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1
FALLON
“Don’t show up to your wedding without a shirt,” was what the warden had sternly told me. And so, I would not. As I wanted to make the best first impression possible upon my human bride Darcy, I recruited Cherry for assistance, much to her husband Silar’s displeasure.
“You impose too much upon my wife,” my fellow Zabrian male growled at me from his brooding place in the corner of the kitchen as Cherry and I sat at the table he’d recently constructed.
“It’s not an imposition,” Cherry said, tossing me a pretty smile.
Empire, if my bride Darcy is only half so sweet as Silar’s woman…
I could not wait to meet her. And I’d be wearing a traditional human male wedding outfit when I did it. Or as close to it as I could get.
“See? She says it is no imposition,” I said lightly to Silar. Slowly, a white glow came into the other male’s eyes. I could only imagine what he was fantasizing about doing to me, taking up this small slice of his beautiful wife’s attention as I currently was. He’d already almost strangled me over her once.
The quiet male was absolutely besotted with his human wife. Entirely owned by her. If I were not about to so enthusiastically fling myself into the exact same situation, I would have teased him for it.
“It is an imposition to me,” Silar grunted, crossing his arms over his thick, bare chest and glowering.
“You don’t have to stay,” Cherry said quickly, turning in her chair to look back at him. “If you have stuff you need to be doing right now. We don’t need supervision.”
Silar’s hot white gaze slid to her and grew brighter, an impassioned crackle of light.
“You don’t,” he agreed in a low voice. He jerked the tip of his tail at me. “He does.”
“You know, in all the time I have known him, I have not heard Silar say so many words together as I have since your arrival,” I told Cherry, ignoring the malice in the white gaze that was once more directed at me. “I believe you are having a good influence on him, even if most of the words I am hearing out of his mouth are some sort of criticism of me.”
Cherry shook her head side to side and then moved her eyes up towards the ceiling in an odd gesture I did not understand. I made a note to look it up in the human manual I’d been given in preparation for my marriage when I returned home.
“Simmer down over there, Silar,” Cherry said.
“Simmer… What?”
“It just means, like, chill out.”
Silar’s brow puckered beneath the brim of his hat. He looked even more mystified than before.
“Chilling something is very nearly the opposite of simmering,” he said slowly. It was obvious to me that he did not want to make his wife feel silly or ignorant by questioning her, but his blunt nature could not help but point out the confusing contradiction in what she’d just said.
“They’re human phrases. I just mean, calm down and be nice,” Cherry said on a slight sigh.
Silar gave an unintelligible rumble in reply. It probably would have been easier for him to attempt to make his blood simmer like hot water than to be nice to anyone besides his tiny wife. But I decided, self-preservation at the forefront of my mind, to keep that astute observation to myself. I could not afford to get murdered by Silar before my own wedding.
Cherry gave Silar a stern look, but the expression soon melted into a smile as she gazed upon him. The affection she felt for my great grunting, brooding neighbour was clear to see. Something tightened in my gut, strong and twisting like a tail, as I imagined my own wife feeling something similar for me. Looking upon me with that same softness.
Eventually, Cherry turned her white, blue, and black eyes back to me.
“Show me what you’ve got so far.”
I quickly pulled material from my satchel, some of it black, some of it white. Or, as white as I could keep any fabric in the dust of this world, anyway. I placed it all down upon the table.
“Alright. Good,” Cherry said, moving her head again, but up and down this time. “You can definitely make a wedding suit in an Old-Earth style with this.” Her thoughtful gaze moved to mine, and she grimaced. “I’m warning you, though. I can help you with the design, but not the sewing.”
“That is no problem,” I said with a dismissive flick of my tail across the wood planks of the floor. “I can sew.”
“You can?” Cherry looked surprised by this. And, if I was not mistaken, perhaps even a little impressed.
From somewhere in Silar’s gloomy, forgotten corner came the sound of knuckles cracking.
