by Amalia Rey
We’ve been on Narul for almost two weeks when I finally figure it out.
“I need a friend,” I tell him.
“Hmm?”
“Well, girls on my planet always have a friend. Another girl that they can talk to.”
Marv nods. “Another girl. I shall find one for you?”
I shake my head. “Not the App, silly. There has to be another girl who is already here and also needs a friend. Girls like to spend time together.”
I glance around the room. The plants are growing, the fish are swimming, and I’m losing my mind. “I need to get out.”
“Okay,” Marv says. “We have a recreation center.”
“Is that just a bunch of sports equipment?”
Marv laughs. “Some of it, but there’s a whole lot more. I hear some of the mated pairs go there sometimes.”
I take extra time fixing up my hair. After all, back on Earth, women spend hours getting ready, and it’s never really been about looking good for the guys. We like to impress each other.
I put on one of the robes that I’ve borrowed from Marv. Hopefully, some of the women that were “selected” know a thing or two about designing clothes, because these utilitarian boys’ outfits need to go.
We walk together to the recreation center. Marv sneaks his hand into mine and winks. “You look amazing,” he tells me.
I like that he can still be impressed by me. “Thanks,” I tell him.
When we enter, I take in the enormity of their underground world. There is an enormous field where males are kicking around several odd shaped balls. Some are more oval than round.
Off to the side, there are swimming pools, a room with screens that look like televisions, and a bunch of chairs set about for everyone to relax on.
And there are several lavender girls sitting around the room. Well, mostly lavender. But I see a few unchanged females as well.
“May I go chat with the girls?” I ask.
Marv smiles. “You’re free to walk around in here. It’s safe.”
Safe. There is that word again. What isn’t he telling me?
I walk slowly, reading the very large room as I wander through the complex. When I reach the largest pool, I sit down at the side and dip my legs in. It’s otherwise empty.
I guess men and women don’t want to swim together.
My eyes continue to wander around the room, until I realize why I feel uncomfortable.
There are no children.
They have an entire recreation center and no children. I suddenly feel heartbroken for the loss of an entire generation.
No wonder Marv came looking for me.
“May I sit with you?” a woman’s voice says.
I glance up. It’s a brunette with pale skin. She is unchanged. I nod.
The woman plops down beside me and dips her own legs into the water. She lets out a long sigh.
“Which one is yours?” she asks me.
I glance around the large room, looking for Marv. He’s at the edge of the ball court. I point, and he waves.
“Oh.” She pauses, studying him. “Well, mine is that snarling beast standing right over there,” she says, pointing to a big purple guy who has his arms folded over his chest. He’s standing on the other edge of the pool, watching us.
“I’m Naomi,” I offer.
“Kimmy.”
“How has it been for you? Has he been kind?”
Kimmy flips her arm over to reveal her wrist. There’s a flower tattooed on it.
“I don’t get it.”
“You will. Let me see your wrists,” she says.
I flip them both over. Nothing to see.
She sighs. “That means I’m pregnant.”
“But you didn’t ‘change.’”
“Because I didn’t agree to mate with him.”
“But…”
“Yeah. He made me.”
I stare at my wrists again. A flower means a girl is pregnant? “How did you know about the flower thing? He told you?”
“I asked him what the hell it was when I saw it. I keep expecting to turn purple after each time he sleeps with me, but I’ve never agreed to be his mate, so I guess that’s how that works.”
“Is he… gentle?”
She shrugs. “I mean, sometimes he’s rough. But only if I ask.”
“So, you are okay sleeping with him?” I want to know.
“I mean, yeah, he hasn’t forced me. I just won’t be his mate.”
“But you’re having his baby.”
“His creepy little half alien baby.”
“We’re trapped here,” I say, staring at Marv.
“Maybe. Or maybe that’s what they want us to believe.”
I shrug. If there was a way home, I’d be able to read it from Marv’s thoughts. Mostly I just read him feeling sad that he can’t send me back. He knows I’m unhappy.
“I don’t think there is.”
She squints again at Marv. “Wait, isn’t he the guy who was conducting the whole App thing? Back at that big room, when I arrived?”
I stare down at my wrists again. I don’t think I want to be friends with her. I glance up at Marv and mouth the words, “Take me home.”
He understands and crosses the large room quickly. He’s by my side almost immediately.
“It is him,” Kimmy says. “He showed them how to bring us here.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I let Marv lead me home.
26
Marv
Naomi has been distracted ever since we went to the recreation center. Three days passed, and I keep seeing her staring at her wrists.
“What is it?” I finally ask her, touching the soft skin on her arms as I take a seat beside her. She’s on the sofa, listless.
“I don’t know. The other woman didn’t like me because you helped bring all the girls here.”
I sigh. “Yeah. I imagine that will make it harder for you to find girlfriends.”
“When do we go up to space again? To your smaller space station?”
“I wanted to talk to you about that. I found another opportunity.”
She looks up at me. “I’m listening.”
“You said that you want sunlight. The V’aalarans are looking for a few members of friendly tribes to go stay with them on their planet.”
“Is it in the Badlands?” she asks. Her eyes look scared.
“Close, but not in them. It’s at the edge.”
“Will I be able to walk in the sunlight?”
She’s been edgy lately. Has it been because I’ve kept her down here, below the surface?
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Perfect,” I tell her. “And, they actually have a job for you.”
Naomi seems to visibly relax beside me. “They do?”
“They have some females that didn’t fit in. They want to create a housing program for them and give them a chance to settle in on their own terms.”
“Really?” she asks. “Are they going to do something similar here?”
I shake my head slowly. “V’aalara’s leadership is a bit different. You see, they raised Queen Abigail. She was the first trial, and they accidentally brought her as a child.”
“That’s awful.”
“But apparently, they brought her twin sister in trial two.”
Naomi’s eyes widen. “What? That’s unreal.”
I nod. It is a bit amazing that it all worked out. “So, since they have two Earth females who they are listening to for feedback, they are trying to figure out how to make the outsider females feel more at home.”
“Since they have no way to return home,” Naomi whispers.
“Yeah. They regret taking them. They’re miserable. Refused their mates.”
“That’s okay. When it’s our time, it’s our time.”
She nods. “Thanks, Marv. I’m grateful.”
I kiss her forehead, my lips grazing her soft hair. “I’ll give you anything you want, my Mate,” I tell her, for the hundredth time.
She doesn’t say anything, which is good enough for me. At least we haven’t fought since the recreation center.
27
Naomi
V’aalara is everything that Narul isn’t. From the moment we land, my mouth is gaping open as I stare at our new planet.
And seriously, I get to live on another planet. If I wasn’t so sad about leaving Earth behind, I’d probably be overjoyed with my excitement about being here.
Marv introduces me to his friend, Goran. Apparently, they worked on the space station together. Goran’s mate, Cam, is golden and grinning. She immediately shows me her flower mark.
“I’m so nervous,” she confides in me as we walk together through a large garden. The garden is filled with pink flowers.
“I’m sure you’ll be an excellent mama,” I tell her. I don’t know if I’m ready, so every day that I don’t see a flower, I breathe a sigh of relief.
Cam pauses and looks at me. She has a tiny baby bump over her super slender waist. “How are you doing?” she asks me. “And I’m not asking for a simple, ‘I’m fine.’”
“Oh,” I say softly. How did she know? Can she read minds?
“Naomi, I know it’s hard. I didn’t like that I was summoned up to that space station, either.”
I glance at her. “You were at the space station?”
“Yeah. We arrived on the same night, only I tried to escape and ended up having to kill a Foog.”
“Whoa.”
She chuckles. “Tell me about it. They had captured four females and turned them green before they tricked me into boarding their ship. I hadn’t accepted my mate yet.”
“I’ve accepted mine,” I say defiantly.
“Hon, I know. You’re purple.”
I bend down to smell a flower. Its scent reminds me of honeysuckle on a fresh spring morning.
“I’m not sure about this whole ‘forever’ thing though. I was drunk when I used the App. I’m not exactly girlfriend material.”
“Why not?”
I shrug, then start walking at a snail’s pace. Cam didn’t react to my words, just kept walking beside me, matching my pace.
This was what I’d wanted, right? A girl to talk to. Marv had found it for me, and I was still too scared to speak up.
“I have never been in a decent relationship. Boys cheat on me. I’m not good enough.”
“You’re plenty good enough,” Cam says.
I keep walking.
“Naomi,” she says, causing me to pause. She walks right up to me and places a hand on my cheek. “Look at me.”
I do.
“You’re beautiful. You’re worthy. You deserve to be treated right.”
I want to agree, but…
“Does Marv treat you well? He looks at you like you’re his Queen. Is that how he treats you?”
I nod.
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know. I want to go home.”
Cam sighs. “But if you know in your heart of hearts that you can’t go back, can he be enough for you?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Think about it, okay? Please?”
I nod. We keep walking, and she steers away from hard topics. She points out their fruit-bearing trees, some p’aca that look like sheep but taste okay, and a long winding road to the mountains.
“You should talk to him,” she tells me finally, as we part.
“Thanks,” I tell her, and I mean it.
.
28
Marv
“This is our new place,” I say, showing Naomi around our designated quarters. They’ve given us a small condo near the Unsettled Camp. Apparently, they’ve rapidly built a housing unit just for single females, and guards protect it from intruders.
They don’t want me to stay there because it might be weird for the females. But they are grateful that Naomi has agreed to work for the cooperative of females.
“I like it,” Naomi says softly, standing by the window.
When we were back on Narul, I didn’t have windows. My last above-ground home there had windows, but we’d been under attack so much from the Foog and the Ta’al that it became impossible to protect ourselves.
I walk over to her and stand beside her. “It’s a nice view, isn’t it?”
She leans back, encouraging me to wrap an arm around her. So, I do. She relaxes beside me.
“I wonder what it would have been like to meet you in a normal way. To go out on a date and decide that we should be boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“Hmm,” I murmur, nuzzling my lips into her hair and kissing her. “I would’ve fallen head over heels in love with you.”
“Why me? How did you choose me?”
I shift my arms so that I’m wrapped around her waist. “I’ve never seen such a beautiful sight before I laid eyes on you. Your smile was so…. real.”
“But I was drunk,” she whispers.
“I have the photo.”
“You do?” she asks incredulously. I release her from my embrace and hurry away, then return with my tablet. I retrieve the saved file and show it to her.
It’s her, but back in human form. Before she was changed. Her eyes are bright, and her lips are full. Her hair is messy, and she doesn’t seem to care. She’s holding that bottle of what I’ve learned is “forgetting juice.” And she’s smiling, even though there are tears in her eyes.
“This was my photo?”
“Yes.”
“And you chose me from this? I look awful.”
“You look perfect.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t understand.”
I lean forward and wait for her to touch me. There’s a memory I want to share with her.
29
Naomi
He leans into me and urges me to hold onto him. I do, and suddenly I see a flash of a memory.
Mother is standing by the stove, tears in her eyes. Father hands her a handful of flowers to make tea.
“What will I do without her?” she asks.
“Aw, my Julee.”
My Father wraps his arms around my mother and holds her while she cries. I stand in the shadows, watching. Memorizing the curve of my mother’s hips, memorizing her face in the dim light.
“If this illness takes you, I need you to protect her,” Father says.
Mother nods. “I’ve been feeling a pain, in my arm. It started here,” Mother pointed to her elbow, then traced the pain back to the center of her chest. “I think this illness attacks the heart.”
“I know my heart will never be the same,” Father says.
They stare at each other; both of them with tears in their eyes. “You are beautiful,” my Father tells my Mother.
Marv closes his eyes and waits.
When he opens them, I stare into his eyes. I immediately ask, “I reminded you of your Mother?”
“No, not that. You reminded me of everything beautiful in the universe.”
“How?”
He presses his hand into mine. “That memory, that was the night my Mother died. I never looked at anything and saw beauty again. I saw pain. I saw emptiness.”
I wait.
“And then I saw you. You were the perfect light in my dark world. I’ve been waiting for you my whole life, and I didn’t even know it.”
“If you met me in the middle of a crowded room, would you still have chosen me?”
“Absolutely,” he says.
&nb
sp; I lean into him and take a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll try.”
He doesn’t understand the sheer momentousness of my words, so I lean against him and press my lips against his. I kiss him until I have to come up for air.
“I like it here,” I finally tell him.
“I’m happy wherever you are happy.”
30
Marv
Naomi settles into her new job, working with the females who are Unsettled. She comes home after her first week wearing a new outfit, something made in the collective.
It’s a dress, styled in the Earthling way.
She walks in and grins at me. “Look what they made for me,” she declares.
Her breasts are perfectly adorning the top of the dress, and I can see her cleavage as she approaches. Oh, this female makes me so needy.
“I want to show you something else,” she says, her voice conspiratorial. She grabs my hand and drags me into our bedroom, where she removes her dress in one solid move.
Underneath it, she’s wearing new panties. They aren’t lacy like the ones she brought with her, but they’re shiny. “I like them.”
She pulls them off and hands them to me. “Okay, here they are,” she teases.
They’re made of p’aca fur.
She lays down and spreads open her legs, waiting for me.
I hesitate for a moment. She’s been acting strange over the past few days.
But she’s waiting.
I climb onto the bed and lick her perky little clit. I suckle it into my mouth, eager to make her sweet juices flow. She cums as I lick her pussy. I want her to scream my name, so I keep going, pushing my tongue deeper and deeper inside of her.
“Marvvvv,” she calls out, and I climb on top of her. I enter her eagerly, like a young man finding home for the first time.
I love her more and more each day. She might not feel the same, but maybe someday, she will.
As we move in tune with each other, I dare to look into her eyes. She is staring right at me, those beautiful pools of light smiling up at me.
“Ohhh,” she moans as I finish inside her. She pulls me into an embrace over her, and I hear her whisper to me, “I love you.”