Warmth settles in my chest.
Andromeda seems even more excited now. “So, let me tell you the criteria thingy. Basically, Sylvus only arranges matches he’s sure are going to work out. If an unhappy hucow were to flee to ICSS space, even Sylvus would struggle to get us out of that mess. Now, that’s a little paternalistic for my taste. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t seriously want this. Basically, I think we should describe the process to you, and you can do a trial placement. Theonlything we ask is that if you have a problem, you come to us to solve it. Me and Sylvus, that is.”
“A trial placement?” I don’t know if I can handle another trial. Then again, if it’smydecision, as Andromeda says, I can choose to make anything work.
“Yeah, we have a couple of Arthropoids looking for pets at any given point in time. They’re not all…good people, but if any of them were abad person,Sylvus wouldn’t associate with them, if that makes sense.”
“Uh… kinda, yeah. So I’d get to meet them first?”
“If you want to. I was thinking, like, speed dating? Is that crazy?”
I laugh and shrug. “No more crazy than sneaking onto Zairion Prime in the first place.”
Andromeda snaps her fingers. “Yes! Exactly. I like you.”
She tilts her glass toward me, and we clink ours together.
Excitement glimmers in her eyes as she says, “You’re in.”
Sylvus and Andromedaset me up in a swanky hotel room for the night, then Andromeda and I spent a few hours in a cafe suspended in the middle of a flower grove as we went over more of the details.
Andromeda poses the ultimate question: Are you ready?
I give an enthusiastic yes.
The next step is to meet my potential matches. We do that over dinner.
The restaurant is much like the private lounge: swanky, moody, and vertical in a way that strains my human brain. Tables line the floor and a network of elevated silk platforms, interspersed with orange globes that throw off warm light despite no recognizable wiring. The waitstaff are all Arachnoids like Sylvus, but elegant orb-weaver types. They step nimbly through the maze of silk, never disturbing the full house of dining guests.
Andromeda leads me along the floor, and we pause as a server delivers food to a table just ahead of us.
I half-expect to see servings of fine steak and prime rib, but the ceramic plates are arranged with intricately cut fruit. Each dish is a sculpture rendered in painstaking detail. There’s a tree whose leaves are paper-thin slices of a fruit that resembles anapple, and next to that a flower carved entirely from what looks like a single watermelon, except the rind is lavender and the flesh is pale orange. I don’t recognize what the other dishes are meant to resemble, but they’re all exquisitely crafted.
When the path is clear again, Andromeda and I head to the back, where a silk hallway sweeps up and around to another velvet curtain. Beyond it is a private dining room, currently empty except for Sylvus chatting with one of the staff.
“This one should be nice,” Andromeda says, clambering up a steep ramp to a table that offers a human-sized booth on one side and an open area for Arthropoids on the other.
I follow, sliding into the booth next to her. What nervousness I feel from being so high—about twenty feet from the main floor—is offset by the solid booth at my back. This feels like a safe cubby from which to observe the rest of the room, and my mammalian instincts settle.
I ask Andromeda a few general questions about the planet to pass the time, but I barely process her answers as I eye the hall we came through, curious and apprehensive about who I’ll meet first.
The first one through the curtain has dark, chin-length hair and the body of a wasp—notably smaller than the sprawl of Sylvus’s spider-like legs. Still, the long, thin stinger at the end of his abdomen is not to be underestimated.
Sylvus greets him warmly as another arrives, this one with mottled grey moth wings, smoky grey skin, and fluffy antennae that twist in the air. Can he already sense me?
His soft-looking wings put me at ease until his piercing crimson eyes scan the room. Even though he doesn’t look directly at me, a shiver trails down my spine.
The third to arrive is a scorpion, dark-skinned with a regal bearing, and the stinger of his tail glints needle-sharp in the dimlight. Two massive claws rest ahead of his humanoid torso, and either could easily snap me in half.
Andromeda is saying something comforting, I think. As she scoots out of the booth, I nod, even though my brain didn’t quite register her words.
I remain vaguely dissociated as the moth approaches. Autopilot carries me through the scripts that I’ve spent my entire life refining.Hi, how are you? It’s nice to meet you. What are you looking for in a hucow pet?
By the time I fully return to my body, the third male, the scorpion, is walking away.
I take a deep breath. Okay, that’s done. Now for the next step, which is…
Oh. Right. Deciding which of these men I want to spend the rest of my life with.
