"Is there some human whose name you would call in need?” the man in the Welcome House asked. He looked levelly at her from between the folds of a robe that covered all but his eyes.
She had never seen one of the originals before, but Sala was not perturbed at all by the color of his eyes. She had seen golden eyes before -- also silver eyes, orange eyes, and purple. People in Sala’s world changed their eye color by injecting a lens. She knew, of course, that the golden-eyed man had not changed his eye color by injecting a lens. He was one of the Taliaw, and his skin was golden, too.
“No,” Sala replied. “No one.”
“Is there not a single human whose name you would call when in need?” the golden-eyed man, whose name was Yuye, asked again. His voice carried no inflection that in a human would tell her if he was impatient, which the words themselves seemed to convey.
“No,” Sala replied, as evenly as possible. “There is no one.”
Yuye took a deep breath and let it out slowly, all the while continuing to hold her eyes with his. She saw the folds of the robe gently moving with his breath.
“Then put your agreement,” he said, and nodded at the stretbark slice that he had assured her functioned like a fingerDroid.
She complied, clumsily, feeling foolish that her mark was surrounded by splatters from the marker that even now, lying flat on the desk, still dripped a blue fluid. She pulled the silken band from her neck and blotted the stretbark and the desk. "I'm sorry," she mumbled.
“Your cloth is damaged,” Yuye said.
“Yes, it is." She held the cloth loosely in her hand, not knowing what to do with it. "Where do I go now?” She would not look into the eyes of the golden man.
Yuye reached out and took Sala’s dirtied cloth in his hands, and Sala could see that his skin was smooth and electric. Her gaze was transfixed by the strangeness of Yuye’s hands. They were the hands of a saint, with five equally long tapering fingers. At the end of each finger a sharp claw was blunted with a supple transparent cap, and similarly blunted on each wrist was another claw that reminded Sala of the dewclaw of wolves. She watched, fascinated, as he sprayed the cloth from a small bottle, and transferred the ink to his hands and then, apparently, as he shook the cloth, to nonexistence. He folded the cloth carefully into a triangle and returned it to Sala, clean. He looked calmly into her eyes from within the folds of his robe. Sala could barely nod, which looked as if she thought that such a kindness, such seeming magic, happened every day for her. She put the cloth into her pocket and swallowed.
“It is a requirement that you explain your need for refuge,” Yuye said in a voice that to Sala seemed resonant with kindness. “Someone will come to speak with you. Return now to the entry room.”
Sala left the small neat office of the man called Yuye, and sat down on a creaky chair. She waited, staring at her own hands, rough and worn, her nails ragged.
Yuye picked up the document and looked at it. The Welcome House was empty before but now it was filled up with Sala. He did not need to look to remember Sala’s even brown skin and her deep angry eyes that said how much she had suffered and how much she would protect herself. Nor did he need to look to know how very different Sala seemed from other humans he had met. How very strong in will and mind. How very determined to be left alone.
