A Beautiful Beast for Christmas

All that she knew of this person was that she was a female from off-world -- though that could fit most people here -- and that her name was Khensa. She tried, but she couldn't place the name for its origins at all and had given up.

She sent a text, asking Khensa if she was still going to be able to make their meeting.

The reply was almost instant.

"On the way now. I don't know the mall very well at all, so I might be a little late, but I hope not."

Debbie was surprised again. Whoever Khensa was, she never abbreviated much of anything in her texts to Debbie, and she'd asked that Debbie not do too much of it either, since English wasn't her language.

It always knocked Debbie on her ass a little. Not her language? Khensa's written English was better than about anyone's around there.

She sipped her coffee and waited while looking around now and then, and wondering what Khensa looked like.

In a little while, ... she heard the soft and tinny sound of someone listening to some music through earpods in the quiet of the almost deserted early morning at the mall.

For one thing, it had to be plenty loud and for another, the music was a little different. It was heavy on very complex rhythms, though the melody was a little subdued -- when Debbie could hear it at all.

She looked up, trying to locate the source of the sounds in the sparsely populated mall and then ...

She watched a tall female come almost straight down the middle of the mall and she tried not to stare. The person was walking in just a little bit of a hurry and the only way that Debbie had to really know it at all was by the long, slow strides that the female was taking.

Everything else, from hand motions to the way that she carried her long body was pure runway model.

Debbie didn't see much of any footwear at all and it took her a second to realize that the other soft sounds that she heard were from the girl's toenails on the synthetic marble flooring. She saw a sort of an abbreviated tank top which ended a fair distance above her navel, and she could also see the way that the smallish breasts in there bounced from her long and purposeful strides.

Below that, she wore tight jeans. Overtop, there was a long Afghan-style coat, open all the way.

Her hair had to be really long, to Debbie's way of thinking.

Well, she was tall and though her hair was done in a cornrow style, it still hung most of the way down her back.

She knew that this couldn't be Khensa. Why would a girl dressed that way be looking for a room out among the vacation craft in a crappy spaceport like Nanworth?

A lot of people were staring at her for a few reasons, Debbie guessed, and she realized that she likely wore the same sort of expression right then herself -- so she made a point to change it, not wanting to be rude.

All the same, though, she was looking.

The girl walked on, looking left and right at the stores and the shops -- and looking right through any people looking at her at the same time as those long legs carried her on.

Debbie watched in a little awe at the way that the girl walked as though she couldn't have cared less over the way that the other people were staring openly at her.

Debbie guessed that she must have been looking for more than half a minute and then the girl looked right at her for just a split-second. Debbie saw a very minute second-take and the barest, yet sincere-looking pleasant smile before the girl walked on, still looking one way and then the other.

Just as the girl was about to pass by where Debbie sat, her ears flicked up a little more and looked even more pointed and then the girl turned and walked straight into the coffee shop.

Debbie watched her hips as she walked away for a few seconds, amazed at how she could 'see' those lean hips by their movements right through the long coat.

Then she turned away and resumed looking for Khensa. She thought about the female and looked once a couple of minutes later to see her sit down at a table alone near the window.

Debbie sighed. Not that she'd been thinking of it at all, but the beautiful female's ethnicity reminded her of the incident a few weeks earlier which had caused the large changes that Debbie was making in her life.

The mystery female was an Anubian, one of the very dark ones. Her hair was as black as midnight and her very short fur -- what was visible, anyway -- was so black and lustrous that it almost appeared blue.

She had the same long face as the male that she'd seen; the long nose over the snout which sometimes showed just a hint of the tips of her canine teeth at the corners of her jaw. This one was a female however, and the pure beauty in that face was remarkable.

Debbie didn't look again -- well at least not for several minutes. She couldn't help it, wondering how these things could look so, ... incredibly attractive and obviously full of grace.

Debbie would never consider it, but she was beautiful in her own way. There had been a time when she could have been a model herself. In fact, she could still make a living like that -- if she only knew how and could look at herself a little objectively.

But she couldn't, being the daughter of a pair of botanists who were always living out on the edges of someplace as they studied what grew there. She'd met Robby at the school dance when they were seventeen and in their final year. She'd never met him before since she was one of the 'out students' who attended via vid-link. That dance had been the first time that she'd ever been there in person.

Their love had been a natural thing and they'd set off together to go to college on another rock out in space. The next thing they knew, they were married. Aside from her husband's untimely demise, their life together had been a rather happy one.

Debbie still had the same figure and she still had her long, honey-blonde hair, but, ...

She had trouble meeting people, being where she was from and, ...

She didn't have a clue about modeling, though she liked to look at the photos in the online magazines that she read now and then.

She tried to sip her coffee and found that she'd already finished it, sipping the way that she had to cover her nervousness. She looked at the time on her phone and she saw that Khensa was now about five minutes late.

"Khensa," she sent, "I'm going to buy a coffee if Ur still coming."

Khensa replied right away.

"Do that and I'll meet you in a minute. Take a table by the window if you can, so I'll know who you are and if I'm even at the right shop."

Debbie sort of stared at her phone a little uneasily at that, not really feeling comfortable with it. She went back inside and bought another cup of coffee and she was a little relieved to see that there were no free tables at the window right then so she took another one which was deserted.

She glanced over toward the Anubian girl and watched for a few seconds as she had a very short conversation with a couple of young human men who were trying to pick her up.

She heard very little of what was said other than perhaps a few lines from the female in that accent, the same one that she'd heard from the one back in the impound.

"- No. I have no interest in either of you. Please bother someone of your own species. I am aware of the way that you refer to people of my kind. So that you know, we see you as rather crude apes."

Debbie found herself looking at her phone with raised eyebrows, now that she remembered the cool disdain that she'd always seen on those faces.

Apes, huh?

As she thought about that, she didn't notice it as the place emptied out. To a place such as that, it was the normal randomness of the business day. There were predictable busy periods and in between those, there was just the way that people seem to find that they wanted what was sold there with a little bit of synchronicity. Right then, there were only two customers in the whole place.

Debbie was growing a little tired of waiting, so she sent, "I'm in the coffee shop."

What she read next was, "I know. I'm here too."

Debbie stared at her phone and wondered if she ought to look up. She did finally and she turned her head.

The Anubian sat there looking at her with a sort of slightly hopeful little smile.

Until that moment, Debbie would have said that in her opinion, humans were the most attractive species known. What she was looking at now as she tried not to stare was forcing her to revise her opinion. She suddenly felt a desire to be an Anubian girl, if she could just look a little like this one in some way on even her worst day.

The other female's smile widened a little, "I made my guess when it was only us here in the whole place. May I come over and join you?"

Debbie nodded and seconds later, she was looking at the beautiful creature as they shook hands for a moment. The more that she thought about it, the more Debbie wanted to know -- or at least clear the air.

"Forgive me," she began, "but I couldn't help overhearing what you said to those guys. You consider us as apes?"

There was surprise written on the other one's features for a split-second.

"I mean, I knew that you wanted to blow them off," Debbie said, "But -- well, is that the way that we're seen by Anubians?"

The female shook her head, "Yes, no, and not particularly. By some few, yes, but I think they'd find something to use in a derogatory sense no matter what. The majority do not think that way, and most have never thought about it at all. My remark was not meant to include you.

You see, almost all of us do not tell falsehoods. So it can be a bit of a challenge at times such as you saw. I wished for those two to leave me alone. What I said was that we as a people or a group or at least some of us see humans that way. I did not include myself, though I left it unsaid.

As far as the rest, I do know that many humans regard us as dog creatures of some sort. I used that as a springboard to work my comment against as though in retaliation."

She tilted her head a little then, looking concerned, "Or will what you overheard cause you and I difficulties? If so, then please say it and I will leave. I truly meant no insult to you."

"No, please don't go," Debbie sighed, "It was just a sort of shock to overhear and well, I'm afraid that I don't really get it. We don't think of ourselves as even connected to -- "

"But you are," the girl smiled without judgement, "It is where you came from. You are advanced now and masters of your great civilisation just as we are the masters or our own, but the roots are still to be seen by outsiders such as me. I didn't say anything about ugly - even to those ones that I was speaking to. I do not consider you to be ugly as a people at all. It is only where you came from.

My personal opinion is that you are startlingly beautiful to me.

Look at me. We hold ourselves in high regard the same as humans do themselves, yet we are descended from something which rather resembles the common jackal on Earth."

She grinned a little, "And we try not to think about that too much either."

"But whenever I've seen any of your people, though it's not very often," Debbie said, "They all seem to carry the same expression, as though they're so sorry that they have to be here with the riff-raff."

Khensa leaned forward with a conspiratorial sort of sly little grin, "It is an affectation," she smiled, "How better to hide how alone and different you feel in crowds of others who are not the same thing as you are?"

She held out her hand again, "I would like to do this properly. I am Khensa Ahhotep -- "

The rest was a strange sort of gurgling yerf to Debbie's ears and she asked for it to be repeated. She only heard the same thing a second time and knew that she'd never manage it.

"I'm sorry, Khensa," she said with a shrug, "That last part is something that I can't even begin -- "

Khensa laughed as she nodded, "It's alright. I know that much of our speech requires a mouth like mine. I only said it to be complete since that is my name."

Debbie smiled and noticed that they were still shaking hands, "I'm Debbie Millhouse."

Khensa shook her head, "I will use that to address you if you wish, but I know that 'Debbie' is a short form for Deborah, which I much prefer. But have you no middle name?"

"Deborah Lisette La Croix, is my birth name -- which I'm thinking of going back to, now that I have the thought in my head," Debbie smiled.

"A very lovely name," Khensa nodded, "but how does 'Millhouse' come into it?"

"My married name," Debbie said "I'm a widow. I lost Robby three years ago."

"I'm so sorry," Khensa said, reaching for Debbie's arm again, "I think that you're far too young to feel that loss."

"It's alright," the human said quietly, "I've gotten used to being alone again.

Where does your middle name come from? Even your first name, ... "

The Anubian smiled, "When our two kinds discovered each other about a hundred years ago in your time units, we found out about your history and learned then of the old Egyptian culture on your home world. Through that, we came to know of the old god Anubis, which is where humans found the term they use to describe us.

To ourselves and each other, we are the Shm'Sha -- spoken as 'Shm-ShA' by us. If you shift the emphasis to the other syllable, it carries a rather different meaning, so you must either be careful or just call me an Anubian. We feel no slight in it and many would likely prefer to hear it from humans.

Our learning of that culture was a great coincidence, but nothing more. All the same, it caused several fashion trends where I come from and one of them was in the popular names we used for children. Khensa was a warrior queen back there and I believe that Ahhotep was a famous priestess of some sort."

"I like your names," Debbie smiled, "Well, the two that I can even pronounce.

Why are you looking for a place out here? You look pretty well-heeled to me. Actually, you look like a model, to be honest."

Khensa laughed a little at that. "I was a model," she smiled, "But I have grown too old and a little too often-seen back on my world. I know that I could do well on Earth if I wished to continue, but to me, the lifestyle only leads one to develop a, ... well let us say a jaded point of view where one becomes just so bored with everything. That is what had happened to me."

She shrugged, "No matter what, I am a person, and people -- that is, most real people, the ones who buy the fashions that I modeled, do not live their lives as though they were at a continuous party which never ended.

Also, there was a catastrophic sadness which came to me.

You see, I am from a noble family - one of three which are tied together. Our purpose over thousands of Earth years was to guard and protect the members of our ruling house. There was an attempt to overthrow that house and though the families prevailed, it was a very near thing.

I was not even there at the time. I was either modeling or as one of several, my job was to protect an ambassador. When the dust settled, I was released and sent away.

Most of the three families who survived are now wanderers, too ashamed to ever return home. The knife fell so hard and fast that I was flying in a small diplomatic craft at the time that I was informed. I asked where I was to leave the craft and I was told that I could have it as my own -- as long as I never returned.

I didn't know what to do and for a time, I just wandered, hoping that something might come to me -- and it did, finally.

I remembered a time when I was younger and I had the love of a good male. We eventually parted because our duties would take us far from each other, and it was very hard for us to do, but we had to do it. Neither one of us could tell our superiors that we didn't wish to do what our purpose was."

She looked off out into the mall for a moment at a store on the other side which was decorated in a Christmas motif.

"You might laugh to hear it, but there are some things which have always been thought of as human that have made their transference to our culture.

My people have little interest in the human concept of Christianity by itself, since the players mean nothing to us. But the tradition of Christmas as a festive and giving time has actually become widely popular among the Shm'Sha.

I had my little place to live and my male and I spent our Christmas there together like a pair of human children with stars in our eyes. I don't know if it was intended to be the true message of Christmas back there on your home world, but to me, it was a time to feel very thankful for what I had.

I wanted for nothing and neither did he, and as the days led up to the night of Christmas Eve and the following morning, we ran around and shopped and ate and we found others who were not as fortunate as we were and we gave what we could to them before we returned to my home and we made love right there on the floor in some furs the whole night long.

I have never forgotten that one magical night.

The next week, we learned that we could not stay together and we parted. I have not seen him since that time."

She looked over at Debbie -- who smiled back from where she sat with her chin on her arm.

Khensa sniffled a little and wiped her tears for a moment. "As I wandered from one place to another, I had a thought that if I was released from the service of a family which mine had protected and served for so long, then there could be only two outcomes for that male.

He is either dead from the fighting, or he was released as well.

I have heard that he had to serve on some merchant vessel. From what I was able to piece together, he is free, and that he came this way not long ago.

For all that I know, he might be married by now to someone else, but I wish to see my cousin again, at least one more time. I need to know that he truly has his freedom and that he is well."

Debbie blinked for a moment, "He was your cousin?"

Khensa nodded, "Yes. There is nothing wrong in it to Shm'Sha people. It was even important among the three families, since we were nobles and we knew what we had that way.

I learned that among your ancient Egyptians, it was common to marry one's brother among royalty. That is not allowed where we came from at all, though some have done it secretly to follow the Egyptian fashion a little too slavishly for my taste.

My cousin and I loved each other very much. I often wish that we had run away together to some other world and culture.

A very romantic idea, I think, but not very practical."

"I think that's about the nicest little Christmas story that I've ever heard -- even though it's a sad one," Debbie smiled, "and I hope that you can find him, but, ..."

Khensa came back to herself, "I have some money. What I wish is to find a clean, safe and inexpensive place to live while I search for him, so that if he is not here, I am not encumbered with property or leases.

I have been searching with my little craft, but it is a small one, not built to really live aboard even by one for very long, unless you travel in cryo."

They sat for a minute and then Debbie offered to buy the next coffee. As she got up to go to the counter, she wondered about something.

She found that she liked Khensa very much in just a short time, though they didn't know each other much at all. That wasn't the point.

Debbie had been sitting there listening and she felt something a little strange in her. She separated out the pure loveliness and grace that she saw and then she set aside the very exoticness of Khensa -- her ways and mannerisms and her obviously considerable intellect.

No, she thought, there was something there tugging at her somehow. She just couldn't get what it was until she was on her way back to the table.