by Loki Renard
He’s explaining everything to me like I am an idiot, but I guess I am an idiot, given I don’t know anything besides the fact that I have been captive for as long as I can remember, which is not very long. Maybe a matter of months.
“I know what a bath is,” I say. “I know how to clean myself.”
“That’s good!” He seems genuinely pleased. “What else do you think you know?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ll figure it out,” he says. “Computer seems to think you have trauma and substance induced amnesia. Your memories are locked away inside.”
“Maybe if I locked them away, I had a reason.”
He looks at me with an expression which is just as wise as it is ferocious. “You cannot hide from bad memories forever, little human. You have to remember eventually. It is better to do it before you are forced to do so.”
“Fine,” I say. “I will have a bath.”
Anything to avoid this uncomfortable conversation about my confusing roots.
Chapter Three - Bath
Tarkan
“What are you doing now?”
“Giving her a bath.”
Reaper snorts. “A bath isn’t what that girl needs.”
“She’s filthy. How else do I get her clean?”
He looks over from the controls. “As soon as you pull her out of the water, you should take her over your knee and warm her rear. Make her feel some heat.”
“Why? She hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“She destroyed the medical bay. She attacked One. Either one of those things is reason enough.”
“She’s scared, Reaper.”
“I don’t care. This ship runs on order.”
“Does it,” I smirk. “Tell you what, you have a problem with my girl, you come to me. And you don’t lay a finger on her either. She’s mine.”
“But for how long if you let her get away with everything?”
“Reaper, she was literally just liberated from brutal captivity. Sorry there’s a mess in your precious medical bay, but not everything can be fixed by hitting it.”
With that, I go back to my girl. Reaper just can’t stand that he’s not in control of her. He has a dominance complex. He has to control everything. But he won’t ever control her.
“You can’t watch me bathe.”
She’s embarrassed. Adorable, given I’ve already seen her climax on my hand. One trait of human women I have always enjoyed is their ability to be reckless animals of pure instinct one moment, and then go all sweet and proper the moment the orgasm drains from their nervous system.
“I think I should. Humans can drown in only a few inches of water, and I want to keep you safe.”
“I’m not going to drown myself in a small bath.”
“It could be an accident.”
I am used to bickering thanks to a long life with my broodmate, Reaper. But this little human takes it to another level. She is argumentative about literally everything. I knew humans were prone to sass, but this one takes the proverbial Earth cake.
“If you watch me, I’m not going to do it,” she pouts.
I feel an urge to discipline her. It is a strange impulse, because in my lifetime I have never been called upon to be the one who enacts discipline. Then again, as second born, it would have been a role I embraced if most of our clutch had not been destroyed before hatching.
Scythkin, unlike humans, do not come bursting out of their mother’s private regions screaming with rage. I wish we did, but instead we hatch from eggs, usually laid in numbers anywhere from twelve to thirty or more. Reaper and I came under attack before we were even hatched and were the only two survivors, a very small brood without a matriarch to guide us.
I say nothing. I stand and I wait and I hope that she comes to the conclusion that bathing is in her best interests on her own.
She tiptoes over to the bath and dips her hand into the water. “Oh, it feels warm!”
“Mhm. Would probably feel pretty good to get in there, huh.”
“Probably,” she says, with a glance at me. “But then you’ll see me naked.”
“You’re already naked.”
“No, I’m not. I’m wearing my dirt.”
And that’s when I realize that the reason she is so very filthy is because the dirt is the only thing she had to clothe herself with. This little human had an instinct toward modesty, she wanted to hide her vulnerable flesh. But all she had to do it with was the stinking soil of alien planets.
I want to embrace her so badly, to comfort her and tell her that she no longer lives in a world where she will be violated in every way at every turn. But words are cheap, and they do not go deep enough.
“What if I promise not to look below the water line,” I say. “And what if I have any kind of clothing you want made for you afterward?”
“You mean, like a dress?”
“Yes, I can have a dress made. We can synthesize almost anything on this ship…”
SPLASH!
She flops into the water and sits there, smiling as filth soaks from her skin. “I want a pretty one,” she says. “I want one that is made of satin and goes all the way to my ankles. I want it to be gathered at the waist, and I want earrings and a crown. No. A small tiara. This isn’t a formal occasion, a tiara will do. A tiara with a sapphire inlaid at the front of it. And I want slippers to wear on my feet. Silk slippers inlaid with the finest kid-skin.”
“Kid skin, as in juvenile human skin?”
“No, it comes from baby goats,” she says. “And it is ever so soft. It makes for perfect slippers. And of course, I will need a shawl of some kind. White, I think, made of the fur of an arctic fox.”
“What is the arctic?”
She stops and looks at me with a blank look on her face. Steam is rising from the bath, obscuring her features, but I can see the sudden confusion I’ve thrown her into with that question. As she was giving her dress order, she was tapping into some part of her mind that was untouched by whatever alien technology wiped her knowing.
“I don’t know,” she says, that phrase so plaintive. Again, she is lost.
“It doesn’t matter, we will work it out,” I say. “So you wish for a shawl for your shoulders, a gown for your body, and slippers for your feet. Anything else?”
“The head of the king of France,” she says, laughing.
I chuckle along too, because I am fairly certain she has no idea what or where France is or, more correctly, was, before the million puppy incident, which I am going to keep very quiet. Though maybe it won’t matter. If she doesn’t know what Earth is, she probably cannot mourn its loss.
What I am gathering is that this girl does know some things. It is just that the set of her knowledge doesn’t come from anywhere in the recent past. What she is describing is the garb of someone who came from Earth, but rather a long time ago.
“I will fetch your clothing, m’lady,” I tell her. “Try running some fresh water into the bath,” I add as a suggestion. “Then it will feel less like you’re floating in a soup of your own filth.”
“You have good ideas,” she says, doing as I suggested. I hear the water start to drain as I leave the room and head for the synthesizer. There’s probably something somewhere in the database that approximates what she wants to wear.
“How is it going?” Reaper appears by my side. I know he’s probably fighting an urge to take over with her, but he knows better than to take this human from me - and he knows better than to make One think he has any interest in any other human. I can see her nearby, giving him dagger eyes for even asking.
“Well, I managed to feed her and get her into a bath, but she’s not going to be easy like One”
“One wasn’t easy,” he laughs.
“Okay, then she’s going to be difficult, like One, but worse. She’s hostile, aggressive, frightened, and I think she might have been a princess at one time.”
“You do? Why?”
I pull the first item out of the synthesizer
and hold it up for him. “Because she asked for this.”
“A crown?”
“It’s not a crown, it’s a tiara.”
Reaper looks at me blankly. “I feel like that’s not something a scythkin warrior should know.”
“This one does, and now, so do you.”
“These women are going to change us, aren’t they,” he says with a sigh.
He knows full well that having one woman on board has changed us. It has changed everything. Before we had close human contact in our daily living spaces, we thought nothing of casual aggression as a means to solve problems, but women don’t like it when their mate is punched in the face over breakfast. Reaper and I have had to cut back on a lot of our fighting because it upsets One. I don’t think 42 will like it any better.
“I better take my tiara back to my mate,” I say, unable to hide a smile. Reaper probably thinks I don’t enjoy this, but he’s wrong. I have somebody to take care of. Someone who needs to be taken care of more than anyone I’ve ever met before. “Oh, and a gown.”
I have never handled women’s clothing, aside from ripping it off willing human mates back on Earth, when Earth was still a thing, but I can tell this will mean a lot to 42. She doesn’t know anything, but she knows she wants this. This is what a detective might call a clue.
42 is still in the bath when I return, but she quickly clambers out when she sees what I have in my hands, dripping water and ignoring the towel I put beside the bath.
“You bought me a gown,” she smiles for the first time. That smile is the greatest reward I’ve ever been given. The flash of her eyes, the dimpling of her cheeks. For a brief moment she is happy, innocent, and free.
“I chose blue, to match your eyes, and a sapphire…” she has snatched it out of my hands and is pulling the dress over her head. Apparently she’s not going to dry herself off after her bath, or ask for any kind of underwear, or…
“You forgot my slippers.”
“Oh, sorry. I’ll go get them. Just one thing. I need an image of those markings on your inner arm. I’ll trade you a picture of them for your slippers.”
“Deal,” she says, warily.
I make a quick note of the markings. It’s simple, but sometimes the most important things are.
“What do you think?”
She asks the question with a shy little twirl.
“You look beautiful,” I say, honestly. Even in her thoroughly bedraggled state, having more than likely ruined the dress I just gave her, she’s stunning. Human females have always held a magnetic allure for me, and I have mated with many of them over the years, but I have never felt this way about any creature. It is a mixture of desire, admiration, protection, and, possession.
42
He appreciates me. I can see it in his fiery eyes, which lock on me with an intensity I’ve never felt before. I have been looked at so many times over the past months. I’ve been looked at with curiosity, with hate, with lechery with every alien expression there is. None of them have made me feel all hot on the inside, as if a fire that was dormant inside me just roared into life. I didn’t know there were fires inside me. I wonder else what might be inside me. I feel something fluttering with every breath I take.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Sorry for what?
“You touched me so, uhm, nicely. And then I wasn’t very nice to you afterward and… I’m not used to being treated this way.”
“It’s okay,” he says in a way that makes me feel that it really is okay. “If you want to orgasm sometimes, or yell others. Everything is okay for now. Your body and brain are going to take some time to adjust, I know that.”
I like wearing the dress. It feels natural on my body, familiar. I haven’t had clothes since I woke up but this gown restores more than my dignity. It gives me back my humanity. They said I was special because I was human, but they never treated me as if I was special. They treated me as if I was meat and they did it so long and so hard that I started to feel like nothing but meat.
“How are you feeling?”
A gentle question, a caring question. I didn’t know it was possible to be cared about. I only know a few things. That I like this dress, that I want something called chocolate, and that I like this alien more than it is possible to like anything else in existence.
Yearning is burning inside me, that flame I felt spark is consuming me. I am falling, tumbling, losing myself to a kind of devotion I couldn’t even have dreamed of when I was chained. He rescued me, and that alone means I owe him my life. More than my life. My body. My soul. My everything.
The feeling frightens me. I know I shouldn’t have it. I know it’s wrong, and it’s dangerous, and I know I need to hide it with everything I am. This is an alien, like all the others, and just because he brought me some clothes, and gave me some shoes and asked me how I’m feeling, it doesn’t mean I can trust him. Or myself. Or the universe.
“You look scared,” he says. “Am I frightening you? Would it help if I sat down again?”
He crouches down, and I see the harsh blades of his body retracting into his skin. He can pull them back, though I think it takes some effort judging by the way he is squirming and trying not to look as though it is hard for him.
I feel another flash of heat through my body, another one of those bursts of affection which feel so wrong, and which I just can’t help.
“Humans like things that are a bit taller than them, but not a lot taller than them,” he explains.
I don’t know why I find it so endearing that a horned daemon of an alien seems to know so much about me and my kind, but I do.
“And I’m human, am I?” I haven’t felt human for a very long time.
“You are,” he says. “A perfect specimen.”
Those last two words make me flinch. They are words the zookeepers used. Perfect specimens never stayed perfect for very long. I didn’t. When I first woke up there was soft flesh on my bones and my skin had a pink glow that was pleasing to everyone who saw me. But then things changed. I refused to do what they wanted me to do. I bit them when they tried to touch me. I tried to escape. Once, twice, so many times I lost count. But they didn’t. And that’s when the chains went on.
He reaches for me. I pull away. “Don’t touch me!”
“Easy,” he says. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
But he is. Everything hurts me. Everyone hurts me. The flames of what I thought were love dim again, and I am left with that dark hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, the one that tells me I am empty, have always been empty, and will always be empty.
“Don’t touch me,” I repeat, even though he’s not trying to touch me anymore. He’s actually moved away from me and is giving me some space, but it’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough. I’m panicking.
My emotions keep swinging back and forth. One moment I am grateful, the next I am scared, and the moment after that I am desperately wanting to be comforted, only to remember that there’s no such thing as comfort or joy in the universe.
“Get away from me!”
“Easy,” he repeats that stupid word. I sense confusion in him. His horned ears are twitching back and forth in confusion, his eyes observing me more intensely than ever. I feel pang after pang of anxiety rushing through me.
One moment I wanted him. Another moment I almost thought I loved him. Now I can’t tell the difference between him and the traders who used those trigger terms which make pure hatred rush through my body. I am a mess, a thoroughly broken creature and he should get rid of me before I hurt us both.
“Just leave me alone!”
“This is a really small shuttle,” he says. “It’s going to be hard to leave you alone entirely, but I promise I won’t touch you. I won’t do anything to you that you don’t want me to do. I really don’t want to hurt you.”
They’re just words, but maybe they mean something. Maybe if he doesn’t want to hurt me, he doesn’t want anything from me?
O
uch. That thought hurts too. What if he doesn’t want me anymore? Of course he doesn’t. I can’t imagine what he would want from me. I am so small and so weak. He would surely prefer a female whose strength matches his own, who has sharp ridges of her own to clash against his when they make love.
“I don’t like this dress,” I tell him.
“You loved it a minute ago.”
“Well I don’t like it anymore. I want to wear something else.”
He looks at me, puzzled. “What else would you like to wear?”
“I don’t know. I can’t say. I don’t…” my breath is coming shorter. I feel myself hyperventilating. This happened to me several times when I was locked up. I used to panic, but there was never anything I could do. I can’t do anything now either. Nothing but….
Suddenly, his arms are around me. He’s hugging me. Close. He’s pulling me so tight that I can’t move. This should send me into an even worse panic, but it doesn’t. I take a deep breath, thinking I’m going to scream, but no scream emerges, just a soft little whimper that dies on my lips when he squeezes me tight.
He said he wasn’t going to touch me. He promised he wouldn’t do anything I didn’t want. He’s already lying. But it doesn’t matter, because this is exactly what I need. How does something so foreign and completely alien know what one little insignificant human needs?
Tarkan
I hold her until I feel her relax in my arms. She’s so scared. When I first took hold of her, she was trembling from head to toe. I saw the way she was kept. I know how much pain she has endured, and I know that her cries and shouts don’t have anything to do with me. She’s afraid of everything.
Holding her in my arms, I know she’s probably going to tell me to leave her alone again, and I will. Unless she starts breathing in that shallow, fast way which makes it obvious she’s about to pass out completely.
I’m going to look after her at all costs, even at the cost of her hating me. When Reaper found his human mate, their intimacy happened so quickly. I don’t think it will happen that way with this girl. She’s too hurt. Too broken. And I’m not expert at putting things back together. I’m usually the one who does the breaking.