Woo-boy. If this man doesn't want me to hurl this whole platter of fruit at his head, he better flap those wings of his and get out of here pretty damn quick.
"Yes, thank you for pointing that out to us, Captain Sensitive," I grind out.
His tail flicks twice in one direction, then once in the other. He knows he's pissing me off, but I don't think he cares. A muscle in his jaw tenses and his golden eyes slide briefly to Aloryk before coming back to me and going steely. "I am going to patrol the skies of the village parameter. Stay with the females, Protector Aloryk." He gives the command to the Trixikka, but his eyes never leave mine. With one more huff from his nose, Mavyx takes a single step back to clear the threshold and launches into the night sky with a handful of wingbeats so powerful, the air whips around us before stilling again.
"You know," Chastity says, shoving a piece of bright blue fruit into her mouth and chewing, "that man of yours sure does have a stick up his ass."
Aloryk's eyes go wide and his twinkles go mad at his temples, which might have been comical enough for me to drop it. But I don't. It's gotta be said;
"He'snotmy man."
CHAPTER 4: ALANA
It turns out, Aloryk is an alright kind of guy. For a bird-man, anyway. He's respectful with both Bea and Chastity and doesn't try anything with me either - fat lot of good it would do for him anyway, since my nearness has already set off one Trixikka mating-alarm and Mav would likely kill Aloryk (or Ricky, as Chastity has taken to calling him) if he ever caught wind that he'd gotten too close to me.
He'd asked a lot of questions about Earth, and about human males and how we would choose our 'mates' back home. I let the others answer that. Whatever criteria I'd used when I'd started dating Josh was clearly faulty since I'd fallen for all of his bullshit and then some. I still can't believe I went along with his'let's start a family'crap. We hadn't started 'trying' properly, not really, but he'd mentioned more than once how he'd love to see me as the mother of his children and I... well, I had apparently letthatnotion replace a few of my brain cells because we weren't being as careful as we normally had been. All the while I told myself that if it happened, then it was meant to be.
God, I'm a damn idiot.
How many other women was he sleeping with while he spun me his story about the happy little family we were going to make together?
"You okay?" Bea asks in a hushed tone, leaning in while Chastity apparently is trying to explain the wonders of Tinder to Aloryk.
"Hm?" I'm a billion miles away when she asks. Standing in the doorway of Josh's office, watching his hand gripping a buttercup yellow sundress before he realizes I'm even there. Before he realizes what I'm witnessing.
Bea pointedly looks down at my knee - the one closest to hers. It's bouncing. "You just looked uncomfortable," she whispers.
I give her a grateful smile and make an effort to stop my fidgeting and wandering mind. No use in reliving that God-awful memory. A twisted part of me wonders what the authorities back home make of my disappearance. My work colleagues and girlfriends will likely be worried. And I've seen enough true crime documentaries to know everyone looks to the partner first, and me screaming at Josh and slapping him clean across the face as he's trying to pull his pants back up won't have looked good for him either. A few people at his office must have heard that. Is it bad of me to revel a bit in that thought? He's not responsible for my disappearance but he is a piece of shit. Normally, I'm a pretty level-headed kind of woman but that - that shithurtand right now, I don't care if it makes me an awful person to admit I feel a bit lighter to think he's in some trouble right now.
My knee stops bouncing and I smile at Bea. The smile is genuine because apparently, I'm a bitch. "I'm good," I tell her, and turn back toward the conversation the other two are having.
"So," Aloryk starts, trying to understand, "there is a little container sitting in your hand with many possible mates inside?"
"Sorta," Chastity shrugs, still picking at the food in front of us.
"And females...'swipe right'to beckon their chosen male and left to reject unworthy males?" He pauses a moment to muse over this information. "How do all the males fit inside the container? Is there shrinking sorcery in your homelands?" His eyes quickly narrow as his tail flicks and those skin-stars of his work double-time at his temples. "How bigarehuman males normally?"
"Not as big as Trixikka," I say, laughing. "But not small enough to physically fit in a phone. It doesn't work like that. It's... it's more like an image-"
"A cave etching?" he says, his purple eyes alight.
My head bobs from side to side as I weigh up how to better explain a cellphone to a barbarian race. Looking to Chastity only gains me a shrug. "Sort of," I agree because it's easier. "You swipe right and they're...summoned." I say the last word with added drama and a flair of my hands, just to blow his Trixika mind.
With how wide Aloryk's eyes get, I think I succeeded. "Truly? You can achieve this? Does it work on females? Can I summon my mate to me if I draw her likeness on the Mother Cave walls?"
"How do you know your mate's not already here, Ricky?" Chastity asks, sipping on the fermented drink that Aloryk brought for us.
The smile he gives is confident and knowing. "I have seen her and she is not any of the females in either tribe that I have witnessed. The Goddesses have started to send her to me in my dreams. She is human and her body is soft, rounded and beautiful." He gets a far-away look in his eye while that pleased smile remains intact. "Her hair is the same color as a mishi flower-" suddenly, all of Aloryk's slowly twinkling skin-stars turn a pretty shade of lavender and I wonder if that's the color he means? Does this dream woman of his have purple hair? Who is she? One of the girls in the pods? Or is it all just a silly dream that means nothing at all? "And she has an etching on her skin. Right here -" he rubs at his collarbone over and over with one finger, tracing a specific shape until his lavender skin-stars start acting like glowing ink in the same spot, lighting up the drawing on his skin "The skin-etching is this curious shape," he admits.
I blink at the sparkly temporary tattoo Aloryk just gave himself with his own touch and glance back up at his face. "You don't know what that shape is?" He shakes his head. "It's a heart," I tell him, and the way his face lights up is kind of infectious.
"Is it her human heart-stars? Does she wear them for me already?"
Oh, man. It's like this huge, seven-foot, muscled warrior has turned part puppy. And I don't want to be the one to have tokickthe puppy but if this girl is real and she shows up one day, he can't just claim her as his because of a dream he once had. "No, not really," I say, watching as his skin-stars start to slow in their excitable flare. I lift my arm and roll up the sleeve of the pink PJ top I still insist on wearing most days. "I've got one here," I tell him.I got it when I lost my Mom.But I don't say that. He doesn't need to know - no one does. I stare down at the star on the inside of my upper arm. The design is simple but the points are long and stretched out making the shape elegant in my eyes. The brightest star in the sky. That was my Mom. "It's called a tattoo. Humans get them for all kinds of reasons." Aloryk stares at my ink thoughtfully. I don't feel the need to elaborate, so I pull my sleeve back down before he's really gotten a good look. "Do Trixikka have anything like that?" I ask, trying to steer the conversation in a different direction.
Aloryk ends up staying with us for a good while longer as we talk. He's so full of questions about human dating and Earth customs that it's like he was cramming for a pop quiz in the morning. We volley a few back at him and he's all too happy to answer. Even with his rapid-fire investigations into what makes us girls tick, Aloryk's good company. He's all smiles and chuckles. And he really seems to relish the opportunity to explain Trixikka traditions to us too. Even Bea warmed up a hell of a lot to him, having to comfort a distraught Aloryk when Chastity joked that human women will dump a guy for not having any skills in the sack. Poor guy suddenly insisted on precise instructions on how to please his future mate.
When he finally leaves, the girl's hut feels a lot quieter and more subdued. Chastity seemed to have exhausted her never-ending penchant for dick jokes and Bea... well, Bea is her usual reserved self anyway. They both bed down on one of the two huge (and surprisingly comfortable) nest-bed-things, the Trixikka built for us. But my mind is restless. I kind of wish Aloryk had stuck around a bit longer. We could have kept our voices down while the other two slept. I still have questions about the Trixikka - mainly how they rear their young. Or, how their young come to be anyway. I know they said their creepy-ass Temple thing gives them the baby bird-boys, but that just sounds all kinds of fucked-up if you ask me.
