Arlo, Personal Log

“Personal Log, Stardate… 517... 5171?? Computer? What is the current Stardate?” Arlo rubbed their face as the onboard computer chimed its response. “It is 0300 on Stardate 51721.” “Thank you. Okay… it’s been just over a month since our last shore leave, huh? I’ve only been on the Cygni for six months now.”

They pause and look out the large window in their room into the inky black. There’s a few white specks of distant stars, somewhere among them is Krius, the star Nie orbits. Arlo feels a pang of homesickness, as they study the specks, not certain which of these specks is home. They turn away from the large window and start their log again.

“I miss home, but the CMO keeps me busy. There’s always some new injury that a crew member will come in with. Just the other day, Captain Luntian came in for a minor burn from when the protein re-sequencer made the water just a little too hot.” Arlo paused again. The Captain making an appearance in sickbay is something of a rarity and for someone who is usually very cool headed and calm, Luntian certainly made a big fuss over such a small burn, flinching with every check Arlo had done. A quick once over with a dermal regen and his hand was back to brand new, with barely a scar visible where the burn had been. It was probably the most interesting case that day.

“But last month's shore leave! We'd finally arrived at the Deep Space Station in the Aerithra system. They were in need of a supply restock and I was tasked with handling the medical equipment transfers. It was an easy task, simply logging all of the equipment and transferring them on hover trays through the airlock and into the station's sickbay. Tedious but easy. Or so I had thought."

~~~

Arlo had been on their fifth trip pulling a hover tray loaded with inoculations for the station crew that needed to be transported as smoothly as possible when, whilst looking back at the extremely fragile package, they bumped into something with a squeak. The vials rattled in the storage boxes at the abrupt stop. In front of them, sprawled out on the floor was a golden coated Katragoon, shaking their head to clear themselves of dizziness. They had also dropped what they were carrying, a small brown satchel, which had fallen with a clink. “Oh No! I’m so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going. Are you alright???” Arlo fussed as they rushed to help the other Katragoon up. As they did, they noticed the other Katragoon’s arm was bleeding. “Your Arm-“ “Oh! No it’s okay! It was bleeding before I bumped into you.” “It was? How?!” The golden Katragoon shrugged slightly, carelessly waving their injured arm about. “The station has a new Werm. I offered to look after him cause I've always wanted a Werm and I just got bit. I’m actually just on my way to sickbay, just need a plaster and I’ll be all good to go.” Arlo looked at the injury dubiously, raising an eyebrow. “Let me walk you there, I’m heading to the sickbay right now and I can look you over when we get there”

Arlo grabbed the hover tray again and walked beside the other Katragoon, who, despite the injury, was walking with a bounce in their step, almost as if they didn’t have an injured arm at all. They procured a blue dalberry from the satchel they were carrying. "Dalberry?" they asked. "No, thanks though." “I don’t think I’ve seen you around on the station before, I’m Sneeze, by the way, are you a new transfer?” Arlo softened at that question, letting a small smile come to their face. “I’m Arlo, and no, I’m not a new transfer, I’m just delivering supplies from the Cygni to the sickbay.” Sneeze glanced over at them, a smile in their eyes. “The galactic class starship? That’s quite the ship to be on” they said with a low whistle, “must be very important to be on that ship.” “Oh no, just an ensign. I’m currently doing my internship under the chief medical officer” said Arlo. “I haven’t been there long.” “You must’ve earned it, to get to be doing your internship on the Cygni!” Sneeze bumped Arlo with their shoulder in a friendly gesture yet Arlo frowned and looked away. “I guess..”

When they reached the sick bay, Arlo set aside the hover tray with the inoculations to go and look through the supplies. “Sneeze, do you know where your station’s doctor keeps the dermal regenerator?” Arlo stood up on their tiptoes to look on a high shelf, moving different bits and bobs around in their search. Sneeze had set themselves up on an examination bed, and glanced over. “Oh, we don't have one of those.” “What?” Arlo stumbled in surprise and nearly dropped the box of safety clips they had just picked up. They sat back on their haunches and placed the safety clips down before turning around to Sneeze. “You don’t have a dermal regenerator?” “Nope! And I tend to have a pretty bad reaction to them anyway, so a lot of my medical treatments are old school, Doc. You do know how to treat stuff the old way right?”

Arlo really wanted to question what Sneeze meant by a ‘bad reaction’ but it wasn’t exactly relevant to treating them so they refrained. “Sure-“ “Great! Bandages and plasters are over there,” Sneeze pointed to a shelf that had a blue box labeled “For Sneeze” on the side of it and it was stocked to the brim with bright coloured plasters and bandages on the other side of the room.

As Arlo made their way over to the box, they heard a small “Chu-“ sound from behind them on the exam table. They spun around and finally saw the creature that had bitten Sneeze, still firmly attached to Sneeze’s long tail, big, dark blue and fluffy. How on Nie they had missed it before, Arlo wasn’t sure. Sneeze sneezed again as they unsuccessfully tried to unlatch werm from their tail. “ I take that’s the Werm that bit you in the first place?” They asked, returning to Sneeze with bandages from the box in hand and gesturing to the large Werm. “Yep! He’s a big fella, Mei-yin said that to get this big, they need to be pretty spoiled.”

Arlo eyed the Werm, its red eyes watching them as it worked its jaw on Sneeze’s tail. Whether or not Sneeze actually felt the crushing bite was up for debate, (if they didn’t, it may have made for an interesting case study Arlo mused later) but they definitely needed to get the Werm off Sneeze before it could do further damage. Werms have teeth for crushing and chewing, and an extremely strong bite which means they have a tendency to hold on to something once they’ve got it in their mouths.

"Sneeze, I'll take you up on the dalberry offer from earlier" Arlo said, focused on the werm. It glared back and puffed up it's fur. "Oh uh, sure!" Sneeze reaches into their satchel again and pulls out a dalberry, this time it's a red colour, "Here you go!" Arlo takes the held out dalberry, and approaches the werm closer. They can hear Sneeze rambling but are too focused on the task to really listen. "Sneeze, I'm going to need you to sit very, very still." Arlo reached towards the werm slowly, the red dalberry resting on the palm of their outstretched hand. The werm’s red eyes flitted from Arlo's face to the offered dalberry, and for a moment it seemed like the werm was considering dropping Sneeze's tail for something actually edible. As it considered, Arlo quickly reached for it's scruff with the other hand. "Drop it!" The werm, much to it's own and Arlo's surprise, almost immediately dropped Sneeze's tail from it's mouth and Arlo fed it the dalberry as a reward, the hand on it's scruff now petting through it's soft fur. "Woah! It's like you're a werm whisperer," Sneeze sounded quite impressed as Arlo finally looked back up at Sneeze. Arlo shrugged, hand still absently petting the werm, now under the chin. "I'm actually surprised that it worked," Arlo said, still stroking the werm. The werm clattered it's teeth in a pleased sounding noise. "Now, let me look at those injuries."

As Arlo tended to Sneeze’s injuries, the werm slithered it’s way over to the brown satchel, and pressed it’s head in to seek out more dalberries. Sneeze snorted slightly, amused that the furry critter was now docile and rummaging through their stuff. As Arlo finished bandaging their arm, they started talking again, though it took a moment for Arlo to actually hear them. “Pardon? Sorry I wasn't listening.” “I was saying, you seem to get on really well with the werm, have you ever considered being a werm wrangler?” “No… can’t say I have,” Arlo adjusted the bandage slightly and Sneeze raised their arm to inspect their job. “Well done on this, excellent bandage up Doc! Anyway, as I was saying, you’d probably be a great Werm handler, I mean, he’s so calm now” The Werm snorted its agreement, shaking off Sneeze’s satchel and moving to snake its way to Arlo, butting its head into their arm. “Never really had a pet. But I guess it may be something for me to look into.”

~~~

"Afterwards, I brought the werm back with me to the Cygni and I've named him Reginald" Arlo reaches down off their bed to pet the sleeping werm curled up beside the bed and they sigh. “Training Reg has been a long process this past month. He’s gotten better with his bite reactivity, but it’s still a work in progress. However… I’ve noticed something.”

Reginald opens one of his red eyes at the petting and makes a soft clattering noise with his teeth before yawning and inching his way up and onto Arlo’s lap. He wriggles a bit before settling down again, allowing himself to be stroked by Arlo. Arlo scritches under his chin and continues “Reginald seems to be really in tune with my emotions. It’s almost as if he knows something is up. He's also made it easier for me to connect with my crew mates, many are so interested in my training methods. I’ve never had a pet before, and I don’t want to fail him. But I think he makes it a little less lonely, to be on this big ship.” Arlo settled back down into their bed, Reginald now curled up beside them, the nightmare that had originally woke them now dissipated from their mind. “Computer? End Personal Log.”