20
RAMYA
“You are such a darling little kitty cat,” Queen Jessima told Bevya as she tickled the messenger’s chin. Bevya stretched across the Queen of Fertilian’s lap and the clevercat’s loud purrs thrummed off the walls.
“She doesn’t usually get this much attention,” Ramya said, concentrating hard to understand Jessima’s southern Shella accent. The Ferts, thousands of years before, taught the Xayans their language and it had become the primary tongue in Xayy, and later, Peqkya.
The Melokai watched as the small, pale woman fussed over the cat. Her long straw-coloured hair was curled and intricately folded on top of her head. Her potent fragrance wafted about her in a cloud and she wore a long, heavily layered dress that someone else must have put her in.
After all the introduction
