Lexx knelt on one knee, glaring at Zeta. He was angry with him for fighting on the ship. He knew better. At the same time, Lexx understood, telling himself. ‘I was afraid of this. There’s not enough room on this ship. They fight each other when it gets crowded and worse,… they frightened Chel.’
Zeta stopped in front of Lexx, dropping his head and awaiting his punishment. Lexx was busy making sure that Zeta wasn’t hurt badly. Of the three, Zeta was the only one with blood on his fur. There were a trio of shallow slashes over his left shoulder, laying the skin open cleanly. It looked worse than it was, but would need attention.
“Just scratches, Zeta. They’ll sting, but you’re not really hurt.” Lexx grumbled, roughly dragging his hand down Zeta’s neck on the other side to make sure that Zeta realized he wasn’t really in trouble.
“Zeta sorry!” The sallomandyr continued apologizing. “Not mean to fight!”
“I know you didn’t,… stay away from Dash and get out of here.” Lexx stood up and motioned Zeta to the door. He wasted no time going through the door, not looking back. Lexx waved the door closed and turned to Chel.
“I,… thought Dash was going to kill Zeta.” Chel sighed in relief that they were out of the room. “It wasn’t Zeta’s fault,.. Dash started it. He really scares me,…” It was a frightening thing to see a tiger who had seemed to placid and polite, turn into a snarling beast.
“I’m sorry, Chel.” Lexx turned away. He felt apologetic about what had occurred, especially since he should have known better. “I’m going to have to start rotating them in stasis or they might hurt each other. They are still animals.”
It didn’t matter that they could talk and were changed, the fact of the matter was that the dice were still animals. When they were angry, threatened or afraid they resorted to their instincts, most of the time with unwanted results. Dash had more than once bitten or slashed another dice that had given him a reason to do so. Chel could have been hurt. Then how would Lexx have felt?
