Craved by an Alien

by Amanda Milo

  Dead serious, he answers, “Tink.”

  I’m glad I’m not drinking. I’d have spit it all over him. “Tink. Your name is… Tink.”

  His ears cock at different heights, giving me the impression this is his quizzical face. “Is your translator faulty? Yes. My name is Tink.”

  “I… I can’t fricking call you Tink. What’s your middle name? Do you have a middle name?”

  Rather than middle or last names, hobs for example, are referred to as ‘The son of…’ followed by their dam’s name.

  Maybe a jot entertained at my outrageousness, he responds, “Tink Zelkturn of the Second Den.”

  This guy just leads you in; I can’t not ask questions. “How many—” I blink up at him. “What are you, two hundred, two hundred fifty centimeters tall? Everything looks bigger from down here—how many Goliath Rakhii named Tink are there? Is there a Tink Zelkturn of the First Den?”

  Rather than answer me, he speaks into a Comm screen on the wall, informing the hob manning it that I’m waiting for Dohartaigh on the ground.

  The ground? The ground? This isn’t the ground. I just ascended a freaking tower! I try to huff, but a lack of oxygen makes it sound—and feel—kind of a lot like choking.

  I’m suddenly coming around to taking Callie up on doing dance workout things together. I used to swim for hours, and I wasn’t always fed by a tank of trimix: sometimes I snorkeled. My lungs are perfectly capable of this. Besides, I can’t have lived through everything I have only to be bested and die on land by an evil set of master stairs.

  I take another gander at my surroundings. Whenever Dohrein and I visit, we always wait here. This time, I figured for this chat I’d just go up to Dohartaigh’s war room or office or whatever the topmost part of the tower holds, but... there are no more stairs.

  You’d have to have wings to make it up the wall. Or be one hell of a climber.

  I point to the relatively small, colorful stones that are mortared together to create this massive edifice we’re standing in. “Can you climb?”

  Tink’s tail takes a sweep of the floor. “That would defeat the purpose of this building’s design.”

  I give him some obvious side-eye. “That wasn’t a no.”

  I manage to wait him out for five and a half seconds. When he doesn’t say anything, I jump into this almost-one-sided conversation with a leading, “You don’t seem bothered by this.”

  His gaze shifts up to the ceiling in what nearly resembles a rolling of his eyes.

  I bite back a grin. “You don’t talk much, do you? Super alien-strong and silent type?”

  He sniffs—an interesting thing to see when your conversation partner’s snout has bands of scales that all flex with the movement. “I was going to say I don’t see much reason in speaking when you carry on enough for the both of us—but you assailed me with yet another question before I could.”

  I hold out my hands. “I feel like this is an opening. I’m going to hit you with another one.”

  “I insist you bring Dohrein when you visit again.”

  This stops me. “Oh yeah?”

  Tink turns back to the array of weapons he was cleaning before I arrived. “Yes. When the pair of you are together, you natter at him with your inane questions.”

  “Inane? And come on, before I got here it must have been quiet as hell.”

  “It was,” he says wistfully—but I see the tell-tale lift of his mouth.

  Unlike some alien-people, I don’t hide my smile, and I make my sigh loud and exaggerated before I give the guy a break.

  I try to find something more interesting in the room than he is, but there isn’t much else to see. This isn’t their house; this is where Dohartaigh spends her time when she isn’t presiding over the Academy. I know she also has a hanger somewhere where she slaps guns on ships.

  This building though appears to be mostly built for function. Ringing around the top of the room are cutouts with wide landing ledges: easy access points to fly in and out.

  I’m studying the high, rib vault ceilings and decorative rafter beams when I feel air currents brush my back.

  Wing beats.

  “Gracie. I was so intrigued at your request to meet that I immediately abandoned my work station.”

  I wheel around, and pretty much like always, my first thought is this is where Dohrein gets his stunner cheekbones. It’s weird, this whole sense of false-familiarity I get when I’m around her. There’s just enough similarities to Dohrein that she echoes to me.

  She resettles her wings, which—unlike Dohrein’s—are feathered, but except for the blue being a little darker, she has his colors.

  Or, I guess, he has hers.

  She’s freaking absolutely smashing in a smart, futuristic-chic tunic top and kickass trousers that had to have resulted from a pair of assassin's pants getting friends-with-benefitsy on militant leggings. What a cross. They’re so thoroughly covered in wing mark patterns that I can’t tell what their original color was—all I know is the design is awesome and I want it.

  And if Dohrein were here, would it make him uncomfortable to hear his mate complimenting his mum on her marks? I mean, we’d all know how she got them… For him, gotta be squicky.

  She takes me in with obvious curiosity. Par for the course, with her at least. She’s always curious—or amused—which is probably why I and all of the other humans are still alive.

  As an aside: if something or someone has the ability to pull a Gryfala’s focus from her work? Damn skippy, that someone has some power.

  I let myself bask in that for a second as I look her hobs over. “My dear Alienmother-in-law. Good to see you too.” I gesture to a lively-patterned hob I don’t recognize. “Is this Father Fifteen?”

  “Why numbers?” I’d asked Dohrein. “Why not refer to him as Father Thomas and—wait, that’d sound like priests. Or monks. Which, with your mom’s reported activities would indicate they sure aren’t—”

  “My dam prefers the cool rationality that assigning numerals affords in order to organize the hobs’ hierarchy amongst each other. It keeps the rookery running smoothly.”

  “Sounds delightful.”

  Dohrein also told me she adds one every other solar or so. That’s a hell of a Happy Birthday Gift to Me.

  She smiles, her finger tracing over a powdery emerald and gold wingmark on her wrist when she answers, “He is.”

  There’s warmth to her that I notice more and more with each interaction. It’s subtle, but I can almost believe Dohrein now when he’s tried to say that this female showed him ‘deep affection’ when he was a fledgling.

  I’m glad he believes that.

  The fact he can’t say the same for all of his sires is another matter entirely and it makes me feel like serving some lit molotov cocktails, which is not the mood I can afford to be in right now.

  I clear my throat and watch her tilt her head, watching me. It’d be unnerving, but she’s done this every visit and it’s not wigging me out near as much as it did in the beginning.

  At first, I struggled with the fact that this creature is otherworldly beautiful (geeky-gorgeous scientist, without the geeky-hot glasses) and if we were compared, I would be found lacking.

  I am not lacking.

  I don’t care if you just hauled me up out of the bottom of an alien ocean. I have an above average-to-healthy awareness of my self-worth and therefore my self-image. I don’t let anyone make me feel like less… but this female here? In the beginning, she damn near managed it.

  Of course, once I realized that she didn’t consider or judge me by her own species’ ideals, it was oddly comforting. Like you wouldn’t look at a cat and reason that you were either more beautiful or less beautiful than the cat.

  Humans are no competition to Gryfala whatsoever.

  I’ll take it.

  With her approval, I’ll be taking a lot more. Still, I can’t help but speak out. “You don’t keep your Rakhii with you? Tink stays down here on the ‘ground floor�
�� level all the time?”

  Tink’s head whips up, and his eyes aren’t warning me, but they’re trying to say something.

  Dohartaigh glances from him to me. “With everyone’s best interests in mind.”

  I have to sink my teeth into my tongue to stop myself from saying any-fucking-thing.

  Her lips thin and she releases a breath that could be on the road to perturbed. “I can sense your disapproval. I don’t do this to be cruel. I found a system that works, and I’m very fond of my Rakhii: I’d like to keep him. This takes management.”

  I take a careful breath. “Look,” I brush my hands down my thighs, wondering if I should keep my mouth shut, or level with her—but do it diplomatically, if I’m able. “I’m not trying to pick a fight here, but if you think you’re convincing me right now, you’re not doing such a hot job.”

  She’s definitely starting to get exasperated. “I don’t need to convince you. I’m merely pointing out this isn’t callousness. It’s necessity.”

  I make a face. “Not callous? Your treatment is so uncaring it’s the very definition.”

  She pins me with her gaze, and her eyes make Antarctica look like a tropical wonderland with leopard seals.

  For the first time in her presence, a lick of more than unease travels up the back of my neck.

  Diplomacy, you dimtwat, what happened to diplomacy!

  "What arrant nonsense." Her claws spread wide, but that’s as much emotion as she allows herself to show me.

  That’s good, because just this little show makes my intestines twitch.

  “Controls are in place for the safety of us all. Physically, we are no match. You can’t possibly fathom the damage a Rakhii is capable of.”

  “I was there that day in the arena. I saw.”

  “Yes,” she nods, “Now imagine if those hobs were males you loved, or family to those you loved. Imagine them being slaughtered in front of you. And consider that Rakhii are capable of creating strong ties to hobs. They experience the loss even as they are killing their friends—just because they are gripped with madness doesn’t mean they aren’t in pain. Now imagine that devastation occurring over an entire planetside—and no one is strong enough to stop them, and nothing can make them return to their reason. Believe my words when I tell you that the way we operate is for the good of everyone.”

  I’m failing at this and we haven’t even started. This has nothing to do with why I came here. I should be able to let this go. Hell, Tink doesn’t seem to care, so why should I?

  Because I wouldn’t want to be left down here. I know, I know: I’m not a Rakhii. They do think and act differently—way, way differently, I can agree with that part. But still...

  Part of me isn’t sure if it’s offensive to walk away, but the other part of me is like ‘walk away now or hit her: those are your fucking options’—so I take a few steps to the side. I don’t quite feel comfortable enough to give her my back, although if she wanted to carve me up with her claws, she could do it whether I was facing her or not. With that overwhelmingly reassuring thought, I turn around and start walking in the other direction.

  Instead of standing there like I’m her specimen to study, she falls into step beside me.

  “There’s a garden we tend to,” she offers. “It’s on the gallery.”

  I feel like I’ve earned lots of good things in Heaven when I control myself and I manage a mostly level, “That’d be nice to see, thank you.”

  I fucking startle when her wing almost circles me. It doesn’t touch, but Dohrein told me this half-cupping thing? This is basically a sign of affection. She’s essentially giving me a motherly pat on my shoulder.

  Is she giving me reassurance because she can see I’m bothered?

  Is this her way of showing appreciation for my restraint?

  Finally, somebody sees.

  I don’t know her well enough to be able to tell, and in a rare show of self-discipline, I don’t ask—mostly because I can’t trust myself to speak.

  The gallery is the platform that rings around the outside portion of the tower like a lighthouse walkway.

  Beautiful and well-tended beds are on either side of us, and I wonder who takes on the job of upkeep on the far side. I suppose the hobs do, because with wings, falling off isn’t too big a concern.

  Perches jut out here and there, perfect for Dohartaigh’s hobs to rest on while she takes me on this tour. Tink doesn’t follow us, but I can admit he might prefer the silent company of a table full of weapons as opposed to my ‘nattering.’

  That thought is almost enough to make me smile.

  By the time we stop next to some weird colored and oddly shaped plants, I’ve calmed down enough that I’m not glaring holes through anything anymore.

  Dohartaigh reaches out, claws stroking the petals of a pumpkin-orange spiked bloom before she severs its head and offers it to me.

  I accept it.

  It doesn’t escape my notice that this flower is about a match for the colors of her eyes, and I wonder if one of her hobs planted it thinking the same thing.

  “You enjoy studying and observing too, don’t you?”

  We’re always monitored and Dohrein has noted the same thing about me. “I wonder why you bother asking. You know I do.”

  The sound that comes from her nose is almost, almost a snort—it isn’t quite forceful enough to qualify, but I feel like that’s what it wanted to be. “Contrary to what you believe, I don’t spend my days watching my offspring with his mate.” She shakes her head slightly, like I’m being absurd. “But I believe you have a scientific interest in us much like we hold for you. There’s a part of you that can separate from your emotions.”

  Slowly, I turn to face her. I feel like my expression says it all: I hope you’re not a betting woman.

  Her eyes brighten at whatever she reads off of me. She turns back to her plants. “Have you wondered why Rein and Crispin aren’t as agreeable and biddable as hobs should be?”

  You mean mindless drones? I grimace. That’s not really fair to say. Hobs aren’t mindless, and they aren’t drones. They just really, really love to serve.

  She severs another flowertop. And another. I start to notice a pattern; she’s removing the ones with misshapen blooms, and if they’re like a lot of Earth flowers, this will leave the showier ones to go to seed—these are the ones she or her hobs or Tink with a window-washer rig or whoever tends the far-side flowers will produce next season’s flowers from.

  “Their test scores were flawless. They don’t lack for anything in quantifiable knowledges,” she breaks from her statue-like calm and brings a claw to her brow, and the gesture makes her look so…

  I need a new word. I want to say ‘human.’ It humanizes her.

  “Yet their results for one area automatically would have—should have—excluded them from ever entering the Academy. Gracie,” her eyes collide with mine. “If they’d ever been Chosen by a Gryfala, they would have faced being cast aside. If they were unable to overcome their difficulty with sharing, it would have rendered them unfit for service.”

  I stare at her. “I thought the bonding was because of humans. I thought we were all special and our humanness was honking up hobwires, making their brains all bondy instead of sharey—”

  “Oh no, in regards to bonding, humans are still unique.” She relaxes and her calculating face is back yet again. If I hadn’t already known she was Rein’s mum, it’d be clear who spawned him right with this one expression. “Especially how they trigger the bonding process over such a wide variety of species.”

  I’m trying to keep up. “You just said Dohrein and Crispin shouldn’t have made it to the Academy. How’d they get in then?” My eyes rove over her. “You covered it up?”

  She huffs a silent, not-happy laugh. “I did far more than that. I pushed out my competition until I presided over the entire school, taking control of every decision.” She slices off another flower. “I designed weapons. I had no interest in academia.” Her
wings pull tighter to her spine. “Not until I realized my offspring was a reject.”

  “Crispin too?”

  “He didn’t seem to struggle as much as Dohrein—unless it came to his nestmate.”

  Crispin’s biological brother was a real prick. “His nestmate. That’s the one he strangled, right?”

  Her wings bob up and down. “Indeed. That was an odd thing, to have aggression between the pair. Hobs get along so well, and siblings hatched in the same nest in the same season is an event so rare it’s almost unseen in our kind,” she explains. “No one was prepared for their violent dislike of each other.”

  “Why did you pair up Dohrein and Crispin?”

  One of her hobs offers her two gel packets. She takes them both—and she holds one out to me. “I didn’t. They found each other. We were intensely relieved. I had hoped that they would become brother hobs.”

  (Definition for the humans out there who are wondering: brother hobs refers to males who develop a close-knit rapport in a Gryfala’s service. Ideally, that will be all of her hobs.)

  “I thought Crispin might be able to work around Dohrein’s natural tendency for possessiveness, if they were ever Chosen.”

  Instead, Crispin had been the one to put the kibosh on that when he met and insta-bonded to Laura on a pirate ship.

  I take the gel packet and use it to point to a nonconformist flower hiding behind a cluster of perfects so she can snip it. “But you said they’d be set aside.”

  “If they could have worked together, I knew they’d have had a chance, especially if they were Chosen by a mature female. You see, Gryfala consider the less-than-ideal candidates for harems after our fertile solars have passed. These formerly lone males can then enjoy the affection of a Gryfala. A sense of belonging with his new brotherhood.” One of her wings motions to her band of males, all of them at ease in each other’s company. “And he can have this without the risk of passing on traits that wouldn’t benefit the whole of our society. But it’s imperative that they not become proprietorial.”

  “Selective breeding,” I say slowly, and her eyes light up with approval, making me want to shake myself, because I feel a flash of pleasure in return. “Does Dohrein know he’s a...?” I can’t say reject. I won’t.