---Shed---

---Krish’s perspective---

“Hassi…?” I call out into our room.

I don’t hear a response but I feel like I’ve already checked everywhere else she might be…

She wouldn’t have just gone off without me, would she!?

Regardless of whatever quirks come up as our cultures clash, ditching your boyfriend to run off and enjoy a party planet alone has got to be a dick move… universally, right?

It’s at this point that something catches my eye.

Over in the corner of the room, where it always is, is her sleep box. It’s one of the very few personal effects she brought onto the ship with her, from Prznith. It’s around a metre tall, a little less than a metre long and a little more than a metre and a half wide. Inside, I know, is a heat lamp and the whole thing is thickly insulated enough to be stifling.

None of that’s what’s catching my eye, though.

On the left side, against the wall, is a tight entrance hatch (that I was only just able to squeeze through on the occasion she let me try it).

It’s shut.

It’s never shut and yet it’s shut, now…

I step forward and my foot crunches on something.

I look down and move my foot to see a dry, crusty scrap of… oh… I understand…

I had a pet snake, growing up… I recognise what I’ve just stepped on.

I walk to the box and take a seat on top, giving a knock with my right hand.

“You in there, Hassi?”

No response.

“Hasiakh, I…”

“No one’s in here! Go… away!” rasps a sibilant voice.

I chuckle “And people say gardenworlders are bad liars(!)”

“I’m a roughworlder! Go away!!!”

“Hassi…” I say, sympathetically “…the guys are leaving soon… we’ll have to call a capsule if we miss the shuttle…”

“Go without me! I had enough of Thrulj, yesterday!” she lies.

“You’re sure it’s not because you’re sheddi…?”

“DON’T SAY IT!?” she hisses, mortified “How did you know!?”

“You missed a bit… I stepped on it.” I tell her.

She gives a long, miserable whine.

“Baby, it’s a perfectly natural and beautiful…”

“It’s not beautiful!” she croaks “I’m hideous right now! I can’t go out in public! I don’t want anyone to see me like this, especially not you!”

I smile “It can’t be that bad… why don’t you come out and let me…?”

“NO! GO!… Enjoy Thrulj without me!”

“If you’re really sure…?” I say, my brow furrowing.

“I’m sure! Get out of here!”

I leave the room and walk to the Commonroom where everyone else is waiting.

I surreptitiously get Victor’s attention.

“What’s up, Cookie?” he asks, cocking his head curiously, speaking in a voice not loud enough to attract attention but not so quiet as to attract attention either.

---Hasiakh’s perspective---

“I [fucking] hate this!” I grizzle to myself, coiled up in my box.

Shedding is already bad enough but it had to be dysecdysis!

Miserably, I try and pick one of the worst offending flakes off of my tail only to wince in pain from the soreness of being freshly shed, and give up.

To top off everything, I was a Sands damned [dragon] to Krish… my Krish!

I know I’m aggravated by dysecdysic sensitivity and gripped with post moult aggression but that’s no excuse!

I’ll only have myself to blame when he brings back some Thruljec beauty and explains that she also resembles one of his divinities and I’m being replaced!

No… no! That isn’t you talking, Hassi. That is simply the evolutionary need to keep yourself safe when your scales are soft! It’s the cocktail of aggression chemicals your brain is marinating in, right now!

Krish would never dump me just for snapping at him… would he?

NO! He WOULDN’T!

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

He’s kind and sweet and warm and sweet and kind and warm… so warm…

Much as I don’t want him to see me right now, I wish he was here to warm me up, instead of this heatlamp (maybe, as well as the heatlamp(!))

Perhaps Gato could give him a sedative and he could go to sleep outside my box(!) Once I’m satisfied he won’t wake up any time soon, I could drag him inside and use him as a hotwaterbottle(!)

I chuckle at the thought.

Then I scowl.

Except he’s not here, is he!

He ran off to go sightseeing and clubbing with the others and left me here all alone, the absolute bastard!

The part of my mind that’s still rational objects that that’s exactly what I told him to do, surely I’d rather he was happy than both of us stay here miserably and, if he’d stayed, I would have been angry at him for that, putting him in a lose-lose situation!

The rest of me is not in the mood for rationality and prefers to pout.

Sands! I’m [fucking] starving!

If I had known the moult would be improper, I would have eaten better, earlier this week!

As it is, I’m just coiled up here, stewing in aggression, physical tenderness and misery (which is surprisingly hungry work despite the lack of exertion) on an empty stomach!

I’m just weighing up whether I’m willing to let Twila see me in this state or if I’d prefer to go hungry… when I smell it…

I stick out my tongue, flicking it through the air, before pulling it back into my mouth, to scrape the aroma molecules it gathered onto my Jacobson's organ.

The smell seems like it’s come from the Eternal Oasis itself! (Or, perhaps, a kitchen adjacent to there(!))

That’s… I’m not imagining it, am I?

No… unmistakably… that’s zazahah rat!… Cooked (to perfection) with a medley of savoury Terran spices complementing it!

My stomach gurgles desperately for what I’m smelling.

I open the hatch, just a crack, and see a plate of zazahah drumsticks, each the width of both of my fists and drowning in sauce.

My sense pits let me know they’re the perfect, [55°C], temperature! Warm enough that I would get to enjoy them heating me up from the inside without burning on the way down!

However, that’s not the only thing they alert me to!

Sitting crosslegged on our bed is a [37.5°C] Terran, smiling stupidly at me.

I shriek and slam the hatch shut.

“You’re supposed to be gone!” I shout, flustered.

“I told Cuddles that we weren’t coming… just like you said.” smirks the insufferable man (his smirk audible in his voice even if his face isn’t visible).

“You told VICTOR about this!?” I accuse, horrified.

“That’s not even slightly what I said! I just told him that we weren’t feeling up to it and that they should go on without us… just like you said.”

“Me… I said go on without me! I told you that I wanted you to go without me!” I say, agog at his wilful ignorance.

He chuckles “Yeah, well… I didn’t want to…” there’s a long pause before he asks “Are you gonna take the food?”

I weigh up my options a moment before demanding “Turn around!”

“I’m sorry?” he asks with an amused chuckle.

“I can’t take them if you’ll see my arms so turn around!” I plead, getting a little desperate, thinking of all the heat they’re losing to the room outside this box.

There’s another pause before he says “Alright, I’ve turned around.”

“You promise?” I ask, suspiciously.

“I swear!” he says with that (still audible) smirk.

I crack the hatch and see that, just like he said, he’s looking toward the opposite wall.

I study the back of his head for a few moments, ready to slam the hatch shut if he makes to turn back.

My hands dart out and, for a nervewracking [second], my arms and all their horrendous skin fragments are entirely exposed before I snatch them back with the prized food and slam the hatch.

I rest the dish on my tail and pick up a drumstick.

I open my mouth wide and begin walking the delicious, savoury meat down my throat, with my bottom teeth.

I repeat the process for the rest of them before resting a hand on my now bulging belly.

I feel a lot better with food in me. Good enough to crack a joke even “You’ve defied biology and put a baby in me, Krish!”

“Have I now(?)” he asks (clearly not fooled for even a moment).

“Yes… a [foodbaby] but still(!)”

He laughs.

“Would you mind turning around again?”

A brief pause and then “Done.”

I open the hatch and, much less cautiously than the first time, place the plate back where I picked it up from before withdrawing and shutting the hatch.

Once I’m safely secreted away again, I hear him get off the bed and, from how it sounds, make his way over to my box and sit on the floor, leaning against it.

“Were they good?” he enquires.

“They were excellent, Krish… thank you…” I sigh, contentedly.

“They definitely seem to have mellowed you out a bit!” he quips.

“Careful, now!…” I warn “…I might unmellow just as quickly!”

He chuckles.

I hesitate for a few seconds before asking “K-Krish…?”

“Yes, Hassi?”

“Why did you stay?… I was literally begging you to go ahead and leave me here.”

There’s a pause for a few moments before he answers “Like I said, I didn’t want to…”

“But why!? I already ruined the last Terran planet you’re going to be on for years! Why don’t you want to just go and enjoy Thrulj with everyone else!?”

He laughs “Hassi… you didn’t ‘ruin’ Fennoscandia for me! I chose to stay with you at Tuun’s mums’ place because cosying up by the fire with you sounded like a better time than going out in the snow, dressed as an ancient English warrior!”

“But…”

“But nothing! Hassi, I stayed with you on Fennoscandia for the same reason I’m staying with you now! I enjoy being with you and doing nothing more than I would enjoy doing fun things with you not there! I… I love you, Hasiakh…”

---Krish’s perspective---

The hatch cracks and I see an arsenic green eye, turned toward me.

Six brilliantly scarlet fingers slide over the top and it’s pulled all the way down.

Slowly, the box disgorges 6m of serpent woman who, halfway out, coils her front half around to face me.

A few scraps of her old skin cling to her body from her bad moult but do nothing to dampen the sheen of her fresh, new scales.

She brings her hands to my shoulders, her four thumbs at my clavicle, her six fingers at my shoulderblades.

Her stiff lips curl (as much as they can) as she says “You love me even when I look like this?” nodding to her back half.

“Yes!” I answer instantly, breathlessly and honestly.

Notwithstanding the dysecdysic skin scraps here and there, her scales are as lustrous as rubies right now, and she has never looked so stunningly beautiful!

She’s clearly surprised by the quickness of my answer for a few moments but then smiles, baring her long, venom injecting fangs, and leans forward to kiss me against her sleep box.

I run my hands up her back, enjoying the divine feeling of her fresh new scales under my fingers.

Eventually, she breaks from the kiss and says “I… I love you too, Krish… I’m glad you stayed with me… even if I’m sorry I ruined your outing again.”

“Oh, lock it up!” I say, waving my hand dismissively “You have nothing to be sorry for, so that’s the last I want to hear about it!”

She shrinks back for a second then chuckles “Alright, Krish…”

“Good… Now, would you like to use me as a heat bed or…?”

She cuts me off with vigorous Terran nodding.

I smile and pull myself from the gap between her and her sleep box.

I pull up the covers on our bed and lie down, pulling them over me.

She slips between the mattress and sheets at the foot of the bed, crawling up its length and between my legs in a way that reminds me of Kayako Saeki, every time she does it (though, I’d never tell her that, just in case we ever decide to watch The Grudge. She would definitely take it as an insult and I’d be subjected to whatever hassle she insisted was necessary to satisfy her Sahasi honour. No thanks!)

Breaching between my chest and the duvet, she comes to rest with the left side of her face pressed against the right side of mine.

“Hassi, I…” I start but she grips my jaw between the two thumbs of her left hand, her three, clawed fingers lightly scratching over my lower face.

“Shhhhhhhshshshshshshshshhhhhh!… Heat beds don’t speak… only heat.”

I chuckle at the absurdness of that pronouncement… then oblige her.