Hang a shining star
When a human woman brings her canine boyfriend over for Christmas, meeting the folks proves to be a little tense. Can they learn the value of family? Will peace on Earth and goodwill to men extend to dogs? Considering the author, will there be knotting involved? Let's find out...
When a human woman brings her canine boyfriend over for Christmas, meeting the folks proves to be a little tense. Can they learn the value of family? Will peace on Earth and goodwill to men extend to dogs? Considering the author, will there be knotting involved? Let's find out...
Merry Christmas! This is a simple story, something of a sequel to Steel and Fire and Stone. At least it shares characters. It's a pretty straightforward story, and it wraps up Chanatja's character arc. I am posting it here because I am secretly a gigantic sap, but I hope you like it anyway ;) Thanks to GoldenFox, Rechan and Spudz for editing and idea help.
Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.
"Hang a shining star," by Rob Baird
He turned the metallic strip over and over in his fingers, fidgeting. Helios Starlines 262, the etched ticket read. Seat 16J. The shepherd was no stranger to starships. He'd been riding the damned things from Augustine to Yalikunga, and a dozen systems in between. This one, at least, wasn't likely to get shot at -- so why was he so damned nervous?
The intercom clicked on, and he started -- jumping briefly at the intrusion into his thoughts. "Attention in the gate area. This is an announcement for flight 262 with nonstop service to Rainier. In a few minutes, we'll begin seating our priority passengers, including Corona Club platinum members and passengers in our first class cabin. Please make sure your boarding slip and biometric identification documents are ready and preapproved."
Check. Double-check. When he turned the biometric card in the light, the hologram turned with it. In profile, his white nose was sharp and predatory. His ears flicked back, and he slipped the thing into his pocket, next to the little package that felt far heavier than it really was. At least people were ignoring him. He could almost fade into the background -- were he not the only dog in the crowd.
"Excuse me -- sir?" A woman's voice caught his attention, and he glanced up to find one of the starliner's crew looking at him expectantly. "Do you have your military identification? Uniformed personnel can board now."
He was wearing his fatigues because he had nothing else, not out of any particular desire to draw attention. But he nodded gently, and followed her to the desk, handing over his identification card, and the metallic boarding pass that encoded his right to embark on the big starship hulking on the tarmac.
"Alright. And you have... no luggage? Just that bag, sir?" He nodded again, mutely. "Final destination Rainier, Arcadia district, Kinnairdy? Very well, sir, it looks like everything's in order. Here you are." She was holding out his documents for him to take; her eyes flicked down to the card, staring at the printed name. "Welcome aboard, mister..."
"Chanatja." He pronounced it not in the fashion of his own kind, with the first syllable growled at the back of the throat, but as a human might. Sha-nat-ya.
The gate agent smiled. "Enjoy your flight, Mr. Chanatja."
Seat 16J was towards the front part of the starliner, a Blohm und Voss 440 -- he'd seen the type before, as cargo lighters out in the frontier provinces. This looked far less utilitarian: the seats were sumptuous, wrapping about his body as he settled in. There was no five-point harness; no handhold to grip in the event of hostile fire. Just a simple seatbelt. He buckled it, and turned to stare out the window.
It was just past dawn at the spaceport. Pink light picked out the machinery in long, soft shadows. There was a gentle promise in them: a warm day, pleasant travels; good company. But he would be long gone by the time the sun had risen fully over the runway.
A tall man and a younger human, not yet into puberty, had been assigned the two other seats in his section. The child took the middle seat; at first, he looked past the white shepherd, through the same window. Then he seemed to catch sight of his seatmate for the first time. "Oh! Hey, daddy, look! It's a dog!"
"Uh. Yes, so it is, Jim. C'mon, why don't you sit and buckle in?"
"It looks just like Mia, except white..." Chanatja felt something touch him -- the boy's hand, petting his forearm wonderingly. He stiffened, his hackles lifting almost invisibly.
"Come on, leave him alone," his father ordered. "We need to get ready for liftoff, remember?"
But the boy, faced with such a novel situation, was not in the mood. "I wonder who its owner is?"
Chanatja cocked an eyebrow, half-turning from the glass to peer sideways at the child. For a human, he was cute enough -- with bright eyes, and a smile that seemed to compliment skin the color of chestnuts. "Nobody," the shepherd said, as softly as he could.
The father coughed awkwardly. "Jim. Sit now." He accented the order by pulling the boy away, down into the starliner's seat. "Sorry," he muttered to the dog. "You know how kids can be."
"No," Chanatja admitted.
Now that the shepherd was verbal, though, Jim was even more intrigued, and took no cues from Chanatja's single word answers. "We have a dog, too," he chirped. "Daddy says it's the best purchase he ever made, because he got it used. Mom didn't like it at first, but now it helps her in the garden. What do you do?"
"I'm a soldier."
"Oh. Cool," Jim breathed, with widening eyes. "Have you ever shot anybody?"
Chanatja shut his eyes. Before he could answer, one of the flight attendants spoke on the intercom. "Good morning, passengers. Boarding is now completed, and we're readying our final checks for departure."
As the flight attendant went through his spiel -- describing safety procedures and the rules of the starliner -- Chanatja found cause to reflect on how very formal it all felt. He had been on many spaceships before. Nobody had ever been so mothering on a dropship, screaming landwards from four hundred kilometers up, dodging missile fire and flak. In the event of reactor malfunction that requires evacuation? He laughed to himself. Yassuja -- didn't these people know that they'd all be dead?
The atmospheric thrusters started with a dull boom that shook the ship from stem to stern. As they gained power, the starliner began to vibrate, a shuddering thrum that set the shepherd's teeth clattering. Next to him, Jim had forgotten all about his companion: he was glancing around nervously, gauging the reaction of the other passengers. "Is everything okay? Are we going to --"
The magnetic grapples that held them to the tarmac released, giving the ship a sharp kick, and then they were drifting upwards, feeling the tug of shifting gravity as the nose angled towards orbit. Chanatja closed his eyes. Now he was back in his element. Everything was gentler than on a CODA gunboat, but the sequence was the same. The roar of the thrusters, building in power. The sound of the wind tearing past. Jolts of turbulence as the starship forced the atmosphere out of the way with brutal, singleminded purpose.
"Daddy? Are we going to crash?"
"No. Of course not." The older man tried to be reassuring. "Look at the dog. Does he seem worried?"
"No, but..."
"Then if a dog's not worried, why should you be?"
Chanatja wasn't certain if this was supposed to be insulting to him or not. "But it's a dog," the child protested. "It doesn't know how to be worried." That one was easier to tell. But it easy enough to ignore, as well -- he was no stranger to being insulted, even inadvertently.
The ride smoothed out as they left the atmosphere, but the excitement of those ten minutes had drained the boy. By the time they were ready for their faster-than-light jump, half an hour later -- the ship's movements slow and peaceful -- his eyes were closed, and the shepherd heard the sound of his breathing become regular and deep.
He was not bothered by silence, but humans often seemed to be. Sure enough, after fidgeting for an hour, the older man spoke up. "Hey, uh. Thanks for not being too hard on my kid, earlier. It's his first time traveling."
"I see."
"We're going to Isle-Saint-Caterine. My wife and the other kids are already there, but we had to get permission from the doctor to travel, and that took a couple days..."
He didn't know what it was about humans that gave them some pathological need to converse with strangers. "Ah."
"What about you, sarge?"
"Rainier is my last stop. I'm meeting a friend who lives in the Arcadia district."
"Staying for Christmas?"
"Apparently."
"Sounds nice." Again, the shepherd's terse responses appeared not to have suggested a desire for quiet, but rather only that he was capable of conversation. "What do you do in the service, anyway? CODA, right?"
"CODA," Chanatja echoed. He had been in the service of the Colonial Defense Authority for some time. "I'm in school right now. Intermediate leadership. I would like to qualify as an armor section leader."
"Oh, walkers? Jackal 33s? I drove those for two years for AAI."
"Yes, but we use 55s now. I'm a gunner. Well... officially. Before school I was training new recruits on the guns." This was in his comfort zone; easier to talk about. "I've only seen a 33 on static display."
"Hope they fixed the problem with stabilizer gyros. I remember, you used to have to switch them off to get a proper lock -- that's what my gunner always said. Really wore out the bearings."
The white shepherd finally allowed himself a smile. "No, they never fixed that. I started mentioning it in training. Otherwise they wouldn't learn until the field, and that's... a bit too late."
"True enough. You seen any action, then? CODA's busy these days."
He nodded, dipping his head a few degrees. "Jericho, Rambler's Eden, Yalikunga, Inverstal, Eden again..."
"Carthage?"
"Never Carthago, no."
"It was hot when I was in. Trying to knock some sense into the big zaibatsus..." The man looked almost... wistful, Chanatja thought, recalling some memories of his past. "You're lucky. It's a good job, if you can keep it. I couldn't."
"Why not?"
The man gestured to his sleeping child. "Kids. Had one already, but when Jim was born... I wanted to stay on, because of the insurance -- and I was pretty close to being able to buy my citizenship. Wife said no, though. She thought I could put my degree to better use. I'm a lawyer. Hate it," he clarified. "But what can you do? Family, you know?"
Chanatja did not. He had never known his parents; before joining the military he had worked for the same corporation that had bred him in the first place, and the company barracks had little room for families. Or intimacy in general. "I... don't, actually. They weren't big on it, where I was from."
"Mia says the same thing. Don't get that about you types. Trust me, sarge, family's the most important thing in the world."
It was another part of the human experience that the shepherd had never properly experienced. The humans he served with wrote letters back home, and mentioned their parents and children and spouses. It was a little like a pack, he supposed, only more so. And more tightly knit.
And he would be experiencing it firsthand.
When the starship touched down, nine hours later, he steeled himself. Setting his jaw, he took a deep breath before making his way into the busy terminal. It had been eight months, now. Eight months of only the letters, and the long-distance chat with its minutes of lag. Eight months of that weight in his pocket. Eight months, and --
"Chanla!" At the sound of the voice -- practically a squeal, happy and bright -- his tail started wagging. Keen ears swiveled, pinpointing it -- but even as he turned the woman was leaping for him, wrapping her arms in a crushing hug around his chest.
"Hey -- gentle," he gasped, and when she relaxed her hold he licked the human's nose warmly. "How have you been?"
"Not as good as I am now." Carla Martin kissed the black tip of the shepherd's muzzle, and then found her feet again, letting him go. "How was the flight?"
"Not bad. It's so different when nobody's shooting at you."
Carla grinned. "I bet." She must've known, he thought. She looked much better as a civilian -- her skin was soft and slightly tanned, and her bubbling laugh had nothing to darken it. "Come on, dear. We should get on the road."
Outside, winter held Rainier in a cold grip. The sky was an electric purple, above drifts of snow that looked fresh and clean. The hoverdyne she led him to had stabilizers fitted, to cope with uneven terrain. It looked rugged, a smaller version of the trucks she'd driven in the service.
It was, at least, warm inside the cab -- and grew warmer still, when Carla leaned over to kiss him again. "It's not a bad drive, thank god. The spaceport is pretty convenient. Wish the weather would decide what it wants to do -- been thinking about a big snowstorm for a few days now..."
"I haven't seen snow at all for almost two years. Yassuja -- good riddance." Curzon had been an icy planet -- he still shivered, thinking about waking up in their barracks, having to open the door against six centimeters of ice every shift.
"Aww. I kind of like it. Peaceful..." She guided the hoverdyne smoothly out onto a packed-earth highway. "It feels like Christmas, at least. Least I was able to get that off."
"Is this your work truck?"
"Huh uh. This is dad's. My truck's at the depot."
Carla had taken a job as a long-haul trucker -- guiding big cargo 'dynes over the endless blank reaches of the continent, from Rainier to the new industrial towns flourishing in the mineral-rich interior. "How's that going?"
She laughed. "It's a job. There's more pressure, you know? But nobody's allowed to shoot you if you're late, so... guess it's a tradeoff. Anyway, they treat me okay. They didn't want to give me the week off, but... well, being a citizen has its advantages. And it's close to home. Close enough to visit."
"You haven't said much about your family..."
Taking her eyes from the road, she turned and gave him a quirky smile. "Well. Family, you know?" Again this rhetorical question, for which he had no answer. "I love them, but they can be a bit..."
"A bit what?"
Carla took her time in finding an answer. "Provincial," was the word she settled on. "But they mean well. I've put up with 'em for nearly three decades now, I can put up with 'em a few more. And so can you," she said, and laughed. "Oh, Chanla. It's so good to see you! How has your work been? School's okay?"
He nodded. "It's fine. Tactical theory, now. I never took Basic Armor when I first qualified. Yassuja -- there's a lot to remember. But much of it is pretty obvious, when you think about it."
"Thought about OCS? Or do you prefer more honest work?"
There was a subtle question that lay beneath it, which was whether or not he wished to make a career of the service. "I've thought about it," he admitted. Very few moreaus had become officers -- he knew of perhaps only a dozen, and they tended to wind up as commanders of moreau units. So far as Chanatja was concerned, this was not a problem: in any case, he preferred serving with his kin.
He'd explained this before, and Carla claimed to understand. She took his answer in stride, at least -- and then kept on, asking him about who he still corresponded with, and how the weather was, and if he was keeping up with the popular culture she'd tried to interest him in.
The house she guided them to lay at the edge of a small farming town, and was bounded by a wooden fence against which the snow sprawled like a lazy housecat, white and soft and languid. Pale light gave the windows a gentle glow. "Hey, uh. Why don't you let me go first?" Carla suggested, and led the way up a recently cleared stone path. She opened the door, and called inside: "hey, everybody; I'm back."
She had just pulled the door closed behind them when a young human woman appeared. Her glance to Carla was cursory -- Chanatja held her attention for longer, though it was with a raised eyebrow that did not betoken any particular affection. "Hey, Coco. Welcome back."
"Thanks, Gabi." Carla hung up her coat, and then turned back around to face the other two. "Chanla, this is my sister Gabriella. Gabi, this is Chanatja."
"Uh huh," the woman said. "Well, uh. You're just about in time for dinner. I guess." She gestured with a nod down the hallway, and then took her leave of the pair.
"Coco?"
"Like the nut," Carla said. "I don't... remember how I got the name."
The dining room was not particularly large, and crowding diminished its size further. Carla introduced the occupants quickly: Gabriella's husband, Randall, and their son Sebastian, a juvenile human around the same age as his neighbor on the starliner. Alejandro, a lanky young man who could've passed for any of Chanatja's students but was, according to Carla, "attempting artistry." They nodded, more or less politely, when she indicated them.
Carla's mother, Sofia, did not. She held Chanatja in a pointed glare, beneath which he sat, cautiously, after the others did. When the glare did not abate, he swept his ears back. Catching the gesture, Carla gave a short sigh of irritation. "Don't mind it, everyone's just... well, you know. They do a lot of work to get ready for Christmas. Oh! Which reminds me, we'll have to find you an ornament, or... something..."
"What?"
"For the tree. It's sort of a tradition to put up ornaments on it. We all do that. I guess I forgot to tell you..."
"There's a surprise," he heard someone mutter.
Carla ignored it. "You don't have one, so --"
"The ornaments," Sofia glowered, "are for family. In case you've forgotten that, too."
The heat in the accusation took even Carla aback, momentarily. "You'll, ah, have to excuse mom. She's just stressed..."
"Is that it?" Sofia's voice was cold, and very sharp. The shepherd had the sense, although her eyes were no longer on him, that he was being chided.
The uncomfortable silence that followed was broken by Alejandro. "Carla, ah, didn't tell us anything about you until this morning. Some aspects... took us by surprise." He followed this up by taking one of the bowls from the center of the table, laden with something redolent of vegetables, and passing it towards his mother.
"That's one way of putting it." Sofia was still standing, disinclined to accept the imposition of normalcy, and presently the young man gave up, passing the bowl to Sebastian instead, who served himself and then handed it onwards.
The bowl had now made its way to an older man with greying hair, who made his own attempt as he spooned some of the red sauce onto his plate. "When Coco told us her new boyfriend was 'fetching,' we just assumed it was an adjective." His voice was dry, although it was accompanied by a wry smile that suggested a conspiratorial fondness.
"Luís," Sofia snapped. "Don't."
The smile wavered. "At least let's not argue at dinner, then?" When this didn't brook any immediate agreement, he continued: "So, Randall, you were saying?"
"Saying?" Randall was a pink-skinned man, with a shorn head and a scruffy beard. Bushy eyebrows lifted with the question.
"About the new bridge?"
"Oh. Yeah, we'll have to delay it another three months. Now, me, I don't really see any problems with it, but you know how the government can be. I guess we'll have to try bribing them soon enough; see if that makes them any more cooperative."
"Randy's an architect," Carla said. "They've been working on a bridge to Albatross Island for a year and a half now. Pretty much as long as I've lived in Rainier. The local ecclesia approved the funds for it six years ago..."
"But they keep changing what they want. First it was supposed to be for heavy traffic, 'cause of the mines. Then that was too expensive, so they rescoped it for light traffic and planned a harbor to ferry the ore instead. Then, just before we started ordering materials, they decided it should be for heavy traffic again. Now they're saying they need to go through another audit to make sure it won't collapse in the winter storms." Randall waved his hand dismissively. "You must know how that kind of thing goes, though; Carla talks about how bad the bureaucracy was in CODA all the time..."
Sofia Martin stayed out of the conversation, and every time Chanatja spoke she flinched, as though the sound itself was offensive. For the first time in several months he was made to feel self-conscious about his accent, which was a mostly unavoidable consequence of his physiology.
His silence -- leaving Alejandro and Randall to carry on the conversation as it moved to become a discussion of the ecclesia in general, and a litany of its failures -- improved matters a little. Enough, at least, that he could focus on the food: roasted pork, accompanied by black beans. The red sauce seemed mostly to be tomatoes and onions, and it prickled his tongue strongly -- though nobody else seemed to mind.
"Something wrong with the salsa?" Sofia's question was not a friendly one, and again the shepherd found his ears pivoting backwards.
"The... the sauce?"
"It's fine, mama," Carla said softly. "Really amazing. Always is when you make it. Are the peppers from David's farm?"
"I didn't ask you."
Chanatja swallowed, and glanced downwards at his plate. It was true that most of the salsa was uneaten. "It's good," he tried. "I will eat more of it, I -- I'm just not used to it. What they serve in the barracks is really bland, that's all." He tried to smile, and perked up one of his ears hopefully.
Sofia set her jaw. "Sorry we don't have any dog food, then," she hissed -- then stood, and stalked from the room without another word. Luís took a deep breath, shaking his head with a long glance in Carla's direction, and allowed that he should follow her.
"Planned this well, sis," Gabriella said. Chanatja was frozen, one paw resting on his spoon, the fingers curled in anticipation of a further bite he no longer felt particularly hungry for.
Carla stabbed at a piece of pork four or five times before successfully retrieving it. "How was I supposed to know? Mom and dad are usually pretty easygoing."
"Perhaps, ah..." Chanatja finally removed his paw. "Perhaps it would be easier if I left. There must be a hostel around here..."
Alejandro shook his head, leaving his unruly mop of hair waving. "Not for twenty kilometers. It's not a big city. You could --"
"Gasta." Carla gripped Chanatja's forearm strongly. "Iltayisa... råk jankala rulnalag, huz... ru... yahatu sar nalhasha. Øda ala dhalchana -- Channich."
Her pronunciation was not particularly good, and she fumbled for her words. She had switched to dogspeak either out of sympathy for him, or to hide her intent; he stayed with English for the subdued reply. "Alright."
"What language was that?" Alejandro asked, glancing between them.
"Nakath-rukhat. It's the language of my... species."
"Oh. Cool. So what did she say?"
"She told me to stay," Chanatja explained. It was not worth explaining that she had also apologized for her mother's behavior, or called her family 'complicated.'
Randall looked up from rolling up some beans and pork into a bit of flatbread. "All that to tell you to stay?"
"She was looking for the right word," Chanatja said, creating the excuse on the fly. "It's not an easy language to pick up, I suppose."
His appetite was gone, and he began to feel more strongly the effects of the day's journey. As dinner wound down he excused himself, and Carla guided him towards her bedroom, down steep wooden stairs and into the house's cold basement.
There, before he could say anything, she slipped her arms around him, and pulled him into a hug. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I should've told you that I hadn't, uh..."
"Mentioned I was a dog?"
"Yeah. That. I guess since I didn't care, I kind of hoped..."
This was not, Chanatja knew, the truth. She had avoided telling them in the way that one procrastinates all unpleasant tasks. There was no reason to have expected that her family would approve, after all. "They hate me. I'm a monster to them -- or a carnival freak. Hate me just like every other human..." he muttered.
"Not everyone," she reminded him softly, and he regretted the heat of his words.
"Well... I guess your brother doesn't seem to mind. But he seems a bit of an outcast, too."
"Alex went to school in the big city." Carla's fingers smoothed the fur of his neck as she paused to consider her explanation. "He learned a lot of things there. My parents don't agree with them any more than they want to listen to him playing Haylom Alem or the Ralu-ralu-kodas. They just put up with him at the dinner table because... what's the saying? Blood is thicker than water?"
He brushed his teeth and changed from his clothes; the routine made things a little less alien. Still, it was really only Carla's presence that made the experience bearable. She leaned against him, as they sat at the edge of her bed. "I'm still glad you came out."
"Well. So am I..."
"Good. You big white lump..." She turned, and kissed him on the tip of his nose. "Let's get some sleep, okay? I promise, it'll be better in the morning."
He was not certain. The shepherd was tired, it was true, from a long day of traveling -- but his sleep was slow to come, and uneasy when it found him. Twice he awoke, staring into the grey darkness in search of his demons, and found nothing. It was only the warmth of the human snuggled up against his furry body that soothed him.
Carla was still slumbering when he awoke, just after the dawn. The light was thin, lacking self-confidence; he shut his eyes and let his other senses take over. His ears caught the sound of distant conversation. A man and a woman, he thought.
"-- We don't have to fight about it..." "No, we don't. Tell it to leave. Before breakfast." The shepherd laid his ears back. "Carla's not going to like that." "She'll get over it, Luís. You can't seriously tell me you're alright with this. Luís. Luís. Answer me!" "No, not exactly, but..." "God damn you and your buts. I won't have that thing in our house. If you won't do it, I will. Good lord, why do you have to be such a soft touch?"
If he opened his eyes again, staring fiercely at the colorless details of Carla's room, he could almost pretend that he could not hear the conversation. It was not enough to keep him from catching the sound of footsteps on the stairs. He swallowed; took a few deep breaths.
Carla was pressed up tightly against him; she had twisted around in her sleep, and her back was to him, so that she faced the door as well. But she did not stir when the knob turned, and pale yellow light framed the silhouette of her mother.
It was a moment before Sofia's eyes adjusted, but when they had Chanatja could see the shudder of revulsion as she caught the scene. His ears drooped further, and he had to steel himself for what came next. "Mrs. Martin?" He kept his voice as soft as he could manage it.
"What?" Sofia didn't seem as reserved; he felt Carla stir in his arms, murmuring quietly.
"She's still asleep," he whispered. "But... I... I didn't mean to cause any problems. I'll leave, just..."
Sofia stepped into the room, in deference to her daughter's slumber, and lowered her voice. "Yes, you will."
"I'm already packed... just... do you mind waiting until she wakes up? I..." His ears flattened further. "I'll tell her something came up, with the army... it won't have to be a problem. Just... a few hours... please?"
The older woman set her jaw, and he had the sense that if she was one of his own kind her lip would be curled. She opened her mouth to speak -- he could tell even before she said anything that it would not be friendly.
But then Carla shifted again, and her mother paused. Her eyes flicked; searched them again. They lingered for a long few seconds -- not on Chanatja, but on something else, something that he could not see. For some moments more he awaited her answer, her cold command.
Instead, though, she turned, and left the room without a word. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and hugged Carla into his fuzzy chest with a reluctant sigh.
She had still not fully awoken, two hours later, and rather than delay the inevitable Chanatja slipped from her bed and padded upstairs to retrieve his jacket from the coatrack and shrug it over his weary shoulders. His bag was still in the closet, unopened.
Sofia was sitting at the kitchen table, her hands around a mug of a dark liquid he took to be coffee. She looked up at the sound of the shepherd's footsteps. Then, when she saw the jacket, she looked away again.
"She's not awake yet," Chanatja explained. "I guess she's tired."
"Of course she is," Sofia said. "She's been racing around since Monday, talking her head off about you coming over. Damned fool," she added, quietly. "Hasn't slept, and then... all that work, getting her father's hoverdyne working so she could drive to the spaceport..."
"Like I said, I... I didn't mean to cause any problems."
Sofia didn't say anything. She stirred her drink until it had developed a swirling whirlpool, and then let the current ebb into stillness again. Finally she looked at him again. "Alright, come on."
"Ma'am?"
The human stood, and opened one of the cupboards, pulling down another mug and carefully filling it from the pan that simmered on the stove. "My hot chocolate," she said. "Old family recipe. From Earth originally, I guess. So's this..." She found a bottle on the counter, uncapped it, and discharged a few spoonfuls into both the new mug and her own.
"That is?"
"Irish cream." She held out the mug, and he took it gingerly. "Come, let's talk somewhere more private."
He followed her to the small living room at the front of the house. The furniture had been recently rearranged, tightly packed together to make room for the pine tree that dominated the room, reaching nearly up to the tall ceiling. It was covered in lights, and popcorn, and what he supposed Carla had meant by 'ornaments' -- small wooden carvings, and beadwork, and finely detailed sculptures. At the top, a porcelain angel regarded the scene in beatific silence.
Sofia sat carefully on the sofa, and when he moved to occupy the seat that faced it across a dark wooden coffee table she shook her head, and indicated the cushion next to her. This he took carefully, and watched her face for approval.
Once more she was silent, but he had no idea what to say to break this spell -- he was not one for conversation, nor for the intricacies of human behavior. When she spoke, at last, it was only to say: "we didn't know."
"You didn't know?"
"We had no idea. About you; about anything. After she joined up, Carla kind of... Disappeared from our lives for a few years. We certainly wouldn't have expected... well... you. Luís and I never had any uplifts, not on the farm, not at the business; not once we retired. I don't like them. It doesn't feel natural. Doesn't feel right."
"You're not the first person to say that," Chanatja allowed. It was true; nobody could say that the moreaus were popular, except for the bottom line of the companies that had created them. "I... hear that a lot."
"Not from Carla, I guess."
"No." Chocolate was, officially, forbidden for his species. So was alcohol. But he took a careful sip of the hot chocolate -- sweet and warm, spilling pleasantly over his broad tongue. Delicious. His tail thumped once, when he took another sip, and in spite of herself he saw Carla's mother smile.
"You like it?"
"It's very good. So... um... so was dinner last night, of course..."
He had worried that the smile might fade, but it did not. "That's an old recipe, too. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I was a little... distracted last night. Ornaments," she laughed ruefully. "That girl. Do you do anything like that? I mean, whoever you're with at Christmas, normally."
"No. I..." He looked at the tree, and thought of how many memories were bound up in the bric-a-brac that adorned its branches. "I've never seen one of these before. I wasn't born free, like you. I was raised in a corporate barracks -- they never would've allowed it. And the army, I mean..."
"We've been doing it for years. My parents did it, and their parents. Just like the food. Everything here... everything here's old. Traditional. Most of the time I think it works out alright. It keeps the family together."
The shepherd lapped slowly at his mug, and without really thinking about it, he found himself saying: "Family is the most important thing in the world."
"Do you get along well with yours?"
He stared into the mug, taking a deep breath that filled his muzzle with the scent of chocolate. It made the answer easier. "I don't have one. The only family I have is the other soldiers in the military. Or..." His ears wavered a little.
"Or my daughter?" He didn't answer. "I don't understand why she does the things she does. I guess I'm old-fashioned that way. But this morning, when I came to throw you out... she just... just..." Sofia faltered, and rubbed briefly at her eye to banish any evidence of the emotion there. "She looked so happy. I haven't seen her that happy since she was a little girl. That was before we moved out here. We want the same thing, I guess, you and me." She took a long drink, swallowing more times than she really needed to. Buying time for an admission: "I'm not comfortable with it. I don't have to be, do I?"
This was not his battle to fight. "No, I suppose not."
She sighed. But she did not answer before Carla joined them, leaning in from the doorframe. "Morning, mama. Morning, Chanchan. How are you guys?"
Before the silence could become too unwieldy, Chanatja spoke up. "Your mother made hot chocolate," he said, opting for the most neutral response he could think of, and hoisted up the mug as evidence. "It's very good."
"It always is," Carla winked; he could not tell if her good spirits were genuine or overcompensating. "Mama, I was thinking -- I know dad's been talking about cleaning the generator filter block for a few weeks... if you're done baking, we could do that today, papi and I. Ought to get to it before the snow falls, if we wind up getting snowed in -- hate to be without heat. You remember how it was last winter... I --" She stopped, and looked between the pair, as if realizing for the first time that something had been interrupted. "Are you two okay?"
"We were just talking." He couldn't read the tone in Sofia's voice.
Carla's gaze had the sudden focus of a policeman investigating a crime scene. "How come Chanla has his coat on? You going somewhere?"
Nothing had been settled. He supposed that Sofia's antipathy had ebbed a little -- but only a little, and the threat she had given to Luís was still in full effect. He opened his muzzle to answer, and then closed it again, flicking his eyes over to watch his girlfriend's mother. Sofia glanced back at him. Then to Carla. Then back again.
"Well? What's going on?"
Sofia pursed her lips, and then sighed through her nose. It was a heavy, pregnant sound. "Cha... Chata..."
"Chanatja," Carla corrected.
This time the older woman's sigh was born more of exasperation at the interruption. "Yes, fine. He was going to go help Uncle Randall chop some firewood, he said. God knows your brother won't."
"Oh. Well... okay." Probably she suspected that this was not the whole story; perhaps she even suspected the truth. But, the excuse having been offered, it was her part in the script to play along. "That was nice of him. But couldn't you have saved the alcohol until after the woodchopping, mom?"
"It fortifies you," Sofia declared primly. "Besides, it's not very much."
Chopping the wood was honest work, at least. He loved the simplicity of it, and Randall proved to be a more or less agreeable conversation partner. Soon enough his son emerged from the house, too, the puffs of his youthful laughter visible in the morning chill. He flopped on his back in the snow like a puppy, and spread his arms and legs to create an apparition Randall described as a "snow angel," and presently the older man was using the pile of wood as an ersatz barricade, against which snowballs pelted at regular intervals.
Even Chanatja, who did not consider himself particularly fond of human young, could not help grinning, and his ears drooped a little when Sofia called Randall and Sebastian in, explaining that they were headed to the next town over to fetch supplies for Christmas dinner. No mention of the shepherd was made; when he was finished with the wood, he padded up the steps to discover Carla alone in the main room of the house.
She rose to meet him, and he gave her an obliging hug. "You didn't go with them? Or were we not invited?"
"We were. Sort of. I... disinvited us," she grinned, and reached up to ruffle his ears. "Thought we could get some time to ourselves. 'Sides, I promised I'd do some work here."
"Work?"
Shrugging, she pointed to a few tools scattered about the floor. "Pulled the filter assembly from the fusion generator. Needs a good cleaning, and some diagnostic work done... easier when nobody's around, 'cause it kills the power, see?" Sure enough, he noticed that the lights were off, and the house was wrapped in a powerful stillness.
"Heat and water, too?"
"Mm-hmm. Why do you think mom had you chopping that wood?"
"Exercise? Yassuja, but I'm sore enough..." He rolled his shoulders, and groaned at his aching limbs.
Carla laughed, and slipped behind him, her fingers prodding the tense muscles. "Poor puppy. Fortunately I can probably manage getting a fire started." He leaned back and into the impromptu massage, his tail wagging appreciatively. "And we have the place to ourselves, so you can relax... or..."
He leaned back, twisting around to face her. "Or?"
"Well..." She let him spin around fully, and draped her arms about his shoulders. Her head was tilted; her gaze coy. "They'll be gone for quite a while, you know."
The shepherd's broad ears flicked, and he pretended to engage in some thought on the matter. "Is that so?" His muzzle dipped, and their lips met -- lightly, at first. "But can your repairs wait? I'm sure they're..." He felt her shiver under the paw that slid down her back. "They're very important..."
"Screw 'em," Carla muttered. "We can do without the heat for a bit, if we're... clever."
He chuckled, but didn't have the chance to say anything before her lips were back upon his. More firmly this time; more insistent. Hands tugged at the zipper of his coat, unsteady in their haste.
The shepherd wanted to take his time -- but it had been eight months. Carla pulled away from the kiss as she shoved his jacket from him; he was momentarily startled to hear her panting, before she stifled it once more against his velvet-furred muzzle. He slipped his tongue past her lips, catching the sweet taste of her mouth, and was rewarded with a quiet, encouraging moan.
Carla had not been outside, chopping wood. She wore only a light cotton shirt, and it yielded smooth flesh beneath his paws when he tugged it up and away from her. Then she backed away, step by step, towards a soft, well-worn sofa -- her fingers prying the zipper of first his pants, then hers, so that they left a trail of discarded clothes behind them.
He fell atop her when she tumbled onto the sofa, pinning her beneath his shaggy body. His erection throbbed strongly, precum already slicking the tip, and his hips gave a short, reflexive buck that left a trail of wetness along her inner thigh. The human's legs parted invitingly -- then she froze, and pushed him away with one hand. "Wait -- wait, stop."
Chanatja's muscles quivered, but he forced himself to stop, sitting up. Keen ears flicked about, listening for a hint of activity. "What?" Had they been discovered? Were her parents home? "Is everything --"
"Mm. Hold on, puppy." She squirmed from beneath him, giving his crotch a teasing grope, and then skipped from the room, leaving him blinking confusedly. Less than a minute later she returned, and produced a wrapped condom from her opened palm.
He blinked once again, brow furrowing. "Are you worried about... ah..."
Carla leaned down to kiss him, tilting her head to deepen the contact. He heard the wrapper tear. "I'm worried," she said with a grin, "about having to clean you out of my mom's antique sofa." He felt her hand back on his cock, stroking down it gently, unrolling the thin material that clung to his shaft. Then she hooked her arm about his upper back and settled back down on the sofa, twisting onto her back and pulling him atop her. "Now c'mon, puppy, don't hold back..."
Wasting no time, he guided himself to her, and an involuntary groan left his muzzle as he pushed forward, gliding into smooth, wet heat that caressed him snugly, gripping every thick inch of his pointed canine erection. Eight months. She shuddered beneath him when he was finally hilted, and her eyes fluttered closed even as her mouth opened in a gasp of delight.
Easy, fluid thrusts -- arching his back as he worked his hips between her spread thighs, each rhythmic buck twisting his shallow panting into feral, pleasured growls. His ears cocked forward to catch her reply -- urgent, whimpering moans, and the wet squelch of their bodies meeting.
Their first few times together it had seemed alien, and she had needed to take charge: now it was as natural as breath, and he hungered for her -- driving faster now, plunging swiftly into the tight, steamy grip of her folds. His human lover keened and moaned and knotted up his fur between her fingers, tugging him closer. Hot breath washed his quivering ears as she hissed up to him: "Chanla -- don't stop, please, don't stop!"
Not that he could've even if he desired it. His body was in the grip of primal emotion. Carnal delight flickered and sparked, smoldering in his body as he thrust quickly, his shaft pistoning in smooth, powerful strokes. Too soon, all too soon, he felt the desire beginning to build -- swelling with the base of his canine shaft, the solid, thick knot that spread Carla's lips wider with each new revolution.
Every time he rocked in to the hilt, forcing his cock all the way inside, she grasped at his shoulders. Her smooth fingernails dug in more and more sharply. "Tie me," she begged, gasping. He pushed forward deeply, sinking his knot past resistance, and she groaned. He held there for a second, a breath, a few rapid heartbeats. Long enough for nature to do its work.
He tried to pull back, and could only manage a centimeter or so. Close now -- god, so close. Pushing forward, grinding against her hips, craving release. Another tug, another urgent thrust -- then it was bubbling up, the energy building to a fever peak, consuming him, spilling forth in a tooth-bared snarl when he couldn't help but give voice to it.
There was a moment of sharp pain where her fingers grasped him, counterpointing the warm, throbbing bliss that swept over him in heady waves as his cock jerked and pulsed into the confines of the thin latex that trapped it. Dimly he was aware of his lover's muffled wails of passion -- the tighter, spasming grip of her womanhood around his buried length. She was tense and shivering, still, when he collapsed to lie panting atop her.
"Mm, pup," he heard someone purr to him. His senses were muddy. "Merry Christmas..."
"Merry Christmas," he mumbled back. "Yassuja, janinar -- ninaru Carrich... Eight months is too long..."
"Long enough to forget?"
He pushed himself weakly up, and licked her face. "Never that, Carrich."
When he settled down once more, she took to petting his shoulders and sides tenderly. "And here I just wanted to show you the fireplace," she teased. "Figured we could sit here and enjoy it... sip some cocoa..."
"I thought the generator was out?"
"Oven is gas-powered. We can make cocoa. Mom left some dough, too, for cookies... I promised I'd get 'em baked." Carla pushed him into the back of the sofa so that she could wriggle from beneath him, rolling him over to straddle the dog. "Better," she explained. "Have you had sugar cookies before?"
"No... not really. I don't think so."
"You can help me cut them out, then. And decorate them. It'll be fun."
It was beneath her warm gaze, and the caress of her fingers, that he felt vaguely domesticated. "I'd like that," he smiled.
"Good. We've the entire day to figure that out. But first things first..."
"Mm?"
She rolled her hips playfully, fetching a helpless twitch from the dog below her. "You ready to go again?"
It was not until well into the afternoon that the others returned; Carla had restarted the generator, but the fire still danced merrily, and its heat was what filled the house. The room was redolent of cocoa and vanilla, and the lingering scent of the cookies. It seemed to have put them all in good spirits, stamping the snow from their boots and taking off their coats to the crackling, comforting warmth of the house.
"Welcome back," Carla called from the kitchen, and then came out to join them, her hands dusted in flour. She stayed behind the shepherd, anchoring herself to his presence.
Sofia nodded. She did not seem to find Chanatja quite as objectionable as before, but her movements were subdued, and she kept herself from meeting his eyes directly. Finally, exchanging glances with her husband, she shook her head, and thrust a small bundle into Chanatja's grasp. "I'm not..." A deep breath; a hesitant sigh. "I'm still not... comfortable with all of this. I'm not sure I ever will be. But it's the holidays. We shouldn't be fighting."
He unwrapped the package carefully, pulling away the butcher paper that swaddled the object. Finally it fell into his paw: a small clay sculpture, handpainted. He held the thing up so that Carla could see. It was a white wolf, seated on its haunches, muzzle raised to the sky.
"They didn't have any... white shepherds. I asked," she said, shrugging. Her voice had the too-breezy tone of someone trying to feign a lack of emotion. "But it sort of looks like one, I guess. Perhaps."
"Thank you." Chanatja's voice was subdued; his ears, without his knowledge, lay flattened against his head. "It's... beautiful." For it was -- the detail spoke of fine artisanship, and in the fluid grace of the beast's curves one could almost hear its mournful song echoing off frozen valleys, calling to absent packmates.
"I'm trying to be more... open. Just... try to understand? Please?"
He had expected none of this, not the gift, or the quiet pleading in the woman's voice, and now the shepherd didn't know what to say. His muzzle parted, and his ears flicked, but words eluded him. Perceiving the silence, Luís intervened: "I noticed somebody left a spot open on the tree. You might see how it looks there, Chanito."
It looked small, and stark against the deep green of the pine's needles. For a moment he felt awkward, placing it to nestle in the branches -- but when he stepped back, the picture changed. Now it seemed to live in a world of fellow carvings and totems. Its nose pointed towards the top of the tree, and the quiet angel there. Chanatja decided that it was howling not in lament, but in exultation, proclaiming joy to everyone who could hear it.
A deepening evening found him outside, looking out towards the woods. The long-promised snow had begun in earnest: fat, heavy flakes drifted lazily down, first blanketing and then obscuring completely Sebastian's snow angel, and their footfalls, and all the mess of the preceding hours and days. When they landed on his muzzle, Chanatja licked the flakes, tasting cold on his broad canine tongue.
"I think they'll come around." Carla's voice was muffled by the snow; flat, quiet. Her hand sought his paw, and he squeezed it gently. "Dad kind of likes you. Mom..."
"She's doing her best," the shepherd said. "They're nice people, Carrich."
Nice people. Humans had enslaved him, mistreated him, taken his first love from him; condemned him to life as a pariah. Since first earning his freedom, he had nurtured his hatred of the species. But where had it gotten him? Carla had seen through him, to the wounded soul beneath that hatred, and he had treated her as an outlier; the exception that proved the rule.
"If this was a story," he reflected aloud -- to the falling snow as much as to her -- "it would take something dramatic. At the start they would've hated me. For no reason. Nothing sympathetic or understandable, like looking out for their kids or... not knowing anything about me. Just blind hatred. Until... I saved their lives. Until I rescued them from a burglar, or I got them out of a burning house or an overturned vehicle. Fought the bank on their mortgage's behalf. I don't know. A big gesture, and then... then they'd realize I was the hero all along." He flattened his ears, and jammed his paws into his overcoat. "I'm not a hero, though."
"And that's not how it works." Carla stared with him, into the storm that drew their perception like a cloak, closing the universe in until it extended no further than the homestead. "And this isn't a story. And they're just people. Just like you and me, Chanla. You can let your guard down..."
Perhaps. He freed his arm and wrapped it around her, sighing happily at the warmth of her body as she leaned against him. Yes, they were just people. Just making what they could of the world; of the dimly glimpsed future, and the wild unpredictability of their wayward children. And so was he. His other paw felt in his pocket, closing about the little box there. Captain Benjamin, the battalion intelligence officer, had helped him choose the ring. She was a fellow moreau; she understood its significance to him.
The door opened, and Alejandro poked his head out. "Hey, Coco. Mom said your boyfriend should come to the Midnight Mass. I mean, if he wants."
Chanatja and Carla exchanged glances, and seeing his quizzical look she explained: "At the church in town, a few kilometers away. They have a special service at midnight on Christmas Eve. We always go. It's a --"
"Tradition," he finished for her, and she smiled. "Of course I'll go."
"Really," she said, when Alejandro had stepped back indoors. The tone betrayed a certain skepticism. So he turned, and drew her into a tight embrace, beneath the softly falling snow.
In truth he knew nothing of her religion. He had never been taught, and canine spirituality was an ephemeral thing. All that he knew -- of sacrifice and rebirth, of redemption; of peace on earth, and goodwill to men -- had been learned, in tiny steps, through experience. And the Mass was more than another ritual. It was tradition. It was shared experience. It was shared love, on a cold winter's night.
It was family. And family, he knew, was the most important thing in the world.