Close Encounters 07: of the 10th Kind

I know, distantly, that I'm supposed to be glad. Kay is home. My girlfriend, my fierce soulmate, has found her way home after being kidnapped and enslaved (and worse). That's good. Isn't it? I know I would've given several body parts for a realistic shot at returning to Earth during my stay at Vurn X'lora.

But then her eyes find me again, and I see it. Hesitation. Indecision. Unwillingness. Reluctant relief flares up inside my breast.

Then, Bane's voice rings out next to me, stonier than I ever heard it.

"I want her to leave."

The relief petrifies until it's hard and cold like his voice.

I look at him full of pleading and confusion. "But... why?" God, I sound like a little girl.

Bane looks at Kay. She looks back at him.

"Because she left," he says.

I glower. And glower. And still, there is no explanation forthcoming. My teeth are grinding.

"What do you mean, 'she left'?" I demand of him, fuming. You make no fucking sense, man. "When? What-?"

"She ran away," Bane says. His tail tucks itself around his waist and pulls tight.

I'm puzzled. And I'm getting mad. And also panicked because I don't understand, and I have a feeling that my not understanding before the time runs out will cause things to happen that I don't want to happen. Things that won't un-happen.

"'She ran away'?" I quote him. "Like... in the beginning? When you brought her on the ship? When I freed her from the box, or-" I wreck my brain trying to figure out his meaning. "She ran away from you in Tulun D'tel, or-"

"You challenged her," Bane interrupts me and slides his brass-colored gaze to me. "You offered. And she ran away."

I offered...? Oh. "You mean when I, uh, propositioned her?" For the foursome.

His silence indicates... Well, it indicates nothing at all, really. Except that this isn't my first Bane-deo. I know an affirmative silence when I hear it.

My memories flash back to that moment. Me, cuddled up with him and Rune, basking in post-coital bliss and trying to get my body back under control. Her, watching from between the ferns. My little monologue. A cordial invitation. All cards on the proverbial table. Her vanishing from the scene, retreating into her cave.

The start of this strange, semi-violent, week-long contest between the three of them, and the tragic erstwhile end of the comfortable cuddles.

So she left. So fucking what?

"And?" I demand, holding my palms up. "What's the big deal here?"

"She left," Bane repeats, and I don't think I've ever heard his voice so full of... indignation? His jack-o'-lantern eyes almost throw sparks with outrage. I'm honestly a tiny, little bit scared of him like this, and I can suddenly see the great General that slaughtered his way through the ranks on sheer will.

"When you offer, there is take or spurn." He snarls up his lip, showing his pointy teeth. "A fortune once spurned is never deserved."

I hold his intense gaze even as I shiver when he says the word 'take' - with the same force that he uses to shove his cock into my cunt - and then shiver again, more happily, when the fact that he just called me and my proposal a 'fortune' percolates through my mind. The tips of my ears go a little hot. Aw shucks, man. Way to casually make a girl feel like the queen of the stars. His anger on my behalf is sweet in an unhealthy kind of way. I can't help but appreciate it a little.

"A woman is allowed to think things through, Bane," I chide him as gently as I can while my heart judders in my throat. "To wait and see and sleep on it. So is a man, by the way. And it was never a time-limited offer to begin with. It never came with any caveats or footnotes. It never came with the implicit - or explicit - demand of one certain outcome, either. She is one-thousand percent allowed to pass up on my offer, without being, what, exiled for it." I look to Kay to make sure she heard me clearly as well.

Bane just exhales and somehow manages to make it sound exasperated.

Yeah, yeah, I'm not getting the Dryth'ian nuances here. Apparently, I've been jilted and rejected; I, my family, and my cow dishonored; my value besmirched - all because she didn't immediately come when I called?

Excuse my French, but what-thefuck-ever.

"I love you, Bane," I tell him and tell myself to hold it together for five more minutes. This shit needs to be sorted. I can bawl later. "I love you, and I love Rune, and I have even more love to offer. It is my business alone how patient I am with an offer." I nod my chin towards Kay. "And then the ball is entirely in her court, and she should be able to make whatever move she wants, at her own pace. That's how choice works. For humans, anyway. For me, anyway." I search his face, silently asking him to understand. "I wouldn't want her otherwise. I wouldn't be able to live with myself."

He's about to say something else, but for once I wish he'd just stay silent. I turn and walk towards Kay, coming to a halt a couple of steps before her. Her eyes flit from me to Bane and back, so full of uncertainty that it offends and hurts me. I don't want her to be uncertain, ever. It's partially my fault that she is in this position.

She is standing so close to the edge of the ramp. Just one half-step back and she would be touching the moss-grass-covered soil of this planet that is hers - or just one small vine that extends out and grasps her ankle-

I decide then and there that I intensely dislike this planet. It's so pretty and so interesting and I'd like to leave. Right now. I'd like for us to leave, ALL of us. My skin itches with the need to leave. I push it down.

"I failed you, Kay," I admit to her, to myself, to the boys. "I should have made more of an effort to understand the dynamic between everyone here, and the implications. I didn't even realize... I'm sorry."

Kay's head tilts a little to the side, just slightly, and blinks.

I will miss her. I realize this and it jolts through me. I haven't really missed my own family back on Earth, or any of my friends and acquaintances there in particular - I never took the time to look back - but I will miss this person.

I really don't want to miss this person. I don't want to miss out on the experience of us together.

My eyes well up. I croak a "sorry" and swallow hard.

Her head slowly tilts in the other direction. She blinks again.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I might have misinterpreted that stare as vacant. But there's plenty going on behind her eyes. She watches everything, and she reflects, silently, always.

"Kay. Tell us. Do you want to stay here on this planet?" My voice wavers but holds.

Do you want to leave me?

She looks towards the wilderness once more. As she moves her body, the seam of her gill gently slides open. Crimson filaments ooze out and flare wide, then start a gentle wave, apparently catching something that is in the air.

There is no doubt that Kay is of this world. Part of this place.

My brain scrambles madly to find a compromise. Okay, well, if she wants to stay, maybe we can stay, as well? We'd just have to hide Bane and Rune, somehow. I'm pretty sure they're enemies of the state or some such. Oh, and me, too, probably, on account of all the Dryth... supremacy... stuff. And I don't know if I could physically survive here. The air is making me nauseous... but maybe I could get used to it? Or wear a gas mask? Maybe it's better by the ocean - they always say that people with respiratory sicknesses get better by the ocean, right? Or, like, maybe we could repurpose our spaceship into a real ship? The ocean certainly looks to be plenty big, maybe... But Kay is obviously a woodland creature, so... maybe there's a forest by the ocean somewhere? That's a thing that exists, right? Like, mangroves? Or we could, like, build a floating forest...

I watch her watching the endless forest, stretching to the horizon. No forest we could build would ever be big enough for Kay. I sigh.

"I don't know if you have missed this place the whole time," I grudgingly admit to her. "I don't know if you have family or friends to get back to. I don't know how long you've been gone; how old you were when you were taken... or if that makes a difference to Drahta at all. Do you feel a... like, a pull? Towards home?" We watch the rolling mists for a moment. "Do you consider this place home, Kay?"

She huffs - the filaments of her gill move and huff along with her in the most peculiar way - and gives me her attention again, and suddenly I'm so afraid of an answer and a decision that I keep going, except in a weirdly loud voice.

"Because, you see, uhm, I hope that you know that this-" I gesture at the massive spaceship behind me, and then at Rune, Bane, and myself- "is also... it's also home. For you. Or it could be if you've got a vacancy, and, and maybe give it some more time. We're... I'm offering, you know? If you're interested."

She looks up at the spaceship for a time.

I try to see what she must be seeing, and... sigh. I mean, that spaceship, admittedly, is really just a tin can aimlessly hurtling through space. After this stopover, it has no particular route or destination as far as I know. It is big enough for a whole colony to fit in, so it is far too large and empty for just four people, but it can simultaneously feel very small if experienced continuously over long periods of time - especially to someone who is a creature of the forest. It has no mists, no twinkling ocean, no sky to speak of with or without planetary rings, the food is somewhat lacking in variety, and the company ranges from reticent to chatterbox and from horny to mildly threatening. There's no Wi-Fi. Not a single book to read. Even the view usually leaves surprisingly much to be desired.

It doesn't look super-enticing on paper, does it?

"If you need more time to think this over..." I swear I can hear Bane growl behind me, and I fight the urge to shush him. I'm not a shusher. I never wanted to be a shusher, but damn it, he really needs to-

Suddenly, Kay whirls around to me and is right there, in my face, and so are her feelers as they attack my head. They make contact and a flash of a moving picture goes through my brain. Rune, armed and armored, speckled with some blood, looking down at me from what appears to be a tremendous height - I'm lying on the floor at his feet, I think? - and his mouth is moving... and then there is greenish sky, and pain like someone stabbed a finger into my eye socket, and it all cuts to black.

With a yowl of sudden pain, I fall into a crouch and grab my forehead.

Above me, all hell breaks loose. There's a roaring shout, and a yip like that of a kicked dog tapering into the hiss of a big cat, the screech of a war bird... It's generally a zoo.

"Stop!" I gasp and blindly stretch up one hand like I'm at school and trying to get the teacher's attention. I'd wave with both hands, but the other is busy holding my poor throbbing skull lest it bursts like a watermelon with too many rubber bands around it. "Stop! Stop fighting, dammit! Fuck!"

Someone grabs my raised hand by the wrist and pulls me back up to my feet. Rune. Just the person I was looking for.

"What did you tell her?" I demand to know - quite loudly, even though speaking does to my brain what the buzz of a dentist's drill does to a hollow tooth. I pull my hand from his grip and push against his chest with it. (It's a habit.)

"What did you tell her when you fought with her in Tulun D'tel? Before you brought her onto the ship, what did you tell her?"

Belatedly, it occurs to me that he doesn't understand me. Grrr, damn translator chips. I'm so over this language barrier. I turn to Bane - who's half-crouched and has his blazing eyes fixed on Kay - and urge him, none too diplomatically, "Quit dicking around with Kay. Translate my question. Ask him!" Then add, "Bane, please," because I love the jerk.

Bane resists for a moment, then relaxes in the most glacial fashion, and eventually relays my question.

"U'l-thennh'akh Y'Dryth-sa," Rune explains. "I vowed I would take her home."

***

"You vowed you'd take Kay home," I repeat Rune's words, confirming with Kay via a glance at her, hoping that she'd react if this turned out to be inaccurate somehow - all just one big, hilarious misunderstanding. But she just looks at each of us in turn, warily, from her own half-crouched position.

"Let me guess. This vow is super-important? Like, immensely? Quintessential Dryth-ness and honor and stuff?"

Bane nods a curt 'yes' and bares a fang, clearly not amused by my cavalierness. Cavalierliness. Cavalierity. Whatever.

Well, he can cope right about now. I turn to Kay.

"And I guess you, Kay, feel like you need to let him fulfill that vow?"

Kay nods as well, more readily. She knows Rune saved her bacon, and that she owes him.

"When I asked you to join us... You wanted to, really, didn't you? But Rune had given you his word that you'd go home, and that's why you felt you needed to let him bring you here. Yes?"

Kay nods twice, once for each question.

I look to Bane again. "You think she should've honored me instead of allowing Rune to honor his vow, huh? That's what made you so angry?"

Bane does and says nothing in that affirmative way of his. Rune's bird gives a long-suffering sort of sigh, which is plenty in terms of commentary.

I sigh as well. Because the alternative is to scream.

God damn this entire alien race and its shite ideas of honor and propriety. You'd think that a crown prince who basically said "fuck it all" to his rightful throne, an army general who took said runaway crown prince for a joyride to a space brothel to pick up a fuck-toy, and a wild woman that was apparently abandoned by everyone and, if not for my pigheadedness, would have been put in a box and shipped off to a planet where her male counterparts can't even be arsed to be interested in what she eats... You'd think that three individuals like that would be a little bit more flexible in their principles! But nooo!

Breathe, Val. Deep breaths.

"Rune," I address my Royal Highness first since I'm pretty sure of his answer. "Do you object to Kay being on our ship, or with me, or with us, in any way, shape, or form?"

Bane grudgingly relays for me again. Bane glances at Kay and shakes his head. The crow shakes its head in tandem and blinks a curious eye at Kay's form, particularly her tits (which look fucking fabulous in this light, all gleaming with moisture from the air and the nipples pebbled up and...). I almost tisk and suppress a grim smile. Males. Universal horndogs.

With a deep inhale for patience, I turn to Bane next. My General.

"Apart from her hesitation, do you have any other objections to her being with us?" I demand to know of him.

He still does and says nothing, but this time it's clearly negatory. (Don't ask me, it's magic.)

As I watch him, his gaze also slides towards Kay, and a faint echo of possessive longing washes over me. Oh, he wants her on our ship and in his grasp, all right. Just like he wants Rune, and me, in his grasp, under his control and care. He's like an ultimate intergalactic Daddy Dom (a little more Dom than Daddy, to be fair) who needs to free enslaved and caged females (and males) and put them on his spaceship because that's what makes him content and happy.

He's just too bent on sticking to his friggin' principles, the stubborn, uncommunicative, self-sacrificing, self-denying boob.

With a mighty huff, I grab Kay by the arm and pull her one step off the ramp. It's like stepping off a slightly elevated curb. She's too surprised to react or resist me and basically tumbles after me. Our bare feet sink into the squishy-and-also-prickly growth that covers the plateau, causing yellowish puffs of what are probably spores to waft around our calves. Ew. Let's hope that washes off.

"Oh, look, Kay! You're home," I tell her, doing a ta-daah with my hands and gesturing at the ground around us.

As though she just discovered them there below her knees, she considers her own feet intently, blinking.

I look at Rune, gesturing at Kay. "She's arrived. You brought her home. Mission accomplished. Vow fulfilled. Yes?"

Grumbling his words so much that my translator doesn't pick them up, Bane translates the message. Rune also gives Kay's feet a long look, examines how her freaky toes dig into the moss for a beat or two, and then nods with an exhalation.

"Wonderful," I snap, impatient and absolutely over this whole drama, and turn to Bane next as I take the most obnoxiously ostentatious steppy-step back onto the ramp. "Bane, do you see this? We're here. She's not. She left. Done."

His tail slowly unloops from his waist as he gives me the pissiest of looks. But there's nothing he can do. I am technically correct, and we all know that that's the best kind of correct. I can almost see the 'insubordinate' wafting through the air between us, like one of those sky banners pulled by a tiny plane. I choose to ignore it, for now, knowing it'll come to bite me in the... well.

"Goooood," I sing (a little patronizingly) (okay, a lot patronizingly), then make a show of clapping my eyes on the A'Draht for the first time. "Kay! Girl! How positively splendiferous to meet you again, here, so coincidentally and all." I wink exaggeratedly at her because it's not often that an opportunity for a good, exaggerated wink presents itself.

Then I reach down and take both of her hands in both of mine.

"Listen, love, would you like to come fly around space with us?"

There's a cold gust of wind and some of the fine mist is blown over the plateau. My skin prickles and I'm suddenly aware that we're standing around in the open, absolutely nekkid.

I'm suddenly very ready to go home. To leave. My neck prickles with tension. The bird in my mind is suddenly so still, he's almost... absent. And I feel the loss like you feel the sudden chill when a cloud blocks the sun.

Focus, Val.

"None of us really know where we're going, exactly," I tell Kay (or rather Kay's hands in mine because I kinda can't bring myself to look her in the eyes... just in case she... decides to... stay) with an embarrassed sort of shrug, "so it might not be the smartest thing for you to follow any one of us, let alone all three."

It's sad but true. She has to know, though.

"We're staying out of the way of any other Dryth, that's for sure, and I hope we'll never see a single Krgotu again, but other than that, the universe is our oyster. I'm sure there are loads of great places worth seeing. And, you know... if all turns out to be rubbish, we could always come back here. Or go to a place that's like this." I shrug again helplessly. "You know. Settle together somewhere, Bane, Rune, you, and me. If you like."

The moment I hear the words as they come out of my mouth, pure yearning surges inside me for that future. An island. Or a beach? Maybe a cabin in the woods. Something like that. The four of us, our own little place, living off the land, and nobody else for a good, long while. Waking up together. Exploring together. Falling asleep together. I bite my lip to distract myself from the pang in my heart caused by this brand-new, fresh longing with the help of a little physical pain. Focus, focus.

I dare to look up at her face. She observes our joined hands for a beat. Then me. Then Rune. Then Bane.

"Don't worry about them. Or about me. This is about what you want. We'll make the rest work, I promise." I repeat it, squeezing her cold fingers. "I promise."