A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 49

She helped him up and as he tried not to fall over, she looked at him as she steadied him at arm's length. The straw and the dirt on her body had fallen away, and she was doing that for him the next instant.

"That was the best time that I've ever had with anybody," he said after noticing that he had control of his mouth again, "Nobody –"

Rudhi placed her fingers against his lips as she shook her head. "Be still while I heal you, Jonas," she said as she looked hard at him and he felt many of his hurts, new and old, fading from him in moments as she went, "I need to know the way of what you are as I go so that I do not do the wrong thing and do more harm than good."

When she was finished – as much as she dared in her relative ignorance of human males, she stood before him and held his genitals very gently in both hands as she looked into his eyes.

"Before this gets any worse for you, I will tell you now that we will never do that again. I took you very close to your death and it was a struggle for me not to take more life from you than what came to me in your fine seed. We are not anything alike and though it is easy for me to see that to your own kind, you are a powerful and fine male but, between us and what we are, you are a very weak being.

I know that this will make you sad to hear, but I like you and I say this not to hurt you.

But it must be said; this was nothing more to me than a bit of play and you have fed me in it, little more. It is my curse to find that I am here on a world with such wonderful people in it – but I have seen none yet that I can hold to my heart and love in the way of my kind. Not one of them would survive it," she said sadly.

If I was not like this – if I was anything at all like you are, I swear to you that I would not ever let you go far from my arms, so you should know that you are not the only one here who does not like the fact that like this, you would not last long with me. I was being very gentle with you."

She looked down for a moment at what she held and caressed so softly, "I am not sorry for what we did at all, only that it cannot be – what I feel already beginning in your heart for me, and so I try to give you a gift here, for what you have done for me. If I can, you will be able to give any female that you couple with more of the gift which you have given me, and more often as well."

She gently released him and she put her arm around his neck to kiss him softly once before she turned and walked away.

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They sat quietly for a while and heard Rudhi come in and go to the bedroom to sleep. Rudhi saw them as she passed by on her way to bed and she smiled at Randi but said nothing to her in her mind. Billy didn't see her, but even by the light of the fire, Randi could see that Rudy was a little beaten up. She seemed happy though, and so Randi said nothing.

It was a few more minutes before Jonas walked through. He didn't appear to see them at all, looking a little unhappy and lost in his own thoughts.

After another few minutes, Randi looked at Billy for a moment. "Would you do me a favor, Billy?"

He nodded, "Sure, if I can."

"I like the way that you look when you're like this," Randi said, "You're really cute and to me, it feels like I've found a friend in a way – as though I've just stumbled on the great guy in school who everybody liked, and I never thought that I'd ever get a chance to meet him, but I have now all that time later, and I find that he's not with anybody and he's a really great guy. Does that make any sense? I mean, I'm trying to describe the feeling the best way that I can, not the facts."

Billy shook his head, "My brother and I were pulled into a hole in the air and then we were here. We were a couple of kids. I was seven then. There was a man there who did it. He fed us and he kept us around for amusement, I guess, and he did teach us to read some and we picked up the rest. We never went to school. Mostly, it was just us out there alone. Before that, we learned from our mother and father, and there were a few teachers. I guess you could say that before we got here, we were a little spoiled.

But the more that I think about it, Randi, I think I understand the feeling that you mean to say."

He smiled then, "But I forgot why we began this."

She laughed a little, "Well, I wanted to ask you if you'd mind going back to the other shape. I like you either way, but I've wanted to see you the other way, now that I'm not freezing to death and scared.

She felt it when he changed then. She'd been leaning on him just a little bit and she noticed it instantly when the feeling of being against a flannel shirt changed. The shirt was gone and when she looked down at his knee, the blue jeans were gone as well, replaced by his mottled fur.

When she looked at his face, she found him looking down, as though he was embarrassed.

"Please don't look like that," she said, "What's wrong?"

"Well, I'm a demon," he said. "I don't know if you can understand it, but human girls were some legendary creatures out of fantasy to us. Hank and I found all kinds of pictures of human women, but we never saw any where we were. I didn't think about it until after I left you when we met, but you're the first true human girl that I've actually touched, and I guess that I was a little afraid of frightening you again."

"You don't frighten me at all," she smiled as she looked at his face, "At first, yeah, but then it was a shock and I was right up against you. Why is your fur not all the same color? I've been meaning to ask."

He shrugged, "To hide better when we hunt. Where I'm from, it's really cold for most of the year, but all-white fur doesn't work as well as this. We lived in the mountains there. The lowlanders called us mountain demons or snow ghosts. To ourselves, we were Tarkroth, but there are only two of us left anywhere and we're not there anymore."

She reached to touch his face for a moment and he allowed it as she studied the patterns there. "The fur on the rest of you is one way, but it's a little different on your face and in a few other places, like your shoulders. More camouflage?"

He shook his head, "There were many clans or tribes of us, each with different markings to show what we are. We were all Tarkroth, but the markings here show that I'm a Ch'arnn. If you get a chance when she's better, take a look at my mother. Females take the clan markings of their males if they're from different clans, but their faces always show what they began as. Beyl'eth and Narreth were born Rohn, so that's what's in my mother's face. My father was a Ch'arnn. I'm half Rohn, but I'll always show that I was born a Ch'arnn."

Randi sat fascinated as she listened, "So, from the sounds of it, there was some intermarriage between the tribes?"

"Yes," he said, "all of the clans were friendly to each other. There wasn't ever a whole lot of intermarriage, but there was always some. The biggest part of that was Rohn females marrying Ch'arnn males, and it happened the other way as well, though not often. The Ch'arnn and the Rohn were very strong allies, and the Ch'arnn were the rulers over all of the Tarkroth. The kings were always Ch'arnn, and it was the law that before a king could rule, he had to take a Rohn wife. I guess it was to keep the alliance strong, and also, if he could survive the courtship, it was seen to be the sign of a good future king."

Randi tilted her head," Survive the courtship?"

Billy smiled with a nod, "All Rohn females are witches. My mother is really strong in that. The intermarriage at the ruling level was so that the future kings would have at least some power and their mother's teachings," he said as he waved his hand and Randi stared as the scene in the front room turned into a vista of snow-covered mountains before her eyes. He showed her glimpses of the lives of a race of demons in the wilderness from his memory. She saw his brother and learned that his name had been Laish. It went on for a time and then it faded so that the room was back to being a simple room in a large house.

Randi sat with her jaw in her lap. "That was wonderful! It was so beautiful there, though I could see that it was really cold. At first, the people looked strange to me, even though you don't at all. But then I knew that I would have been the one who looked strange there. They all looked so strong and yet gentle at the same time. I could see that the females were much smaller than the males, like your mother is next to you.

That was so nice to see," she said, "I liked the way that the mothers would hold their children on their hips and just talk to each other while their kids nursed – the whole thing was so peaceful."

Billy smiled, "That's what I remember. I'm sure that it was a little simple, since I was just a kid then. I missed out on a lot of that because Hank and I were here when we grew up. We wanted to leave the old creep where we lived, and we finally did – but Hank died and I came here alone."

"Who was the beautiful one who was with you the most?" Randi understood what he'd meant about the viewpoint, but to her, it was rather charming.

"That was Narreth," he said, "Remember that I said that she wears the body of Beyl'eth now. As you saw her, that was as she was then. I'm sure that I've made it all look a little rosy through my young eyes at the time – and I guess I saw her that way then."

"Why did everyone come to ask her things?" Randi asked as she saw him look past her into the flames for a while.

"It doesn't mean shit anymore," he said quietly after a moment, "The one that you saw was Queen Narreth as she was before when she lived her own life, in her own body, before my life turned into this."

There were waves of heat shimmering off the ground in the scene before her and when the hot wind blew fitfully, it carried dust and the odd bit of dried-up vegetation with it . Some of the buildings had fallen in and in many places everywhere, she saw machines scattered around.

The viewpoint changed a little as it moved toward a large building and once inside of it, Randi saw Laish again from the back as he ran to a large wheel and beckoned, wanting them to hurry. Then she was looking up into Laish's worried face as he looked down through an opening as the viewpoint changed and she knew that she was climbing a short metal ladder. Once inside, the ladder was hauled up and a hatch closed, and the pair of boy demons hurried to crouch in a compartment of what had once been known as a Boeing B-52H.

Once there, Laish lit a candle so that they could eat something and speak in whispers before the candle was blown out and the demons crawled into a bed made from a sleeping bag and a sheet to hold each other and try to sleep.

"That was my home for most of my life, "Billy said as the scene faded, "I guess I was about nine then. We used to sleep inside a big bomber that was in that building, the one that we climbed into. The machines that were everywhere were airplanes that humans had to fly around in. It was years before I learned that the big thing where we slept was made to drop explosives called bombs. We liked it because that was where we felt safest at night. The man who brought us there would find humans and drink their blood and when we were kids that scared us, so we hid ourselves away every night for a while.

We could close the hatches and lock them. It probably wasn't any safer than anywhere else, but that's where we'd go to hide and sleep in the Radar Navigator's section. There were maps there and sometimes, I'd sit and sweat in there all day, burning candles and looking at the maps. I didn't know any better then, I guess, but I was trying to figure out the way back so that Hank and I could get home."

"Laish looked very scared in the glimpses that I got of him," Randi said in a hushed voice.

"He was," the demon nodded, "and he was the brave one. I was just a notch away from pissing myself every night for a while back then."

"That must have been awful," she said and he shrugged, "Well by then, we'd pretty much gotten the idea that nobody was coming to save us. I forgot all about the home that we had after a while. It wasn't a palace like what I've seen that human kings and queens used to live in, but it was a good place to live."

"Wait a second," Randi said as she shifted a little for comfort, "Can I lean on you more?" she asked and he nodded, "Sure. I like it."

She moved to stay on the floor, but turned around a little so that she was sideways to him as she sat cross-legged between his knees with his left leg bent over her knees. As she settled against him a little, Randi looked up. "You said that I saw Queen Narreth. Your mother was the queen?"

He nodded a little uncomfortably, "Uh-huh, but all of that's gone, Randi. The last time that I saw it was in a dream where I met my mother as the ghost that she'd become. We have dreams which reflect reality, so I saw the place that I showed you as it is now, under the broken pieces of the mountain behind it."

He raised his hand to show her, but Randi reached to stop him, "Please don't show me that. Billy," she said softly, "Not unless you want to see me cry, 'cause I'm pretty sure that I would. I don't need to know about everything that happened. I'm just sad to know what you had and lost at such an early age."

She thought for a second, "So if none of that had happened, Laish would have been the king one day?"

He shook his head, "Tarkroth queens always spawn twice, not far apart at first. The first child might be a girl or a boy, but the second one is always a boy. The first child was always the one whose role was to protect the second one their whole lives until the second one rose to become king. Hank always looked out for me in everything. We're just wired that way, I guess."

He looked at her and smiled a little, "I got nothing from all of this, other than the abilities that I'd have needed one day to rule there. I didn't want any of it – it just came to me here while I wasn't looking. I'm not the king of anything and I never was, though Beyl'eth always made noises that I was.

I'm just a demon with a history that I never got to live in, that's all."

Randi felt the pressure against her leg, not far above her knee and she knew what it was right away, so she reached to his surprise and a bit of shock as she moved her leg a little and took his hardening shaft in her hand very gently to move it so that it rested against her thigh and might be a little less uncomfortable than it had to have been getting where it was. She hadn't meant to, but the way that her leg had been must have been pressing against him. She knew that she was right after a moment's thought about the warmth that she'd felt there.

"Sorry about that," she smiled a little ruefully as she touched it lightly, "I didn't mean to cause that. I wasn't thinking. Is that better?"

Billy nodded, but he was still a little surprised, and he saw her little grin, "I don't mind it if that happens, Billy. I used to have somebody for me once, so it's not like I'm gonna get all flustered because I accidentally caused that to get a little hard. I am a farm girl, you know. The only thing that's different is that it's a demon's and it belongs to somebody that I'm beginning to see as a friend. Just don't start rubbing it on me."

She raised her hand and looked at the wetness of the thin fluid on her fingers in the dim light of the fire, "Crap," she said and she amazed him further as her clothing disappeared, "I don't have anything to wipe this off with," she shrugged as she wiped her fingers against her bare leg for a moment.

She looked at him and almost laughed at his expression, "Don't you get your hopes up," she said with a little chuckle as she waved her other index finger at him, "I like you. I just don't like you enough, "she smiled as she leaned against him more and pulled his arms around her.

"I might, though," she sighed as she felt the warmth and comfort of his soft fur against her. Right then, she felt as though she could have been happy forever just snuggled up against him like this with her head on his shoulder.

He looked at Randi and she looked back. "What?" she asked.

"I feel something like ... as though you have accepted something," he said, "I don't know what it is, but I feel it."

"I don't know," she said, "but I was alone here for a long time, and I guess that I can understand how you felt, always wanting to feel safe. After what Rudy did to save my life, I don't feel so nervous anymore."

She pressed her head against him for a moment as she spoke. "I know that you were thinking that I'd be afraid of you, but the more that we talk, I'm beginning to think of you as the biggest, best teddy bear in the world.

She had to explain what a teddy bear was after that, but Billy smiled once he understood. "I'd better be going," she said after a few more minutes, "or I'll want to feel that body against me all night, and I'm not anywhere near ready for that."

He nodded, "I think that I finally understand about you and some of what you've been through yourself. Now I'm the one who is sad. I used to read books in the library at the base, and there was a section for their children. So I read all that I could to see what it was like to be a human child. From what I read, what happened to you shouldn't have happened any more than what happened to me and Hank. I think my favorites were about a girl named Trixie."

Randi smirked a little, "Billy, I read those books too. I don't remember the name of where Trixie Whatever-her-name-was grew up, but those books painted things a lot rosier than your memories from when you were little. Neither one of us is lucky enough to be living a fairytale."

She moved to get herself a little untangled so that she could stand, "After you brought me home that day," she said, "I thought about you for a long time afterward, and I suddenly knew that you'd never have hurt me, so it's not a big jump for me to want your friendship the way that I seem to, but I'm not the same girl that you pulled against you and tried so hard to warm up as I was that day. I've got to think about that, Billy."

"Randi," he whispered looking up with a little sadness, "I'm just a fucking demon. What the hell would you want with somebody like me anyway?"

She didn't answer. She just looked down at what she saw now standing up in his lap, almost pressed against his abdomen. "What are you gonna do about that?" she asked.

He looked surprised, "Nothing," he said with a shrug, "It'll give up and go down in a little while."

He watched as Randi rolled her eyes, "Wrong answer, Handsome. I'd have felt better if you'd just have said that you were gonna take that up to the hayloft and do what comes naturally to a male like you. Give me a little room here," she said as she reached down to push against the inside of his thigh.

Randi Farber thought back to the first scenes that he'd shown her, of people like him living their lives in a bit of happiness and peace. She was sure that they were his honest memories from when he was just a little boy. It had amazed her, the way that she could look around in them, as though she was seeing everything with her own eyes then. She was thinking of something that she'd seen there and she was certain that he hadn't noticed it, but she had.

She didn't know much about the culture of those long-dead ones there in that snowy paradise, but she did see it as a pair of young adult demons stood off to the side in the panorama. Billy might not have noticed or maybe it was just a common thing which was such an everyday occurrence there that it was just not a big deal. She'd seen the two of them standing almost face to face with the male's wings around the female. From what she now knew of the range of expressions of his kind and their motions, she knew that they'd been doing some heavy petting between them standing up.