Page 37 of My Human Wife

“In all that entertainment you never saw a naked human man?” Ava asks.

“No. There was never any sex ever. Maybe a kiss or an allusion to an affair. That’s why it’s so odd that twice I’ve heard Imperial people say humans love sex. Why do they think this?”

Both women laugh at me.

“I don’t know what’s so funny.”

“I shouldn’t be laughing, I don’t think. I want to be pregnant. But we’re laughing because Earth is known for making lots of entertainment about sex. Possibly more than anywhere else in the galaxy. That’s why they think humans are obsessed with sex and maybe we are?”

“Oh,” I say. “My entertainment choices must have been censored.”

“No doubt. Your master probably didn’t want you to know what you were missing.”

“Probably,” I agree. Then after a few minutes of silence I say, “But it didn’t work because I knew what I was missing even if I couldn’t articulate it. I could feel it in my skin. Nothing was satisfying like a humanoid penis, although I’ve only experienced that once.”

“Oh you’ll have a lot more dick here,” Coco laughs.

“When that man put himself in your mouth, did it feel right?” Ava asks curiously.

“I don’t know. I can still taste him. It didn’t feel as wrong as tentacles and their sour genetic material.”

“Ewww ‘sour genetic material,’” Coco says. “Stop making me laugh.”

“I hope for your sake Lara that Kamos finds you a really lovely human man.”

“Coco,” I say more seriously. “Why do you want to be pregnant with that man’s child?”

“I’m not getting any younger and it gives me better status. Also just look at Ava with her daughter. I want to experience love like that at least once.”

“But is Ava’s daughter going to be sold?” I feel the room instantly become colder. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean…”

Neither woman says anything, and we lay in silence again.

Coco breaks the stillness. “Love comes and goes anyway. Why shouldn’t I want love for a child even if it’s not permanent? I still always will have had that time.”

“For 15 years I lived in a luxurious zoo. I don’t know anything about love, but I thought from what I read that when you fell in love with someone it was forever.”

“It can be,” Ava says. “But people you love can’t be around forever even if they want to be.”

“So then what happens.”

“You miss them,” Coco says. “It hurts like nothing else. Probably like it hurt when you missed your parents. You must have loved them.”

I remember with acute clarity. I touch my arm for the medicine from Hela to give me strength. “It felt like I couldn’t breathe I missed them so much in the beginning.”

“That’s love,” says Coco. “It’s the same with children.”

“More with children. I’d die for Mei,” Ava says.

We are quiet again. Everyone knows Mei’s time is numbered in the harem. She has grey skin and looks Imperial. She can’t stay.

“I want to be a mother even if I can only care for the child until she becomes an adult,” Coco says.

Thoughts are swirling around in my head with this. “You don’t mind the child will be born into captivity and live as a pet?”

“It’s a better life than elsewhere and look at that man who just had sex with me. Our offspring will be a prince among pets.”

The phrase, ‘A prince among pets’ floats through my mind and I am speechless.

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