2 comments/ 15450 views/ 15 favorites A Change in the Air By: entwined_tails Through the window Bartleby could see the houses of the town glaring white in the light of two suns, set amidst a bleak winter-scarred landscape just surrendering to the first wave of bursting green vitality which would soon consume it. Beyond rose the high sand hills, their gaunt profiles silhouetted against a golden red sky. Beyond them, he knew from memory, lay miles of flat arid plain, becoming moister and more fertile until they turned into the great southern swamps, near-endless, stewing and stinking with unfettered life. And beyond them, thousands and thousands of miles beyond, was Her. "Now that's a view," exclaimed K'ar-Eek, standing beside him. "This is more like it! I'll take this one." Bartleby turned back to him. "But I told you, this is my room." "And it's bigger than that shoebox next door you tried to fob me off with." He sighed. "Well... I don't expect to be here much longer than a few more nights, just until the air changes. Alright. You take this one if you want it, I'll stay in the other." "Brilliant!" He threw one of his two huge suitcases onto the bed and began to unpack lavishly. Bartleby gathered together his things; it didn't take long. "Let me know when you've settled in," he called as he walked out the door. "I'll give you the tour." * * * The Earthrise Institute occupied a small pyramid of concrete and glass in a quiet backwater of a remote, agreeable and highly multicultural little planet. In the first year of its existence, it had employed people of no less than seventeen different species, all hard at work on one problem regarding one species living on one planet, only discovered so few decades ago. Soon, likely enough, the inhabitants of planet Earth would discover they weren't alone. And when that happened, they would need to be able to communicate. Bartleby was one of the few employees ever to have lived on or even visited Earth. He reflected that if the friends he'd known there had been shown the Institute, the first thing they'd ask about (after the inevitable surprise about the existence of civilisations beyond their own thin atmosphere) would be how people of different species managed to work and get along with each other, given the diverse opinions regarding manners, communication, hygiene, ethics and the like. The only answer he'd be able to give was that it was all a big muddle, and most people somehow managed to find a way. The way he'd found was to keep himself as far removed from the noise and confusion as possible. A square viewing platform ran around the top floor of the building, and it was one of a number of places he knew where he was almost assured solitude. But not today. He sighed inwardly as he stepped out to see a nonhuman figure leaning against the rail, gazing out across the valley. "Bartleby?" she said without turning around. His consternation melted away as he recognised K'er-Sekla the sydian, probably the only alien he knew who he actually enjoyed talking with. "Enjoying the view, K'er-Sekla?" She glanced round at him, her eyes gleaming blue in what Bartleby knew to be the close equivalent of a human smile. "It gets better every day. Shouldn't you be showing the new fellow around? Swapping Earthish gossip?" They spoke in English, which had emerged as a surprising Esperanto among assorted races united only by an interest in Earthish culture and linguistics. K'er-Sekla's was unusually fluent; if he didn't look at her he could almost forget she wasn't human herself. Not that a sydian was so very different from a human; that is, if you didn't count the tail. Or the dense, even coat of short golden fur covering the whole body, or the unearthly face with its colour-changing eyes. Or the nimble four-fingered hands or handlike feet, or the clicking-singing voice, or the proportions of the limbs, or the way they moved... but they had two legs, two arms, were about five feet tall and wore clothes, and that made them close to human compared to most of the other species at the Institute. Compared to the far, for example. "I was giving him the tour, but it's on hold while he unpacks twice his own weight in baggage." In my room, he thought, but didn't say. "Really that much?" "Definitely. He persuaded me to volunteer to carry it all up the stairs." Her eyes flashed in amusement as he came to stand beside her, hands on the railing, staring out at the view. "And no sign of a change in the air yet?" she asked. He took a deep breath to be sure, but he well knew the answer. "No. Nothing yet." "Good." Bartleby looked at her, puzzled. "I mean," she said quickly, "I like having you around. I'll miss you." He nodded. "I'll miss you too, K'er-Sekla, but I have to go." It was then that she moved her hand over to rest on his. He felt the warm tickle of her furred fingers interleaved between his own, in sharp contrast with the cold metal railing beneath his palm, not knowing what to make of the unprecedented gesture. Sydians, in his experience, didn't go in for casual personal contact. Should he say something, do something? No, better just to accept it and enjoy it. Even if he wasn't sure what she meant by it, it felt right. "Bartleby, we know each other fairly well now. You can just call me Sekla if you want to." Bartleby glowed inside. Permission to address a sydian by name without the formal prefix was a more intimate gesture of trust and friendship than any slight physical contact. "I'd be honoured, K'er-Sekla. I mean, Sekla." She flashed him another blue-eyed smile. "I'm going to get something to eat." A finger gestured between him and the landscape. "You two enjoy yourselves." She gave him a fond pat on the hand before sliding away towards the mess hall, leaving Bartleby feeling for once entirely at peace with himself and the world, if only for a few minutes. * * * "The mess hall," Bartleby said, hurrying through the doors after K'ar-Eek, "most important room in the Institute." The other man wrinkled his nose in affected distaste as his eyes swept the room. "I can see how it gets its name." Like any space occupied by people from a wide assortment of species, the air carried a potent mix of strange odours, some pleasant and some less so. Chatter from a dozen different tongues echoed through the big square room, chief amongst them a unique form of pidgin English. The hall was intended principally as a place to eat, laid out in long tables, but had been broadly adopted as a communal office and general living space, littered with papers, books and interfaces interspersed with plates, bowls and bulbs of food. People came here to work, eat, gossip, play, hold meetings, or all at the same time. "If you don't want to work in here, and I won't blame you, I certainly don't, then you can..." "One moment, Bartles." "Bartleby," he corrected automatically, but K'ar-Eek was already strutting towards a nearby table, his eyes locked on the sydian sat there. Sekla was eating from a bowl of nuts, removing the thin shells with the incredibly dextrous fingers of one hand without looking. Her eyes, brown with concentration, were fixed on a sheet of paper, on which she was scribbling something illegible with her other hand, using the inimitable sydian scrawl requiring the use of two pens held like chopsticks between her long fingers. She glanced up as K'ar-Eek approached, and smiled. "Hey there, Bartleby, come sit down here. I'd appreciate some good company while I work." A frown of indignation shot across Bartleby's face. How could she possibly think the other man was him? Just when he thought they'd drawn so close! They didn't even look alike! But... no. He thought more carefully. They were both tallish, thickly built, clean-shaven men with short dark hair. To his eye they were little alike perhaps, but to a sydian, without his advantage of a good chunk of the brain dedicated solely to processing human faces, there was probably little to tell them apart. He'd made similar mistakes himself and they were always embarrassing, but quickly forgiven. Of course, technically, there were no humans in the Institute... K'ar-Eek rectified her confusion by dropping his human visage. There was a strange jolting sensation as the man disappeared and a sydian materialised in the same space. Bartleby always found it disconcerting to watch. It gave the impression that nothing had really changed, that you were just seeing the same thing from a different angle, and the knowledge that this was actually a quite accurate description didn't help at all. "K'ar-Eek, new anthropologist." He made a strange contortion of his limbs that Bartleby recognised as the sydian equivalent of a formal bow, and in doing so skilfully contrived to get entangled in the sensors and transmitters of his visage generator strapped liberally around his body. The visage generator, a device allowing a person to simulate the form of another so well as to require special instruments even to detect, was arguably the pinnacle of technological achievement to date. It was so high-end that only a few thousand existed across all known space. When Earth's civilisations had been discovered years ago, a plethora of races had hurried to send down visage-wearing researchers to investigate humanity. The payback was not immediate. It takes years for a person to learn how to walk, to talk, to think, and the same is just as true with a virtual body as a real one. Subjects were sent as young children with their memories blocked, growing up never suspecting they were anything but human, until one day, as young adults, the two halves of their minds came snapping back together. Bartleby tried not to think about that day. It still gave him headaches. And so about twenty years after the discovery of Earth, those who had survived the mental recombination came back, telling of the planet's wonders and horrors. Every one of them half human, half something else. It was some of them who had founded the Earthrise Institute, and more had joined later, Bartleby amongst them. Looking around the mess hall, he could see half a dozen apparently human figures, going by Earthish or alien names as they chose, and he knew them all: there was Seul-Ki the antoran, Grey-Eye the hyeloki, Georgina the greater ilk, Anatarikietti the plentilalius... and Bartleby the far, of course. Sekla rushed over with exaggerated concern to extract K'ar-Eek from his visage generator, pretending not to have noticed the deliberate nature of the entanglement. Bartleby watched her, wishing not for the first time that he could move with the same kind of sweeping grace that she managed to put into every motion. "Come on, let's get you out of that thing... here, let me undo this... no you're making it worse, here, let me hold this hand out of the way..." K'ar-Eek showed every sign of enjoying himself immensely. "Someone with hands as talented as yours must surely be a surgeon?" "Oh no, guess again. Move your arm this way... look at this, whyever did you let anyone strap these so tightly, with soft fur like yours?" "Got it. With a voice like that you must be the director." "She's the cook," said Bartleby shortly. Technically it was true. Sekla had a talent for languages but no qualifications, and had been able to get into the Institute only by taking a job as the sydian cook. By the end of the first week she had made no attempt to cook anything, but had picked up such an exceptional amount of English that the director had let her stay, without any formal change of job description. Meanwhile, the sydians had to cook their own meals. Neither sydian paid him any attention. Probably they were too distracted to have heard him. Somehow he felt the tour was over, and turned back to his room feeling sour. Sydians were notoriously open in their affections, and Sekla and K'ar-Eek's flirting was nothing unusual; but something about it had irritated him, and he didn't care to look too closely at what it was. * * * His new room looked out over a brick wall a few meters away. He opened the window and stuck out his head, breathing the air in deeply. No change. It looked like it probably wouldn't happen tonight. He sighed and sat down at the small desk. At least it would give him time to finish this report before he left... As he worked, the bright afternoon faded into evening. Dimly he could hear the world inside the building: the chattering and clicking and squawking of speech, the thud of doors, the clatter of dishes. Next door he heard K'ar-Eek settle into his old room. Through the open window he could hear the world outside too: the chirping and calling of birds, and insects, and reptiles, and stranger things. He focused on the sounds, trying to soothe his restless heart, and tried not to think about how much he missed Her. It was cold with the window open, but he couldn't bear to cut himself off from the outside world; from Her. Instead he wrapped himself in a blanket to keep warm. He must have been completely absorbed in thoughts of Her, because he didn't hear his door open, and jumped when he felt a long-fingered hand on his shoulder. He turned quickly in his chair to see Sekla standing over him, smiling, holding something on a small plate. She was wearing different clothes to before: a variation on the usual sydian robe-dress but more decorative, fashioned from a soft green velvet, and showing just a little more than the usual amount of fur. "Here. I brought you some food. Eat it." He looked at it critically. It looked like caramel shortbread. It was hard to be sure: several times he'd casually bitten into what looked like normal Earthish fare only to discover some unpalatable alien delicacy. But that wasn't why he hesitated. In sydian culture, the offering of food was usually a precursor to sex. Wasn't it? He tried to remember. It was as though a human had sidled up to him, placed a hand on his blanketed thigh and said in a sugary voice, "it's cold out here, do you mind if I join you under there?" But then, maybe he had it wrong? He dithered, unsure how to respond, and in the end his hunger made his decision for him. He bit into it cautiously. It was caramel shortbread, and good, too. "This is really good stuff. Did... um... did you make it?" "No. Anatarikietti made them, I just swiped one for you." "Oh. Um... thanks. I won't tell him." He made to take another bite, but she snatched it away and laid it to one side. A furry hand came to rest on his thigh, fingering the coarse thick fabric of the blanket. "It's a bit cold out here," she whispered in a voice that he could swear had a sugary quality, "do you mind if I... join you under there?" His heart hammered. Surely not? He hesitated. It wasn't that the thought of sex with Sekla had never slipped into his privatemost thoughts when he wasn't looking, and it certainly wasn't that he found the thought unappealing. It was just that he'd never, ever, even for a moment, imagined that it could be anything more than just a thought. Now that it seemed a very real possibility he was suddenly faced with very real questions he needed to answer. Might he endanger a closely valued friendship? Were humans and sydians even compatible? And most importantly, what would She think? He was still deciding how he was going to reply when he found his hand already lifting up one side of the blanket in invitation. She squirmed onto his knee, facing him, and pulled the blanket back over them both. Drooping towards him, she let her head rest against his chest. Unsure what else to do, Bartleby placed an arm cautiously around her back. They sat still for some minutes, he nervous and uncertain but enjoying the contact and intimacy after months of near isolation. Sekla was warm, and her golden fur made her peculiarly soft and comfortable to hold. Her gentle, spicy aroma filled his nostrils agreeably. He felt he could cuddle her like this all night. Maybe it was all she'd wanted, after all? At length she stirred and looked up at him. "So, are you ready to show me how a human does it?" Bartleby quite suddenly noticed her eyes. They were green. He'd never seen that before, but he knew what it meant. "You want me to show you how a human does... what?" he said stupidly, knowing what she meant but needing confirmation anyway. Her eyes laughed. "I want you to show me how a human does... this." Her hand again touched his, warm and tickling, her fingers gently caressing. The other hand she laid flat against his chest, fingers running across the fabric of his shirt in unmistakably sensuous designs. Her long, thin tongue flickered hungrily over her lips as she looked him up and down. Up to this point, Bartleby had still entertained the possibility that he was suffering some colossal misinterpretation of her intentions, as can so easily happen between different races. Now, he had to admit he was left with no doubt whatsoever about what she wanted. He was suddenly very conscious of the rapid beating of his heart. A dozen sentences all ran through his head and tried to get out at once. "Um... I... ah... you..." Her hand found the bottom of his shirt and eased underneath, rippling fluidly across his bare stomach, tingling. Handlike feet gripped his calves. He spluttered something even more incoherent. "What's the matter? You seemed so keen before. Have you gone shy on me, K'ar-Eek?" K'ar-Eek? Ah. Bartleby grimaced. Of course, he thought. She thinks you're K'ar-Eek. She doesn't know you switched rooms. A shame. He'd really thought for a while that they might... "Listen. I'm sorry, but I'm not..." "Ssssssshhhhhhhh! It's alright if you're nervous. Don't talk. Just do." He'd lifted his arm away from her and had been holding his hands out awkwardly, not knowing where to put them, afraid to touch her. She took them gently in hers and carefully placed them around her hips. He let them stay there. "But I'm not..." He found a furry finger pressed to his lips, silencing him. She shifted her legs, wrapping her knees closely around his hips, her long tail hanging between his knees, curling around his ankles. Bartleby knew she must be able to feel his arousal. "I'm not..." She kissed him before he could finish, lips pushing against lips, turning, locking, embracing. Bartleby had never kissed someone of another race before. He'd had relationships with a far, as a far, and with humans, as a human, but that was all. K'ar-Eek's lips felt strange, tasted strange, moved strangely. And equally as strangely, he found he liked it. He even liked the tickle of fur against his lips. He felt himself kissing back, unable to resist. As they pulled apart he stared into her eyes. Big, blazing green eyes. Green with lust. "That wasn't so hard, was it? Now, what was it you wanted to say?" His sense of virtue battled for control and lost. "Can we do that again?" They kissed again, more confidently this time. Without rising from his chair he let his hands move across her back and pull her closer, needing her, squeezing her soft flesh, pulling at her fur and the soft velvet of her dress, trembling. Her feet rubbed against his thighs, her hands flowed across his shoulders, her tail squirmed around his legs. He was barely aware of his erection pulsing and heaving beneath her. It didn't, however, go unnoticed by Sekla. After what seemed a timeless, glorious dream she broke away and looked down. "Look at this, K'ar-Eek," she said, shifting her weight up and down experimentally, "I didn't know humans were so... big! You must have almost twice what a sydian carries around down there!" Bartleby, somewhat self-conscious, tried to pull her into another kiss but she pushed him away, moving herself back onto his knees to let her hands flow over his bulge, feeling its contours through the fabric. He breathed heavily, feeling suddenly very hot. A Change in the Air "So this is what human women get to play with, is it?" She grinned up at him impishly. "You wouldn't deny me a closer peek, would you? Now how do these Earthish clothes work?" Her hands fumbled with the button until it popped loose. Then the zip was drawn down slowly, and the fabric pulled to either side. He could only sit rigidly, disbelieving but never for a moment wanting her to stop, as first one finger, then two, slid under the elastic of his briefs, combing through his fuzz of hair, and then the whole hand, sliding down, over his cock, his balls, exploring, making him gasp, finally coming to a firm and comfortable many-jointed grip around his cock. "Ahem," coughed a voice from the door. They both whipped their heads around to see K'ar-Eek standing just inside the doorway, in sydian form but once again strapped into the spider's web of black straps, cables and devices that constituted his visage generator. He was leaning nonchalantly against the wall, eyes scintillating in a way that Bartleby would have recognised as amusement had he not been so distracted. Sekla still had her hand around his cock. "You two having fun? Or were you just getting in some practice ahead of me?" Sekla stared at Bartleby for a long moment, then at K'ar-Eek, then back at Bartleby. He felt his stomach try to implode, and tried to say something, but nothing came out. "Bartleby," she stated carefully, staring with expressionless grey eyes. He didn't breathe. How would she react? Would she be angry? Upset? Would she... just maybe... might she shoo K'ar-Eek away and keep going? Her eyes exploded into glittering Sydian laughter. "Bartleby! Bartleby!" He didn't think he'd ever seen her laugh so hard; her whole body shook with it. "Bartleby the far!" He nodded, still too numb to speak. "Well then." She gave his cock a friendly squeeze before pulling her hand free. In one smooth motion she'd moved over to stand beside K'ar-Eek, picking up the discarded caramel shortbread on the way, and had her arm locked with his. "Thanks Bartleby, it's been really... interesting." She gestured to him and then to his penis. "You two enjoy yourselves." And they were gone. He sat motionless until they were out of earshot of the door, and then swore loudly, a long and sustained far expletive, every syllable dripping with vehemence. Then, the worst of his emotion vented, he fastened his trousers, locked the door against the world, sat down at his desk and buried his head in his hands. He fervently wished he'd been honest with her. He wished the whole night had never happened. He wished the air would change so he could leave them all at last. And most of all, he wished Sekla would come back. She didn't come back. The air didn't change. History didn't unwind. Bartleby slowly regained control over his turbulent emotions. It didn't matter. Tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, the air would change, and he could leave all this behind. He'd be setting off on his long long journey, and if he didn't want to, he didn't have to come back here, or even think about it ever again. He'd be with Her again. He needed to change. Leaping up out of the chair he stood in the centre of the little room, gauging the space around him. And closed his eyes. And dropped his visage. As little as he enjoyed watching other people change, he hated changing himself even more. There was a wrenching sensation like being flipped ninety degrees in a direction that couldn't possibly exist, and suddenly everything was the same yet different. He was different. Where before had been Bartleby the man, there was now a new Bartleby, fundamentally different from the old, and yet just as familiar, just as natural, just as much a part of his identity. The world changed when he did. The room, already cramped with its sparse and minimal furniture, shrunk even further and became claustrophobic, forcing him to hunch slightly inwards. The shadows became darker and impenetrable, but the light seethed with a rich and previously unimaginable spectrum of colours as he looked about with new eyes. The air suddenly danced with smells: the musty cloud of the room, the unmistakable reeks left by its recent human and sydian occupants, and through the window the hundred discordant scents of the outside world. The cacophony of faint sounds about him was amplified, and joined by a bass throb lower than anything he could hear before. Bartleby very rarely went about in his far form in the Institute. It wasn't just that he had difficulty fitting through most doors. It was mostly that he was the only far here, and as a human he felt slightly less conspicuous, slightly less alien. But sometimes, when he was feeling restless or lonely, he'd let himself out and block out the world and think about the great migration, about the gathering place, and most of all about Her. With his more sensitive far hearing, he noticed the murmur of voices from the next room: one human, one sydian. The words were indistinct but he could hear them murmuring softly, sometimes laughing. And between the words, just on the edge of hearing, he could make out other sounds: the rustle of fabric, the soft hiss of fur sliding over flesh, the wet whisper of lips sliding over lips. As time passed the voices stopped and it was just the other sounds, becoming louder, faster, more urgent. When the voices eventually returned there were no words to them; just two sydian voices - the human voice had disappeared - expressing pure, primal emotion in short, sharp gasps, rhythmically, increasing in speed and volume. Bartleby, feeling like a voyeur but unable to shut the sound out, listened longingly as they reached a final, wailing climax. As the noises faded back into quietude, he tried to cast his mind away and think of Her. But try as he did he couldn't shake the memory of Sekla's delicate fingers brushing against his, or of her lips dancing against his own. * * * In the morning, Bartleby remembered a conversation he'd had with Sekla a few months before. Coming from a human and far background, two races which as a general rule held up monogamy as an ideal, he'd had difficulty appreciating the sydian viewpoint. "You do agree that we are recently being friends?" she'd asked, staring out with him across the white snow-quilted landscape. He'd nodded. It was the first clear day after the snow and they were both on the viewing platform, wrapped up thickly against the cold. "Imagine it that when that happened, I said to you that I tell you to have no other friends only me, and that if I found you out that you had any friends not me, our friendship would be the end." Her English was more than a little rough, but considering that she'd only been learning for a month, it was remarkably good. "Seems a bit unreasonable," he'd said, mulling slightly despondently that he really didn't have any other friends. "Right. Imagine now I am your lover. Is it seem now any more reasonable?" "Yes, it does." She'd frowned. "I don't understand you no more than you understand me." Bartleby pulled himself back to the present. He'd been drifting aimlessly all morning. His work was finished, and it seemed too late to start anything new, but still there was no change in the air. Sekla was still high in his thoughts; he'd seen her only once that day, passing briefly on the stairs, and she'd given him a casual wave and smile just like she always had. He hadn't known whether to be relieved or disappointed. But he'd had time to think. Gradually, cautiously at first and then more definitely, he'd resolved on a course of action. The smoky air of the kitchen was saturated with a choking mix of pungent odours. Bartleby tended to hold his breath if he was just coming in to grab something quick, but this time there was no avoiding breathing in the unappetising cocktail of smells. The room was divided into regions based on general diet: one corner was devoted to meat, hung with remnants of animals long past being identifiable. A worse smell came from the corner scattered with diverse alien fish and other less certain things from a dozen different seas. But most offensive to the nose was a long row of cylindrical vats; fermenting, refining, putrefying and other mysterious processes, occasionally belching out noxious vapour. Seeing through the haze the profile of a sydian preparing a meal, he hurried past industrious cooks to join him in the least abhorrent part of the room, that piled with fruit and vegetables and grains. "Um... excuse me?" he said hesitantly. The sydian turned its head without stopping its chopping of something hard and round and red that Bartleby couldn't put a name to. "Bartles!" "Oh, hello K'ar-Eek, I didn't recognise you without your visage generator." "Fair enough, fair enough." A moment's silence. "Kind of ironic, though, considering..." "Please could we not have that conversation? I need some sydian food." "Ah! Well, here I am making a big pot of teg-greshkla; me and some of the local boys are off on a bit of an expedition, and we're in need of the provisions." "Would you mind if I took just a little bit?" He pushed over a bowl of what looked like blue potatoes and what looked very much like a potato peeler. "Only if you give me a hand." It took the best part of an hour. They talked a little about small things, K'ar-Eek mercifully avoiding the topic of Sekla. Finally Bartleby stood with a hot bowl in his hands of something brown and lumpy that smelled a little of soap. "Thanks K'ar-Eek. Have a good trip." "No trouble, Bartles. Good luck with K'er-Sekla." He went by his room on the way, studied himself in the little mirror, straightened his collar, ran a comb through his hair. Looking at his reflection he took deep breaths, trying and failing to calm his nerves. The teg-greshkla was still warm when he reached the door to Sekla's little room near the top of the Institute, his heart pounding. He was sorely tempted to turn around and hide in his room until the air changed, but he found himself knocking anyway. Sekla opened the door, wearing a loose white dress tied about one shoulder and the waist, ending just below the knees. Bartleby thrust the bowl towards her before he had time to think. "Here. I... um... brought you some food." She took the bowl and shot him a questioning look. "My, you're keen. Wasn't last night enough for you then?" "I..." "That's alright, it wasn't enough for me either." She flashed a smile. "Just checking... K'ar-Eek?" "Nope. Bartleby." "I know, I'd have thrown it in your face if you'd said yes." "Ah." "You'd better come in then." The architects who designed the Institute hadn't put a great deal of imagination into the rooms. Sekla's room was identical to Bartleby's old one in size, shape and furnishings, and like it was formed half under the angle of a great sloping glass window. But comparing the two, it was at first hard to see the similarity. Whereas everything he owned fit into one small suitcase, and most of it lived in that suitcase when it wasn't in use, her room overflowed with everything that was Sekla. Heaps of books jostled for space with unruly piles of clothes. Sketchbooks, battered photography equipment, an arc welder and several items he believed to be sport-related were just a few amongst the dozens of abandoned or occasional hobbies evidenced in the chaos. Every scrap of surface was littered with an eclectic selection of ornaments, and with knick-knacks and cheap souvenirs from everywhere she'd ever visited. Every hint of wall was obscured under a layer of posters, paintings, sketches, photographs and scrawled notes. Bartleby found it horrifying, and at the same time, beautiful. "Sorry for the mess," she said, clearing a space to sit on the edge of the bed, untouched teg-greshkla still in hand, and motioning for him to sit beside her. Bartleby stayed standing. "I'm... really sorry, K'er-Sekla, for letting you think I was K'ar-Eek last night. I just... couldn't bare you to stop." "Call me Sekla. And I think I can forgive you, if you'll forgive me." "Forgive you? What for?" "For pretending I thought you were K'ar-Eek last night." She stared up into his eyes, hers grey and unreadable. He stared back. "You... but... why?" "Because, Bartleby, you have such an impenetrably exclusive attitude to love! And I know you have a mate out there somewhere. I was afraid you might be angry with me if I asked you outright. I needed to gauge the way you felt." "Oh, Sekla, I'd never have been angry with you. I'd just never really thought about it before. Now I... I can hardly think about anything else." "When I left you cold and went off with K'ar-Eek..." "It was only as much as I deserved for misleading you, I understand." "I was going to say that it was extremely funny." He thought about it. "In retrospect, maybe a little. Alright, I forgive you." "Well then." She looked down at the bowl of thick brown liquid, raised it to her lips and drank, mouthful after mouthful, until it was empty. "Shall we pick up where we left off?" Bartleby sat down next to her and rested a hand on her knee. It had been shaking ever since he left the kitchen but now it was steady. "We threw ourselves into it awfully fast last night. We've got all the time we want. We could take things slowly." "Fuck that," she replied, and pulled him to her to kiss him. At first he simply let himself be kissed, letting her soft skilful lips flow unresistingly over his, her fur tickling him, letting her hands glide over his back and shoulders, relishing the taste and smell of her, feeling the last of his nervousness wash away. Then he kissed back, meeting every gentle movement of her mouth with an even gentler one of his own. His hand moved to the back of her neck, fingers tracing the graceful curve of her spine, pulling her closer. The room seemed to fade away, leaving nothing in the universe except their two bodies entwined, no sound except their urgent breaths, no smell but her strange and exotic scent, no feeling except the fire where they touched. With every second the passion in him burned brighter. Gentle wasn't enough any more. He kissed her hungrily, arms tight around her back, his lips sliding ravenously across hers, trying to feed a hot and dark appetite at the heart of him which only grew with every kiss. He swelled for her. As their mouths finally drew apart, and the world about them rushed back into existence, they found themselves standing, clasped in each other's arms, squeezed tightly together, her groin pressed against his through two sets of clothing. She moved her hips slowly from side to side, making Bartleby groan. Her eyes lit a deeper shade of green as she whispered to him. "And I thought you were a good kisser yesterday." "Yesterday I was pretending to be K'ar-Eek." She laughed. "K'ar-Eek's an excellent kisser too, actually. But he doesn't have anything to compete with this." She reached down a hand to clasp the bulge in his trousers. "Speaking of which, I think we were up to about this bit when he barged in?" Just before he could pull her in for another kiss, she ducked down for an eye-level view of his privates, leaving him with nothing within easy reach but the tapered tip of her tail. He took what he could get, and as she released his button he drew the tip to his mouth and kissed it softly, feeling it twitch in response. By the time she'd drawn down the zip and let his trousers fall untidily to the floor, he was massaging it between his fingers, feeling from its trembling reply that he was doing good. Slowly he began inching his fingers down her tail away from the tip, stroking and squeezing, just as she worked her flexible fingers under the elastic of his briefs and eased them down, all the way to join his trousers round his ankles, letting him stand free and erect. As her hands moved to cup his testes with a feather touch, and then her long fingers stroked lightly forwards to brush the underside of his shaft, he didn't let the sensation distract him from his dotage on her tail, tracking gradually downwards towards her, the tail twitching and coiling to show her pleasure. He'd reached about half-way down when she stood up to kiss him again, softly but intimately, and still his fingers continued their stroking journey, slipping with determination across the furred, muscular flesh, until at last they stopped when they found themselves gripping the thick base of her tail where it disappeared into the folds of her dress. "Don't stop there." She stood motionless, her hands quivering against his shoulders. Bartleby smiled as he delved further, fingers running over fabric, under her tail and beyond it, into the place between her legs, and forwards, feeling the cloth warm and slightly damp to the touch. He couldn't tear his eyes away from hers. Such expression, in a sydian's eyes. Green with lust, yes, but when he pushed there just so they flamed up a little greener still for a split second, even a moment before she twitched in response. There was the overtone of a blue smile there as she laid one hand on his and with the other began to loosen the folds of her dress. And as he felt his hand being guided inside, until it rested on the wet, hot and soft fur between her legs, not only did they flare up bright green again, but he could see the subtler tones around the edge, of nervousness and anticipation and excitement. And when he moved his thumb, finding the streaming fire of her opening and rubbing against it, he saw the bright explosion of green for only a split second before the eyes snapped shut, and she let out a soft howl of pleasure. Bartleby pulled himself free and sat down on the edge of the bed, tapping invitingly on his lap. "Care to make yourself comfortable?" Sekla took his hand and began to drape herself over his knees, facing him; he guided her to sit the other way, with her back to him, and pulled her close, until her shoulders pressed against his chest and the small of her back pushed his cock flat against his belly, the length of her tail dangling between his legs. His arms wrapped around her and he planted a moist kiss on the back of her neck. "I think," she murmured, "this might work better if I was facing you." He didn't reply. His whole mind was fixated with the memory of the green flash in her eyes when he touched her in just the right way. He'd make her eyes burn with green. With more determination than skill he fumbled with the complex fabric of her dress until she gave him some help, guiding him through releasing the folds of material around her waist and legs and pulling them up until she sat revealed to him; the strong golden curves of her legs meeting in a pleasingly curved nexus, covered in the same short fur as the rest of her, and exhibiting her opening, pink and pulsing, streaming from between slightly parted lips. He traced around it with a finger, feeling her squirm under the arm he kept wrapped around her chest. If only he'd chosen a position where he could look into her eyes! He had to content himself with picturing them in his head. His fingertip dipped irresistibly between the lips. He could feel the effect of his every movement through the way she moved. As he slid the tip slowly back and forth he felt her shake under his arm; as he found the head to a deeper passage he felt her twitch against his chest; as he pushed the whole finger fully into her, sliding smoothly into a hot and wet comfort that throbbed around it, he felt the thrashing of her tail against his testes. Experimentally he tried dipping the finger in and out, flexing it, twisting it, pushing and pulling with it. As he did she squirmed and writhed and gasped so expressively that he almost felt he could share what she was feeling. His lips brushed the back of her head. He knew he needed to feel her come in his arms. A second finger slid in besides the first, making her grip slightly tighter and more satisfying to them both. Bartleby started to push them in and out, in and out, in a slow and measured but unrelenting rhythm. Her chest heaved under his arm, her legs tensed against his, her tail coiled and flicked. And as he worked her she cried out wordlessly on each inward stroke, drawing breath on each outward pull, getting louder and higher. She pulsed compulsively against his fingers, in perfect rhythm with their motion. He knew when she came by the explosive wet squeeze of her around his fingers, sending a shudder rippling through her whole body. For a brief moment she was perfectly still and silent, every muscle taut and tense, before she shook with a great gasping exhalation and sat trembling and panting under his arm. A Change in the Air When he let her swivel round to face him, he could see her eyes as green as before, but with the trace of the last of something brilliant fading away. Dearly he regretted not being able to see them when she came, and hoped that he might still have another opportunity. They kissed: not urgently, but sensuous and lingering. And then she left his lips and kissed the sensitive skin of his neck; he arched back his head to let her kiss just under his chin, then down his throat, tickling and tantalising, dashing out with her long thin tongue. She pulled at his shirt to indicate that it was in the way, and Bartleby undid the top button, letting her draw her lips down a little further onto his chest. He fumbled for the next one, and the next one, and as he did so she moved her attentions downwards, until finally, with her tongue lapping across his belly, he undid the bottom button and let the whole shirt fall open. Still she kissed her way downwards, one hand holding his cock out of the way, until she reached his carpet of pubic hair and was forced to draw her lips away. But she carried on down with her fingers, wrapping the long, thin, flexible digits of one hand around his balls and squeezing gently, making him grunt. Then the other hand, tracing slowly up the shaft of his cock until it reached the end, pulling back the foreskin, and a single fingertip questing around the slick surface of the sensitive head. Bartleby tried to lean forwards to kiss her again, but she pushed him back. "Ssshhh. I let you do me, now this is me doing you. Just sit back and enjoy it." He nodded, and let his hands rest limply on her shoulders where she now knelt in front of him. With one hand still clasped around his balls she lowered her head and lapped the tip of his cock with her long, flexible tongue, making him writhe despite his best efforts at control. And then again, a little further, this time bringing her lips in contact to kiss him there, sliding and circling over the responsive head, then further, engulfing him in her mouth. Pleasure consumed him and he cried out wordlessly. He knew, in his current state of high arousal, it would take little work to bring him to a climax, and as Sekla brought her head forwards and back, lips surfing over the shaft, her tongue working miracles on the head, he mourned that this ecstasy must surely be short-lived. But she worked him slowly, and he willed himself to hang on, and a minute later they were still going, and a minute after that, the pleasure accelerating, him gulping air in ragged breaths, she staring up at him with gorgeous green eyes, maintaining an inexhausting and unrelenting rhythm. At last he felt the pressure in him build to where he knew he couldn't hold it back. He shouted out as the dam burst, and he felt his liquid love shoot into her mouth, gasping as it pulsed strong and sumptuous out of his shaft. Her mouth kept up its work on him until the last dregs had been tempted out, and only then did she slow to a gradual stop, a slight trickle of milky semen escaping from one corner of her lips. She let him go almost reluctantly, stood to look him in the eye, and swallowed; when they kissed again, tender and weary, he tasted the salty tang of her mouth. They wrapped their arms about each other and let themselves fall back onto the bed, sated and trembling. Bartleby wasn't sure how long they lay there for. Maybe it was only a few minutes, maybe an hour or more. They didn't speak. They didn't even move, but simply lay staring at the ceiling, each entwined in the other's arms. He could feel the rise and fall of her chest and the slow beating of her heart, and was completely at peace. Eventually Sekla broke the silence. "Do we have long together? Before the air changes?" With a start Bartleby realised that he hadn't thought about the air, or the migration, or Her, since the morning. He took a deep breath and concentrated. Still the same. "No, not long. It could even happen tonight. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. Probably no later than that." "I really will miss you." "And I'll miss you." He wondered if it was true. Would he forget all about her when he was back with Her? Or would he be pining for the migration back here, in a strange reversal of the way it had always been? No. He couldn't imagine it. "I never really understood what you meant when you said the air changes." "That's alright, I never really understood it either." He stroked a finger fondly across her arm. "One day at the start of spring, every far breathes the air and knows, just knows, that something is different and that it's time for them to go. I can sense it without the least ambiguity, but I couldn't tell you in words what is different, or begin to find an explanation for it. "Throughout the winter we all live our scattered, solitary lives spread out across the surface of the world. But as soon as the air changes, we start moving, every one of us moving towards a common point." She lay listening intently, one hand playing slowly across his chest. "How long does it take?" "About two months each way. It's almost the opposite side of the world from here." "Can't you just get on a plane or something?" "No." He couldn't put any really rational arguments against the idea, but on a fundamental, unarguable level he knew it was deeply wrong. "It's against my nature." She was silent for a minute before asking, "What's it like?" He had to think about it. It was a question no far ever had to ask. "You start out on your own. You don't take anything with you: just your feet to carry you and your eyes to guide you. Every day you keep moving the way your body knows to go, eating whenever you can find food, sleeping wherever you can find shelter, never the same landscape around you. "And sooner or later, you meet someone else heading the same way and you stick together. And then you'll run into someone else, or another little group, and before you know it you're part of a herd, all moving together, all excited, swapping stories of the solitary world you've left behind and the loved ones you're rushing to meet. And as the days go by the herd gets bigger, and the end of the journey gets nearer and nearer, until finally..." She leant her head against his shoulder, waiting for him to go on. "The gathering place is beautiful. It stretches for miles, and every little scrap of it is bustling with far. I never know how I find Her, but I do. She's always there before me. I'm looking through the crowd of faces, thousands of them, and suddenly, there She is. I rush towards Her, calling Her name, She turns around and sees me..." He stopped, realising that he was trembling. Sekla took his hand in hers and squeezed it reassuringly. "Tell me about her. Your mate." "She's... we're... we belong to each other. I love Her." He didn't feel like saying anything more, and she didn't ask it of him. Bartleby turned his head to look at Sekla, who gazed back at him with eyes gleaming a brilliant blue. Suddenly the track of his thoughts changed direction completely. He'd been thinking about Her, and indeed he loved Her deeply. But She was thousands of miles away. And there was another face ingrained in his affections, and she was right there next to him, so strange, so beautiful, and he couldn't be with her for much longer. It would be a shame for both of them if he spent their last time together pining over another. He leant over to stroke her cheek, then kissed her, softly, slightly, then again, more certainly, more sustained. Before he knew it, all thought of Her had washed away like dust after the rain and his mind was again filled with Sekla, a thought of her so consuming that it pushed everything else out of its way. It didn't take them long to recover something of the earlier drive of their lust, not with two pairs of lips caressing and exploring each other, just as two pairs of hands caressed and explored the others' body. Bartleby fueled himself on her scent, on the soft smooth slip of her fur under his fingers, on the taste of her lips, on the twitching of her tail coiled around his thigh. In no time at all he stood erect for her again, it standing so hard it ached, and he could see she was as ready as he. Sekla took an opportunity between kisses to speak. "Bartleby, stop just a minute. How about we take a pause and get the rest of these clothes off? I want you completely naked." He looked down at himself and laughed out loud, realising that he still wore his open shirt and his trousers gathered round his ankles, exactly as they'd been left after their first fit of passion. As for her, she still wore her white robe-dress, albeit hanging open and loose at the bottom. It didn't take her long to shrug off the rest of her dress, revealing a chest richly garbed in dense golden fur. It took him slightly longer to liberate his shirt and trousers, during which she ogled him hungrily. She smiled a critical eye up and down him as he at last stood bare before her. "Very nice. Very nice indeed. But I said I wanted you completely naked." For a moment he didn't realise what she meant, and when he did, he did so with a start. But then, why not? She must never have seen him completely naked before. Taking a step back, he dropped the human visage. Again, the disorienting jolt, and again the room seemed to shrink drastically around him. A familiar wave of nausea fell over him alongside the dizzying blow of the richer information from all his senses hitting him all at once, but subsided when he picked out the scent of Sekla, even richer and more interesting and somehow more tangible than it had seemed to his human nose. She gazed up at him in wonder, so much smaller now. Her eyes skated over him, taking in his whole body under its network of visage generator paraphernalia, finally coming to rest on one specific spot and flashing white in surprise. "Fuck, Bartleby!" He realised at once where she was looking, and learnt for the first time that an erection carried over from one form to the other. The white in her eyes flickered back to the green of lust. "I... think I can take you. I want to try, anyway." Bartleby moved to stand over her, placing his legs with care to avoid disturbing anything in the small room. "No." "You don't want to? I want to. I'd let you know if you're hurting me, you don't need to worry about that." "Oh, I want to. I want to rub this leg against your thigh, and use this leg to stroke your chest, and this leg to cradle your sweet head, and these two to loop round you and hold you close to me." He looked properly into her eyes, with his far eyes, for the first time. They were green. But what had seemed a simple green to human eyes, he could now see was a whole spectrum of colours, exhibiting three or maybe four flavours of lust, and all of them were on display as she looked at him. "I want to push into you slowly; and then gently, ever so gently, pleasure you, until I pour into you, screaming in ecstasy." She stared, eyes burning greener on all wavelengths, and reached out a hand towards his cock. He brushed it aside. "That's what I want to do. But I can't. I'm sorry. This body belongs to my mate." The world flipped around him again, becoming larger and quieter. "I hope you're not too disappointed." "I..." She paused, uncertain. He placed a reassuring hand on her side. "I don't understand you, Bartleby. But I can see it's important to you." Her hand reached to brush his chin. "And I could never be disappointed with you, whatever body you choose to love me in." He let her draw him closer until they stood clutched in each other's arms, her chest pressed so close and warm against his that he could feel her heartbeat. His fingers traced the bones of her shoulders; hers skimmed across his bare buttocks. He felt there should be something for him to say, but then he realised there was nothing she didn't already know. So he communicated as comprehensively as he could by kissing her tenderly on the lips. What happened next, Bartleby could only later recall as a vague blur of stroking fingertips and dancing lips and gentle arousal, saturated with the spicy smell and taste of Sekla. A blur of kisses, and quivering legs, and golden fur, and his hands roving all over her, needing to touch every inch of her strange and beautiful body. And shining through the haze, her eyes, shining greener and greener, staring adoringly into his own. One moment stood out clearly. She kissed him, for perhaps the fiftieth time, but this time she let her long, agile tongue slip into his mouth and flicker about, probing, wet and wonderful, whispering against his own. At the same time she ran her flexible fingers over his responsive cock, squeezing it, taunting it. After that, there was again a blur, but this time more heated, more urgent. A blur of hands gripping and pulling at tender flesh, of tongues rasping ravenously over slick skin and damp fur, of her hands palpitating and tormenting his eager shaft. Sekla wrapped one flexible leg around his waist, the fingerlike toes gripping tightly. Throwing herself athletically up into his arms, she brought the other leg round the other side, leaving her arms clasped around his shoulders, her legs wrapped around his hips, her dripping pussy rubbing against his cock. She moved her hips experimentally, making Bartleby moan in response. "Like this?" she asked. Bartleby carried her slowly to the bed and laid her down gently on her back, climbing on top of her, her legs between his knees. "Like this." Her tail wrapped up from between her legs, coiling around his waist, pulling him down. He let himself descend. There was no more foreplay: both recognised that the time for that had passed, and there was nothing more to be done but feed their urgent, consuming need. Her hands clasped around his back as the tip of his cock met the mouth of her pussy and he pushed slowly inside without pausing, feeling her warm and wet welcome that seemed to try and help pull him in, seeing her eyes blaze green and her mouth open to shout silently. He was determined to fuck her slowly and sensuously, to draw out the pleasure for the both of them. And so he began, grinding his hips against hers, as restrained as he could bear, relishing the tight pulsing wetness of her, the way her eyes lit up with his every movement. But soon he couldn't stand the slow pace and found himself speeding up, pounding into her in deep, delicious thrusts, his skin gleaming with sweat, his breaths fast and ragged. She writhed under him, every contortion of her limbs as expressive of her ecstasy as the gasping of her voice or the flashing green of her eyes. Faster he thrust and faster. With every push he could see her eyes burn brighter, hear her voice cry louder, feel her body twist more convulsively. He was reaching a climax, building irresistibly to burst out of him but he willed it back, waiting, just another thrust... and another... and another... Everything happened at once. Her orgasm boiled violently around his cock, a hot wet spasming squeeze that gripped him tightly. At the same moment he let himself go, shouting wordlessly as he exploded into her. Her eyes snapped shut, her body taut and still for a moment except where she clenched rhythmically against his shaft, milking the juice out of him. And then she screamed, a primal howl of rapture. And opened her eyes. They screamed with colour. Not just green, although green was there, even brighter than before; every colour, flashing and dancing and combining, erupted from her eyes in an orgasm of light. Bartleby stared, gasping, as he pumped the last diminishing injections of his seed into her, and her throbbing climax died away, leaving them quiet and still and exhausted. * * * He was suddenly awake. Sekla lay close beside him, sleeping, one arm spread limply over his chest, but it wasn't her who had woken him. He had to be sure. Moving her arm gently to one side he stood up, moved to the centre of the room and flipped into far form. And breathed. "What is it?" a voice mumbled sleepily from the bed. "The air has changed." * * * Sekla's deft hands finished untying him from the last remnant of his visage generator, dropping the piece into a neat pile with the others. It was a bright, crisp spring morning and a good crowd of people of various types had gathered outside the Institute building to see Bartleby off. That, or to ogle at his far form, which most of them had never seen. He chose to assume the former. As he stared out in the direction of the sand hills, his feet itched to carry him away. But he had to finish things here. Stooping to pick up the heap of visage generator paraphernalia, he deposited it in the arms of Sekla. "I told you that this body belongs to my mate. Well... this body belongs to you." Her eyes flashed in amusement. "Bartleby, I'm not going exclusive with you!" "I don't expect you to. You do things your way, but let me do things my way." "I... alright." "I'll be back to claim it in the autumn." "I'll take good care of it until then. And after then I'll take excellent care of it." Bartleby extended a forepaw and she kissed it softly. There was an awkward silence. He felt he should say some kind of goodbye, but didn't know how to begin. Sekla saved him. "Why are you hanging round here when I can see you're bursting to get going? Go on, don't keep her waiting. Go!" "Alright." He nodded at K'ar-Eek in the crowd. "You two enjoy yourselves." He turned around and left, walking at first, and then breaking into a run. He had the suns on his back and the ground between his toes. Ahead of him rose the sand hills, and beyond them, the plains, and beyond them, the swamps, and beyond them, far beyond them, somewhere... was Her.