11. Cherry
11
CHERRY
M y face felt hot and my stomach hollow as I stumbled towards the house, clutching my bag to my chest. He’s your husband , I told myself fiercely, he doesn’t have to be your friend.
We’d only just met. He didn’t need to spill his guts to me the way I found it so easy to do. I’d even told him it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if he told me to stop talking!
So why did I feel so fucking hurt now?
It wasn’t like he’d even done anything. I mean, not really.
All he did was walk away from me.
Last time I checked walking away from your nosy new wife isn’t a crime!
I blew out a loud breath between my lips, dropping my bag on the house’s back porch and blinking away a fresh, stupid batch of tears.
Maybe I’d touched a sore spot with my question. Maybe he didn’t like talking about his parents. He’d looked absolutely thunder-struck that I’d even asked. Was that some kind of Zabrian taboo I didn’t understand? Or something specific to Silar that I’d messed up by asking about?
At the very least, it seemed obvious his parents weren’t here. Based on his reaction, I thought it was probably safe to assume that they were dead. Just like mine. But if we had that in common, he certainly didn’t seem keen on commiserating about it with me.
I turned around, looking back the way I’d come, and found myself startled at how far away Silar already was. The man was damn fast with those long legs. It was hard not to feel like he was running away from me, despite the fact he was only walking, if at a rather relentless pace. He’d put his hat back on, and his electric turquoise hair swung between the taut muscles of his shoulders as he ploughed through a stretch of long grass towards a tall, wooden fence. The fence suddenly opened – a gate – before it slammed shut again, taking Silar out of view.
The porch wasn’t high enough off the ground for me to see what lay beyond the fence. But Silar’s house – our house, I supposed – did have a flat spot on the roof back here that seemed to function as a sort of tiny balcony that also jutted out to shade the porch. There was a ladder leading up to it. Leaving my bag behind, I clambered up.
This little roof/balcony was less than two metres squared, and I made sure to stand in the middle because there was no guardrail that would keep me from falling to the ground if I weren’t careful. From here, I could get a much better view of Silar’s property, and boy, was it extensive. I found myself entirely gob-smacked and more than a little impressed at the fact that this seemed to be a one-alien-show. I had no idea how he managed this massive amount of land with its gardens and its shuldu and its… whatever those were.
They were big and four-legged, and there looked to be at least fifty of them, if not more. They came in shades of rust-red, midnight blue, and yellow-ish beige, many of them with spots or speckles on their hide. The largest ones in the herd had impressive antlers, the width of which easily surpassed the span of both my arms outstretched. There were three other shuldu out there, too – one black, one white, and one a softly rosy pink that reminded me of the colour of Darcy’s hair.
Silar was on that pink one now, riding without a saddle, trotting around the fenced-in area with the established ease of a man who knew exactly what he was doing. The cattle-creatures were obviously used to him, as they continued munching the tough grass and lowing at occasional intervals while Silar made a perimeter of the pasture. There appeared to be another closed gate at the other end, which once opened would lead out into a vast tract of land whose flatness eventually gave way to more trees that appeared to go on until mountains thrust upwards out of the horizon.
Is all of this his?
So much space it made me a little dizzy. I plopped down onto my butt, not wanting to topple off the edge of the roof. I highly doubted snapping my spine on my first day here was going to speed up Silar’s uneasy acceptance of me.
Silent Silar.
Yup. Sounded about right. At least he wasn’t only that way with me, if he’d earned that nickname from the others around here.
Speaking of others…
I gingerly got to my feet again, scanning the landscape for any other signs of life, wondering how far away Darcy and Magnolia would live when they arrived and married their husbands. It was hard to tell from here, but I thought that I could just make out another structure – a little poky dot in the distance – that might have indicated another house or barn nearer the mountains. But I couldn’t be sure.
Looks like it’s just you and me, hubs , I thought as my gaze went once again to Silar. He’d gotten off the pink shuldu and appeared to be inspecting part of the fence, his impressive form folded at the waist as his hands and tail all worked in tandem to tighten some unseen fastener.
Well, if he could keep himself occupied with chores, then so could I. I wasn’t going to sit up here and mope all day. I’d told him I’d work hard, and I would. Winning Silar over so that he’d keep me here appeared more and more monumental a task every moment.
So I’d better get started.
I climbed back down the ladder and hopped onto the porch. Scooping up my bag, I headed inside the house.
I wasn’t exactly sure what I was expecting to find in my alien-cowboy’s bachelor pad, but I was relieved to see the place was extremely tidy. And not just tidy from clutter, but clean, too, the various wood and stone surfaces looking like they were wiped down with regularity.
The back door I’d come through had brought me into what was obviously a cooking area. A large sink stood beneath a sunny window and wood-doored cupboards crowded along the walls. A large stone opening stood on the other side, and when I saw some wood piled beside it, I realized it was a wood-burning oven. My heart sank, because I’d barely been a cook back home with processed protein blocks and modern appliances at my disposal. It certainly appeared that the set-up here was much more rustic than what I was used to.
My pan would fit right in, at least. I pulled it out of my bag and placed it on a shelf by the oven, feeling a little bit better now that something of mine was here.
In fact, it was one of the only things here. I frowned, spinning around in the space, noticing just how empty it was. It was a small room, so I hadn’t really sensed it before. But now that I looked closer, I couldn’t see much of anything to even indicate somebody lived here.
There was no art, no decoration, no entertainment screens, no family mementos. Apart from my pan, there were only two small, tinny-looking pots on the open shelf. There weren’t even tables or chairs in here, I thought with astonishment, placing my hands upon my hips. Did the man scarf down his food while standing up?
I left the kitchen for the next room and found it just as eerily impersonal as the kitchen. Which was weird, considering it was very obviously Silar’s bedroom. But all that was here was a bed with a single blanket and pillow against the wall, a set of drawers that I assumed had to at least hold some pants since he apparently didn’t seem to like wearing a shirt, and what I thought might be a small charging pad for his data tab. On the floor was an extra pair of very large boots, and a small closet revealed a few tools, an extra belt, and a single, lonely chair that had clearly been stashed away due to apparent disuse.
And that was it. Entirely it. There was literally nothing else in the room.
Except for what looked to be a book of sorts. I gawked at the ancient tech, afraid to touch it in case the pages fell apart. Not that it looked old – it seemed newly printed. But I hadn’t seen a book like this in person… ever. I was pretty sure there was a bookstore on Elora Station, but I hadn’t visited it while there.
It was open on the bed, pages-down and covers-up, as if he’d put it down in a rush but hadn’t wanted to lose his place. I couldn’t read the Zabrian text on the front cover, but there was no mistaking what the image showed. It was an illustration of a smiley human woman wearing a wedding dress.
What the hell…?
I took a quick look out the bedroom’s only window, glanced back through the open doorway to the kitchen, and saw no one. I strained my ears but didn’t hear the accusatory footfall of Silar coming back to find me snooping, either. And really, was this even snooping? This was the only bedroom in the tiny house, which meant it had to be mine now, too. And it wasn’t like he’d hidden the book or anything. Still feeling like I was doing something wrong, I held my breath and picked up the book.
It was open to a page of text I couldn’t read. I kept my thumb in that spot so I wouldn’t lose the page, then flipped through the rest of it. It was mostly dense, alien lettering, but every once in a while, there was a cartoonish image thrown in illustrating some facet of human life or another.
I gasped, then snorted, my cheeks warming when I came across the image of a naked human woman. Like the other images in the book, it wasn’t a photograph, but rather something rendered. The result was slightly silly and vaguely embarrassing, reminding me of awkward sexual health lessons at New Toronto High. Even worse was the next page, which showed a euphoric cartoon human male guiding his erection towards an equally blissed-out cartoon lady with her legs spread open. There were black lines connecting labels to various parts of the human anatomy for both figures, like a medical diagram.
Oh my fucking God. Is this some kind of human sex manual?!
OK, maybe sex manual wasn’t exactly a fair description. Most of the other pages seemed to be about things like clothing and food and Terratribes I and II. But still, the thought of Silar studying the cartoon women on these pages – so happy they practically looked fucking high – made me want to melt into a puddle on the floor and disappear.
But then again, the book hadn’t been opened to this page. Maybe he hadn’t even gotten to this part of the book yet. If he was reading it in order, he’d have a hefty amount of text to sift through before he got to the good stuff near the back.
I thought about tearing the sex-ed page out of the book just to save both of us some awkwardness, but then I thought better of it. If Silar was ever going to get over his weird apprehension around me and actually want to do the deed, it would probably be good if he had some sense of what human sex involved beforehand.
With that in mind, I actually felt a bit miffed about the fact I hadn’t gotten my own Zabrian manual to study. How come my husband got colourful cartoon porn to prepare for the arrival of his human wife when all I’d gotten was my sheaf of silver landing papers and a card with Silar’s name tacked on the back?
Taking my thumb out from the saved spot, I placed the book back down just as it had been before.
Further exploration of the house revealed a cold cellar below-ground which looked to be mostly food storage, accessible via a set of stairs built down into the floor of the kitchen. I was rather put out to see there was no real bathroom, instead just a small outhouse to the side of the main house and a hose out back like there had been at the warden’s building.
Guess that’s my new shower , I thought, pursing my lips as I surveyed the bare-bones toilet-and-washing situation. The water pressure back in my Terratribe I apartment wasn’t anything impressive, but at least it had been inside the house!
I figured the water here probably came from a well system. I wasn’t sure if it was heated, though I did notice what appeared to be some sort of solar tech at the side of the house which presumably powered at least some of the things around here, like Silar’s data tab charger.
I was just considering whether I was brave enough to give the outhouse a try when footsteps made me spin around. Silar had chosen that moment to return, though when his eyes lit on me, he looked like he was about to turn right back around again.
“Is this where you wash?” I asked, my voice oddly high and croaky, unwilling to let him go again. Surely asking about the water situation wouldn’t get me ignored for another twenty minutes the way asking about his parents had.
“Yes,” he grunted. He walked over to the hose, which was looped around a hook on the house’s outer wall. It reminded me of the way his golden tail looped around its belt hook.
His tail unwound, the end slithering over to a metal tap on the wall which, once turned, sent water spewing out the hose. He turned it off once more.
“You wash out here even in the winter?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you get cold?”
“Not really.”
“I’d probably get cold,” I said, not wanting to cause trouble but also not wanting to freeze my fucking ass off out here come winter.
“Oh.” He hesitated, as if that thought had never occurred to him before, then said, “There’s a tub for laundry. You’re small. You’d fit in it.” He jutted his tail towards the house. “You can fill it inside and wash there if needed.”
“Oh, good,” I said, breathing out with relief. I could probably even let it heat up in front of that big oven, too. I’d have to get naked in the kitchen, of course, but was that any worse than prancing around outside without clothes?
“Make sure to always wind it back up here in the shade of the house,” Silar was saying now, drawing my attention back to the hose. “If you leave the hose sitting out in the sun too long, when you turn the water on it will be hot enough to burn.”
“Oh. Thank you.” My thanks were sincere – I wasn’t aware of such a possibility and was glad for the warning. I’d never had a garden or outdoor space on Terratribe I, and it never got very hot and sunny there. “Did that happen to you?”
“Only once,” he said. “Learned my lesson. Only part of me that ever burns these days are my ears.”
“Your ears?” Was that some kind of metaphor about being embarrassed? But that had to be a human thing – burning ears. I hadn’t even seen any ears on this guy! Where was he hiding them?
He gave me a sideways glance with eyes that once again were veined blue instead of white. Then he took off his hat and tipped his head down to me.
So he did have ears after all.
And, my God, they were the cutest fucking ears I’d ever seen, alien or human.
They were on the top of his head, normally hidden by his hat. The only other times he’d been bareheaded so far he’d either been behind me on the horse, or I’d been distracted by other things. Like his dick.
But now, with him bent down like this, I could get a good look at his adorably rounded, velvety ears, sticking up from the top of his head like an Old-Earth mouse. They were the same yellow-gold as the rest of him, though the edges and backs were darker, with streaks of irritated-looking black.
“Are they burned now?” I asked uneasily. I may not have known much about Zabrian anatomy, but the black streaking along the skin there really didn’t look right.
“Yes,” he grunted, straightening back up.
“Wait, what?” I gasped at his careless reply. “Why?!”
“Same reason you can burn,” he said, sounding completely unconcerned. “Sun.”
“Is this from today? From the ride back here?” I asked, feeling like a total ass. He’d given me his hat and now he had an injury because of it. “I’m so sorry, Silar!”
He blinked his lashless eyes.
“Why?”
“Because! You got burned because of me!”
“I got burned because of the sun.”
“You know what I mean!”
Impossible fucking man.
“It is only my ears,” he said slowly, looking mystified by my reaction. “We have good hearing, but it makes the skin there more sensitive.” He eyed me for a moment. “If I’m not mistaken, your scalp, face, and neck would have burned without the hat. And maybe even your ears on top of all that.”
“Well, yes, that’s true. But still!”
“Still what?”
Oh my God. Was this how all of our conversations were going to go?
“Come on,” I said, shaking my head and grabbing his hand. He jolted, staring at where I touched him with eyes glowing white again. I really need to find out what that’s about …
But I’d learn about his weird glowy eyes after I’d taken care of his ears.
Thankfully, when I started walking, tugging at his big body, he followed without complaint. I let go of him once we were in the kitchen where I’d left my bag on the floor. I bent down and rummaged around, shoving aside clothing for the few bottles of toiletries I’d brought from Elora Station, which included a small tube of general antiseptic healing ointment. Seizing upon it, I grinned with triumph, then straightened rapidly and turned to face Silar. I paused, noticing the way he’d hastily averted his gaze when I’d turned.
Was he staring at my ass?
Well, that would certainly be an interesting development, considering the way he’d seemed so keen on not touching me so far.
Unless he was noticing my lack of tail back there… Maybe he thought my butt looked weird without one.
Unfortunately, that was probably the more likely (and depressing) scenario. I pushed it out of my mind, focusing at the task at hand – Silar’s poor little burnt-up ears.
I was about to ask him to sit down when I remembered there wasn’t anywhere to do it in here. Except the floor, I supposed.
“How come you don’t have a table or chair in there?” I asked him as I walked through to the bedroom.
“Why would I need one?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused as he followed me.
“For eating?”
“I eat standing up.”
I knew it.
“OK, well, in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re very tall, so I need you to sit down.”
Still holding my tube of cream, I opened the closet and attempted to drag the chair out one-handed. But it was heavier than it looked.
Silar’s tail snapped forwards from where he stood behind me, wrapping itself like a whip around one of the posts on the back of the chair and pulling it out of the closet with ease.
“Great. Thank you. Would you sit down, please?”
“Why?”
“I’d like you to sit down so I can put some of this on your ears,” I explained. “It’s from Elora Station. It’s human-made, but it’s supposed to be effective for a wide range of non-human skin types, too.”
“Not necessary,” Silar said, frowning at the tube.
“Of course it is! What if your burns get infected or something?” I pointed stubbornly at his hat which he carried in the claws of his left hand. “When was the last time you washed that thing? You knew your skin was damaged and you just plonked it back on your head anyway!”
Silar, appearing entirely confounded, glanced at his hat before putting it down on top of his chest of drawers. I took my new-to-me hat off as well, placing it down beside his. Then I stopped, frozen by the effect. Our items of clothing, his large, mine small, placed side-by-side in such a mundane fashion. Like we’d been putting out hats there together in this spot all our lives.
I shook myself and pulled my gaze from the hats to find Silar had seated his bulky body on the chair as requested.
“Oh! Great. Thanks,” I said, hurrying forwards. I stepped up neatly between his spread thighs.
I grimaced as I unscrewed the cap, realizing that Silar’s face was precisely boob-level like this, but it couldn’t really be helped. I wondered if Zabrian females even had breasts, and once again cursed my lack of Zabrian manual.
Speaking of manuals, wasn’t that the sound of one getting snapped surreptitiously shut? Silar hadn’t moved from the chair, but his tail had snuck over to the surface of the bed, closing the book, which it now shoved under the pillow and out of sight.
I couldn’t exactly say why, but the action just about charmed the pants right off me.
“You don’t need to hide it,” I murmured in what I hoped was a soothing tone. “I already saw it earlier.”
Silar didn’t immediately reply as I squeezed a bit of the cream onto the tip of my finger. I thought he’d just ignore what I’d said entirely, when he unexpectedly spoke up.
“I did not want you to see how far… Or rather, how not far I’d gotten…” He heaved a sigh, rubbing at his jaw. “But I have been reading it. Trying to, at least.” He made a gruff sound of displeasure. “I thought I’d have more time.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that coming here early would affect Silar or his plans.
Just like it hadn’t occurred to me that I should have refused his hat earlier.
“I’m sorry,” I said ruefully. “I seem to be causing you a lot of problems already. I haven’t been a very good wife so far, have I?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Silar cocked his head and replied anyway.
“Don’t apologize,” he muttered, tilting his head down slightly so I could get a better look at his ears. “I’m the one who hasn’t finished building your room and your bed.”
I halted just before my finger touched his right ear.
“My room?” I repeated. “My bed? You don’t mean for me to sleep in here?”
He wrenched his gaze up to meet mine. It was back to blue again.
“Do you want to?”
“I just… I’d assumed…” I cast my gaze around the room. For some reason it landed on our two hats again. Side by side.
I came here to be his wife, didn’t I? I wasn’t here to half-ass anything. And if I wanted him to keep me around after thirty days were up, surely I’d need to try to get as close to him as possible, right?
“What do Zabrians do?” I hedged, feeling suddenly shy. Sharing a bed with Silar…
“Haven’t been there in cycles,” he said with a toss of his tail that felt like the Zabrian version of a shrug.
“You don’t ever go there to visit?”
He stiffened, his gaze flashing white before he tilted his head down again, casting more of his face in shadow. “No.”
“Well, we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” I said. “But I expected… Well, typically human married couples share a bed. Or at least a room. Not always, of course,” I stammered. Good grief. I was well and truly blabbering now. “If there are, I don’t know, sleep issues or something, they might sleep apart. Do you snore?”
“Do I what?”
“Snore. It’s this loud snorty noise people make when they sleep. Sometimes. Not always. Do you snore?”
“I have no idea.”
“It’s fine if you do,” I added hastily. “Mama always said I sleep like the dead, so it won’t bother me…” I steeled myself. “I’ll sleep here! If that’s agreeable to you, I mean.”
Silar didn’t look up. His head still bent, he merely muttered one single, growly word directly at my boobs. “Agreeable.”
“OK. Swell. Sleeping arrangements are settled, then,” I said in a breathy rush. For some reason I didn’t feel relieved by this agreement, even though it was what I had been angling for. My belly tightened with nerves as I finally dabbed some of the cream onto the blackened edge of Silar’s ear. He hissed sharply, and I snatched my hand back.
“Sorry! Did that hurt?”
“No,” he said after a tense moment of heavy breathing. He curled his hands into fists on top of his thighs.
This was just like when I’d put my hands on his shoulders and then kissed him earlier. The simplest touches resulted in the most extraordinary, explosive physical responses. It occurred to me as I thoughtfully squeezed more cream from the tube that it might have been months, or maybe even years, since Silar had been touched by another person.
“Here,” I whispered, giving him a bit of a warning before I stroked the edge of his other ear, gently spreading the cream. He didn’t actually hiss this time, at least, but he did breathe in sharply through his nose. Some unseen muscles beneath the hair on his scalp spasmed, making both his ears twitch in unison.
“Are you sure this isn’t painful?” I asked doubtfully, adding a little more cream to the first ear.
“Define painful,” he said raggedly. Thrown by the question, I couldn’t come up with an answer.
Instead, I asked, my heart in my throat, “Should I stop?”
“Probably.”
I raised a brow at him.
“If I stop, will you promise to finish the job and do this yourself?”
“No.”
I smirked and rolled my eyes.
“I didn’t think so. I’ll try to be quick.”
Silar remained dutifully stiff and silent under my ministrations. Soon enough, all the inflamed, black bits of his ears had been coated with the healing antiseptic cream.
When I was finished, I asked him if he had any bandages to wrap everything up so the skin would stay clean, but he just stared at me blankly.
“Did that not translate?” I asked, wiping residue from my fingers onto my pants. Silar’s blue-veined gaze tracked the movements of my hands against my hips. “I want to wrap up your ears so all the cream doesn’t come off and everything stays protected.”
“It translated,” he finally informed me, taking his eyes from my hip-area with what looked like some effort. “I just don’t have anything like that.”
“What the heck do you do when you’re injured?”
“Usually nothing.”
I gaped at him.
“So, what, you just bleed all over the place and don’t even bother covering the wound?”
He did that tail-shrug thing again.
“Blood clots quickly enough. If it’s really deep I just wrap it in a shirt.”
Is this why he doesn’t wear a shirt? I thought rather grimly to myself. They’re all ruined with old blood stains because the man doesn’t have a single fucking bandage in his entire fucking house?
“Well, we’ll just have to make do,” I said with forced cheer. I went back to my bag in the kitchen, tossed the tube in, then fetched out my red scarf. I returned with it to the bedroom, fingering the soft material as I went. “Cherry red!” I said, smiling and shaking it at him.
“What’s that?” he asked from his seated position. Now that I was done rubbing cream on his ears, he seemed a little more relaxed. His fists had uncurled, and he leaned his large torso back against the chair, watching me as I approached.
“It’s for your ears.”
His gaze narrowed.
“Don’t use that.”
“It’s clean and it will protect-”
“Don’t.”
I sighed in exasperation.
“Are you going to put your hat back on and go back to work out there?”
“Yes.”
“Then you need something to cover your ears! Your hat’s got all kinds of dust and bacteria and lovely human sweat in it now, thanks to me. And I’m pretty sure wrapping a whole shirt around your heat is not going to be ideal.”
“Don’t use that.”
How many times was he going to repeat some variation of that same command?
“Is there a specific reason why you don’t want me to use it?” I asked, fighting to keep the irritation out of my voice. I was the idiot who’d taken his hat and caused him to get burned in the first place. Couldn’t he just accept this little bit of kindness from me, from his wife ? Why couldn’t he-
“It’s too nice.”
My nagging thoughts dispersed instantly. I stared at Silar, suddenly overwhelmed with something that felt a whole lot like tenderness. He didn’t want me to, what, get it dirty? He’d rather let an injury get infected than sully something of mine?
I swallowed a hot lump in my throat.
Silar took care of his property. Of his house. Of his animals.
But who took care of him?
Who took care of the man who didn’t have a table to eat at or a person to eat with?
The man who didn’t even bother to bandage himself when he bled?
I will.
I would do it. I was his wife now and wives were supposed to poke and prod, help and heal, and if Silar didn’t like it then too fucking bad because he’d married a human woman and we were one hell of a stubborn breed.
And if he decided to send me back after thirty days as a result…
Well… I’d just have to cross that bridge when I got to it. But I wasn’t about to idly sit by and watch Silar make dumbass decisions about his health just so I could keep my scarf clean.
“I may not know much about Zabrian marriages. Or even human marriages,” I admitted quietly as I returned to my place between Silar’s spread legs and placed my scarf gently over his ears. “But I do know that you’re more important than some scrap of fabric.”
I tugged gently on the scarf before tying it in a bow beneath his chin. Satisfied with my handiwork and trying to ignore how hilariously cute he looked with the scarf arranged along his hard jaw the way an old lady would wear one, I nodded once. He stared back at me in white-eyed silence.
“Next time,” I told him with a soft smile, “We’ll get some real bandages.”
I had a funny feeling that this big, quiet, alien dope was going to need them.
I had a feeling he’d needed them for a long, long time.