CHAPTER THIRTEEN #2
“Oh my god, you have to look at this,” Leesha crowed, her eyes lighting up.
“Black jeans and a lavender shirt. How fucking good does that look?” She held up her comm, and the device had combined the two pieces of clothing with a 3D projection of my body, showing a detailed image of how I would look wearing the items. She’d also added a pair of black boots, and I was thoroughly pleased with the result.
Far more interesting than non-descript beige, and a much better fit for the shape of my body.
“Uh… yeah. Looks good,” my master said, his eyes riveted on the image. “You’ve, um… been doing well,” he stuttered, then subtly licked his lips. “Thanks for giving him a hand.”
Leesha shot him a saccharine smile. “You’re so very welcome.”
? ? ?
I woke to a rapid thumping on my door, and I was up and on my feet even before I’d figured out what was happening.
Or even where I was. “Yes, sir?” I answered, fumbling for the door in the darkness.
If my master was calling, I was obligated to answer.
And if he was waking me in the middle of the night, then it could only be because he wanted to make use of my services.
My cock was already half hard, given that I hadn’t had the opportunity to climax in two whole days…
Reality jolted back into my brain as I stumbled into the hallway, seeing Leesha shoving her feet back into her boots at the end of the hallway.
“Rose is in labour,” she told me, as she saw me emerge from my room. “If you want to see the birth, get dressed and meet me over in the barn.” She shot me a bright grin, then dashed out the front door.
Right, yes. I remembered that I was living at the animal sanctuary now.
And a moment later, I remembered that the reason I hadn’t been allowed to climax in two whole days was because my master was not actually my master, and he had no use for the many, many talents I’d been taught during my training.
“Xel? Are you… Oh!” My master skidded to a halt as he burst out of his bedroom, still buttoning up his pants.
He looked me up and down, seeming lost for words as he took in my state of undress and the visible erection straining the front of my boxer shorts.
“We have to… uh… Leesha said that…” He gave me another quick once-over, then blinked and shook his head.
“Rose is about to give birth,” he finally managed.
“Put some clothes on and you can come and help.” That was a direct order, and I braced myself for the irrepressible pull of the compulsion to obey him…
Only it never came. The innate desire to please my master remained, but the buzzing in my brain that demanded I comply with his orders remained conspicuously absent.
“Yes, sir,” I said nonetheless, scrambling to gather my wits amidst the dregs of sleep, the remnants of the entirely arousing dream I’d been having before I was woken, and my confusion at the absence of the bond I was so used to feeling.
I stumbled back into my room, pawing at the wall to find the light switch, and by the time I was dressed, my master had already left.
I shoved my feet into the borrowed boots I’d been wearing and turned on the light on my comm, to avoid tripping on the way across the paddock.
As I was reaching for the doorknob, Bribie came padding sleepily out of Leesha’s bedroom, blinking at me in confusion.
I hurried down the hall to his side, turning him around and giving him a nudge to go back into Leesha’s room.
“Go back to sleep,” I said to him. “You don’t have to help with this one. ”
The munsend shook himself lazily, then padded back into the bedroom, and I heard a muffled thump as he flopped down onto the rug. And then I was hurrying out the door and over to the barn, hoping I hadn’t missed anything important in the few minutes I’d been delayed.
Inside the barn, Leesha was leaning on the stall door where Rose was penned up, peering at her intently. In the stall next door, the other thumbits were bleating continuously, roused either by Rose’s agitation or by our presence.
Rose herself was standing up, her legs spread and her head down, and there was a trickle of fluid coming from her back end.
I wrinkled my nose at the sight. I knew the basic mechanics of reproduction, and I’d been taught a number of different ways that animals from a variety of different planets produced their young.
Some laid eggs, some gave birth to live offspring, a few species had a way of cloning themselves by budding off miniature replicas of themselves, and still others required a separate host species to incubate their lavae for a time before the offspring broke out of their host’s body to begin independent life.
Thumbits, apparently, gave birth to live young, but I’d never given the actual process much thought.
At first glance, it appeared to be far messier than I’d ever anticipated.
The videos had always shown images of clean, fluffy cubs or chicks, wobbling about on unsteady legs.
But of course, when they first came out, they wouldn’t be anything like so neat and clean.
“She’s doing pretty well on her own,” Leesha said in a soft voice, sidling up to me. “We’re just here to help if anything goes wrong. But if we’re lucky, she’ll be able to handle it all by herself.”
We watched for another minute or two, then a long, pointy object appeared out of Rose’s back end. “That’s a foot!” my master blurted out. But the foot disappeared back inside Rose just as quickly.
“Why did it go back inside?” I asked, concerned that something was wrong.
But my master just shrugged. “Sometimes it just takes a while. The feet can pop in and out a few times, while the contractions get stronger and everything lines up in the right place. It’s not a problem unless the mother seems to be in distress.”
We waited a few minutes more, and then the leg slid out again… and this time, there was a second little foot beside it. “Come on, baby,” Leesha crooned at Rose. “You can do it. Nice big push. Come on, girl.”
Rose let out a bleating sound and stomped her feet a few times. Then she put her head down and her abdomen seemed to ripple… and all at once, a tiny little version of herself plopped out of her and landed with a thud on the straw.
"Oh goodness, it’s so cute!” Leesha gushed, all but jumping up and down as she watched. “And it’s white! White thumbits are the cutest!”
As we watched, Rose took a moment to recover, then she turned around, sniffing at the calf warily. But caution soon turned to affection, and she began to lick the little body all over.
I couldn’t help but grimace at the sight.
“That must taste awful,” I said – not so much a complaint as an expression of surprise.
My trainers had never anticipated that I’d be involved in animal care in anything but the most superficial way, and so they’d taught me just enough on the subject to avoid the appearance of ignorance, but nothing more.
My master chuckled. “I think thumbit tastebuds are quite different from our own. They eat grass, after all,” he pointed out, quite sensibly.
“Looks like we got away with the easy option,” Leesha said. “Just give them a few more minutes to make sure the little one can stand up, and then we can go back to bed.”
We all stood there, watching with rapt attention as the calf slowly tottered to its feet, and then its mother led it to the rack of hay that had been set up earlier.
Thumbit calves were born able to eat vegetation straight away, Leesha had told me earlier in the evening, which was in contrast to a lot of the species from Earth, which depended on their mothers making milk until their digestive system developed a bit more.
The calf wobbled along after its mother, nibbling at the hay when she gave it a nudge in the right direction.
But despite the clear evidence that it was safe and healthy, we all continued standing there, watching.
After a time, the mother went back to cleaning the calf, licking all the parts she hadn’t got to yet, and then she stood and looked up at us, then back down at the calf, seeming for all the world to be saying ‘See? I made this. Didn’t I do a good job!’
“You’re going to be a terrific mother,” Leesha told Rose, and the thumbit shook herself, as if pleased with the praise.
It was a truly magical sight, and I was immensely pleased to have been able to see it.
But the longer we stood there, the more I became aware of an odd sensation, in my mind and in my chest. It was not a comfortable feeling, though I couldn’t quite put a name to it.
It intensified when I looked at Rose, paying such close attention to her calf, and clearly wanting to protect and care for it.
All of a sudden, I became aware of… anger. I was seethingly angry, and though I was certain that I wasn’t angry with Rose, something she was doing was nonetheless causing the anger.
I was aware of my breath coming quicker, and I abruptly turned away, wanting to somehow distance myself from whatever was making me so angry.
“Xel?” my master said, stepping away from the stall to come after me. “Are you okay?”
I ignored him. I strode up the aisle, heading for the door, thoroughly confused about how I was feeling.
“Xel? Wait! Xel!”
He was not my master. He could not command me to stop…
and yet, the instant I was outside in the cooler night air, I slowed, waiting for him to catch up and forcing myself to take slow, deep breaths to calm myself.
What the heck had just happened? Why would I be angry at a thumbit caring for her calf?
“Xel? What’s wrong? What’s going on?” My master didn’t sound angry.
He only seemed concerned. I tried once again to locate the source of my anger, but as sometimes happened when I thought about things I wasn’t supposed to think about, it seemed like there was a wall in my mind, stopping me from accessing the thing I wanted to see.
“The calf will stay with Rose for a while?” I asked my master, not entirely sure how it was relevant. But it seemed to be part of the idea that was infuriating me, and I clung to that, hoping it would eventually start making sense.
“Yes. For about a year,” my master said. Then he again asked, “Are you all right?”
Behind him, I saw Leesha coming out of the barn, switching off the lights and closing the door behind her. She’d apparently decided that Rose and her calf were safe enough for the night and could be left alone.
“She’s going to care for him,” I went on, continuing the conversation with my master. “Protect him, and teach him how to be a thumbit.”
“Yes,” my master said, a frown on his face. “I mean, you must already know that, right? You understand how animals reproduce?”
“Yes,” I said, because I did understand it.
But like so much of my education, it had only been taught to me as an abstract concept, not as a practical experience.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I didn’t mean to concern you.
I’m fine.” I was not fine. But I couldn’t for the life of me begin to find the words to explain what was wrong.