GoM 3, chapter 3 (Patreon)

Dante woke feeling like something fuzzy and dead had fallen asleep in his mouth. With a grimace, he tried to roll to his side only to find he was pinned down by Regi's weight against his left shoulder. “Regi?”

Regi twitched, his hand coming up to rest on Dante's chest, but he didn't open his eyes.

This was nice. With Regi sleeping next to him, Dante could imagine a future where this was normal. He just wished he understood Regi’s people well enough to know whether he should hope for a future. Other than the fact that pregnancy required three individuals and that Regi himself had two fathers in addition to a mother, Dante knew precious little about how Kowri personal lives worked. That made a man a little paranoid about making a fool of himself.

Rather humiliating himself, Dante confined himself to fantasies and soaked up Regi’s head. He had almost drifted off to sleep again when the chime for the door sounded. Regi startled, jerked upright, and then rolled off the edge of the slanted bed to the hard floor.

In a flash, Regi bolted to his feet and drew his weapon. Being a security officer on an alien police vessel apparently gave a man good reflexes.

“Come in,” Dante said. When the door slid open, Vk stood there, her nose crumpled to half normal size.

“What's wrong?” Regi demanded.

She held her hands low. “Absolutely nothing. I think everything is just fine.”

Regi's arm hair ripples, something that happened when he was trying to keep his arm hair from standing on end. That was enough to set Dante on edge and he climbed to his feet ready for a fight.

“What do you need?” Regi asked.

Vk straightened her nose. “The great beast that likes Dante is waiting outside the ship.”

“Lady Divashi’s Brown?” Dante perked up at that. He loved riding—had since he was a sprog—but sitting astride that powerful beast was a special pleasure. Despite the fact that the animals were sacred to Gavd, god of justice, Divash’s Brown would break free of the stable hands and come for Dante every time someone saddled him. Dante took a special pride in that, especially since the followers of Gavd had such a problem with him.

Regi's hair was on end, making him look fluffy. He turned to Dante. “You need an escort.”

“You're welcome to come along,” Dante said. A quick ride through town on a couple of pebafri should be casual enough to avoid any suggestions of inappropriate behavior if it turned out that Dante’s interest was unrequited.

Vk looked from one of them to the other before focusing on Regi. “I can ask the stable to send another of those animals around.”

“My duties do not allow me to get away right now,” Regi said. Dante wished he knew whether that was a lie or not. The temple recognized him as a devoted of Divashi, so he had to mediate between Captain Cota, Gimi a’Onidba and Bekdi a’Gavd.

However, he couldn’t work all the time. Besides, from what he’d said, there wasn’t much to negotiate right now. Bekdi wanted the outsiders confined to the ship until the ship was ready to leave Kowri space, Gimi wanted the temple to recognize Dante as an exalted, and the captain…. Actually, Dante wasn’t sure what he wanted. He wanted to keep Kowri off the ship, but he was also invested in talking to as many Kowri as possible.

“I’m sure the captain wouldn’t mind you taking some time off,” Vk suggested, her nose so long that it had lost all its wrinkles.

Dante eyed Vk with interest. Perhaps his love life had an ally. Or perhaps he was misreading everything. The latter was entirely possible, but misreading a situation had never kept him from humiliating himself and the pursuit of a hot man.

“Yeah, come on Regi.”

“I have too much work. Vk, either requisition a calm animal and have Dante show you how to ride or put on a good pair of walking boots.” Nodding at each of them, Regi strode out of the room with a swagger that did nothing to assuage the heat in Dante's belly.

“That man is stubborn,” Vk said.

“Oh? What do you mean?” Dante invited her to commit herself to playing matchmaker, but she only stared at him, her expression unchanging. Dante sighed. “So, what's it going to be? Riding or walking? With a calm animal, riding pebafri is not nearly as dangerous as you Coalition people make it out to be.” It seemed that most of the universe had lost any sort of emotional connection with animals. Dante thought that was proof that aliens weren’t as advanced as they pretended.

“I am significantly heavier than either Kowri or human. I would prefer to not overburden an animal.” She huffed.

“No problem. Tell the stable how much you weigh, and they’ll be able to tell you if they have an appropriate animal.” Dante did that all the time. Of course, he’d once had to ask a woman from Wichita to ride a Percheron that she had taken one look at and declared “uncute,” but matching a rider and horse was standard. The stables around here did the same. Siger had said as much before he’d betrayed Dante and tried to murder him to preserve his own twisted sense of racial purity.

Vk continued to stare at him blankly.

“This is what I did for a living before I got kidnapped. I took people who did not know how to sit on a horse and I taught them. I'm not to say I taught them how to ride because I didn't, but with a good tempered trail horse, sitting on top of it really is all you need. Come on. Live a little.”

“Given the alternative to living, I can assure you that I do. I have not yet woken up dead,” Vk said which was either a joke or a translator glitch.

Dante changed tactics. “Put your trust in Regi's gods and see what they have in store for you.”

“If I believe the Kowri, their gods do not see outsiders, so any action I would take to trust them would be a sign of foolishness, not faith.”

“If the Kowri gods are really powerful creatures that live in an adjacent dimension, which is Ter’s favorite explanation, they have only seen Kowri in the past because they live geographically close to them. Now that you are in the middle of Kowri space, there's no reason why they can't see you as well as any other sapient creature on the planet,” Dante argued.

Her nose crumpled. “That is a theory I would recommend you not share with other Kowri.”

“Trust me, I don't plan to. I don’t need to give Bekdi a’Gavd any additional reasons to hate me. But think about this, my species is used to having more space. I’m going stir crazy. So wherever Lady Divashi’s Brown wants to take me, I’m going to go. After all, following the pebafri’s lead is an excellent defense against Bekdi’s claim that I should stay in the ship. So, you can ride or your feet are going to swell to twice their size.

Vk honked loudly enough to startle Dante. “Sometimes I question Regi's good judgment in liking you, and then I remember that like you, Regi is an unforgiving, how do you call it, son of a motherless male?”

Dante formed a quick little family tree in his head apparently male pregnancy was a thing in the universe because otherwise that insult would make no sense. Unless male pregnancy wasn't a thing and that's why it was considered an insult. Sometimes aliens were so hard to figure out. “Are you trying to say bastard?”

“Yes. That is the word. I still do not understand what another’s parental status has to do with one's personality traits, but after serving on a ship with Ter, I have learned that profanity does not have to make sense. At least your creativity lends itself to less violent expressions.”

Ter’s invectives did tend to involve internal organs and bodily orifices. “Are you going to call for a pebafri you can ride?”

“I will see if the stable has a creature that is appropriate to both my weight and my level of experience. If not, I expect you to curb your curiosity so that I am not forced to walk half the circumference of this planet.”

Dante grinned. She would get a pebafri. They were solid creatures, built like a rhinoceros and a Percheron had gotten frisky after drinking too much one night. And while Vk was large, he couldn't imagine that many aliens would be too heavy for those great beasts.

“Give me about ten minutes to change clothes, and I will meet you at the hatch,” Dante said. Vk nodded at him, a gesture he had noticed many of the crew had picked up very quickly. And then without a word, she walked out.

Dante looked over to where Peaches sat on her sleeping platform, her much smaller male suitor curled at her side. “What do you say, girl? Do you want to go for a ride?” Dante had a pang of grief for the way Blue would go insane every time Dante said that. As old as the dog was, he was always up for a ride, whether it was in the truck or running beside the horses. Of course, after a mile or so, he’d sit on the side of the trail and wait for the group to loop back around. He couldn’t keep up with Dante the way he had Dante’s grandfather. But that wasn’t his life anymore. He had to find a way forward.

Peaches lifted her head and blinked at him for long minutes before she finally trundled down the narrow ramp and came over to him making a little cry to be picked up. Her boyfriend woke, looked around, and then tucked his nose back under his tail. “I guess it’s just us girl,” Dante said as he held Peaches close. She wasn’t Blue any more than Divashi’s Brown was Marengo or Regi was some boy Dante had met at the bar. Everything was different.

But if he could let go of some of the homesickness that kept crawling under his ribs, he might even find he could be happy here. He would be. And step one was that he was going to go riding under a big, blue unpolluted sky with planetary rings hanging above the horizon like a gauzy curtain of light. Home didn’t have that.