How can this be my life now?
Fortune is not this kind. She is fickle and I can’t help but be afraid. Where is the ugly surprise? When will this all be yanked away?
But if I focus only on that, I’ll miss these beautiful moments I have now. So I put it out of my head and take another large bite of the most delicious food and all the universes.
And I gaze at my beautiful mate who sits across the table.
I wish she were closer where I could touch and scent her more easily.
But then I think, no, it’s better to sit like this where I can see all the changeable expressions on her face.
“So you were a jock?” she asks.
Like so much of what she says, this makes no sense. I studied Earth customs more than anyone, but I find that I’m still so often at such a loss.
“I mean, you played that sport, what did you call it, when you were in school?”
Ah! “Yes. I was always very good at unza.”
“Right, unza! Don’t tell me, you fly around on broomsticks chasing a flying golden ball?”
“Broomsticks? No. We are Draci. We have wings. And it is not so much a ball we used as a large baton.”
Ana leans forward across the table. “Do you miss them? Your wings?”
I think for a moment. “We haven’t been able to truly use them in almost a hundred and fifty years. Space is too cramped on the ship. And on Earth we cannot fly free either since we are meant to be kept a secret.”
I look around the shop where humans of all sizes and colors and shapes move all around me, none of them giving me a second glance. They are living their own lives and now I am living among them.
“No,” I say decisively, grabbing Ana’s hand. “I do not miss my wings. Not when not having them allows me to be here with you.”
A slow, pleased smile crosses Ana’s face. “You want to get out of here? We can take the rest of the pizza with us.”
“Where will we go now?” I cannot hide my excitement. Every place Ana has taken me today has been amazing.
First we drove through the city and I admired the human architecture. Then we ‘parked’ the car and I got to see everything so much more up close.
We passed shop after shop, each of them selling items so unique I got distracted more than once. Ana was patient, her smile wide as she explained strange Earth customs to me.
There are shops for shearing the hair on their heads. Shops that display small shining jewels on strings that females wear around their necks and wrists. It seems the hoarding impulse is not just a Draci impulse, for the gems are as lovely as any the ancients would store in their caves and fight over in the Century Wars. Though they are much smaller then gemstones on Draci.
Other shops are devoted to their kits, filled with brightly colored objects of play. Still more stores were for shoes and food and for decorating one’s dwelling. Other tall buildings are places of business, and dwellings, and banks—which, when Ana explains it, just seems like another form of hoarding to me.
Then finally we arrived at the establishment that sells pizza and Ana has been enchanting me with her stories of Earth kind ever since.
Ana bites her lip as she blinks up at me slowly. “I was thinking we could go back to my apartment. My dwelling.”
My thoughts immediately go to the last time we were secluded and alone. How it felt to penetrate her body with my shaft, so deep inside her. Her scent on my tongue. The enchanting way her teats bounced with my every thrust.
I nod emphatically. “Yes. Yes, I would like that very much.”
Because as exciting as seeing this Earth city is, the best part about today has been Ana. She is bright and happy and expressive, none of which can be used to describe any Draci I know. Being around her feels so good, even when I am not fucking her. I know all humans are not this kind. I have studied their history. They can be just as violent and cruel as my own race.
But in Ana I have found the single jewel amid a mountain.
And I have also been fighting my erections for most of the day. Her scent is still on my tongue, no matter how many other scents I encounter.
While she sat across from me eating pizza, her teats juggled enticingly through the thin fabric of her clothing, and all I could imagine was earlier when she whipped it off over her head and exposed herself fully to me.
I’m not sure that going to her apartment means I will get a repeat of such a display, but even the possibility has me up and out of my seat.