CHAPTER 20
Striding boldly through the doors of the law office, riding the high of Hannah’s claiming, I’m emboldened to the point I feel… powerful. I feel dominant.
It’s heady. With garment bags draped over my arms, I storm into the labyrinth, stalking past desks until I reach my black-sheep corner. I march to the mock-Gryfala’s door, and with my elbow I knock firmly.
But I don’t give her the chance to permit me to enter. I”ve already adjusted my burden so that I have enough of one hand free to twist the knob of the door, shoulder it open, and storm inside, right up to the mock-Gryfala’s desk. And with cold deliberation, I spear her with a stern look as I set the stack of her garment bags on her desk nearly atop a stack of file folders. (But not quite on top of them. I would hate to cover some unfortunate person”s case file when they are innocent of this mock-Gryfala’s crime of offense and don”t deserve to have their folder buried and cause it to perhaps become misplaced or lost) Then I lean nearer to the mock-Gryfala, still staring directly in her startled, quickly turning furious, eyes. “I do not belong to you.”
As if my statement is of no importance, as if I”m too inferior for her to acknowledge that I”ve even spoken, she spits her next words at me. “What,” she demands, her tone biting along my skin, “took you so long?” Then her eyes rake down my person. “What happened to you?”
My clothes are smeared with traces of my wing’s powder. In my attempt to scrub it off, I fear I only managed to mash it into the fabric’s fibers. I coated the areas with liquid soap which should help act as a barrier, should anyone brush against me. In addition to the unsightly film of soap, my outfit is also sporting paper toweling bits from where I scrubbed the absorbent paper pulp sheets over each mark until the sparkle was gone. My dress shirt is badly stained and wrinkled, as are my trousers, and my hair is rumpled as if someone grabbed it repeatedly—which Hannah did, take that, Mick! I also smell like Hannah, and it is a heady, incredible scent that may or may not be detectable to humans.
I do not explain what happened to me to the mock-Gryfala. Instead, I tell her what will not be happening again. “I will not do your bidding,” I tell her, politely but firmly, giving her a stare that might have the power to silence even Mick.
And at my show of firmness if not dominance, a very unwelcome change comes over her.
The female’s lashes flutter. Her gaze moves over me again, differently this time. I watch her eyes change. She gazes up at me in a way that shocks me. And alarms me.
She begins to open her mouth, but I’m afraid to risk her giving me an order when she has this look in her eyes that I’ve seen before from females who think it’s no harm to use me.
I panic. I panic so hard a purr rips out of me.
The mock-Gryfalas eyes roll back in her head and she collapses, sprawling over her desk. Her forehead bumps her mug of coffee, causing the liquid to splash onto her keyboard.
In a rush, I lunge over the desk and lift her face, which is on her computer controller’s ‘mouse’—a primitive cursor-controller that humans favor—and this stops her computer from frantically selecting and interacting with the elements in use on her system. Then I lift her keyboard and turn it over, shaking it in an effort to drain it of coffee.
A deluge of debris rains down from it. Not merely coffee. Clumps of fiber, strands of hair, dust, bits of food, the body parts of an insect—
“Don’t you clean your keyboard?!” I ask in horror.
Of course she doesn’t answer. She’s completely unconscious, her mouth slightly open, saliva beginning to leave her mouth and pool onto the stack of files where I’d carefully set her face.
I set her keyboard back on the desk transversal to its normal position to leave more surface area and snatch a tissue from the thin paperboard dispenser on her desk to first wipe an area clean on her desk’s surface—if I was taken aback by what was hiding in the crevices of her keys, her keyboard was hiding an abominable buildup of filth underneath of it—and rescue the file folders from her mouth by sliding her head to a safer desk location.
When I straighten, I realize I’m breathing hard. I didn’t mean to take that protective measure. Unsure what to do now that I’ve purred her into oblivion, I reach into my rearmost pocket for my Comm, intent on asking Julie for advice.
I see I have several texts from Hannah.
My hearts begin pounding from a different sort of alarm. Is Hannah all right?
I open her messages to me in a rush.
HANNAH:I know you told me to wash your marks off my clothes.
HANNAH:But the stuff wouldn’t come off.
HANNAH:I guess I didn’t try very hard either. They were really pretty.
Here she includes what humans call emojis, which are small caricatures of human expressions. It’s very obvious how instrumental facial expressions are for human communication when you see the many ways the visually-able population has invented to augment their drier written forms of communication. There are even programs that describe these characters for humans who do not have visual capabilities to rely on. Humans appreciate expressions immensely.
I shake myself to refocus on the crisis at hand: Hannah’s message. The emoji she included is a face with one eye open, and one eye ‘winked’ shut.
It is a playful-looking expression meant to relay that she means my wing markings are…
I frown, puzzled. I’m not certain why she would wink-face at me here.
Confused, my eyes scan her next message, hoping for more clues.
HANNAH:Every time I glance down at myself, I replay what we did.
Here she’s sent two emojis that are red faced expressions. A blue teardrop is on the outer corner of their right eyes. Bracket lines above the emoji’s eyes are set in a way that conveys a sort of distress, as does the gaped-open mouth with their tongues sticking out.
They look as if perhaps they are retching and weeping as they overheat. Or perhaps they are sweating?
Thoroughly confused, frowning extremely hard as I attempt to decipher her messages, I look at Hannah’s next communication bubble.
HANNAH:Don”t worry, I”m being careful not to accidentally touch them. But I had customers come into the fabric shop. A husband and wife.
HANNAH:The husband looked like he wanted to be anywhere else, but he was holding his wife’s hand like a champ.
HANNAH:The wife saw your wing powder on me and thought it was so pretty, she reached out and touched it.
I gasp out loud.
HANNAH:Long story short, I had to lock the store for the second time today as she attacked her husband like a starving woman right there by the blizzard fleece and the Cotton Kings Sultan Shadow yarn.
My hand slaps on top of my head and my wing talons grip each other, anxious and pinned at the level of my shoulders.
HANNAH:On the positive side, the husband said he’d be bringing his wife back to the fabric store really soon. Anytime she wanted to come in fact.
She adds a laughing emoji here, and this relaxes me by a fraction, because if I’m reading her messages with the appropriate context, she and these people have chosen to find this situation humorous instead of traumatizing.
HANNAH:So that’s a plus. Anyway, just wanted to share. Really, I just wanted you to know I’m thinking about you. A lot. Have a good rest of your day, Jonoh. Can’t wait to see you when we get home.
I run a hand down my face. My wings, shameless things they are, began heating at the idea that Hannah is wearing their marks. At learning that she is anticipating joining with me again this evening, my entire body temperature has risen, and it was already on the rise with my troublesome situation.
With a jolt, I glance back at the mock-Gryfala, then quickly send a few replies to Hannah before I close our communication chain in order to pull up a texted communication chain with Julie.
Julie enters the office a few short moments later as I’m carrying a small paper cup from the water cooler in the corner to the plants on the office windowsill that are looking in need of hydration. “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!” Julie whispers in full hushed volume.
As if in reaction to the harshness of the question, the mock-Gryfala insensibly slips from her chair and crashes to the floor of her office.
“Oh my stars!” I exclaim, and round the desk. Hurriedly, I lift her and arrange her back in her seat.
“Is she all right?” Julie asks.
“I think so,” I say worriedly. “But she struck the floor quite hard. I feel a measure of guilt.”
Julie makes a grumbling noise. “I’d order you not to feel guilt if that wouldn’t be wrong, but it is, so I won’t—but Jonoh,” she says, giving me widened eyes, “you have to get control of this. Dropping women into comas every time you feel threatened isn’t a long-term solution.”
“I didn’t mean to weaponize my natural defense!”
“Weaponized narcolepsy is what this essentially is,” Julie musingly agrees, before shaking her head. “We’re all lucky you’re a good guy. You could use your roofie purr for so many evil reasons.”
“Roofie purr?” I ask in confusion.
Julie has moved on though. She is giving me a very firm stare. “We’ll teach you how to stop being pushed.”
“Is that possible?” I ask, feeling hopeless.
“Let’s hope so,” she mutters.
“What do we do?” I gesture at the mock-Gryfala. “How do we explain to her what has happened without explaining that I’m an alien here?”
“We don’t explain,” Julie says. “And we sure don”t tell her the truth. Let’s call 911. Let them wake Cherise up and tell her she must have had a seizure or something.”
Medical specialists, traveling ones, arrive. They ask questions that Julie answers curtly, as if she were present with me at the time of the mock-Gryfala”s drop into unconsciousness. She does all the speaking and no one thinks to question me alone, which I’m eternally grateful for.
The state of my clothing rouses their curiosity, but Julie explains I was on an errand across town earlier and came back a mess. The personnel quickly lose interest in my appearance in favor of the immediate concern. They rouse the mock-Gryfala from her deep, peaceful sleep and she is quite shocked to learn she passed out.
When it’s clear that we’re dismissed, Julie grabs me by a clean edge on the sleeve of my arm and hauls me out of the office. She leaves me at my desk with a whispered order to run all commands from coworkers and the like by her for the rest of the day as a sort of failsafe, should anyone else inadvertently order me to do their bidding.
(A somewhat common occurrence because although I am a ‘black sheep’ to be avoided socially, my coworkers do indeed enjoy taking advantage of what they’ve discovered is my terribly agreeable, biddable personality and they’ve learned by process of elimination that if a female coworker orders me to finish an undesirable and unpalatable task, I will—precisely as Julie once warned me they would.)
I take my seat and slump over my very well-kept space (with my immaculate keyboard, which I”m suddenly very grateful to have labored to keep clean) and my eyes fall on Saphkarra’s framed picture that Hannah gave me. And very suddenly, I want a framed picture of Hannah too. Really, I just want Hannah here, but since I can’t have that, a framed photograph will be the next best option. I want a visual reminder of why I’m here, what I’m toiling for. Tonight I will ask her for one. And my stare turns inward as I realize that tonight, for the first time, I will take Hannah to her bed as a mate should. And the prospect of this no longer fills me with nerves and anxiety. For once, the thought of going to bed with Hannah fills me with pure excitement. With expectation, I finish my shift.