Boss Me Forever

by R. R. Banks

  As soon as he stepped outside, he realized that the other men had, in fact, followed him and they were seething with so much anger it was almost as though he could feel the waves of energy rolling off of them. He didn't pause on the stairs leading up to the meeting hall but continued down into the center of the compound, bringing him closer to his house and further from the rest of the tribe.

  "What did you mean by that?" Ero asked.

  The youngest and smallest of the warriors, Ero had always been teased and bullied for his size. This had made him bitter and angry over the years, creating in him an unpredictable violence that often led him to major conflicts with the other warriors and even non-warrior members of the tribe. When he met Zuri and she became his mate, much of this anger and instability disappeared, replaced by a sense of confidence and control. That new control, however, seemed to be gone now as the temper returned and his eyes flashed aggressively at Bannack.

  "I didn't mean anything by it," Bannack said, trying to brush off the comment that he made even though he knew it was completely out of line.

  "You obviously meant something by it," Pyra said, stepping closer to Bannack, "You said that there was no way that you were supposed to mate with a species other than the Denynso. Do you think that there is something wrong with other species?"

  "It's not that, Pyra," Bannack struggled to find the right words to express what he had been feeling, but they seemed to die and disappear before they could get from his mind to his mouth.

  "Well, it seems to be exactly that," Ty said, showing uncharacteristic anger on his face, "It seems like you're saying that the only acceptable mates for us are Denynso women, and that you are too good to have a mate that isn't one of them."

  "Let me remind you that each one of us, as well as Gyyx and Ciyrs, found mates that are most certainly not Denynso women. We fell in love with humans, a species that none of us knew anything about any more than you know anything about Loralia's kind."

  "You knew something about them," Bannack snapped back, "We have encountered humans before; even had them come and stay with us for a few months at a time. You might not have known a lot about humans before the women came, but you knew something. You had spent time talking with humans and you had heard about them from Creia. They weren't a complete unknown."

  "Why does that matter?"

  "With Loralia, I know nothing. Absolutely nothing. We didn't even know that there was a species that existed below ground, much less what they are like. So how am I supposed to be OK with the fact that apparently I am falling for her when I don't even know who or what she is? Mating with a Denynso woman would mean that I understood her. I would know what she is, where she came from, and how we were going to live our lives together. We would have a shared history and the same perspectives. It would be easier and more realistic to bond with her and stay bonded with her because we would be able to know each other more quickly and more easily."

  "So you think that because our mates are human women and not Denynso women that our bonds are not as close as the men who have Denynso mates? Or that somehow our relationships are not as good, or as 'realistic'?"

  "Be honest, Pyra," Bannack said, staring directly into Pyra's raging orange eyes, "Don't you feel better knowing that Eden is technically a Denynso? Didn't it make you happy that Ciyrs somehow changed her from a human to one of us?"

  "I was happy that he saved her life and that I wasn't going to have to live without her. I didn't care what she was. All I cared about was that he got the Klimnu toxins out of her and kept her alive. If that meant turning her into a Denynso woman, that was what it would take; but I wouldn't have loved her any less if she had woken up still completely human."

  "After everything that's happened in the last few months with the Klimnu and Jem, and now with the idea of going out into the other areas of the planet to find out what else is out there, I just don't think I'm ready to even think about having a mate, much less having one that I will have to learn everything about."

  "Do you really think that any of us was really ready when we found our mates? Or that we didn't have to learn everything about them, too?"

  "If you haven't noticed, those five women might all be humans, but they are in no way exactly alike. Each one of them is so different it barely even matters that they are the same species," Ty said, "I know that being with Samira doesn't mean that I understand Eden like Pyra does, and that Ero wouldn't be able to trade Zuri for Leia and just expect that Gyyx would be able to pick right up with her without any problem. That's part of finding your mate. You have to learn her and she has to learn you. Remember, you're just as much a different species to Loralia and she is to you."

  That statement struck Bannack harder than he would have anticipated it would have. He had been so wrapped up in how conflicted he felt about her that he never stopped to think about how Loralia perceived him. She hadn't shown a single moment of hesitance when it came to him, and had given herself over to her feelings for him immediately, never once worrying that he wasn't one of her kind, or even that he was a part of a species that had taken over the land where her kind used to live, something that the Denynso would have responded to with violence and anger. She had soothed him and offered herself to him in a way that was so trusting it now made him feel sick at the way that he had treated her.

  "What am I going to do?" Bannack asked, looking at the men around him.

  The anger in their eyes faded and he could see compassion build in their expressions. Each of them had been through their own personal struggle when they were finding their mates, and they knew how difficult it was to overcome those feelings. Ero had even had to go so far as to travel from Uoria to Earth, becoming the first of his kind to ever travel through space, in order to find Zuri and apologize to her after offending and hurting her so deeply that she had left the planet only a day after arriving. They understood what it was like to be unsure of the intense, all-consuming feelings that came with finding their mates, and now he needed them to tell him how to get through it.

  "What in the hell is wrong with you?"

  A shriek from across the center of the compound pulled Bannack's attention away from the other men and he saw Eden stalking toward him with a ferocious look in her eyes. Somehow her belly made her look even more intimidating, like a mother animal ready to fight something that was threatening her nest. Bannack took a step back, but Pyra stepped up behind him, forcing him to stay in place and confront the fiery redheaded woman.

  "What?" Bannack asked.

  "You didn't tell Loralia that you were leaving?"

  "Um."

  "You just left her? You brought her to her house, she brought you inside, and then you just ran away?"

  "Is that all she told you?"

  It was bad enough that they knew that he had run out on Loralia. Bannack didn't want to think that she had shared with them everything that had happened leading up to him gathering his clothes and running harder and faster than he could ever remember running in his life.

  "Oh, no," Eden said, shaking her head with a spiteful half-smile on her face, "but I don't think that my baby is old enough to hear that story more than once in the same evening."

  "I thought that you said you didn't bond with her," Pyra accused from behind him.

  "I didn't," Bannack insisted.

  "Not completely," Eden said, and then mercifully stopped.

  "I know what I did was awful," Bannack said, taking a step toward Eden as the other two women ran up to them, "and I want to make it up to her. I'm dealing with my own issues, but I'm working through them and I don't want to hurt her any more than I already have. I want to tell her how sorry I am before we leave."

  "Well that's really sweet, Bannack, but it's not going to be quite that easy."

  "Why?"

  "She left," Zuri said.

  Bannack felt like a rock hit his stomach.

  "What do you mean she left?"

  "After she told us what you did, she decided that she didn't wa
nt to be here anymore. She said there's nothing for her up here and that she wanted to go back home where she didn't have anyone to hurt her."

  "Damn it."

  "What are you going to do?" Ty asked as Bannack walked around the human women in the direction of the forest.

  "I have to go find her."

  Chapter Seven

  I had only been away from my home for a matter of hours, but it somehow seemed like I had been gone for months. Everything seemed cold and empty, like the cavern itself had forgotten what it was like to have the touch and presence of a living creature inside of it. Even though I had lived in that cavern since birth, I entered into it with a sense of trepidation hovering just in the back of my mind. Nervousness pricked at me as I slid down through the hole in forest floor just above the mirrored realm and made my way down the large tree toward the reflected branches that made roots across the sky that had become the floor.

  Something had changed within me and suddenly I didn't know where I fit anymore. The walls and crevices that had always welcomed me and had never inspired even a moment of fear now seemed strange and I wondered if I was going to be able to continue on with my solitary life in the way that I had for so many years. It was amazing how much something as simple as stepping above the ground and experiencing the presence, companionship, compassion, and betrayal of other creatures could change everything that I knew about myself, the world, and my perceptions of existence within it.

  I slid down the vines on the tree, letting them carry me until my feet hit the solid wood of the tree branches. I looked down at the reflected sky, the black expanse streaked with the murky, pinkish grey clouds that broke up the sky and muted the stars both above and below me. For the first time I found it as strange as the Klimnu, the Denynso, and the humans had found it. I had always known that our world was a mirror of the one above it, and that what we saw was not what they did, but it wasn't until I had actually stepped onto the ground and saw, for the first time in my entire existence, the sky stretch over my head rather than at my feet that I felt the odd tug within me that said I was questioning something.

  Just as I had told Elianna when she nearly fell into the sky through the stone floor I had created for them by reflecting the wall behind them into the expanse in front of them, the entire existence of my kind was based on belief and trust. We had to believe from the very first moments that we drew breath that what we saw was what it was, that it would behave the way that it was meant to, and to never question it. Questioning, wondering, even for a moment, could mean death. In not questioning, however, we never encountered the possibility that what we thought we were reflecting, how we were perceiving a situation, could possibly be wrong.

  I was wondering about that now as I stood at the very edge of the reflected sky and pondered what it was that I was seeing. If that was the reflection of the sky, did that mean it was only the reflection of the sky as I perceived it? What if I didn't believe that it was the sky, that I believed it was glass, would that make a difference in how it behaved? Could it be that what I was seeing was not actually what was on the floor of the caverns, but what was being reflected by the caverns, meaning that there was something else actually there?

  I knelt down by the edge of the sky and experimented by dipping my hand down into it. Like it always had, my hand slipped beneath the edge of the tree and into the cold space. I withdrew it and reached for one of the clouds. Holding tightly to the vine, I leaned slightly forward so that I could scoop my hand through the pink and grey streak that was like a faint wash of paint across the blackness. When I pulled my palm back, I watched as the pink and grey melted into cold water against my skin. It was just as I would expect it to be.

  I sat back against the tree and closed my eyes. I remembered what I had thought I felt when I was standing in front of Bannack. In him I had seen the same desire and need for me that I had felt for him. I had believed that that desire was as intense and irresistible for him as the feeling that I had when I looked at him. I could only believe that because I had no other option but to believe it. Now, though, I realized that I did have another option. I could question what I believed about Bannack, and if I could question that, I could question what I believed about everything, including that the sky was all that existed on the floor of the cavern. Holding onto that feeling about Bannack, the realization that what I had seen in him wasn't really what was inside him, but what I wanted to see, I opened my eyes again and looked at the floor of the cavern.

  This time I didn't see the sky. When I looked at it in those dark, silent moments I saw a pane of glass. No longer were the stars struggling to glimmer through the clouds. Instead, I saw only darkness, as if I was looking through it into the abyss deeper in the planet. I closed my eyes again, took a breath, and when I opened them I saw an expanse of thick, white ice.

  I reached out over the ice and felt the cold rising up off of it, tingling against the skin of my palm. Releasing the vine that had been tethering me to the tree, I stood and stepped out onto the ice. The cold was almost painful against the bare bottoms of my feet, but I reveled in it, enjoying the sharp, undeniable feeling that told me I had created what I wanted to from my own perceptions. What I had told Elianna was absolutely true. She hadn't believed that the floor would be solid, so it turned back into what she had been told it was, and what she believed it to be, the sky. When I believed that sky to no longer be the sky, but glass, it had become glass. And now it was ice.

  I didn't need my mirrored compact anymore to create what I desired. I only had to believe in my ability to change my perceptions and the perceptions of those around me, and I could create whatever I desired.

  I walked across the ice until I reached the expanse of dark ground on the other side and continued forward, not glancing back over my shoulder to find out what happened to the ice when I looked away. The corners of the cavern still looked strange, but I forced myself not to look at them. I kept my eyes focused ahead and climbed my way down into the second chamber so that I could go back into my house.

  The solar panels hadn't had the chance to power the lamps since I had left, so I had to rely on the soft glow from my skin to illuminate the room around me. I walked into my bedroom and removed my dress, not bothering to dress again as I made my way out of my house and toward the hot spring toward the back of the chamber that I had adopted as my bath. I sank down into the water, allowing it to soothe my muscles and ease the tension that had built within me.

  I dipped my head back into the water to wash my hair and then braided it into a long plait down my back, and then twisting it up so that I could knot it around itself. The air of the cavern was cool around me as I climbed up out of the hot water and made my way back to my house, allowing my skin to dry as I walked. I felt like I was moving through a still, untouchable image, as if nothing was moving with me or responding to my presence. It was as if the emptiness inside me had extended out and taken the energy and light from everywhere I ventured.

  Once I was back inside my house I reached into the bureau against my bedroom wall and pulled out a nightgown. I was just dropping it down over my head, intending to crawl into my bed and allow the world to disappear around me, when I heard a voice echoing through the cavern.

  Chapter Eight

  "Loralia!"

  Bannack wrapped his arm through the vines hanging from the trees and called out to Loralia again. His eyes were focused on the massive expanse of ice that stretched across the cavern where the reflection of the sky had been when he was last in the underground world. He screamed for her again, not sure if he should even attempt to step on the ice, and remembering what she had said about believing in the reflection in order for it to be real. Considering he had no idea what it could possibly be reflecting in order to appear as a block of ice, he couldn't bring himself to believe in its ability to withstand his weight.

  Finally Loralia appeared on the other side of the expanse much as she had the first time he saw her. Her body gave off the same soft gl
ow, but this time it wasn't being entranced by the glow that made him want desperately to cross the cavern and be near her. This time it was knowing that she was inside that glow, emanating it from her smooth, soft skin and her hypnotic eyes that made him need to get over to her. He could feel his body responding with almost painful intensity and his heart pounded just knowing that she was close again.

  "Bannack?"

  Her voice sounded confused and she didn't step any closer to him.

  "Loralia," he said again, "I need to talk to you."

  "I don't have anything to say to you," she said.

  The words made him feel like his heart had constricted and he couldn't force any breath into his lungs.

  "Please," he said, taking a step down the trunk of the tree and toward the edge of the ice, "I just want to tell you that I'm sorry. If after that you want me to leave and not ever come back down here, I will. It will be the hardest thing I ever do in my life, but I'll do it if that's what you want, as long as you just let me talk to you for a few minutes now."

  Loralia looked down at the ice and saw it breaking. Long, fine cracks appeared across the surface, forming patterns like lace until the pieces started to melt away, disappearing into the blackness of what was once again the reflected sky. She had created the ice to keep him away, but the sound of his voice and the desperation in his words told him that she hadn't been wrong about what she had reflected from him. It was questioning it that had brought her to the truth, however, just like questioning the sky had brought her to the ice that now melted into the stars. She wondered if outside it was raining.

  "Please, Loralia," Bannack said again, "Let me come over to you."

  There was a moment of stillness between them and Bannack watched as her eyes explored the sky that now stretched across the cavern, and then lift to him. He was worried that she was just going to tell him to leave and that he would never see her again, or maybe that she would make a floor for him to walk across and then make it fall away right when he was in the middle of the room so that he disappeared to wherever Jem had gone when he fell during the battle. To be honest, he really wouldn't have blamed Loralia if she decided to do either. He realized now how horribly he had treated her, and if she refused to have anything to do with him after it, it would be completely justified.