The evening
November 15, 2023 at 1:05 PM
“Well, when will a beautiful stranger win your heart?” Marie laughed and sipped her wine, hiding a grin in her glass. She knew perfectly well what the answer would be. But she asked nevertheless. Why do they always ask about this?..
Lilian sighed, smiled at only the corners of her lips and joked as usual:
“My heart forever and undividedly belongs to a single man”.
Asami shook her head reproachfully.
“Lily, how long is it possible? Remember, in college what guys were after you!”
“Yes, and where are they now?” Lillian grimaced sarcastically. “And then, my job…”
“That’s the thing, you’ve been married to your job for a long time!” Asami wrinkled her nose contemptuously.
“But I shouldn’t marry a yautja!” Lillian spread her hands and reached for the bottle. “And why are we talking only about me again? Tell us what’s new with you. We see each other once every five years…”
“Yes, let’s drink to the meeting!” Marie fussed and raised her glass, conveying her excitement to the others. The friends clinked glasses and prepared to reminisce about the years of their stormy youth. The evening had just begun, but already promised to be long.
The door to the service apartment opened quietly. There was twilight in the hall.
“Kefir?” the woman called into the void, stepping over the threshold and groping for the switch. “Kefirchik, are you sleeping?”
The silhouette of the Yautja, a menacing, shaggy shadow, separated from the kitchen. A contented rumbling sound was heard.
“No, I ate,” the transfer device said.
“If you want to be healthy, eat alone and in the dark…” Lilian muttered absentmindedly, suddenly remembering her Russian grandmother’s favorite saying, after which she finally turned on the light.
The predator narrowed his yellow tiger eyes at the bright light bulb and leisurely licked his chops. Traces of meat juice were still visible on the light beige oral membrane.
“I see better in the dark, you know that?”
“I know,” the woman grinned, kicking off her shoes and heading towards the yautja.
“How was the meeting with other females?” Kefir purred affectionately, allowing himself to be hugged, and also wrapped his arms around Lilian. Then he bent down and slightly clumsily butted his friend with his head. The woman responded by ruffling his mane and kissing the bridge of his nose.
“Everything is fine. They say hello to you”.
“You’ve been absent for a long time”.
“We haven’t seen each other for a long time and we miss each other”.
“We miss you so much…” Lillian responded slightly guiltily, opening the hug and starting to undress.
“Do you miss me?” the jealous stretched out his mandibles demandingly, following her into the room.
“Of course, I counted the minutes!” the woman giggled. Kefir rumbled with satisfaction. Continuing to follow her on her heels, he stepped on a blouse that had fallen from the back of a chair.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Lilian clasped her hands and hastily snatched the crumpled wardrobe item from under her scaly foot. She didn’t have many beautiful clothes, mainly because she had to spend most of her time in overalls, and there was no point in filling her closet with dresses. Plus constant travel…
The Yautja ignored the reproach, only parted his maxills mockingly and again reached out for a hug. Here it would seem: a hefty bull, endowed by nature with all the properties of a killer machine, and as affectionate as a kitten. It took Lillian a while to get used to it…
“Well, wait, let me take a shower,” Lillian deftly dodged and moved to a safe distance, where, completely unashamed of prying eyes, she pulled off her skirt and her bra. After that, the woman took out a terry robe from the closet and walked briskly towards the bathroom
in only her panties.
“I’ll make tea,” the predator resigned himself.
“You are my miracle!” Lillian turned around and blew him a kiss.
In fact, this charming scoundrel was called Struggle — that is how his name was translated from yautja’s dialect. With the addition of something in the form of a patronymic — son of String. But Lillian didn’t think it was a good idea to translate names. The male became Kefir solely thanks to the phenomenon of interlingual homonyms. Simply put, his name in his native language sounded quite similar to the name of this fermented milk product. Thus, Lillian had a choice — try to pronounce this word, shamelessly distorted by the structure of the human mouth, or transform it into a more accessible form and use it as a cute nickname. She chose the second, especially since yautja, like kefir, had a characteristic smell that was repulsive at first, but over time became familiar. Predator didn’t mind, partly, probably, for the reason that he also couldn’t pronounce his friend’s name and was forced to call her Iean — it sounded very strange. Perhaps stranger than this, these two ended up together and were quite happy — for almost six years now.
The story of their acquaintance began under very exciting circumstances. A thirty-year-old repair service employee arrived at one of the space stations to eliminate an accident in the control unit and now…
Yes, jokes aside, Lillian really was a repairman (a first-class one, by the way), and the choice of such a career remained forever incomprehensible to her family and friends. She was constantly told that she had mastered a profession that was not for women and that someday it would finish her off. Strictly speaking, move a small semi-automatic shuttle between the planet, the orbital station and two autonomous complexes was indeed not the safest thing. A hostile vacuum around, a hopeless disruption of biorhythms and a complete lack of personal life. But Lillian stubbornly clung to her calling, looking a little down on her friends, who, to be honest, were not particularly successful in the pursuit of happiness either. Marie got married for the third time, convincing herself and those around her that “now she definitely made the right decision,” conducted some vague social activities, posted her achievements on Instagram, and dragged a spoiled child to the doctors. Asami, in turn, tried to pretend to be a businesswoman. She was not married, but had a fairly wealthy partner, whose financial support did not allow her to realize how unprofitable her business really was. In her free time, she painted with ink and watercolors. Both friends considered themselves self-sufficient and independent individuals, and at every meeting Lillian was told in unison that she was wasting her precious years on something unknown. Or rather, it’s not
clear for what and it’s not clear for whom. Her profession was dying out — after all, it has long been known that with the development of robotics, the need for technical personnel will soon disappear completely. Her relationship with a representative of another space race was futile (explain to them that races exist within the same species, and yautja are just a separate biological species, it seems, was already meaningless). Oh, and why did she love these two fools?
Although the girls were partly right, of course: the stations had not had permanent technicians for a long time. Robots dealt with minor breakdowns, some of the work was successfully completed remotely, but nevertheless there was always room for force majeure. And it was precisely this force majeure that was Lilian’s specialty. When the automatic systems began to fail for some unknown reason, and the station threatened to leave orbit, called Lily. When the robots, instead of eliminating the breakdown, began to make it worse, called Lily. When it was necessary to sort out and start a suddenly dead engine on the knee, who did they call? Right! And the woman accepted every call for an emergency as a challenge to fight, and considered every job well done to be her personal victory. Several other craftsmen worked at her facilities, but only Lillian was trusted with the most difficult cases. And, frankly, it was very flattering for her to feel indispensable. There was only one thing more pleasant than this: to realize that we managed to do something really necessary and useful, maybe even prevent a catastrophe and save someone’s life. It was precisely for this reason that Lillian clung to her “dying profession,” which in fact remained more alive than all the living.
And as for the yautja… With the yautja, everything happened in a very unexpected way. Everyone has bad days, even professionals, and then one day, on a regular assignment, an underestimated “problem” suddenly turned into a full-blown and unforgiving asshole. To eliminate this very ass and save her career, Lily lacked three things: physical strength (or equipment that could compensate for its lack), another pair of hands and a non-standard vision of the situation. Only a miracle could help, and it was not slow to appear — in the guise of a reddish-gray striped predator; an adventurer and a lost technical genius rolled into one.
As it turned out later, Kefir belonged to the caste of scientists — it turns out that the yautja also had such. By the standards of his relatives, the thirty-nine-year-old individual was considered a very young, who was supposed to be under the supervision of his elders, but it just so happened that the station where he was registered was disbanded due to wear and tear. The scientists were distributed in all directions, and those who already had status settled down quite well, but Kefir, although he had earned the respect of his former colleagues for his extraordinary intelligence and hard work, ended up in some outback position below a laboratory assistant. The result was a conflict with the leadership, which ended in a traditional yautja’s duel, in which the young male, of course, did not win, and expulsion as a natural and terrible result.
For several months, the young male wandered restless, finding himself at the very bottom of yautja society. How exactly he got to the human station remains a mystery. But it was nothing other than fate itself. Initially, Kefir was interested in the breakdown, and only then he discovered a human woman fighting against insurmountable circumstances. He came over and helped — more for fun. He probably didn’t realize how much he saved the situation.
Then they introduced themselves to each other. It turned out that Kefir didn’t even have a place to sleep. In fact, the predators never suffered from being away from home, but Lillian couldn’t just leave him alone and called him onto her ship. She coordinated the alien’s presence with management and promised that the yautja would not rip off anyone’s head. She got a new friend a part-time job, registering it in her name, since predators had never been hired before.
So they began to live together — mostly on the ship, and sometimes in service partments and service compartments. Considering that the living space for the yautja was also not officially allocated, they had to live together in close quarters. This is probably what brought them closer together. It was especially influenced by that difficult period when Kefir caught some kind of severe infection and fell ill. Lilan did not have any medications suitable for the yautja, and the sufferer had to be nursed in the old fashioned way, reducing the fever with wet towels, placing IVs with diluted saline, and also forcing him to eat and drink. During his illness, the woman got used to touching him, and he got used to her touching him. And then they found themselvesin the same bed for the first time — Lily could not allow the patient to lie on the floor as before, and there was only one sleeping place.
Then the illness went away, but the habit of being around remained. Although the specifics of yautja heat transfer brought some inconvenience. To feel good, he needed an atmosphere of hellish heat and tropical humidity. His body temperature was also high. However, not seeing any indecent hints on his part, Lilian very quickly got used to making do with a minimum of clothing at home. Gradually, she adopted from her neighbor the ability to calmly relate to her own body and its vital functions. Soon the two got used to each other so much that embarrassment became simply inappropriate. It got to the point that Lily asked Kefir to rub her back in the shower, and he turned to the woman for help when old scales did not come off well in hard-to-reach places on his body.
Time flew by, and the feelings connecting the strange couple only grew stronger. True, Lillian did not know how to interpret them. It was something between love and affection, a friendship full of tenderness and seasoned with a fair amount of flirtation, but not tainted by vulgarity. It is believed that friendship between a man and a woman is impossible, and will either be destroyed or lead to bed. In humans, perhaps, but Kefir was not a human being. And the most important difference was that the interspecies couple did not try to suppress mutual sympathy with the tombstone “we are only friends — nothing more,” but, on the contrary, began an exciting game of simulating relationships. Lillian, without embarrassment, even in public called the Yautja “my man” — first as a joke, and then not as a joke… And the yautja almost seriously said “my female” and gave out compliments, each more funnier than the other, however, quite in the spirit of their rude tribe.
In general… Lilian felt such support from her companion that none of the suitors had given her in the past. Moreover, yautja embodied all the main masculine qualities: loyalty, willingness to forgive and protect, kindness and strength. And the predator received from an earthly woman what every man dreams of: adoration and care. They constantly showered each other with affection — but to a certain limit, never crossing the boundaries of what was permitted. We can say that the story of their relationship could easily be given to a twelve-year-old girl to read, without fear of instilling in her perverted tastes, because this is exactly what the love of a beautiful earthling and an alien from the stars looks like in the understanding of little girls…
By the way, fairy tales are fairy tales, but there were still real examples of cohabitation between people and aliens, but most often earthlings found a common language with representatives of the chsha people who have humanoid features. The yautja are a different matter — something completely different for full-fledged sexual relations. Lily and Kefir understood this perfectly and did not try to deceive themselves. In a certain sense, each of them remained a loner.
Sometimes Lillian went on dates for a change, but nothing serious ever came of it. She talked sweetly all evening, realized that the next interlocutor was superficial, narrow-minded and vulgar, she delicately parted with him and returned to her fanged friend, who could not find a place for himself out of jealousy, but could not oppose real arguments to the meeting of a woman with males of her own species.
The situation was reversed when Kefir began to rut in the spring. This wild, archaic
trait made the yautja very similar to animals. Moreover, the mating season made the predators completely uncontrollable for a couple of months. Lilian giggled at first when she saw that the male periodically consulted some analogue of the “women’s calendar,” but when the domestic cat turned into an angry tiger, she suddenly became unable to laugh. To justify the yautja, it was worth saying that he tried with all his might to bring his uncontrollable sperm toxicosis under control, but his success was variable. Few reasons, just reassuring ones. In addition, Kefir was forced to periodically take a bath to flush out excess sexual products — for this purpose, there was a certain implant in his sacral area attached to the necessary nerves. As the male once explained, scientists implanted such things into themselves so as not to be distracted from research on reproduction. But since Kefir ceased to be a scientist, and moved from technical research more to practice, then giving up females lost its meaning for him. Therefore, when the rut reached its peak, Lillian reluctantly had to let her fanged one go for a walk with the females. The females, however, did not really favor the outcast, so the predator returned from the parties, although satisfied, but morally depressed and very battered. Lily sighed, lamented, swore a little, then she felt sorry for the unlucky lover, washed his wounds and put him to bed…
And all the more valuable for both were the moments when no outsider interfered in their lives. One-off dates, the mating season — all this passed, but the two of them remained. And even though no one took their relationship seriously, deep down the yautja male and the earthly woman knew: everything was serious with them and forever.
Lily came out of the bathroom, drying her wet hair as she went. The yautja was doing something in the kitchen.
“Will you have honey or sweet rectangles?” he inquired over his shoulder. There was no word “cookie” in the vocabulary of the translation device — simply because cooking was virtually absent among predators as a phenomenon. But, oddly enough, they knew and respected honey. In fact, over these six years, the couple perfectly learned to understand each other’s speech, but people and Yautja preferred to organize everyday communication through a repeater, so as not to break their languages with alien words.
“Have I already told you that you are the man of my dreams?” Lillian laughed. “You know, many human males think that coffee in bed and the like are nonsense. But you are different”.
“A good male provides the female with food,” Kefir said seriously.
“People don’t always have it, unfortunately”. The woman sank down onto the sofa and leaned back blissfully, stretching out her legs.
“When I caught that animal, for some reason you didn’t like it,” the predator remarked good-naturedly.
“Because it was a deer in the park. And you and I didn’t have any problems for the only reason: because you are yautja. The valiant police would prefer to feed you all the deer, as long as you don’t touch them”.
“Let me catch something you like next time,” the fanged one did not give up. He walked over to the tea table and with clumsy precision placed the teapot and two cups on it. Or rather, one cup and one gravy boat with a narrow spout, which seemed to be specially made for the specific mouth of a predator.
“Catch me some waffles in the kitchen,” Lily laughed. Kefir snorted, but went for waffles.
Returning, the Yautja sat down next to his human female on the sofa and hugged her, immediately burying his mandibles in her hair, which could be regarded as a gentle kiss on the top of her head. The woman sighed happily and pressed herself against her bare scaly chest, on which the first stubble was barely visible. Kefirchik was growing up. He, of course, would hardly be able to catch up with the mass of his fighting relatives in the future — once Lillian had a chance to see seasoned predators up close, and she was very impressed by these majestic and at the same time creepy creatures — but still, within a few years he was supposed to become much larger than usual men. Then they will have to look for a bigger bed and a stronger sofa…
“What are we going to watch? Today you choose”. She reached for the remote control.
“About animals or about your science,” Kefir responded without hesitation.
“You, as always, are true to yourself”. Lilian flipped through the channels and stopped at some program about biomechanics. “Well, look, here you have both animals and technology”.
“I’ve already seen that,” the male twitched his mandibles disdainfully and took the remote control from his friend.
“Well then look for it yourself”. The woman leaned forward to pour the tea. “What will we do tomorrow? We have one more day off”.
“You won’t run away from me again?”
“Stop it! I planned to meet my friends a month ago!”
“I do not know anything”. Kefir playfully bit her on the neck. “My female”.
Lilian did not answer, she just returned to her predator’s side, made herself comfortable and closed her eyes, sipping the scalding drink with a smile. “My female”… It was so stupid and frivolous, but for some reason I wanted to hear it again and again…