Page 23 of Owning His Pet
“Oh, I was just thinking about how to restore rain to the planet without burning up in the sun.”
He gives me a slightly pained expression. “You do understand that plan was never going to bring the rains back. You burning up in the sun does nothing to change the ecology of a planet. Your colony is going to have to adjust to a changing world. It may be best for them to seek new worlds.”
“They don’t want to do that. It’s one of the original colonies.”
He directs my attention to his eyes with a gesture. “Pet,” he says. “I want you to understand that is not your responsibility, and even if it were—and I repeat, it is not—you could not change the rains. A planet’s water cycle is greater than the efforts of a single human.”
“I mean, couldn’t we get more rain by raising temperatures? Or, shouldn’t the water we’re manufacturing be going into the atmosphere and being recycled as precipitation?”
“Perhaps,” he says. “But again, sweetheart, you are the daughter of a merchant. You are not a water scientist.”
“I could be.”
“Do you want to be?”
“Not really.”
He chuckles. “You were given an unreasonable mission that was designed to end your bloodline. I believe it was a political move.”
“Why do you believe that?”
“Because,” he says. “The alternative is believing that intelligent creatures thought sending you to space would fix their water cycling problems and that is…”
“It’s very human,” I say. “We’ve always believed that giving up something precious can get something else that is important.”
“Yes,” he says, his lips quirking in that way people’s do when they’re trying not to laugh in your face. A lot of his expressions are rather human and easily readable for me.
I’m going to get them rain.
My dad would have gotten them rain.
I’m going to do what he would have done.
* * *
Freak
My pet is adorable, and she cannot help the limitations of her human intellect. I have not spent a great deal of time among humans, I must admit. My travels took me among other sentient life forms of similar capacity though. I do admit I used to look down upon them with a certain amount of smugness. I don’t feelthat with my pet. I feel an intense affection that makes me honor her.
The moment I felt her inside her capsule, struggling to escape a fate she did not deserve, I knew I had to have her. There was something about her that just fit with me. It is hard for a creature who knows that time and space are persistent illusions to believe in things like fate, but we Psyons do know that we do not know everything. In our culture, the unknown is where a spark of divinity may yet hide.
Meeting Mara was always going to happen, but it still surprised me. And taking her as my pet felt like the right thing to do. It feels better than simply abducting a woman, which, I suppose, I have also technically done.
I am starting to feel peace inside myself of a deeper kind, a possessive kind of wellness. She is mine. The weakness I felt at the hands of my captives is gone. I have not only freed myself, but I have found another, and in caring for her, I will care for myself.
It is time to go home.
* * *
Mara
Freak is standing over me, hot and practically naked. He is so tall, so strong, so muscular. Some of his scars and spikes seem to be going away, almost like they were never there at all. He looks more like a big handsome blue man right now. Well, sort of. He still has those magnetic eyes and the thick mane of hair, and a smattering of scales and marks. I tilt my head as I look at him,noting the way he seems to shift in appearance depending on my perspective.
“It’s time, pet,” he says. “Your training is only just begun, but I think you’ve got the general gist of it. We’ll work on the rest of it as it comes up.”
He leans down and re-fits and re-zips my suit, leaving some of his seed trapped inside with me.
“It’s time to go back to your world?”
