Kitsukeshi (part 2 of chapter one rough draft 1)
When he woke again it was in his own bed. She had her head resting on his shoulder this time, with a thin pillow stuffed in between her cheek and his skin. Comfortable she seemed, and her weight was not such to make his limb go numb. He closed his eyes again; thinking to go back to sleep, but the rumbling of his unruly stomach forestalled him. Slowly sliding out from under her so as not to wake her, he padded from his nest to his refrigerator. He was muzzle deep in a container of macaroni salad a moment later, and another moment after that he had licked the container mostly clean. Once he had done that he went into the bathroom and cleaned his teeth. He was in the process of flossing when he heard a mild crash and a thump, followed by curses, some of which were directed at him.
“How could you put something that heavy near the bed? I can’t even see until I get to where my glasses are in the morning you know!”
His mate had fallen in a tangle of covers and pillows and wrenched her knee. His sculpture of entwined kitsune had fallen over and was pinning her to the floor. Her language was very colorful, and more of it spilled forth when he dared laugh at her predicament. Now she was very very angry. He stopped chuckling and lifted the sculpture off of her. A spreading bruise on her behind made him want to laugh more but now that he was close perhaps it wasn’t wise. Laughing in the first place had been more of his people’s misplaced sense of humor then anything else. This he explained while he rubbed balms onto the injured leg of his mate and soothed her various bruises with the same.
“Now I’m all oily,” she complained.
He smiled a smile full of teeth and bit at her shoulder that wasn’t bruised. Her eyes lit up with feral wanting. In the surface of her mind she most likely told herself she hated it when he did this. Hated the marks of ownership and dominance he left on her snowy neck, despised how swiftly she had allowed herself to be claimed as mate. But inside herself where there were no lies left, there she admitted that she desired all of it. That dwelling day to day in a world where to be less then dominant was to be eaten, she had longed for a world where she could be soft and tender without deadly fangs at her throat for the presumption. He willingly would stand between her and very much in order to make that world her reality. But even as they romped together he thought hard to himself about what he would not stand in the way of. Could he stand up to Honored Inari as she had done, were she the one laying prone on the floor? Would he even have thought to do something that to his kind seemed so vulgar before today?
While he never would have thought to do so before she had shown it was doable, he was now certain that he would defend his mate when needed. Now he simply had to determine how he was to defend her from the machinations of her own mate-kin. Inari was a minor annoyance when compared to the seeker on their tails and the likelihood that her mother’s mate would simply hire another should this one fail or quit or disappear.
For now he was stopped. The barrier to the dens would not admit any whose blood it did not recognize of old or was made to recognize now by ceremony. The method of halting such actions permanently was beyond him at this time, but he was certain an answer would come along eventually. Lusts momentarily dealt with and still full of macaroni salad, he lay abed and luxuriated in her scent. She hopped up then gingerly put her feet to the floor. When his mate tried her weight on the injured knee and felt no pain he smiled at the comic look of puzzlement on her face. She walked slowly to the kitchen and rummaged through the fridge. He could tell she found something by the sound of his silverware drawer sliding out then back in. She came padding back in her bare feet, no cloth grabbed for modesty and he smirked up at her from his recumbent position. He watched her every small movement while she ate the cottage cheese she had found. She had put peaches from a jar in the chunky dairy stuff before eating it. Obviously she loved peaches. Perhaps the old fruit tree in his back yard could be convinced that it could bear peaches one more time before its seasons of bearing were over forever.
The rest of the day and that night were spent mostly in bed. Kitsu knew that she would ask something soon. The peace would not last for always until her curiosity was satisfied.
Gwendolyn sighed. All the polite ways she had thought up in her head to ask Kitsu about his ‘differences’ sounded idiotic at best and outright laughable at worst. So she decided that warning him about it and then being horribly blunt was the only way to go. She took a breath and turned to speak to him, and found him waiting patiently in a pose that meant he was paying very close attention. He was pretty smart as far as she could tell. He had to anticipate that the novelty of their relationship would wear off and leave her wanting answers eventually.
“I’m going to ask some things. Trying to be polite would be dumb. Or at least it would sound really dumb. So please forgive me if I insult you or upset you in any way. That’s not my intention.”
“You want to know about the other bits I suppose, and perhaps about why the PI cannot find you and the nature of Inari if I can cover all that for you.”
“Well yeah. First question is, of course, about those other bits of yours. Why are you like that? Was it a birth defect and your parents just chose to let you stay that way?”
“No it is not something in the nature of a defect. Everyone who lives in the dens here and all of the dens around the world are like this, save for a few who were welcomed permanently from the outside. They remained as they were meant to be, single gendered unless they put forth effort to change their shape in that way a purpose. To change your gender or alter what you are born with to be else is the hardest shape change of all. Those of us born to the dens are Yaoi-Kitsune. We are what would translate into your tongue as ‘fox demon,’ or perhaps ‘demon fox.’ We can at will assume the shape of our beast being and depending on power and lineage we will have one to thirteen tails. All of us are hermaphroditic when it comes to gender. One gender will dominate in our nature and how we see ourselves. For instance it is obvious that I prefer to be seen as male, and desire females for my mates. However should two den folk mate together, both become pregnant and bear offspring. It is done at the same time usually, for convenience sake if nothing else. I have had several children with people I am fond of but no longer mate with. However they live in other dens and should cause you no difficulty, since the likelihood of your meeting is rather slim.”
“And the babies you had? Where are they at?”
“I have always found it difficult to get pregnant or stay that way to term. I only have one child, a female sided child who lives in the household of Honored Inari with her other parent.”
“You are letting Inari take care of your child? He seems way too prone to mood swings and instabilities to be safe to be around children.”
“He would never stoop so low as to actually provide childcare for any of his offspring. He is too busy in any case even should he desire to do so. He is both den leader of this den and chief over all dens. Her Father/Mother cares for little Sukinai. Some times she comes to visit me and to play for a while but that is seldom.”
“That actually answered several other questions, like “do those parts work, and why that happens.” Do a lot of the ‘Boys have problems having babies?”
“I am among the few who suffer any difficulties. I had thought to try human fertility drugs, but I have been without a dual sided mate for many moons now.”
“What was that about people being welcomed from the outside on a permanent basis? How so and what reason would you have for doing that?”
“As you may guess though we do have a few populations and even though we trade folk among them, proactive planning is required to prevent inbreeding. The best way is to bring in single gendered human folk and create a Yaoi-kitsune out of them through exposure to our powers and magical energies. When that person breeds among us their children are usually single gendered and then the next generation brings about emersion of the human traits. Those children come out mostly kitsune.”
“So it’s your turn to go find one to bring across?”
“It is not done like that! Despite our enclaves we do live most of our lives among the humans. Those who are chosen to stay among us and become us are given the choices we offer out of love and a longing for them to be with us!”
“No offense, remember!”
“Sorry, but it’s just like marrying into the mob without most of the violence and the law breaking. It is to be undertaken seriously and with all due gravity, but it is also a joy. A human who joins us is nearly ageless and lives for several human lifetimes at least, if they are not killed. Those years are lived in virtually perfect health and with a wealth of magical abilities that most humans cannot imagine. However it is not just a choice made by the mate of the human. The whole of the den must accept their admittance, and the den leader has to give his approval also.”
“That leaves me out of it then I guess.”
Gwendolyn laughed out loud at her joke and he could tell that she was not eager to try to regain a missed opportunity or make up to anyone over her behavior. Retarded aging was like sweets to a child for most humans. That she honestly did not care or possess much of vanity about her at all amazed him. She was truly marvelous and he told her so. She just smiled and patted him on the cheek like he was the clever child, not thinking or at least not dwelling on the fact that the aging factor meant he was very much her elder. Another bonus showing of character for her.
Laughter sealed the day, and only one remained before they had to leave the dens again. He nested down beside her and she tucked herself against him with the thin little pillow once more. She seemed to favor that position of rest over all others. He pulled the covers up over both of them and sighed with sleepy contentment. Tomorrow would bring some sort of new trouble, he was certain of it. But that was tomorrow and he would deal with what was in it in the moment.