Redux Vol1 Ch10: Questions to be answered...

Jack woke up, it wasn't the instant awareness of being jolted by an alarm or the gentle rising from dosing in and out but a gradual recognition of existence. Like he was coming back into himself, slowly like an automated system booting up his brain ran through a list, checking things, registering the feeling of a warm body pressed up against his, he assigned that warmth to Hisra, and moving on he noticed something, a sort of tension in his body, he knew this feeling, it was the feeling he got when he was in real danger. Something clicked and he was no longer so detached, with a start he opened his eyes, and looked over at Hisra, who was for some reason currently staring up in horror. With a bad feeling Jack swiveled his head, and what did he see but Jessika, sitting there staring at him with a wholly unnatural smile on her face.

It was like staring into death's eyes.

"Oh, you're awake! Good, good..." she smiled, revealing her teeth in a smile that never truly reached her eyes, which seemed to burn with the fires of hell. "Sleep well?" she asked, "Because I did, though not by my own discretion." she laughed, it was a deep sound in her throat, more of a growling mixed with a chuckle and the sound brought forth images of his body being ground to a bloody pulp by two massive pieces of granite, "You wouldn't happen to know anything about how I got I don't know, roofied would you?"

"Well, I don't know, we didn't roofie you," He said quickly before his mind caught on what she had said." And how would you know what being roofied feels like anyway?" he asked, and there was a pregnant pause as she considered how to answer that question. It gave him time to take stock of the situation, and he was not really liking the odds of getting out of this unscathed.

"Touche," she said, narrowing her eyes and smiling even further; it was like looking at a twisted grimacing caricature of her usual face. "I'm going to believe you, this time, but only because I've known you since middle school, and I doubt you have the balls to try something like that, if it ever happens again however." she paused, before whipping out a kitchen knife from somewhere he couldn't see and she embedded it into the bed right between his legs. "Imagine that, only, slightly higher..." he shuddered involuntarily as the threat to his manhood registered, honestly he wouldn't have blamed his balls f they had retreated back up and into him right at that second, he would have like to withdraw himself. Jack pulled the knife out of the bed, a difficult task to be sure as Hisra was currently hanging on to him for dear life, hampering his movements. Once he had it out he tossed it off to the side, away from everyone present, though for all he knew it was one of many Jessicka had on her person.

"Oh, and another question," she said, her smile still creepily in place. "Why does she have a tail?"

With a feeling like a stone dropping into his stomach he looked down to find that Hisra not only had a tail but that it was wrapped around his torso, along with all her other limbs as she clung to him for dear life, shaking slightly. He looked up at Jessika, "Would you believe me if I said it was a prosthetic and we were into some kinky shit?"

"No," somehow her smile twisted even more, and the fire in her eyes burned a little deeper. "It moved, and I can clearly see it is attached quite clearly to her lower back." He was about to protest how that was ridiculous when a spasm ran through Hisra's body and the tail twitched in a way that could never be explained away as Jessika's imagination.

"Well," Jack sighed, "fuck," how exactly was he supposed to do this? It was one of those situations that many men had found themselves in, the dreaded 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' sort of situations, but this time there was more at stake than simply accidentally indicating your girlfriend or wife was fat or something. "Would you like the long or the short of it?" he asked.

"While I don't mind the view," she pointedly looked him up and down before continuing, "if I am awake then that means it won't be long before Jean is, and I don't think it would be good to find the two of you … in this state..."

"Short it is..." he gathered his thoughts, a rather difficult task between being naked, being clung to by Hisra, and Jessika's intent gaze. "Well, Hisra and her family are what are called Trilska, they are one of the many races of aliens that live somewhere out there in the galaxy," he looked up to see if she was going to call bullshit on him, but her face was a mask and she didn't say anything so he continued. "I was unaware of her people, up to the point I saw a woman being accosted in an alleyway and stepped in."

"And you like the idiot you are stepped in?" she asked, the smile had slipped slightly.

"I like to think of myself as a rather noble person-" Jessika snorted at that, and he held up his one free hand in surrender. "Believe whatever you want, the truth of the matter is that after I dealt with them I put my shirt around her shoulders, as she looked rather cold at the time, and unbeknownst to me that is essentially a proposal to her people."

"And she agreed?" she asked, this time her face showed skepticism, which was a welcomed change from her mask. "Just like that? Not knowing you or anything?"

"Apparently her people have a sort of bond, it happens between two people when they erm, get engaged, and the Trilska can heal across this bond, I had gotten hurt in the fight and was pretty out of it, so she, erm, initiated the bond, which did heal me but also meant we were no engaged."

"Can this bond be broken?" she asked, looking over at Hisra now, Jack was amazed by how well she was taking all of this, after all he did just tell her aliens were real, and that his fiance was one of them. Hisra had stopped shaking so much as the conversation had continued, and was now looking up at Jessika.

"Only in death," she answered, "well, that is past the Trisle."

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"Trisle?" Jack asked, that was a word he had never heard before.

"Three month waiting period, after the bond is formed there is three months before it gets to strong to separate, if it is severed in that time period there will be significant emotional and mental trauma but not enough to kill anyone, at the end of that there is the Irusuli, which is a ceremony of sorts that is on the last week of the Trisle, it is one last moment to allow anyone who sees the union of the two parties to be flawed or faulty to protest, if the connection lasts then the two are officially engaged in the truest sense of the word."

"Engaged not married?" Jessika asked.

"Yes, engaged until a child is born of the union, then they are recognized as a mated and married pair," Hisra answered.

"And what about illegitimate children or the like?" Jessika asked, and at the confused look on Hisra's face, she clarified. "You know, like say a Trilska or whatever you are cheats on her bonded partner and gets pregnant from some other male?" Hisra looked horrified at the idea but answered anyway.

"That is quite impossible," she shook her head vehemently. "The nature of the bond makes that impossible, aside from instilling absolute loyalty, it also changes both a Trilska and the other member's body. Most species are not fertile with other species, Trilska are the exception to that, they can mate with any race through the bond, but in order to do that their bodies change to suit a specific host, and it is very specific, even another member of the host race would not be able to impregnate a trilska, or in the case of male Trilska get impregnated by them."

"How exactly does that work?" Jessika asked, more interested than skeptical now.

"Well, we don't actually get pregnant the same way other races do, from a rather young age we develop an egg, like any other female mammal, but for a trilska the egg is already fertilized or rather it doesn't need to be fertilized as the child inside is a clone of the trilska parent, once our body is adapted to the host parent the DNA is analyzed and all the best elements are taken from it and added to the child, giving it only the advantages of the host race and none of the disadvantages, and once the child is born the process is started in her, and her egg is a clone of her."

"Meaning each successive generation stacks good traits ontop of good traits and simply becomes what more perfect? Do I have that right?" Jessika asked and Hisra nodded. "That almost sounds parasitic," she said a disturbed look on her face.

"Not really a parasite, the Trilska are more, symbiotic in nature, they don't feed off the host they bond with or anything like that, we don't harm the bond mates at all, in fact when the bond mate dies, so do we, aside from that there is the healing that we can affect on the host and our own physical abilities sort of get transferred to the host" Hisra explained, "As a race we actually can't breed with other Trilska, you see we breed with others, and this ensures our bloodlines never mix and our race is extremely versatile for it."

"That's all good and dandy, but how did that work before you were a spacefaring race?"

"Well, on our home planet, we were not the only intelligent form of life the Virsin lived there as well as the Trilbeka and a few others."

"Virsi-? You know what, never mind, we can touch on that later," Jessika looked over at Jack. "You know when you asked me out in middle school and I turned you down saying: no woman on earth would ever be with you. I didn't think you would take it so to heart..."

"So, should we tell your sister?" Hisra asked, "It would be so much easier not to have to hide it, and well frankly it is rather uncomfortable hiding my tail, I have to put it in a dimensional ring, and it pinches, and it's cold on my backside..."

Jack laughed "This is Jessika we are talking about here, if she knows something and she wants to tell someone there is no way to stop her, now, if naked interrogation time is over, can I please put some clothes on? It's rather chilly without them."

"Awww, I was enjoying the view..." Jessika smiled, licking her lips in a suggestive manner…

***

For the second time today they explained what Hisra was and where she and her family came from, it even involved some tail wagging and prodding to convince Jean, but eventually, they got her convinced.

"An alien, that means there are more of you up there?" she looked up at the ceiling of the house, as though she could see through and look at an armada of alien ships.

"Well, yes, but not just the Trilska, there are Vors, Wolshirs, the Vada, and several hundred other races."

"That's uh, a lot of races, I think we need to not let anyone else know, let's be honest here, earth isn't even truly spacefaring yet, and I don't really know how well it would handle suddenly being thrust into intergalactic politics."

"Agreed," Arka nodded, "Besides, I think I am going to make this my new vacation destination, it's so peaceful and relaxing here, no diplomats to please, no races to try and not offend, I would hate to see it ruined by other tourists, like Draxin."

"Draxin?" Jack asked.

"Draxin was a small world like this, not even capable of spaceflight, but it was discovered by some people, and the word spread about how nice and relaxing the place was, so lots of people went there, and well, it's a mess now, they were not prepared for such an influx of people, and I don't know, it lost its relaxing feeling."

"Yeah, something tells me earth would not do so hot if it just randomly got tons of alien visitors..."

"Which is why we will keep this a secret," Hethuk said.

"Thanks, appreciate it Dad," Jack said, and was surprised when Her father froze in place, staring at him. Shit, had he offended the man somehow? That had felt a little forced...

"Dad?" he asked looking at Jack.

"Yea, I thought well I don't know, if you don't like it I can keep calling you by your name." he was about to apologize for it and was feeling extremely embarrassed when Hethuk spoke again.

"This is the happiest day of my life!" he shouted, springing up from the table, "I got to go call someone!" he sprinted out of the room.

"Huh?" Jack asked.

"Dad always wanted a son, Male Trilskas are rare, when we are in our mother's womb we are genderless, and we decide what gender we will be before birth." Jack felt like those words were a punch in the gut and he had a sick sort of feeling somewhere deep inside.

"Wait, you decide your gender?" he managed to croak out.

"Yes, but after we are born it can't be changed why?"

"Oh, thank god, nothing its nothing." he sighed in relief and flopped back on the couch, which caused both Jessika and Jean to laugh, and caused the other three women in the room to look around in confusion, not really understanding the situation as it were.

"Hey, sis you remember when we all thought Tirs was going to be a guy?" Hisra asked with a smile.

"Of course, Dad used to lean up against mom's belly and whisper all the merits of being a man, it almost worked too, until she changed her mind just before birth, I don't think I have seen a more conflicted person, he was happy to have another baby, but he really wanted that son hahaha" The three sisters laughed.

"Thanks Jack, it's been his dream for so long to have a male call him dad by their own discretion for I don't know how long," Hisra said, after wiping a tear out of her eyes.

"Glad I could help I guess..." he said, still flopped down and struggling to cast the unwanted thoughts out of his head that plagued him...