Star Side

Chapter 57

"She suggest you put the eggs in so you can bathe while I hunt," he didn't sound pleased and clicked to his mother with thinned pupils. His mother tittered back at him, something about 'same gender' and 'circumstances.' As they continued their low arguing, with more and more words breaking across the clicks and grunts, I tried pawing a bit into the nest, wondering if it was normal for someone to get excited at a giant bowl of squish or if it was some weird twisted instincts birthing eggs had given me.

With a loud puff of air the queen snapped her tail against the floor and stomped off, jeweled braids clicking after her. I waited till she had gone through the curtain before asking what that was all about.

"She wanted to help you bathe and get you, uh, comfortable, but I told about divine beings only showing their nakedness to their mates. Clothes like touch. She thought it...silly. Said you needed food and mates provide, but divine beings different. Made her see so."

"She seems awfully excited that you're mated."

"She..." he rolled his jaw as he searched for a word. "Likes you? Excited? Curious?" His ears flattened. "Bossy. Ways of other mates not her right."

"Her business you mean?"

"Yes." He hesitated, eyes flickering to the curtains. "You would like to bathe? New clothes?"

"There are clothes here for me?"

"Royal females wear clothes." The words warped with his sudden purr of pleasure.

I smiled. "Oh? You like me being royal?"

"You are mine. I am next chief." The purring abruptly stopped and his tail and wings drooped.

I nodded. "Ah. You don't want to be chief."

He nodded sullenly, then looked to the bundle on my front and reached out.

"Can I?" His longing washed away the irritation and dread in his mind waves.

I happily opened up the bundle and let him scoop out each egg, which he nuzzled and purred against before setting it gently in the moss of the incubator. It made me smile, seeing how fond he was of the babies even while they were still, boring eggs. I could feel his warmth and love over his waves, which he had let loose again once his mother had left. I hadn't realized I would miss feeling his emotions until he'd locked them up tight to face down his mother.

"Have you always wanted kids?" I asked.

"Why would I not?" He nuzzled and purred against the last egg, then carefully set it next to its siblings and closed the lid.

I shrugged. "Some people don't want kids. They don't want the hassle or lose the time kids—young, take away."

He gave me an odd look. "What would they do?"

"Huh?"

"With the time. Time not given to young. What could be better?"

"Travel? Learning?"

"Why not take young with you?"

"You can't do everything with young, can you?"

"No, but young are small for very little time. Precious time." He looked down at the eggs in their incubator fondly. "Eggs, warm and little, such little time. Then they hatch, move lots and..." he seemed to lose words to describe just what he was envisioning, but I could imagine with the happy, excited wiggles he was painting my thoughts with.

I felt myself warming as well as I looked at them and found, despite my trepidation at all this new strangeness, I didn't regret leaving the station. I wanted to see them hatched. I wanted to see the new people I had created who wouldn't have existed otherwise.