I recovered from birthing eggs by the next day, to Gilrack's dismay as he had been hoping to baby me longer. He and his father had done my hair up in elaborate, jewel dotted braids and Gilrack enjoyed redoing and cleaning them up way too much. I kind of felt like I'd become his doll in that regards, but I didn't mind too much. Who knew claws along the scalp could feel so good?
Gilrack would leave every few hours during the day to do 'hunts' or to fetch stuff from the pod. He did so just in time, as I finished exploring every nook and cranny of the royal nest within an hour and needed something to do outside of trying to get my muscle back. The first time he had walked in on me doing pushups he'd freaked out. Even after I explained to him about feeling fine and working on getting my strength back, he'd whined about 'bleeding' and straining myself. Naomi had told me that bleeding post birth lasted for a week or so and that, as long as it wasn't heavy bleeding, was completely normal, and since my bleeding had already decreased to a trickle I figured I was fine. I'd had worst periods.
Still, I let him drag me to the bath once I had done and carefully scrub me down from all the sweat. Then he'd settled me down in the nest, once more done up in silk wraps, to feed me seared meat and strange gray pears that tasted like a mix between watermelon and mangos. It was a surprisingly delicious meal, for being so utterly alien.
I couldn't remember ever being doted upon like this. Gilrack even fed me a few bites before I came back to my senses and demanded my independence back. I wondered why it didn't bother me more. I had arms and legs that worked. My natural strength had been one of my few prides. And yet here I was being treated as though I were small and delicate, something most girls wouldn't stand for, and...
I think I loved it.
Being done up in silk and jewels, cooked for and fed, scrubbed and hugged—something deep in me that had been empty all my life began to fill, and if I could I would have purred. Had I only been pretending to be strong? Or was it simply that tiring to be strong all the time?
Thus, when Gilrack reached over one evening to caress my cheek with the knuckle of his thumb, I found myself leaning into the touch without even thinking about it. He purred at my reaction and leaned his face forward to carefully brush his cheek against my own, spiking the air with a musk and pine scent, like cologne made out of mountain snow.
"Precious. Beautiful. I love you."
And I felt it, washing over me in warm waves to contrast with his cool scent.
I hugged my eggs and felt, for the first time, that maybe it would be okay even if they hatched into monstrous, ugly hybrids. Because at least Gilrack would still be there, and at least he'd still love me. Right?
He didn't let my uncertainty linger long, curling himself around me and demanding to know what had upset my thoughts. When I told him, he crooned comfort and assured me I would be his only mate for the rest of his life.
"You could always get another if I die. I don't mind." I said.
He'd chuckled at that. "Jo, your beauty and kindness has ruined me for any other female."
"Your females can't be that mean, can they? Your mom's nice."
He hadn't liked that. To Gilrack, his mom was only ever overbearing and nosey.
His father, though, Gilrack looked up to as his personal hero. He was smaller than Gilrack, probably because of the wings, and had Gilrack's reddish shade with dark maroon at his extremities instead of purple like Gilrack. He had black hair and yellow eyes and the largest curved, black horns that I'd seen yet. It made him seem more threatening than he actually was when I'd first seen him, but he was anything but. Soft spoken, considerate, and I swear on my life was psychic. Gilrack explained to me that his father just had a talent in reading mindwaves and interpreting emotions, but I wouldn't be persuaded. Horack was a mind reader. It helped a lot since I was still getting a handle on their noise-based language, especially since he was the only one Gilrack was comfortable with having around while he was gone on his hunting/fetching trips.
It was his father who found me exercising one morning, and he had found it fascinating. After looking to both the eggs in the incubator and me, probably considering whether he wanted to do some grandpa-ing or look into whatever yoga I was doing, he fell beside me and tried to copy my moves. Through our broken speech he managed to convey that they had training exercises for soldiers, so he wasn't a stranger to exercise, but he'd never seen anything like yoga and was interested in seeing what my alien legs could do or, perhaps, learn something new to improve his own body. He took good care of it, apparently, as he proved by showing he was ten times more limber than I'd ever be.
"For tunnel digging," he insisted, caving his shoulders around his head to show how he could narrow his body into half its width.
I'd never get enough of that shoulder trick. It was just so damn weird.
Gilrack had none of that limberness. He told me later that he had lost that when he had grown wings. His 'bones' had stiffened and he worried how that would affect him traversing the tunnels. I didn't find anything exciting about fighting back claustrophobia by sticking oneself into rock crevices half my size, but, you know, to each their alien own. He couldn't understand what was so great about getting drunk, so there you have it. Not that I'd ever be getting drunk again, unless Levi decided to visit with his homemade moonshine in the future.
Which brought me to my first unpleasant discovery: the coms link didn't make it down here.
For whatever reason, either because of all the rock between us or something special in said rock, I couldn't reach Naomi and Levi and they couldn't reach me.
Thankfully, Gilrack was able to understand the controls enough to use the coms at the pod to let the two know they had reached the planet fine and that I was safely tucked away in the nicest accommodations his underground cave folk could offer. But the coms function on my handheld device was thoroughly useless.
I was okay with that. Gilrack promised to take me out to the pod when I got lonely for human conversation, so I settled with the other functions of my handheld pad, like the huge library of books I'd downloaded before coming here.
Gilrack, forever proving his repentance of stuffing eggs in me without my knowledge by being the best mate ever, also brought me what could only be paints, paintbrushes, and thin slate canvases.
"They are not as...nice as your paints," he had told me apologetically as he handed them over. "But we have artists too."
True, the paints weren't in as wide a variety as mine, nowhere near it, and some of them changed to completely different colors or just straight on gray when I mixed them, but hey, I wasn't picky.
A week after I had come I had my first artwork up on some free space on the shelves above the opposite end of the nest, next to the fireplace. It was just of the eggs sitting in a nebula, but I had put a stupid amount of effort into getting the right blue and purple of their shells so I was pretty proud. I knew it had been a week because the 'light stones' as Gilrack called them stuck in the ceiling faded with the rising and falling of the sun, despite being who knows how many feet away from the surface. Stupid useful rock, if I do say so myself. Seriously, what was the likelyhood?
But apparently Vetas had untold treasures in its depths that previous scans for precious resources to mine had missed. Treasures which Gilrack promised to show me once I felt safe leaving the cave to so a little exploring, though I'd have to go with his father if I did for he said, rather sadly, that his instincts would torture him if there wasn't at least one of us with the eggs at a time. Something about nurturing them with mind waves and just overall making sure they were safe. Which I could totally understand, as I didn't feel all that safe leaving them myself, even after a week of getting comfortable in this new world and having his attentive father and doting mother visiting us frequently.
I was still waiting to see what Gilrack hated about his mother so much. She was only ever pleasant to me, calling me sweet names like 'good mother' and 'pretty little thing' and bringing me treats whenever she came. She wasn't offended if I didn't like whatever I tasted, insisting, quite patiently in her own tongue until I could understand, that it was more important to her to learn my tastes. She wanted to make sure I was comfortable and tended to and kept apologizing for Gilrack's stupidity in mating me before I was ready.
"I taught him better," she insisted, sounding so much like an Earthly mother I'd smile every time, to which she'd try to imitate by pulling back her mouth's corners like Gilrack did. She wanted so badly to communicate with me better. Even if she didn't let her sincerity radiate towards me in her mind waves, I could have seen that.
Gilrack didn't seem to approve of his mother's attentions to me. He seemed to think she had ulterior motives and didn't want her touching the eggs. So she just visited when he wasn't around. I didn't have any problem with her holding them. She'd always hold them close, like the precious things they were, and wrap her big hands about them so they'd stay warm.
"Oh, if only I had a daughter like you," she said at one point.
"How many daughters do you have?" I'd asked, as clearly as I could. This language was just so freaking weird.
"Nine," she said. "But not wise to dote on them. Gives them ideas."
"Ideas?"
"That they are greater than others not born to chief when they are same. No royal blood. No purple." She tapped on her skin.
"I'm not purple either."
"But you are not born to chief. I can favor you and you will think you are stranger. Not stranger. Good little mother. Beautiful and kind. Wife to next chief." She attempted a human smile on her own. "I was waiting for next chief. Waiting for wings. So I could...dote."
Ah. I guess that made sense. If the children of the chief thought they were intrinsically better than those who weren't born to them, it would make life harder for them when they had to live among everyone else instead of as a chief themselves. But the wife of a chief, or even the chief themselves, was different.
At the same time, I thought that was sad. Parents should dote on their kids regardless of their birth, shouldn't they? At least...I wish mine had.
Maybe that's why Gilrack didn't like his mother. Or, at least, one of the reasons. Especially since he seemed like the doting parent type. He probably thought it was a downright crime not to gush all the love you have on all your kids.
Wait...nine daughters...
"How many sons do you have?"
"Fourteen."
Damn. I mean, if laying three eggs at a time was common, I could see how it happened, but Gilrack told me their females were only fertile once to three a year, depending on their health, and tracking those times were difficult. One to two eggs a time was more common than three, but still.
Still, Gilrack had twenty-two siblings! Holy cow! I had twenty-four in-laws! Wait, she had two other mates. Did that make them my in-laws too? Twenty-six?
Ugh, how'd I remember all those names?
Thankfully, only his mother and father were allowed up into the nest while I was there, so I wasn't overwhelmed by siblings. Technically, his mother's other two mates could visit with her permission, but Gilrack had firmly put his foot down on that. He barely allowed his mother herself into the den, though he technically had no right to deny her entrance. It was hers after all, though she insisted that it was now mine and Gilrack's since Gilrack had grown wings and officially become next in line to be chief/king. It still sounded more like a queen/king situation to me.
Not that Gilrack ever seemed happy about the prospect. Apparently, despite only being one of the two kids who had the 'purple' needed to inherit the position of chief/king, he'd been more interested in jewelry making and hunting, which explained the buttload of carved jewels he had ready to twine into my hair or string around my wrists with long, thick strands of his own hair. So much glitter, man, I felt like a walking bank account. This, in turn, seemed to be for the best as his brother was far more interested in the throne. He'd been the only one to really pay attention during his mother's grueling lessons on leadership. Gilrack had only skimmed along enough to pass because his father had insisted on it.
I knew this because Gilrack's mother told me with the tone of a venting, frustrated parent. Gilrack wasn't the only one disappointed. His mother had disappointment in him to match.
Oh, which reminds me, her name was Shahtit. Like the slide of stone against stone then coming abruptly to a halt.
These name definitions, yo. Made me miss the 'Laughing River' or 'Sitting Dog' like stuff of the Native American's back on Earth. Even their names had to do with sounds rather than, well, you know, words. Nouns. Adjectives. Prepositions. Verbs. It's all about the onamonopias with the demon-looking people of Vetas.
But hey, at least their food was good. Seriously, how Gilrack made it through our rehydrated crap was beyond me, my gawd. What a trooper. He insisted I was only getting the best of the best and that more common food was more like our food, but I still held to the fact he was a trooper, which pleased him minutely.
"Food was little concern by you," he said while gently moving one of my jeweled braids behind my smaller, rounded ear.
I closed my eyes and let myself feel his touch and what it was becoming to me.
Maybe it was okay to let myself believe that maybe I was all that he thought me to be. At least in these moments.
"You're not too bad yourself," I told him.
To that he purred loud as a freight train.
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Don't mind me. Just painting my son's fingernails along with mine. It's the only time I do my nailes--when I can turn it into a mother-son activity. Need to get some new colors, though, my blue's gone defunk. The three-year-old is very pleased with his silver shiney toes. My poor oldest has outgrown nails with mom. *sigh* Welp, can't infringe on his masculinity.