I was not able to imagine the courtship dance between our two species, end to end and dancing through the sky in a sacred coupling that would bring the next viable generation. Yet, I found myself imagining unfurling my sexual organs and pushing the bristled puffy end into her accepting cavity. The thought made me shudder.
The empress’s soldiers dropped me unceremoniously to the floor and the rubbery leaf beneath me rippled. My weight with the metal wings nearly exceeded the floating natural platform’s strength.
“You dare come back to my sector?” My translator was delayed here, interference from the viscous liquid below. Her voice was as deep and raspy as I remembered, croaks rising and falling in a nightmarish way.
“Miss the neighborhood, what can I say?” I could move my mouth, but not much else. I focused, trying to lift my wings slightly in an approximation of one of Alder’s nonchalant fae motions. Though I found his mode of language limited, often his body movements got his intentions across better than words.
“I have been humiliated by you, experiment. It is time for retribution.” The pitch of her croaks lowered, her anger flowing uninhibited.
She was stalking towards me, but I couldn’t shift my head to see more than the empress’s bent back limbs, the skin of them a dark earthy hue, pockmarked and blistered.
I closed my eyes, letting the buzz come to life that helped me isolate external stimuli and think my way out of tight spots.
“Planning to kill me, Empress?” Buzz. Hum. Focus. I could feel agency returning to my limbs. It took every ounce of effort, but I felt my iridescent wings move a fraction. When I reopened my eyes, I knew it would only be a short while before I could make my getaway. The drugs were strong, but I’d been through worse.
Years spent being poked, prodded, and injected with all manner of substance had made me resistant to many things.
“I will do worse than kill you, betrayer. I will destroy you. Piece by piece.” She leaned down, legs bending and popping in the way only particular species could, and her bulbous acid eyes with the black slit iris stared at me menacingly. Membrane lids flashed over the sticky orbs. “We’ll invade your mind with the very thing you stole from us.”
She stood back up out of view, and moments later one of her minions hopped forward. He leaned down, cocking his head back, and then thrusting forward to lick me slowly across the face with his rough tongue that tried to suction against my exoskeleton.
Immediately, my vision began to go fuzzy. The Bufo Alvarius excretions were strong.
Buzz. Hum. Focus.
I jerked, rolling away from the soldier, extending my wings sharply to pull me up off the floor. I slammed my jointed legs down, feet smashing against the pool leaf, sending violent vibrations to rock the empress and her men. Their legs adjusted, hopping upwards and landing back down easily.
“Do you remember, betrayer, our night of love? Was it worth going against me and losing all of that?” She leaped into the air, thumping down hard only a wing’s length in front of me. Her tongue unrolled quickly, flashing out to trace up my neck. I could fight the sensations, fight the hallucinations, but only for so long.
If they kept dosing me, I’d be at their mercy. No amount of buzzing in my brain would resurrect me.
“You still don’t realize,” I murmured, swaying against the unstable leaf beneath me, my vision blacking out. One more dose, I realized. That’s all it would take.
And then they could convince me of anything.
They could make me lose myself within my own mind.
Yes, I’d been through torture at the hands of the scientists. Caged. Beaten. Injected.
But, through all of that, I’d kept command of my own mind.
I had not realized my greater fear until these moments.
As my vision blinked and threatened to extinguish.
“What? What don’t I realize, betrayer?” she croaked, amused and hungry for my submission.
“We didn’t have a night of passion, Empress. I dosed you,” I paused, my approximation of Alder’s thing called laughter bubbling beneath my exoskeleton, “with your own hallucinogen. I wouldn’t touch you, even if the survival of the known universe depended on it. You kissed and had sexual intercourse with your own hand.”
She sputtered, hopping up and down and croaking nonsensical violence. “You’ll pay for that, betrayer.”
“Sure I will.” I slammed the point of my wings down, cutting into the curved leafy floor. I opened them wide, slicing through the rubbery surface with ease. And then I gave my own little hop, shooting down into the thick liquid below, and hoping to hell it was something survivable.
The Bufo Alvarius Empress croaked a scream, and two of her soldiers followed me down below the surface. But my metal wings were just as useful at cleaving through liquid as their powerful legs, and I raced ahead of them towards the exit.
I needed to find Lise first.
No, I wanted to find her first.
The way I wished to find my wife when my day as a healer in our colony was over. I would fly, far above the city, against the lavender sky, over the gold forests, looking for her. She was a grower, cultivating the many plant varieties in the hidden groves within the woods. She was always pursuing the sweetest nectar that would provide our people with the most energy, and stronger offspring.
She was beautiful.
Her wings unlike any others.
They matched the sky and glowed with veins of silver.
Lise… made me feel that way.
I was no longer a healer. Now I was a criminal, a conman, always pursuing the next bit of coin to stay afloat. For
