Keelo
“Look at that!” Eot shouts, pointing to something up ahead.
I don’t attempt to urge my and Rin’s bimor to speed up, knowing it’s pointless, even when, a moment later, Halley draws level with him and lets out a gasp of her own.
“Oh, wow.” She motions for us to hurry. “You’ve got to see this.”
Their enthusiasm is catching, and Rin leans forward in the saddle. She’s clutching the pommel with one hand and is using her other to hold the wide brim of her hat-cum-helmet away from her eyes.
I’m more captivated by the sight of her excitement than the prospect of what’s ahead. This is the most attentive I’ve known Rin to be—and the most childlike. I almost want to slow our bimor down further to draw this moment out for longer.
Knots form in my stomach, the enormity of my conflicting emotions making me physically uncomfortable.
After my fight with Eot last night, seeing him with Halley this morning—Halley who was leaning over the side of her mount as if she wanted to climb into Eot’s breeches with him—felt like getting my chest ripped open.
But then there’s no denying that the last few hours of travel, listening to her chat to Rin about rain and deserts and counting sand particles, have been… pleasant.
I want to keep scowling, but despite my best efforts, I never can stay angry at Eot for long, not even when he’s purposefully trying to piss me off. And this time I know he didn’t do any of those things with the intention of hurting me.
Quite the opposite.
I crave Halley. I desire Eot. And I yearn for them both to crave and desire me in return. With barbs and scratches and commanding words. With a relentless fist around my cock that won’t let me come until I’m hoarse from begging and their faces are flush after their own release.
Since our first meeting, Eot’s and my future together has been predetermined. So long as we could prove our worth, the Elders Coalition was always going to partner us with a female pair. One mate each. One family each. Separate yet forever joined.
And we’d come so close to achieving that idyllic future.
Of course, neither of us could’ve predicted Rin needing our help or Halley forcing her way on board our ship. Now, here I am, my entire world thrown into turmoil with Eot having offered to share Halley.
Not to share himself.
Not to share me.
I stare at their backs as the distance between us slowly closes.
Sand still clings to Eot’s skin from when he fell out of his saddle, and despite his exclamation, he’s only got half his attention on the sight before him.
He keeps sending Halley furtive glances, as if hoping that each time he looks at her he’ll find her looking at him.
For as long as I’ve known him, he’s had a lot of restless energy, but it’s worse now he’s so close to Halley.
He can’t keep still, shifting in his seat, picking at the closure of a saddlebag, glancing at Halley, brushing sand from his shoulders, glancing at Halley, shielding his eyes from the sun. Glancing at Halley.
I glare. It shouldn’t be possible for so many conflicting and overlapping emotions to fit inside a single head. Yet here I am, struggling as though I’m a hundred people with a hundred different thoughts.
To make it worse, part of me knows that the four of us spending time together should be enough to make me happy. Eot, Halley, and Rin being safe and happy should be enough. Today should be enough.
But it still isn’t.
Because I’m so incredibly greedy.
Greedier than every single other Arrok.
For how can I have one of them without the other? It doesn’t make sense to me. I can’t separate my desire for Halley from my longing for Eot into two separate shapes.
But that isn’t what Eot proposed.
I bet the idea of him fucking his other half has never even crossed his mind. So I keep my distance from the both of them.
You just need to survive until tomorrow evening, I reassure myself.
When we’ll have returned to the ship and this will all be over.
From there, it’ll be a short flight back to the market—or to the nearest space station, if Halley remains determined to abandon Lyd—and then we’ll be free of her forever, and everything will return to normal. To something bordering on manageable.
Eot will be furious.
And Rin? The thought is painful, so I don’t think it, even as she lets out an audible gasp, and we finally crest the last of the sand dunes.
A ravine stretches before us. It cuts through the planet’s surface, lines of sediment coloring the exposed rock in strips of muted earth tones.
“It’s got to be at least a mile wide,” Halley says breathlessly. “Are we sure the trikon’s even down there?”
“Is this still the right way, Rin?” Eot asks.
The youngling retrieves the datapad from her pocket, checking our comparative location to that of our prey. When she gives him a decisive nod, I peek over her shoulder to confirm for myself, but she’s right.
“Then down we go,” says Eot.
“If we can find a way down.” I eye the steep walls of the ravine and silently run some rough calculations for how much a climb of that size is going to put us back.
I really don’t want to be out here any longer than necessary.
“The farmer didn’t mention a ravine, or I’d have charged more. ” A lot more.
“Maybe he’s never been out this far,” Halley suggests, then points to something a little way to our left. “I think that’s an animal trail. We could follow it down.”
“Good idea!” Eot curves the corners of his mouth up in an approximation of the human expression Halley favors, and his top lip catches on his tusks.
It’s ridiculous and adorable, and he’s clearly only doing it to impress her.
Halley must be impressed though, because she laughs, and my stomach tightens with irrational jealousy.
“You know it’s probably the trikon’s trail,” I loudly point out because nobody else seems inclined to state the obvious. But, as there isn’t another path, both Eot and Halley ignore me, and we begin our descent.
We end up having to dismount to stop our left legs from scrapping against the rock wall.
Then, Rin and Halley take the lead, picking out the widest sections of the animal track for Eot and I to follow with the bimors.
We tie their reins to the saddle of the animal in front—but loosely so that, if one were to fall, the knot would come undone rather than pull the others down with it.
“It’s got to be an old riverbed,” Halley says when we eventually reach the bottom.
It’s darker down here and several degrees colder. A glance toward the sky shows me that the two suns are hidden from sight by the high walls so that it feels more like dusk than late afternoon.
“I studied beginner geology as part of my undergrad degree. You see this stone here”—Halley crouches to touch the ground near one of Rin’s booted feet and breaks a thin layer of rock away where it’s split from the ground—“I’m pretty sure this is shale.
Or, I mean, this planet’s equivalent of Earth shale. ”
“Akh…” There were too many words that didn’t translate—undergrad, degree, shale?
For a second, Eot and I share a confused look, and it’s clear he’s thinking the same I am.
It’s such a familiar thing for us to do—to glance at each other when the rest of the world suddenly doesn’t make sense—that for a second it’s like we never argued last night.
But then he’s sending another furtive glance toward Halley, and it’s a punch to my gut.
“What is this sha-el?” Eot asks.
“It’s mud that turned into stone hundreds of thousands of years ago,” she says. “It’s my guess that this entire ravine used to be flooded, once upon a time.”
Straightening, she hands her piece of broken mudstone to Rin.
“You can tell all of this by merely looking?” Eot asks, leaning over the youngling’s shoulder for a closer examination of the shale.
Halley shows him her blunt teeth in reward for the question.
So…happy.
“Remember how I said earlier that the weather has a big impact on the environment? Well, you can use the environment to learn about prehistoric weather patterns. It makes sense that there was once a lot of water on this planet, because water erodes rock into sand. It would’ve created those caves as well.
” And she gestures toward the ravine wall to where the dark mouth of a cave cuts through the layers of colored rock.
It’s not the only one. We passed several on our way down, although most were too small for a human to crawl into, let alone an adult Arrok. Now, from our position at the base of the ravine, I can count another six caves within our sight, although the one Halley pointed to is by far the largest.
There’s a scattering of smaller rocks outside its entrance, and piles of dried, old shit. I take another peek at the datapad, but we aren’t so close to our prey for that cave to be its home. Nevertheless, I breathe deep, searching for clues in the air.
“I can smell animals.” Blood and fur and waste. “But it’s faint. Possibly several days old.”
“The trikon probably came back this way,” Eot agrees. “After it attacked the farmer’s herd.”
“I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to how good your sense of smell is. Umm…that is…” Halley clears her throat, and it’s easy to guess that she’s remembering our earlier conversation, when Rin had been asleep.
Eot puffs up his chest, straightening to his full height, the prideful ass.
But before he can say anything in response, Halley’s taken hold of Rin’s hand, and the two of them are walking down the center of the ravine together.
Halley points to the occasional rock, but if Rin answers any of her geology questions, her voice is too soft for me to hear.
I expect Eot to go rushing after them, but he sidesteps closer to me. I watch him from the corner of my eye, even as Halley and Rin move farther away.
“What?” I steel myself for his answer.
I’ve changed my mind, sorry.
I don’t want to share anymore.
Or, worse yet: Halley asked me to tell you that she only wants me and not you.
When he finally breaks the silence, it’s with a low whine that sounds more like a broken water pipe than words.
I flinch I’m so taken aback. “Fek, Eot.”
“Akhhhh!” He whines again. “This is so scudding hard, Keelo. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“What...you’re doing?” I repeat, stupidly.
“With Halley. I don’t know what to say to her anymore.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, because you never want to talk to anyone.” Evidently judging Halley and Rin to be at the appropriate distance for a private conversation, he catches one of the bimors’ reins and follows. The two other bimors follow in a procession, all still tied to the beast in front.
“I talk to you,” I tell the back of his head, rushing to catch up.
“When you want to scold me or to order me to do something. So?”
“So, what?”
“So tell me what to do.”
My stomach drops. “You want me to tell you how to…mate with Halley? After I expressly told you to leave her alone?” I can barely speak through my clenched jaw.
The words glue themselves to the inside of my throat, and I’ve got to force them out.
Just as I’ve got to force my feet to keep moving, instead of letting my body atrophy at the base of this canyon, like one of the many sun-bleached bones scattered over the shale. Left behind and forgotten.
“Yes,” Eot agrees. “I want you to tell me how I’m supposed to get her attention.
And don’t act all high and mighty like you’re not hoping to benefit too.
We’re sharing, remember?” He asks that last question as if there’s some universe in which I haven’t been nonstop obsessing about the idea of us sharing.
As if he didn’t spend half the morning sulking about our fight.
“I never agreed,” I say through gritted teeth.
He laughs. It’s a beautiful sound, loud and full of relentless positivity. “But you want to. I know you.”
“No.”
“Yes.” Persistence enters his voice.
I begin another denial but understand the futility of it without having to also explain a lot of things I’d rather not confess. Besides, there’s never any point in us arguing when we’re in this mood. Neither one of us is going to change our mind, so I don’t bother replying.
My silent no might as well have been a shout. We both hear it, unspoken.
The look of hurt that crosses his face is nearly enough to make me scream, Don’t you understand? If I can’t have you, then I can’t have Halley!
So instead I say, “Compliment her. Tell her what it is you like about her. Then, maybe, Halley might find something to like about you, too—but I can’t promise that. You’re a difficult male to live with.”
“Compliment her, yes.” Too distracted to pay my insults any heed, he rushes forward a few steps, shouting at Halley across the distance, “Are you sure your species has not yet discovered advanced space travel, Halley?”
“What do you mean?” she asks, and I don’t need to scent her to know she’s confused by the sudden conversation.
So am I, to be honest.
“You know so much about meteorology and geology and how the planets work,” Eot calls. “So, if you’re a representative of your species, how is it that humans haven’t yet explored beyond their own galaxy?”
“Well, this stuff’s easy to learn.” She waves a dismissive hand, clearly still not understanding what he’s trying to say. “I sat in a lecture theater and looked at old slides. It’s not like I was the first person to discover shale.”
“That’s…not what I meant.” Eot’s shoulders drop an inch, and he glances back at me.
Fek. I cup a hand to the side of my mouth, grateful that there’s nobody else around to overhear me about to make a scudding fool of myself. “But you were the first person to discover this shale.”
“Yes!” Eot nods. “That’s true. You discovered this shale.” And he kicks demonstratively at the ground.
“Er…” There’s a pause, and then Halley shows us her teeth in another display of her pleasure. “Yeah, I guess I did.”