Chapter 9 - Bea
For the rest of the day it was like I was even more hyper-aware of Zyntarr being beside me than I had been before.
Every slight brush of his feathers on my arm or the tufted tip of his tail on my calf sent shooting stars up my body.
It makes me wonder if that’s what skin-stars feel like for the Trixikka?
By the time evening rolled around, and he’d taken my plate of food in his huge hand, telling me to ‘come,’ with a jerk of his head toward his hut, my stomach was doing somersaults.
“If we retire from the others early, and eat together in here, it will be less noticeable than you having to choose to come with me when you bid the other females goodnight.” He says the words so logically, and level as he sets my plate in front of his on the ground before seating himself there too, the arches of his big wings rising high above his head.
Zyntarr then takes the little soft leather pouch he likes to have on a low-slung cord around his hips.
He keeps a blend of spices in that pouch.
Sometimes the blend is different, and I can feel him watching for my reactions when I try it on my food.
It hasn’t tasted different in a while, though.
It’s tasted so incredibly good, and part of me wonders if he designed that particular recipe of herbs and spices specifically to my taste, and now he just carries around a little pouch of it to season my food with?
He does so now, looking up at me with that gorgeous blue eye of his before he tucks the pouch away at his hip.
My heart feels like a jumping bean. Are we really going to start sneaking around?
Well - sort of sneaking around. It’s not very sneaky of us because everyone will eventually know where I’ve been sleeping if I’m not at the girl’s hut.
And, is it just going to be sleeping we’re going to be doing? Or are we…? My eyes fall to Zyntarr’s loincloth of their own volition. He’s sat cross-legged and not even the soft leather can hide that there’s something large and heavy hiding under there.
I mean, it would be stupid for me to think this guy isn’t huge in that department - he’s huge everywhere.
What if it doesn’t fit?
“Bea?” Zyntarr’s hand is paused mid-way from his plate to his mouth, a small chunk of seasoned meat grasped between his fingers. “If you do not wish to spend this night with me, I will not force you.”
I shake my head of all previous thoughts - thoughts of things not fitting into particular places.
Looking away from the mammoth that I just know he’s got hiding under that loincloth, I eye the food Zyntarr had set down in front of me.
He’d filled the plate for me earlier - taking time to select the alien meats, fruits, and veggies that both he and I have come to learn I enjoy.
My cheeks heat. I was letting lustful thoughts take over when all he’s done so far is feed me.
“Bea?” he asks again. This time when I look up to him, he’s chewing slowly while eyeing me. “If you are uncomfortable, we do not need to spend time together this night.”
I take in a lungful through my nose, my shoulders rising as I try to pull myself together. “No, no. I’m fine, just-”
Just getting fixated on the possibility that your… ‘thing’ is gonna wreck me, and that I shouldn’t want that.
Right?
Instead of explaining, I finally sit down in front of him, our plates of seasoned-to-perfection food between us.
I can feel the stare of Zyntarr’s one piercing blue eye as I take my first few bites of food, nodding my appraisal of the flavors hitting my tongue.
But his stare is almost too much. We’re sitting too close. And we’re alone.
I avert my gaze from his, taking my time to look around his hut as I chew.
I’ve never been in here before - I’m not sure I’ve ever been properly alone with Zyntarr before either, not in recent memory anyway.
His presence is big, even while he stays still and quiet.
But he lets me look around his home - at the stone walls and woven fern roof.
There’s an extensive collection of spears propped up against one wall, and a few crude pots and storage boxes lined up beside them.
Around us, Zyntarr has placed a few of those glowing opal-like stones that light up when you touch them.
They’re beautiful, and make the area feel very intimate, like a romantic date.
I’ve never been on a date before.
“Why do you not like to lead, little Bea?”
The question is a smooth, low rumble from his throat. It wasn’t loud or abrupt, but it jars me out of my musings about romantic dates nonetheless.
“What?”
Zyn sits a little straighter, his tail slowly flicking beside his crossed legs.
“You never do anything with the younglings without first asking the other Carers, even when it comes to teaching them about female or human things - an area that you have the most skill and experience to be able to teach. With village tasks, you ask first - you always ask first. You never just decide, and do. And with my heart-stars, you wanted to ask the Goddesses before you are willing to just believe what you know what you saw.”
My eyes fall to his chest again. “Zyntarr, I don’t know if I can believe what I think I saw-”
“Why can you not just decide to believe?”
His question leaves my lungs with no breath. Just decide? My mouth softly opens and closes again like I want to tell him. I do want to tell him.
Instead, I study my plate of food, moving a seasoned vegetable not too dissimilar to a carrot around before I can muster up the courage to retell the hardest part of my life. “I… uh…”
Zyn’s hand enters the frame of my view, covering my own, stopping me from aimlessly pushing around the food on my plate.
“Bea.” It’s only one word. One, small, word.
My name. But he says it so softly. He makes it sound so rich, and warm like it somehow contains all the depth of the whole alphabet, and not three insignificant letters.
But he doesn’t say anything else. And his hand doesn’t move from mine.
So I dare to look up into that beautiful uncovered eye of his, and bite my lip as I study the openness I see there.
“I… I had a daughter once. Back on Earth.”
His tail stops flicking on the sandy ground, and it suddenly feels like the world has paused along with him - like I’m centered on a spotlighted stage, petrified that I’m about to deliver the wrong line - go off-script, ruin the whole damn production.
I take a deep breath, and prepare to relive the one thing I thought I’d never tell anyone.
“I was young, and stupid, and made a choice to trust someone. That decision ended up with me getting pregnant.” Pausing to swallow, I remember that the whole topic of sexual reproduction is very new to the Trixikka.
“You learned about sex, and pregnancies, and babies, right?”
I hadn’t realized that Zyn was even holding a little carved, wooden cup in his other hand until it splintered into pieces under the force of his grip. “Did a human male force you to have his youngling, my mate? Did he hurt you?”
“What?! No! I-… we were both young, only sixteen, and we just got carried away one time.”
Zyntarr looks so still, it’s like he’s made of stone.
I reach out and place my hand over his this time, gently forcing him to let go of the broken cup. “Zyntarr,” I say softly. “You’ve got huge splinters in your palm now. It’s bleeding. Let me help pick them out-”
“No,” he pulls his hand from mine. “I will tend to it later. Keep telling me of your daughter… please.”
Your daughter…
Those words twist me up inside.
“She’s not my daughter anymore,” I sigh.
Taking another calming breath, I try to explain it as best I can to the patient alien man sitting in front of me.
“We were both young, and when you’re young you kind of…
get carried away. Everything to do with…
that kind of thing is all new to you at that age. ”
Zyntarr nods solemnly. “It is all new to me, too.”
I don’t know why, but that makes my cheeks heat even further.
“Well, when we did it… we made the wrong decision to not use protection. He told me it would be ok - that just one time would be alright. I remember a voice at the back of my head screaming that that was wrong, and one time is all it takes.” I glance up to Zyntarr and it looks like he’s barely breathing, his skin-stars whirling and twirling at his temples as he concentrates on my words.
“Well, I chose to ignore the screaming voice, and it just… got quieter and quieter the further we went. Until it was over. Really quickly, actually.”
I still remember the deflating feeling after my first and only time having sex. It was like there had been this huge build up of excitement for something like a parade and a firework display, but all it amounted to was one sad float and a single sparkler.
And a baby.
“My parents were very strict. When my mother found out about the-” looking down, I hadn’t even realized I’d started hugging my middle, my palms sliding across my belly where she once grew.
“When Mom found out about the baby, she was so mad. She said I’d let her down, and shamed our good family name.
I don’t think I’d ever seen her so angry, and especially not at me.
I was used to being the good girl. Always doing the right thing.
” That look of disappointment on her face where once there had only ever been pride is still burned into the back of my mind like one of those old-timey, little projector slides.
Every now and again, my brain holds it up to the light, and there she is, ashamed of that one choice I’d made.
“It really mattered to her that people from our community wouldn’t find out,” I continue.
“So she sent me off to my Aunt’s house - a farm in the middle of nowhere really.
And before the doctor had even seen me, my Aunt had arranged for friends of hers - a married couple - to come and visit. ”