered the compassionate expression on Jennifer Keller’s face when she broke the news, and for a moment experienced again the strange mingling of joy and sadness she had felt. Joy at such great news, sadness that she could not share it with the father of her unborn. Kanaan’s face rose to the front of her thoughts as it did so often these days, and for a moment Teyla wished that she could have him return to her so easily as Laaro’s father had come back to him.
The apprehension in the young boy’s eyes found its mirror in Teyla. He feared for his parent, for his father’s health, just as she was so afraid of what unkind fate had befallen her people on New Athos. Teyla paused and gripped the careworn rail of a balcony, staring out into the night, looking up at a sky of alien stars. Somewhere out there, her people waited for her to rescue them, and she vowed she would, even if it meant going into battle with a weapon in one hand and her newborn in the other —
A dash of light in among the thin clouds caught her eye and Teyla turned to study it; but no sooner had she looked than it was gone. A flash of lightning, perhaps? But there was no thunder, no distant stormhead on the horizon.
“Hey.”
She turned to see Ronon Dex walking purposefully toward her. Teyla’s eyes narrowed. “Colonel Sheppard sent you after me.” It wasn’t a question. “I can take care of myself,” she began, her tone more defensive than she would have liked.
The big man shrugged, apparently unconcerned. “Ah, I was getting bored anyway. Food was good but the portions were small. Then that Takkol guy started making a speech and all of a sudden I felt restless.” He smirked slightly.
“You would prefer a less pleasant evening?” She raised an eyebrow.
Ronon nodded; he had no artifice about him. “We’re not here to play nice with people, Carter said as much. If there’s something going on here, Wraith or otherwise, we need to find out, drag it into the light…” He hesitated, looking over Teyla’s shoulder, out across the balcony.
She instinctively turned to follow his gaze. “Did you see something?”
The Satedan came to the edge of the balcony and looked down. Arranged in radiating rings beyond the canopy of the massive tree were curved plots of cultivated land turned over to crops and herd animals. He pointed. “Something moving down there. Like a… A shadow dropping out of the sky, black against black.”
Teyla opened her mouth to speak again when she saw the flicker of light again; but this time it was low to the ground, a quick-blue white flash out by the edges of one of the farm sectors. The light was strobe-bright and it faded just as fast as it came, leaving a purple after-image on her retina. A triangular shape, hovering slightly above the ruddy brown earth.
“I saw that,” Ronon growled.
Then a woman’s scream reached them, thin and faint but still distinct.
Dex moved quickly. There was a rope ladder-pulley affair close to the balcony, extending down through a square hole cut in the decking. He gave it a hard tug to check it, and then looped the guide cord around his hand. It was rigged for a fast-decent, maybe for use as some kind of fire escape or emergency egress; it would get him down to the ground in seconds.