by G. Howell
“You’re getting better at drawing people,” the voice behind me observed quietly.
Even sitting I managed to jump. I twisted around. Chihirae was standing about a meter back, hands hooked over opposite shoulders in a posture that made her seem quite… inhuman. She was watching me. “Chihirae?” I dumped the folio back on the desk and scrambled to my feet, nearly toppling the chair over backwards. She almost smiled. “Chihirae… are you alright?”
A strange look twitched her features. “I’m fine. Mikah.”
“They didn’t hurt you?” I ventured. I wanted to embrace her, to grab and hold her but I couldn’t forget that anger from a few hours back.
“Hurt me?” She waved a negative. “No. They asked questions. A lot of questions,” she said.
I felt that like a punch to the guts. “God, I’m sorry. I’m… I never wanted anything like this. This is not. . .”
“They were about you,” she continued quietly. “Asking me to tell about you; about how we’d met; what you were like.”
I took the one step closer. She didn’t move when I gingerly reached up to touch her, to lay fingertips on the side of her face. Her amber eyes just watched me. “You shouldn’t have stayed,” I croaked. “You shouldn’t have stayed here. Not with me. If you go back to Lying Scales now, maybe they’ll leave you. Maybe they’ll forget…”
“They’re dreams, aren’t they?” she asked me, her eyes studying my face, catching the flinch.
“What?”
She looked past me, to the papers on the desk. “They’re your dreams, aren’t they? In there,” she said, gesturing to the sketch book. “Those pictures I saw earlier. They’re from your dreams.”
I didn’t know what to say. She walked past me, leaving me standing like a fool with my arm outstretched, not quite brushing against me as she went to the desk and opened the folio. I could’ve stopped her. I didn’t move as she folded the cover open and started leafing through the pages.
“Why did you draw these?” she asked after a while.
I gave a small shake of my head. “I don’t know. I just needed too… I had to get them out. It felt… more dignified than screaming.”
Her ears twitched back and she kept turning the pages, past the dark scrawls of things from my nightmares on to brighter things: scenes of shipboards life. A Rris helmsman at his wheel, a young female Mediator squinting into sunlight.
“You flatter her,” Chihirae said and I felt a momentary twinge of guilt mixed with pride. At least she could recognize the subject.
“There were a lot of questions,” she said as she turned the page. “They asked a lot, but, they also answered a few of mine. They told me, Mikah. They told me what you did.”
“What did I do?” Possibilities churned through my imagination. “I’ve done a lot of things. Perhaps, some not so smart.”
“This may have been one of those,” she said quietly. “You made an agreement with them.”
I nodded. Standing at the desk, she couldn’t see that. “A.”
“You bound yourself to them.”
“A.”
“Why?” she asked simply.
Because… Because… I almost touched her as I struggled to find the right words; almost stroked fingertips through the fur of her back before pulling my hand back. No, there was an answer. It was the small box sitting where it’d been unpacked from my luggage. I picked that up and when I turned back Chihirae was watching me. I held the box out to her, the wood nothing but cheap little strips of pine joined into a rudimentary container.
“That’s not an answer,” she observed, watching my eyes.
“It’s a promise. It’s the only one I was able to keep.”
Chihirae hesitated, looking up at me. The black tufts on her cheek and ears formed an x with uncertain eyes at the center, then she carefully took the box from my hands. The top lifted off. There was some straw packing that brushed aside. I saw her tip her head as she regarded the contents, then gingerly reached in and lifted it out.
A tiny incarnation of a tree cast in bronze, not more than ten centimeters high. An intricate representation of tiny branches and equally miniscule leaves. It was stylized, with the limbs and the twisting of the trunk not quite as a real oak would grow, but that was entirely artistic license.
“I said I would bring you something. I’m sorry it’s not much,” I said. “There were circumstances…” I shrugged apologetically.
Chihirae held the little sculpture cupped in her hands and stared at it and didn’t say anything. Nothing on her face moved, not the slightest twitch of expression. I sagged. So did my spirit.
“You don’t like it,” I said in a small voice. I’d blown it. I just didn’t know how to respond in the way she was expecting, in the way a Rris might. Giving her gifts? How did she see that? A feeble attempt at bribery?
Her head lifted and she was gazing up at me with an expression that was so completely Rris that it was nothing I could read – an inscrutable feline mask with stunning inhuman eyes that seemed to look right into me. Eyes that burned in the night. Eyes that stirred that little part of my hindbrain that remembered them from nights tens of thousands of years ago.
“”I didn’t know what would be right,” I said, almost babbling for something to say. “I didn’t know what… I…”
I trailed off as she stood and in turn she didn’t say a thing as she brushed past me on her way to the door. Behind me, I heard it close; heard the creak of the hinges and the final click of the latch.
And when I turned the dark wood of the door was still closed and she was still on this side of it. Her eyes glowed like something in the night as she regarded me.
“Chihirae?” That gaze was unsettling. “Have I done something wrong?”
Her padding feet were silent on the carpet as she crossed the space between us and looked up at me, holding that little sculpture between us. I could see the little striations in her eyes, the flecks of gold in the amber, a faint reflection of my own face and the unreadable soul beyond. “No,” she said softly and I could smell her breath; her musty scent that reminded me of dusty summer days. “No, nothing wrong , Mikah. I’m… all that’s happened - all that they told me, and you were concerned about a gift?”
“No,” I shook my head and tried to explain: “You. A promise to you.”
“Oh, Mikah. Oh, rot you,” she sighed, exasperation or resignation, I couldn’t tell. “How can you… Oh, rot. I like it. It pleases me. Almost as much as your safe return,” she said as she reached up to touch my shoulder. I sank to my knees, leaning forward against her chest and her arms went around my neck. I felt her velveteen fur against my temple as she laid her head alongside mine.
“You great, hairless fool,” hot breath murmured into my ear, and there was no reproach in her voice. It dredged a chuckle from somewhere inside me, a spasm of humor that grew to full-blown laughter. I hugged her back, holding to her as I pressed my own cheek against the encompassing warmth of her chest. I could hear and feel a heart beating, drubbing with a rhythm that didn’t match mine and at some point something inside me finally tore and the laughter turned into gulping sobs. My tears streaming into her fur as I clutched to her, as a dark bottle I’d buried deep and desperately held closed for those past few weeks cracked wide and emptied itself.
For some indeterminable amount of time she suffered my embrace. Clawed fingers stroked at my hair and beard while my own tears soaked through the pelt on her chest. She just held me while I held her and embarrassed her, desperate for something that was familiar; that was stable and accepting. Just holding on to one another.
Eventually, after a long while; after my outburst had blown itself out and I didn’t have anything left to cry out, she carefully rumbled, “Hai, Mikah, what happened? Tell me? In your words?”
I stayed where I was,
kneeling before her, my head bowed to her embrace. “I have done some terrible things.”
A pause.
“Chihirae,” I choked. “I slept with her ladyship. Had sex with her.”
“Huhn,” she rumbled again. I felt it in her chest, like a distant earthquake. “That terrible, a?” she said softly and I didn’t hear any sort of rancor in her voice. Could I have picked up on it if there was? A little later she asked, “Why?”
Why? “Because... I... I wasn’t sure what she would do if I didn’t.”
“Sahh,” she breathed. I felt her carnivore breath ruffling my hair. “That might go some way to explaining the odd questions they were asking,” she murmured.
“Oh,” I flinched. “They asked you about... that?”
“Yes, they asked me about ‘that’,” she said in a softly chiding way. I may have imagined the garnishing of amusement. “And that was the terrible thing?”
I tried to think of what to say and that hesitation said more than words would have.
“Not just that, a?” she said and nuzzled my head. “What happened, Mikah? What did you do to get the Guild involved? Do you want to tell me?”
“A,” I said in a small voice. “I want to tell you. I do.”
“But?” she urged.
“But … I can’t,” I said into the damp fur of her chest, a mixture of sorrow and desperation stabbing inside me. I tried to explain, tried to make her understand why I was doing this and it was so important that she did. “Please… You’ve been dragged into my affairs before, and that was… that was something I never want to happen again. If I told you everything that’d happened, you would be involved again. If you knew what happened, they might ask you. You would either have to lie, or not answer. Things happened that if the Guild became aware you knew of them, I don’t know what they would do.”
“But you…”
“Chihirae,” I whispered urgently, “There were things the Guild doesn’t know about.”
“Huhn. Her ladyship?”
That stung. “A,” I choked. “That, amongst other things.”
“That you won’t tell me about,” she rumbled
I clenched against her. “Please… I will tell you if you really wish me to, but please… don’t.”
“Huhn,” she thought on that for a while. I could feel her breathing, feel the expansion of her ribs. Finally, she sighed. “Very well. I won’t dig into that,” she said and I looked up, looked into her furry face. “I would like to know,” she wrinkled her nose to flash sharp little teeth for me, “but… you may be right.”
I bowed my head to her chest again. “What did they threaten you with? For that agreement?” she asked quietly. I flinched and she only had to think for a second before knowing the answer. “It was me, wasn’t it.”
I didn’t reply, but she kept going in a low voice, turning the concept around in her head.
“That was it, wasn’t it? Threatened me so you would… what? Keep their secrets? They didn’t tell me that.”
“That I would cooperate with them.”
She was quiet for a few seconds, then I felt the pressure as she laid her chin onto my head. “Oh, rot, Mikah. A contract like that with the Guild simply to get your cooperation?” She chittered out loud. “Oh, rot, the trouble you must’ve caused them.”
I shuddered at that. She felt it and hugged me close, holding me, stroking my head. It helped. “Hai, sorry. It’s over now, Mikah,” she whispered and the warm roughness of her tongue gently lathed my ear. “You can forget it now,” she whispered, her breath tickling as much as her tongue had.
And my hand shifted, scratching and stroking across the taught fur of her back, holding her as she held me. There was a feeling of security there. I knew that security was fragile and illusionary, but it was there and I wanted it, I clutched to it like a lifeline. Her dusty scent tickled my nose; I could feel her muscles shifting, her ribs moving with each breath; feel the inhuman heat of her flesh beneath her furry hide, the pebbles of her nipples against my skin. I heard her breath hitch for a moment as I scratched her back and then heard her rumble, “Hai, welcome home, Mikah.”
End
(an hour or so after the end)
A night breeze stole in through the open windows and set the drapes to billowing like pale wraiths. It flitted through the room and explored the shadowy corners: the pictures on the walls, the papers on the desk, the limbs of a little ornamental tree, the clothes strewn heedlessly across the floor. It washed over the bed, cooling the sweat on my skin and mixing with the heat of our panting breaths. Moonlight fluttered with the curtains, a flicker of ghostly light spilling across the floor, across the bed, across the figure kneeling astride me as she moved with an urgency that almost mirrored my own. Her eyes flashed molten brass as they caught a glimmer of light in the night and teeth were a momentary impression of dagger-white in a snarling maw. Hawser-taut hands clenched and clawed in my desperate grip; almost fighting to pull away; almost trying to grab me tighter as she moved, rocking her hips. She was huffing and whining and then snarling, noises that reverberated and built upon themselves as she rocked back and forth until it was a yowl, an over-revving chainsaw on hardwood.
Cut off when the door crashed open and light poured into the room.
Chihirae squalled and twisted and yelped again. I yelled with her as things that weren’t meant to move like that were yanked and a knee caught me in the side and she grabbed for something and went over in a tangle of sheets and limbs. I could see past her to where the bedroom door was hanging wide open. Two shapes stood there, the pair of Mediators: Jenes’ahn holding a lamp high in one hand, a knife in the other, Rohinia brandished his scatter gun. Both of them staring open-mouthed at us.
I also gaped, momentarily shocked. Just for a moment, before the anger erupted like touchpowder, “What the hell… What’re you doing?! Get out! Now!”
“There was noise…” Rohinia started to protest. “Shouting. Ma’am, we thought…he was hurting you.”
“What?” Chihirae’s frazzled head popped up, her muzzle distorted in disbelief and then fury. “Rot you! He was most certainly NOT hurting me!”
The Mediators’ ears went flat. Jenes’ahn was staring. At me. At us. She’d seen me naked before, but not quite so… exposed. “Ma’am… we… “
“You can leave!” Chihirae snapped.
“Now!” I repeated, reaching through the tangled sheets. “Go!”
“But… what are you…”
“Now!” I bellowed in rage and the Mediators ducked aside as a pillow on a flat trajectory flew past them and thumped into the wall on the far side of the hall. They looked at the fallen cushion, then back at us. And dodged another pillow.
“Ma’am? Rohinia appealed to Chihirae. He looked… almost amused.
“Get!” Chihirae snarled. “And shut that door as you leave!”
They retreated, Jenes’ahn scrambling for the door even as she stared at us. My final shot thumped into the wood just as it closed. “Fuck!” I snarled and fell back onto the bed and growled at the ceiling, “I’m going to put them on leashes.”
There was a pause for a few seconds and we just lay there, breathing heavily. Then Chihirae ventured in a considering sort of way, “Did you just throw cushions at Mediators?”
I had.
“Huhn, was it a good idea?”
“Probably not. Rocks, pointy heavy things would have been more effective.”
The mattress shifted in the warm darkness. A warm, hairy mass draped across me and a furry face loomed over and grinned down and this time there was nothing terrifying about it. “Probably wasn’t a good idea,” she said.
“Really?” I asked, reaching up to toy with her cheek tuft.
“After all, we’ll have to go pick them up,” she said and tried to nip at m
y finger.
“Later,” I said, flicking my digit out of the way, then used it to scratch under her chin. It was a reflex action that still felt a bit disturbing on some level, but she leaned into it. “Chihirae?” I asked, stroking down her neck.
“Huhn?” she rumbled.
“There was something a few people mentioned… Something to do with some rumors; some ‘stories’ about me? About us?”
“A?” she inquired, but I saw the flinch.
“Chaeitch may have let slip a few details he… heard about us from, well, somewhere. Know anything about that?”
“I… huhr… I’m not sure…” she started. I could recognize frantic thinking when I saw it.
“Or shall we discuss it later?”
“Later,” she pounced on the opening, looking more than relieved and then grinning at me again with glistening and predatory anticipation. “A, later.”
Much later.
------v------
Afterword.
It’s been a long, strange journey. As with all long roads there’ve been the rough patches; there’ve been the steep hills to climb, the storms, the ice and snow, the icy mountain passes and vertiginous precipices. I’ve weathered those. I’ve survived and come through; sometimes battered and bruised, sometimes wiser and richer. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve had to.
As I moved through the world I’ve been places I never knew existed, met more kinds of people than I’d dreamed possible. And I’ve had to learn the hard way that their world – their civilization and their society - is built from its very foundations on their perceptions. Those are embedded in their civilizations very strata, and those perceptions aren’t anything human. There have been times when misapprehensions and misunderstandings have been able to be cleared up by simply talking, offering proof or explanations. There have been plenty of other times when no explanation is going to alter a perception. What they consider normal is a manifestation of their physiology and their history, an evolution of social adaptations that have led to what they are.