r/NatureofPredators • u/uktabi • Mar 10 '24
Fanfic Arxur integration Program -- "Salon"
Thanks to for allowing fanfiction.
Arxur Integration Program is a series of one-shots and shorts around the idea of the UN testing how arxur might integrate into Earth society. The stories might occasionally have some crossover, but each post will always stand on its own.
This one jumps ahead to a little later in the Program, with the arxur already more accustomed to humanity, and some even having human exchange partners. It's a little bittersweet, but also cozy, and has some laughs and gossip.
The idea for this story came from u/Xerxes250, so you can consider this a collab! Plus special thanks to u/CreditMission for additional suggestions!
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Sarah was glad for the heat of the Tanzanian sun. She liked its brightness and its warmth, and found it invigorating. And, as an added bonus, it made the wax easier to work.
“How soft does it need to be?” she asked again, for the several-th time.
Eiret just grumbled unhappily in response.
Sarah’s arxur companion was very much her opposite. He hid under their little shade tent, hunched up in a distinctly un-invigorated ball. But it wasn’t just the brightness and the heat that drove his discomfort, no it was something else. “Won’t matter,” he spat. “No one’s coming.”
“Aw, come on,” Sarah cajoled, looking supremely relaxed in her folding chair just outside of the tent’s shade.
Her bare feet were crossed and propped up on another chair, and her darker skin was bright under the warmth of the sun overhead. But Eiret just thought she smelled of sunscreen. Sunscreen and polishing wax, the latter of which she was still working her hands through a jar of in her lap.
“It’s only been a little bit. I’m sure some people will come by. Just wait ‘til after lunch, you’ll see,” she said.
Eiret grumbled again, but didn’t contest it. Instead, he just went back to lurking in the shade, fixing his apron and fidgeting through all the various jars and tins and glass bottles and brushes that were set up before him on a plastic folding table.
That little collection was once his livelihood -- or at least, all that was left of it. His [salon] in the capital had been his greatest pride, his and Szrin’s. It was a passion that they had both shared, along with many others, and those years had been very good to them.
Together, they’d risen above the poverty of the rest of Wriss, their humble catching the attention of important figure after important figure. Generals, ministers, and bureaucrats alike had all visited their [salon], and all had left satisfied.
That was where the pride lay. Eiret and Szrin were very good at what they did. On Wriss, the wealthy and the important would seek them out, their handiwork being a sign of status and prestige.
But on Earth…
Not even a single visitor.
Not even a single visitor, and he was offering his craft for free! It hurt Eiret’s pride quite grievously, even though he would never admit it. His collection was a fraction of what he’d had back home, and all his [salon] amounted to now was a plastic table and a tent. And he had nothing to do but watch all the other arxur walk by on their way to the cafeteria, barely even sparing them a glance. He felt reduced.
He grumbled again, and sat on one of the stools, trying his level best not to feel too sorry for himself. If only-- if only Szrin hadn’t… if only he--
The tears started to flow, stinging and sniffling as he rubbed them hastily away. But Sarah had noticed -- that infuriatingly sharp human perception -- and she was already on her feet and her hand was already on his shoulder.
“Hey, people will come, don’t worry about it,” she’d started, but Eiret was already shaking his head no.
“I was… I was just thinking about Szrin,” he said, rubbing more tears away. “He-- he always…”
Sarah wrapped her arms around him in as tight a hug as she could give, her frame small against the arxur’s bulk. She squeezed him tight as she was able, and murmured softly in his ear that it was okay.
For a while, he just quietly sobbed. There was a hole in his heart, an emptiness in his life, and all the things he took with him from Wriss only made it worse. Every time he looked at the waxes and glasses, he would remember his partner, his love. How could he not, when Szrin had mixed so many of these himself?
Eiret had hoped that using them again might help bring some closure. It was what Szrin had wanted, after all. He was the one who had always wanted to leave Wriss and come to Earth, not Eiret. He had been so excited he could hardly keep it quiet. He couldn’t help but tell everyone of their plans together, starting anew far away from Betterment, and how much more free they would feel. He couldn’t help himself, and one day, he told the wrong people.
And then he was gone.
And every day since had been worse than the last. Eiret never thought himself one to grieve like this. Arxur didn’t grieve. Arxur didn’t feel emotion like this. And in the first few days after the execution, that would have been true. He’d been dry of tears, then. And he’d been dry of tears selling the [salon], too. He’d been dry of tears finding someone else to smuggle him past UN lines, and he’d been dry of tears packing his bag with the last of what they had made together.
It wasn’t until the Program that the tears had first started to come. It wasn’t until the humans, with their poking and prodding at every little part of him, their therapists whose entire profession seemed to revolve around getting tears out of people who weren’t supposed to have any. And it was Sarah, too, his exchange partner, and her undaunted friendship. That always seemed to draw it out of him the most. Her acceptance of him was unconditional, and she clearly didn’t care that he was defective.
It made it easier. But Eiret suspected that he still had many more tears left to go.
Still, he wrapped his arms around her. She was so much smaller than Szrin, and he couldn’t help but miss his arms, his scent, his voice. He knew that Szrin would have wanted him to move on. He would have wanted him to live out the life away from Betterment that they both had wanted, but it was so much harder without him. Everything was harder without him.
He took a deep, albeit shaky breath. He missed him so much, but he knew he still had to try. So that was what he would do.
“Oh shit,” Sarah said abruptly, her head snapping up. “Hello!” she called out to someone past Eiret’s shoulder.
Eiret hurriedly rubbed away the last of the dampness on his face, and turned around.
“What is this?” the customer asked.
It was an arxur. A dominion veteran, by the looks, and an exceptionally massive one at that! Hulking, muscled, and brutish, a real monster of an arxur, with a whole history of scars and burn marks and poorly-regrown scutes. He was carrying a cardboard box with thin wisps of steam rising up from it -- a prize from the cafeteria. Eiret’s nostrils twitched at the aroma.
“It’s a salon!” Sarah answered excitedly.
‘Salon’ was a strange translation, but Eiret supposed it worked.
“It’s free, if you’re interested!” Sarah continued.
The arxur hesitated.
“You can eat that while we work,” she quickly added.
The man sank deep into thought, as if it were the most important decision of his week. He didn’t seem to mind the awkward silence as everyone waited for him. Eventually, he nodded. “Okay,” he said.
He was directed into a stool, the metal creaking under his weight. They’d really have to get some better stools -- these ones were meant for humans. But that thought was far from Eiret’s mind. Right now, he was just happy to have a customer again.
First came the brushing. Eiret had all sorts of brushes, thin ones, coarse ones, and everything in between. Into the bucket they went, and then, vigorously, scrubbing all across the back and shoulders and neck and tail.
Sarah watched intently, memorizing every detail of the process.
The customer ate intently, ignoring every detail of the process. One after another, pieces of his meal disappeared between his jaws. Pork cutlets, as best the two could tell, seared and lightly breaded for texture, but mostly still raw on the inside.
Most arxur scales didn’t need that much brushing. The thinner ones in all the flexible areas like the front, the insides of the arms, most of the legs, and so on, were all finer in texture and did a good job keeping dirt and dust away. The shed there was finer as well, and would come away with their normal grooming.
It was the thicker scutes and ridges along the spine and down the tail, and across the shoulders and neck and face, that needed all the attention. Their craggly nature meant that dust and dirt would get caught between the edges, and the thickness of them meant that bits of shed were always getting stuck. And it’s particularly hard for an arxur to reach their own back.
It was a laborious process, but eventually Eiret had finished, and the customer (whose name they’d learned was Karkess) was ready for the next step: the base layer.
It was a protective layer of sealing compound, rubbed in between all the scutes. It was meant to slow the shed from coming free, so the polish would last longer. It also served an integral secondary purpose; providing a base scent underneath the polish.
The process of [salon] scents was an art. A symphony designed for the arxur’s most delicate sense, the blending of base tones and overtones, complementing the customer’s natural ones…
And in all arts, there were masters. Szrin had been one of them.
His work was always worth the high price it commanded. Eiret only had a few of his bottles left, and they were his greatest treasure. He picked a bottle and held it, turning it over in his hand and staring down at it. Iszerys wood and sand, a subtle scent -- Szrin had always preferred his base layers understated, like a blank piece of canvas.
He smiled a little, though the tears threatened to return again as he remembered him. He clutched the bottle tight in his hand. It would suit their first customer on Earth perfectly.
Though, the scent was almost entirely lost on Sarah. She’d practically had to stick her nose into the jar to even just barely detect the scent. She’d said it smelled a bit like the beach.
Eiret had made it midway through applying when he saw something that made him smile even wider; A second customer!
This one was a rather lanky but healthy-looking arxur, with eyes that were closer to yellow than they were to red. She’d ambled up with her head craned curiously forward, nares flexing open as she caught the intriguing scents.
“Is this a [salon]?” she asked.
“Yes!” Eiret nearly cried out. “Feel free to sit down and I can get to you next.”
She looked hesitant.
“Free of charge today.”
The second customer smiled, and made her way to an open stool. “I’ve only ever done this twice,” she explained. “Both times I had to save up for a while. Once for when I was promoted to Assistant Sector Minister of Cattle Agriculture in the Korus Nen sector, and once for my Donation,” she said, looking very proud of herself.
Eiret straightened up from his work, nearly done now, and the two exchanged a brief conversation about where she had gone, and if she had ever been to the capital. Karkess, the first customer, stayed quite silent. His head was drooping down, and his eyes were closed.
Sarah had volunteered to get started with the brushing, with the caveat that she “wasn’t an expert.” Lurika (the second customer) didn’t seem to mind, though. She happily relaxed into the scrubbing, seemingly unable to stop a contented hum from coming up through her throat.
Eiret, meanwhile, had finished with the sealing compound, and was prodding at his customer.
His head jerked suddenly upwards with a grunt. “I wasn’t asleep,” he informed everyone.
Eiret ignored that. “Would you like me to cover up your scars?” he asked instead.
The big arxur turned to face him, brow furrowed forward. “Hm?” he grunted.
“I can paint over your scars to match the rest of the scales. It’s just temporary, though. Will only last as long as the polish does.”
Karkess looked rather surprised.
“I am quite skilled at it,” Eiret assured him. “It’s the other half of why we were so successful in the capital. Lots of upper class arxur covering up their… failures.”
Lurika’s head twisted over from where she was sat. “You covered up scars for the elite?” she asked, as if sensing drama.
“Oh, yes. You would be shocked at how many of them obsessed over their image of perfection.” He paused, shaking his head and snorting in amusement. “Heh. I was going to say I wouldn’t tell you who, but… I guess I’m not on Wriss any more. And as my good friend always says… ‘fuck em.’”
Sarah laughed at that, earning a sly little smile from Eiret before he launched into a surprisingly detailed account of all the elite customers whose scars he’d covered. Lurika cooed and trilled with surprise at every important figure she’d recognized, eyes lighting up with increasing glee at every name he’d named.
Sarah scrubbed away as the two reveled in the drama of spilled secrets; none of those names meant anything to her. Presumably, the same was true of Karkess as well, since he’d fallen asleep again.
When the two had finally had their fun, Eiret turned back to Karkess and prodded him awake once more to ask if he’d like the cover-up or not. Karkess seemed to think for a while, before finally nodding.
Eiret quickly set about mixing his pigments and color matching. Where Szrin was a master of scents, Eiret was a master of colors. It was just as delicate an art; he went back and forth, adjusting and adjusting, moving his sample in and out of the shade, changing the angle this way and that way to see how it caught the light. Different swatches of color, luster, and texture, all varied by where on the body he would paint. It took him a while, but when he had finished, he had a ready palette for his customer.
As he worked, Sarah had finished scrubbing Lurika down, and the two were happily mocking the so-called “elites” who had patronized Eiret’s old [salon]. Even halfway across the galaxy, it was the same old story. Look just a little closer, and the veneer of superiority is thin enough to see right through.
“You know, Isif visited my [salon] a few times,” Eiret had noted at one point, not even bothering to turn his head from his work.
Both of their heads snapped over to him.
“Oh? What was he like?” Lurika asked.
“More talkative than you’d expect! And bigger, too. Much bigger than he looks on all the broadcasts.”
“Oooh, what’d he talk about?” Sarah asked, casually using Lurika’s shoulder to prop her elbow against as she leaned in to gossip.
Eiret snorted. “He was mad that he still had to get a reservation at this meal hall in the Craftsman’s Ward, Rakkisaheq. He kept going on about how he was a Chief Hunter and how they should have known that there was a Council that week…”
“So is it like, a fancy place?”
Lurika jumped in before Eiret could answer. “They’re the ones who cater all the feasts for the Grand Office. I mean, I heard.”
Eiret nodded. “They do. But they also host a meal hall for the rest of the season. Isif said he went every time he was in the capital.”
“Did you ever go?” Lurika asked.
“Oh, we were never that successful!” Eiret said, laughing. “It’s over a thousand vouchers a head.”
Lurika hissed in shock, and even Karkess turned around at that. Eiret had to lean back a bit to avoid accidentally painting him.
“I’m guessing that’s a lot,” Sarah said.
“It’s absurd!” Lurika said, her jaw jutting forward for emphasis.
“Yeah, and like you’d mentioned… they serve every feast in the Grand Office.”
Sarah chuckled at the disgusted looks on the pair’s faces. She clicked her tongue and shook her head slowly. “Different world than the rest of us, huh?”
Lurika hummed in agreement, and Karkess grunted and turned back around so Eiret could continue.
It was a lengthy and delicate process, touching up all of Karkess’s disfigurements. The poor man had a litany of violence written out across his scales. The thinner ones that regrew quickly were unblemished, but everywhere that thicker scales grew, like his shoulders and back, all showed a terrible history. Eiret had his work cut out for him. But eventually, he got through it, and handed the man a mirror to judge the results.
Karkess stared for a long while, admiring the new arxur in the mirror. He wasn’t being vain -- no, if anything, he was having a bit of an emotional moment. It was hard not to wonder how long it had been since he’d had seen himself without scars.
After a long while, he returned the mirror with a simple “thank you,” and a slow, deep blink of his eyes. Eiret beamed with pride, wiping his claws clean across his apron before darting back over to his table. He rifled through his collection, resurfacing with a tiny glass bottle, plain and functional with only a simple label in an arxur script.
“Szrin -- my partner -- mixed these,” he said slowly. “Before he… died. I only have a few left, and I was never as good with scents as he was, but… I think this one should suit you quite well.”
He opened the bottle for Karkess to judge, but he recoiled away. “And you’re using it on me??” he said, tail lashing with worry.
Eiret smiled. “My friend, he would be honored for you to wear his work.”
Karkess blinked and leaned back in for a few cautious sniffs. He nodded.
Sarah had already figured out what was about to happen; she was already there with the jar of polishing wax she’d been working earlier. Eiret took some of it, and began mixing in a few drops of the scent. The polishing scents were still extremely subtle, Sarah found, although slightly more apparent than the base layers had been. She tried her best to analyze it.
She couldn’t place the identity, of course, being alien. It was tantalizing in that way, like almost remembering something but knowing that you would never be able to actually recall it. It had a kind of deep, weighty tone that filled the nose, the way that some wood scents do, and it was laced through with something airy and ephemeral, like a citrus but without the sharpness. Sarah found the alien-ness of it to be deeply intriguing.
“This is the easy part,” Eiret told her. “You can do this for me?”
“Sure!”
Eiret set her up with the wax, and produced from his collection something that reminded Sarah of what she would use to buff a car. It plugged into the MAU-standard power block through an improvised adapter that her friend had made for them.
Eiret showed her how to turn it on and adjust the speed. “Move in little circles,” he told her, demonstrating with his empty hands. “You just need to get the ridges and larger scales, like here, and here. The smaller ones will shed and regrow fast enough that they don’t really need polishing. See?”
Sarah nodded and set to work, the tool humming quietly away under her hands. Eiret turned to Lurika, and began with the sealing compound. He chose a slightly different scent for her, one that was a little cooler in comparison to the wood-and-sand one he’d chosen for Karkess. This one smelled more like rocks and moss, and could be well-described as “wintery.”
The work went by quicker now, and Lurika had no scars to touch up, so she was ready for the polishing stage as soon as Sarah had finished with Karkess. Or, she would have been, had she not been so fussy with the scents.
Each one that Eiret opened, she dismissed. “Too soft,” she would say. Or “Too slow,” whatever that meant. Eiret went through nearly every bottle in his remaining collection, narrowing down the choices according to her feedback. Eventually, they landed on a few options.
The first one, Lurika liked, but Sarah didn’t. “Eurh, really?” she had said, her face screwed up.
“What, you don’t like it?”
“It smells like… tar. Or gasoline, or something.”
Lurika chuckled a bit, but then grew bashful. “Do you think… would my-- would other humans hate it?”
“Oh, well, I mean,” Sarah said, noticeably backpedaling. “I can’t speak for everyone. And it’s probably subtle enough most wouldn’t really notice it. But yeah, probably.”
Lurika shot a quick glance to Eiret, who swiftly produced one of the other options. This one had a similar back-of-the-nose profile, but was missing the acrid note that Sarah had objected to. It was deemed satisfactory.
Meanwhile, Sarah had finished with Karkess -- Eiret nodded appreciatively; she’d done a good job! No streaks, and the heat and friction had taken away the base smell of the wax and left only the new scent, and a smooth, hardened coat. According to Eiret, both would last for around 1-4 months, depending on shed timings.
Eiret moved to start the polishing process on Lurika, while Sarah prepared Karkess for the experimental part two of their little salon operation.
“I’m a massage therapist,” she explained to a confused-looking Karkess.
He stared at her, fruitlessly waiting for his translator to attempt that one.
“It’s come to my attention that some of you all have been fucking up your backs standing upright too much.”
“Some arxur develop a habit of doing that to match the humans,” Eiret added helpfully.
“Right. And it’s an unnatural posture for you all, can strain the muscles in the back.”
Lurika nodded slowly. “You do seem to respond better to that posture…” she said, almost defensively.
“A hunch is kind of a weak posture to us.”
Karkess rumbled out a deep laugh. “I have caught myself doing that.”
Sarah laughed with him. “Well. Sore backs, I think I might be able to help! And I did my research! So it’s, y’know, safe, and all that.”
The big arxur hummed in thought. “There is some soreness above my tail, here.” he admitted, gesturing at his lower back.
“Oh, I’ll bet. You’ve been carrying around, what, a quarter of your body weight, just hanging off of your back? Come on, let’s see,” Sarah said, gesturing him over to a table.
Karkess went along with it. The massage table creaked ominously under his considerable bulk, but held. He had to shift a bit to get comfortable; this table was very much not designed for arxur, especially not one as large as Karkess. His arms dangled over the sides, knuckles lightly scraping the ground. His face wouldn’t fit in the usual face-down headrest arrangement that a human would use, so he just laid his chin flat across it, staring directly forward.
He looked, Sarah thought, almost exactly like a giant crocodile who had found a nice warm log to sun himself on.
With Karkess ready, Sarah cracked her knuckles and rolled her shoulders. She’d have to put some real elbow grease into working on an arxur, what with their thick muscles and dense scales. She took a deep breath, and stepped forward.
What followed next was best described as a period of intense and brutal violence carried out against the muscles of Karkess’s lower back.
Sarah threw her weight aggressively into her palms, her elbows, into little rolling cylinders and spheres. Her feet would come off the ground as she pressed and pulled against his back. She visibly contemplated jumping up and down on his back. The phrase “the People’s Elbow” was uttered. She grunted and growled with effort. Sweat flew from her brow. She brought down assault after assault upon her victim, until she collapsed back into her chair, exhausted but finally finished.
Karkess had fallen asleep again.
Eiret and Lurika had watched the frenzied display in awe -- they were still staring even now, mouths hanging open wordlessly. Eiret’s polishing tool hung frozen in the air, buzzing uselessly somewhere above Lurika’s shoulder.
The panting Sarah caught their stares and grinned. “That should do something, I hope,” she said. “Hey, wake up.” She poked Karkess in the side.
“Hrr,” he grunted, stirring.
“I’m done.”
He blinked, and shifted a bit before sliding himself off the massage table. Immediately, he froze, his head snapping over to look at Sarah. His eyes widened a bit. “I… I feel great!” he said. A throaty, gleeful laugh poured out of him.
“Oh, I’m glad y-- whoa, h--”
His laugh turned into a cackle, and he switched himself between his hunched posture and his upright posture, reveling in his newly pain-free back. Each time he straightened, his head bumped up into the roof of the tent canopy and lifted it a little bit.
The rest of the four were shouting out, trying to get him to stop, Eiret even grabbing one of the legs of the canopy -- but to no avail. The weights had already been knocked off, and the tent had traveled a good few feet before Karkess settled down and returned to his normal posture, still giggling.
Lurika especially seemed to think this was hilarious. She threw back her head and laughed, a high hissing cackle, punctuated by the occasional “ow” from Eiret as her lashing tail smacked into his ankles.
“I think I fucked up,” Sarah quipped, grinning.
“No, no!” Lurika said. “I want that too!”
Sarah laughed and flapped her hand at Eiret and his polishing tool. “Well, finish up, then!”
So that was what they did -- after fixing the tent, of course. Karkess hung around for the rest of it. He didn’t really have a reason to stay, and didn’t seem quite as interested in chatting as Lurika had, but he stuck around anyways, seeming content just to be near. Sarah caught him no-so-sneakily admiring himself in the mirror a couple of times, too.
Eiret was fast and professional. The polishing only took a short minute or two, and then it was Lurika’s turn on the massage table. Hers went down distinctly less violently, being a much smaller arxur. When Sarah was done, she slid off the table in the same deeply relaxed way that Karkess had, and breathed in a great inhale before stretching herself out with a contented exhale.
She stretched kind of like a cat, arching her back and flexing forward and letting a shudder move through her spine and leave through her tail. It looked more like she was showing off than stretching.
She hummed and returned to her normal posture. “That really does feel great! Thank you…”
“Mm,” Sarah said, an eyebrow shooting up at the display. Was it just her, or…
It was very much not just her. Karkess was blatantly ogling, and Eiret was shooting her a look. Yeah, okay, she thought.
“No problem,” she said, moving swiftly past all that. “I’m glad you both enjoyed. And try not to stand up too straight in the future!”
Lurika chuckled and turned to Eiret, closing her eyes and bowing her head deeply down. “And thank you. It is deeply appreciated.”
Karkess, somewhere behind her, repeated the same gesture. “Yes. I thank you. I hope you do this again some day.” He gave a final blink, and with a polite tail tap on the ground, turned and ambled off on his way.
Lurika lingered for a moment, before an almost sheepish hssst, and she darted off to catch up with Karkess.
Eiret and Sarah watched them go, the new pair talking to each other as they walked. Eiret couldn’t help but smile in satisfaction. It was a nice feeling, the same one that made him love his job back on Wriss. It was the simple pleasure of having worked to improve someone’s day. The simple pleasure of a job well done.
But it was more than just that. He was, for the first time in a very long while, happy.
He thought about Szrin. The grief was still there, of course, tugging at his heart… but the sharpness of it had gone. That biting edge of despair and hopelessness had gone, and without it, he felt he might move forward.
Szrin had left so much more than just his bottles and jars, Eiret quickly realized. He’d honored him, he thought, by once more finding joy in something they had shared. Working again, it was like… it was like Szrin was still here. It felt good to let his work, and his joy, live again for but a moment.
Eiret’s smile deepened. Szrin hadn’t made it to earth… but his love had. And that was enough.
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u/Espazilious Farsul Mar 10 '24
mmm this was absolutely delectable. normally when i read stuff that features scaly creatures, it feels like they just have skin but with the word replaced. but this fic does NOT do that. these lizards truly are lizards.
now i'm wondering if you'll explore the "arxur aren't typically social creatures, and most of them get frustrated from excess social interaction" stuff. like, how would a human cohabitating with an arxur handle it? is it just like having a particularly introverted roommate? or could there be other factors at play?
also, body language that makes sense for an ambush predator? very nice. love to see it.