© 1991,1998,2003 Watts Martin
This story deals with adult themes and sexual situations.
– Chapter 3 –
Which led the better life: the slave, or the pet?
The shock had quickly dulled to a quiet anger. Allin refused to respond to Teisha's petting and prodding—or, when he had driven her to frustration, pushing and hitting. Abstractly, he knew she wasn't hitting hard by her own standards, but each blow hurt, and strengthened his resolve to never acknowledge her presence. She might treat him like a pet, but he'd be damned if he'd act like one.
He spent the days she was at work restlessly exploring the house, futilely studying the books, trying the locks. He looked out the windows, memorizing the suburban landscape around him. If he managed to get out, no escape route looked particularly promising.
Nights were spent being as stubbornly passive as possible. When Teisha was home and awake he rarely moved unless she physically picked him up and carried him somewhere, perhaps trying to play with him before realizing he'd just passively sit where deposited. Then she would pull a book down from a shelf and spend the rest of the night reading, every few minutes glancing wistfully at him.
When he was thinking, it was about The Question (he always saw it in capitals). Allin had flirted with philosophy before, but couldn't recall anyone asking The Question. He supposed the issue had never come up before.
If he was her slave, he would have to work. A pet wasn't expected to.
But she would at least assume he had greater than animal intelligence. Teisha's understanding of humans didn't allow for the possibility of even near parity with her.
And slaves were sometimes given their freedom. Not pets.
On the third night he'd been there Teisha came home carrying a large box. "Yimano, Allin," she said as she did each evening, walking past him with the box and heading into her room.
A minute later, she came out and addressed him again. "Geri, Allin." He didn't look up. Whatever she wanted, she considered important; she immediately crossed the room, plucked him off the couch and carried him through her bedroom door.
He'd never been in the room before; he glanced around a little as she dropped him on the floor. Then he realized he wasn't on the floor at all. She'd set him on a human-sized mattress placed in one corner of the room.
Allin closed his eyes, feeling like beating his head against the wall. She bought me a doggie bed. Teisha was talking to him excitedly; he opened his eyes again and favored her with a blank expression, then leaned back. A few seconds later she left the room, obviously disappointed he had shown no reaction at his "gift."
Allin sighed heavily. The pet mattress was six feet long, plush and pillowed, covered with a fur-like fabric he recognized. It had been a famous export of Kalithar, a land on a different world from Ranea peopled with elf-like humanoids about two feet high—was it this world, perhaps? Ranea traded with them centuries ago until the caravans became less and less frequent, eventually ceasing all together. It was assumed that Kalithar, never politically stable, had finally fallen apart. Allin now wondered if their descendants were kept in big gerbil cages for the amusement of "little" girls three times their size.
He stared up at Teisha's bed. It was neatly made, a navy blue blanket covering its six foot wide, twelve foot long surface. Two pillows, each half Allin's size, rested against the headboard. It looked so comfortable he almost salivated. The bed obviously held two people; Allin wondered whether or not Teisha often had company in it. He hadn't noticed any sign of her having a social life.
In a moment, Teisha came back in the room, carrying a plate of food, like she had done for the last three days after coming back from work. Allin didn't bother to look at it when she set it down beside him and kneeled next to him, trying to coax him to eat something.
After a minute, her voice became desperate. Allin was used to it and stayed still, looking at neither the food nor her.
Then something he wasn't used to happened: she screamed "Jippin, vo theffin libala!" at a decibel level human lungs could never hope to match and threw the food dish at him.
Luckily, she hadn't aimed; it flew so fast he wouldn't have had time to react. The dish shattered against the wall hard enough not just to rip the wallpaper but to chip the stone under it.
Allin scrambled back. "Okay, you got my attention," he gasped, ears still ringing from the yell. "You didn't have to try and decapitate…." His voice trailed off as he turned to face her.
Teisha had slumped against the side of the bed, eyes closed, big tears streaming down her muzzle and dripping onto her shirt.
Allin looked away, sighing. "You don't have any right to treat me as a pet," he muttered. "I do not have to feel guilty for refusing to be one."
A wracking sob came from the doe, turning into a miserable cough.
"Shit, I hate this. If you had any sense you'd see I wasn't just another animal." He closed his eyes. That wasn't true, was it? She might think he was smarter than an average human, but he'd owned cats that were smarter than average. And he still expected them to be pets.
"All right, you don't know any better, and I suppose to you I've made a pretty shitty pet so far." He looked back up at her. She was still sobbing, more quietly now.
"I'm sorry," he said, and sighed again. "Shit." He knew that Teisha just thought he was making more funny noises. If he wanted to make her stop crying—and not end up back at the pet shop—he'd have to act like a pet. What had he been expecting to accomplish by being obstinate? Clearly, he was going to be a pet, and another owner might be far less tolerant than Teisha.
If he stayed as her pet, maybe he could learn the rabbits' language—waiting patiently for months, maybe years—enough to tell Teisha his story. And desperately hope she'd help him, rather than just tell him he was her pet, and that was that. No guarantee, but no choice, either.
Allin rose to his knees and awkwardly slid over to Teisha. "Don't cry," he said softly, wishing he could say it in her own tongue. On his knees, he could put his hands on her shoulders. At his touch, she opened her eyes, staring warily at him and trembling. "I'm sorry." He moved closer, his chest touching hers, and he wrapped his arms around her neck and buried his face in her neck fur.
Teisha gently stroked his back with one hand, her sobs quieting. "J'arala vo, ponthala," she whispered. "Ji juvil i ve mri." She guided him into her lap, running her fingers through his hair as she rested his head between her breasts, the other hand stroking—petting—his chest and legs.
And really, being held that way wasn't that bad. The feel of her arms around him was… pleasant. Far more pleasant than anything he'd felt since he'd left Ranea.
He wondered if he should find that realization disturbing.
* * *
That night, as Teisha sat on the couch reading, Allin wandered listlessly around the living room, trying to figure out what pets did to keep from dying of boredom. He developed a deep and horrible suspicion that the pets he had owned himself, during his brief and unsuccessful flirts with the "quiet life," slept most of the time because they had nothing else to do. At least his had gotten to travel a lot. He, however, was housebound. When she finally set the book down and went to bed, she waited for Allin to follow, watching him get comfortable (at least to her eyes) on his mattress before kissing him lightly on the cheek and heading into the bathroom.
Allin rolled over onto his back and stared at the ceiling, a dozen feet over his head, forcing himself to analyze his situation more realistically than he'd let himself do in the past. Barring unforeseen changes in circumstance, his salvation lay in breaking the language barrier, and he would have to learn Teisha's language the way an infant rabbit might. Except that people expected babies to learn to talk. She read every night; maybe if he persisted in showing an interest in what she read, she'd pick up on it, and start reading to him.
Of course, some pets "talked," or least repeated words. The humans the rabbits kept as pets were likely capable of learning some of the rabbits' language; he suspected they were kept the way a human might keep a chimp.
But they were smarter than chimps were, weren't they? Did the rabbits simply not care whether their pets were language-capable sapients, or did they have the same relation to their kept humans in terms of intelligence as humans of Allin's kind did to the apes? It was said that high magical aptitude was a function of intellect. The Sidhe often referred to humans as children….
What if he really was an animal compared to Teisha?
He heard the door to the room close softly. Allin turned, and sucked in his breath.
Teisha was nude, clothes draped over one arm, back to Allin and her bed. He sat up and watched as she tossed the clothes in her closet and walked to the bed. Her chest fur was, indeed, white, running from her neck, across her breasts and all the way down to her thighs, where it disappeared in a fluff of dark brown between her legs. Allin stared stupidly up at her, his mouth dry. She shook her head, cascading her golden hair around her shoulders as she pulled back the blanket and sheets, not noticing her pet's rapt attention until her legs and thighs were covered.
She leaned over the bed, looked down at him and smiled. "Mri peyo, Allin," she said, obviously not realizing the effect she was having on him—maybe not aware she could. Then she pulled the sheet up the rest of the way and rolled over on her back. Allin continued to stare unabashedly until the lights suddenly went out, evidently responding to Teisha's unspoken command.
After a moment longer, Allin fell back against his mattress with a thump, breathing heavily.
Few people in the world, he had concluded years ago, who looked as good without clothes as they did with them. Furred races didn't have to worry much about blemishes, birthmarks and the host of other difficulties associated with visible skin, but everyone had to deal with being too skinny, too fat, or just being out of kilter with their society's ideal proportions. Allin had had many more liaisons than he would care to admit through his adventures, and had been involved with subcultures that considered clothing (and often sexual inhibitions) frivolous. Out of a hundred people he'd seen naked, he could think of maybe a dozen who looked as good undressed as they did in a well-chosen outfit.
Teisha was one of two who unquestionably looked better nude.
He wondered if real pets ever noticed such things. He suspected not. Having a dog or cat try and make love to your leg or arm wasn't uncommon, and the last female cat he had owned always took an inordinate interest in gender-specific parts of his anatomy. Still, it probably wasn't because she had fantasized about him.
He rolled onto his side, facing away from his mistress's bed. If he didn't stop himself from being sexually attracted to the furry giantess, the coming months might be a great deal more frustrating than he had anticipated.
* * *
When he woke up the next morning, Teisha was already awake, sounds of running water coming from the bathroom. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, admitting that the "human bed" was a great deal more comfortable than the couch.
Teisha walked in a moment later, still gloriously nude. "Mri morat, ponthala." She kneeled over him, hugging him against her chest and giving his back a brisk rub before drawing away and crossing to the closet.
Allin blinked, quite awake now. "Don't make a habit of doing that sort of thing," he muttered, taking a deep breath.
He stretched self-consciously and, for the first time since he had been taken by the exotic animal traders, looked around for his clothes before realizing he no longer wore them. He stood up and sighed, walking to the door. Teisha turned at the sound of the knob turning, watching him open it and shaking her head slightly. Allin looked back and wished he hadn't; she was half-dressed, a woefully dull yellow skirt pulled on and a bra with cups almost the size of punch bowls half on.
"I'm going to go out here and try to remember great sex I've had in the past," he told her. "Fantasies about women who might crush me to death in the missionary position are unhealthy." He walked into the living room and sat on the couch until Teisha came out, dressed in typical deathly dull fashion. She brought him breakfast, gave him a kiss and went off to work.
"Your ability to take a body like that and make it look so plain is truly amazing," he said, shaking his head.
* * *
The next night in her room was not as bad as the first. While the sight of Teisha's unclothed body was still enough to completely hold his attention until she left his field of vision, he no longer felt like a drooling idiot around her, and she could even pet him without causing undue heart strain. He'd thought he was long since immune to puppy love. He wondered if, against reason, the size differential contributed to her attractiveness; he'd always had a slight weakness for the exotic.
That evening, Teisha didn't come home on time. Earlier he'd decided a peculiar small glass box on one of the shelves was a timepiece. The box was tall and thin, containing two columns of twenty-four rectangular crystals each, stacked on top of one another like cards. In each column, one crystal always glowed; symbols between the columns presumably marked off hours. Teisha always walked through the door within a few minutes of the time the sixth crystal from the bottom on the left column was lit, usually before the fourth crystal from the top on the right had glowed.
By the time the fourth crystal from the bottom on the left had lit up, Allin was starved. He finally gave up and went to the refrigerator himself, pulling out a selection of food his mistress would never dream of giving him and stacking it on the counter. He climbed up beside it to get a plate from a high cabinet, then went out into the living room to eat.
She walked through the door when he was almost finished, her expression giddily blissful. She immediately started talking to him, faster than he could follow, heading straight into the kitchen. Then suddenly she stopped, staring at the plate of food he'd gotten. "Thiksa!"
He looked down at the plate, then up at her as she walked toward him. He drew back as she approached. "Pinay," she said softly, sitting down beside him. She cupped his chin in a hand and tilted his head toward her face, studying it intently. With a pang of self-loathing, Allin realized he was trembling.
Then she noticed it, too, and petted him soothingly. After a moment he relaxed; maybe it wasn't that uncommon for humans to figure out such things.
Or maybe he was exceedingly lucky to have Teisha as an owner.
In a moment she got up and went over to the bookshelf, opening up a small cabinet in the lower right-hand side. It revealed a case of small, neatly arranged jewels; she picked one, seemingly at random, and set it in a short black ebony base on the shelf above the cabinet. As she walked toward the hall to her bedroom, the room filled with orchestral music.
"Damn," Allin said, crossing over to the jewel and staring at it. The sound of the music wasn't coming from it; in fact, he couldn't tell where it was coming from at all. No matter where he stood, the instruments that sounded as if they were on one side or the other stayed that way. A violin on his right would still be on his right if he turned around.
He reached to the crystal but hesitated before touching it. If he accidentally broke something, Teisha might beat him, no matter how nice she was. Pain was, after all, a common way to train animals. He sighed, settling for staring at it and listening.
Shortly after a chorus started, Teisha came back out, dressed in a pink terricloth nightgown and singing. Her voice, while obviously untrained, was a clear, on-key alto. He'd heard worse bar singers in his travels.
She went over to the bookcase, retrieved a large book and sat down on the couch with it, still singing. She opened it with the spine on the right, flipped a few pages into it and started to read, occasionally reaching out and stroking Allin's leg absently. After a moment she reached down and adjusted his position by pulling one of his legs over her own.
"That may be comfortable for you, but it's putting my other leg to sleep." He squirmed a bit under the weight of her leg, trying to get to a point where he could see the book, and ended up falling prone, head on her stomach.
She laughed and lifted her legs up, stretching them out across the length of the couch, her torso nestled between the back and one of the arms, then moved Allin between her body and the couch's back, his left leg pressed against the length of her right and his right leg resting on top of it. She rested her right arm along the length of his body, stroking his rump absently with her hand.
"Oh, don't do that," he mumbled into her shirt. "If you knew what you're making my body go through right now, you'd be arrested for animal abuse." She didn't stop, of course.
He concentrated on visualizing a small blue triangle, inoffensive and very unsexy, and tried to find someplace to rest his right hand that wasn't on her stomach, her leg, or worse, between her legs. He finally gave up, resting it on her left knee and trying to get comfortable.
He wondered again whether a non-sapient pet would be aroused by the unthinking caresses Teisha was giving him. Did she know he was becoming aroused? She didn't seem to.
Yet, if she thought of him in exactly the same way he would have thought of a pet dog or cat, or even a chimp, she should be finding him a great deal more remarkable than she seemed to be. Obviously, the rabbits' pet humans weren't in the same category as other animals.
Maybe they didn't mind arousing human pets. Perhaps they weren't quite pets.
Allin felt his face color. And maybe I'm just a stupid animal and nobody cares. The thought made him slightly indignant—but the alternatives he'd started to consider were more unsettling.
In about a half-hour he fell asleep, Teisha still singing along softly to her music.
* * *
Allin spent the next few days sleeping during the daytime and avoiding Teisha's touch as much as possible, without being too obvious about it. He would sit still for petting, but was not about to let her cuddle him—especially late at night. She had taken to wandering around the house in only the bathrobe, or one night, nothing at all. Allin spent as much of that night in different rooms from his mistress as he could manage.
Each of those nights, Teisha came home later than usual; one night she didn't show up until midnight, and went straight to bed. She had stopped bothering to feed him dinner when she showed up more than an hour or two after sunset, seeing that he knew how to get his own food if necessary.
At first, Allin had been genuinely worried about her behavior—and his concern itself surprised him. However, the third night Teisha came home, singing and looking blissful, he realized she had a social life after all: she was coming home from dates.
He gave up on the books temporarily. She had done almost no reading since she had started dating. Understandable, of course, but immensely frustrating; with her spending so much time away from home, he wasn't even picking up any more of the language than he already knew—barely a few dozen words at best.
It was almost a week before he "met" her boyfriend. Teisha came home, almost on time; holding the door open for her was a creature that looked big enough to reach into the sky, rip the sun from its moorings and swallow it whole.
As he followed Teisha to the couch, which Allin quickly vacated, he shrank back into merely frightening proportions. The top of her head came to just under his chin, and his shoulders were well over three feet across. He spotted Allin and rumbled something which sounded very much like the phrase the young doe at the pet shop had squealed when she first saw him, the one he had translated as Isn't he cute?
Teisha said what he translated as "Allin, this is Silarant," but Allin quickly dismissed the rabbit's real name, dubbing him "Troll." Troll was dressed smartly, quite unlike Teisha, who today had chosen an unusually awful blouse that managed to not only conceal her cleavage, but—incredibly—minimize its mammoth size. Coupled with the tight, pleated skirt that effectively hid her gorgeous legs, the outfit left only golden hair and her delicate face standing out enough to merit a second glance.
When Teisha rose from the couch a few minutes later to head into the kitchen, it became obvious that Troll knew what kind of body lay beneath the boring clothes. When she bent over to get a pan from a low cabinet, he grinned in a way which could only be described as wolfish.
"You think you're horny now, try having her stroke your butt when you're lying on her lower thigh," Allin said cheerfully.
Troll didn't even glance in the human's direction, evidently considering pets beneath all but cursory notice.
The dinner she made was vegetarian, but smelled absolutely mouth-watering. Troll made conversation with her in the kitchen, beyond Allin's range of hearing, for a few minutes, then sat out on the couch flipping through a book until the food was ready. It was obvious he wasn't reading. Not enough pictures, Allin suspected.
To Allin's chagrin, they finished all the food themselves. He walked into the kitchen as the two were sipping an after-dinner drink, presumably alcoholic. "Fine, don't save any leftovers for your poor, helpless pet," he said to Teisha as he went past.
When he came back from the refrigerator carrying some raw vegetables, Troll pointed at him, speaking to Teisha in his unintelligible rumbling bass. Teisha laughed; Troll looked mildly uncomfortable, glancing across at the human.
"I'm well-trained," Allin said, walking up to Troll and holding out a carrot. After a moment the rabbit took it, staring at it oddly before setting it down and continuing to talk with his date.
As he watched this curious excuse for a date, it became obvious—to Allin—that Troll expected dessert to be served in the bedroom. When Teisha wasn't looking directly at him, his expressions alternated between lust and impatience.
Allin might have found it amusing, if it hadn't been for the quick flashes of contempt. Expecting Troll to show signs of being in love with Teisha might be unrealistic, but Allin suspected he simply didn't like her very much. Each laugh on her part brought a fleeting irritation on his; each time she spoke earned a stifled yawn when she looked away.
Allin guessed his owner had such a poor self-image that she'd recreated her appearance to match the dumpy bunny she saw herself as—thus neatly preventing most people from taking enough interest to challenge her perception. For whatever reason, Troll had taken interest anyway, and Teisha had obviously fallen head over heels for him. She spent most of the evening giggling like a four hundred-pound schoolgirl.
For his part, Troll seemed irritated by Allin's presence. When the two crossed over to the couch, Troll stared so pointedly in Allin's direction that Teisha led him into her bedroom and sat him down on his bed, petting him a few times before leaving.
Allin rolled onto his stomach and sighed. If the rabbits' age could be judged the same way a Ranean rabbit's age could, Teisha was in her late twenties, and might have been a virtual "old maid" for some years. He couldn't blame her for this dalliance with Troll… but he felt certain Troll had no intentions of this being more than a dalliance. If the fuzzy mental picture he had of his owner's personality was accurate, she wouldn't view "casual sex" as anything other than an oxymoron.
Allin believed that, too, but he'd arrived at it through trial and error—mostly error. He wished he had a way to warn Teisha. Even if he could speak the language, though, he suspected she wouldn't listen until it was too late.
"You're jumping to an awful lot of conclusions about those rabbits," he admonished himself out loud. And why should he be so concerned? Teisha should be able to take care of herself—and he was hardly in a position to play her big brother.
The door opened again just as he was falling asleep; he watched through half-lidded eyes as Teisha entered the room, her blouse already unbuttoned and pulled out. Troll followed behind, his shirt and belt having been left behind on the couch. Do you really want to do what you're getting ready to do with me watching? Troll reached out to Teisha's waist, pulling the clasp of the skirt open; a gentle push and it fell to her feet. She wriggled out of the blouse, leaving her clad only in panties and bra, and then slowly slid Troll's pants off, revealing already bulging briefs. Teisha caressed them quickly but firmly, and the bulge grew too big for them to contain completely.
While he was not proud of it, Allin had watched people make love before—but it had always been with permission. Yet these two would not care about his presence; a pet could not be a voyeur. Did he really want to play on Teisha's misunderstanding of what he was? Or did she know he would understand what was going on?
They finished undressing each other; Teisha spread herself out on the top of the perfectly-made blanket, pulling Troll down with her. With wry amusement, Allin realized the buck's erection was at least a foot long. Some of his "ladykiller" friends would suffer permanent psychological scars at the sight.
After a few more seconds, Allin regretted his indecision about looking away. He felt unable to drop his eyes, coloring slightly as Troll traced a path with his tongue up from one of Teisha's erect nipples to her lips, dipping inside as he came down on top of her, rolling her to one side and pulling one of her legs over his. She seemed almost overwhelmed by the attention, and Troll was quite willing to take advantage of it.
His view became Teisha's back and Troll's roaming hands, and occasionally Troll's head as he kissed and nipped across her neck and shoulders. When Allin started imagining what the rest of Troll was doing, hearing his mistress' soft gasps and moans, he regained the will to look away. He rolled back onto his mattress, staring at the ceiling and becoming aware of his own arousal.
This situation wouldn't go real far in keeping him from finding Teisha sexually desirable, would it?
He abruptly sat up and quickly crawled out of the room, slumping against the living room couch. He could still hear the moans through the open door, though, joined by soft protests of bedsprings. Allin's imagination was all too willing to supply the visuals he was denying his eyes.
Teisha screamed when she climaxed. Troll just moaned softly.
In spite of himself, he walked back to the bedroom door, glancing in. The blanket was a rumpled heap under the two lovers; Teisha shook and gasped in Troll's arms. He was breathing heavily, eyes closed, with a smile on his face that Teisha could not see and Allin instantly despised.