Page 26 of I Married A Lizardman

“Honestly, because I knew I could make a difference,” I said matter-of-factly. “You have amazing lands, and I have expert skills in farming. I was thrilled at the prospect of turning the situation around for your people in the space of two-to-three months. But I never expected there to be such fierce pushback. I understand your history, but I don’t understand allowing past tragedy to let you starve when such a simple solution exists.”

“And now that you know that things are not going to be what you thought?” she insisted.

In that instant, I realized she wasn’t asking this lightly. My answer could define the future of our relationship going forward.

“I left my world to come here. I have sworn to be by Olix’s side, for better or for worse, until death do us part in both the human wedding ceremony and the Andturian one,” I said, holding her gaze unwaveringly. “My word is my bond. I do not know what the future holds, but whatever comes our way, I will face it with him.”

Luped’s face softened, and the tension that had creeped up in my back faded.

“I do not know if my people will ever embrace what you have to offer, even if they starve to death,” Luped said with a frown. “We are pretty much indoctrinated from birth against it, and it’s not a natural interest for us. But we must evolve. The rest of the world is moving forward, and we are being left behind. I believe that if we are not careful, we will be driven off our lands and then become extinct. Olix is fighting a difficult battle between honoring our ways and trying to lead us into the future. I also believe that you are a clever female. As long as it won’t hurt Olix, I will assist you in any ploy you come up with to help us move forward.”

I grinned, my heart soaring at finding this unexpected ally. I extended a hand towards her. Luped stared at it, a little confused. She repeated my gesture, leaving her hand in front of mine. I grabbed hers and shook it.

“You’ve got yourself a deal,” I said with a grin before explaining what shaking on a deal meant.

She shook her head at me, amused. “Now that we are in agreement, please give me the details on what you need built so that I can get started,” Luped said. “You also asked for hay, straw, or woodchips. We have hay and woodchips. Do you have a preference?”

“Woodchips would be ideal,” I said. “The smaller the better, but I have a shredder if needed. I would need the equivalent of six of these crates.”

“Very well,” Luped said, giving me a funny look but not arguing.

While she went to fetch the woodchips, I pulled out my datapad and browsed through the specs of shelves and hooks I’d been considering while planning all the things I could grow on Xecania before my departure from my home world.

The woodchips she brought back needed more shredding. They were leftovers from the Crafters, which they used to start the fires in the cooking pit of the Great Hall. I gave her the specs for the shelves and hooks, then shoved a bunch of woodchips in the shredder, leaving it to work its magic while I continued preparing my seedlings.

Luped came back a short while later with a hovering platform ladened with wooden planks and tools, immediately going to work on the shelves outside the shed I was using as a greenhouse. Watching her lift those huge planks like they weighed nothing blew my mind. But more importantly, although I mostly considered myself a loner, seeing her working ‘with me’ through the large windows was a major boost to my shaken enthusiasm. I didn’t feel so unwanted.

By the time she finished building the first set of shelves, I was done with all my seedling and shredding. Sadly, tomorrow was a play day, so she would build my hooks the day after, and then make more shelves. Before calling it a night, I used one of the fire stones—a polished stone similar to the glowstones that lit our house but that could heat like a hot plate—to boil some water. I filled a few empty containers with the shredded wood chips and poured the boiling water over them to let them pasteurize overnight.

When we rejoined the rest of the clan for evening meal, the curious and speculating looks of the Andturians failed to retain my attention. The dark and hungry gaze of my mate had me throbbing in all the right places and wondering what the heck had him so triggered.

Chapter 10

Olix

With the great hunt coming next week, I had a lot of preparation and coordination to do. All five Andturian clans would be heading out together to cover a greater area. We rarely used technology, preferring to stick with our traditional tracking methods. However, this hunt was far too important. The situation of Clan Leader Surtas was becoming critical. They had been the first to be hit by the scarcity of game. And now, their Gatherers were finding less and less to harvest in their woods. We four other clans had spared what we could, but with our own reserves running low, another failed hunt and public market could force his hand into selling his lands.

This would be a fatal blow to our people as all the hunting grounds and lands surrounding the Inosh Mountains would be lost to us. I refused to entertain that possibility.

Using the map software had allowed me to get a better overview of the location and direction in which the herds were moving based on the latest sightings by our scouts. I hoped that planning things this way would bless us with better results.

As soon as I completed that task, and with an hour left before the evening meal, I decided to seize this opportunity—for the rare times I fiddled with a computer tablet—to consult the knowledge database to which the United Planets Organization had given us access. Since the arrival of the tourist resorts and the Bosengi refugees, the knowledge network had significantly expanded, not only with accessible information, but also with real-time features from tracking, online ordering, communicating, etc.

Over the past few years, Luped had made increasing use of it while mostly failing at convincing me to do the same. However, we had all witnessed how much it had benefited her. The practical things she had learned through it had significantly enhanced her building skills, taught her how to make clever furniture, additions, or modifications to existing ones, showed her ingenious dwelling designs, and above all how to maintain and improve our current dwellings. They had been built decades ago according to Vaengi specs. Over the years, that technology—from plumbing to heating, and everything else in between—had become dated and some of it even obsolete. Without Luped and her research, many of the comforts we had come to take for granted would have been lost.

Yes, we needed to learn more and not be left behind by all the other species, both on Xecania and off world.

But it wasn’t new technology that held my interest right now. I had started reading more about humans, kicking myself for not having found the time before Susan’s arrival. It would have made the first day so much less awkward. Although my mate and I communicated well, I believed she was keeping a number of things from me. I couldn’t say if it was out of embarrassment, because she didn’t think I would understand or want it, or because she wasn’t interested in it. I suspected the truth lay somewhere in-between the first two options. The way she looked at my lips whenever we kissed only reinforced that sentiment.

I performed a search for human coupling. The first results were extremely boring documents that focused more on the human anatomy and the physiological aspects of mating. I knew the mechanics. I just wanted to know better how to please my mate.

I modified the search to look for human coupling rituals. That was slightly better, although a lot of it focused on courting a female, and then a series of pretty useless things to ‘set the mood’ before mating. Apparently, you should feed your mate first—although most of the meals suggested appeared to be desserts or small, unfulfilling treats. The other recommendations included: playing meditation or sleep-inducing music, dimming the light in the room to make seeing difficult—only to semi-fix it with a bunch of candles, and littering the floor or sleeping nest with flower petals. Why did they need the mood set, anyway? You either wanted to couple or not. Even now, just thinking about my mate had my stem torturing me with need.

Then I searched for human coupling videos—it would take me days to recover from the trauma.

The variety ranged from highly educational to downright horrifying. It took me a while to differentiate which knowledge sites had the horrifying ones and which had the educational ones. Although even the latter had categories that disturbed me.

The first thing I learned was that humans used their tongues for far more than licking the grooves of a male’s abdominal muscles or the teats of a female. Why would that species ever think that licking inside the mouth of another made sense? And yet, every single video had extensive displays of it. The couples also licked and sucked each other’s genitals. How did that make sense? Human females even swallowed their mate’s seed—which prompted me to search if a human female could be impregnated that way. They could not. So, why did they do it?

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