Revenge is Sweet

me and my mother and sister, the thought that he had killed those four to protect me, the thought that he would do that again and again made me feel strange. I felt, funny down between my legs and licked my lips and found the wind across them as they dried to be pleasant. I crossed my legs and liked how I felt. So I did it again as I watched him toil in the water for me. For me. He had risked all for me, given his life for me. He had asked nothing from me and he had done whatever he could to make my life safe and comfortable. I kept crossing my legs and then, a shudder ran up my body from the place where I peed. I wanted to hold him so much right then but was too tired to stand up so I lay in the sun, feeling the warm sand on my back through the clothes I wore and fell asleep.

  That night when we retired, I removed my clothes and insisted that he do the same. I wanted to feel his skin against mine. Oh, he argued saying “Child, I’m more than twice your age” but finally gave in and we lay there with him in his underpants and me naked. I looked him over carefully as he slept, his body so different from mine. He had hair on his arms and legs and chest and face where I had none. His ears were round, his eyes lacking my vertical folds, his forehead smooth of antennae and his chest flat. I lay on my back and watched my breasts flatten and move to the sides but still, they were obviously present and my nipples were red and erect while his were pink and flat. I knew he was a man and I a woman but I didn’t remember what that meant, my brain was still healing and trying to regrow those parts they had removed. How many memories had I lost and would I ever recover them?

  I knew he had no tail but there was that bulge in his pants where I was flat.

  I slid my fingers down to feel myself, my hair re-growing there and found moisture between my legs. It felt good when I touched myself there and soon found a place that felt really good as I stroked it. I removed my fingers, wet and smelled then tasted them, all the time staring at my protector. Why did he wear those clothes when I was naked?

  I touched him, felt him there, firm yet soft then as I stroked I felt him grow larger and harder beneath the cloth. He was snoring as he often did and slept soundly because he worked so hard and so glancing to ensure that he was asleep, I pulled his underpants down and stared at what I saw. It looked familiar, yet new as if I had seen that before and the sight gave me pleasant feelings as if I were remembering something pleasant but could not. Like a mushroom but larger and with a hole in the cap, I stroked it lightly and it pulsed beneath my fingers.

  Scared, I replaced his clothing and lay there, in his arms, afraid yet... wanting more. I found myself stroking my own wetness as I rested my hand on his hard member feeling it beneath me wishing I could remember what to do and then the shuddering began again and again and soon I fell asleep relaxed, smiling and wanting more.

  I was alone when I awoke, covered to resist the morning chill and he was making breakfast as he always did. Rice, some plants he found and bits of fish with the paste of fish bones mixed with oil. I stared but his pants wouldn’t let me see if he were still hard so I ate what he gave me and asked, “What are we and why are we so different?”

  I didn’t understand all that he said and don’t remember it all but this is what I did hear him say, “Fifty million years ago a race of six-limbed reptiles developed intelligence. But they had a few problems. Their society was homogenous, they were one race with one language so had never seen anything different. They are socialists and so had no greed. They were pacifists and vegetarians so had no war and because of this, they advanced slowly. They finally spread across their part of the galaxy, exploring planets like their own and terra-forming worlds to create places to live as they traveled. But they were cautious and having never seen another race before they never knew other life existed.

  “So one day one of their automated ships visited Earth and grabbed a bunch of biological specimens and brought them to their world and suddenly the Demons discovered that they were not alone. They cured the humans of their ills and set them free and the humans spread across the Demons worlds until 500 years later, one group decided that they were more important than the others and started a war that lasted centuries. Entire planets were destroyed before the war ended and the Demons won only because they changed themselves and their human allies into soldiers.

  “With the war near won, the Demons returned to exploration but they needed workers to keep their ships running so they took me and your ancestors from Earth and changed us, them, into Weir like you to work for them. They just didn’t understand why humans argued with this. Everything that you are, your tail and feet and hands are designed for moving around a starship in zero-gravity. Your ears and eyes and antennae are designed to see and hear and sense problems with the ship. And your ability to regenerate are to keep you alive for centuries so you can serve them better.

  “Well, they would release their servants after a few years and some of us banded together with humans from Earth who wanted a better life away from the people like the ones who harmed you and we settled on a world on the Frontier and the humans who moved there bore Weir children. Your grandparents are humans from Earth who were offered a chance at a better life and took it.

  “Sometimes, we return to Earth. We do it to offer colonization to others who are good people, we return to study humanity for someday, Earth will develop the ability to travel through space and we need to know how to deal with them before the Demons solve the problem, and we do it because Earth is our Homeworld and we miss it.

  “I returned for some reason I’d rather not discuss and got stuck there, made human again or I’d be in a similar lab. I’ve been trying to return home for decades because although I was born on Earth, I love my adopted home more. That is why we are different. I was born human, you were born Weir but we are both of the same world.”

  “Why do the humans hate me so?”

  “They don’t hate so much as they fear. Humans are aggressive. They evolved from a predator ape and when one group of humans meets another that is different, they get afraid that the other group will try to steal their food and land and females so they kill them first. It just doesn’t occur to humans to be nice to a new people. So they saw your family and were afraid that you were an advance spy for an alien invasion and instead of talking to you, they reacted with violence. You aren’t special. They gave disease infected blankets to Indian women and children to facilitate their westward expansion into lands they wanted. They infected Southern blacks with diseases so they could see how they spread and how people died from them. They experimented on you to see how they could destroy us when they traveled space. It doesn’t excuse their acts, but it is easier to understand them.”

  “I want to kill them for what they did to us.”

  “As do I, child. But that will come when it comes. You will live 500 years, the humans far less than a century and will destroy themselves long before you age. We have time.”

  “You look old. Your heart stutters when I listen to it as you sleep and your bones ache in the cold. Are you going to die?”

  “We all die eventually. When the Demons took me, they fixed my problems and made me into what you are. But they didn’t fully understand humanity and made mistakes. Like along with the ability to live for centuries and repair injuries easily, they condemned the Weir to a lifetime of sexual need. If you don’t get sex often, you die just as if you don’t get food or water or air. When they turned humans into Weir, they didn’t change our DNA so much as they activated and modified latent genes that we always had. So when a human that has been adapted is injured badly, the regeneration sometimes changes us back into humans again. That is what happened to me. And unfortunately, this human body is fragile and sensitive to human pollutions. So yes, I am dieing. If I can return home, I can be fixed or if I can return to being Weir, I will heal but as for what I am now, well, I have led an interesting life. I’ve lived and loved. I’ve planted trees and fought in wars, watched the clouds drift across the sky and visited the
stars. I’ve loved and married and sired and raised children. I’ve done a lot and if I die today, my main regret would be in not reuniting you with your family.”

  “How old are you? And how old am I?’

  “Age is a state of being. Humans are lucky to live eighty years, Weir for five hundred easy. This body is old, nearing the end of middle age and falling apart. You? I’m not certain. Weir mature late and stop ageing early so I am guessing late teens, no more than twenty but probably younger.”

  “I’ll live centuries? And you won’t last decades?”

  “Correct. You will look much as you do now for four hundred years. You won’t even begin to look like me until around four hundred-fifty years or so. So you have near five centuries ahead of you, I will be lucky to last another few decades. Don’t be sad, it is the way things are so accept them.

  “Here! I am going to teach you the beginnings of fighting. Since you are still weak, we will start with Tai-Chi, or rather something similar. Do as I do. Move slowly, relaxed, breathe with your belly and feel the Earth beneath your feet, feel the energies flow as you move. Relax and be one with the