Page 8 of Eat My Moon Dust
“Your left shock’s out of alignment,” I said, filling the space before he could ask me about my weekend plans. “I’ll get Bree to take care of that once we’re back.”
“Oh, sure. No rush,” he said, rubbing his upper left hand against his mane.
“Thanks for the ride.” I took the duffel with a grim smile, slung it over my shoulder, and punched the ramp release. The roar of the falls drowned out any other conversation as we descended onto the open tarmac.
??
Corsa’s home tower was a marvel of engineering, much to my chagrin. I stared up at its pyramid architecture, the intricately designed balconies that cascaded in blocks overflowing with red and pink vines, the hand-carved pillars around the lobby entrance depicting scenes of shilpakaari fishing in the ocean depths of Dharatee, and enjoyed a rare glimmer ofpride.
It wasn’t an emotion mypriyainspired in me often anymore. Bitterness, resentment, resignation… That was more like it.
But when I looked at the grand facade of that ridiculous building, a little bit of the tension ebbed. True, I no longer enjoyed the sunrise view from that balcony, but my spats did. Every morning, when they woke up for school, scrambled to find their shoes, fought over the cleansing mister, and ate their breakfast, that sunrise was looking in on them.
Letting the reminder wash over me, I took a deep breath, stepped up to the building’s access panel, and swiped my palm over its sensors. The directory read my biometrics, then told me to make a selection. I wasn’t in the database.
My heart skipped. I blinked down at the directory’s holoscreen, then stupidly tried again. Twice more. When I still wasn’t granted access, I set my forehead to the wall with a grimace and closed my eyes. Mane flared with anger, I pressed my fist against the wall. Not in a punch, but with mounting pressure; enough to grind my calloused knuckles into the stone and really feel it.
Corsa had found someone else.
It wasn’t the first time, and we hadn’t been together since well before I took the Renata contract. But it still bit deep into my soul, filling my gut with fresh vitriolic tar. I wasn’t enough. I’dneverbeen enough. Coiling with a woman was just a show of desperate men in iron shoes, dancing until their feet burned off, and mine had finally whittled down to stubs.
Grinding my dental ridges, I took a deep breath and commed Corsa’s unit. The holoscreen’s vid feed flashed, letting me know she’d turned it on. I blinked at it staring me straight in the face. She would have known I’d be coming.
“Recording in progress,”it stated.
“It’s Hunar,” I said awkwardly, forcing a neutral scowl across my features. “I’m here for the… for the spats.”
The unit’s responding vid popped up and a younger shilpakaari man answered. He was handsome and smooth. I couldn’t tell much about him except that his eyes were dark and his mane thinner but longer than my own.
“Corsa says you can come up. They’re already packed.”
The grand entrance hissed open, and the feed cut out.
When Corsa’s new coil opened the door tomyunit, I wasn’t surprised that he was lean, with a narrow waist. His coloring was rare–bright blue with violet markings–and his tendrils looked as if they’d been dipped in expensive dyes. He looked me up and down, at the grey stripes along my forearms and the dull blue-green of my skin, then smirked.
“Priya,”he called over his shoulder, digging his heel into my limping pride. “Their father is here.”
“Coming!” she called from the bedroom in her sweet, singsong voice.
I bit the inside of my cheek with all three of my left canines until I bled. Despite getting away from Corsa, moving halfway across the moon to the most remote and secure location in the fuckinggalaxy,my shriveled, unusedsentiswelled at the back of my neck with biologically-mandated interest. I suddenly understood why monks cut theirs off, liberating themselves from their sensory phalli, from the slavery of mate-dependent heat.
I’d been trying to wean myself off Corsa’s coil for nearly two orbits, but the distance hadn’t helped at all. No wonder everyone thought I was nearing retirement. My colors had been drained of their virile glow by the slow deprivation of her taste, even though I’d taken vitamins and supplements to keep the worst of the coil deficiency in check. Now, standing next to her new coil, the stark reality of what lay before me hit me like a freight drone.
Someday I’d be a roaming husk, shuffling up and down the streets, my mind and body so starved that I wouldn’t be able to distinguish food from shit.
When Corsa rounded the corner, she had Reha under her arm, running her hands busily through our daughter’s lustrous light green mane, making sure it shone bright. She smiled up at me in a flippant way, as if she’d caught an admirer on the street. “One sec,” she said, then slipped back down the hall. “Boys, come on! Virhek, could you get their bags from their rooms, please?”
“Of course,priya.”
Virhek preened, his mane curling and puffing up with importance. I nearly rolled my eyes. He’d thought he’d have to fight for her, no doubt. That was the common course of these sorts of things, a fight for favor. The younger man must have thought I was weak and old.
Iwasweak and old…
Virhek brushed me aside gently while Reha looked up at me with a critical eye. Her little tendrils curled at the tips, quietly judgmental.
I cleared my throat. “Hi, sweetheart. How’ve you been?”
Weak.Such a weak attempt. Reha shrugged and opened the notifications on her holotab.
