Open Season Page 2

  Yet even miles away from her family and out from under the control of the elders she'd grown up with, she still so often feels smothered by her neighbors' watchful judgement. She may not have to deal with her mother foisting every eligible Pixiso male of marriageable age on her anymore, but every time she brings Betsy or Juli or some other woman to her home, she swears she can feel her whole community peer out behind curtains, reminding her of her duty to her people. The pinched look on old Gonuh Venture's face every time he sees another car parked outside Dona's place. The way the neighborhood kids love to snickeringly speculate on her affairs. Or even the way the Soons shake their head patronizingly with just a hint of disapproval at their daughter's very good friend, no matter how much they might like her as a neighbor.

  Dona frowns as she starts the coffee. It's not that Dona doesn't want kids. Maybe. Someday. Eventually. Maybe. But wanting kids—someday—shouldn't have to mean giving up everything else she wants. Should it?

  Sexual politics are complicated enough, whatever your species. God knows, the humans don't have it figured out either. But, for Pixisos—particularly those of them that had immigrated to Earth—it has added challenges. Before she left Montana, Dona talked to her uncle about what it was like growing up gay on Pixis. With the cycle, it's hard to deny that attraction is uncontrollable and undeniable. It happens irrationally and often inconveniently. When your entire culture is built around that premise, it's hard to judge people too harshly for who they're attracted to.

  But that's kind of the point. Pixiso culture, no matter who you are or where you come from, sprung up to control that side of themselves. To never allow an individual's irrational attraction to inconvenience the community. Which means, if your attraction is toward someone you can't mate and breed with—toward someone who you can't further the community's goals with—no one will fault you for feeling it. But they will judge you for acting on it.

  With a rueful grin, Dona opens Betsy's fridge and grabs eggs and bread. What do humans call it? Love the sinner; hate the sin. Something like that.

  Her mother had been so sure Dona would grow out of her attraction for women. That Dona's biological instinct to breed would win out. But it didn't. Not on a planet and a country where the LGBTQ+ community has roots and outreach, even if it doesn't quite know what to do with Pixisos like her yet. Where, for the last thirty years, she's watched the humans in that community fight to make their lives and the lives of those like them better. Where being gay doesn't have to mean giving up life paths and options. Where marriage and adoption and artificial insemination exist for every human, no matter who they love. Where, if Dona and those like her are willing to work for it, perhaps someday they too can have everything they want.

  Well, maybe not everything.

  Like most Pixiso elders, her parents hate the idea of unnatural breeding. The idea that Dona would even consider having children outside the accepted way tore her family apart. Her mother loved telling her, "We wouldn't have been given the cycle if nature had intended us to ignore it."

  It's not that she wants to ignore it. She understands all the cycle can teach about the nature of life and love, and the hope it means for the future of her people here. She just doesn't want the antiquated and irrelevant culture around it to dictate her entire life. The cycle is a gift, one full of complex and often contradicting emotions, experiences, and growth, but so is the Migration. The good rarely comes without the bad; to enjoy one, you must learn to accept both.

  "Smells good." Betsy wraps her arms around Dona's shoulders as she peeks over her to check out the sizzling promise of breakfast.

  "This will be done in a minute. Why don't you toast the bread?" Dona nods to the loaf still waiting on the counter.

  As Betsy turns toward the toaster, she arches her eyebrow at Dona. "You sure you don't want to come to the march today?" She shrugs her shoulders a little too casually, still not entirely comfortable with Dona’s, and therefore her own, dating situation. “You could ask Juli to come too.”

  Dona winces. "Not really my thing." The Space for All rally. Dona supposes it's great that Betsy wants to go. To show her support for the Pixisos. But the idea of going herself. Of being surrounded by a crowd full of well-meaning humans championing her as some kind of hero for simply existing. Of having strangers speak broken Pixisos to her, despite the fact that, in order to better assimilate to their new planet, few Pixisos actually speak the language anymore. Of having people be surprised by her grasp of English or having them feel the need to explain basic Earth customs or norms, as if Dona hasn't been living on this planet for most of her life. Of them staring at her with Betsy like they're mascots for the movement.

  She shakes her head. Not exactly her idea of a good time, much less the ideal place to officially introduce her girlfriend to the other woman she’s seeing. Dona understands that this—protests, gaining allies—is an important step in the movement toward equality. She appreciates the support, but, if she's being completely honest, would rather do so from a distance. Opting for a less direct response, she shrugs. "Besides, I can't miss any more work than absolutely necessary."

  Betsy nods sympathetically. "Which is part of why we're marching. Better paid leave policies for Pixisos is definitely part of the protest's message." She places the toast on a couple of plates and carries them to the stove. She kisses Dona on the cheek. "I'll march enough for the both of us then."

  Dona smiles. Coming to Earth had been an accident. Their ship, carrying thousands of her people across the stars, had been aiming for a planet in another galaxy, one not suffering many of the same problems—overpopulation, catastrophic war, pollution, and poverty—that they left Pixis to escape.

  They were never supposed to be here. But, due to the fuzzy math involved in turning theoretical space travel into an actual trek across the stars, they are. Without the materials to fix their ship and the fuel to power it—which are light-years away—there's nothing any of them can do about it. For Dona, it's odd knowing this—this kitchen, this house, this neighborhood, this country, this planet—isn't where she's meant to be. After having left her planet as an eight-year-old refugee, then Montana as a runaway teen, Dona isn't sure that this could ever feel like home.

  But, smelling the homey scent of coffee, fried egg, and warm bread and the seductive perfume of Betsy still clinging to her skin, Dona hopes that, one day, with all its good and all its bad, maybe it could be.

  *~*~*

  Standing still in the shower, Juli hears her boyfriend's footsteps as he heads down the stairs, and she heaves a relieved sigh. She hates that her body complicates things with her own boyfriend. But he's only human, and she doesn't want to make things more difficult for him than she has to. She knows what her cycle does to him. Not just him, but any compatible being around her.

  She asked him once what it feels like, and what he said scared her. Still scares her. Not because of him. She can't imagine ever being scared of him. Rather, the idea of what her body does to him—to them both—that neither of them have much control over, terrifies her. Kyle described how the scent starts as a tantalizing hint of something, like a pie on a windowsill or a neighborhood cookout he wasn't invited to. Everything about it makes him want to sniff it out, to find it and get his piece.

  Almost perennially since the Pixisos arrived, there's always some new, hyped-up study, with contradictory results on whether humans are more susceptible to the cycle's effects than Pixisos, or if Pixiso culture evolved, long before they came to Earth, to simply adapt to it. Juli honestly never knows which pseudoscientific conclusion she prefers.

  If humans are just more affected by it biologically, then it's not really their fault, right? It would certainly explain why humans act the way they do. With the Pixisos certainly, but also with each other. If the behavior tied to their sex drives is just naturally out of their control, then humans quite literally can't help themselves. It would explain the way their cultures evolved and the sexual struggles they deal with among t
hemselves. Add in the Pixisos, and of course it'd be a hopeless mess.

  Part of her always wonders if that theory is just a cop out. Intellectually, she almost understands how that could be—the difference in brain structures and hormone levels could explain the humans' reactions to the newly introduced Pixiso pheromones, evolutionary pulls, and all—but she has a hard time believing that it's impossible for them to behave like a normal, civilized person. To not pounce on a random Pixiso stranger like they’re just some piece of ass to grab and take and use. She just can't understand the reasoning behind wanting someone, only to treat them as if they're nothing, as if their wants and desires don't matter, as if they owe you something because of that attraction.

  After all, everyone, humans and Pixisos alike, want a lot of things, money and luxury, but they're all expected to, and for the most part are able to, follow certain laws and standards when it comes to wanting them. You can't just steal a car or house, no matter how much you want it; why should a person's body be treated any less?

  It doesn't make sense that humans are able to make those kinds of distinctions between desires. Are able to control some but not others when, for the Pixisos, those desires aren't so different. But, if there is some unknown, biological force at play that somehow makes them more susceptible to sexual desires of all kinds, especially when it comes to the Pixisos, then Juli supposes no matter how easy it might seem to her and her kind, the humans just can't help it. After all, they can't help their genes any more than the Pixisos can.

  Some scientists tried, after the Migration, to engineer a drug to ward off the effects of the cycle on humans or one to kill the effects in Pixisos altogether. But, after being held in quarantine, most Pixisos were wary of scientists and didn't trust anything the humans weren't willing to try themselves. Still are. Hard to create drugs without subjects to experiment on.

  No matter how uncomfortable and troublesome it can be, the idea of getting rid of the cycle feels…unnatural. It's part of her people. It would be like changing the color of their skin or the shape of their ears so they can fit into society better. Sure, it'd be more convenient, but who would be at the end of it? What would they have given up and would it be worth it? Juli doesn't know the answers to those questions, but until she does, it feels safer to let nature alone.

  Because, if it's purely cultural, if her people have simply figured out sociological coping mechanisms to an evolutionary inconvenience, that gives her, gives humanity, hope that one day this world will figure it out too.

  If only anyone on Earth knew exactly what those coping mechanisms are and how they were developed. But it's hard to really study and understand your culture's roots, when the majority of your culture and its history is completely out of your reach.

  Once, doing a paper for school about her native culture, when all Juli's friends and classmates were doing research on Sweden or Italy or Korea, she'd had to write about the whole of Pixis, as if it were one cohesive culture. But it's not. Each culture—from the Itdekh from the western mountain ranges to the southern island Uzusis people and rainforest Oxdyl—are different, affected by their geography and history. Each evolved differently.

  Her mother told her the Uzusis thought of the cycle as a gift. Reproduction rates are low for Pixisos, compared to humans, so the Uzusis people believe nature compensated. Her mother's people think of each birth as a miracle and see the cycle as a spiritual rite of passage into adulthood. For women, it's a sign of transcendence from childhood into the miracle of future motherhood. Her father described the cycle, for men, as a test of strength and character and a chance to prove oneself.

  Not every Pixiso culture is like that. She left the planet with her parents when she was four, barely old enough to remember anything about it. But she remembers hearing about the Itdekh. There was an Itdekh family who'd moved into their neighborhood. Or rather, she remembered the little boy and his father, but she couldn't recall ever even seeing the boy's sister or mother. She knows they existed somewhere in that house. She'd asked her mother about it, both as a three-year-old child hungry for playmates her age and then again as a preteen doing a school report, but her mother had just shaken her head and said, "That's just their way." They see women as precious, sure, but the cycle isn't a gift—it's a treasure. One that needs to be guarded and shielded from the rest of the world. Even as a child, Juli remembers wondering if that truly made them feel protected; to her, it sounded more like a prison. But that's their way. If she's honest, when it comes to some humans, seclusion doesn't sound so bad.

  Even Kyle told her during their first cycle together that he had to busy his hands, by shoving them into pockets or giving them something to hold or even sitting on them. There were times he'd be talking to her and, mid-sentence, realize that, without intending to, he was touching her. Her hair. Her hand. Her cheek. Her waist and hips.

  It took a long time, and a lot of discussion and negotiation, to get where their relationship is today. It took a while to develop routines and tools—like the candles and letting her take the lead—to help them both during this time.

  Juli shuts off the water and grabs her towel, marveling at how far they've both come. This is why she loves him; she hasn't met many men—of any species—willing to try. To work so hard. For her.

  Being with her isn't easy. There's the cycle and all that comes with it, sure, but there's also the day-to-day of it all. The way people look at them when they walk out in public together. Not all the time or with every person, but it feels as if, everywhere they go, she can always feel someone's gaze on them. At best, it's as if the world sees them as a curiosity or rare sighting; at worst, it's as if it sees her as an insidious seductress and him as a traitor to his race. If they get the wrong wait staff or store clerk or security guard, someone who sees her—sees them—as a threat, well, there goes date night. Or grocery shopping. Or parking. Get the wrong neighbor or landlord or lawmaker and their home could suddenly feel less theirs. Get the wrong doctor or police officer and the fate of their lives could be left to biases beyond their control.

  What kind of life is that? What kind of future, by being with her, could he hope to have? Could their potential kids hope to have? What does she have to offer that could possibly make that worth it? Kyle could never—no one could ever—have a normal relationship with her. It's not enough that they find each other attractive and enjoy each other's company and the same kind of things, the same foods, the same movies and music, the same life goals and routines. That might be enough for other people, but sometimes it feels like there should be more than just that for them, shouldn't there? She should be more than just that, shouldn't she? To make up for everything else, she ought to be amazing, perfect.

  Her parents had told her, when she was growing up, that to succeed on this world, she needs to be undeniable. Given who they are—what they are—no one was going to simply give them anything. If she wants something—a job, a relationship, respect, anything—she would need to be better than, worthier than, everyone else. The only way to survive in a world that doesn't want you is to make them need you.

  So she's always tried to do and be that. Undeniable. In school, she always strove for the highest grades and top achievements. In the workplace, she does her best and, even with the week-long complication of her cycle, tries to be as little of a burden as possible.

  With her relationships—especially with Kyle—she tries as hard as she can to never give them a reason to want to leave. The world does that enough for her.

  Juli pushes through cute, out-of-season summer dresses and comfy, fluffy winter wear to the lonely space in the back of the closet where she keeps her cycle clothes. They're the drabbest, blandest, most boring outfits she can find. She hates it, but she has to be careful. While she wants something full-covering, to avoid showing as much skin as possible, it also has to be lightweight, since her scent gets stronger the more she sweats.

  As she's thinking about it, she makes sure to put on deodorant. Lots of it. />
  She sighs as she dresses herself in something unflattering that makes her feel sad. The long, gray shirt dress falls like a shapeless tunic over loose, flowing gray pants. She looks into the mirror and feels like a gloomy cumulous cloud.

  Perfect.

  She reaches for her perfume. The scent is strong; it reminds her of the stuffy attic she helped clean when her friend Kelsey's grandmother passed. Though it makes her eyes water, she sprays it all over herself. Lets it burn her nostrils, making her sneeze.

  Then she digs in her drawers and finds her gloves.

  Her people may look like pixies, but they're not. Pixisos are small and cute and ethereal looking, but they have no magic. They can't fly. They can't control nature or bestow blessings upon anyone. They have no special powers or abilities.

  They are—she is—powerless.

  That fact smacks her in the face every time she slips on her gloves, the ones that give off a small current—like the sting of a static shock—at a touch. It won't hurt anyone, but it's often enough to shake a person back to sense and stop them from doing something awful.

  "Coffee?"

  She turns. Clutching her chest, she's glad she didn't turn the gloves on yet, sure she'd have shocked one or both of them in the moment. She didn't hear him coming. Certainly didn't smell the coffee he's carrying.

  She tells herself to calm down and take the mug he offers. "Thank you."

  "You look…"

  She gives a small laugh. "Yeah." She knows.

  He shrugs. "You know that, even if your clothes aren't, you're still beautiful."

  Yeah, she knows. It should feel like a compliment, but she hears a warning.

  Sometimes, she wonders why she even bothers. He's right; it doesn't matter what she wears. She can hide in beiges and grays and layers all she likes, but it won't stop someone who scents her. But it makes her, and more importantly makes other people, feel like she's trying. Trying not to attract attention. Trying to not encourage or ask for it. Trying to be good.