Chapter 2
What is sex?
Filbur
“How can you let someone else go up there to meet your bride?” Juni, my niece, asked as she walked beside me, carrying her little pack over her shoulder. “And, more importantly, how could you send Guidy and Tegha to look after her and help her prepare and not me?”
I patted the thick skin of her skull and scoffed. “You know I need you here. You are in training, remember? And you know I was not allowed to leave.”
She mumbled her disapproval. “I could have talked to Father. I am trained enough to take over while you are away for a few hours…”
She was, but it was not the point. “I do not need you to fight my battles for me with my brother,” I teased.
“I think you do, since you never seem to get what you want from him anyway.”
I gave her a pointed look. “He is biased when it comes to your sisters and you, and you know it. You can make the man do anything.”
“Exactly!” She beamed. “I could have made him listen to reason. She is to be your partner. A part of our family. Father should—”
“He knows all this, Juni,” I interrupted her. “But he also is a good and responsible leader. I am in charge of everyone’s well-being. Although you know how to tend to the most basic wounds, you are not ready to handle something more serious.”
She crossed her arms in front of her, narrowing her eyes at me. “See, you do not need me. I could have gone up with Guidy and Tegha to meet your bride.”
By the sea gods, this girl was just like her damn father. “Wrong. In fact, I need you to do the next check up,” I said, unhooking the leather satchel at my waist to throw it to her. “Make sure you do not forget anyone.”
Her jaw dropped as she caught it. “You are joking, right?”
“Do I look like I am joking?” I deadpanned. Her throat bobbed. “Exactly. Go ahead. By the time you are done, we should be stopping for the night and expecting the human shuttle to arrive.”
She gave me a once over. “I truly hope you will take the time to shower and put on clean clothes.” Her wince told me everything I needed to know about my current appearance.
We had been walking for days already and it would be a couple more weeks before we reached our summer destination.
“Of course I will,” I said, although I could not know for sure if I would be able to find a water source suitable for bathing near our camp tonight. “Do you take me for some savage?”
Juni pondered it but did not grace me with an answer. Instead, she asked, “How do you think she looks?”
I wish I knew. The only other human female I had ever seen was Ghauro’s female.
She looked beautiful, but I had no idea if all of them looked similar…
Human male varied from one to the next, it was only safe to assume it worked the same.
As for my own species…I guess, for an untrained eye, females and males looked alike.
But our colors went in a lot of different shades.
Whereas I was a bright red, my brother was a grayish blue with purple undertones—which he had given to all his children and made me more and more of an outcast.
“I do not know,” I told Juni. “I can tell you that human females have something here,” I said, pointing at her chest. “Ghauro called it udders, but his human called it breasts.”
She hummed quietly, still not leaving to take care of the task I had given her.
“So, you will make babies?” she asked suddenly and I nearly tripped.
Why was I the one having the reproduction talk with her?
“Shit,” I cursed under my breath. “Did you not have this kind of talk with your own parents?” I grumbled.
“Oh, I did. I know I was conceived in a bottle and grown into a glass box in the sky until I was big enough to be born.”
Right. The reproduction talk was a weird one to have nowadays.
“Father said your bride could make real babies,” she said excitedly. “Like, inside her own body. It sounds awesome!”
For fuck’s sakes. Why me?
“Uhm, yeah. That is about all you need to know.”
She frowned, and I could feel the damn question forming in her mind.
Please, do not ask it. Please. Just, please. “Then how are babies made?”
Fucking fuck.
“Ask your father.”
She looked confused. I ignored her and kept moving forward, even increasing my pace. “But I did,” she argued. “He told me about the box thing. And then, when he told us about your bride, he said she was the one who was going to carry the babies. What happened to the box?”
Someone please fall and need assistance. Anything to rescue me from this conversation.
No one did. Nothing saved me from having to explain. “The box was never supposed to happen,” I gritted out. “You know all the species in our system are infertile, right?” She nodded. “It is because of this that the human created the box. So we would not go extinct while they fixed the whole issue.”
“So your bride is the one fixing this?” she asked innocently.
“Sort of. She is here to at least try to fix it.”
“And if she succeeds,” Juni asked, “will everyone get a human bride? Even me?”
Okay. That was enough for me. “Ask your father,” I gritted out again. “I will not be scolded by him because I told you how sex works.”
How was she this fast with her short legs? No matter the pace, she kept up. “What is sex?”
“Something I cannot tell you about. No go do what I asked you to if you want to remain my trainee.”
Juni only tried to argue for a minute before she took off, going over everyone to offer assistance and inquire about their health and any injury that might need attending.
Good. That left me all the time I needed to panic about the incoming arrival of my bride and the lack of water around for me to make myself look presentable.