Family from Beyond the Stars, Ch. 9 (Patreon)

CH. 9Lonely Mother

Kenny sighed in frustration as the hum of the ship's engines droned on beneath him.  It had been a ‘week’ since the encounter with Nova's father's ship.  Nova herself had not even come back down to the hangar bay consistently in over two day-cycles  Kenny and the cubs sat despondently, staring out of the open window at the flash of slipspace around them.

They rarely ever stopped in a new system anymore except for maybe an hour or so to recharge the solar batteries just enough to flash away again.  He tried to keep the kids distracted but their games had started to become dull.  Most of the time they just sat there together, dozing, snuggling, or with him switching up which hand he used to pet the nearest of them.  The cubs had no idea why their lives had suddenly taken such a dull turn.

Kenny knew.  That didn't mean he liked it any more than the cubs did.  The memory Nova had unintentionally showed him kept replaying in his mind, the fragmented pieces and shreds of information serving only to horrify and confuse him.

What was more, Nova had not returned to talk about it with him.  He and the cubs saw her maybe once or twice a day and only for bare seconds of time.  She would poke her head in as if to check on them, then flit back away up the hall.  Any attempts to follow her resulted in the hangar doors being closed.  They would only reopen the next time she came down.

Those momentary blips of her attention only served to distress the cubs.  They had no idea why suddenly their mother was seemingly avoiding them.  He tried to comfort them as best as he could, assuring them it was not their fault, but they seemed unconvinced.

He was left in charge of putting them to bed every night and waking them up in the mornings, and he had slept in just his padded container rather than his own pod since there was no one to close and activate it for him.  He honestly didn't mind as much; he knew Nova was distracted.  Even so, he missed her.  So did the cubs.

What was worse, Nova's growling sessions at 'night' had started back up much more frequently now, and these times she sounded truly angry and bitter.  The snarls and roars went on and on, they felt like, keeping him from getting much sleep no matter how he tried to block them out.  They eventually would end and he would immediately collapse from exhaustion.  He made himself get up though every time the ship dropped out of slipspace to check on the view out the window.  If they had halted to restock the solar banks, he would awaken the cubs.

It didn't seem fair to just let them float there when he was already awake, and being this lonely was somehow worse than it had ever been on Earth.  Still, he also felt very guilty, and the urge to just let the cubs enjoy their dreams was horribly strong.   He often had to fight against his parental urges to at least give them the opportunity to get some exercise, versus subjecting them to yet another day of boring, tedious waiting to see if Nova would finally come back to be with them.

Sometimes, he even found himself getting mad at her.  He knew she was desperately trying to protect them and outrun her psychopathic father, who was responsible for destroying her homeworld, and her mate, the King.  Yet, at the same time, she had no idea how much her absence was hurting her cubs.  He also had been forced to accept the reality of just who Nova was.

She was a Queen!  Or...she had been a Queen.  Could you still be the ruler of a people who might not even exist anymore?  Were her children the Heirs to a forgotten dynasty, stolen from them by the greed of their Grandfather?  The questions just made the silence, the maddening isolation, all the worse for him.

Finally, the third day of Nova-less depression finally wound down to a close.  The cubs' lights barely even shone anymore from their misery and boredom despite how he tried to entertain them.  They crawled back into their tubes, faces despondent and their shoulders slumped.  It broke his heart to see Joey not having smiled in so long, to see Chandler's ruff drooping, and to always hear Phoebe sniffling in misery.

Enough was enough.

Making sure the kids were safely and securely tucked into their 'beds', Kenny warily approached the still open hangar doors.  Taking a deep breath, he peered through into the darkened hallway beyond.  The occasional flickering trail of lights showed him the sloping walls and sharp angles that soon vanished out of sight.

Moving as quietly as possible, the Human stole out of the hangar bay and down the hall.  Every single nerve in his body was tense and he tried to make absolutely no noise.  This was Nova's biggest rule: no one but her left the cargo hold where they all lived, played and spent their time together as a family.  His exploration did not take him long to run into a wall, literally.

The hallway ended abruptly in a dead-end.  Nothing but a flat, featureless steel wall.  He looked slowly around but there were no other hallways, paths, doors, or even hinges.  A sinking feeling came to him then and he looked up.  The lights trailed off into the darkness far above him, highlighting the entrances to other rooms and halls.  At the very top of that sheer drop, glowing dimly, was the entrance to what could only be the cockpit of their strange vessel.

Kenny's shoulders slumped in defeat.  How the heck was he supposed to get up there?  How did Nova even get up there?  Then he remembered how her species could cling to flat surfaces.  He looked at the hand of his livesuit, then at the wall again.  Tentatively, barely hoping to believe this would work, he pressed his covered palm against the metal.  There was a strange suctioning feeling and when he tried to pull his hand back, there was resistance.  Only when he deliberately willed the hold to release did his hand spring back.  He rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath.

"I sure hope this works," he whispered to himself, then planted his hand once again on the wall.  He used the powerful grip to pull himself slowly up onto his tiptoes.  His other hand reached up yet higher.  It stuck too.  Arms already shuddering slightly, he began to laboriously pull himself up the wall.  He felt like Spiderman, except that Peter Parker probably had a much easier time than he was.  Only his hands were adhesive, his singular source of being able to cling to the steep surface like a gecko.  His breath began to pant out of him as he ascended yet higher.

Chancing a look back down, Kenny was delighted and horrified to see he was halfway there.  A fall from this distance would absolutely have been lethal and he had to fight hard against his fear of heights to resist becoming frozen with fear.  His arms only shook the worst when he had to climb higher, otherwise letting him just hang there like a tree frog on a windowpane.  He kept going.

A few dozen feet higher, his hand slapped onto some kind of panel.  To his alarm, the wall slid open right in front of him, revealing a room beyond which he nearly fell into before he adjusted.  Peering inside, he tried squinting his eyes to make out anything.  The flashing lights on the walls, and a distant red glow, revealed some kind of private quarters to him, although he saw no bed.  The walls were different inside, strangely padded, but otherwise unremarkable.

He kept climbing.  Sweat beaded his brow and his arms shook as he finally neared the only glowing doorway.  Distant whirls and shifting of gears came mutedly to his ears.  He threw a hand over the lip and, puffing hard, hauled himself up over the edge.  He lay there on his back for a second, panting heavily, before he chanced a look down the way he had come.  A straight drop, over at least a hundred feet.  How the heck had he ever done that?!

Shaking himself, he looked around.  He was in yet another short hallway, this one which led towards a room from where emitted the dull, soft pink glow he had seen from below, as well as the grinding sound of motors and gears whirring.  The flash of shadows alerted him to movement there as well.  Soft growls came as he stalked closer to it.  He peered around the corner and up at the source of all the noise.  His breath caught in his chest.

Nova hung upside-down, suspended from the center of the room, her huge furry frame currently fixed in place by a strange, chair-like contraption of metal arms, curved plates, and pads of dark, svelte material that conformed to her as she moved.  Her eyes were glazed over, literally, in white, and hovering in front of her face was a blue-tinted electronic visor.  Her four arms and tentacles all rapidly clicked, whirled, and maneuvered complicated-looking machine controls, ranging from joysticks, handles, levers, and gear shifts.  All of them emitted soft sounds.

Her footpaws were planted on a pair of pedals, alternating pressure on them every so often.  Each time she did so, the chair would swivel in place by some unseen, unsupported matrix.  She moved from hanging upside down to being suspended sideways, as if weightlessly.  Only her hair obeyed the natural law of gravity.  The walls of the room were blank, bare, and rounded.  What hung before them though were brightly lit display monitors with no clear source what they were being projected from.

In rapid succession, Nova whipped a paw through a dozen panels of light with one paw, flicking them away over and over.  Her expression looked ferocious and determined but also exhausted.  The footpaws swiveled her chair again and she turned completely around from him, revealing the secret behind her weightless suspension.  A series of tentacles had seemingly impaled her between the shoulder blades and again right above the base of her spine.

Kenny was quick to realize that, while horrific at first glance,what function this served.  No doubt, being connected physically to the cockpit and computer systems helped her maintain her equilibrium while she piloted the warship.  She didn’t seem to be in any pain at all, at least

Using a tentacle, Kenny watched her rapidly click on and off several buttons.  There was always something of her that was moving, and the coordination of it all was unlike anything he had ever seen.  She was more machine now than a living being for how she moved her limbs, her head never changing its orientation except for slight twitches of her head and ears.  She responded to stimuli like a supercomputer, no life just code.

It was terrible to see her like this.  He couldn't imagine the mental stress this put her under.  At the same time, perhaps this was just how her species steered and operated their ships.  If he had dared to come up here at any other time, he would never have dreamed that she was not totally in control.  But he could see the exhaustion that had set into her face, even if the rest of her body did not respond to it at all.  She had been killing herself like this for at least seven days, two of those completely uninterrupted.  Had she even slept in all that time?

He had to say something, do something.  He couldn't bear to see the woman of his dreams, the mother of his adopted children, the most wonderful being in the universe, doing this to herself, no matter the reasoning.  He took a wary step forward.

"Nova," he called out weakly, trying to make himself heard over the constant noise of the ship.  The engines were both louder here as well as also somehow muted, a constant, droning thrum in his ears that adjusted tone and cadence at a single pull or alteration at her paws.  She didn't respond.  "Nova!" he yelled louder.  Still nothing.  He furrowed his brow, took a solid stance, and then bellowed as loudly as he could, making his voice screech at the end right as her chair had stopped moving.  "NOVA!"

She jerked in place; she had heard him that time.  Her brow furrowed, white eyes narrowing before the electronic visor sputtered and faded completely from view.  Her implant powered down and the chair she hung from slowly returned to some kind of dormant position, climbing to the ceiling and hanging upside down.  Her claws released her hold on the levers and switches, her tentacles taking firm grips onto various pieces of machinery to support herself as he heard the hisses of the cockpit's own tendrils detaching from her spine.  The engines' hum lowered until the sounds dropped away entirely.

Nova swung down and out of the chair, landing on the floor of the room with a light, muffled thud.  He saw the impact ripple up her powerful limbs, the muscles underneath corded to absorb the twenty-foot fall.  Her head did not turn in his direction at first.  She kneeled there, four arms splayed out at her sides, her tentacles writhing like serpents.  Her blank, featureless white eyes blinked once, twice, then returned to their normal, brightly glowing blue.  A shudder went up her spine.  Then her head lolled and she collapsed.

Kenny leaped forward to her as she landed flat on the floor and ceased to move.  Her tentacles lay limply alongside her, her limbs shuddering every now and then with spasms.  He frantically turned her head to the side, having to truly exert himself to do so at the immense, deadweight of moving just her skull so that she wasn't laying directly on her face.  Her eyes were closed and her breathing came light and shallow, sensor flashing at her temple unevenly.   He kneeled there beside her, desperately trying to think of anything he could do to help.  He had never felt so useless before.

Reaching down with his shaking hand, he began to stroke along her fluffy, scaly jawline, not knowing what else to do.  He hummed a song for her as he did, keeping his touch gentle and loving.  His body bowed over her head, worming his legs gingerly underneath her skull to give her some kind of a pillow rather than the cold floor.  He stayed there for a long time, just petting her face, praying as fervently as he ever had.  ‘Just please let her be okay,’ was his mantra.

After what felt like an eternity, Nova's eyes fluttered and she breathed in, deep and steady.  It startled him, having lost all feeling in his legs a while ago but unwilling to care as to his own discomfort.  He gazed down at her blearily flickering blue eyes as he kept petting her face.  She stiffened and gave a low, weary rumble that sent vibrations from his head to his tingling, half-asleep toes, before she finally was able to lift herself up off of him.  His legs prickled as blood slowly started to flow back into them but he had eyes only for her.

After blearily shaking her head, her eyes finally refocused and she looked down at him.  Nova stared for a solid five seconds in complete silence before she finally blinked in dawning comprehension.  She looked around as if to confirm where she was, then back to him.  Her pupils had slit themselves back into those razor-thin lines and her ears folded back.  He actually felt himself tensing up before she finally relaxed.

'Kenny?' he heard.  He openly sighed in relief to hear her voice for the first time in days, although even through the link, often lacking tone and inflection, she sounded utterly exhausted.  Her eyes scanned him over and over, no doubt trying to ascertain if he was even there, and once that was established, why.

His elation at seeing and speaking to her quailed and failed him, his head hanging to his chest.  "I’m sorry.  You hadn't come down in so long and the cubs and...we all missed you..."  He kept his eyes fixed on his heels guiltily, able to feel her penetrating stare.  "I know you told us not to leave the hangar.  I was just...I was so worried about you, and the cubs, and..."

The exhaustion of the last few days was beginning to crash down onto him and his eyes burned at the corners.  He wiped furiously at them but he couldn't stop himself.  God, how much he hated crying in front of her.

"I'm s-sorry..." he hiccuped as the tears started to flow.  "I didn't know w-w-what else to d-do.  Please don't be mad at me..."

For her part, Nova stared at him silently.  One paw slowly lifted and brushed his soft, stubbly cheek, causing him to flinch.  She did not lower it.  Her head cocked to the side and she gave a rumbling purr down at him to get his attention.  When he was finally able to force himself to meet her eyes again, she saw the deep pain and fear coloring his mind at his fear of her reaction.  Even more than that, however, was the relief and joy flowing from inside of his tearful eyes like a welspring.

Her ears folded back and she gave a soft sigh.  This Earthling...would he ever cease to surprise her?  Even being fearful of her punishing him for breaking her rules, he had dared to come this far into the ship, looking for her.  Guilt washed through her as she thought of the cubs as well.

A thought came to Nova then as she just stroked Kenny's cheek with a thumbpad, and she peered past him at the entrance to the cockpit.  She looked back at him, arching an eyebrow up.  'Kenny.  You climbed to get here?' she asked.  He nodded mutedly, just leaning his face more against her warm paw, causing her soft smile to grow.  Such a fascinating little being.

She attempted to rise, but a wave of exhaustion, hunger, and stress nearly sent her to the floor again.  She kept herself upright by stabilizing herself on her other three arms, although those shook noticeably.  Forestalling his worry for her wellbeing, Nova slowly leaned down and bopped her head against his as gently as possible, barely brushing their skulls together.  She maintained the pressure of that touch for a second or two before she pushed more firmly but also lightly forward, upsetting his balance easily.  Kenny flopped over onto his back with a small sound of alarm which just made her purring grow deeper.  He lay there, blinking up at her in confusion.

Kenny was so resilient, she thought as she gazed down at him; so dependable and bright, despite his lifetime of hardships.  His heart seemingly never wavered no matter the difficulties he faced, staying true and strong in its conviction and love of life.  He thought of others before himself and gave his all for them, wanting only the chance to earn the love he should always have been given unconditionally in return.

And yet, there were times like this when she could not deny how small and delicate a thing, compared to one like her, that he was.  It had repelled her at first, that she owed so much to someone like him, so weak, so very unlike her people.  Now, however, it was those same differences that showed her just how strong this Earthling was.  Her vision began to cloud and she felt small tears burgeoning the corners of her eyes, somehow making his face sparkle.  Then she yawned, assuaging her brief worry that she was starting to see things.

Nova needed to rest, and she knew that.  Kenny too looked as tired as she did.  There was no way he could climb back down on his own.  It was intriguing for him to have made the climb at all, not just in will but in adapting so easily to her species’ technology.  Even so, she knew that for his size, it would not only been a hard-fought endeavor, to say nothing of overcoming his fears, either of her potential reprimanding or falling from such a distance.  What was a simple jaunt to him must have been nerve-wracking.  Such a gesture deserved, at the very least, one of equal value returned.

Sighing wearily, she flipped him with a paw and reached down to snag her teeth onto the back of his livesuit's collar.  She lifted him as easily as she might have for the cubs before she headed to the lip of the cockpit's door.  Swinging herself over, she began the climb down.  The natural adhesion of her paws and tentacles allowed her to maintain solid holds on the slick, steep walls of the vertical hallway.  Normally, she would have been able to easily make such a routine climb, even using one limb less to support herself, but she had pushed herself to the absolute limit as of late.

She knew the reason why, but it didn’t make blaming herself any easier to forgive.  She had caused all of them much heartache, she knew.  Even so, the thought of how close He had come to catching them after all this time sent shudders down her spine.

She remembered the time before Kenny, being all alone with this feeling of constantly being on edge, always pursued no matter how far or how fast she went.  She thought back even further, to the days of light, of sound, and color, of when they had all been taken away.  One of her paws slipped on the wall and she slid down a few dozen feet before she caught herself again.  She heard Kenny making soft whimpers as he swung in her teeth and she resettled her attentions on just climbing.  Finally, they reached her private quarters.  The doors hissed open and she crawled in.

Her jaws opened and she allowed Kenny to plop down onto the padded floor of the dimly lit, red-tinged room.  Exhaustedly, she closed the doors behind her and flicked on several displays and buttons.  The ship was idling on the edges of some remote solar system, right on the fringes of dark space.  It was simple to activate the low-energy stealth systems and fade their ships signature completely out of sight and detection.

She spared a small check at their power reserves, assuaging her usual caution by the surplus the engines still had left.  They could recharge later.  She needed to recharge herself, and Kenny did too.  She nudged him with her muzzle towards the back wall and he followed her there.  Her mind was blurry and unfocused; thankfully she had the routine memorized.

For his part, once inside Nova's personal quarters, Kenny was quick to notice it had no obvious sleeping pod, like he and the children did.  It was spacious but rather bare, spartan in design and detail.  Various panels, switches, devices, and hinges dotted the otherwise nondescript walls.  Despite the tenuous situation of her being so exhausted that she had barely been able to make the climb down the hall with him hanging suspended by her teeth, he couldn't help looking around in interest as she pressed multiple buttons and switches on the walls all around.

A view of the cargo hold flashed into being on one previously nondescript wall panel like a television screen, showing him each of the cubs floating in their tubes.  His own pod remained open and unused.  He returned to looking around.  The room was dimly lit by small sensors that emitted soft red glows.  The ceiling, floor, and walls were all some kind of padded material that felt smooth and warm to the touch and compressed underneath his feet.

A pair of doors hissed open up above his head, revealing some kind of shelf which he quickly released was not unlike a bunk bed from a naval vessel.  Nova's personal resting area.  He confirmed this as he watched her haul herself up into it with an audible groaning hiss of effort and relief.  He smiled, glad there was no need to convince her how badly she needed sleep.  Even her stubbornness could be swayed in the face of such exhaustion.  He looked around once her tail had slipped out of sight and into the bunk high above, then shrugged and laid down on the floor itself.  It was softer than he had expected once his weight settled into it and he sighed.  Each of the individual panels was made from the same padded material on the walls, a malleable liquid consistency similar to a heated waterbed.

He yawned immediately, easily able to imagine drifting off right then and there.  He heard Nova snort up above him, not looking back at her and instead just sighing sleepily.  "Goodnight Nova," he murmured.  "See you in the morning..." and closed his eyes, already feeling the succor of sleep taking hold.  He jerked them back open as suddenly something snagged at the back of his livesuit’s collar, lifting him into the air.  Even as used to this as he should have been by now, he couldn’t restrain a small yelp before, just as abruptly as he had been snagged, he was being plopped gently but unceremoniously back down, but this time inside of Nova’s bed.

She looked at him curiously, one eyebrow arching up and a small smile on her muzzle.  The bunk was just big enough for her to lay in, which ironically made it feel absolutely huge compared to him.  The sectioned material they laid upon was just like the floor of the room but even warmer and softer to the touch.  He could feel body sinking into the cushioned panels at first before they firmed back up, conforming perfectly to him like one of those super-expensive foam mattresses back on Earth.  He felt perfectly and fully supported no matter how he positioned himself.

He looked up at her glowing eyes, the only source of light now save for the dim red panels at the corners of the bed as the door to it closed again.  He could barely see anything but her eyes and the occasional flash of her bio-lights up and down her body.  Even so, he knew she was still smiling down at him, from how the corners of her orbs crinkled and the slightly visible gleam of her fang-tips.  He tried to return the expression but was suddenly too nervous.  He hadn't shared a bed with someone in years.

Eventually, he mustered up enough confidence to say, "Thanks," in a hushed and weak tone of voice.  She inclined her head.  He shifted his weight in the bed again.  It felt so strange for a bed to swallow him up like this one did but also maintain his weight and body arches so perfectly.  "You're...sure this is okay?"

Nova chuckled, deep rumbles bouncing around the walls.  Her purr echoed softly around them as she leaned down to nuzzle her nose against his cheek.  Then she gave him the tiniest lick on the face and turned back around, tapping a series of panels on the back wall.  They slid open and she arranged her spine up against them.  There were a number of hisses, followed by her noticeably stiffening and letting out a slight grunt, before he heard a gurgling sound of liquid transferring from and into somewhere.

Nova gave a deep sigh and a slight growl before she relaxed.  Leaning up in the bed, he saw that, just like in the cockpit, a few dozen tubes had extended from the wall and connected themselves with her spine.  A familiar yellow fluid flowed into her for several seconds in periodic bursts before the process reversed itself and the tubes disengaged from her.  She slid back away from the panel and she closed them back up.

Her eyes returned to his; they already seemed brighter.  He couldn't help but be shocked and amazed.  "So...you don't have to sleep in the tubes like the cubs do?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"You just...plugin and the gel does everything for you super fast?"

She nodded, purring again.

"Neat!"  He yawned again, head suddenly rushing with how tired he truly was.  She laid a paw on him, reminding him of a weighted blanket, and he flopped his head down against the bedding.  His neck kind of hurt at this angle.  Even as he thought that, he felt a panel inflate underneath his cheek, lifting his head back in line with his spine.  He sighed and relaxed completely.  "Your technology is awesome..." he murmured.

Nova purred behind him and then a thick, heavy, dense weight slid in against his back.  He didn't need to look to know that Nova was spooning him.  Her four arms lay gently all around him, keeping him close while her legs curled up and under her.  The tentacles had gone back into her shoulders and she lay her head above his.  Something warm, pliant, and very soft pushed firmly against the entirety of his spine as he lay on his side.  His cheeks burned as he realized what they were and he tried not to enjoy the sensation too much.

They lay like that for several seconds, listening to the thud of her heartbeat, the thrum of her breath, and the distant sounds of the engine.  Eventually, the awkwardness became too much for him.  He cleared his throat.  She didn't move or respond, but he knew she was listening.

"So u-umm..." he mumbled.  "This is...really nice and all but...can I ask what brought this on?"

Nova's muzzle pressed against the back of his head, rubbing her nose through his hair and across his skull.  'Nova is grateful to Kenny.'

He blinked.  "Grateful?  But I broke your rule."

She rumbled behind him.  'Kenny broke this rule for Nova.  Because of Nova.  Kenny is forgiven.'  Then she chuckled.  'Just this once.'

He smiled at that.   It was easier to believe she was just being nice to him for being so concerned about her, than she was doing this just for her own sake too.  That way, being in love with her wouldn't feel quite so wrong.  He could pine for her and it was all well and good.  But just the thought that she might feel the same, hurt.

He didn't even know why at first, but maybe it was something about how he felt incredibly guilty.  She had lost her Mate to tragedy and here he was, moving in on her.  Sure, it was by her choice, but he was nothing special, nothing to aspire to, mostly just along for the ride and to be with her and the cubs.

That was enough.  Wasn't it?

Her arms tightened around him then and he realized he had been actively thinking all of that.  He didn't need to say those kinds of things out loud for her to catch him doing so.  Her tongue slid across his ear and throat gently.  'Kenny does not want Nova?'  Her voice, still monotone and rumbling in his head, felt hesitant and gentle.

He sighed out loud, feeling defeated that he couldn’t just keep his depressing helplessness to himself.  "Nova..." he breathed.  Why was this so hard?  "Of course I do..." he sniffed hard as his emotions rose up inside of him.  "But...I'm...I'm nobody.  I'm just a pathetic little social parasite.  I latch onto people in desperate need to be included.  I've done it all my life, inflicted myself onto them.  I'm not...worthy... I don't deserve to have someone as wonderful as you."

Her growl rumbled all around them.  He could feel her glaring down at him from behind.  'Kenny is unfair,' she told him.  He blinked.  Unfair?  'Nova cares for Kenny.  Does Kenny not care for Nova?'

He turned around slightly, looking back at her.  Her face was stern, not angry but sad.  "Of course I care for you!" he told her before he looked back down.  He heard her sigh in frustration.  Why couldn't he find the right words?!  "I care...more about you than I've ever cared about anything else in the universe.  You and the cubs!  You're all my...my..."  He couldn't make himself say it out loud.  He couldn't say something he knew was only a wistful fantasy of his own mind.  The truth was something vastly different, no matter how desperately he wished it could be true.

'Family,' rumbled Nova above him.  She sounded firm as if stating the obvious.

"But…we're not!" he protested.  "I'm just an Alien to you.  I'm nothing like your Mate was.  I'm just this scrawny, puny, pathetic, overly-emotional loser!  The cubs could do much better for a dad.  You could do much better!"

Her paw clamped onto him and she pushed her nose down against his, turning him fully to face her.  Her glowing eyes bored into his, her glare transfixing him in place.  He saw the swirling stars of her pupils, the darkness behind the light.  He saw himself staring right back at him within those dark orbs.  Then her face softened.

'Kenny.'  She extended her tongue and licked his forehead again.  He felt those tiny bumps and ridges catch on his scars ever so gently.  'Your emotions are beautiful.  Strong.  My people, they feel emotions deeply.  In ourselves, in others as well.  Kenny is not weak, worthless, or pathetic.  Your heart, it is Stronger than any other Nova has seen.  And Nova has experienced many.  Your emotions, your heart, are as song.  Nova hears them, sees them.'  She placed one padded finger against the center of his chest, compressing the material of his livesuit.  'Here.'

Kenny didn't speak.  He didn't dare interrupt her.  He just kept staring up into those bottomless galaxies that were her eyes, watching the stars wheel around himself as she kept him close, safe, and warm.  His heart soared as he listened to the words echoing within his head, barely able to believe them even as he heard them ring with absolute certainty and faith.

He was the unluckiest man on Earth, perhaps in the whole universe, or so he had always thought.  How had he somehow been allowed to meet, to fall in love with, and hear such beautiful words from a creature so perfect, so very different from himself?  She didn't see him as everyone else always had.  She saw him as something much more.  Now if only he could convince himself of what she felt too.

Nova resumed speaking.  'Kenny does not find Nova…'  She paused, looking as if she were trying to find the right word.  'Attractive?’

Kenny actually scoffed out loud.  "Nova, I think you're one of the most attractive creatures that have ever existed.  I still feel guilty for staring at you the first day we met.  I mean…we aren’t even the same species but…"

'We are not the same Species.'  She agreed, ears flicking.  Then her eyes sparkled and she extended a tentacle from behind her.  She held his phone between its gripper prongs.  He blinked in surprise as she clicked it on and unlocked it, somehow having the ability to bypass his fingerprint security scanner.  She flicked on the gallery and his face immediately went red as she arched her head to the side, claw idly flicking between multiple downloaded pictures of questionable content.  'That seems to be no problem to Kenny.'

He hid his face in her chest and he heard her laugh up above him.  He wanted to die from embarrassment.  He didn't even care how she had somehow managed to charge the depleted battery.  He knew she had somehow seen those pictures the last time they had used the device together.  He was far too flustered to even feel like she had invaded his privacy.

He glanced up, but the collection of both human-appearing amazonian, often fantastical women in those pictures held no appeal to him anymore.  He lived with the perfect woman now, after all, even if he had no dreams or aspirations that she would ever have wanted him.  Parr for the course really, he pondered.

Nova rumbled like a cat down at him, if much deeper, getting him to at last look her in the eyes once again.  Her ears wiggled and she lowered the phone back behind her.  Her paw again stroked his cheek.  'What Does Nova need to do to convince Kenny?'  Her smile turned suddenly…lascivious was the only word for it.  Her eyebrow even raised meaningfully.  ‘Perhaps Nova should replicate some of the pictures on Kenny’s device?’

His eyes went wide, face heating up in an instant, and he shook his head rapidly.  The physical logistics aside, the sheer implication of what she was asking made him want to shrivel up into a ball.  "N-no!" he squeaked up at her.

She nodded, making him sigh in relief as that hungry gleam once again left her teasing eyes.  'That is good.  Nova’s Species does not mate in such fashion.  Our biology is very different.'  Then she growled slightly and pushed a paw pad against his stomach, slightly compressing his abdomen and making him give a small grunt.  ‘Also, such activity would most likely result in physical harm for Kenny, no matter how careful Nova would try to be.’

Kenny couldn’t help but agree as she lifted the heavy finger.  Still, he was not entirely successful in curbing the burning curiosity that welled up inside of him, an unspoken question he had never dared to allow to surface since he and the cubs came into her life.  Even if he had no sexual urges anymore, a question he still wanted an answer to someday, this seemed not only interesting but also good to know information.  For science of course.  It wouldn’t hurt to at least ask, right?  "H-how do you...mate then?"

Once again, her eyes twinkled and she leaned down to nuzzle her lips against his forehead and cheek.  'One thing at a time, Kenny.'  She sounded chastising but also teasing and amused.  'For now, Nova is...' she actually trailed off, yawning loudly.  Her glowing teeth flashed in front of him and for once it didn't scare him.  Well okay, maybe still a little.  'Tired.  We shall rest,  together.'  It was both a statement and a question.

Unable to argue, Kenny just sighed and shyly curled up into her arms more.  When she didn't stop him, he nestled his head against her chest.  A single whiff of her warm, summer-musk scent made his eyes start to flutter closed.  It smelled like wildflowers baking in the sun almost, like cut grass only just then starting to lose its freshness.  Her arms folded in around him at once, her purr rumbling through him like an all-over body massage.

'Good,' came her voice, softer and more gentle in his head now.  'Nova.  Did not want to be alone.  Perhaps Nova is…selfish, even if Kenny does not mind.'

"How...could you possibly be selfish right now?" he asked sleepily, curling into her more.  "This is a dream come true for me...I feel selfish myself in how much I don’t mind."

'Nova is…lonely.  I have not shared such space with another in a long time.  Kenny too, it would seem.   Still, Nova cannot help but feel selfish.  I Nova is afraid to be lonely again.  But Nova does not feel alone when she is with Kenny.  You make it better, the quiet, bringing warmth and light back to Nova.  Nova hopes she can return such to Kenny, for everything Kenny has done for Nova and…our Cubs.  Together, as a family, perhaps we can heal at last.'

He felt a single tear slide down his cheek into her thick fur.  "A family..." he repeated in a soft mutter, eyes drifting closed at last.

'Family.'  The lights around them went out.  'Sleep, my Kenny.'

"Goodnight...my Nova," he breathed.  And like that, he was out.  They drifted together in that warm darkness, healing the wrongs and hurts done to them.  They had been lonely for far too long.  But all that was slowly changing.