I wake up with the dawn and shift from my stone form to my human skin, staring out at the shadowy valley where we’ve chosen to reside. Uncle came to Earth before the rest of us and bought this mountain valley so that we would have privacy for our work. The land is so different from Ukon, but after so many years, I find it as beautiful as the humans who live here do.
My home planet calls to me, the darkness of the land and the volcanic hot springs. Ukon has two suns, but the planet isgravitationally locked with their orbits. It is always day on the bright side of the planet, and the night is eternal on the dark side. My people live and flourish on the dark side, and on the side of eternal day, our fellow sapients thrive, the tevatyl. The In’ai could never stand the brightness and heat of that side of the planet and were unaware of the tevatyl living there. We never told them of the other sapients, and the tevatyl gratefully offer a tribute of wealth to the karkoyl every year on the anniversary of our independence.
Stretching, I wipe away the longing to see the stars of my galaxy and grumble about having to be awake during the day. Generally I take on the responsibility of being awake when the sun is shining because the rest of my brothers are unbearable if they have to rest at night. Faulkes especially gets grumpy when he has to work during the day. I would rather he stay happy and content if I can help it; he’s more sensitive than the rest of us to interruptions of his usual schedule.
Once I’m awake and fully shifted into my human form, I take the elevator down to the house and head to my room. I pull off my loincloth and throw it into the particle cleaner hiding in plain sight as a laundry hamper in my bathroom and step into the shower, shedding my human skin. Human soap is toxic for my natural skin, so I cleanse with the sand we import from our home. It buffs out the grime from the day before and gives my body a soft sheen without stripping my skin of its natural chemistry and balance.
Once I’m clean and fresh, I step out of the shower and dry myself by shifting to stone and letting the water evaporate off me naturally. My stone form stores much of the water in the tiny pores and the rest evaporates away, then I shift back and pull my loincloth from the particle cleaner. I tie it on as I leave the bathroom and pull a card from the pouch tied to it, touching it to a bloodstone rune on the leather to activate the spell that willshift the bevelan leather from loincloth to pants. It morphs into soft leather pants as I walk to my closet where I keep all my shirts.
I dislike wearing cloth, but the soft cotton of the open front poet shirts I have custom made for myself is bearable. They also reflect the nature of my inner self that I rarely get to indulge in with a job as demanding as mine. I’m creative, and before I became a soldier, I was an entertainer. I entertained our oppressors, but regardless of the audience, I enjoyed my work. My favorite part was the smiles that I’d draw from the slaves because the In’ai didn’t always hear the barbs in my performances but the slaves did.
I pull a shirt off a hanger and don it, making sure it lays on my body the way it’s meant to. Tits out, I like to say. I didn’t pierce these nipples to hide them behind cloth.
Once dressed, I draw a line of kohl under my eyes and give them a little wingtip, then check the time. I head to the kitchen where our chef, Jax Stuart, will have breakfast for me ready. The only days I skip my morning meal with her are her days off. Those days I go without eating since it’s not a necessary function for my body every day.
I could shift to my stone form, and as long as I stay stone, I don’t need food. The only reason to eat is because I expend excess energy in my skin shifts, especially the human shift. That form takes far more energy to sustain than either of my natural shifts. The only good thing about that is that I get the joy of eating Jax’s food.
When I enter the kitchen, Jax casts a glance at me and points to a plate with what looks like a small quiche on it, some tomato slices, fresh mozzarella and basil, and a small bowl of strawberries with a dollop of yogurt and a drizzle of honey. I grab the plate and the roll of utensils next to it and sit at the kitchen table.
“It looks delicious,” I compliment.
She snorts as her fake fairy wings catch on a row of hanging cast iron skillets. I was told when she moved her own cookware into the house that using cast iron skillets adds iron to the food she cooks in it, thereby adding to the nutritional value of her food. We didn’t think that gargoyles would need iron as a dietary supplement, but since she started cooking for us, we all feel sturdier, as if the extra iron is adding to the density of our natural forms. We sent the information back to Ukon. Since most of our people will literally eat rocks to replenish any mass converted to energy, we don’t exactly have a lot of scientists studying nutrition.
Fuck, we’re still recovering from a thousand years of enslavement, so we don’t have a lot of scientists at all. For a while we were completely reliant on the tevatyl for all our educational needs. We’ve got a lot of ground to make up for, which is one of the reasons Uncle Maxime agreed to take on this position with the IPPS; in exchange for our posting here, the IPPS is working with our government to bring the karkoyl up to date with the other members of the Alliance of Species.
As I start eating, Jax sets another plate in the place where I got mine, and a few moments later, our new butler walks in, wearing the same type of plain black suit he wore yesterday. He doesn’t immediately notice me, and when he picks up his plate, he says a few words to Jax, turning his back to me.
Now that I’m aware of it, his ass pulls my attention straight to it. It’s the biggest bootie I’ve ever seen on a human, though I’ve seen porn with this body shape as the main aspect of the images. He’s shaped like a pear with a straight body from his shoulders to his waist, then he expands in a beautiful curve to an ass anyone with a brain would want to play with. His thick thighs hold up that caboose and flow into legs hidden by the pants he’s wearing. He can’t hide how big his feet are, though. Atleast as big as mine, and that tells me this guy probably isn’t fully human.
The pouch on my hip shifts, and when I look down, one of the cards flies out, hitting Dec’s shoe. He doesn’t immediately notice, so when he turns around to bring his plate to the table after his conversation with Jax, he startles at seeing me.
A smile creeps up my lips, but I squash it by shoving some fruit in my face.
“Good morning, Thoren,” Dec greets me, stopping in his tracks. “Do you mind if I join you?”
I kick the chair across from me out and wait until he puts his plate down before using my fork to point to the card on the floor behind him. “You mind grabbing that for me? Must’ve fallen out of my pouch.”
Dec turns, sees the card, and bends over to grab it, giving me the absolute best view of his ass. His upper body disappears, leaving the heart-shape of his lower half for me to enjoy for a second. He straightens and turns around, catching me staring. I feel absolutely no shame about that, but his cheeks turn a tempting shade of pink, and that alerts the inner bloodstone krake that my species evolved from to a potential new obsession. Our species’ evolutionary ancestors were obsessed with reds and pinks and collected anything in the red spectrum. Watching Dec turn pink stirs that inner beast.
Ok,thatis embarrassing. I got over my obsession with pink when I was a child, but apparently this man’s ass has a way of turning me back into the primal krake that I was pretty sure I’d gotten past once I matured a bit.
I take the card from him. “Thank you.”
I glance at it, and what do you know? It's The Fool again. What the fuck is happening here? Do the cards think Dec will be a fun new adventure for me? No! Well, maybe. I mean, it could be fun to tease him a bit. I wonder...
“Uncle says you graduated top of your class from Mrs. Cavenaugh’s academy?” I can’t very well go around making the butler blush if it’s going to traumatize him or drive him off. “What brought you there?”
Dec smiles fondly and pulls out a tarot card from the inner pocket of his jacket, showing me a surprisingly good representation of him on The Fool card from a human deck of tarot cards. “Actually, it was this card in conjunction with a benevolent shop keeper that started me on this path. He scared me when I first saw him, but when I pulled The Fool out of the spread, he told me that I was starting a new adventure and gave me the academy’s card and a reference. The card and reference qualified me for a scholarship, and it was the best thing that’s happened to me in years.”
I wince inwardly, hoping that doesn’t mean he’s had a difficult life. Humans tend to fail their most vulnerable neighbors, and somehow Uncle always manages to find ones that society has failed. Jax paid for culinary school by running drugs for a gang that I had to intimidate into giving up its claim on her. Our gardener, Alex, was tending public gardens for free as a means of staving off existential despair before she got a job with us and was finally able to afford the gender affirming care she needed to thrive. Her assistant, Angel, walked up one of our mountains with the intention of getting lost because he’d lost his mate. Uncle found him and he’s been tending to our gardens and his grief ever since.
The point is, I don’t know why I expect Dec to have a history that doesn’t include some kind of distress. Obviously, I’m hoping for something that doesn’t align with the will of the stones in this old house.
“Can I ask why you haven’t had enough good things happen in years?”
Dec’s face saddens, but he replies without the hesitation that I would expect from someone trying to protect their vulnerabilities. “My uncle passed about three years ago, and it’s been really difficult since then. He raised me after my mother abandoned me, but I wasn’t prepared for life without his constant presence and support. It turns out, I’m pretty shit at life without someone to give me direction.” He stops and his eyes widen and his cheeks turn pink again. “I mean, I can totally run this house without constant supervision. I am totally a badass butler. I mean, I excel at this job and enjoy it very much. I apologize for my crude language.”
Relieved that it’s only the loss of a parent that preceded his arrival, I chuckle at his sudden attack of professionalism. “Since you’re not on the clock for another fifteen minutes, I think we can forgive the use of perfectly common language. I believe Jax is on the clock and I’ve heard her drop three fucks, four dammits, and a shitty in the last ten minutes. I’m pretty sure it goes along with her angry fairy goddess vibe.”
