Seventh Atlas, ch.3

Author's Note: Hey, tentacles! Hit a bit of writer's block with this, as I mentioned, but then things started to go smoothly. I really like working on this one -- it has a very different 'energy' from most of what I write, and that's sort of refreshing. Focusing on things that are cute or meaningful rather than outright seductive can be a nice change of pace, but... of course, things do appear to be getting a little more heated, mm?

[story] [fu/fu] [alien girl] [cuddles]

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“Nrrrn. Gaad pooding, b’jur.” Ahsia looks pensive as I hand her the little snack pack – she’s familiar with its shape, but not its color, which is a pallid yellow rather than the deep, almost-black brown of the chocolate pudding I’d given her before. She eyes is suspiciously, lifting it to her nose, sniffing. She seems suspicious, but not displeased. Setting the cup down, she reaches for a pre-opened chocolate bar, sniffing that as well, then licking it. Familiarity again. “T’chem ghen akn barr-pooding?”

“This one’s pudding,” I set a hand over the pudding cup, then move it over to the chocolate bar. “This one’s chocolate. Pudding. Chocolate.”

“Pooding. Chak’lit. Nn…” she furrows her brow, taking a big bite of the chocolate bar first – she’s already had that and knows she likes it, and with a few quick gnashes of her many rows of jagged teeth, the entire thing’s gone. Her face lights up with contentment as it had before… then her gaze returns to the actual pudding, which is banana-flavored this time. It’s time to put this question to rest.

She reaches out for it, extending her (impressively long, agile) tongue to scoop out a healthy slurp of the yellowish ooze. She rolls it around her mouth, swallowing, and visibly stiffening, her entire slender figure going tense with pleasure as a high-pitched squeal hums out from behind her closed lips.

“Good?”

“NnnNNNnNnNnnnn!” she squeaks, and I swear her eyes would be watering if I thought they could, she seems so positively overjoyed it almost looks painful. “Lap’n kac phal pooding! Eee!” This is an even more extreme reaction than I’d expected – and either she’s easy to please, or I managed to quickly stumble into the equivalent of alien catnip. I still have one experiment left, though.

“That’s banana pooding– err, pudding. Now, let’s see how these stack up against the O.G., wiiith…” I reach to the little plastic bag beside me, pulling out something I’d kept hidden until now: chocolate pudding, the same kind Ahsia tried when I first discovered her, first brought her in. “...Chocolate pudding.”

“Oaaaah,” she gasps, the dark, glittering jewels of her compound eyes going wide. She reaches out to take the cup from me, fussing with the lid, then letting her tongue dive back into the creamy abyss. For a moment, I let my mind wander, considering what other things that tongue might be capable of – gah, I need to stop letting my thoughts get tempted into such dark, sticky places. Shaking those thoughts from my mind, I watch her reaction, which is again one of delight, clearly surpassing the chocolate bar, but coming nowhere near the banana pudding. “Nnn! Pooding!”

“Alright, you’re a pudding girl, good to know,” a soft smile touches my face. For the moment, I’ve managed to forget the position of incredible stress Ahsia’s put me in, allowed myself to focus on this moment, here, with her. Just learning about her… befriending her, I guess. I wonder if she sees me as a friend, or just someone who feeds her, harbors her? I have no real way of knowing.

The smile doesn’t fade as I watch her finish off all three treats I offered her, sitting cross-legged on the couch and letting out a content little whirr as she does so. She’s adorable in a strange new way, now – with her original tessellated spacesuit discarded, I had to give her some of my own clothes to keep her… well, decent. Not that she particularly seemed to mind being naked, but she quickly proved to be a distraction I could only endure for a finite period of time. While her slimness approaches my own, Ahsia exceeds my height by half a foot at least, so my clothes look decidedly silly on her – an old white Pixies tank looks more like a baggy crop-top on the alien girl, and a navy-blue pair of my old lounge pants look more like capris, reaching barely past her knee. I can’t help but find the whole thing adorable, this majestic, exotic beauty sitting on my couch in poorly-fitting hand-me-downs, licking the last few crumbs of chocolate out of a foil wrapper.

I scoot up onto the couch next to her, though not too close – while Ahsia has yet to ever behave aggressively towards me, the image of those fangs is seared into my mind, and I still have no idea what sort of behavior might irritate her. Giving a good foot of space between us, I grab the remote control and turn on the television, across the room from us. I consider for a moment how I haven’t watched a single second of TV since Ahsia showed up, about four days ago, when it used to be something I did for hours and hours each day. Really out here living life, I guess; way too distracted to need a distraction.

The smallish flatscreen flickers on to the immediate sound of laser fire, an anime from the late 90’s or early aughts where some kind of sci-fi cowboys are facing off against a robot army, and they’re right in the middle of a firefight. Whether it’s the light or the sound that disturbs her, Ahsia looks up sharply, eyes wide, and recoils back onto the couch, crouched with her arms outstretched, three-fingered hands gripping the edges of the cushion. “Kaja! Maiy nidag jey?!” she exclaims, tail lashing wildly behind her as her gaze fixes on the screen.

Shit, okay, so… yeah, it turns out some things do irritate her, after all. “It’s cool, it’s cool, it’s just the TV,” I say in the most soothing voice I can muster, flicking through a few channels until I find something that seems ‘safe’ for her: a kids’ channel, where a guy in a giant scaly animal costume is teaching a diverse rainbow of preschoolers about the alphabet. Ah, shit, yeah, Peter Pangolin. I used to watch this growing up, surprised it’s still on the air. Peter has to be old as fuck by now, or… more realistically, they put a different dude in the suit and called it a day. Honestly, considering that Ahsia can’t speak English and doesn’t seem to have any sort of miraculous automatic language-learning abilities, maybe something like Peter Pangolin would be decent for her to watch. And as much as I weirdly enjoy spending time with her, we won’t be able to be together every second of every day – she needs something to do when I’m not here. “How about this, huh? You wanna watch this?”

Ahsia looks at me, eyelids curling up from the bottom until they form narrow, suspicious slits, and she looks back to the television. She looks almost… annoyed, somehow, though I can’t tell what from; the voices coming from the show are all soft and soothing, none of the running, screaming, and lasers that had startled her in the anime. “Pan’no gaad ref, hum,” she says, slithering off the couch and onto all fours, crawling towards the TV and examining it more closely, caressing her fingers across it. Finding nothing useful, and clearly not internalizing that it’s the remote that operates it, she tries speaking – whether directly to the TV, or to the characters on screen, I have no clue. “Hamun’ah, akc, ijj’o manaf! Ref!”

“I can change it,” I offer with a slight frown, aiming the remote at the screen and changing the channel, this time to an admirably-aging brunette in an apron, dicing up celery for some sort of recipe. Ahsia gawks at the screen a moment, then glances back at me, slowly digesting what’s going on. She crawls back over to the couch and climbs up onto it, right by my side – leaning into me, actually, looking over my shoulder at the remote I’ve so miraculously used to manipulate the screen. Knees together and feet tucked beneath her, she winds both her arms around my midsection to get as close to me as possible, causing an immediate crimson flush to spring onto my cheeks. Our little ‘bathtime’ together was certainly… intimate, but this is miles different, Ahsia’s lithe curves pressed tightly against my body sending a soul-numbing thrill through every inch of me.

“Manap? Gag’al an? Mis’u teeribu…” she chirps close to my ear, and it’s only after a moment that I realize she’s been talking for a few seconds now, and I just didn’t hear it. Swallowing hard, I glance over to her, seeing her gaze fixated on the remote – she wants me to use it, and I think she’s under the impression that only I have the ability to do so.

“R-right, yeah, sorry,” I clear my throat, blinking a few times and aiming the remote again, switching channels and waiting for a sound of approval from Ahsia. A documentary about fishermen from the Philippines doesn’t interest her, nor does a cop drama with the ‘twist’ being that one of the cops is actually Frankenstein. A low-budget fantasy movie about a girl with a magical axe holds her attention a little longer, but finally, we get back to what she’s been wanting this whole time – the anime with the lasers.

In an instant, her expression reverts from one of boredom to one of amazement, and I feel her arms tighten gently around my midsection. “Oaaah! Gaad manap teeribu!” she exclaims, transfixed. However she came to the conclusion, she seems to understand that this is something for her to watch, though I don’t know if she’s trying to educate or entertain herself. Still, she seems happy, and… I suppose that’s what matters. If I can teach her how the remote works, I should be able to keep her entertained while I leave the house and… fuck, try to figure out what to do with her, I guess.

I set the remote down on the couch arm and finally allow myself to relax, watching the anime with Ahsia, but mostly relishing in the sensation of her warm arms around me, her slim figure squished up against the side of my own. She lays her head on my shoulder, one of her short horns occasionally grazing the lobe of my ear, and I can hear the sound of her breathing, which seems to happen exclusively through her nostrils with her mouth completely uninvolved in the process. I carefully wrap my own arm around her slim, bare-skinned midsection, resting a hand on her hip, and I feel a slight shiver ripple along her pale lavender skin when I touch her. I can’t help but feel excited, though I undoubtedly should not be.

Since my alien stowaway seems to have decided what she wants to watch, I settle in for the evening and give this show a shot, though I’ve certainly never seen it before, and it doesn’t look like the sort of anime I’d ordinarily watch. All in all, it’s fine. It seems like the cowboys are some sort of spacefaring smugglers, and their adventures get them in trouble with all kinds of folks (not just robot armies). There’s a standard gunslinging ‘everyman’ rocking a Stetson, some sort of amorphous blob with a bushy mustache that I infer is the ship’s doctor, a young, plucky mechanic, a buff, frizzy-haired catgirl that dual-wields machine guns, and a beautiful psychic who mostly seems to be here for upskirts, or occasionally advancing the plot. It’s… stupid. Meandering, a little sexist, and the third act of each episode seems to devolve into a totally mindless action scene. Ahsia loves it.

Squirming in place so that I can see her face without sacrificing a single inch of physical contact, I steal occasional glances at the alien’s expression as she watches the show, which I eventually learn is called Blue Moon Memory. The parts that she reacts to, or that she… I dunno, seem to resonate with in some way. For everything strange about Ahsia, her facial expressions seem to be a near-perfect 1:1 for humans, with the exception of her weird eyes, so I feel like I can read her emotions more-or-less accurately… or, at least, as well as I could read a human’s. So, not that well.

She tenses at the sound of lasers (foreboding), seems unusually pleased whenever the catgirl is on-screen (so she likes girls, eh? maybe?), but most of all, she looks deeply invested in all of the long shots of space, or of spaceships. Her expression becomes not one of wonder, and not quite one of longing, but of comfort, familiarity, peace. I watch her tail swish contently from side to side as she immerses herself in whatever memory seems to so please her.

“Havin’ fun, Ahsia?” I whisper to her, gently touching my nose to her cheek.

“Vieg adu mis’u,” she says, her tone seeming to answer mine, though her words are nonsense to me. I wonder, for a moment, if she can understand me, but I can’t understand her.

“Can you nod if you understand me?” I say softly.

“Ni’du mis’u, raanalan, nnn.” She glances back towards me, seeming a little perplexed, a little perturbed. It wasn’t the answer I was looking for. Shit.

We watch for a few more hours until this particular ‘block’ of Blue Moon Memory reruns has re-run its course, and the channel starts playing a school-setting anime that Ahsia appears to reflexively despise, letting out an anguished hiss in the general direction of the TV. “Alright, it’s getting late anyway,” I chuckle, disentangling with her and standing up. “I’m gonna shower and head to bed. There’s chicken and milk in the fridge if you need anything.” I don’t expect her to follow everything I’m saying, but I know she knows ‘tsi’ken,’ at least.

She nods, seeming to partially understand, or at least grok the important parts. I head to the bathroom and strip down, getting under the hot water and giving myself a moment to think. I need to make a plan as to what I’m gonna do with Ahsia – it’s something I’ve been spinning my wheels about the entire time she’s been here, trying to draw up something resembling a cohesive roadmap. I’m not taking her to the authorities, which means I can’t show her to anyone who might report her to the authorities. This rules out Ms. Carico or any other old professors, as well as any family. Mostly it leaves Kale, who won’t believe I found an alien, but if I can get him to come to my place and actually see Ahsia with his two bare eyes, he won’t have much of a choice. There’s always Mrs. Abbassi, the librarian that more-or-less tolerates my presence, why not show her the potentially dangerous extraterrestrial life form eating fried chicken on my couch? Or, hey, Mr. Richter who works at the Gas N’ Dash, I’m sure I can trust him with my life.

The more I consider showing Ahsia to someone else, the more insane and dangerous it sounds. Maybe I just run away with her, rebuild her ship, have her fly me away beyond the stars, to a new life. Min Molina, the first trans girl in space, first human to have a hot alien girlfriend, probably dead within the first five days. Fuck, nothing I can think of leads me anywhere reasonable. I just keep going around in circles.

I’ll call Kale tomorrow. It’s the only thing that makes even a slight amount of sense, and probably won’t end up with me in prison and Ahsia getting dissected in a lab somewhere. I sigh, turn the water off, and dry myself with a towel, finally making the journey from the bathroom to my bedroom naked. I hear crunching from the kitchen, followed by a surprised snarl from Bastard, and a moment later I hear the heavy pad-pad-pad of his stubby gray feet heading into the bedroom ahead of me, jumping into the laundry hamper and promptly going to sleep.

I’m hopefully not far behind, toppling into bed and throwing a sheet over me, rolling over onto my side. I try to still the constant buzzing of my thoughts, if only long enough to slip into unconsciousness, but sleep seems to elude me as minutes tick by, encroaching on an hour. The longer I go without sleeping, the more being tired makes me anxious, and that anxiety makes me wired, and it gets more difficult to sleep. Fuck. If only I could–

The sound of my door creaking open shakes me to full awakeness, and I look up to see a silhouette in the doorway to my bedroom – the familiar lithe silhouette of Ahsia. “Nid’ola,” she says softly, her voice nearly a whisper, as she encroaches, tail swaying calmly behind her. As she gets closer to the bed, she unceremoniously doffs the ill-fitting top I gave her, then shimmies out of her pants, leaving her perfect body quite entirely nude. “Ahsia, heer.”

My mouth goes dry, but I nod, patting the bed beside me. “Ahsia, here.” I don’t know exactly what she wants, but her tone isn’t sultry, it’s… lonely. She stalks forward, crawling onto the bed and under the sheet, her arms winding around me from behind, her face nestling against the back of my neck. I swallow hard. “Good… g-goodnight, Ahsia.”

“Guud naaayte,” she purrs, her tail coiling around one of my ankles, the entirety of her slender figure pressing against my back, playing big spoon to my little spoon, causing an unexpected thrill of gender euphoria.

It takes a moment before I feel the shape of her ‘member,’ whatever exactly her penis-like appendage is, pressed up against my butt. It isn’t hard – I still have yet to see it hard, it may not even be possible – but there’s still something enticing and erotic about it, something that sends my heart pounding for several long moments. Finally, though, the warmth of her body, rhythm of her breathing, the satisfying tenderness of her arms around me, coaxes me into a state of relaxation that finally allows me to drift away. I wish this night didn’t have to end. This sensation of feeling attractive, desired, whether or not Ahsia desires me in any such way, is something I haven’t experienced in far too long, and never quite in the way I wanted. Not… like this.