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  “And what if that’s not how I want them to see me?”

  “Ah ha!” I point at her, “You do like them!”

  She flaps at me “Shhhhhhhh! Someone might hear you.”

  “Don’t worry!” I say in my loudest drunk man’s whisper, “if you do, they will know!” And I tap the end of my nose.

  “On no.” She says, and goes bright red.

  “Oh yes!” I reply, cackling at her.

  Poppy walks me back to the apartment we are staying in, and then heads home herself. I’ve spent several days hanging out with Poppy now, and I’m starting to feel very fond of her.

  I head through the apartment, at first thinking no one’s home, but they all appear from the same bedroom as I’m getting myself a drink. I smile at them, but the looks on their faces makes my smile drop away. They all come and sit on stools at the breakfast bar in front of me, and I know whatever has been going on, they are about to come clean about it. Pate and Tark are both looking at Abner. Of course they are, poor Abner, always gets volunteered for everything.

  “Come on then, spit it out.”

  Abner sighs, but seems to think it’s better to get on with it.

  “Our mother sent us a message saying that she has met a woman and thinks she may be willing to mate us.”

  For a moment, I feel utterly crushed, but then Pate growls out “I said no.”

  I let out a huge breath of relief, “Right, that’s it then?”

  They share and uncomfortable look and I know it isn’t.

  Abner carries on, “Well, obviously just Pate saying ‘No’ wasn’t really enough, so she wanted to know why?”

  They share that look again, and honestly I’m starting to hate that look. Absolute blistering rage fills me, but what comes out of my mouth is even and measured, “And none of you wanted to tell her you’re fucking an alien?”

  Abner and Tark wince at fucking, but Pate is still as stone. “We...It’s...just a bit...difficult. We told her we have a mate...that we love...but...she got really excited and asked us an essay’s worth of questions about you...and if you’d want to go home to have the cubs.” Abner looks down at the worktop, and all their ears are flat.

  Oh.

  And he did just say they loved me, which has softened me up again.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and sit on the remaining stool.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for, we thought we were never going to be lucky enough to even have a mate, we came to terms with never having cubs a long time ago...and we don’t want anyone else, it is out of the question now. We just don’t want to hurt our parent’s feelings.”

  No, I get that, it’s understandable...but from what I understand, they instinctively mate for life. So, now there might be another option, and it spawns a horrible, niggling doubt in me. If they really did have the choice, surely they would choose the one who could give them a family. Wouldn’t they? And if they don’t, does that mean they are just...tied to me, and they never really chose me in the first place. What if it just happened to be that I was the first willing female so….that was that?

  It’s a horrible thought that undermines our entire relationship, and I’m frowning at the worktop now; trying to pick it apart.

  “So, what are you going to do?” I ask them.

  Pate just shrugs, but Tark says “I think we should just tell them, and whatever happens...happens. I like things the way they are.”

  I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding.

  They send them a reply the next day, including a group photograph which I was not happy about, but they were going to see me at some point, and no amount of time spent getting ready was going to make me any less...well, different. The reply came surprisingly fast...and the guy’s seemed taken back by how curt it was. Basically, she wanted them home to at least meet this potential. And soon. It wasn’t too late yet, I am, after all, not one of them.

  We sat together and read it I don’t know how many times.

  “We just won’t go.” Pate said flatly. Any sort of even attempt at trying to tell Pate what to do typically resulted in him doing the exact opposite.

  “We should, even if just to prove a point.” Tark replied, and they both look at Abner.

  “I don’t know, it’s just odd...it’s very abrupt. Not like mother at all.”

  I don’t know her, but all three sat there, studying it for what felt like ages.

  ABNER

  Maisy and Poppy are out again for the day. Maisy seems to enjoy spending her days with Poppy. She watches her work in the gardens while they talk, but isn’t interested in helping. “Gardening's not my bag,” she told me when I’d met them at the door, Poppy looking like she’d spent the day working hard, and Maisy looking exactly the same as when she’d left.

  We are heading to the commander’s office, Micka and Titus have requested us urgently.

  “Thank you for attending so promptly,” Micka greets us, and ushers us to a large desk under the window where Titus was already sitting.

  There’s a list of information on the screen, and the three of us lean in to study it.

  Micka lets out a tired huff and drops himself into an empty desk chair. Pate’s reading faster than me and sounds disgruntled when he asks “They’ve not officially accepted them as intelligent? Why?”

  “Read between the lines Pate, they have all but accepted them. The final confirmation will be as simple as a meeting. A conversation. That’s it.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Pate, I’m sorry, but we can’t just abandon our duties to take Poppy to Homeworld, and in any case I think it would be a lot for her. Your Maisy seems much more...resilient.”

  Pate starts to answer, but I interrupt, “Don’t you think she would want to be given the choice, Pate? Considering what it would mean.”

  He shakes his mane in agitation.

  “There’s something else,” Micka gestures at Titus and he brings something else up on the screen. It’s an image of what could be a human, and the three of us exhale a surprised chuff in unison.

  “Is it another human? It looks...wrong.”

  “We thought that at first, but if you look closely...”

  We jostle each other as we all lean in toward the screen, and Titus makes room for us. The image is bad, the room is dark; the bars of the cage vaguely showing. It’s curled up in a ball, and it’s naked and dirty. This one doesn’t really have any mane, just some odd dirty tufts. It’s looking away toward the wall, and is as curled up as it can get, its knees against its chest.

  “It was found on the ship of who we now believe is the original seller, the Homeworld station picked it up, and because of the behaviour it was initially logged as a new species, but not intelligent. Luckily, they received our information on Poppy and took another look, what they took as ‘behaviour’ was actually a cocktail of sedation. Our people can’t act until intelligence is decided but they won’t let the human go either; not while it’s in question.”

  “Why can’t that one go to the interview, it’s already right next to Homeworld...” Micka puts a hand out, making a ‘there’s more’ gesture.

  “The trader is in dock at Homeworld Station, and the human has been moved aboard, we have already forwarded the language as further evidence of their intelligence; so they have access to that. The human had been...mistreated...so they have temporarily taken it into medical on the Station. The soon to be ‘Leaders of Health’ are the medical officers there; this is human is quite literally being cared for by the best there is...and yet they don’t know at the moment if the damage done to the human is permanent. It will be in no state to do anything for quite some time. It doesn’t mean it won’t be handed back though, if they aren't sentient, then...they are property.”

  Tark speaks out, “So you’re saying that if Maisy doesn’t go, no one will. And if no one does, this human is in real danger of being handed back to it’s abuser?”

  Micka gives a very dejected nod.

  M
AISY

  “So we go back, I have a meet and greet with whoever these people are. Humans get the same rights as you guys, and then we can make sure any others are being treated right. Have I got all of that?”

  None of them answer, but all three of them nod. They look like those three monkeys sat in a line on the sofa.

  “Right, so this is a no-brainer. When do we leave?”

  Abner and Tark turn in almost comical unison to look at Pate, who huffs and gives them both cat shit eye. “Fine, we will go…but let’s not spend too much time at home. It will also give us opportunity to reject this female.” He said it with such certainty I would have laughed, if inside I didn’t feel like crying.

  I get what he’s saying though, they are all worried something will upset me, or their parents, or their mother will be pushy about this potential mate business. It’s a risk I have to take though, if they choose her then so be it. They think they've found someone else being kept in what sounds like terrible conditions, and my conscience would not let me sleep at night if I knowingly allowed that to continue.

  I surprise myself when I say goodbye to Poppy and feel tears prick at my eyes. She seems much more accepting of her situation; I don’t know if that’s got something to do with her new found friendliness toward certain station commanders...but I am sure it’s helping. And I know she will be fine...but I will miss her. I tell her I will definitely be back as soon as I can but...I realise I don’t actually know how long that will be. We agree to write regular ‘letters’ as I will soon be out of what I’ve been thinking of as radio range.

  The journey back to what I'm thinking of as ‘home’ even though I’ve never been there takes about two weeks. That time is spent more or less shared amongst the guys as they work...and I am desperate to be useful. I don’t just want to be this spare part that needs to be fed. They start to teach me about the day to day running of the ship...the physical maintenance as well as the basics of plotting courses and such like. In the evenings I sit with someone, more often than not Abner, and he teaches me about their home, everything from traditions and history to identifying common plants and animals. Tark thinks Abner’s turned into a giant nerd for doing this with me, and teases us mercilessly. It keeps my mind active, and some evenings I even spend playing a board game which Pate is teaching me how to play. The pieces and the board remind me of sort of backgammon, but it’s more a war of attrition in my mind, you never really win, it’s more a battle of who can lose the slowest and leads to the majority of games being abandoned since they just take so long...I don’t know what the game is actually called in their language, but the translator spat out Zugzwang for me.

  Between the three of them this might also be the physically fittest I’ve ever been. I have been engaged in physical ship’s maintenance, which they all assure me, even though the tasks I’m doing are very simple, make their lives a lot easier. Whereas before they would have to wholly remove panels or physically climb up into places, now they can simply boost me up, or in one instance, just full on push me into a vent. The size difference between us lets me easily access some places that they can’t. I did find the nearly mummified corpse of what looked like a guinea pig though and that was a bit upsetting. I soon got over it when Tark distracted me...and then Abner turned up to help. Pate still isn’t sharing but...honestly it works for me. We have very easily fallen into a simple routine where I spend my nights with whoever I like. It sounds as good as it is. Like I said, probably the most physically fit I’ve ever been, they can be hard to keep up with.

  The journey passes really fast for me, I’ve heard from Poppy a couple of times, the second ‘letter’ surprised the hell out of me because she was asking for relationship advice. Apparently I am now a pioneer in human alien relationships, and that thought makes me laugh out loud to myself. Poppy’s having trouble getting her men to see her as an adult female who...wants things. She says they have the caring side of the relationship down, but she was so resistive of them for so long she thinks she’s made them very wary. There’s also the ‘age gap’ to consider, but I’m a bit dismissive of that worry...after all, there’s a hell of a lot of more important differences before you get to something as mundane as ‘age gap’. I tell her what Pate told me about him having to rub one out one hundred times a day before we started doing the deed, just because my smell drove him nuts, and suggest she simply sit with them and think very horny thoughts. They'd cave eventually.

  I also tell her roughly about the mating ritual and to look it up, it might do her some good and if anything would make them recognise that she’s an adult, it would be that.

  We’re nearly there, and I spend time on the deck, watching the planet get bigger, and trying to decide if I’m anxious about this or not. I mean, I’m meeting my boyfriends’ parents, so that elicits a normal amount of nerves in me but...I realise my men have spent the last two weeks filling me with confidence. They have slowly, without me even realising, taken away every little worry I’ve been harbouring. The love I’ve been tending for them grows a little bit more.

  I know pretty much what to expect. I hope.

  There's a large space station orbiting the planet but we bypass it – it is there for the necessity of ships much larger than ours. The guys explained that the vast majority of larger vessels are mostly constructed in space and just do not have the ability to land, nor can they withstand the gravitational stresses of getting close to anything with much mass. Makes them much more efficient when actually in space though, and makes construction much easier as they will never need to pass through an atmosphere.

  I think I’ve learned more actually useful information in the last couple of weeks than I did in literally years of formal education, and again I am filled with gratitude for the turn my life has taken...it might have been rocky and somewhat pants-shittingly terrifying to start with but it has totally been worth it. My train of thought leads me to that poor girl who is on that station right now, hopefully she’s fine, but we don’t know anything about her. She has been much, much more unlucky than I have been. I know she’s been in the care of station medical staff since discovery, and will stay there until a formal decision about humans is made...but that doesn’t change what she’s already been through.

  TARK

  We land, and even though she’s expecting it, Maisy’s bottom jaw is nearly on her chest. It’s different really seeing it for the first time. As we step off the ship, the cool air buffs my fur, and when Maisy shivers, Pate doesn’t hesitate to draw her into his side. She half-heartedly tries to escape him, her neck craning round. We’re only in the storage dock for ships and we are making our way to the shuttle, but her eyes are huge in her face. I’m not watching my surroundings, none of us are, we’re watching her, enjoying her wonder as she experiences it all for the first time. The childlike amazement is almost radiating off her, and with her there I find I’m seeing things again if they are new myself. Trying to figure out what has particularly caught her attention, then looking at them critically and trying to imagine them as if I’d never seen them before. Trying to share in Maisy’s wonder. We reach the shuttle and she won’t sit, practically pressing her face against the glass to see out. She moves and leaves a mark and I realise she actually is pressing against the glass. Since she won’t sit Pate takes a seat with his back to the window and lifts her into his lap so she can look out over his shoulder. Abner’s pointing out landmarks to her, but for some she’s beating him to it, regurgitating history, pointing out features she’s seen in images, naming plants and animals. Sometimes she’s going as far as to be able to say the genus as well as the common name. She’s incredible, and the pride that I feel is a solid thing in my chest. We have been moving more and more like a fluid pack, and the link I feel with my brothers is now fresh and new and strong in a way I’ve never known it.

  The other passengers are watching us with great interest, “It’s her first time here,” I tell the cabin at large. Although they are used to the odd non-indigenous v
isitor, and it’s fairly normal to see, as a species we only have regular links with a few others, so Maisy will be easily singled out as something new.

  A cub wriggles from his mother and boldly asks me “What is it?”, just as its female manages to gather him back into her lap, of course they can’t understand Maisy, but she can understand them loud and clear. She turns to me.

  “Can you tell them Human? From Earth? Oh! And say hello and that it’s amazing to be here and I’m very grateful. Doesn't hurt to be polite does it?” She’s slid around in Pate’s lap to face the cabin at large, and Pate huffs at her last comment, but I translate it all but the last bit for everyone.

  It’s a conversation starter, and on the short remainder of the journey I briefly explain Maisy’s situation, and how two other humans have already been found and there will likely be more from what I, now quite embarrassed for myself, explain I saw when I bought Maisy from the market.

  I don’t openly explain our relationship, but Maisy's size and reactions has worked to engender sympathy from the other passengers. I am sure some of those sat close enough will have an inkling at our relationship simply because the level of which our scents have intermingled, but they are free to draw their conclusions.

  We transfer to another small private transport to where we are staying, Abner had the forethought to actually make use of a short term rented property, he did not want to stay some nights on the ship and some nights at our parents as we would usually, neither felt right for Maisy.

  He managed to find an all on one level property with a fair-sized enclosing garden, it gave us privacy and wasn’t too far from the centre and our family home.

  MAISY

  This place is incredible, like a city from a sci-fi movie crossed with the most exotic gardens you’ve ever seen. The sun is tiny and gives off a glaring bright white light, and it gives everything a clean cold look, like all the contrasts are slightly sharper than at home. The colours of some of the leaves are jarring too, when you're so used to everything being just...green. The guys have rented us a house too, and I mooch about whilst they unpack our things, the garden is beautiful and I can’t wait to have an afternoon to just sit out in it. I think I’ll need some more clothes though, everywhere I’ve been for ages has been artificially climate controlled, but here there’s a chilly breeze today which the guys inform me is pretty standard weather for this time of year. I’m glad that when we were back on the space station they'd insisted I get boots, even though I didn’t think I’d ever need them, I’m really glad of them now. Abner appears out of the double doors whilst I’m surveying the enclosed gardens and trots over to me.