I think I’m offended. Billy certainly has a lot more to say for himself now that he has Gruff’s favor to court. He wasn’t telling me all these apparently obvious problems with my plan.
“Please. Let me go. I didn’t know…” he’s begging again. Slow learner, fast betrayer, apparently. Last time I try to help someone out here, that’s for sure.
“I have no intention of hurting you,” Gruff says to Billy. He doesn’t say that to me, I notice.
“What about me? Are you intending on hurting me?”
“I’m intending on hurting you as much as you need to be hurt, you absolute brat.”
“Now see what you’ve done? You’ve gotten me in trouble,” I sigh at Billy.
“You got yourself in trouble,” Gruff says without any kind of sympathy for my plight.
This isn’t fair. I was just trying to help Billy, and myself. I thought our alliance would mean something, even if we hadn’t strictly discussed it, or had any real reason to trust one another. There are some things you just don’t do.
“You’re welcome to stay under my bridge,” Gruff says to Billy. “I expect you to work, but you’ll be safe until such time as you feel ready to claim your own territory, and one day, a mate.”
“A mate seems unlikely, sir.”
“We cannot stay in rut forever,” Gruff says. “There was a time before this, and there will be a time after. The women will return. They have to.”
“Wait… what?”
Gruff decides to finally properly enlighten me.
“The rut was once just a season that lasted a few months per year. It was the time we mated and bred. Then everybody would return to baseline. Something changed in the last few years. The ruts became longer and longer, and then permanent. That’s when the women left, because they did not stop cycling until they were bred, whether they wanted to be or not, and the males were on the edge of complete madness at all times. We’ve adjusted since then. The constant call of the rut remains, but some of us have learned to control those impulses.”
“Well,” I say. “That sucks.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “Now, get your hide home. You are in trouble, human.”
“Of course,” I sigh. What’s new.
Gruff
Jem continues to find new and innovative ways to run away and nearly get herself killed. I have already punished her for this latest foray into the wild, but I know another is not far away. I can tell from the look in her eyes she is determined to get revenge, or honor, or some other nebulous human drive I do not pretend to understand. I see the longing in her. I feel it when she lies in my arms in the night. There is a restlessness in her soul that is not settled with simple copulation. I thought she might be bred by now, but she is not. She is still a wild thing, perhaps more wild than any feral goatling I have ever encountered.
She is all I need. She is all I have ever needed, a bright and sensual female with a true love for her goat, and a passion for making love. She’s my mate, my match. She’s what I have asked the universe for every night of my adult life, and I do not know how to keep her.
“What am I going to do with you, Jem? When will you stop trying to flee this world? Do you not see how fortune has smiled on you? All the ingredients for happiness are here.”
“I know,” she says, apologetic. “I know. I’m just…”
“Human.” I finish her sentence for her.
9
We go back home, where Gruff is true to his word and lets Billy stay. Billy lives in the barn and spends most of his time tending the goats in the way Gruff wishes I would.
“He makes a better housemaid than me,” I comment to Gruff as we watch him sweeping out one of the stalls.
“That’s because you’re lazy and think you’re too good for brute labor,” Gruff says.
It’s not that I’m too good. It’s that I’m too bad. I don’t belong here. Everybody here thinks I’m either an evil creature, or a stand-in fuck toy for the females they all miss so much.
I have to go. If I stay, I’m just going to end up being another one of Gruff’s little charity cases. He has managed to convince me of one thing, though. This world is too dangerous for Strumpet to run free. When I make my escape, it will be entirely alone. Gruff knows about goats, and Strumpet is happy here. I’ve had my suspicions from the beginning that my mission to this planet was really Strumpet’s mission. She was never my support animal. I was hers. I’ve found her somewhere safe to be, somewhere she can live a happy Strumpet life with caretakers who know how to look after her. She belongs. I do not.
I know Gruff is aware I’m still thinking of getting away. He watches me as much as he can, but he has to sleep sometimes. Unlike mine, his body is fully adapted to the natural Capricorn day and night cycles. That means he sleeps for a very long time. More than long enough to enable me to sneak out and get a good head start under cover of darkness. I try not to think too much about what I’m giving up. I remind myself of who I am and what I am instead.