“There’s something I’ve been wondering,” she says after a while. “If you wouldn’t mind telling me…?”
“What?” I sweep my fingers over her silky black hair, luxuriating in the feel of it. “Ask me anything and I will tell you what I know.”
“How did you end up here, guarding the females like this? When it seems like avoiding males is so important to them, why did they make an exception for you? I mean, I think I know. You’re… nice. Like a big stuffed animal.” She hums and snuggles deeper against me. “I’m curious.”
Lying my head back, wondering what a stuffed animal is, I think back to that time, long ago when I first decided to leavethe forest.
“I know you’ve mentioned some things, but not how you and Melsya and the others found each other. I assume it was a coincidence,” she says when I don’t immediately answer.
“It was not.”
“It wasn’t?”
“During that time, all those years ago. Some of it is hazy, though I do recall that. I recall the day I was… born, or awakened, as well, unlike most nagas I have known. Many have forgotten or came after.”
“You… didn’t arrive on a ship?”
“A ship?” I try to imagine being on a ship and shudder. “No.”
She turns her head upward to look at me. “How the hell did you get to Earth then? I assumed you all came here from some ship many years ago.”
“I came from the ground, from the wet glass vats.”
“I… Okay…” She resettles against me. “You woke up from some cryostasis thing or something, I think I understand. Maybe you’re an experiment.”
Though I do not know what cryostasis is or if it is what I woke up from, it is true, I do not remember everything before I ‘woke,’ so I continue answering her first question. “I followed the females out of the forest, like many others back then had. Some of the females left in groups, which were easier to track, while others went alone, but for the most part they all met outside the borders of the forest despite coming from many different clans across the land. It did not matter. As long as they were female, they were accepted into the larger group. They formed outside the boundaries of the forest and on the only land left that wasn’t viciously defended as a clan’s territory. Back then, there were many more of us and the forest was much smaller. There were few safe, if any, safe places to go.”
“But they were dying because of the males.”
I shift her closer to me. “Yessss. This is why they needed each other for this to work, and only each other. A male, from any clan, could not be allowed, even if they were deemed trustworthy. Despite the females being from many different ones, their trust only extended to their female counterparts, not the males. It was the only way. The only way for all of them to agree.”
“Agree to what?”
“To take the risk and leave.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“Because I was one of the males deemed trustworthy. I had no clan, no territory. Back then, I did not even have a nest to call my own. I was forced out of the forest because if I stayed, I would have had to defend myself daily from attack. I was aware where the females who’d already left were gathering. It is how we found each other.”
“But they trusted you?”
“I killed every male that approached, claiming, for the first time, the land outside the forest’s borders as my own. Eventually, enough males had died searching for them that I was avoided, avoided by all except the female nagas. Though most would not approach me, they knew what I was doing without ever speaking to them.”
“You guarded them.”
“Only while they waited for the rest to arrive. In that time I took it upon myself to divert all other male attention away while the few other malessss—because I was not the only trustworthy one—spread the word to the other females across the land to leave.”
“And when they left, you left with them?”
I run my hand through her hair. “The forest expanded, and with it, the males spread out and claimed new territories.The females had to leave the forest’s borders entirely if they wanted continued peace. At some point many of them began to leave, disbanding into smaller clans and heading deeper into the wastes. Until, eventually, they were all gone and I was alone again.
“With the forest claiming my territory, and being hunted again by the nagas also wanting different territory, I chose to head out into the wastes too. I came to this place and by chance, reunited with some of the females. Vowing to leave them alone and to guard them like I once had, they chose to remain here and so I made a nest and claimed part of the city as mine.”
“That’s it?”
“Yessss. That is it.”
“You never wanted to mate with one of them even knowing…?”
