Chapter Text
Lazila curled tight into a little ball on my belly fur in our den, ears flopped to the side slightly in rar sleep. It was one of those rare and precious nights where ra had been able to stay under for an extended period, nearly until sunrise.
Rar fur was the silver blue of twilight streaked with cotton white. Rar nervous disposition was usually written all over rar lithe and muscular face. It was painted in the sharp bowls of rar large ears. But for now it was absent, leaving rar with nothing but the gentle rising and falling of rar chest as ra breathed, as slowly as I ever saw rar.
I cherished those moments of perfect solace, when everything came together to allow rar the kind of stillness that didn’t just live in your body but found its way into your soul.
A little twitch caught in rar leg muscle and the spell was broken. But that was the nature of a life lived in a state of perpetual motion. Even if it was… slower now. I carefully slipped a dress on under me, wrapped my little sling pouch under rar, and carried her with me into the food prep area to make us breakfast for the day ahead.
The hab, once so full of scampering feet and art and life, felt emptier these days. We had raised a family together here, settled into a life neither of us had ever expected when Lazila first contacted me to help rar manage the constant, neverending panic that was lagom existence. None of my other therapy clients had ever made me laugh like Lazila did, though. Gotten me riled up like ra did back when rar body could still take me being rough.
But now, our kids had left the nest. Some would probably have kids of their own soon. It was crazy that could be the case considering how short we had been together from my perspective, but… well. Different lifespans, different timescales.
Mine was eight times Lazila’s.
I had done my best to give rar a good life in the short time ra had been mine.
As best as a xenrani could do.
Lazila was still asleep in the pouch strapped to my chest as I set the bowl for rar breakfast down and began chopping various roots and spices, tossing a vinegar dressing and bean paste, garnishing it with fermented berry and plating the whole thing atop some boiled grains that would be easier for rar to chew. I loved cooking for rar. I had learned every detail of my little mate’s tongue in so many ways. The forms I showed my love may have changed as age started to wear, but never my passion for expressing it.
“Good morning, Qalai,” Lazila said with a little groan as ra finally startled awake and buried ragom in my mane, nerves ready to flee even if rar body was in no state to.
“Good morning, Lazila,” I answered back, rubbing the top of rar head with my chin.
I carefully lifted rar out of the sash and set rar down in the little nook in the den wall at my eye height beside my own table, then set rar bowl down. We made for an odd couple, that was for sure. Most affini in this lagom settlement were about my size, so we lived in a hab that had been designed for a lagom floret and owner, inset just a few meters underground in the side of a hill where Lazila was most comfortable.
Lazila was limping, cane in paw as ra went to sit down and eat. Literally and otherwise. Lagom didn’t have the benefits of thousands of years of Compact medical advances like me, though even wild I would have long outlived rar. I was still a young xen, but far older than rar. Yet, Lazila remained more stubborn than any xenosophont I had ever met.
It had been rar desire to continue the old archive work with minimal affini involvement that brought us together in the first place. Lazila dreamed of a day when rar descendants could walk among the ones they called their predators, live without the curse of constant readiness to flee.
It would not be in rar lifetime, Lazila knew, but to take those first steps mattered to rar.
My tiny mate was not fearless, but instead ra was brave. Braver than any other sophont I had ever met. Running slower because ra knew it was safe to let me catch rar. Existing in spite of fear, taking what ra could. Taking this little slice of the world back, taking my claws and knot and stings.
Lazila had been the one that asked if I could get mods to make myself fully sexually compatible with rar, then sent me back to get something bigger. Just barely small enough to not injure rar. The one who bared rar neck and begged me to enclose it in my teeth when we made love until every synapse of panic was so burned out they fired less.
“You're watching, not eating,” Lazila teased me, crunching a mouthful of greens.
“Oh, yeah, just reminiscing.” I picked at my own breakfast a bit, some compiled whatever.
“About fucking me, if I smell right.”
I couldn't help but grin. “You smell right.”
Lazila laughed, finishing the last of rar meal. “Feels good this old body still makes you want to chase. Not much time left before I stop running.”
Guilt crept into my chest, and one final attempt to convince the little lagom sputtered out of me.
“You could still have longer as a floret. Run further. Another year, maybe two.”
Lazila’s ears twitched disapprovingly at me.
“This again. We are not the affini. We all stop running in time, Qalai. The fear of «death» is in you, I think.”
Lazila's little mouth always sounded adorable when ra tried to say words in my native language. It just wasn't shaped to growl like that. But the point was well made. My fears had a different context.
“Of course it is. Of course I’m afraid of losing you.”
“Chose mate poorly, then,” ra joked as ra carefully clambered down, grabbed her cane and started slowly ambling over to stand next to me. “Affini would buy you a year more of me. Won't change the centuries after.”
Ra didn't want an implant. Didn't want an Affini. To experience what past lagom had experienced was important to rar work. But ra had retired a month ago.
“I see you limp. I don’t like you hurting in ways we can’t control.”
The tiny little thing looked up at me with defiance in tired eyes. I had burned away every drop of fawning instinct in our time together. Proven I was a more terrifying predator than the ones that haunted rar nightmares, and let ra burn the panic out pinned under me.
“No. I stop running with you, Qalai. Then you keep running past. Two eyes forward, one on the sky.”
It was one of rar favorite little sayings. My third eye, evolved so long ago to survey for aerial predators, had always pleased her. A reminder that even the predators had predators of our own.
“I just think you deserve lin ralazinziq. The real one.”
“Know you catch me, keep me safe after. With the qalai I might get away, never with you. Too big, too fast, too strong, love me too much. Don't need to try so hard. Don't need affini for that.”
I sighed, and carefully picked her up, touching our noses together.
“Well, we’re still going out today.”
When my stingers plunged into Lazila’s fur, ra squirmed, but only looked up at me with a flustered tremor. I pulled rar in close to my mane, sensitive little snout sniffing at the calming scent whose efficacy was amplified massively by my venom. An echo of so many nights when she was younger, and yet far too few.
But that wouldn't be enough for today.
The autoinjector flashed, slowing Lazila’s hyperactive reflexes. Ra thumped rar leg against me in confusion. “What are you doing, Qalai?”
“You don't need to walk. I’ll carry you.”
“Whatever you say, sexy stink lady.”
Lazila adjusted into her sling, nuzzling against my fur, finding that calm ra only got to experience glimpses of with the strongest of my pheromones. I had gotten every mod I could, to maximize the effects. To give rar something like an implant would have.
The meadow was beautiful as I stepped outside, rar cane in hand. The personal transport was already waiting, hovering a small hop off the ground.
Lazila had never been inside one before. Ra had no reason to, having never left this settlement, not once in rar life. Ra was born here, and it was one of the few on Ralin that the lagom hadn’t abandoned for the stars away from a planet shared with their ancestral predators. A defiant act against a history of defiling by the carlai. Or as Lazila called them… the qalai.
My mate wasn’t looking out the window when we flew over the threshold to the world outside the bubble the affini had built for this gathering of lagom that refused to leave Ralin. Ra had put on rar blinder mask. Ra trusted me to keep rar safe.
It wasn't long before we arrived at our destination.
I picked rar up, and stepped off the transport and out into the plaza.
About a hundred carlai stared at us in utter disbelief.
One last act in defiance of those who had devoured rar history. I was taunting them, flaunting the lagom in my arms none of them would ever be allowed to devour again. The prey they were biologically driven to hunt and axiomatically unable to catch.
I didn’t know carlai expressions as well as I knew lagom ones. But I knew universal signs of hostility. Raised fur, flashing teeth. I didn’t belong here. No, that was the point.
I was carrying a lagom, invading their space.
But who cared. The carlai were tiny. Barely larger than little Lazila as I towered over them like a giant. Rar monster among monsters. The affini snipers camouflaged around the plaza with sleep darts didn’t hurt, but Lazila wouldn’t notice them, didn’t need to know about the things I’d needed to arrange to be allowed to do this at all. To rar, this was real as it got.
The xenodrugs did their best at keeping Lazila’s heart from exploding. I could feel rar tension even through the paralytic.
I made my way to a bench. Occupied, of course. Lazila’s pupils narrowed with terror as I walked right towards the carlai sitting there. There were empty ones, but I wasn’t going for them.
The carlai on the bench looked up at me with twisted visage of shock and derision. Every muscle in dar body existed with purpose, shifting and goading in a familiar predatory pattern. A voice hissed in a language I knew and Lazila didn’t. “You fucking your food, cousin?”
“Move,” I snarled back, pumping carlai-targeted intimidation pheromones into the air.
Pre moved.
I carefully set Lazila down in the seat with rar cane beside rar. The bench was just slightly too large for rar and far too small for me, and sat on the grass beside it, slinging my arm around rar back.
Lazila was too terrified to speak. I didn’t expect rar to. I ran the flat side of my claws through rar fur in the exact way that ra liked it the most. I savored every second of it, until finally rar shivers settled down into a slower rumble and I couldn’t justify continuing for a second longer.
Lazila had the softest ears.
The carlai around us kept a distance, watching in utter fascination. The two species that had evolved alongside each other so rarely met in the flesh now. Lazila had never even seen one in person, only even knew what they looked like from the illustrated records in the archive and the shadows in rar nightmares.
I knew my mate better than anyone, and I caught the moment rar panic died. When facing the thing that scared rar most had gone from panic to… discomfort. I recognized the toe twitch of mere social anxiety. Lazila never liked being the center of attention.
Ra was staring at the most terrifying thing any lagom could imagine. Surrounded on all sides by the monsters of their own psyches. And under the dread, the panic, was just simple shyness.
These might be the dreaded qalai, but they were still just… people. Some wore beautiful fabrics, carried tablets, wore collars. Xenosophonts like everyone else.
“They're kinda cuter than you'd think, aren’t they,” I said aloud, pointedly for all to hear. “I know you have a thing for scary beasts, any of them catching your eye? I’ll wingman for you, babe.”
I heard the hitch in rar breathing. The laugh that couldn't come out. The humor in absurdity.
Ra would never see the day when lagom walked, not ran, among the sophonts they had shared a planet with. But this, I could give. This glimpse of a future when even Ralin was theirs again.
Then.
Someone stepped into the plaza, and strode towards us. We had talked before, but this was my first time seeing them in person.
Lazila’s new owner.
Rar new Qalai.
Alope Decidia, Fourth Bloom.
They were going to be perfect for rar, and give rar everything I couldn’t. I wouldn’t accept anything less from a candidate. Looking at their perfectly constructed Lagom body, their soft looking paws, their comforting face. I knew that it was true. They came to a stop, and kneeled beside the bench, focused on my mate.
“You must be Lazila. It is a pleasure to meet you, little one.”
Lazila twitched rar ear. It was the most ra could do to answer right now.
So many looked at the Lagom and thought of them as a faint hearted species for how they run away. But I knew the truth. Lazila taught me there is nothing more courageous than a creature willing to stare suffering in the face like rar did. I wanted to be brave like ra. I wanted so badly to have Lazila’s courage. But I just couldn’t.
The Affini could give rar the stillness ra needed. The type that finds its way into your soul. I would witness no more twitches. The spell would never again break under my watch.
Lazila recognized what was happening. Rar tiny little paw squeezed tight around the finger ra was holding. I shifted over and whispered into rar ear.
“You always were the brave one. I need you to be brave for me one last time.”
I handed Alope the paper striking our pinnate status, rar cane, and the volunteer domestication forms I had filled out.
The tiniest little squeak could be heard. No one but me would know to listen for the voice under rar panicked breaths, the words half formed in modulated hyperventilation. Even Alope never would, there would be no reason to learn the little gasps of fear and panic when they were finally melted away.
“I forgive you, Qalai.” Another ear twitch. “Two eyes forward, one on the sky.”
They were rar final words as my mate.
A darting vine plunged into Lazila’s fur, and ra slumped to the side. Alope gave me an apologetic look.
“I appreciate the grandness of this gesture to you, but I will not allow my floret to continue to be stressed.”
I winced. Important to me.
Alope paused for a while, pretending to be lost in thought while ra slipped under. It was a gesture for me and me alone. Affini don’t need time to think. Finally, a hammock of vines extended from their chest, and picked Lazila’s resting body up. Rar grip on my finger was the last to go.
The affini tucked the lagom who deserved better against their chest, and then just stood there, looking down at me.
“What do you want? Are we not done?”
“Miss Qalai-”
“That’s not my name anymore,” I snipped back. Lazila had named me Qalai because my old xen name was too hard for ra to say. It was Rar word that translated best to owner, developed from their first monstrous keepers. How fucking fitting, in the end.
They hummed in consideration. “Well, my unnamed xenra acquaintance. I have forwarded you resources on grief counseling. My cordial offer to take you as well still stands. Even if you initiated the separation, I have my doubts that this severance of your pinnate status is in your best interest.”
“This isn’t about my best interest. I have a long life ahead of me. You want four hundred years of a xen as a bonus for caring for a lagom for just one or two?”
The affini was quiet for a moment, knowing I was right. This was just the reality of our relative lifespans, and Alope didn’t come to Ralin to adopt a xenra.
Still, the unwarranted sympathy written all over their snout wouldn’t go away. “Lazila will be my fifteenth elder care floret of rar phenotype. I will have more after. Your skills as a lagom comfort xenosphont would never go wasted.”
An appeal to make me feel useful. Fuck off.
“No. Thank you, genuinely. But I don’t want that. I’m done being a therapist.”
Their piercing eyes dug into me. An entire unspoken conversation was exchanged in instants. “Are you going back to your den, then? I will be staying in the lagom settlement, living close to rar family. It might complicate matters…”
Rar family. A pointed choice of words, and a deserved one.
My ears flattened back in shame. I already knew what all our kids thought.
And I couldn’t face them.
Couldn’t fess up that after devouring Lazila’s best years, I was still too fucking cowardly to let rar stop running free. Just another predator preying on a lagom, inventing novel forms of parasitism. Sucking up the happiness ra could have had with a real owner, because I needed it to feel important.
There was no return trip planned.
“No. I'm staying here. I already have a hab reserved.”
Alope’s attention flicked side to side, at the thin ring of carlai keeping their distance.
“You know what that will mean. The required… separation.”
I did.
“Goodbye, Alope. Take good care of Lazila. Ra deserves the world.”
They made a rustling sigh, and turned away. “On that, we agree, little one. Every sophont does.”
Alope left without another word, carrying the sophont I loved most in the universe away from me for the last time.
I felt the notification buzz from my pocket. I didn't need to look at it to know Alope had just filed to categorize me as an annate sophont to the entire lagom species. It was the obvious choice. As they should.
Our kids, our grandkids. They’d forgiven everything else, but this, they would not. They'd see what I really was.
I would be the monster that betrayed her mate in every way possible. No longer rar Qalai, but qalai.
I don’t know how long I sat there for. Long enough that Alope was long, long gone. Long enough that I couldn’t consider making a stupid, selfish mistake.
The pressure in my chest kept building.
At some point I let my paw fall into the spot where Lazila had sat, the empty vacant seat, as if I could capture that warmth and somehow that would undo everything. Even that went cold.
Why was I like this? What force pummeled me into this shape and filled me with this agony? It was me, of course, I did this to myself, and I didn’t deserve to feel bad about it.
But that injustice just made it worse, made it all build up more and more, pain over decisions that compounded on guilt over feeling pain at all, anger at my cowardice and the hubris that I would ever think myself capable of filling the role of a god.
A searing howl of pain finally escaped me, echoing around the plaza and sending every one of the few carlai still watching scrambling away. Roaring and snarling until my fists needed somewhere to go. The seat that had held my precious little lagom moments ago was the best option.
Nobody stopped me. Why bother? Just compile a new bench tomorrow. Nothing I do matters.
Lazila wouldn’t remember I existed tomorrow. All those times I had failed to calm ra would be wiped away forever. No consequences for my selfishness. Gone like a bad dream.
I knew for sure, because it was one of my stipulations when I chose rar owner.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that her body had broken down so much faster than mine. That all she got was gone in a blink. That I would keep running for so long no matter how little care I took of myself, and she had crumbled to dust so quickly with the best I could manage.
But most of all. The greatest unfairness.
That I had personally stolen every second of the decades that an implant would have given her.
The bench was splinters beneath bleeding paws by the time I was done with it. I staggered until I backed into a tree, slumping against the bark until I was sitting on the ground amongst the roots. Some of the affini watched me. Keeping a distance.
How kind of them.
“Hey, cousin,” came the voice of another xenosophont. Shifting gently in place, the green furred Carlai stood just a few feet away, looking up at me. Dar ears were short and swivelled up towards my distraught form, agile thigh muscles at ease. I realized it was the one I had kicked off the bench I just smashed to pieces. Pre was holding a small bandage kit within dar rounded claws. “You need this.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled in carlai with as much gratitude as I could manage in a language I had learned in secret without much practice.
Pre sat in the shade beside me, not saying another word, just leaning gently against me as I wrapped the cuts on my hands up. Comforting me, in dar own way. Bearing me no ill will.
Another joined in time, then another, surrounding my little tree, collecting in cluster around me, almost protectively. No comment was made on what had just occurred.
It was a moment of understanding, of empathy for someone clearly in pain.
And I didn't know exactly what it meant for them. Carlai thrived on pain. Being around it, causing it, experiencing it. Sadomasochism in their DNA, in a way. Even if it was culturally important to the Lagom to see their former predators as monsters, they weren’t ontologically evil. That was just how they evolved.
They at least had a fucking excuse.