“Well, it’s good. I ain’t picky, though. I’ll eat just about anything,” Bryce said as he shoved the last bite into his mouth.
“I am not gifted that way,” Zef said with an almost deprecating tilt to their mouth. “I find most things repulsive, not in taste but in consistency. I am… a picky eater, as you humans say.”
Bryce chuckled. “That don’t surprise me.”
“Oh?” Zef’s wings buzzed softly.
“You seem to be particular about a lot of things,” he said carefully, not wanting to offend.
Those milky eyes dropped to their twined top hands. “Ah, yes, I suppose I am. I do try to be accommodating—”
“It ain’t a bad thing,” Bryce reassured, and Zef nostril slits flared. “And I’m gonna do my best to be accommodating right back.”
“You are very kind,” Zef said softly, and Bryce shrugged, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.
“Just the decent thing to do. We gotta learn to live together, right?”
“Indeed.” They fidgeted for several seconds before they asked, “It does not bother you?”
Not wanting to lie, Bryce considered his words carefully. “I mean, I’m sure we’re gonna clash at some point. We’re different species with different cultural norms. I might offend you without meaning to, and you might do or say something that gets under my skin. But that’s life, you know?”
“Yes,” Zef agreed.
“But I don’t mind if you like to do things a certain way. I may mess it up sometimes, but I’ll still try,” he said, and Zef smiled, small but genuine.
“I shall try as well. To be flexible.”
Their wings buzzed again at the wordflexible, but it was a different hum this time. A lower, more agitated sound. It made Bryce grin.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said confidently, and Zef nodded.
Fluidly, they rose to their feet and gestured at the cupboards. “I shall show you my mug system now.”
Bryce swallowed thickly. “Mug system?”
Before the shops closedfor the night, Zef walked with Bryce to the bodega a few blocks away. They dragged a wheelie shopping bag behind them, and Bryce brought his backpack. They chatted intermittently, but it was mostly a quiet walk. Not that he minded. The silence wasn’t awkward, at least, and Zef didn’t seem perturbed by it.
They’d let their hair down from the messy bun, and the wispy strands danced around their face in the light breeze, catching on their tall, pointed ears. They had several piercings, but none of the jewelry matched. They were all simple hoops, but made of different colored metals, which struck Bryce as strange.
Given Zef’s personality, he would have assumed such disordered jewelry would have bothered them. He mulled it over for almost a full minute before he decided to ask. They had said that they wanted him to be open and honest about what he was thinking, right?
“Hey, how come your earrings don’t match?” he asked as they stopped at an intersection, waiting for the light to change so they could cross the street.
Their top left hand flitted up to touch their ear momentarily before they lowered it back to their side. “They are not meant to match,” they said simply.
Bryce waited for them to elaborate, but when they didn’t, he prompted. “How come?”
“Their purpose is not decorative. They are symbolic; they hold meaning in my culture.” They pointed to the gold hoop lowest in their cartilage. “These were the first, and I received them upon my hatching, though I was too young to remember it. When my progenitor dies, I will remove them, and the scar will remain as visible proof of my loss. These”—they touched the next highest piercing, an amber hoop, then one higher, a silver ring—“I received when I molted for the first time. And these, when I reached sexual maturity and endured my first fertility cycle.”
Near the tip of their ear hung two closely clustered rings, a white and black. “These colors indicate that I do not wish to procreate, nor do I wish to copulate in a sexual manner. It is helpful in avoiding uncomfortable interactions or inappropriate propositions.”
Right, Oliver had mentioned that Zef was asexual, and he’d read during his research on Mantodean culture that most—if not all—Mantodeas fell on the ace spectrum. Which, in and of itself, was interesting. Sex-avoidant on a biological level as opposed to a sexual identity.
“If I were to change my mind and want to procreate, I would take the white ring out and replace it with a blue one,” Zef said as they crossed the parking lot, Bryce keeping stride. “Though I do not foresee that ever happening. I find the idea of procreation rather unpleasant.”
“Don’t like kids?”
“It is not the offspring that is off-putting, but the procreation process,” Zef said as they approached the entrance to the bodega. “It is lengthy and painful, and the idea of my body being used to incubate what is, essentially, a parasite is repulsive to me.”
