by Robin Roseau
“Magic dust.”
“I told you.”
“Why do you have this?”
“For the exact opposite purpose: camouflage.”
I laughed again.
She was thorough. She even did my lips and my eyelids. That part made me nervous. I told her I didn’t want my lips a strange color.”
“I’ll accept that, but I don't want a sharp line where the dust ends, either. So, the dust will provide the color.”
“Okay.”
Finally, she was done. I was entirely grey, and I’d gotten a little worked up about that. Carolina looked at me. “You’re upset.”
“Is grey the color of being upset?”
“I am not completely unable to judge your emotional state, Taisha.”
“It’s grey,” I said. “I know, it’s not activated or something. You painted my entire body grey. I’m… Please turn it on.”
“It won’t be perfect. It can only do its best. It will grow more accurate.”
“I won’t be able to tell. Please, Carolina.”
She didn’t do anything, but the color began shifting, and then some more. It was ugly at first, but it kept shifting. Carolina didn’t say anything, but then I said, “Please kiss me.”
That took no encouragement, and we both got into it. And then she looked at me and withdrew, but her colors shifted dramatically. I looked down. “So,” I said, gesturing. “Is this lust?”
“Yes.”
“And yours?”
“Yes, and joy.”
I pulled her to me, and we hugged tightly.
* * * *
Other than when she went hunting for breakfast, we spent nearly every minute together. She denied me clothing, but as she wasn’t wearing any, either, I grew accepting. We talked. We made up games. She took me swimming, but I wasn’t allowed to do anything that required me to hold my breath. Afterwards, we showered together. Once a day, she changed the net over my hair, washing and drying it first.
As promised, we ate one meal a day entirely the Komodo style, but the other meals included the other foods I needed to be healthy, but always with fish she caught. We found that some of the fish she found sat better with me than others.
And we talked; we talked for hours. In one of our conversations, she asked, “Do you resent what is happening?”
“No. If you kept me here but neglected me, I would resent that. But you don’t neglect me.” I smiled. “I like the way you touch me.”
And touch me, she did. If we were together, she was touching me, and encouraging me to touch her. She didn’t touch my most erogenous areas, but we both loved the way she would rub my bottom. Rather than becoming overstimulated, as I would have predicted, I became increasingly responsive to her.
The colors were a distraction, although in time, I grew to expect my body to be a variety of colors, and I found myself controlling my emotions to give myself colors I liked better.
The worst parts were when she left to hunt for us. I was left to my own thoughts, and inevitably they led to the outside world. I didn’t want to think about that, so I took to moving to the grotto to wait for her. I became increasingly attuned to her arrival, and I know I exploded in color every time she rose above the water.
We had one conversation I should share. This was on the second or third full day. We’d been swimming and were cuddling in the grotto. I’d get cold soon, but I wanted to swim a little more before showering, and so we were cuddling for a few minutes. “Mermaid,” I said.
“Mmm?”
“Does it bother you that I call you that?”
“As you use my name more, no. I like it. And who knows? Maybe mermaids of human lore are from a lost exploration ship that crashed here.”
“Maybe,” I said with a laugh. “How did you decide it would be you?”
“We didn’t,” she said. “You did.”
“I’m fairly sure I couldn’t decide.”
“Violet had you Tested.”
“Excuse me?”
“One of the times you were driving Muriel’s robot,” she explained. “Violet made you believe you were very tired. You had dinner with the Catseye and watched a movie.”
“I fell asleep. I don’t remember going home, but I woke up in my bed.”
“You spent the night being tested, and then they woke you after putting you in your own bed.”
“Those little sneaks!”
“We believe you would have been happy with any of us,” she explained. “You like Forever Twilight, but Violet said you would struggle to fall in love. You would, eventually. But you actually hate Niecor mating rituals. As it isn’t difficult to find good mates for a Niecor, Forever said we shouldn’t force it. She intends friendship.”
“Good. Is she all right?”
“Yes. She’s fine. She had not committed to you, and she is happy for us.”
“I like her.”
“She is very easy to like.”
“And Aventurine?”
“That was less clear,” she said. “Kitsune mating practices are far closer to human than many of the species, especially Komodo. And you were already deeply intimate with her. The testing struggled with that, but it was Audra who pointed something out.”
“What’s that?”
“You struggled to pick one of us, and that was in spite of already being intimate with the Kitsune.” She brushed my cheek, and I turned a fresh set of colors.
“Ohhh,” I said, understanding.
“You would have loved her, and the two of you would have been happy. It was Aventurine who pointed out that it is more difficult to find compatible human mates for the Komodo, and she said while she would have been happy to claim you, that it should be me, when everything is taken together.”
“Does she offer friendship?”
“Yes, but she will be a little more aloof to avoid confusing both of you. Now, I wish to talk about something related.”
“All right.”
“The nature of a Komodo relationship is that one is dominant in the relationship.”
“I sort of figured that out. But you’ve promised we’ll find a way for me to have my career, and you’ve promised we’ll be able to have children. You’ve promised a good home. And I really, really like the way you treat me.”
Her colors shifted. I was just beginning to recognize some of the patterns, and this was pleasure, but I knew there was more to it than that. It would be a long time before I could read more subtleties.
“There is a period where I will limit your interactions with others. We will see both of them, but you will remain distant with them. Over time, we will develop a comfortable relationship with each.”
“Is that twenty years or two?”
“Oh, a year or two,” she said. “There are customs, some of them that are important to me, and some that are required for a healthy relationship.”
“We’ll do anything you need, Carolina,” I promised.
* * * *
It was a week before we had another notable conversation. Oh, we had conversations, lots of conversations, but one I’m going to share. It was after a shower, and I had sat quietly as she dried and netted my hair. Then she wrapped arms around me from behind. I laid my cheek against the side of her head.
“Why haven’t you gotten mad at me?” she asked.
“Why would I get mad at you?”
“I’m keeping you a prisoner.”
“Oh, golly. My mermaid is showering me with attention.”
“I did this to your teeth.”
“To me, it’s weird. Carolina, I don’t know if you see it this way, or if a Komodo female would, but in a way, it’s a little sexy, too.” I smiled. “I like eating from your fingers.”
“The first human was upset about it, and Taisha, if someone had done this to me, I would have rebelled. I wouldn’t have been accepting. I would have fought her.”
“And eventually succumb?”
“Yes. For us, that is inevitable.”
&nbs
p; “Does your biology require me to fight you?”
“No.”
“Good, because I don’t want to fight you.” I pulled her around to me and wrapped around her, laying my head against her chest. “The only thing that I don’t like is that I don’t think I’m showing all the right colors. I find it unlikely your computer can tell everything going on with my emotions, and I bet you’re attuned to what you perceive.”
She hugged my head to her.
“I love our differences,” I whispered. I brushed my hand along her side, along the fine, fine scales. “I am so…”
“So, what?” she asked when I didn’t finish.
“Many things, I guess. Nervous, a little, because I was just starting to figure out my place in this world, and now that is changed, so I have to start over. But I know you’ll take care of me while I’m doing that and help me to find that place.”
“I will,” she promised.
“Humans and Komodo need the same things,” I said. “We need shelter and wholesome food. From what I can tell, we’re both social creatures. I think this would be hard for me if it lasted for years, but you’ve said it won’t.”
“No, nothing so long.”
“You’ve promised the things I need. And I’ve promised the things you need, but I am nervous I won’t understand them, and that I’m doing things wrong.”
“You’re doing things perfectly,” she assured me. She lowered her head, and we tongue-battled. And I know my body showed my desire.
“Taisha,” she whispered, hugging me again. We held each other for a minute, then she asked, “Would you like to cuddle for a while, and then we can play a game?”
“Yes.”
I wasn’t sure that I was in love, but I knew I was getting there. I was nervous for the future, but so excited, too, and perhaps more confident that it would all work out than I’d ever been.
Love
Our very odd life continued with little change for another week. I hated when she was away from me, hated it, and I found myself waiting in the grotto, no matter how long she was gone. And then one hunting trip went on and on. I began to worry something bad had happened, and then grew nearly frantic. My relief when finally, she appeared left me sobbing, and I ran to the pool and slipped in, wrapping around her, sobbing and babbling something, I don’t know what.
She held me, there in the water. She lost the fish she had caught, but she’d find it later. She held me, crooning softly.
Eventually, she brought me upstairs. We dried, and she led me to bed. And there, she made love to me for the first time. At first, I didn’t realize what she was doing, only that she began touching me in ways she hadn’t before. But she asked if she could touch, and I whispered, “Yes, my mermaid. Yes.”
She touched and explored, and then she came back up and captured my tongue, teasing me, while her hand found my center. I closed my eyes, moaning, as she began to touch, to tease.
To enter.
She took me, her way, and it was wonderful. She rode my passion to conclusion, and then wrapped around me, pulling me to her and holding me while crooning.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“I love you, too, my mate.”
She hadn’t called me that before. “Your mate,” I said. “Yes.” I held her tightly. “I love you. I love you.”
I was a little frantic to make sure she knew. She held me, crooning.
* * * *
It was a while later that she laughed. “I lost our dinner. I am going to go find it again. It hasn’t been so long it isn’t safe.”
I went with her, although I stayed on the rocks. She was gone only seconds. She fed me, a Komodo meal, and then we went swimming together, although most of the time I asked her to simply hold me. So she did, doing most of the work for both of us.
I grew cold, and so we ascended to the shower. One I was dry, she replaced the hair net. I felt it with my fingers then smiled at her. Her colors were bright, a pattern I hadn’t seen before, at least not on her.
“What does this mean?” I gestured to her.
“Lust for my mate,” she said.
“We should do something with that.”
“I agree.”
She brought me to bed, and then she took me again, and again. As I lay in her arms, I asked, “What about you?”
“I will show you,” she said. “A little at a time, but my lust isn’t the same as yours. It is the lust to claim, to hear your sweet sounds of surrender and joy.”
“And if I want to hear yours?”
“You will.”
And she showed me, but only a little, before turning around and taking me once more, and then we slept.
But we became little sex fiends for a while. What she could do with her tongue, well, let’s simply call it every woman’s deepest fantasy.
Furthermore, it turns out she could engage in another fantasy, one I’d never really found worked that well. Not that I had a lot of practice, but still.
She could do that while she was under water.
There were handholds in the pool. She had me hold on then swam away, but she came back and drove me crazy as she took me, there in the grotto. That would become a common act for us, but the next day, she did it differently. She tipped over, facing down, but hanging her legs over my shoulders, offering herself to me while taking me at the same time. That worked well until I lost hold of the hand grip, and we went plunging under the water. She pulled herself loose and had me in the air nearly instantly, but I coughed up water for a while, which made her nervous.
“I’m fine,” I managed to croak. “That was fun for a while.”
Two days later, there was a change. Somehow, she had added a handhold higher in the rocks over the water, and hanging down, two thick straps with loops in the ends. I laughed when I saw them. She took me swimming then led me over and helped me slide my hands into the loops.
I didn’t slip this time.
But at the end, I hung from my arms and couldn’t free myself. I laughed weakly until she got me free. “So now we combine kink,” I said.
“I don’t understand. What is kink?”
“Seriously?”
“English is not my first language. Have you forgotten.”
“Um. Kinky sex is just about anything outside ‘normal’. Tying someone up is the most common example.”
“I’m fairly sure nothing we do is normal for a human.”
“Some people would say any interspecies sex is kinky, but it’s normal for us.” I smiled. “I love you, my mermaid.”
* * * *
Three days later, things changed again, although Carolina didn’t warn me. We began the day with, unsurprisingly, fabulous sex and tender pronouncements. She then disappeared to catch our breakfast. We ate, cleaned up, and then when I turned to her, she was holding my swim suit.
I stared at it. “What is that for?”
“It’s time to go home.”
I closed the distance, pushing the suit aside, and wrapping around her. “My home is in your arms.”
Carolina held me for a minute, but I didn’t fight her as she helped me into the suit. She had my visor and her own suit.
“Why do we need these?”
“Because the route home goes past a lot of humans whose sensitivities we must consider.” She led me to the grotto and handed me the breathing device. I lifted my hand to my hair. “We didn’t talk about this,” she said. “That stays.”
“My teeth?”
“Stays.”
“Forever?”
“No. Will you grow impatient?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She did the work for us. This time, I held on in front of her, face to face. We swam slowly, and it was beautiful.
I knew when we entered the cove, and then she brought us to a stop, holding me in place. We did that a few more times in increasingly-shallow water. And then, together, we stood up.
Beginnings was before us. Waiting on the beach were our fr
iends, those from The Center and Carolina’s coworkers from the linguistics department. Carolina and I wrapped our arms around each other and strode forward.
They had sandals for us. It was Jasmine herself who did mine, and then Audra with a towel. And then Carolina and I were each passed from one to another for hugs and a quiet “Congratulations.”
“This is from Yvette,” Audra said, kissing my cheek. “She says Congratulations, and she’ll see you soon. Oh, and by the way… She’s pregnant!”
“A little Catseye?”
“Yes.”
There were humans about. I was a little numb from everything, and terribly overwhelmed, so I didn’t pay much attention. But then a little girl ran up to us. She came to a stop, staring at me and then looking at Carolina, then back at me. “What are you?”
“Well,” I said. “This is Carolina.” She stepped to my side. “Her species is called Komodo, but to me, she is a mermaid.”
“A mermaid?”
“To me. She can breathe underwater and swims very, very well.”
“But what about you?”
“I am human,” I said. “From California. This,” and I gestured, “Is a sort of alien body paint. Pretty cool, huh? It changes color based on my mood. Right now, I’m so excited, I don’t know if I can make it change.”
“Of course, you can,” Carolina said. She pulled my head over and began kissing and tongue battling me. Around us, a few people laughed, and others may have had other reactions, but I clutched at my wife. Then she released me. “See?” she asked the girl.
“It changed!”
“It did,” Carolina confirmed. “Mine did, too.”
* * * *
There was a reception at The Center. Carolina had new clothes for me in the Komodo style. They left as much of me exposed as was acceptable for human society, but with support where I needed it. The dresses were white and diaphanous. “I want your color to show.”
Anything else would have clashed. “I love it.”
I got my first look in a mirror, and she didn’t rush me. The color really was shocking, and while I looked, I saw the colors shifting. “Carolina?”
She stepped to me and set her hand on my back. “I know this is surprising to you.”
I turned to her. “You can read my mood with a glance, and I bet I know what it’s saying.”