Many days passed in heaven. If he hadn't known before, he knew for sure now that learning much sped the days. Time had never moved so quickly for him. Each day had new words, new nuances, and moments filled with the sweet scent and sweeter soul of his heavenly maiden. Even when her scent went tart with frustration or stress, she would be patient. She never touched him violently, nor the others, though he loved watching the ways she'd place her hands on her hips or cock her beautiful head, or the expansive expressions that would quirk the gentle features of her face. All the things he found their language lacking, the clicks and trills, hums and purrs, he found made up for in the minute motion of their faces and hands. These were a people grown in the light. They controlled light with a flick of their fingers and never had to move in the darkness if they did not wish. Thus, he began to imagine that their eyes could see much more than his, though his vision changed and sharpened as days went by as well. The air of heaven was nothing short of magical.
His dreams became increasingly filled with the memory of how she had felt in his arms, pressed to him. They sang with her voice and words and the sweep of those thick lashes against her pale cheeks. He couldn't fathom how any creature could be so enraptured and still be able to focus on survival. It was a good thing he was in the controlled environment of heaven where all their predators had been shut out. Back on his planet, having such distraction about him so often would have spelled his doom.
He also learned about his new, strange body. His stiff bones, while a stopper to his maneuvering into spaces he'd been able to manage since he'd reached his full size, made him stronger. He found his strength had increased almost double. He no longer choked on excess claiming venom when he thought too long on his maiden. Instead, his body would heat and his groin shell attempt to retract, which was much more manageable than throwing up bitter venom. His tail had shortened a bit and the fur on its tail thickened, for which he was thankful, for he was always worried about accidentally nicking the too-soft skin of the heavenly beings on one foul turn, though his kind had been taught to control every part of their being from a young age and to be aware of wherever it touched. Even the smallest scratch of a spine can bring a tunnel down. One wayward touch could mean everything between blood brother and foe.
Though, and it amazed him somewhat to see, he didn't think the heavenly beings had such a sensitivity to touch. He had waited for his divine maiden to lash out over the few times he, the other male, or even the chieftess female had touched her. But she hadn't so much as flinched and had accepted the touches earnestly. If his nose hadn't told him otherwise, he'd think they might all be related, but he had clarified through word that only the dead-eyed ones were blood-related. His maiden was an anomaly.
And so, after a long time of gathering his courage, he reached out to her and let his fingertips brush against her shoulder once when she had been painting and allowed him to watch.
She glanced at him, a question in her eyes. Her mind waves told him she'd thought he needed something.
When she'd just gone back to her painting afterward without flashing tooth or fang, his heart rocketed.
Oh...oh this could be bad. Or this could be very, very good.
He felt awful the moment he had thought that. How could he dare to even think about taking advantage of her culture, her openness to touch? Perhaps the dead-eyed male—Levi, they had names—was so used to touch that the sense had been dulled and he didn't feel how soft and warm and calling a female's flesh could be, or the searing invasive heat a male's could be. Perhaps he didn't feel each tug of muscle beneath another's skin.
When Gilrack reached out to her again, he had to swallow hard and calm the trembling of his spines.
She didn't look back that time. Just kept on painting.
The gentle twitch of her muscles as she moved her brush, the expanding and deflating of her lungs, the tickle of her calm heartbeat and the silken sigh of her hair against his wrist.
It was too much. He had to pull away or risk burning himself with his own heat and popping out of his own drawer, and that was an offense he didn't want to risk. He had never once seen Levi with his privates revealed, nor any of the divine beings, and it didn't take a genius to piece together that at least that was the same between their cultures. Privates were just that: privates.
Getting used to his new wings served as a necessary distraction from his maiden. Fortunately, there were places just large enough for him to test them out, such as the strange bright cave where they grew their food. Though his kind was also omnivorous, he found the divine beings even more so, which made sense as he had yet to see other living creatures in heaven beside the occasional flying insect. How they managed to find meat despite that was a continuing mystery to him.
That aside, flying came surprisingly easy to him. His body seemed to instinctually know how to mimic the much smaller flying creatures of his home caves. The feel of the air whooshing around him took some getting used to, though. It was too much sensation at once. But, over time, he found his senses narrowing so he could focus instead on how the streams of air moved and found it not unlike swimming through water. Just needed to scoop more down to move, which was where wings came in.
The first time one of the divine beings caught him practicing flying in the 'biome dome' as they called it, their eyes had nearly popped out of their heads and they'd run off to bring the others. He couldn't help but be pleased. Flying was just as much a new thing to his kind as it was to theirs, though he couldn't help but wonder why they hadn't grown wings. They lived in the sky, after all.
Which brought him back to the constant mystery of just what made up their sky caves.
His heavenly maiden had called him down more than once from hovering near the transparent surface of the dome where she built her nest. (The fact that she'd let him near her nest at all thrilled him beyond words.)
"Glass," she had told him when he'd asked about it. "It is made by melting down quartz sand, molding it into the desired shape, and letting it cool."
Quartz sand...It took some more lessons for him to understand just what kind of dirt they meant by sand, which apparently only applied to the texture, so quartz was something else entirely that they, oddly, didn't have up in heaven. But before he could be too confused they explained that they too had a ground where this quartz sand came from and that they had flown up from it, just as he had.
When he had eyed their wingless backs in confusion, Naomi and Jolene (Jolene, Jolene, Jolene), since they were the only ones to ever try to explain things to him, had smiled in amusement.
"We build tools," said Jolene. "The tools make it so we can fly. We build our wings."
And that was a mind-blowing concept. Of course he was familiar with tools and inventions. His people had pullies, lifts, gears, buildings, and tools to work and melt stones of all kinds. He was familiar with heating up a substance in order to mold it into something else.
But it had never occurred to him that something could be built to fly.
They didn't stop there, though. The females began to point out all parts of their cave. It turns out the very cave itself was one giant tool built of many. They even pulled away panels to show him the many...baffling innards beyond of things called 'wires' and 'fuses' and 'computer chips,' which he couldn't even begin to understand. They let him watch as they wore darkened 'glass' over their eyes (they also made him wear some for some reason) and used light to make minute, tiny burns, melts, and seals inside the complicated tools. They let him watch as they manipulated the many narrow ropes of all different colors, textures, and substances. They held up bits of metal so he could see the arc of light jump between them. They let him handle the squishy parts (he couldn't even begin to think of how one would use a squish tool). They pulled down many armed 'fans,' flipped 'breakers' and 'switches,' and even let him climb a ladder to poke his head into the array to see the very expanse of the innards of their home.
Gilrack couldn't get enough of it. To think, the divine beings' power came from an elaborate working of tools none of his people had ever thought to even try.
It only made it worse for resisting the call of his divine maiden.
Because she was a genius.
Naomi and even the dead-eyed male (he hated thinking his name) admitted that Jolene was smart even for divine beings. The chieftess had him watch as Jolene worked numbers and symbols in order to calculate just how far a distant star was (the only reason he could fathom the distance was because of his divine maiden managing the clicks for it in his own language). And she did that all with just her head and eyes. She did it within moments. She could even tell him the exact distance between himself and the wall at any given moment just by knowing the exact length of his tail and the floor.
Intelligence in a female was rated far higher than scent, beauty, and gentleness among his kind. It made his knees weak and his claiming venom come in almost as strong as before his transformation. Several times he had to abruptly leave or risk humiliating himself.
He could never bring this maiden home. She'd be the death of him. Every male would throw themselves, tail over claw, to kill him and claim her for their own, or beg her to take them as a concubine, which he could never allow.
But her intelligence would also make all the difference. She would change their homes to something unimaginable. Perhaps she could even take them all back into the sky with her, where they'd all grow stiff and strong and sprout wings.
And to think, their children...oh, their children.
He stayed up late just imagining the possibilities. What beautiful, powerful beings they would be, beyond all comprehension and thought. They'd be creatures of myth, beautiful, divine, and able to calculate the very expanse of existence.
He wasn't worthy. He would never be worthy.
But she was unmated, and the only male around her was past his prime, small, weak, smelly, and dead-eyed.
Resistance was never a question.
So, slowly, hesitantly, as more days passed and his vocabulary expanded, he'd reach out more. First it was bare brushes of his knuckles against her clothed shoulder or elbow. Then it was her hip or perhaps her folded knee nearby or a brush of his wing tip from a distance. Then, he'd dare to hold that soft elbow in his palm or slide his tail against her calf. He even dared to lay his wing over her shoulder and back like a blanket.
Then, one day, she smiled, rolled her eyes in an expression he knew meant exasperation of some sort, and she took his hand in both of hers.
Her hands were tiny in his and doughy and soft. They were white compared to the dark purple of his hands. The claws were thin, rounded, and short, a dream for holding delicate hatchlings to her breasts.
He knelt then and there, his chest practically shaking apart with his purrs.
He knew, in his heart, that touch didn't mean the same thing to her as it did to him. But he couldn't overcome the instincts that sang at a reciprocated touch. It was a song of acceptance and love, though he knew it couldn't be possible that she could understand. Her mind's waves were warm, but not scorching and thumping like his.
But he could pretend, alone in his den, when his fangs lengthened and body ran hot, that she did.
He let his mind's waves flow over her. He wanted so desperately for her to know how he worshiped her. He needed so desperately for her to comprehend and, just maybe, return the flow to him.
But she'd only pull back the corners of her mouth in that 'smile,' which he had unfortunately learned could mean everything from pleasure to anger. Her eyes, however, said she was happy with whatever she felt, so he could comfort himself with that.
He desperately wished he could learn the word for 'love.'
He tried. He'd learned their word for mate and parents and babies. He'd even learned their word for copulation and all the taboos for what was inappropriate and what was not (he'd very, very carefully learned those words). Learning when to touch had been more difficult, but they'd shown him through example and told him it was based, much as his kind was, on permission between the two parties, for all levels of relationships, from child and parent to friends, to mates.
But his mouth would always run dry when he opened it to ask. His touches so far had only been what he had seen among the three divine beings, but he so didn't want his relationship with her to be on their level.
But he couldn't just ask to mate with her. She was just holding his hand and even he knew how wrong it would be to go from step one to the end in a moment. These things took time, step by step.
It was driving him mad. His dreams, the fleeing to hide his staff, the drowning in claiming venom, the lava of deep devotion searing his chest.
He thought he just might die.
"Touch," he managed to gasp. "Touch?"
His heart shivered as her smile fell away. "Touch where?"
Anywhere. Everywhere. Where was he supposed to start? What was the order?
In his fit of excitement and anxiety, he choked out the first word that came to mind.
"Breast?"
They were ample, large breasts, as though already filled with milk for hatchlings. No female had a right to look so sacred, so motherly, so...hnnnrrgh.
She dropped his hand as though it stung her, and he knew he'd just made a horrible mistake.
"No." The word was cold and firm.
He left, not wanting to let her see him curl up into a ball like a hatchling to cry.
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In case you guys haven't noticed, you are currently reading my rough draft. That means no editing, because if you edit during a rough draft you risk writer's block. Oh, and Wattpad is racist. That is all.