I think she truly was interested, Dragon thought to himself as he watched Bobbi from the corner of his eye. After all, she claimed that studying other species’ cultures was her job—another strange concept, a female working outside of the home! But if what she said was true, it was clear she enjoyed her vocation.
“How do you make a living studying other cultures?” he asked, turning to look at her. “And why do you have to? Do you have no male to provide for you, back on your home planet, ‘Earth?’”
She stiffened and the smile she’d been wearing for his mother fell right off her face.
“All right, I would call that question extremely misogynistic if I hadn’t just spoken with your mother and learned a little something about your culture. I’m betting that there aren’t many women involved in any kind of work outside the home on Saurous.”
“That’s a bet you’d win,” Dragon remarked. “Females are much too vulnerable to be outside the family compound—it’s too dangerous for them.”
“Maybe in your culture,” Bobbi said, frowning. “But not in mine—or in the culture of the Kindred of the Mother Ship, for that matter. They believe that women and men are equal and that women should have the same opportunities as men.”
Dragon frowned, feeling confused.
“So…they allow their wives and daughters to just wander around in the open? Don’t many of them get Claimed by strange males and bred by force or even killed?”
She shook her head.
“No, of course not! Is it really that unsafe for women on Saurous? They can’t ever leave the house?”
“Of course they can leave the house! They can go out on their regular Market Day—as long as they stay in the boundaries of their own Clan’s territory and go in a group,” Dragon said.
Bobbi rolled her big blue eyes expressively.
“And what’s that—one day a month?”
“Market Day happens once a solar week,” Dragon said, frowning. “And the women are free to come and go as they please on that day, as long as they stay together and get back to their family compounds before it gets dark.”
“Wow—one whole day a week, straight to the market and back again,” she said sarcastically. “Now that’s what I call freedom!”
Dragon shook his head.
“I don’t understand—how is that a bad thing?”
“It’s bad because the women should be as free to come and go as the men—at any time of the day or night and any day of the week,” she said.
“But…if they went out at night or on any place but the Market they might be Claimed and taken by strange males,” Dragon pointed out.
She raised one eyebrow at him.
“You mean the way you ‘Claimed’ me and dragged me away from my research project on Avria Pentaura?”
“I told you—I took you to keep you safe,” Dragon growled. “You have no idea how vindictive my brother is—he would have come back for you.”
“That’s what you say, anyway.” She crossed her arms over her full breasts. “I think it’s just an excuse.”
Dragon cast about for a way to convince her, though he knew he shouldn’t have to. No Saurian male would bother explaining why he had Claimed a female—he would just take her and breed her and be done with it. But somehow, he found himself wanting to make the little feela understand his reason for taking her.
A sudden thought occurred to him and he went over to the sleeping pit. Leaning down, he snagged a blanket and brought it over to her.
It was a patchwork blanket, made up of many small, furry hides, none of them bigger than the span of his hand. Dragon held it carefully as he handed it to her.
“Do you see this?” he asked, pointing to one gray hide, spotted with purple.
“What is this? Some kind of an animal pelt quilt?” She looked at it with interest. “This looks like something that might have been made by indigenous people back on my own planet.”
“My mother made it for me—so that I could remember my pet—Nibbles,” Dragon told her.
“Nibbles?” She frowned. “Wait—didn’t your brother say something about that on the ship?”
Dragon nodded grimly.
“It was a warning—one you’d do well to heed. Nibbles was a heechee—a small, furry rodent with a long nose and big, purple eyes. A mammalian used for food here on Saurous,” he explained. “We got a shipment of them from the butcher—live ones because my mother prefers them fresh—when I was just a boy.”
“And you picked one to be your pet?” Bobbi asked, tilting her head and looking at him curiously.
“Yes, Dragon admitted, somewhat stiffly. “It’s… not something that’s done here on Saurous—they don’t have what you call ‘pets’ here. But my mother saw me feeding Nibbles little pieces of partha bread and stroking his fur and she decided to let me keep him.” He ran a hand over his hair. “Of course, the minute she said I could have him, Zerlix started complaining that Nibbles was the heechee he had wanted for his Last Meal.”