“Shall I show you what I ordered?” he asked.
“Oh. Sure. If you want to,” I said, holding my own box shut. I hoped he’d hurry up and show me whatever boring thing he’d ordered so I could go pee on one of these fucking sticks already.
He opened his box and pulled out…something. I wasn’t exactly sure what the hell it was. It was bright yellow and plastic-looking, vaguely tentacle-shaped, with suckers running down one side.
“What is that?”
It is a dildo, of course!”
It wasn’t a dildo like any I’d ever seen.
“Are you…sure?”
“I thought you should have one of your own. One that isn’t purple.” He said purple like it was something foul. “But I also did not want to order you a human-shaped one. Unfortunately, Zabria does not produce sex toys modelled after Zabrian genitalia.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised by this. Then again, the culture really was quite uptight. About a lot of things. “Seems like a missed opportunity. You could make it battery powered! Make the cock tail spin around all over the place!”
“Such a thing does not exist. Believe me, I looked.”
Something about that was absolutely hilarious to me. Stern Hallum, Warden of this province, trying very hard to find a Zabrian dick to order.
“This was the best I could do,” he said.
“It’s yellow,” I pointed out, raising my eyebrows.
“Yes.”
“Any particular reason you went with yellow?”
He got a little bit huffy then, adjusting his belt and looking adorably annoyed. “Purple is an absurd colour for a dildo!” he snapped. “Everybody knows this!”
I snorted and rolled my eyes at him.
“Well, thank you, I guess,” I said with a chuckle.
“You are welcome,” he said seriously. “Now show me what you’ve purchased for the hospital.”
Crap. Should have known my sharp-as-a-tack husband wouldn’t forget about that.
“Nothing important. Or even interesting!” I said, trying to slyly put the box behind me. Of course, this looked suspicious. And Hallum was a warden at heart.
He narrowed his gaze at me and held out a stern hand.
“Show me, wife,” he said.
“You’re not the boss of me!” I started walking backwards with the box still behind my back. Unfortunately, this meant I couldn’t actually see where I was going. I hit the wall, and the box went down. Dozens of tiny white-and-pink paper sticks went fluttering to the floor.
“What are these?” Hallum asked, crouching to retrieve one from the floor. “They look like matchsticks.”
“They’re not matchsticks,” I said, not even bothering to try to hide them now. “They’re pregnancy tests!”
Hallum started picking them up and putting them back in the fallen box.
“I thought the ambulance scanner could function as a pregnancy test,” he said. I got down on my knees and helped him collect all the sticks.
“It does,” I said. “But I can’t get the language settings switched out of Zabrian. I stuck my finger in there and I don’t have a clue what the heck it was trying to tell me!”
“Wait.” He froze, clumps of sticks in each of his fists. “You were testingyourself?”He waved his fists at me. “These are for you?”
