I wasn't out long before Gilrack had me zipped and capped in my suit again with my eggs and back in his arms for flight. This time I got to watch his mother as she took off in a graceful ploom of draped cloth and purple wings. It had been hard not to admire all the royal dressings she'd put on herself, namely the glittery jeweled beads in her braids and the shimmery cloth she'd dressed herself in lazy loops. I could dig that fashion style. Sparkly and comfy? Shut up and take my money.
She led us up the great tower, past the shining chandelier, and into a series of vents with polished stairs.
"Only those who fly can reach this nest," said Gilrack. "Only chief and their brood."
It took less than a minute to reach the intricately carved, polished marble entrance, which had a curtain of shimmery purple cloth as a doorway. It was also wide enough to fit two Gilrack's and the light from beneath glittered off the faceted surfaces of some the carvings. I thought I could make out swirls of millipedes and other winged things.
The purple queen held back the curtains for us, a quiet, happy thrum in the back of her throat. I hadn't been able to keep up with all of her conversation with Gilrack, but it was good to know however it had ended, she was still happy.
Gilrack bobbed his head to her before stepping through the cloth.
My eyes seemed to open big enough to fill up my helmet at what awaited on the other side.
A large chamber, fit for a basketball court, had been carved out of the white-gray marble and meticulously polished. The floor, however, had been done in a colorful mosaic of some kinds of flowers. On the right wall was extensive shelves and long counters on either side of a large, bowl like sink with what could only be a facet. At the end of the far counter was a masterfully carved fireplace of sorts, carved into a kind of bowl in the wall with a chimney that went up to who knows where. In the back was another entrance covered in cloth, next to the entrance, taking up a large space in the corner where the back wall and left wall met, or rather curved together, was a raised bowl filled with pillows, cushions, and blankets of varying material and color. Next to this bowl like nest was a strange stone box with a clear doom showing the orange and yellow bed of moss within. The rest of the yellow wall was left for what I could only guess was some sort of coat rack for all of the queen's vestitures.
The queen cluttered happily as Gilrack set me on my feet.
"Out out," she said, reaching forward only to stop just before her claws reached my zipper.
Gilrack harrumphed in displeasure and waved his mother away without touching her, in that way of theirs. I guess it was hard not to be touchy when you were a queen and a mother.
Once I'd again been extracted from my suit, the queen was about me again, ushering me to the nest in the corner. As she did so, she pointed the curtain in the back and said what I gathered to be their word for a bathroom. But rather than push me straight into the nest, eggs and all, she took me to the little box next to it.
"When Gilrack not around and you need rest, put eggs here." She lifted the clear dome. As she did so, a poof of warm air wafted towards me.
My jaw dropped. "An incubator."
"Best to keep eggs with us," said Gilrack quickly. "So young can feel mind waves. But short term, yes."
I reached out to touch the wiry orange and yellow moss to find it surprisingly soft and very warm. I wondered if it was the moss itself that made the heat and why it would do such a thing. For the first time I wished Joshua was here so he could have a field day. Plants had been his thing.
The queen gestured to the box, jabbering a little too quickly for me.
"What did she say?" I asked Gilrack.
"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.
Gilrack's touch on my shoulder brought me back from my own imaginings of tiny little babies kicking and making grabby hands towards me. As always, it was gentle and perfectly calculated for space. He gestured to the curtains in the back of the room next to the nest, where the unknown bathroom would be.
I hesitated.
Gilrack's ears lowered. "Won't hurt."
"Can...can I bathe by myself?"
I know I said something hurtful the moment it came out, even if Gilrack smothered it behind defenses the moment it popped out.
"Yes," he said, all eager to please, even as his mindwaves had vanished from me.
Grooming was a mate thing, I remembered. He'd been so happy to help me wash the last time I'd let him, and even when I was half-conscious in a bath tub. It was the act of making sure who you loved was cared for and comfortable. I got that.
But I was already compromising a lot by being here, wasn't I?
But it wasn't like it wasn't something he hadn't seen already, right? And it wasn't like I should care if he thought I was the embodiment of sexiness right now. I wasn't asking to be humped again, was I?
Oh god, I'd been humped and I couldn't remember it.
Gilrack had already led me through the curtain by the time I was scrambling out of that pitfall.
The bathroom was much smaller than the previous room. The majority of it was left to another large stone basin, not unlike the nest, with another spigot above it. The curved walls about it had also been done in a colorful mosaic, this one of a waterfall and plants in the dark blue greens and oranges of Vetas forests. Clay jars with leather tied caps lined a shelf next to the tub.
On the right wall, away from the tub, was the first wooden door I'd seen since I got here, with a big gold handle in the middle.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Toilet," he said, even as he stepped forward and opened the door.
A plume of sulfur came out with it, along with the hush of water against stone. I peered into the moss illuminated depths to see a little waterfall disappearing into a hold rimmed with red stones. Steam wafted up from the water.
"Huh. Nice." Hot spring toilet. "And the water doesn't run out?"
"Underwater river, warmed by water rocks."
"Lava?"
"...Yes. Lava."
"Or I guess it would be magma while it's underground. Cool."
A peep of pleasure eeked out from behind his walls.
I hesitated as I considered the fancy waterfall toilet.
"Um, so..."
I didn't need to say anything more. He vanished, out the closet, closing the door behind him.
It was an interesting experience, squatting over an ever cleaning clay hole to do my business. My backside got soaked in the meantime, along with half my clothes, but I could definitely see how that this would keep you clean. It was like a cave man bedit.
Since they were already wet, I went ahead and stripped out of my clothes when I came out, wrapping up the cotton pad of blood in my underwear and hunging them on a stone peg conveniently placed next to the bathroom. After shifting my weight from foot to foot in thought, I mentally threw my hands up and went to peek my head out the curtains.
"Would you bathe with me?"
Gilrack, who'd settled himself next to the incubator and looked like he was seriously considering taking the eggs out to comfort himself with some cuddling, perked up. Happiness exploded like pop rocks across my mind.
"Jo sure?"
"I'm sure," I said. "Just..." I stopped at that, not sure what I would say. It wasn't like I could say 'just don't stare too much' or whatever else. Like I said, he'd already seen it before.
Even so, he could still sense my apprehension, so he approached slowly and forced himself not to look too hard. He turned a little wheel I hadn't been able to spot amongst the mosaic and more steamy water came out to fill the tub. It was also scented of sulfur, but he started taking bottles down to sniff at them, only to reconsider and hand them to me.
"Which smell best?"
Thus started my new alien quest to discover which bath perfumey stuff I liked, and it was a weird experience. Gone was the usual lavender and vanilla of the usual bath stuff I'd had back home and in was...what was this? The first two weren't too bad, they didn't remind me much of anything besides wet dirt or cut grass, which wasn't bad, but the third made me gag.
Gilrack swiped it out of my grasp like it had stung me.
"I will destroy this one," he said with a low growl.
"Dude, it's your mom's, don't go ruining your mom's stuff."
"I don't care. It...it is an offense."
"Whatever." I sniffed the forth bottle, which was a pleasant relief. It smelled like the desert right before it rained. "This one."
He went ahead and poured it out into the filling tub. It turned out to be a green and blue pasty sort of stuff that quickly dissolved. It helped dampen the sulfur smell considerably.
The huge tub filled much quicker than I thought it would and he turned it off once it was about half-way full. He tested the water with a finger before gesturing for me to enter.
It was like stepping into a hot tub. I hadn't realized just how achy and sore I had been until the water touched my foot and I melted like butter on a hot pan. I barely noticed the tiny stream of pink leaving my legs.
I could feel Gilrack smiling through his mind waves as he stepped in after me, raising the water level till the tub nearly overflowed with his bulk. He'd found a green sponge like thing somewhere and approached me with it.
"Can I?" he asked.
I just grunted, too far gone in my heat induced coma. Gal, when had I gotten so cold? Wasn't the space suit supposed to keep me at optimal temperature? And gal, my poor girl parts, my poor thighs, what had those eggs done to me?
My anxiety seemed to melt away as well as I found a comfy niche on the edge of the tub to rest my chin in. Surely, if this life would have hot baths, it couldn't be that bad, right?
I was barely aware of Gilrack putting the sponge to my back. I was half asleep by the time he had scrubbed whatever he could reach and went at the hair tie keeping my hair tightly done up. His claws against my scalp as he very gently combed out my hair into the water made me shiver.
A deep purr vibrated through the water.
"Beautiful," he murmured.
I was on the edge of a dream, so I didn't respond.
The dream of velvet strands doing some sort of tango broke when his face, somehow warmer than the water, pressed against my shoulder blade. I felt him take a slow, deep breath, than puff it out into the water.
He didn't do anything more than that. Just sat there in the tub, his wings on either side of us, resting his head against my shoulder. I could practically see several months' worth of exhaustion and tension bleeding out from him and into the water.