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“We’re supposed to get a powerful protective animal to help us on our missions. Something with teeth and claws. Something that can kill in our defense. I got Strumpet. They were trying to embarrass me, and now I think they were trying to set me up too. Mission accomplished.”
“Their mistake,” he says. “They delivered you to me.”
“Yes, because what you really needed was a goatherd,” I say, sarcastically. “I can’t live my life here, like this.”
“Why not?”
“Because… because I’m supposed to have adventures, Gruff. I’m not a fucking domestic laborer.”
“Maybe that is what you are for now.”
Strumpet is pregnant. She has always been a little bit of liability. Maybe she’s happy here. And maybe it would be okay to leave her here with Gruff. He’d take good care of her. He’d make sure her babies were safe and happy. I could leave her, I could go and find this city, where they have the technology to get me off the planet. I could catch a ship and escape. And I could live a life of exploration. Like I intended to. Yes, there are wild bucks between here and there, but there will always be obstacles and dangers. I have worked a long time, dreamed a lot of dreams, and none of them ended in domestic servitude.
* * *
It is a dark night when I sneak out of Gruff’s house. He is sleeping soundly and does not stir as I leave. I can’t let my desire for him override basic sense, and the greater drives and purpose of my life. If I have been set up, I intend to do something about it. Gruff doesn’t understand. He thinks I should be happy just to tend goats and get fucked. Maybe that would be enough for some people. It’s not enough for me. If EET decided to betray me, they’ll soon discover it was huge mistake.
I go back to the dome. Yes, it’s a risk. I could encounter a buck or two along the way. I am still armed, though, and I am absolutely prepared to use my weapons. Perhaps they sense that. Or maybe I made a good enough impression the other day. Or maybe they’re all asleep. Either way, I don’t get the chance.
Until I reach my dome. And that’s when I realize it’s not empty. Someone is inside the tattered remnants of my dome. Someone who snores.
I level my weapon at the door.
“Who the hell are you?”
He sits bolt upright, startled from sleep. It’s a young buck. Teenage, probably. He looks skinny and scared, more scared of me than I am of him. I’d put his age at about eighteen if he were human. His clothing looks like it might have been expensive once. It’s silk, gold and green, but it is tattered, torn, and filthy now.
“Don’t hurt me!” He lifts his hands and looks at me with concerned eyes. It’s the first time anyone or anything on this planet has shown the slightest fear of me, and it confuses me for a second.
“Don’t hurt you? Aren’t you going to try to hurt me?”
“Why would I do that?”
We stare at each other, trying to work out who is the aggressor and who is the potential victim.
“I don’t…”
“My name’s Billy,” he says. “I turned eighteen two months ago.”
He says that like it is some kind of explanation.
“Okay. Happy birthday?”
He laughs. “No. There was nothing happy about the birthday. I was cast out at the first touch of daylight. Eighteen years and one day was too old to live in the city.”
It makes sense. In a world without females, young males become disposable. This one looks hungry and scared. He’s skinny, and his horns are yet to curl, they’re just sort of sticking up out of a mass of red hair. He’s got blue eyes, and there’s a lost expression in them that arouses every single bit of protective instinct I have inside me.
“You were thrown out without anything?”
“I was given supplies,” he says. “But before the first dark came, I had been robbed of everything. I’ve never had to survive in the wild before. I don’t…” he looks like he’s about to cry and I feel my heart break with pity and outrage. “Every time I cross the path of another buck I have to run and hide, or…” He does not finish the sentence, but my mind fills in the blank admirably and awfully well.
“Fuck,” I curse under my breath. “Are you… do you need medical attention? I have some painkillers, and I have some bandages.”
I was going to keep them for myself. This journey won’t be easy, and the odds of me being injured at some point are fairly high, but now his need is greater than mine.
“I’m okay,” he says. “I look worse than I am.”
“Are you hungry?”
