by Amanda Milo
I’m crowing. “This is the best day!”
The kids are looking between the adults, Doc’s face is the color of a spankin’ new firetruck, and Hotahn is smirking at her so smugly I want to watch her drag him into the bathroom and put him to good use, so I offer, “I’ll watch the kids!”
“My favorite word is kitten,” Cricket shares as she stands and brushes herself off. “Gracie, what’s your favorite word?”
“Oooh! My favorite word is a beautiful long thing, but it only takes four letters to spell and it starts with a C…” I grin evilly at Hotahn and receive an extra-killing glance with a helping of watch what you say or I won’t mercifully snap your neck until after I’ve slowly broken all of your bones.
“Cats!” Cricket cries out excitedly.
“Cats… WHY yes! Cats is my new favorite word,” I assure her. “I love it when Dohrein plays with—”
“Infernofire!” Hotahn exclaims under his breath.
I double over, snickering helplessly.
Dohrein drops his hand from where he’d been about to muffle me.
I make a show of brushing quarry dust off his pants but in actuality do some furtive feeling-up. “My mouth gets more action from your hand than my former favorite four-letter word,” I mock whisper.
His eyebrows lift a centimeter in challenge.
Hotahn growls, but there’s no smoke—or flames—behind it. “Enough you vexing human: I’m trusting you.” He heaves out his breath in exasperation and holds out his elbow to Doc.
It’s a testament to how awesome Hotahn knows I am, because although he seems a touch reluctant, he does entrust their beloved children to our care and books it to the loo with his female.
Dohrein is smiling slightly as he watches the lavatory door slam.
I hate to burst his happy bubble, but… “We have to let them go you know,” I break it to him sadly.
Dohrein sighs. “I’m aware.”
It’s one thing to know a computer is watching. It’s one thing to sneak a quickie by a nosy pair of researchers.
It’s another thing to have your friends peering at you every time you duck into the loo for some privacy.
And Doc’s become a friend.
Hotahn’s become… he’s…
Well, if he didn’t like me, I wouldn’t be able to speak because he’d have tied a knot in my tongue for dropping one too many curse words so I think we might be friends.
Besides, Dohrein can keep himself busy peoplewatching just like normal people have to do it: in public. I tap his wing talon. “We’ve got a human village to build and that will keep you plenty busy. We’ll even make you a perch somewhere so you can spy on everyone like a gargoyle.”
“I like the sound of this gargoyling,” he muses, sounding brighter.
“Good. And it looks like everyone’s getting back to work, so we should go get our rocks… moved... off?” I call to Angie, “I tried to make that one dirty.”
She sends me a conciliatory nod. “It was a decent effort.”
Callie shakes her head. “No points.”
I shrug. “Hey, thanks for not demanding my hair in conquest or something.”
She grimaces. “Yeah, sorry, about that. And I think I owe you a pair of earrings.”
“My ear holes have probably closed over. I lost mine a while ago.”
“No,” she says on a strained breath as she lifts a rather large pebble. “You didn’t. I think Zadeon stole them.”
I drop my pebble, almost crushing my foot. “How’s that?” I don’t even get the chance to hop back and check my toes. Dohrein’s supporting me with a wing as he’s lifting my foot for inspection.
Callie looks very guilty. “Well, I didn’t know! I made an offhand comment that I liked your earrings.”
I stare at her.
“I’m really, really sorry!” she wails.
Zadeon’s head lifts. Go figure he can hear this sound. I hold up my hands. “It’s cool, we’re square. Let’s just be relieved you didn’t say you liked my ears.”
Penitently, she goes for another big pebble.
“If it helps,” I offer, “I think he traded for them, not stole them.”
This is both a relief and a surprise to her. “Yeah? What did he give you?”
I huff a laugh. “I thought Dohrein had gifted them to me, but one day I came in and on my dresser was a pair of really cute lace knickers. The funny part? I thought he had a thing—”
“I do now,” he says. “Thank you, Zadeon.”
“—so I’ve been dressing up my underwear ever since.”
A deafening bugle echoes off the quarry’s canyon-like walls, and all us humans cover our ears like we’re under fire.
A look around shows the hobs wincing and the other Rakhii have their ears pinned, but no one’s alarmed—because this is apparently Bubashuu’s end of the workday trumpet. Yes, the years taken off our lives is courtesy of him.
“THE HUMANS’ HELPING MEANS WE STOP EARLY TODAY,” he thunders.
It could almost be taken to mean that we helped so much they can all leave work early.
What I think he means is ‘THESE TWITS ARE UNDERFOOT AND WE BETTER QUIT BEFORE ONE OF US STEPS ON THEM.’
Works for me. I’m dead on my feet, my skin’s scraped raw everywhere—“Hey! Rakhii-keepers! Can we get some spit passed around?”
Beth looks down at her bleeding hands. “That’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever asked. But Scotty, sign us up.”
EPILOGUE
DOHREIN
The care and feeding of pregnant humans is not a simple affair. After conducting extensive interviews with every gravid female, they report that if they had a food preference before, the item makes them ill now.
If they didn’t care for a food prior to becoming gravid… well, pregnancy doesn’t aid them in taking to it any better.
I sigh as I drag my fingers through Gracie’s mane. She’s draped over my chest, my wings wrapping us. When I shared the fact that this pose happens to be the preferred clasp for a Gryfala, Gracie sleepily pinched me. Our clasps being this configuration of late have little to do with her similarities to a Gryfala (although I do so enjoy teasing her otherwise) and more to do with the fact that this is the only position she finds comfortable at the moment.
Not because her stomach has grown out—it hasn’t really, not yet. It’s because her body pains her from all the time she’s put in at the quarry.
The human village is progressing fabulously. The women have shared that it would take years to build the structures from where they came from.
Here, we should see completion before the end of this solar.
“Helps when you have giants,” Gracie yawns. “Freakishly intelligent giants,” she mutters.
She only recently realized Hotahn is an inventor. She’d seen his creations, but she didn’t spare a thought to whose hands had formed them.
Hotahn is quite skilled.
Between my experiments and his abilities, we’ve forged a biomechnical set of wings we hope will give Crispin back the ability to fly.
“You realize that if we have a girl, she’s going to grow up being called a princess?”
I blink down at her. “That came from nowhere. I don’t see the complication. She will be a princess.”
Gracie plants her elbows into my ribs to sit up, only to drop back and off me.
I catch her mane fast. “What plagues you?”
She nods to the areas her elbows dug in. “Does it hurt?”
I scoff.
She grins up at me and inches back onto my chest, crawling up my frame until she can reach my chin to peck a kiss against it. “I like your super strong body.”
My wing’s patagium expands around us, and I scoop her flush against me. “I love your body too.”
“That include the princess I’m carrying?” she teases.
I squeeze her with my wing. “With or without precious cargo.”
“Great answer.” She pops a piece of chocolate coa
ted popcorn into my mouth.
“I find it amusing that you’re attempting to condition me to give you compliments.”
“Pah! I don’t have to condition you in order to know how awesome I am. Besides. If I ever started to wonder I could always ask my sewing circle to tell me.”
This statement doesn’t even rouse jealousy. She loves to terrorize the hobs she sews with.
“Play nice with your toys,” I remind her.
She pinches me. “As if I’d be anything less!”
I tug her mane, and enjoy how she presses her pelvis against my abdominals in reaction.
She’s quiet a moment. “She’ll be born in a castle. She can’t get too big-headed though: I think we made our baby in a dressing room.”
A sound of sublime contentment rattles out from my chest, a reverberation of extreme pleasure. “And we made her well.”
Gracie nearly spits her snicker into my skin. “Fuck, I love you.”
My hearts swell and heat even as my voice retains its droll tone. “But do you love me more than coffee?”
She pats my pectoral. “Let’s not get crazy.”
One could wrongly interpret the abrupt connection of my wing against her rump as a slap.
But Gracie’s laughter whoops out so loudly, I doubt it.
BONUS CONTENT UNLOCKED: LEVEL AKITA
I knew what you were going to say.
You want to see what happened.
So did I!
UNLEASHING AKITA
CHAPTER 1
HOTAHN
Humans become nervous the moment you approach them. Or if you stand over them. Or if you try to speak to them.
The first time I realized this was when I attempted to ask one about her people. Specifically, if they had contraptions that mimicked wings and allowed them to fly.
“Like jetpacks?” she’d answered so weakly I barely detected her words.
Humans seem to breathe their responses whenever I ask questions. Whether they do this with their mates too or if this is simply in response to being questioned by unknown males, I don’t know, and I don’t care.
I just want to know if humans have mastered sky flight.
When I’d moved closer to the female that answered me, she seemed to lose height and heart, and when I questioned, “What are jetpacks?” she’d whimpered, “I don’t know!”
My spines rattle at the memory.
I hear a mechanical beep, and I bare my fangs.
This sets off another round of murmurs and more little beeps.
These humans.
I’m standing on Earthen soil, searching for jetpacks or any other human technology I might find useful in my quest to build Crispin’s wings, but all I’ve encountered are humans with small rectangular tablets. Being that I’m an engineer by trade, and an inventor at hearts, I’m curious about their little contraptions’ purpose.
They hold them up in front of themselves, between me and them.
When I snatch one—the miniature tablet, not the human—it seems to be in some sort of viewfinder mode: all I can see is whatever area I point its face in. What’s the purpose of staring through it?
“What is it?” I hear a human whisper.
“I don’t know,” I answer, thinking, Humans. Always whispering—when my answer causes an uproar.
I hold out the useless tablet to the frozen human in front of me, and he takes it like you would if an animal were offering you food: with awe and disbelief.
“Do you know what a jetpack is?” I ask him.
“The…”
I bring my claws to my ear, yanking the tapered tip. This human is slow and quiet.
Have patience, I tell myself. Maybe something is wrong with him. Maybe his dam laid on him when he was a pup. It’s sad, but it happens sometimes.
“The… the thing that makes you fly?”
I grab him by his shirt and tug him to my face so that I won’t miss any of his words. “Yes. Where can I find one?”
“I don’t know!” he shouts.
Well. So they are capable of greater volume. I drop him and grab another human. “Do you know?”
“No! I don’t know anything!”
Hm. Maybe it’s only the males of the species that can achieve volume. Some species have females that are duller in color, or smaller. Perhaps this species differs in gender vocalization abilities.
I let him go only to watch him collapse as if he lost the ability to use his legs. I toe him to check, concerned when he crawls back—but then he pops up and seems well enough. I nod to him. “I appreciate your honesty.”
There is a crowd of humans gathered now, every one of them holding out those odd tablets. They aren’t for protection: if they were, they’d have stopped me from handling their fellows. Neither are the humans tapping away at them like hobs use tablets to enter data or send Comms.
I doubt I’ll get helpful answers from this lot, so I don’t ask what their toys are for. They don’t appear to aid in aviation and I suppose that’s all I need to know anyway. I stalk straight through the middle of the human cluster, vaguely enjoying the small yips and squeaks as they scramble to get out of my reach.
I pick up my pace and find the shops alongside the pedestrian strip I’m running on are turning less and less attractive.
Some of the more run-down looking buildings have windows covered by metal bars.
There’s two reasons to bar entry: to keep out dangerous animals, or to keep out dangerous people—when it gets to the point where you’re having to brick yourself off and ward doorways and windows with metal, it seems there’s little distinction between the two.
The pedestrian strip’s upkeep seems to suffer also; cracks, and buckled flat rock, and the tarmac next to it looks just as worn.
I’m passing an alley when I hear a screech.
Now this is a loud human sound.
I slow my steps, and double back to find a woman with a lank mane (I’d been informed that the males of this planet are not like hobs, and seeing the state of this female’s mane proves it), a lit smoking stick jammed between her lips. She’s holding a boy’s arm at a sharp angle, and I don’t have but a click to think it’s too extreme a hold when she roughly shoves him to the ground.
She kicks him—her boot making a sickening sound at the connection.
He makes no sound at all.
His eyes show nothing at all, and perhaps this is even more disturbing.
When he sees me over her shoulder, his eyes briefly widen—but it’s as if he’s seen too much in his time to be affected any longer.
I snap the woman’s neck, and I don’t feel affected either. Which surprises me: the males I know adore their human mates. I was sure I’d feel regret at killing one.
I offer my hand to the boy and wait until he takes it. “Why did she kick you?”
“Because she can,” his voice is disturbingly dull. “Could,” he corrects, and now he stares down at her, and although his expression doesn’t change, I grow uncomfortable when a tear tracks down his cheek.
“Did she mean something to you?” A boy sheds no tears for a stranger that kicks him. “Who was she to you?”
“My mom.”
My hearts stutter. His dam?
His dam… she… “Say again.”
“My mom,” he repeats, but instead of mourning her further, or cursing me, or appealing to the Creator to curse me—he turns and looks to either side of the ugly buildings we’re nested between.
This alley stinks. The buildings on either side of us stink. The dead woman at our feet stinks.
Maybe that was why I hadn’t noticed the little female.
The boy beckons to her, and she moves from the shadow cast by a large reeking metal box that smells of sour piss, rotten food, and perhaps more bodies.
I may have felt no regret at killing a woman. To have this juvenile female witness it though…
I glance between them, and see they share the same color of mane.
Likely siblings.
I just murdered these pups’ dam before their very eyes.
Infernofire. “I didn’t know she was here. I didn’t know the woman was your...” I say to no one. As if that is the largest problem and not the fact that I just created two orphans.
“She’s probably seen worse,” the boy mutters. “Come on, Kaylee.”
I drop to my haunches, my tri-toes spreading to absorb my weight. The smell is nauseatingly strong at this height, but it’s no less than I deserve. “I’m… sorry,” I tell them.
The boy shrugs—but he wipes another tear.
“Do you have a sire?” I am aware of this much: humans mate in pairs, not harems like the Gryfala, so I’ve killed half of these pups’ family.
“A father?” the boy seems to be attempting to clarify. At my nod, he gives a harsh scoff.
The female… she just looks at me.
I reach out for her.
“HEY!” the boy shouts, and rushes me.
I’m surprised—and I admire his courage, which seems to stall a little in response to my immediate acquiescence of his (technically) unspoken command. “May I pick her up?” I ask him. Naturally, I would have asked her, but I see I need to gain the male’s trust first before I’ll be allowed to interact with his sibling.
To show protectiveness even in the face of my size versus his: yes, I find I very much respect him.
Her wellbeing ascertained, now he looks to her, this Kaylee, for approval.
My tail slowly curls up as I consider that this is like Gryfala then, where the females hold the primary power position, and the males guard them. Beyond this I know virtually nothing, as I’ve avoided humans up until this trip to Earth because I had no use for them. I’m rapidly beginning to regret my ignorance.
Kaylee is the one to make the move: while I’m questioning if I should shift to a knee in deference, she reaches for my tail.
“Careful of the blade, princess,” I warn her.
“What are you?” asks the boy.
“What is your name?” I ask him. “I’m a Rakhii. I am not from this place.”
“Levi. And yeah, I figured that out.” His brow furs rise high, then fall as he rolls the whites of his eyes.
