Raz the Farmer

CHAPTER 1: HOMECOMING

	The plains of Oklahoma passed by beneath the shuttle as the pilot took it low over the flat terrain, fields dotted with small farmhouses and silos whizzing past as the only points of interest in the sea of green grass and yellow crops. Raz was sat across from me in the troop bay, her giant alien figure secured to an appropriately sized crash couch with a harness as the engines shook the deck beneath our feet. She was looking out of a nearby porthole, her yellow, feline eyes tracking the passing structures and herds of grazing cattle. The round, furry ears that protruded from the mop of orange hair on her head swiveled and twitched, her similarly colored tail trailing from the back of her seat to rest on the floor like a giant snake covered in peach fuzz. She was eight feet of muscle and claws, a killing machine by human standards, a Borealan in the prime of her life.
	I was bringing her to meet my parents as we had been granted a month of leave and I had insisted that she observe the human custom. We had been in a relationship for a couple of years now, and I still hadn't told my parents exactly what she was, just that I had met someone and that we were going steady. The distances involved and our workload meant that visits like this one were few and far between. It wasn't through any shame that I had failed to inform my parents. Raz could be crass at times, but I knew that she would do her best to make a good impression. It was just that my parents were somewhat traditional and I didn't know how they might react to finding out that their only son was dating an alien.
	I had dropped out of agricultural college to join the UNN against their wishes, to protect the Earth and her colonies from alien threats, and I wasn't certain that my salt of the earth parents would be able to tell the difference between enemies and allies. The Borealans were a member race of the Coalition, a multi-species alliance that had banded together to fight against common threats. While integrating their vicious warriors into our units had been somewhat of a challenge, in the end, it had been Raz and I who had built that bridge and found common ground between our two cultures. As a result, the two of us had become instructors on a Naval installation known as the Pinwheel. I was an instructor on the firing range, and she trained new Borealan recruits to interact with humans without...eating them.
	Borealan culture was extremely hierarchical, more like a pack of wolves than anything humans would consider a society, but their way of looking at the world lent itself well to military life. Together we had trained every Borealan shock trooper who had ever served alongside human troops.
	“Is it all grassland?” Raz asked me, her eyes still fixed on the view beyond the window.
	“What, the whole planet?” She had never been to Earth before, this was her first time setting foot on a planet that wasn't her own, having served her time so far in the UNN on space stations or Naval vessels exclusively. “No, this is a state, kind of like a territory on Borealis. There are different environments and geography than just this. We have mountain ranges, lakes and rivers, cities...”
	“I think there's more grass here than in all of Elysia,” she mused as she watched the fields fly by us. Her home planet was primarily hot and arid, her people living in relatively small oases created by great lakes ringed with fertile jungles. They formed a natural barrier against the desert beyond and trapped a microclimate that made the interior lush and hospitable.
	“We can see other places too,” I said, “we don't have to stay with my parents for more than an afternoon if you don't want to. I just want you to meet them.”
	“It's fine, we can always come back another time and see more of the planet. You already talked me into coming, you don't need to sweeten the deal now. I know that this is important to you.”
	I smiled at her. Despite the predatory instincts roiling beneath her savage exterior, she was uncommonly understanding for a Borealan, and she always did her utmost to see things from a human perspective. Maybe that was why we had been able to find common ground in the first place, but even then, our earlier encounters had very nearly ended in maiming. In the end, we had found a balance, a kind of equilibrium between us. It was tentative and unstable at times, but that was part of what made being with her so exciting. I hadn't quite tamed her, and she had never been able to induct me into her pack and become my Alpha, leaving the two of us in a state of perpetual low-level conflict that expressed itself as bawdy romance.
	“Coming up on the coordinates,” the pilot called back to us from his seat in the cockpit. “Where would you like me to put down, sir?”
	“My family is expecting us,” I replied, “setting her down in the courtyard shouldn't alarm them.”
	“Very good sir.”
	They had probably heard the vessel approaching by now, they might very well be waiting on the porch to greet us. My heart quickened as I felt a surge of apprehension in my gut. I felt the shuttle bank, the pilot shedding speed as he began to circle our farm, preparing to land. The vessel slowed, a mechanical clunk resonating through the deck as the landing gear deployed, the shuttle bouncing as they absorbed the impact of the landing. Raz seemed to pick up on my uneasiness, grinning at me and exposing her sharp teeth.
	“Hey, at least you're not meeting my parents. My father is the Patriarch of Elysia.”
	There was a pneumatic hiss as the landing ramp lowered, a cool wind blowing into the troop bay as we unfastened our safety harnesses and descended. Raz stretched her arms over her head as her clawed, paw-like feet hit the dirt, relishing the opportunity to stand at full height after so many weeks cooped up on spaceships better suited to humans. I joined her, hearing the ramp close behind us as the shuttle's engines idled. I waved her away, and once we were clear, the vessel's thrusters flared and sent it off into the sky.
	I shielded my eyes against the bright sunlight and looked around as the dust cleared, a wave of nostalgia washing over me as I saw the farmhouse that I had grown up in and the barn beside it. Behind me was a grain silo, and beyond it were flat fields that stretched from horizon to horizon. As expected my parents were waiting on the porch, my father sporting his greying beard and clad in one of his signature flannel shirts. My bespectacled mother was standing beside him, wearing a white apron over her floral dress.
	I mustered what courage I could find and strode towards them, trying to appear confident in my dress blues. They were expecting a soldier, and that was what I wanted to give them. Raz loped along beside me, taking long strides on her digitigrade legs. She was similarly clad in a blue UNN uniform more suited to her exaggerated stature. Although most of her body was hairless, the fur on her protruding hands and lower legs gave the impression that a big, orange tomcat had been stuffed into a suit.
	As we approached the house, it became apparent that my parents were staring. My father especially was craning his neck to get a better look at the imposing alien as we came to a stop. My mother leaned in to hug me, my father hesitating for a moment before shaking my hand, his eyes still fixed on Raz as he squinted against the summer sun.
	“It's so good to see you, Stanley,” my mother crooned, momentarily more interested in me than in the spectacle that was unfolding. She beamed as she looked me up and down, scrutinizing my shining boots and the various commendations and rank insignias on my breast. “Look at you in your uniform! When you told us that you wanted to join the UNN, we had our doubts, but here you are!”
	“It's good to see you too. Mom, Dad, this is Raz.”
	She turned her attention to Raz, looking up at the towering Borealan. I began to fear the worst, but after a brief delay, she met the alien with a hug. Raz bristled. Her kind didn't like unsolicited contact, especially from strangers. But she endured it as my mother did her best to wrap her arms around her wide hips, which was as high as the short woman could reach, then stepped back to examine her.
	“I have to say it's quite the surprise, but any friend of Stanley's is welcome in our home.”
	“Thank you, Matriarch,” Raz replied in a formal tone. Meeting the parents wasn't something her people made an occasion of and so she seemed to be giving them the only honorific she thought appropriate. That got a laugh from my mother.
	“You can call me Patricia, dear, now come inside and get out of the sun.”
	I was surprised by how well my mother was taking it, ushering Raz into the farmhouse excitedly as the giant alien ducked under the human-sized doorframe, but I noticed that my father had not offered her any form of greeting. It might be quite a shock for him, they had never met an alien before, and I had kind of sprung this on them. But if he made a point of being rude, I would need to have a word with him in private about it. For now, it was best to just enjoy the reunion. I was sure they would have hundreds of questions to ask us about our jobs, our lives on the space station and our unconventional relationship.

***

	“Would you like tea or coffee, Raz?” my mother called from the kitchen as we sat around a low table in the living room. We were surrounded by my mother's knick-knacks, everything from porcelain sculptures of babies and cats to potted plants that looked as if they had seen better days. It seemed that no surface had gone unscathed, even the mantelpiece above the old wood fire was covered in heirlooms and trinkets. Raz looked incredibly out of her element, a large couch sagging under her weight as she sat uncomfortably beside me with her knees almost reaching her chin. She leaned over and whispered to me, unsure of how to reply.
	“What is customary?”
	“She'll just have a glass of water,” I called to my mother, patting Raz on her steely thigh to reassure her. “You don't have to be so formal, try to relax.”
	My parents walked into the room, my father taking a seat in an adjacent armchair as my mother placed a tray of assorted biscuits and drinks on the table. She handed a glass of water to Raz, who took it gingerly in her massive hand, downing it in one gulp.
	“Help yourself to snacks, Raz,” she said as she sat down. “Now Stanley, tell me everything that's happened. You never email, you never call us on the vidphone, I want to know what's going on in your life! I thought it was odd that you hadn't sent us any pictures of you and Raz, I thought that maybe you were gay,” she added with a chuckle. “But now I see what you've been hiding.” She shot Raz a knowing smirk, which seemed to put the Borealan more at ease.
	“I just...” I struggled to justify myself as my parents scrutinized me. “I wasn't sure how you'd react to us. I guess I just put it off as long as I could get away with.”
	“And yet you insisted that I meet your parents when you heard we had leave coming up,” Raz chimed in, growing a little more confident. “You wouldn't take no for an answer, like an angry little kitten denied a seat at the banquet table.”
	My mother laughed heartily as Raz nudged me with her elbow and I reddened. I was relieved to see that they were getting on so well, perhaps the sheer novelty of the situation was drawing in my mother. My father, on the hand, still hadn’t made any real attempt to engage with Raz. Maybe he just needed time to adjust to the idea.
	My mother picked up a mug of steaming coffee from the table and took a sip, practically gleeful as she demanded that I tell her the story of how we had met, and so for the next couple of hours we relayed the events of the past two years. I left out some of the more gory details, as understanding why Raz had treated me so poorly during our first few days together took an in-depth knowledge of Borealan culture and biology that my parents lacked. I abbreviated that period of conflict into a series of harmless misunderstandings. Raz seemed relieved by that. She hadn't understood humans any better than I had understood Borealans at the time. She had only realized how her behavior had appeared to humans after the fact.
	When I was done, Raz was quizzed about her culture and her home planet, really coming out of her shell as she described Elysia in detail while my mother hung on her every word. It was unusual to see Raz so restrained, she was normally so outgoing when we were on the Pinwheel, not thinking twice about starting brawls with the cockier Borealan recruits and giving unflattering nicknames to the grizzled chief of security. She was fearless and ruthlessly sarcastic in her role as the Pinwheel's unofficial Matriarch, but perhaps I had failed to convey what this visit would entail. She had treated it as some formal event initially, perhaps afraid of being judged by my parents, but now her usual brash self-confidence was shining through.
	My father listened to the tales with interest but didn’t participate in the lively conversation. Before very long the sun was beginning to set, and the supply of biscuits had been exhausted.
	“I'm sure you two are tired from all the traveling,” my mother announced as she stood to retrieve the now empty tray. “Stanley, you can sleep in your old room, but Raz isn't going to fit. We're going to need to find something else for you, dear.”

***

	It was the first night that we had spent apart in a long time. I slept in my old room, and my parents laid out several mattresses for Raz in the guest bedroom. We were woken up the next day by a call to breakfast, Raz devouring a dozen fried eggs before realizing that it might not be appropriate to exhaust my family's entire food supply in one sitting. My mother was unfazed, continuing her attempts to feed the giant alien, the discovery of bacon reigniting Raz's hunger and bringing her back around.
	Borealans ate a lot, they were the scourge of UNN mess halls across the galaxy. Not only were they physically more imposing than humans, which came with an exponentially larger calorie requirement, but they were also more heavily muscled due to the high gravity of their home planet. They had bones like concrete, and with a weight of anywhere up to six hundred pounds or more, the muscle mass required to simply move their enormous bodies around gave them the appearance of weightlifters or athletes. Raz had thighs like tree trunks and abdominal muscles so prominent that you could have used them to wash clothes, but she was also a developed woman, her figure soft and feminine despite the underlying brawn.
	“Is Dad up already?” I asked as I finished off a plate of bacon and eggs. There were no chairs that Raz could fit on and so she sat cross-legged on the tile floor, although that still put her at chest height to the table due to her stature.
	“Yes, he's out with the tractors.”
	“Still? He's had those auto-tractors for years now, and he still doesn't trust them to do their job without supervision?”
	The farm was mostly automated, with robotic tractors and harvesters that handled nearly all of the manual labor. They allowed my parents to operate a good sized farm without hiring any help. The tank-like robotic tractors tilled the fields and sowed the crops, while the titanic combines handled the harvesting, with drone trucks to bring the corn to the silos. My father was old-fashioned, he had never trusted the machines to do the job properly and insisted on supervising them. Granted they weren't perfect and sometimes their pathfinding got screwed up, but they didn't require his constant attention. Dealing with the occasional rogue tractor driving around the field in circles was a damn sight better than tilling the fields yourself or having to pay an army of laborers.
	“You know how he is,” she replied as she unfastened her apron and hung it on the back of a nearby chair, sitting down with a plate to join us at the table. “He spent a fortune on those things so that he wouldn't have to spend all day in a tractor cab, took me long enough to talk him into it. Here I was hoping he'd spend more time at the house, but he just ended up spending all day watching them go round and round in the fields instead.”
	“These machines drive on their own?” Raz asked.
	“Yeah, like our UNN surveillance drones,” I replied. “They're hooked up to a central computer in the barn that controls their routes wirelessly.”
	“I will tell my father, I'm sure he would like to buy some for the grain farms in Elysia.”
	“He does like his gadgets,” I replied through a mouthful of toast.
	“Why don't you two go out and find him when you're done eating?” Mom asked. “You remember how to get to the cornfields, right Stanley? I told him to come back to the house for breakfast, but something must be holding him up.”
	I nodded, finishing the last of my fried eggs and getting up from the table.
	“Come on Raz, I'll show you around.”

***

	We made our way down one of the dirt paths that led away from the farmhouse, the wind blowing the crops around us as the sun beat down above our heads. It was the summer harvesting season, the crops were tall and ready to be picked. I couldn't see over them, but Raz was tall enough that her head peeked above the golden wheat.
	“There's so much land,” she mused as I walked beside her, “it just keeps going as far as I can see. It's strange not seeing a jungle in the distance, makes me feel exposed, like I'm walking along the hull of a spaceship rather than on the surface of a planet.”
	“Yeah, the great plains can be a little agoraphobic if you're not used to them.”
	“Our numbers are kept low by the limited living space, but here you could house our entire population ten times over. It's no wonder there are so many humans.” She let the wind blow her orange hair, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her face. It had been a long time since we had set foot on a planet. The Pinwheel had a simulated environment, and while it was rather convincing, it still lacked these small comforts.
	We followed the dirt track for a mile or so before the sound of engines drew us towards one of the corn fields. It was partially harvested, an enormous combine with a gleaming white hull making its way down a row of corn on its fat wheels, its wide blades churning to pull up the plants and strip them of their crop. Where a cab would have been, there was instead an array of cameras and sensors, culminating in a long-range transmitter dish that extended from the top of the machine.
	As we watched a similarly sleek tractor drove up beside the combine, pulling a large trailer behind it, the behemoth disgorging a waterfall of grain into the container from its chute. I looked around for my father, shielding my eyes against the midday sun and wishing that I had brought a hat with me, finally spotting him across the field. He was crouched beside his pickup truck, examining something near the ground. I led Raz across the field to greet him, and he looked up when he noticed us, wiping his brow and waving in our direction.
	“Hey Dad, what's keeping you? Mom wanted you back for breakfast.”
	“I'll tell you what's keepin' me,” he grumbled. “These damned auto-tractors, that's what. The proximity sensor on the one I have pulling the trailer must have failed, or maybe their programming is screwy or something, I couldn't tell you. In any case, the thing nearly ran into my truck when I was pulling out. I had to swerve to avoid it, and now I'm stuck in this ditch.”
	I leaned over to get a better look and saw that the pickup was indeed stuck in the drainage ditch that ran between the two fields, the back wheels suspended in the air as the truck lay across the gap.
	“Can't you get one of the tractors to come pull you out?”
	“I can't trust these damned robots to drive in a straight line, never mind tow my truck free. They'd probably just tear the front axle right off of it.”
	“I'll walk back up to the farm and bring Mom's car around, maybe we can tow the-”
	Raz dropped down heavily into the ditch with a crunch of dry foliage, the two of us watching her curiously as she crouched to position herself beneath the truck. She braced her shoulder against its undercarriage, planting her feet firmly on the ground, then heaved. The truck bounced, my father's eyes widening as he watched the alien give it another shove, loosing a snarl as she briefly lifted what must have been at least a two or three-ton vehicle into the air before it fell back down. The muscles in her legs bulged beneath her clothing as she strained against its weight, adding some forward momentum to her shove this time to send it rolling back onto our side of the ditch. The back wheels landed on the dirt, bouncing on their suspension as we looked on in disbelief, Raz leaping back out of the ditch to stand beside it.
	“Well I'll be,” Dad mused, scratching his beard as he appraised his newly freed truck. “Strong as an ox, this one. Thank you, Raz.” That was the first word he had said to her so far, and judging by his expression she had gone some way towards winning his respect. “Hop in the back, I'll drive you two up to the house.”
	I sat beside him in the passenger seat as Raz climbed into the flatbed, the truck sagging a little under her weight as Dad turned it towards the dirt path, giving the combine a wide berth.
	“I didn't really know what to think when you showed up with Raz,” he muttered, keeping his voice low so that she wouldn't overhear him from her seat in the flatbed. “I've never seen anything like her before. When she stepped off the shuttle I didn't know what to say, I was a little frightened I guess.”
	“Well, that's kind of why I didn't tell you and Mom about her sooner. I wasn't sure how you'd react.”
	“I suppose we didn't part ways on the best of terms,” Dad said as his expression softened somewhat, his eyes focused on the road. “I wanted you to take over the farm when I retired but you up and left us so suddenly. I thought that you'd gotten your head full of propaganda and that you'd end up coming home in a box. When you told us that they’d made you a firing instructor, well...you can imagine our relief.”
	“I've seen combat,” I replied a little tersely. “It's not as if the Pinwheel is completely safe.”
	“I'm not trying to say that you're any less of a soldier, just that I'm glad you're not fighting on a different planet every week, that's all. They sanitize the news to make the war look a lot cleaner than it really is, but we all know what's really going on.”
	He turned off the dirt track and headed for the farmhouse in the distance. It was perched atop a hill along with the grain silos and the barn, which was painted in the traditional red despite the cluster of transmitters that protruded from the roof.
	“You didn't discuss it with your mother and I, you just signed up and then off you went without so much as a by your leave. We didn't hear hardly head nor tail of you for the better part of two years, and now you show up with a giant alien in tow. You just keep throwing me curveballs, Stan.”
	“I'm not trying to be difficult, Dad,” I sighed. “But you're not always easy to talk to. Look at the auto-tractors. Mom tried to get you to buy those for years and you wouldn't, but now you've come around to the idea. You tend to trust your gut reaction, and I couldn't wait around for you to see things my way this time.”
	“Well...for what it's worth, I'm proud of you. It didn't really hit me until I saw you in your uniform, but if you were never going to be a farmer, then I can't think of anything better for you to be.”
	“Thanks, Dad, that means a lot to me.”
	“Raz is quite the...er....handful. Is my daughter in law really going to be an alien?”
	“It's looking that way, yeah. She's pretty special, Dad, I hope you'll take the time to get to know her before we have to leave.”
	“Well you never had a way with women Stanley, I was starting to get worried about you, but it looks like you skipped the little leagues and went straight for the world series.”

CHAPTER 2: SKINNY DIPPING

	We arrived home after a short drive, and Raz hopped out of the back of the pickup, the suspension bouncing as her weight left the flatbed. My father got out and stretched his legs, the midday sun burning above us like a fiery ball in the azure, cloudless sky. The heat was stifling, I was used to the climate-controlled torus of the Pinwheel, kept at a constant comfortable temperature by the station's computer monitored systems. Raz seemed to be enjoying it, however. This was a lot closer to the climate of her home planet, after all, though it must have fallen short of the intense heat of Elysia.
	“I'm gonna get on the horn with the dealership and give 'em a piece of my mind about that damned auto-tractor,” my father complained, making his way towards the farmhouse. “Thank you for your help, you two.”
	Raz seemed pleased with herself, standing in the dusty courtyard and planting her hands on her wide hips, shooting me a toothy grin. The wind blew her orange hair, her long tail waving back and forth, and I couldn't help but smile along with her.
	“Why don't we go for a walk?” I suggested. “There's a stream near here where I used to play when I was younger, it wouldn't do to visit an alien planet and stay cooped up inside the whole time.”
	“Lead the way,” she replied. As I watched, she hooked the curved claw on her index finger through the loop on her zipper and pulled it down to the waist. She shrugged out of the sleeves, letting the torso of her blue UNN jumpsuit fall to hang around her hips. She was wearing a grey tank top beneath it that struggled to contain her exaggerated chest, stopping just below them to expose her belly, fresh sweat giving her prominent abdominal muscles a reflective sheen. Now liberated, she stretched her arms above her head and yawned widely, her breasts bouncing beneath the inadequate garment with the motion. Her round, furry ears swiveled in my direction as she watched my eyes play over her muscular figure, her grin turning into a sly smirk.
	“Are you going to show me around or are you just going to stare at me, monkey?”
	My brow furrowed in mock anger at the use of my pet name, originally an insult that she had used in reference to my species' simian ancestry and now a playful nickname.
	“Come on then, follow me. We'd better find some way to occupy you before you get yourself into trouble.”
	She bounced over to me on her springy, digitigrade legs like an excited child, the low gravity letting the already agile alien jump about like she was on the moon. She came to a stop beside me and ruffled my hair with her dinner-plate sized hand, then we set off down the dirt path.
	While most of this region was completely flat farmland, there were pockets of forest along with ponds and rivers here and there. I had spent much of my time exploring the area that surrounded my family's farmhouse as a child. The nearest school had been quite a bus ride, and none of my friends had lived within visiting range, so most of my free time had been taken up investigating the natural wealth that surrounded me.
	I led Raz down the path and off towards the nearest pocket of trees that broke up the endless fields and grasslands. One could imagine that the Earth was flat, standing here and looking out over a landscape that was almost completely level from horizon to horizon. Raz sauntered along beside me, walking slowly so as not to outpace me with her longer strides.
	“Everything smells strange,” she commented, “unfamiliar. There are plants and animals that I've never smelled before, sounds from birds and insects that I don't recognize. I feel like I should be on edge, but the Earth is a tame planet.”
	“How do you mean?” I asked, looking up at her.
	“Everything on Borealis has evolved to kill something else, everything is dangerous. It's an endless competition for survival.”
	“Surely you have some animals that aren't out to get you? Pets? Domesticated livestock? Smaller creatures evolved to evade predators?”
	“Yes, though they are few. Even our herd animals are perfectly capable of crushing a Borealan if provoked.”
	“Well there's nothing like that around here,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “I suppose black bears and wolves are dangerous, but they're rarely sighted, and there certainly aren't any near the farmland. You'd have to really get on the bad side of a deer or an elk to provoke it into attacking you rather than just running away.”
	“I don't know these animals,” she chuckled, and I patted her on the thigh apologetically.
	“We'll get you a kid's book, you can learn your animals. A is for antelope, B is for bison...”
	She whipped the back of my legs playfully with her long tail, making me stumble.
	“You'll have to visit Elysia one day,” she said, then laughed at my worried expression. “Oh, you thought this meet the parents tradition only went one way? I hope you like blistering heat, crushing gravity and vicious wildlife. Oh, and my father is the size of a Krell and controls his own fleet.”
	“Maybe in the winter,” I conceded, “when is it coldest on Borealis?”
	“Winter in Elysia comes twice a month and lasts for three days.”
	“Of course...”
	A butterfly floated towards Raz on the breeze and her amber eyes locked onto it, her pupils dilating from vertical slits to dark circles. Her ears twitched as she tracked it, watching the colorful insect disappear into the tall grass of an adjacent field.
	“B is for butterfly,” I volunteered.
	We walked a while longer, Raz taking the time to appreciate the landscape as we approached the small patch of forest where the stream was. We passed under the canopy, the rays of sunlight that penetrated the leaves stained green, pleasant shadows cooling us as we followed the old dirt path between the trunks. The air was full of insects, birds chirped as they hopped between the branches of the trees and the sound of flowing water rose to my ears as we neared our destination. I pushed through the undergrowth and found the stream nearby, the clear water rushing over the smooth pebbles that lined its bed.
	I leaned down on the bank and dipped my fingers into the water, it was cool and pleasant on my skin, a few small fish darting away as my hand disturbed them. Raz wasted no time, stripping off her jumpsuit down to her underwear and crudely wading into the stream until it reached her knees. She let herself fall backwards into the water with a splash, floating as she beckoned for me to join her. I shrugged and began to strip off my clothes. Borealans loved water and Raz was no exception. She spent a great deal of time at the Pinwheel's gym where there were several Olympic sized swimming pools, her affinity for water reminding me of a tiger as she lurked near the surface and waited for imaginary prey to pass by. Her home city was built around the shore of a gigantic lake, and her people spent much of their leisure time fishing and lounging around in the shallows.
	Now wearing nothing but my shorts, I stepped into the stream to join her, the flow too gentle to knock me off balance or carry us away. There weren't many weeds, the bottom was made up of pebbles that had been smoothed by eons of rushing water, and they felt pleasant under my bare feet. She splashed me, drenching me with a torrent of water in order to sabotage my slow acclimatization, laughing as I shivered.
	“Just jump in, the water’s nice.”
	I gave in and let myself sink, the stream almost deep enough to reach my waist in places. I copied Raz and let myself fall backwards, floating on the surface and watching the breeze rustle the leaves in the canopy above us. It was a welcome reprieve from the heat, the sounds of birdsong and chirping insects almost made me want to fall asleep here.
	I felt Raz coil her tail around my leg, the fur damp against my skin, and she tugged me closer to her. She caught me in her arms and crossed them over my chest, nestling my head between her buoyant breasts. The tank top that contained them was sodden and clung to her figure as I sank into her soft bust.
	“Borealans don't really have vacations,” she mumbled into my ear, “this is one human custom that I wish to adopt.”
	We floated there for a while, just enjoying the sounds of nature and the sensation of the cool water on our skin. I lay atop Raz like she was some kind of giant inflatable pool toy, her chest making an admirable pillow as my head sank into the soft meat of her bosom. Jokes about her massive breasts aside, I was shocked at just how buoyant she was, she easily weighed as much as four or five humans and yet she was able to float on the surface of the stream with me lying on top of her. Maybe it was just her immense lung capacity, or perhaps evolution had favored some aquatic traits in creatures that commonly lived near large bodies of water.
	“So this is where you spent a lot of your time as a kitten?”
	“I was never a kitten,” I laughed. “As a child, yes. I'd come down here quite often, I spent many a summer exploring the area.”
	“What did you do here?” Raz asked, watching a stray leaf as it passed us by on its way downstream.
	“Sometimes I just relaxed, like we're doing now. Sometimes I brought a tablet computer with me and watched videos or played games. Did a fair amount of hunting too.”
	That seemed to peak her interested, her fuzzy ears turning to monitor me.
	“That might explain why you're so good with a rifle, what did you hunt? Is there big game here?”
	“No, nothing like that. Well, there are deer and elk in the region, but mostly I just hunted rabbits and wild turkeys.” I remembered that she had no idea what those were and so I elaborated. “Turkeys are big, dumb birds, good eating. Rabbits are these little, furred mammals that are fast on their feet, but they make good stew if you can ambush them. I had a little .22LR rifle, a pea shooter really, but it was enough to kill small game.”
	“Quite the little Ranger. It's no wonder they made you a firing range instructor if you've been shooting from such an early age.”
	“How about you?” I asked. “Borealans are a martial people, when did you start fighting?”
	“Even kittens playfight,” she replied, “but I never fired a weapon until I came of age. You've seen how large our guns are, a kitten couldn't wield one, and we never miniaturized our designs.”
	She was right, the Borealan rifles that I had seen had been enormous. Their native technology was not especially advanced, though the large-bore powder guns that they used were devastating. I had no doubt that they could put a round straight through an elephant's skull.
	“You know what Borealans are like. When I was old enough, I fought my way up the hierarchy and became the Alpha of my own little pack. I came from my father's litter after all. I got my fair share of scars, but I spent most of my youth in the city, I never went hunting. That's more of a Ranger thing, and I was a member of the aristocracy.”
	“Was it hard having all of those expectations on your shoulders?”
	“Well, I'm not an only child. If I had failed to meet my father's expectations, then my siblings would have taken up the slack.”
	“How many siblings do you have?” I asked. I had never really put two and two together before now, but her people reproduced in litters of anywhere up to half a dozen kittens. She might have as many as six brothers and sisters. That would make any family reunion a nightmare. One Raz was almost more than I could handle, never mind a whole litter of them.
	“I have uncounted relatives, the status of Patriarch comes with many privileges, one of them being the attentions of powerful women who wish to further their own lines. My father has bred with many women and has produced dozens of children. I have three sisters and two brothers born of the same mother, though I am the largest and the strongest.”
	“Yeah, I don't doubt that. What are they doing then? Are they soldiers in the UNN like you, or are they back on Borealis doing their own thing?”
	“Two of my sisters are mated, they're raising litters of their own. My third sister is a landowner, and my brother is a Royal Guard.”
	“You're not afraid that one of them will steal the throne from you while you're working on the Pinwheel?”
	She chuckled, her chest bouncing around my head as I rested on top of her.
	“It doesn't work that way for us. The Patriarch, or Matriarch as it may be, is the Alpha of Alphas. There's no family succession, every Borealan starts out on the same social footing and has to work their way up the ladder. Of course, some are better bred than others, and more is expected of them. If a family can maintain their high position for several generations, then they will have access to more desirable mates, resulting in larger and stronger offspring.”
	“Like you?”
	“Now you're getting it,” she chuckled, her claws combing my wet hair. “My father is a great warrior, an impeccable specimen of Elysian stock, and my mother was a Ranger.”
	“A Ranger?” I asked, surprised. “You've spoken of your parents before, but you never told me that your mother was a Ranger! How did they meet?”
	Rangers were reclusive survivalists. They rejected the modern towns and cities that bordered the great lakes and chose to live in the surrounding jungles, which they considered to be the natural state of their kind. They lived off the land and spent their time hunting the vicious creatures that inhabited the dense primeval forests in order to sell their pelts and produce to their more cosmopolitan neighbors.
	“They met on a hunt. It is customary for the Patriarch to slay a Rainbow Spider in order to wear its fur as a symbol of status, and she must have impressed him or gained his respect during her time as his guide. After bringing down the beast and feasting on its flesh as is customary, they mated, and I was conceived along with my siblings.”
	“Quite a story. You know how my parents met?”
	Raz shook her head.
	“At a bar in Tulsa.”
	She laughed again, the motions sending ripples across the surface of the water.
	“You should give yourself more credit, Stanley. I am of noble birth while you are spawned from humble farmers, yet we have achieved equal rank and status. Either I have slacked, or you are exceptional.”
	I thought about that statement for a while as we floated in the stream, feeling the cool water pass between my fingers and toes, listening to the birds chirp in the trees as Raz relaxed. We had lived such different lives and yet somehow we had ended up in the same boat. Both of us had wound up as instructors rather than the warriors that we had set out to become. I wouldn't have it any other way, but the parallels were odd considering our drastically different starts in life. Maybe opposites really did attract.
	“I like it here, it's peaceful” she mumbled. “Tell me the names of the birds, Stanley.”
	“Let me see...the blue one with red wings over there is a kingfisher. They dive into the water to catch small fish. The ones singing are jays or maybe thrushes. If we're lucky we might hear a woodpecker, they make a sound like...what are you-”
	I twitched as I felt her damp, furry tail snake up the leg of my shorts, creeping around my member and squeezing it with all the dexterity of a gentle hand. Her arms tightened around me, and I felt the warmth of her breath on my ear as she leaned closer to whisper to me.
	“You're so tense. It's been a few days since we had some alone time, I know how you get. Let me help you...relax.”
	“Raz...come on...”
	“There's nobody around,” she chuckled, trapping my ear between her pointed teeth and pinching it playfully. “You humans are so prudish, what are you worried about? Will the kingfishers think any less of you?”
	I leaned back against her body, the firm abdominal muscles that pressed against my back contrasting with the soft pillow of her bust, my erection rising to strain against the damp fabric of my underwear as her sodden tail began to stroke the shaft. It was as flexible as a length of rope, and she could lift a person with it almost effortlessly, but now she used it to gently tease me as she pinned my arms at my sides. The wet fur felt odd on my skin, silky and pleasant, the hairs tickling me as she wrapped it around my member and slid the appendage up and down. It felt like someone was jacking me off with a furry glove or some kind of bath towel, and I tried to relax as she had her way with me. This was Raz, and she wasn't going to stop until she got what she wanted. Better to just let her have her fun and go along for the ride.
	My shorts were tenting now, and she reached one of her large hands down to hook a claw around the waistband, pulling them down just enough to free my erection. It bounced in the air, peeking out of the water and pulsing in time with my heartbeat. I felt Raz's breathing grow deeper as she eyed it hungrily. Her orange tail was coiled around it like a hairy snake, shiny and damp with water, the sensation more pleasant than I had anticipated as she stroked me rhythmically.
	The water was cold, but her body was warm and growing hotter as she became more excited. I could hear her heart as my head was lodged between the supple, watermelon-sized globes of her breasts, heavy and slow as it pounded in her chest. She was clearly enjoying herself. This was as much for her own amusement as for my benefit, Raz chuckling into my ear as she tightened her grip on me and I arched my spine in response. She crossed her arms over my chest to ensure that my own limbs were firmly secured and that I couldn't touch her or myself, dragging her tail from the base of my member to the tip and making me squirm.
	She paused at the head, grazing the sensitive glans with her velvet fur, the water making it slippery as it dragged across my tender flesh. She drove jolts of harsh pleasure down my spine, hugging me against her firm body and pressing her cleavage around my head with her biceps as I bucked, craning her neck to look down at my burning face with the sly smirk that was now so familiar to me. It was at once greedy and generous, covetous and considerate, a look that betrayed her intent to overwhelm me with pleasure for her own entertainment.
	“Tell me more about the birds,” she whispered, her tone low and lascivious as her gentle stroking continued. A bead of excitement welled at the tip of my member, my muscles trembling, my nerves buzzing as if they were electrified as she chewed the tip of my ear again.
	“B-Birds?” I mumbled, confused and having trouble focusing on anything besides the fluffy tail that was massaging the length of my shaft. She tightened around the head like a noose, biting my ear and making me shudder in her arms.
	“The birds Stanley, do try to concentrate...”
	She wrung my member with her tail, teasing as I tried to ignore the mounting pressure in my loins, wracking my brain trying to remember the species of birds that lived in this region. I didn't know what compelled me to play her silly games, but when she got like this, and I felt her touch on my skin, I couldn't help but do as she requested.
	“There are swifts, geese and ducks, cranes near bodies of water.” She dragged her pointed claws across my chest, applying only enough pressure to make me fidget and gasp rather than slicing me like salami as those wicked hooks were perfectly capable of doing. “Hummingbirds...those drink nectar from...flowers.” She increased her pace, my hips thrusting upwards of their own accord, searching for more stimulation as my mind began to fog. “Wild turkeys, quails, pheasants. Those are...you can...”
	My gasping breaths were overpowering the sound of the stream, and I turned my head to one side, pressing my red face into the supple meat of her breast and tasting her sweat on my lips. Her scent was alluring, the water failing to wash away her sudor as her bust floated above the surface.
	I jumped as her downy fur dragged across my balls, her tail winding up my shaft again to polish the glans, slick and wet as she buried her nose in my hair and nuzzled contentedly.
	“You're so sensitive,” she mumbled, punctuating her statement with a harsh squeeze to my erection that made it ache and throb. “So fragile,” she added as she tickled me with her sharp claws. “I have so much fun playing with you.”
	I melted into her inviting body, giving in and letting the waves of pleasure wash over me uninhibited, Raz grinning as she realized that I had surrendered to her. She tightened her tail around the base of my member to cut off my welling orgasm, leering down at me with a bawdy expression on her face.
	“Say that you're mine, and I'll let you come.” I began to complain, but she gave me another tug, my protest petering out into a low moan. She drew red welts in my skin with her claws, lowering her voice to murmur in my ear again. “I like to hear it from your own lips, say it...”
	“I'm...yours,” I replied softly, and I felt a pleased shudder run through her body underneath the water.
	She resumed her stroking, her tail gripping me like a fist and pumping up and down relentlessly, my twitching member buried in her silky fur as she drove me higher and higher. She knew what I liked, knew how to push my buttons, and I thrust impotently against her as my pleasure reached its inevitable peak.
	I tensed, my body trembling as she wrung my ejaculate from me, my emission pumping into her tail as she enclosed my cock in a fluffy prison. She watched me with a grin as my eyelids fluttered, my face burning as my aching muscles forced another rope of my seed from me. She kept up her gentle stroking, my arms still pinned against my sides, easing out a few more trembling ejaculations as I shivered and struggled against my bonds. I saw static, my brain fizzing and popping as if someone had filled my skull with soda, electrical fingers crawling up and down my spine as the cruel pleasure gave way to a giddy euphoria.
	She held me close to her for a while longer, letting me enjoy my afterglow as she let the running water wash her tail, the two of us floating in the clear stream as the sun dipped towards the horizon. We were usually so busy, running around the damned space station with barely a minute to spare between assignments. It was nice to take a moment to just...exist together. Some people filled their vacations with itineraries and activities, but not me. I wanted a break from the daily grind rather than just replacing it with a new one. Boredom was a rare commodity these days, and it should be enjoyed.
	Eventually, the moon and stars came out as the sky turned a deeper shade of blue, the air retaining its warmth despite the setting sun which now painted the horizon in beautiful shades of orange and pink. My fingers and toes were wrinkled from spending so long in the stream, the water’s surface reflecting the pastel colors. The bushes that lined the banks of the stream were full of glow worms, the ghostly, green light they emitted competing with the starfield above our heads as the insects created their own little galaxy in each shrub. The birds had mostly quietened now, replaced by the croaking of frogs and the chirping of crickets in the undergrowth.
	“We must have been here a good few hours,” I mumbled, breaking the peaceful silence.
	“Do we need to leave?” Raz asked, clearly not wanting to be disturbed.
	“Unless you want to miss dinner, we should probably get going.”
	At that she pushed me off her to fall into the stream, dunking my head into the cool water and standing upright.
	“I thought that might motivate you,” I sputtered, spitting out a mouthful of water as she grinned down at me. Raz climbed the bank and wrung out her tail as if it were a damp rag, cocking her head as I laughed at the sight. I crawled out of the stream to join her, wishing I’d had the foresight to have brought towels with us. I should have know that wherever there was water, Raz would somehow end up in it.
	I watched her pull on her jumpsuit and did likewise, the two of us setting off back up the dirt path with sodden undergarments. It wasn't a long walk, and we could change when we got back to the farmhouse.
	“I think my father is making barbecue tonight,” I said as she loped along me beside me.
	“Like the sauce?”
	“You've had the sauce, yeah, but you've never been to a real barbecue before. This state is known for its great barbecues.”
	“So...what's a barbecue?” Raz asked, her eyes fixed on the full moon that was visible through the dusk. She seemed fascinated by it, and I couldn't remember if her home planet had any moons or not.
	“You cook different kinds of meat outside on a grill, mostly beef, and pork sausages. It's an American tradition.”
	“I thought we were in...Okahooma?”
	“Oklahoma is the state, America is the country. Well, technically we're in the United States of America, but that's a whole different story that we don't need to get into. Think of a state as a territory within a territory. In any case, we're having a barbecue, and there will be lots of things that you like.”
	“Everything on Earth is so...fragmented,” she commented.
	“It's not so different from how things are done on Borealis, we just have a few more steps. We still have a President who serves as a kind of Patriarch, the planet is split into various countries not dissimilar from your territories, and then ours happens to have further subdivisions called states.”
	“And what if one state should take control of another's land, or a stronger Patriarch should arise to challenge the President?”
	“Well that doesn't happen, we have treaties and agreements that help us moderate that kind of thing. Everyone agrees to follow the same laws, and for the most part, it works out fine. We've had plenty of wars in the past between countries, civil wars between the different states too, but not for a very long time now.”
	“Because of the UNN?”
	“In part, but that organization is more a result of peace, not the cause of it.”
	“My father dreams of creating a similar organization,” she said. I was surprised by that, it didn't sound like something that Borealans would do. When they cooperated it usually only came after a fight to decide who should be in charge.
	“How so? He wants to unite the territories?”
	“He is Patriarch of the whole planet in all but name. The leaders of the other territories bow to Elysia's military power, but he lacks the number of troops that would be required to take control of the other regions. He loves all things human, he wants to emulate what he sees as your success, but he knows that it can only happen if the territories of Borealis put aside their differences and learn to cooperate as you have.”
	“That doesn't sound like something a Borealan would say,” I chuckled.
	“Peace on Borealis is maintained mostly because it is logistically difficult to attack other territories. Marching an army across the desert from one lake to another would be unfeasible, at least in the scale that would be necessary to take and hold it. There haven't been any such invasions since the modern era began and the ancient tribes each laid claim to their own territory. Spaceships change that, however. Thanks to my father, Elysia is the only military power that has a fleet and the other leaders recognize the power that gives him over them. He has not won a fight against them to claim the position of Alpha, nor has he raised an army to occupy their lands, yet they dare not assert themselves over him for fear of reprisals. Such a stalemate is exceedingly rare in our culture. What does someone do when they must fight, but cannot?”
	“Then you have to talk,” I volunteered.
	“Yes, they treat, but it gets them nowhere. They won't risk provoking him, but they won't accept his rule without a show of force either. I don't imagine that the situation will resolve itself any time soon.”
	“It's a noble goal, if anyone can find a solution to a problem like that it's probably your father. Based on what you've told me about him he sounds like the only Borealan leader thinking to the future and striving to modernize.”
	I noticed that she was still staring at the moon, wide-eyed like a little girl as she walked beside me, the cool wind blowing the ears of corn in the fields to our left and right.
	“You keep looking at the moon, what's so interesting about it?”
	“It's just so...close. I've seen other planets before of course, the Pinwheel orbits one and I see it out of the windows nearly every day...but there's something about seeing one stellar body from the surface of another that's captivating.”
	“Doesn't Borealis have moons?”
	“Nope, no satellites. Your moon is so large and clear, you don't need a telescope or anything. You can just lie down on the grass and watch it pass by overhead.”
	Seeing things from her point of view, it was kind of special. There weren't many planets that had another stellar body orbiting so closely, let alone one so large and visible.
	“Maybe we take it for granted,” I replied.
	As we neared the farmhouse Raz's ears pricked up and she looked suddenly alert. Before I could ask her what she was picking up, I smelled it too, the unmistakable scent of a barbecue. We reached the courtyard and met my parents outside, where they were sitting on plastic lawn chairs around a smoking grill, my father flipping meat patties as he waved to greet us. I had to drag Raz away from the alluring scent of the food to get a change of clothing, she was of a single mind when meat was on the menu.
	Once we were both dressed in dry clothes, we made our way back downstairs, joining my parents around the glowing embers of the barbecue grill as my father began to pass out buns for the burgers. Raz seemed confused, but I informed her that it was a kind of sandwich and showed her how to make a traditional cheeseburger with some vegetables and a slice of cheese melted over the patty. She didn't care much for the lettuce, but she loved the cheese, licking the juices off her fingers with her long tongue as the sauces stained her fur.
	Raz seemed to be growing more comfortable around my parents. She had been so formal and tight-lipped when we had first arrived, but now she seemed to have understood that human families were not like those of Borealans. She didn't have to step on eggshells for fear of some gigantic alien clawing at her for not showing it the proper respect. She could relax here and let her guard down.
	She chatted with my mother about the feasts that were held at home on Borealis, telling her about the exotic animals that were provided by the Rangers and of how the various meats were prepared and consumed during banquets that could last for a whole day or more. It was customary to hold a massive feast at least twice a month, on the nights before the winters came along with their rapid freezing. The Borealans entered a state of low metabolism as they waited for the sun to return and rouse them from their lethargy, living on their calorie reserves from their feasts. While no such seasonal changes happened on the Pinwheel, Raz would still become sluggish and hungry when exposed to cold temperatures, a physiological reaction no doubt.
	Before long most of the food had been eaten, and the coals in the grill were going cold. The sun had vanished below the horizon, leaving only the light of the full moon to bathe the courtyard in its pale glow. My father had not chatted much with Raz, preferring instead to talk to me about the happenings on the Pinwheel and the larger war effort. My mother was getting along famously with her, however, finding more common ground in their shared love of food and cooking.
	After complimenting Dad on his barbecue, we turned in, Raz winking at me as we parted ways to sleep in our separate rooms. She had quelled my rising frustration during our visit to the stream, but I still missed her company. Sleeping alone just didn't feel right after having shared a bed with her every night for the past two years. I had grown accustomed to the way that she sank into the mattress and drew me towards her, the heat of her massive body with its ravenous metabolism that warmed me such that I rarely required sheets, not to mention the spooning.
	Oh well, it wouldn't be long before we'd be back on the Pinwheel and our usual business would resume. Her company was more of a reward to me than any paycheck that the UNN could write up.

CHAPTER 3: HOME ALONE

	The next day I woke up a little late and made my way into the courtyard looking for Raz. I found her in the barn with my father, helping him repair the rogue auto-tractor that had run him into the ditch the previous morning.
	It was still very hot out, though she probably found it pleasant in comparison to the searing heat and oppressive climate of her home planet. She was wearing her blue UNN jumpsuit with the torso unzipped to dangle around her waist, her ample chest contained within a grey tank top that was now stained with the sweat of the morning's labor, her sudor giving her body a reflective sheen as she worked in the shade of the barn. My father was up on a raised scaffold, the cab of the tractor opened up to expose its inner workings, a mess of disconnected wires and components that dangled haphazardly. As I watched, Raz hefted something that looked to be about the size and weight of an engine block, digging her claws into the metal for leverage as her exposed muscles bulged through her lustrous skin. She lifted it off the ground, slotting it back into the tractor as my father directed her with a wave of his hand. He set about reconnecting the cables as she stepped back and wiped her brow with the back of her furry forearm.
	Her ears twitched as I entered the barn and she turned to greet me with a wide, toothy grin.
	“Good morning Stan,” Dad said, not looking up from his work. “Your friend is helping me with the auto-tractor. It's a damn sight better than hiring a crane to remove the computer assembly, I'll tell you that much.”
	“I'm glad to see you two are getting along.”
	Raz's chest heaved as she caught her breath, breasts as large as basketballs and far heavier swaying under the sodden top that barely served to contain them, beads of her sweat following the channels that her taut muscles cut in her belly as they rolled down her abs. She wasn't even especially in shape by Borealan standards, she had spent a long time in Earth-standard gravity which was about a third lower than that of her native planet, yet she still appeared to me to be chiseled from marble.
	She caught me looking and gave me a knowing smirk. It had been two days now since we had shared a bed and I was starting to get antsy. She gave an exaggerated stretch, raising her arms above her head and flexing the twin rows of muscle that decorated her midriff, catching the sunlight that penetrated the slats of the barn so that the shadows accentuated the prominent bulges of her six-pack. Her jumpsuit was hanging low on her wide hips, the barest peek of her smooth mound visible over her waistband as her sleeves dangled loose.
	“Your mother is going to drive me down to the dealership when they open around noon, gonna give 'em some hell about this shot proximity sensor,” Dad said as he waved the offending component above his head. “Of course we had to remove the whole damned assembly to get at it because the fine folks over at the shop don't want you servicing these things yourself. Couldn't even pop the hood without connecting it to a wireless network and entering the authorization code from the owner's manual.”
	We chatted about the robots for a while, my Dad listing off a series of complaints about them as Raz pitched in occasionally with comments about what farming was like in Elysia where most of the work was still done by manual laborers. He joked that he would trade his fleet of drone vehicles for a handful of Borealans if they were as strong as Raz. He might be treating her more like farm equipment than a potential daughter in law, but they seemed to be getting on marvelously now. It was reassuring. As usual, my Dad was slowly coming around to new ideas, it just took him a little while to overcome his innate stubbornness.
	My mother eventually arrived to collect Dad, and they drove off towards the nearest town to get a replacement proximity sensor from the dealership, leaving Raz and I alone.
	“It's a bit of a drive,” I muttered, “they'll be gone for at least three or four hours.”
	I felt Raz's heavy hand fall on my shoulder and I looked up at her as she stood beside me.
	“I need a shower, show me where it is.”

***

	I led Raz into the house and up to the second floor, a little worried that the old wooden staircase might not take her weight. It creaked and protested but thankfully it held together. We came to the bathroom, Raz needing to duck so that she could fit in the human-sized hallway. The ceilings were about seven feet high, yet that still left the Borealan about a foot too tall to stand comfortably.
	She could barely fit inside the bathroom, and the shower cubicle was woefully small. It would be like trying to cram a human into a space the size of a filing cabinet. Her weighty breasts pressed up against the back of my head in the small room, her tank top damp against my skin, the familiar musk of her exertion reminding me of long nights spent in her voracious company. They rested on my shoulders, heavy enough to strain my back, like having two bags of sand perched on me. She was probably doing it on purpose, she never passed up a chance to tease me. It was all part of our ceaseless romantic cold war.
	“Yeah, I'm not going to fit in there,” she said. She leaned across me and snatched a hand towel from beside the sink with her curved, black claws and thrust it into my arms. “You're up, monkey.”
	My face reddened as I walked over to the cubicle and picked up the shower head. The bathroom was tiled, with a drain in the middle of the room, and so it wouldn't cause any problems to shower outside of the cubicle.
	“Better take those clothes off unless you want them to get wet,” she said, watching me with a smirk as I dutifully removed my shirt and jeans. Her eyes played over my naked body as I placed my clothes on a nearby rack, the four faded scars she had given me when we had first met trailing from my chest down to my belly. I walked back over to the shower and turned the faucets, taking a moment to find a comfortable temperature, then turned to watch Raz wriggle out of her jumpsuit. She slid the blue fabric down over her meaty thighs and stepped out of it, then hooked the waistband of her underwear with her claws and slid them off. She pulled her stained tank top over her head and discarded it, then motioned for me to stop as I aimed the shower head in her direction. She was still crouched to avoid scraping her head on the ceiling, even more imposing than usual in the confined space, her exaggerated breasts hanging heavily and drawing my gaze with their gentle swaying.
	“Not yet, come here.”
	She leaned back to lie on the tiled floor, stretching out and resting her elbows on the rim of the bathtub. Luckily it was an old-fashioned one, made from iron rather than plastic or porcelain. She might have broken it otherwise. She beckoned to me with her orange, furry finger and my cheeks flared red as I approached her. When I came into range of her long arms, she reached up and took a fistful of my hair, pulling me down and planting my face between her soft breasts.
	They were larger than my head, and I found myself enveloped entirely by their pliant fat, slick with her sweat and imbued with her familiar scent. She used her biceps to press them together, squeezing my head between the doughy globes and smothering me, the beating of her massive heart pounding in my ears. I struggled, and she released me, chuckling to herself as I emerged from her cleavage.
	“I thought you wanted to have a shower?” I sputtered.
	“Don’t play coy, you’re as hard as a rock. You know what I like after some hard exercise.”
	I didn’t have a comeback, and my body was betraying me. My erection was at full mast, jumping in the air in time with my racing heart, my face a shade of crimson as her yellow eyes peered at me. Her sensitive ears could hear every thump of my heart against my ribcage. She could sense the warm blood that rushed through my veins, smell the pheromones that leaked from my pores as I grew more and more excited.
	She leaned forward, and I felt her full lips press against the nape of my neck, sucking gently at my skin as a pleasant shiver rolled down my spine. She knew how to push all of my buttons, she could play me like a damned fiddle, and I felt my stiff member push into her thigh as she pressed her carnivore teeth against my jugular. She bit me, knowing full well that I enjoyed the sensation, hard enough to make me grit my teeth. She broke the skin a little, her long, rough tongue dragging across the bite mark to lap at the small trickle of blood.
	“Damn it Raz,” I groaned, dull pain and seething arousal mingling to fog my brain. “We talked about this...only below the collar or people will see it...”
	“So wear a scarf,” she grunted. She crawled her lips further up my neck, then bit me harder to leave a red welt as she gripped my hair for purchase. I arched my spine as she pulled me against her body, wrapping her arms around me and squeezing me in a bear hug. Her ample breasts cushioned me as my erection scraped against her firm abs, made slick with her sweat. Her feline tongue grazed my throat as she mouthed at my neck and shoulder, soft and placating now, feeling me shudder as I rested atop her massive body.
	“It’s summer, idiot,” I mumbled. “How am I going to wear a scarf in summer?”
	“It’s as if you don’t want people to know that you belong to me,” she shot back, “I know how much it turns you on when I mark you. I’ve caught you staring at the bite marks in the mirror.”
	“Yeah, but other people don’t need to know that!” I complained as I attempted to hide my burning face in the cushiony meat of her bust.
	“Very well, I’ll just have to bite you in other places instead...” She pushed me down past her breasts, her massive hand on my head as my face came level with her belly. I could feel the heat emanating from between her thick thighs, parted to let me kneel between them, her loins so tantalizingly close to my member as it bounced in the air. My eyes traced the lines of her prominent abdominal muscles, bulging from beneath her glass-smooth skin and coated in a veneer of gleaming sweat, my mouth watering despite myself as I pressed my lips against them.
	She tensed them reflexively as I dragged my tongue over her warm body and tasted her salt, her bulging muscles as hard as my erection as I traced their contours downward. I crawled my lips across her six-pack, licking and mouthing as I went, feeling a tremor roll through her powerful body as I pushed my roving organ into her navel. She pressed my face against her abs with her hand, rubbing my flushed cheek against her damp skin.
	“Who needs a bath towel when I have you?”
	I moved lower, biting her hip gently, feeling the muscles ripple beneath her slick skin as I teased her. I passed over the soft tuft of orange fur on her mound and splayed her labia with my fingers, feeling the heat of her loins on my lips. She looked down at me, biting her lower lip, expectant and eager as her polished thighs pressed against my cheeks. She could pop my head like a cantaloupe if she had been so inclined, but she wouldn't, she just liked to let me know it.
	Her people saw sex as a competition, often the direct result of a failed challenge. The dominant party took advantage of the loser to propagate their genes and ensure that only the strongest Borealans bred. It was hardwired into their brains, fighting and exertion aroused them, as did insubordination and anything they might consider an affront. Humans were wired differently, so we never submitted fully in the way that was expected of Borealans. It made us at once frustrating and a source of ceaseless lust to them. Raz's every instinct commanded her to break this small, frail human, to induct me into her pack and make me her subordinate. My will was too strong for that. She had never succeeded, and after learning more about human behavior and culture, she had eventually abandoned her attempts.
	That didn't mean to say the arousal that my defiance caused her had diminished in any way. It still bubbled under the surface, rising to the top when we made love and expressing itself through her fervor.
	She gripped my hair again, pressing my face deeper into her groin. I began to mouthe and kiss in the ways that I knew she liked, dragging my tongue up and down her vulva, tasting her sour juices as they seeped around my mouth. Raz's titanic body twitched and shivered with barely contained excitement as I roved and licked.
	While long and agile, their own tongues were somewhat rough like those of cats and it made oral sex a little too intense for them. In contrast, human tongues were smooth and soft, almost designed for this very purpose. No Borealan who discovered the secret ever let their human companion alone for long.
	Raz was so much larger and stronger than I was, but at this moment I was in control, I could bring this eight foot alien to her knees with only an inch of wet muscle. I knew that it irked her to be so affected and I took pleasure in it, knowing that the retribution would come in the form of more ardent and passionate sex when she finally regained control of her faculties. For now, she rolled her wide hips and writhed on the bathroom floor, twitching and dancing as I parted her quivering thighs with my hands and traced the folds and creases of her loins with the tip of my tongue.
	I circled her winking opening, then pushed a probing finger inside her tunnel, the taut muscles within greeting me with all the strength of a vice as they attempted to drag me deeper inside her. As large as she was, she was incredibly tight, her pelvic floor muscles were no less powerful than those in the rest of her body. They undulated and rippled, massaging the length of my finger and crushing it with almost painful contractions as I roamed higher. I pressed my lips around her clitoris, drawing it out from beneath its protective hood and trapping it in my mouth, painting its tender surface with my saliva. She growled and arched her back off the floor, her rumbling vocalizations shaking my bones, and I felt her narrow passage clench around my digit in response.
	She was gushing, strands of her thick emission hanging from my chin as I circled her firm bud with my tongue, my cheeks glazed with her clear nectar as her massive, steely thighs pressed around my head. Her skin was as flush as burnished metal, a layer of soft fat cushioning the steely muscles beneath, warm and smooth as they brushed against my red face. Her grip on my hair grew tighter, sending a shiver crawling down my spine as she tugged, urging me onward with her gasping breaths.
	A spark of inspiration was kindled in my mind as I spotted the shower head discarded on the floor nearby, and I reached over her with some difficulty to retrieve it. She glared down at me between her massive breasts, annoyed that I had stopped licking, then snapped her head back with a pained growl as I turned the shower head on and played the jets of water over her loins.
	“What are you-!? Oh, you little-!”
	It was all she could do to avoid bucking and knocking me across the room, her long legs trembling as she put all of her concentration into staying still, the shower head spraying her vulva as I resumed my work on her clitoris. Fresh sweat shone on her skin as she scratched the tiles with her clawed fingers, her abdominal muscles tensing and rippling. I couldn't resist running my free hand over their bulging surface as I lapped at her firm nub of flesh. I caught it between my lip and tongue, and she gasped, the iron bathtub that she was leaning on creaking its protest as she put too much of her considerable weight on it.
	I felt a powerful spasm wrack her body, her spine arching to raise her ample butt off the floor as she came, her claws pricking my scalp as she held me pressed against her quivering loins. I kept up my licking and teased her with the jets of water, her glistening, pink flesh feverishly hot against my lips as I mouthed and eased out another shuddering wave of pleasure.
	Her viscous honey leaked down my chin as it mingled with the water, her tremors eventually abating to leave her gasping on the tiles. I peeked up between her thick thighs to see her looking down at me with flushed cheeks. She urged me upwards, and I discarded the shower head on the floor as I crawled up her massive body, her fingers buried in my hair as she slammed her oversized lips against my own.
	She subjected me to a greedy kiss, shameless and wanton, her long tongue pushing into my mouth to bulge my cheeks and coil around inside my head as if it had a life of its own. She must have tasted her own juices on my breath, but she didn't care, letting her lust overcome her as she pinched my lower lip between her sharp teeth and drew a little blood. Her textured, slimy organ pushed deeper to graze the back of my throat, my eyes watering and my mind growing hazy as I melted into her embrace. Her tongue was so slippery, her strokes so strong and confident, her furry hand rising up to stroke my face in a tender gesture that contrasted with her ruthless kiss.
	She released me with a wet pop, a strand of her saliva linking our lips, then she took my wrists in her hands and rolled me onto the floor. My back hit the cold, damp tiles and she flipped over to perch atop me. Her thighs closed around my waist, her oversized breasts hanging heavily as they settled above me, swaying as they fought against gravity. She gazed down at me with a lascivious expression on her face, her grip firm as she pinned me to the floor, beads of sweat catching the sunlight that flooded in through the curtains as they dripped down her toned body.
	Her breasts bounced gently with the rise and fall of her chest, I longed to reach up and sink my fingers into their supple flesh, to feel the firm tissue that hid under her delicate fat beneath my fingertips. She had me trapped, however, just the way she liked me when she was of a mind to repay me for some delicious injustice, her drooping eyelids betraying her indecent intentions as she played her feline pupils over my body and wet her puffy lips with her pink tongue.
	She lowered her face to my neck, doubling over due to her exaggerated height, and I felt her warm breath on my skin. She opened her mouth and licked her sharp teeth with the tip of her tapered tongue, poising to bite me and enjoying the feeling of me tensing beneath her in anticipation. Instead, she planted a sucking kiss, letting my erection press against her dripping loins as it pulsed and twitched. She moved a little higher and took my ear into her mouth, pinching it between her fangs and tightening her grip on my wrists as I bucked.
	“Fight me,” she whispered softly, “I love it when you struggle...”
	She moved back down to my neck, dragging her rough tongue across my skin to taste my sweat before sinking her teeth into me, my spine arching and an unbecoming moan escaping my lips as she bit down. She withdrew, leaving another red welt, grinding her hips to press my member between her slick loins and my belly as I writhed beneath her. My body was a patchwork of bruises and scratches from her often violent lovemaking, she was always riding the line between obeying her primal instincts and being considerate of my human limitations. Sharing a bed with her was dangerous and exciting.
	She had never really hurt me though, not since our first confrontation which had resulted in the four scars that decorated my torso from chest to belly. I still sometimes saw the regret in her eyes when she caught sight of them in her more sober moments. At the time, she had not understood the relative fragility of humans. Borealans healed quickly and were exceptionally tough due to a lifetime of resolving even minor conflicts with bouts of violence, it was one of the reasons that they were so useful to the UNN as shock troopers. A Borealan could take enough damage to kill a dozen humans and just keep going. It took them a while to adjust to the idea of such wounds being severe or even mortal to their human squadmates, and that was one of the things that Raz taught the recruits in her integration program.
	She used her long, dexterous tail to grip my erection, positioning it below her opening as her juices dripped down to glaze the shaft and her hands pinned my wrists to the tile. She rubbed my glans up and down her vulva, watching me twitch with a primal hunger in her feline eyes. She slipped my member inside her, her eyelids fluttering as my erection met resistance for a moment before breaking through into her warm tunnel. Her flesh was hot, feverish, her smooth walls gripping me like a silken glove as her muscles rippled and massaged me. The suction was powerful, the friction maddening as she began to slowly grind against me, despite the copious amount of lubricating fluid that leaked around my member to drip down my shaft in globs.
	She rammed me deeper, letting enough of her weight fall on me that I really felt it, coming down on me hard enough to bruise my hips. She lowered her face so that it was level with my own, drinking in my expressions. Her orange hair tickled my face, damp with sweat, her breath warm on my skin as I bucked and wriggled underneath her. She was like a cat with a mouse, teasing and torturing, dragging out the chase for as long as her quarry could tolerate it.
	Her thighs tightened around my hips, the firm muscles beneath her silken skin squeezing me as she moved, my throbbing erection scouring her insides as her hot flesh enclosed it. Her contractions wrung me as if she were trying to draw my emission from my body through sheer force, rolling up my shaft in waves as her pace increased. She was crushing me against the tiles, the water from the shower making our coupling slippery, Raz releasing one of my hands from her furry grasp to grip the edge of the iron bathtub for purchase. I reached up to fondle one of her breasts, the fat spilling between my fingers like dough as I weighed the massive globe in my hand, but her sinuous tail shot up to wrap around my wrist like furry manacles and pinned it back to the floor. She grinned down at me, sitting upright atop me and letting her heavy breasts bounce as she fucked me into the floor.
	I heard the tiles crack beneath me, the bathtub's rim creaking under her grip as she rolled her hips to drive my member against her slick walls. She rose torturously slowly on my shaft, her loins sticking to it like latex as her satin flesh dragged across my skin, before slamming back down on me to drive it as deep inside her as she could take it. She found a pace that suited her, slow and heavy, almost knocking the wind out of me as she let gravity aid her downward thrusts. I bucked up into her, meeting her halfway, our flesh slapping together to echo in the confines of the bathroom.
	“Deeper,” she growled through clenched teeth, looking down at me with a hungry expression. I did my best to oblige, thrusting up into her quivering tunnel. Her smooth inner walls flexed and contracted around me, slick with her oozing nectar. I glanced down to see her toned abs flexing and bulging as she watched my member slide in and out of her, lubricated by her syrupy emission that was forced out to spill around it. Her breath came in labored gasps, her ample chest heaving, making her impressive breasts bounce as she gyrated on top of me. She let go of the bathtub, the metal twisted and dented by her powerful grip, delving her fingers into my damp hair. Her touch was oddly delicate and caring, contrasting with her violent pace and apparent indifference to my squirming and my pained moans, her cheeks burning with affection as she locked eyes with me. Beads of perspiration rolled down her flushed skin, following the contours of her bulging muscles, her sweat making her skin shiny and reflective.
	She leaned down again, her hold on my hair tight as she pressed her puffy lips against mine. A jolt of electric pleasure crawled down my spine as she pushed her rough tongue into my mouth, the metallic flavor of her saliva prickling my tastebuds. I couldn't even attempt to meet her kiss, her tongue was just too large and strong. I could only lie back on the wet tiles and let her ravish me. Her lurid embrace could barely be described as a kiss, it was too obscene, too wanton. I began to feel my consciousness fading as I started to run out of breath, stars dancing before my eyes as her organ roved in my mouth and she held me tightly. It tickled as it glanced the back of my throat. She was desperate and greedy, slamming her hips down on me all the while as her thick honey dripped down her thighs and fell to my belly in ropes. I couldn't take much more of this treatment.
	She released me with a smack, wasting no time as she pressed her smooth, oversized lips around my throat. I felt her teeth prick my skin, the vulnerability oddly arousing, my erection throbbing inside of her narrow passage as she teased me. She dragged her tongue across my burning skin, leaving a trail of her thick saliva as she mouthed and sucked, my reflexive trembling only encouraging her.
	She moved on top of me more ardently now, my arms pinned to the tiles with one hand and her fuzzy tail, the other buried in my hair as her breasts rested heavily on my chest. She rode me greedily, merciless, driving a gasp from my lips every time she rammed down on me. She twisted and gyrated, rolling her hips to scrape my member against her reaches, scouring her satin walls and burying her face in the nape of my neck. Our sweat mingled, her toned body sliding against my own, the taste of her salt on my tongue as my vision began to blur with the intensity of our coupling.
	Her body seized, her sculpted muscles clenching as a shuddering orgasm rolled over her. She bared her sharp teeth as she nuzzled my neck, her loins gripping me like a fist as her contractions wrung me violently. Her walls massaged the length of my shaft like so many probing fingers, shivering and undulating as her grip on my hair became painful, Raz clinging to me and loosing a wail that she had failed to suppress.
	I joined her, bucking into her in an instinctive desire to drive my cock deeper inside her welcoming loins, forcing a jet of my warm emission into her quivering tunnel. Her bicep pressed against my cheek, slick with her sweat, the firm muscle shaking as she tried to endure the spasms of pleasure that wracked her body. My brain was flooded with static as my extremities went numb, my legs felt as if they were melting, my body pumping its very life force into Raz as her passage squeezed and contracted around it.
	The pleasure ebbed and became a euphoria that fell over me like a warm blanket, Raz's grinding slowing as her breathing became more regular, sweat dripping from her body to rain onto me from above. The mess that we had created together oozed from between her legs, sliding down her thighs and pooling on my belly. She lifted herself off me, rubbing her loins gently with her finger to ease out one last shudder before rolling onto her back to lie beside me.
	“Ok, now I actually want to have a shower,” she laughed. I retrieved the shower head and turned it on, spraying her in the face with it. She sputtered, batting at it playfully as I chuckled at her reaction. I took the hand towel and ran it across her skin, roaming over the firm muscles and soft fat of her chest and belly, washing away the sweat and the mess that we had made as I went. She purred appreciatively as I washed her, soap and water making her skin slick and shiny, crickets chirping outside the window as I followed the curve of her flared hips and slid my hand between her thighs.
	“Give me a few more minutes,” she mumbled, her lashes fluttering as she enjoyed the sensation of the fabric between her legs. “And I'll undo all of your hard work.”

***

	By the time my parents had returned from the dealership we were dry and clothed again. My father recruited Raz to help him replace the broken proximity sensor on the auto-tractor with the new one, making use of her superhuman strength to remove the vehicle's massive computer from its housing. I had to admit that sleeping apart, even if it was only for a day or two, really stoked the fires. Shame about the cracked tiles on the bathroom floor, but I could replace those and just tell my parents that I had dropped something on them. Raz seemed happy, she was practically glowing. This vacation had really done her some good.
	Borealans were so dutiful, they obeyed the orders of those they saw as their superiors as if it were law and never seemed to give themselves a moment to breathe. Raz would never have admitted that she could use a break, but I was glad that I had managed to talk her into it.
	We wouldn't be able to stay much longer, unfortunately. Most of the time off that we had would be taken up in transit time. Superlight travel was not quick or convenient, but it had been nice to do something a little more special than just wasting time in the Pinwheel's recreational center. I felt like a load had been lifted off my shoulders now that my secret was out, even if it had turned out to be an unnecessary one. I had been so worried about how my father would react, but he had warmed to Raz and was treating her more or less like a member of our family.
	I stood in the doorway of the barn and watched her pull the tractor's computer assembly from the cab, my father kneeling on a scaffold nearby and disconnecting the wires as she went. Biceps bulging, she hefted the engine block-sized assembly and placed it carefully on the dirt floor, wiping her brow with the back of her furred forearm as Dad hopped down to inspect it.
	It was nice to see them getting along. When I had met Raz, she had been practically feral, like some kind of wild animal that had wandered in from the forest and refused to be tamed. All it had taken was a little cross-species understanding, albeit along with several threats of maiming, to build a bridge. It had happened with Raz, and now she was teaching others of her kind to see humans from the same perspective as she did. When this war was over, we were going to need to get along, and Borealans like Raz were the key to that. The UNN seemed to want to use her people as disposable shock troopers, but if her father had his way, then Borealis was going to become a real military power that could not be so easily dismissed.
	I watched as my father replaced the offending component, gesturing for Raz to place the computer back into the recess where the driver would have sat in a traditional tractor. She strained to lift the hunk of metal off the ground, her impressive figure never failing to enrapture me. Dad scurried up the scaffold to reconnect the wires and cables as she held it in place, then she stepped back and planted her hands on her hips to admire their handiwork.
	“We'd better think about getting our things together, Raz,” I said. “The shuttle will be here to pick us up before long.”
	“Has it been two days already?”
	“I'm afraid so, yes.”
	She stretched and sighed, then turned her attention back to my father, who was just finishing up with the repairs.
	“Do you require more assistance, Father of Stanley?”
	“You can call me Greg,” he chuckled as he slammed the access door on the cab shut and lifted a tablet computer to check the wireless connection on the tractor. “You've been a great help Raz, thank you.”
	She walked over to me, seeming pleased with herself, and we made our way back to the house to pack our bags. We hadn't brought much, just a change of clothes each, and so it wasn’t long before we were ready to depart.
	We sat in the living room again, Raz seated uncomfortably on the human-sized couch as we chatted with my mother, waiting for the roar of the dropship to come in over the horizon.
	“Have you enjoyed your stay with us?” Mom asked as she handed Raz a glass of water. Even a pint glass was dwarfed in her massive, furry mitts, and she drank it down in a few gulps.
	“Yes, very much so.” She looked to me for a moment, struggling to remember the phrases I had taught her. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
	“You're very welcome,” my mother replied, chuckling at Raz's stilted delivery. Being formal didn't suit her, she was out of her element, but it was endearing. “We'd love to have you again. I think you even managed to get on Greg's good side, that's quite an achievement!”
	She sat down beside me and sipped at her steaming mug of coffee, turning her head towards me and straightening her spectacles as Raz looked on.
	“You're off to your space station again, then?”
	“Yeah, it takes a while to get back to the Pinwheel, and we need to be back on duty pretty soon. It's a miracle we managed to get any leave at all, Raz especially is being run ragged lately with all the new recruits.”
	“And what is it you do exactly, dear? Remind me.”
	Raz took a moment to think about her reply, shifting her weight on the couch as the wooden frame creaked ominously under her exaggerated weight.
	“I train the new recruits and teach them how to interact with humans without...I teach them how to avoid conflict and work together.”
	“You're being modest, Raz,” I added. “She's the unofficial Matriarch of the station, there's no Borealan on the Pinwheel who doesn't respect her and look to her for advice, and the more unruly newcomers quickly learn to fear her.”
	“I can't imagine what that must be like for you,” my mother said as she leaned over to pick up her mug from the coffee table and took another long sip. “I had a hard enough time raising Stanley, never mind a whole space station full of children.”
	“They are not my children,” Raz clarified, but my mother waved her hand dismissively.
	“Sure they are, sounds like the job of a mother to me, running around after unruly youngsters and trying to set them straight.” She placed her mug back on the table and leaned back in her seat, appraising Raz as the alien looked on. “I'm glad that Stanley has found somebody he gets along with. He was such a solitary boy, I did worry about him making friends and finding a partner when he was growing up.”
	“I'm right here Mom,” I complained, embarrassed by her frankness.
	“We live so far from civilization, he never really had the opportunity to play with the other children and socialize with other people the way a boy should. When he said that he was joining the UNN, I was sure he would be eaten alive at boot camp.” She leaned across and patted me on the back. “He proved us wrong though.”
	“Stanley is respected among the troops,” Raz said, my face starting to burn as I realized one of her tactless comments was coming. “He trains all recruits in the handling of weapons on the station and his skill with a rifle surpasses even my own. His martial prowess is one of the qualities that first made me desire him as a mate-”
	I cut her off with a wave of my hand before she divulged too much, increasingly embarrassed as she cocked her head at me quizzically, but my mother seemed more than pleased by the information.
	Saved by the bell. The sound of a shuttle's engine rang out through the house, faint but growing louder as it approached the property.
	“That's our ride,” I said, standing and gesturing for Raz to follow me. We walked out into the courtyard with my mother in tow, watching the vessel circle the farm on its stubby wings before selecting a landing spot a short distance away. It kicked up a cloud of dust as its gear absorbed the impact, the troop bay ramp lowering as the pilot waited for us.
	“Thanks for having us Mom,” I said, giving her a hug. She embraced Raz too, wrapping her arms around the alien's wide hips for a moment before releasing her. My father jogged out of the barn and approached us, wiping his hands on an oily rag and then extending one towards Raz. She looked to me as if seeking reassurance, and when I didn't protest, she took it. They shook, and while Raz likely didn't understand the significance of the gesture, my mother and I did. Dad was stubborn, he loathed novelty and change and yet here he was shaking the hand of an alien who he had met only a couple of days prior.
	Maybe there was just something special about Raz that made her approachable while other Borealans were not. Perhaps it was her personality or her experiences that opened her up to people and let her interact with humans in ways that would have been intolerable to others of her kind, at least before going through her integration program. In either case, she had won over my father in record time. In doing so, she had secured a place in our family.
	I bid my father goodbye and climbed into the dropship, waving to my tearful mother as the bay door closed with a pneumatic hiss and we buckled into our respective seats.
	It was the same pilot who had brought us down from the jump carrier, and I greeted him as I clipped the harness across my chest.
	“Back up to the carrier, sir?”
	“Yes, thank you.”
	“It's nice being back here,” he commented over the roar of the engines as they powered up, lifting us towards the sky as my farmhouse diminished into the distance behind us. “It's so rare that I get to visit Earth these days. This your first time Ma'am?” He directed the second question towards Raz, and her furry ears swiveled to track his voice. “What did you think of our homeworld?”
	“I liked it,” she replied, beaming at me across the troop bay. “I look forward to my next visit.”

THE END

For a list of all my work, along with free art and Ebook downloads, please visit: www.patreon.com/Snekguy