by Amanda Milo
A tap on my lips has me doing a full-body twitch—the bottle spout just poked me—he just poked me! With this bottle! Curling my fingers into fists, I part my lips with no enthusiasm whatsoever.
Gently, he eases the nozzle on my bottom lip and absurdly, I think of a penis. I imagine his penis. Eeek! Why did my mind go there? He’s not making this sexual why did I have to? I squeeze my eyes shut, preparing to pull back—
When the bottle’s contents drip onto my tongue.
Whoaaa. What is that proverb? Something about honey being loathed on a full belly but loved on an empty one? Well this belly is completely empty, and this stuff tastes like the sweetest, most incredible substance to ever hit my tastebuds.
My palms heat and it only takes me a second to realize why: they’re back on his knees, with me stretched up like some poor starved animal being patiently bottlefed and nursed back to health by a good Samaritan.
The stuff backs up in my mouth when my throat spasms with a silent laugh. This guy, a ‘good Samaritan’?
But… he didn’t have to come in here and give me food. Or a blanket. A super-nice smelling blanket. I could be in a cold cell right now, with nothing at all to comfort me. He could simply have left me, starving and ignored, just like the other one had instead of feeding me right now.
I dare to lift my eyes to his, something I’ve been actively avoiding as I suck on the thing he’s got pushed into my mouth—it’s just too weird otherwise—and I’m caught in fascination as I watch his pupils spread, making his irises look like they’re slowly filling with cephalopod ink.
And I don’t know if I catch movement, or what, but I’m suddenly peering straight up above my hairline—where his hand is hovering. Sort of like he wants to pet me.
Without any conscious thought on my part, my neck arches just the tiniest bit. I think I can sense some of my hair brushing his hand.
If it really happened it was the lightest of feather-lite brushes, but it doesn’t last long enough to register because suddenly he’s snatched his hand back, clutching—strangling—the life out of the mattress he’s sitting on.
Annnd if there are two choices; ‘touchy-feeling alien vs. thoughtful-but-afraid-to-be-touched-by-me alien—I’d take this one. If he’s afraid to touch me, that’s just fine because I’d rather have it this way, whatever we’re doing right here, than try to fight to keep him off of me.
Because there’s no way in heck I’d win.
I don’t know what benefit he could possibly get from being nice to me—when he so clearly seems to not want to be too nice to me. I don’t know why he’s gone through the trouble of taking care of me, but whatever his reason is, I am grateful. I squeeze his knees in silent thanks, then I close my eyes so that I don’t have to see his reaction.
Oddly, I don’t want to see it if he gets grossed out and pulls away.
CHAPTER 15
BRAX
It won’t fill her belly for long, but Gelert said it could sweeten his mistresses’ mood like nothing else would.
It’s working for this Gryfala too. Instead of smelling like eye-wateringly strong fear, and heartbreaking grief…
She was at peace the instant she tasted it. Now I pull the feeder tip from her mouth as her eyelids show she’s turned drowsy. This detail, in addition to the way her hands go from clamped-over-my legs to barely hanging on, clues me in easily enough.
She is mere moments from collapsing. I inhale again, relieved that it’s not as sharp; the smell of heartbreak. Heartrending pain has a distinct scent, and she is being shredded apart by it.
It’s not my concern, of course—I’m not concerned. I just don’t want to smell it. It stinks.
I cap the bottle and use the point of it to nudge first one hand off of me, then the other. Then I flip the container around so the wide base is what brushes her shoulder as I tap her. She opens her eyes long enough to see me give her a ‘sleep now’ gesture: to which she smiles agreeably and sinks to the floor, curling up on her side.
I tug at the blanket, adjusting it until she’s covered before I leave her. For now, she has gained a temporary tranquility.
CHAPTER 16
TAC’MOT
Today is a rotation of many firsts. There was of course how the day started—with the improbability of bidding on and winning (and thus essentially becoming an owner of) a Gryfala. But now, it is an entirely new first that I am staring at a broken door. My broken door. My door is broken.
Being that Brax obsesses over this ship, it’s rare for anything to be broken—whatever the issue is, it is normally worked on as soon as it shows signs of wear, before it ever gets near to breaking down.
Except for the engines. Brax does what he can, but he can’t work miracles.
Therefore, the sunken impressions of what appear to be—yet cannot be—clawed thumbprints have me utterly baffled.
I grasp the door for balance then lean my head in so I can see the other side.
Impressions of a giant’s clawed fingerprints!
“Metark…”
A little more gentle coaxing using small nudges back and forth finally see the door struggling all of the way open for me, and dumbfounded am I to find yet another first: Brax’s scent isn’t only outside my door. His scent is in my quarters.
In seven solars he’s never so much as stepped those gargantuan three-toed feet over the threshold. This has been—is my private little enclave.
As shocked as I am over this incredible (as in, unbelievable) impossibility, it takes me a click to register that the scent of him is odd.
Musky, and dark. Like breathing a thick syrup instead of a condensation cloud of scent.
I’ve never encountered the like and I’ve no idea what to make of it. It tingles in my nose so I bury it against the skin of my inner arm to rub away the sensation and mask it, even temporarily, in my own smell.
Shaking off the strangeness, I softly hop to the bowl on the floor. It looks like she barely touched it.
She must be starving by now.
I look at her, finding it interesting that she is still on the floor yet she’s moved closer to the bed. She looks to be deep enough under not to be disturbed if I try to move her, so I try.
I am wrong.
She startles awake and instantly starts to struggle. Absurdly, something long forgotten, something my father mentioned in passing once, flits between my ears as clear as if he was beside me right now speaking it. I haven’t heard his voice in so long I don’t even remember what he truly sounds like. I don’t remember what my parents even look like anymore. But I know it is his voice.
“You want to know how I knew I wanted to be your dam’s mate? She has a beautiful kick, my son. Tether yourself to the female that has a strong, beautiful kick. Life deals hard blows: you need a strong match, a strong mate.”
Ha! He should have witnessed this princess’s self-defense practice on me earlier this rotation.
My spleen is still twinging.
If he could see this female now. I’m struggling to hold on. When I grip her tighter simply so that I don’t drop her, she starts to snarl, buck—and yes, kick—most impressively.
Shaking my head, odd day of firsts indeed, I manage to get her over the mattress before she tumbles out of my arms.
She blinks up at me, looking wary. She smells afraid, but I am having great difficulty concentrating on her. I peer down at my hands: they feel like they’ve been coated in moisturizer. And they smell pungent—it’s Brax. I yank them away from my nose. They smell like the strange, newly heightened scent-version of Brax.
I feel my face screw up in disbelief. What is this?
Looking up, I focus on the blanket she is clutching around her. It has to be that. He must have given her his blanket.
Two burning questions:
Just how long has it been since he washed that reeking thing?
And he gave it to her why?
He could have given her mine. No, I haven’t washed it today, but at least it doesn’t
have the fetor of… whatever is on that.
I suppose him lending her his noxious bed covering is to our benefit though because I only own one blanket. Now I won’t have to worry about either one of us getting cold. “Be at peace,” I tell her, showing her my open palms. “I won’t hurt you.”
Her eyes show she is most dubious. I start to tug my blanket off the bed, working it back and forth until it slides out from underneath of her. She settles down seeing that I’ve no intention of leaping on top of her. She settles even more when I start the inelegant process of lowering myself to floor level, stretching out on my side and kicking out my feet. As I’m not cold yet, I start to ball up my blanket under my head—when a pillow suddenly lands next to me.
My pillow.
My pillow, that also smells a bit like Brax.
My nose crinkles. I exhale in a series of small, dismissive sneezes.
She laughs.
Startled, I lose interest in the pillow, staring at her until I realize I’m making her uncomfortable.
“Apologies. I don’t hear females laugh often enough to be used to it. It is very pretty,” I tell her, accepting my pillow with belated grace.
It isn’t so much that it is a bad smell. It is strange, because technically, it smells pleasant enough. It is just as if…
To my instincts, it’s as if it is flashing a glaring, bright ‘WARNING: Property of Brax’ adhesive label.
But it is my pillow.
This is my room!
Yet my instincts are telling me to heed the presumptive warning—get as far away from my pillow and my room as possible, true ownership status be rutted.
My rational side is a little peeved that part of me feels driven from my own quarters, from my own things.
From my own Gryfala.
Not that I own her in reality, it is only that… that I didn’t feel like I couldn’t approach her before. Now, my baser half is rebelling a little anxiously over our proximity—despite the fact the distance between us is not precisely a small thing.
Yet, anxieties make for poor padding. This floor is most uncomfortable.
After a time, when the air has dissipated the worst of the discomfiting scent, and her breathing has long since calmed into slumber, I clamber up, using my five limbs as I must in order to walk. Slowly and resolutely, I reach the bed, easing in beside her. I push my pillow in her direction in case she wakes up wanting to use it.
The way she’s wrapped herself up in his odious blanket, it doesn’t seem she minds the aroma at all.
To each species their own. Clearly.
I stretch, reacquainting myself with the nano-engineered polymer softness that I have most definitely taken for granted before now.
Dear mattress, please accept my deepest, most sincere apology. I regret that I haven't cognizantly appreciated you as I obviously should have.
I kick around a bit until I’m in a comfortable position, and I valiantly ignore my lingering discomfort at being this close to her. No matter what the smell is projecting at my system, I am tired. My skin, much to my relief, is so far clear of warning symptoms. If my senses take the odor as a threatening deterrent, my skin does not. I’ll just stay on my side, and the air circulation will naturally continue to work on the worst of what is clinging to her and perhaps by morning, I won’t have to fight the instinct to avoid what has been marked by Brax.
Resolved, I close my eyes.
Then I groan in resignation as she unconsciously moves to nestle against me. I want to escape now but…
She misses her hobs.
Pity wells up in me. This poor female—
A block of ice lands on my leg. The burn! I swallow a startled chirp as I flinch back but she doesn’t release me—doesn’t even stir. The hypothermic limpet! I stare down at her in horror. How is it possible for such a warm looking little creature to have such cold feet?
Too bad she did not seem inclined to accept Grake. They would suit well: she is in need of males—it is wholly apparent she needs them for warmth. Plus, Grake most surely misses his kind. Perhaps he wouldn’t be deterred by the threat of frostbite.
I grimace, bearing through the discomfort until her foot thaws enough that I don’t feel its sting. Then, very carefully, I reach between us and tug up her top knee so I can access her other foot—and, with a fortifying breath, I angle her knee cap so that it pivots her foot against my tail.
Creator! I will have words with that hob tomorrow.
Then… any vestige of disgruntlement at my plight vaporizes as she lets out a shaky sigh and with an arresting, comatose trust, nuzzles her nose into my chest.
Thankfully, the fabric of my new shirt protects me from the chilly little tip.
This bizarre little creature. When her fingers unconsciously clutch and release my skin, my muscles all relax in reaction. Strange, but… somehow pleasant. I sigh, feeling an odd stirring behind my breastbone. No matter the message Brax’s smell carries—I am surprisingly comforted by her warmth and touch, and by the time the lights auto-settle, I find I don’t mind her extra scent marker so much after all. I wrap my arms around her, and experience the soft comfort of her mane under my jaw as I settle myself to sleep.
CHAPTER 17
TARA
I wake up to find the alien, in bed, on top of me.
There is an alien half over me. Or… I’m half under him, depending on how you want to look at it. I’ve tensed up all over and he twitches—his head lifting off of me enough that I can watch as one eye slowly cracks open, then the other. He keeps them half-peeped, like he’s feeling too lazy to work them any harder than this. His brishkers are sticking in every direction, the ends curling slightly as if they’re resting too. They look… kinda cute. The beads he’s got on some of them are ornate. Some look shot through with gold, giving them a sort of sparkle—
When he sees where my attention is at, he caws—or, coughs?—a quiet… laugh.
As I blink at him in astonishment, his lids fall shut before he pats me and murmurs something in a rustier voice than the one I got used to hearing in our brief time together yesterday. Like he’s reassuring me ‘Shhh, the alarm hasn’t gone off yet’ or ‘it’s Sunday: we don’t get up early on Sundays.’
Somehow, his completely relaxed, groggy demeanor goes a long way to thawing my concern about him being in bed with me. Guiltily, I think of him putting me on the bed last night, and then doing the gentlemanly thing by taking the floor. Really, it was all very polite of him. I can imagine I’d have changed my mind halfway through the night too, right around the time I got the numb hip and the first neck crick.
His chin is back to digging into my shoulder; not painful, just enough that I wonder how I slept through it. When I try to inch away from him, he lifts up, yawning—and then he’s stretching, his long, powerful feet flexing.
He looks like something that an FX department is going to want back: their character escaped off their movie set.
He’s like one big special effect to me. Like any minute, someone will call ‘Cut!’, and later there will be bonus contents on the dvd of my life that will show some guy in a green-screen suit; then I’ll know for sure that CGI magic has tricked me into seeing and believing something crazy almost looked real.
And that’s the thing: he almost looks real—but it’s too crazy to believe.
Meg and Mona would get such a kick out of him.
My eyes fill with the tears I have been working so hard not to shed in the five and a half seconds I’ve been conscious. It’s a good thing I woke up last night to find the squishy packet beside me, otherwise I’d be dead from dehydration with the way I’ve been crying the last twenty-four hours. Give or take. I’m not actually sure how long I’ve been here now. Besides too long. That squishy packet… My eyes return to the alien, who seems to be well on his way to falling right back to sleep.
It was thoughtful of him to leave me with his version of water. When I’d woken up sometime in the night, I’d been facing the wall, a packet of water-gel
-substance propped on me. I don’t know when he joined me on the bed; but now that I’m processing it, not only was I facing the wall—it was actually like I’d been shoved at it. My eyes narrow. Maybe that’s what woke me up: him shoving me.
No! He seems too… polite to do something so uncivil.
He also seems too polite to drag me over to his side to drape himself over me too.
Did I snuggle up to him?
I might have.
Okay, that might totally have been me.
I wipe at my still-leaking eyes, trying to focus on innocuous things like water, and dehydration. On anything. Focus on anything that isn’t… Simone! Megan!
They’ve got to be so scared, and so, so confused.
AMY, I LOVE YOU. This chant is as far as I’ve let myself go down the path of ‘Are they safe, are they—’
Amy will be there. My sister stepped up when the twins’ dad stepped out. Briefly, I wasted a thought yesterday wondering if he’d help her, but he made it clear he wanted no part in the twins’ lives when he left us and that hasn’t changed in over two years.
My poor, sweet girls. They’re just getting old enough that they’re noticing they’re missing this fabled ‘dad’ person that exists for kids on TV shows.
And now, they’ll be missing a mom.
Something else! Think of something else.
I feel the sleep-heavy fingers on my hip flex once. It feels nice but it reminds me: this Mutant—yes, demoted back to Mutant—locked me up and abandoned me yesterday.
The anger-fueled memory must play out across my face because the alien sleepily peers at me again only to jerk back, eyes going wide. His brishkers unfurl seeming to stand at full, frightened attention.
I just shake my head at him. Whatever. ‘Thanks’ to him, yesterday I had all sorts of time alone to think. To plan. To gain resolve. I’ve got this.
