“Gruff!”
A small party of bucks has arrived at the front door. There are three in total, one big old one and two younger ones. The younger ones seem very strong and are both shouldering significant loads of stuff, and most likely also, things. I wonder if these are some of the traders Gruff told me about.
I notice the way Gruff’s eyes slide to me for a moment before he reacts. I have an immediate feeling of uneasiness.
“Stay inside,” Gruff says to me before going out to greet them. I don’t remain indoors. I sneak out the back and circle around to the barn that is located quite close to the house. This is where Gruff keeps heaps of hay in a raised loft. I climb up to the loft and wriggle my way through the hay until I’m able to peer out over the edge of the open hatch and finally see who our unexpected guests are.
Their leader is a big gray beast with a few black markings here and there. Gruff greets him with a big, masculine hug.
“Piam. It is good to see you,” Gruff says.
“And you, Gruff. I am glad to see you still intact. We worry about you, living out here on the frontier alone with the outcasts and criminals…”
Gruff laughs. “This is where I like it. This is where the strongest stock is bred, and where the strongest bucks survive.”
“Alone,” Piam says. “You must miss your own kind.”
“I like my solitude.”
The older buck grunts. “That makes this request a little less easy to make. My sons and I have been on the road for quite some time now. May we rest with your herd?”
“Of course. You know my home is always open to you, Piam.”
Gruff raises his voice ever so slightly at the end there, as if he wants me to hear it. He’s warning me that they’re going to come in. My mind flashes back to my first altercation with the other buck. Will they all be overcome with lust when they see me? Will they scent me? Have they already? I wonder if I should hide. I get the strong impression Gruff does not want these people to see me. I decide to hide, snugging back into the hayloft and secreting myself among the tightly packed dry grasses.
Gruff opens the front door, welcoming his band of guests in. If he was expecting me to be there, he doesn’t skip a beat when he realizes I’m not. I see him open the front door and glance around the property.
“Let’s eat in the barn,” he says.
“Why!?” I mouth the question to myself. He has a perfectly nice house, why is he dragging them out to where I am trying to keep a low profile?
The answer soon becomes apparent. The visitors brought a few carts of supplies with them, too big and dusty to store indoors.
“We brought you some forage from the North,” Piam says on his way into the barn. “Berries, roots, and grains. These wild places remain largely uncultivated, but the city’s horticulturalists are making great strides in developing entirely new fruits and foods.”
“I hope to begin growing from seed this year,” Gruff says.
I ignore the conversation about seeds and instead focus on spying on the newcomers. I am able to see everything from my vantage point among the grasses in the hayloft. I have an excellent view of four sets of horns, Gruff’s, Piam’s and the as yet unintroduced sons of Piam. The scent of buck is strong now, strong enough to start fucking with me again. All these males in this confined space, all this pure masculine energy. Gruff’s scent is stronger than any other, perhaps in response to their presence. I don’t know the precise biology of what is going on right now. I do know that I am starting to feel some kind of sexual way, a way that someone hiding from a pack of virile males probably should not feel. I burrow back into the hay and hope that this visit won’t go on too long, though it sort of sounds like they’ll be spending at least one night.
“Brutus, how is the wife? Last time we spoke you were on the verge of making your life pledge to a doe?” Gruff asks what seems to be a polite question.
Brutus grunts. The sound makes my belly clench low. Fuck. I have never been the sort of person to find more than one guy attractive at a time, but these aren’t guys, and I can’t help what all this chemistry is doing to my biology. I tell myself that it’s not really that I am attracted to any of them. I’m just reacting to a series of circumstances and events, and…
“Not a good topic of conversation,” another one of the brothers pipes up. “Wedding never happened.”
“And you, Trex?”
Neither of them have stories of romantic success to share. They make this clear in a series of rough guttural sounds that make full sentences obsolete. This planet clearly has a mate crisis, and I have landed smack in the middle of it. It’s not something I just intellectually understand. It is something I can feel coursing through me. I have become part of it.
“When I was a young buck, there was a mate for every male,” Piam sighs. “Then I had two sons, and so did everybody else. And now…”
“We’ve heard this,” Alix says. He seems like he is the youngest, and possibly the most hot-headed. Or maybe just the most desperate for a mate. Hard to say.
“The courtesans of the city are busy,” Piam says. “There are lines. Long lines every day outside the brothels. The courtesans are the richest in the land. We have nothing to sell that is of even close to the same value.”
Caprine society seems as though it is in a desperate state. I wonder why Gruff never speaks of it. He prefers to speak of simple, local things. A lot of my curiosities are being sated, but I do wonder how long I’ll be up here, stuck hiding from the horny bucks.
Turns out, not that much longer. The grasses are tickling my nose and irritating my sinuses. I let out a sneeze. That brings all the bucks to their feet, leaping off the benches on which they sat.