Page 21 of Jorhee

The three of us nodded and, apparently satisfied with our silent responses, he gave us a nod in return and continued.

“My great grandpa served in the US Navy, and when he got out, he used his VA loan to buy the land he built the Double J Ranch on. He built up a herd of beef cattle, which my grandfather then added a small horse herd to. My dad took itover when grandpa got too old to do much around the ranch, and growing up, as the only son, it was always said one day the ranch would be mine. I grew up doing chores around the ranch, and while other boys did Scouts, I did 4-H. My sister helped bottle feed rejected calves and the odd foal, but always complained about it. She didn’t even enjoy helping Mama cook, which is probably just as well since she can burn water. When Mama died, Dad ended up hiring a cook who’d prepare all the meals for the ranch hands and us. My sister refused to do 4-H, sticking with Brownies before dropping out in fourth grade. She spent nearly all her time playing with her Barbie styling head she got that year for her birthday, putting makeup on it and doing its hair. I went to college to learn business, to help me make sound decisions about the ranch’s future.

My final year, she met Ted while attending beauty school at the local Vo-Tech. She ran into him at a local coffee shop, and right after she got her certificate and was hired at Pam’s Pamper Parlor in town, they got married in our backyard. Ted’s an accountant and is the junior partner at the local tax preparer’s office, which is really just a fancy way to say Harold Meyer has him pay half the office rent and power bill as well as for the spring water delivery for their water cooler. No sooner had they said their “I do’s” than my sister insisted Dad let Ted handle the ranch’s accounts.

I graduated, and Dad insisted I come straight home, so I did, and I wasn’t real happy about that. Doing our taxes, sure, but actually managing our accounts? That felt wrong, as neither one of them had anything else to do with the ranch except for coming to Sunday dinner twice a month. Dad gave in, letting me handle the ledgers before handing them off at the end of each month for Ted to look over, supposedly to help advise us on how we could lessen our tax liability. Their visits to the ranch began to get more frequent, increasing the Sunday dinners to every Sundayand often Saturdays too, calling my Dad during the week ‘just to chat’ etc. I can see now it had been an escalation with stealing the ranch from me in mind. They had to be influencing Dad behind my back all that time; otherwise, he’d have ignored the comments his new fiancee made about my being gay and that causing potential problems for the ranch.”

He looked down at the tightly clasped hands in his lap.

“I actually think my sister had something to do with that too, as Miss Susie goes once a week for a wash and set, every Wednesday, which folks in town call ‘Blue Wednesday’ as the older ladies all go for the Wednesday Wash, Rinse, and Set special.” His lips quirked up on one side. “The rinse always leaves their hair with a blue tint. My grandmother used to go, and her white hair always ended up looking bluer than most, bless her soul. That and my Dad said she suggested I stay at the ranch as a ranch hand for a while, so I don’t think she meant for Dad to actually just give them the ranch entirely. ”

I did not like what I was hearing. “Your sister and her mate and your father’s new mate convinced your father to give your sister the ranch?” I demanded, hoping I had misunderstood where this had all been leading to.

He sucked in a breath, letting it out in a small gust.

“That’s about the size of it. We all sat down for Sunday dinner, and Dad let us know he was marrying Miss Susie and they were buying an RV and leaving on an extended honeymoon seeing America. Then he dropped the bomb, saying Miss Susie had pointed out my being gay made people uncomfortable, so it would be better for me to let my sister do the store runs to the feed and hardware stores and Ted take over the rest of the ranch, with me taking over as ranch foreman once our chief ranch hand I’d been helping retired. So, instead of an owner, an employee.” He ran a hand over his face, looking troubled, and Buster whined, licking his other hand. “I’m okay, buddy,” he reassuredthe canine, giving him a gentle scratch behind an ear. “Miss Susie has always been really devout, never missing a service at church. She went to morning service every Sunday, including the adult Sunday school, and Wednesday evenings, she’d go to that one too. And she also attended some ladies’ thing there every week. But the thing is, she was always nice to me, so this came kind of outta left field. And for her to say she wouldn’t marry Dad unless he kept me as a ranch hand who didn’t have any business dealings even at the feed store, well, that feels odd. But if my sister bent her ear while doin’ her hair, I can see how she’d be easily convinced that she would be helping Dad and saving the ranch. To put it mildly, she’s a bit gullible.”

“That makes it even worse, because if that’s true, they also duped Miss Susie," Kiprr pointed out.

“Yeah, well, she was still willing to let me lose my inheritance because of what other people might be thinking about me, so I’m not willing to forgive her either. But I really would like to get my horses. One’s the gelding my Dad got me as my tenth birthday present, and the other is the mare he gave me when I graduated from college and returned home. Both have papers in his name, though, not mine, and well, when he said what he said, I lost my temper and said some things, so I reckon he will be feeling right salty about that and won’t want to let me have them.”

“The press will sniff this out,” Fethri said, giving me a significant look.

“I was afraid of that. They’re going to want to know all about me and my family, huh?”

I placed a hand on his thigh, giving it a gentle squeeze, my tail circling his ankle. “They will. Thank you for sharing this with us so I can let my fathers know. They will have the Press Office try to get a handle on it. As for your vid idea, I think you should get started right away. Just don’t mention your family directly, except to talk about the hope that soon the horses youleft behind with them will be here, enjoying new lives at New Haven.”

He nodded. “Okay, yeah. If I don’t sound critical of them, if what they did comes out or they say something negative about me, it’s them that will look bad.”

“Exactly.” I bumped his shoulder gently in a show of solidarity.

“I’ll do it,” he said, a determined glint in his eye. “Tomorrow I’ll see what I need to use to do it and maybe even get started making my first vid.”

I had a feeling his family was not going to know what hit them and his horses would be on their way much sooner than he dared to hope.

14

JESSE

Kiprr turned out to be a great resource when it came to creating my first video. Using my tablet, he filmed me talking about how surprised I’d been by being matched. I mentioned my initial sense of disbelief, but Johree had suggested not going into the finer details, which I agreed to so as to not cause potential offense amongst the Dragonii for having insulted their prince, so I glossed over my rude behavior and merely informed all that Dragonii could confirm who their mates were by scent, so there was a double confirmation that a match was indeed solid.

Then I made my big reveal as to who I’d been matched with. After conferring with his fathers, who looped in the publicity office, it was decided that my vid would be prefaced with a short segment from the king, and released galaxy-wide as an official announcement, with my YouVid channel also having the video go live thirty seconds later. That way, everyone got to hear about the match at the same time and get an introduction of sorts to the new prince - me.

And don’t that beat all. From disinherited son to prince, in one fell swoop. Plus, I not only get my own damned ranch, but a planet more or less too.

Kiprr and I edited it quickly thanks to the editing software Bob sourced for us, leaving it so it more or less viewed as if it were a livestream. We did the same thing the day after, quickly filming Johree and I, as we left the Corsair, walking down the gangplank onto the spaceport grounds. This video was all about my first impressions of New Haven, which I genuinely was seeing for the first time, having stayed aboard until it was time to start filming precisely for this reason. I wanted authenticity rather than slick production values. This was me, the ordinary guy from Oklahoma who was about to marry an alien prince and who’d become the first human colonist of New Haven. We walked from the spaceport while Johree explained how small the colony was right now, lacking even a jail or a house for us to live in. Then we walked down the small main street, which was made of packed dirt, and I did a quick 360 pan to show everything that was actually there, which, as he’d said, was mostly a whole lot of nothing. But we talked about what was coming soon to the colony with the infrastructure that was going to be built.

“We won’t build any particular building until we have staffing for it,” Johree explained, “so while the schoolhouse is a priority, its lot will remain vacant until we have a schoolteacher. In the meantime, the very few school-aged children we have are taking virtual lessons together, which are being taught by Bob.”

“So, kind of like the kids in the Australian Outback,” I said, remembering a documentary I’d seen in the third grade where the kids there often either did lessons via radio or attended an online school. How true that still was, I had no idea, but I figured it would give folks back on Earth a frame of reference that was both familiar and successful. “What’s being built here?” I asked, pointing to a bot that was building walls within an outlined perimeter marked with lasers put down by some of the Corsair’s crew in order to assist the colony’s growth.

“That’s our new sheriff’s office and jail,” Johree replied smoothly. “Crime is pretty nonexistent, but we do get a few rowdy drunks who need to sleep things off, and if we ever do need to actually detain someone, it’s best to be prepared in advance. The grid laid out across from it will be our courthouse. Right now, I’ll perform the services of a judge, and if a trial is required, colonists will be selected at random for jury duty.”

We came to a stop, and he pointed to a large area next to the courthouse. It was marked off, though strangely it appeared to have no back corners.

“Right here is where we’ll build our manse.”

“You mean like an actual mansion?” I squeaked, and he laughed.