FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

When Kyshryn set out from the Safiric Nebula, it was with cargo and an important mission. His people, a towering arthropodal race, long and thin with delicate, chitinous exteriors and sensory antennae which perceived the universe as a pageant of chemicals, had sent out probes to worlds thought habitable. Though they'd neared FTL speeds, the galaxy was a vast place, and it was centuries before the probes reached their destinations.

The probes sent back several negative reports, as expected. But a few promising surveys were returned--and one that was peerless.

The planet was about the same size as their own, not tidally locked, atmosphere primarily a nitrogen-oxygen blend. Water coated the planet in liquid and was frozen at the poles, and data from the probe implied a slew of biomes as well as a diversity of native life.

To think they'd been fortunate enough to stumble onto a garden world!

Kyshryn, one of his people's foremost xenobiologists, was chosen to staff a one-being craft laden with several fertilized eggs. The ship would coast along on autopilot for several of his species' lifetimes, both Kyshryn and the ova frozen. The scientist would be periodically unthawed to ensure there were no issues. The plans were made; great shelled claws drifted over one another in farewell. Then, the cargo safely loaded, Kyshryn's journey commenced.

A voyage of ten thousand years took, to his experiencing, about a month. There were no issues--not until the very end.

His vessel coasted out of slipspace within the blue marble's orbit and that's when Kyshryn realized something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. As slipspace melted into reality, he realized too late that the composition of the planet's atmosphere had changed in the intervening eons.

The planet was now coated by an almost invisible cloud of debris, most of it metal and some of it derelict, and said debris was on a collision course with his craft. Though he was no longer FTL--in fact, he was moving infinitesimally slow compared to his former speed--it was impossible to veer away in time. The vessel crashed into the debris and he was sent on a collision course down towards the planet, his fate completely beyond his influence.

---

Rural Montana. It was vast. It was empty. It was sweeping.

It was just what Tanya needed.

The young woman spread her arms out on the old ranch house she'd inherited from her grandpa. It had been an unexpected gift, but one she'd appreciated, especially after such an ugly breakup with Clancy. A retreat from the bustle and noise and heat and heartbreak of Phoenix and a skip north by a thousand or so miles had been what she'd needed to hit reboot on her life. The nearest 'town' was little more than a gas station, a convenience mart, and a few motels and was a drive of nearly fifty minutes, provided the weather didn't leave the roads in choppy conditions. Tanya didn't mind. The quietude and solace were just what she wanted.

And as she was pondering that, an honest-to-god meteorite crashed into the woods about half a mile away.

The impact was like a low-magnitude quake, knocking Tanya on her ass with a surprised squeal. Far above her, the distorted, muted sound of the sound barrier breaking rocked the atmosphere.

For a few minutes, all she could do was sit there on her porch, legs splayed, eyes wide. Her chair rocked of its own accord from the aftershocks. Inside, a picture had fallen from its hanging, the glass shattering.

"Fuck's sake," she muttered, finally picking herself up and dusting herself off. "What else could go wrong?"

The hike from her property into the woods wasn't a hard one, but she still took her time in case other meteorites were on their way. Thankfully, her fears were unfounded; by the time she arrived at the impact site, she was confident there was nothing else coming down.

She quickly found herself agape with shock. The material smoking down in the crater was warped and mangled, but indisputably a spaceship. It was about as tall as those big Volkswagen vans they had in the sixties, and half again as long; a smooth oval of unknown metal, once sleek and solid, now cratered and charred. It was still recognizable as some sort of tech via distant hums and pneumatic hisses and the glow of lights.

A feathery sound brushed her ear; Tanya whirled, seeing a real-life, honest-to-god alien staring back at her, a big bug like in those sci-fi flicks.

Her mouth wordlessly tried to speak and her eyes rolled back into her head, and as she collapsed, she was positive these were her final moments.

She needn't have been so dramatic.

When she came to, she was laid out on a woven rug inside of her ranch house, the fire she'd left merrily burning in her stove now smoldered down to embers. A chittering sound met her ears as the whatever-it-was investigated her kitchen.

Ah, there you are. Awake.

The sensation was so disorienting that Tanya almost fainted again. The 'speech' was not speech at all. It was... was like having a thought impressed into her brain that quickly faded away, like a handprint left in a new mattress. It was not so much words as ideas and concepts that communicated themselves to her. The communication was through scent as best she could tell; a foreign typhoon of aromas, subtle, seemed to wash over her. The smells were indisputably not of Earth, so her brain filled in the next best approximations. There was a breath of mango and cinnamon followed by the pungency of fresh tar, all overlaid with the smell--yes, the smell--of a new violin. The change in aroma occurred in milliseconds and immediately impressed the alien's thoughts into her.

"H-How...?" she choked.

Ah, so you communicate aurally, the reply came. We had considered that a definite possibility for other sapients. We use pheromones, and I'm pleased to see that they translate.

Shakily, Tanya turned to view Earth's newest visitor.

It--he? She got a definite masculine vibe from it--was a tremendous... well, insect was the only term that really fit. He was closest in appearance to a jungle centipede--the sort you saw on nature programs that lived in the Amazon and grew to be the length of a man's forearm. He, though, was probably a good ten feet long, his body flat and as broad as the width of her shoulders. His armor was a soft reddish-brown, interlocking together in solid plates with spidery limbs sticking out of each plate. And his face... it was vaguely grasshopperlike with its big eyes and mandibles, but flat like the rest of him, with two long, wiry antennae.

She swallowed dryly.

Surely you realize that if I meant you harm, I had opportunity already. I could tell by scent this place belonged to you, so I took you to it. He scuttled forward, and Tanya stopped breathing as his antennae swept over her, trying not to flinch.

He paused. Surely I am not so frightening? I know that your planet boasts many creatures like me.

"None of them are as big as you," she said. "And a lot of people--erm, humans like me--consider them to be... scary." She'd almost said pests, but decided that wouldn't make a good first impression.

I see. 'Humans,' you say... When our probes surveyed your planet ten thousand of your years ago, there was no sign the hairy simians were on the cusp of achieving true sapience. Ten thousand years is a hiccup on a cosmic scale, but you've been busy evolutionarily, haven't you? As he 'spoke,' the scents wafting out of him shifted swiftly, reminding Tanya first of decaying leaves, then of fresh-cut grass, then of treacle. Regardless, had we known of you 'humans,' we would not have selected your planet for colonization so cavalierly.

"C-colonization?" Tanya said, sitting up rigidly. "W-wait, but--"

Oh, don't worry. His... 'voice' wasn't the right term for it; his mood, the timbre of his scent-based communication, was suddenly inflected with a far-off quality. I survived the crash, but my cargo was not so lucky. The eggs shipped along were destroyed, each and every one. He took his antenna from her and moved in a circle, pacing almost absently around her. I suppose I could repopulate... but it seems crass to try and displace native sapients, to say nothing that by dint of numbers alone, any war would be brutally one-sided.

His chitinous legs tap-tap-tapped across the wooden floor of the ranch house as he uncoiled from her. "Repopulate... how?" Tanya asked. "There aren't others of your species on Earth, are there?"

The pheromones took on an almost amused, playful scent, like lilacs laced with capsaicin. Can your species not sire yourselves on others? he queried. Well, I suppose due to the variety of species on your planet, that's to be expected. Nearly every life form on mine is an arthropod like my people, and though we are the only sapients, it is simplicity to breed ourselves using them...

"You think that would translate to species on a different planet?" Tanya asked. She couldn't help but feel skeptical.

The pheromones couldn't hide the newcomer's amusement. I suppose if I wanted to put it to the test we could see, he replied with an undercurrent of supreme confidence.

Almost without realizing it, Tanya found herself comfortable with this interstellar interloper. He was, despite his hugeness and formidably intimidating visage, more or less just a guy, and they exchanged names--Tanya, Kyshryn--and she awkwardly invited him to stay in her ranch house's loft.

As she slept on her side, hearing him scuttle overhead, the sounds creaking through the wood like pebbles striking the boards, Tanya couldn't help but wonder--what had she gotten herself into?

---

Kyshryn made several expeditions to the crash site over the remaining days, sometimes accompanied by his new 'human' friend, sometimes alone. She seemed hesitant to discuss the eggs, but he didn't know why. They weren't his, and should he so choose, they were easily replaceable. Only as he came to understand their species--they only bore one child at a time and typically mated for life, to say nothing that they couldn't rely on other species to repopulate in times of crises--did he come to understand that children were both more difficult to obtain for humans and spent more time with their parents, so the bonds were closer. She was projecting an imagined pain onto him.

Almost none of his tech was intact, and Tanya seemed paranoid that the 'G-men' would investigate at any time and haul him away for dissection, so after salvaging what he could, Kyshryn enacted the liquidation procedure. His ship dissolved into a mass of melted chrome that cooled into an inorganic lump squatting at the bottom of the crater.

No 'G-men' showed up that Kyshryn knew of, but about five days post-impact, a team of scientists stopped by Tanya's house looking for the source. She led them to the crater and kept Kyshryn hidden in her loft for a few days while crews of humans arrived with crude-looking yet undoubtedly effective technology to excavate his ship. The liquidation was successful; they failed to pick up that it was anything other than an inert heap of metal and hauled it away to be catalogued and stored away in some lab.

And that, as Tanya said, was that.

"Wow," she said, watching the last of the trucks drive away. "I actually pulled one over on Uncle Sam. If only the IRS was this easily to fool..."

Kyshryn didn't know what this IRS was, but he was glad to finally be free to explore this Earth uninhibited. After all, even if his plans of colonization had been smashed by a human satellite, he was still a xenobiologist with a whole planet to catalogue. Hopefully what tech he'd salvaged wouldn't be difficult to repurpose into an ansible to direct the information back home, but even if not, simply satisfying his native curiosity would have to be enough to provide meaning to his new life.

The planet Earth was vast, with a diversity of biomes; there would be no way for Kyshryn to catalogue it all in his lifetime. The sheer daunting nature of the task wasn't intimidating to him; it was a challenge, a seemingly insurmountable one. How better to test himself?

One day after the human scientists departed, Tanya gazed at him from her veranda, watching as he ever-so-delicately arranged every type of plant life he could find. Strangely, she found some plants to be more special than others; the colored ones with scents that relied on his smaller doppelgangers to reproduce were most dear to her, while the long, thin stalks she more or less ignored, treating them as an extension of the soil itself. Others, prickled and hardy, she called 'weeds,' treating them as pests.

He had politely asked one day for the opportunity to catalogue her crops, to which she'd raised an eyebrow. The gesture was unnecessary; the mild confusion radiated off of her in scents and smells. Kyshryn found the fact that humans spurned olfactory communication in favor of sound to be fascinating, given how important a role scents still played in their biology.

"Crops? I don't grow crops, but my neighbors do," she'd replied.

Clacking, Kyshryn had glanced at the colored plants with their rich smells. Since she devoted so much time and energy caring for them, then surely...?

Just as he had done, the human read his mood without him having to say it. "Oh, those aren't food," she said. "They're flowers. We keep them for... they're, uh..." She trailed off, apparently at a loss for words. "They look and smell nice," she finished, somewhat lamely.

So you cultivate simply for the aesthetic? Intriguing. Kyshryn found himself wishing that he were a cultural scientist, not a xenobiologist. He could piece together the chemistry and structure of these humans as a species, but the impulses that drove them as a society were far more fascinating--and also beyond his ken. Yet you told me your species are omnivores. How do you acquire plant matter? Foraging?

"Foraging? I mean, my ancestors did, thousands of years ago, around the time you sent that probe. But since then, usually just a few people cultivate a lot of plants, and then they give the rest to others."

That is quite generous of them.

"Well, we do pay them." She blinked. "You, uh... know what money is, right?"

Transactional material used as a substitute for labor in exchanges, Kyshryn said. My people used it for most of our history, though upon achieving a certain level of technology, every individual found themselves with excess and it lost its meaning.

A touch settled on his exoskeleton, making him clack with shock. He'd gotten lost in memories despite his best intentions. Tanya was staring down at the array of plants, resting her hand on his shell as she did so. "Why are you doing this?" she asked.

Kyshryn clacked again. Truth be told, the touch of the human felt... pleasing, to him. He had felt nothing when he had gently dragged her from the crash site after their first meeting, but now? Perhaps it was only familiarity, but he came to appreciate her.

Or was something else at play?

Careful, he chided himself. The hormonal suppressors died in the crash, and your body only knows that there are no other of your kind around that it can see. The urge to repopulate will grow. That would be a problem indeed. He had no intention of souring his people's potential relations with the first other sapients they'd encountered by succumbing to base urges. He would simply have to marshal his self-control.

It is my job, he told her. I was to safeguard the eggs shipped with me, colonize this planet, and categorize all information about its life. The former task is lost, and the second is in extremely poor taste now that I know your kind are sapient, but the third? I can do the third. He brushed one foreleg against a long, thin leaf he'd sawn out of the ground. ('Grass,' the human had called it.)

"I see," Tanya said. Then she frowned and bent over, removing her hand from his shell to poke at the material he'd collected.

His body missed her touch.

"Oh, this isn't a plant," she said, gently touching one of the things he'd collected. "Easy mistake."

What is it?

"A mushroom. They're a type of fungus."

What is a 'fungus'? Kyshryn asked. Certainly it cannot be an animal, can it?

"No, it's..." Tanya trailed off, scratching her hair.

(Hair. A feature of warm-blooded creatures on this planet that birthed live young and nursed them with milk. Kyshryn's best approximation of it was that it was like being coated with thousands upon thousands of fine, insensate antennae. Human hair came in a variety of colors. Tanya's was a coppery red that reminded Kyshryn of his people's shells. He found it attractive and was disconcerted that he did so.)

"I really should have paid more attention in biology class," Tanya said after a moment's pause. "Fungi are like... they're sort of like plants, but not? Most of them are parasitic, like they grow on plants or animals or their corpses. Some of them are edible, but others are toxic, so it's best not to eat them if you don't know." She shrugged apologetically. "I'm really not an expert, sorry. But I know they're not plants."

Kyshryn released a small burst of pleased pheromones, communicating his appreciation of this insight. There was nothing like this on his home planet... how fascinating. Blushing and shuddering as the smell of his pheromones washed over her, Tanya fell in beside Kyshryn, placing her hand back on his shell. The touch distracted him. Yes, there were lifeforms here on this planet that Kyshryn was quite fond of.

---

That night, with Kyshryn dozing in the loft as usual, Tanya couldn't sleep. She brought her hand out from under the covers. She'd rested it on the alien earlier that day, and his scent--playfully spicy, yet almost floral in a way--could still be faintly discerned on it. She breathed in and shuddered, feeling a heady pressure building in her loins. Something about his scent just...

Biting her tongue, Tanya drifted her hand low to stroke her labia before gently fiddling with her clit. Breath hissed from her in a steady stream. She envisioned that long, supple body winding around her, caressing her with its limitless legs, sinking inward...

"What are you doing?" Tanya murmured to herself. Why was she fantasizing about an alien--something that was like a giant centipede? And why couldn't she stop?

When Kyshryn announced that he wished to journey into the forest a few days later, she found herself feeling distressed. "Rural Montana is dangerous!" she insisted. Didn't he understand? Sure, he was big, but there were wolves and bears and mountain lions out there--to say nothing of humans with guns or, worse, cameras to snap photos to send to the government. Despite his initial reluctance, she'd convinced him to allow her to accompany him. Who better to protect him than a local--and who better than a human to keep him free from prying eyes?

The journey had been slow, almost laborious. They went maybe ten miles a day, if that. Kyshryn was painstakingly documenting everything he came across--every bird, every leaf, every spore, every tuft of fur clinging to a thorny bush. Before long Tanya wondered if he might not more know about Montana's wilderness than she herself. The quickness with which he acquired knowledge, and its sheer breadth, astonished her. She found she didn't mind the slow pace which they were taking. It gave her more time to spend in his company.

If only Clancy could see me now, she'd mused, a wicked smile touching her lips and her heart. He kicked me to the curb and said I wasn't 'interesting' enough, and I end up spending most of my time with an alien instead. How's that for interesting? She entertained no thoughts of going back to him or trying to 'get him back'. Clancy was bad for her; she just liked thinking about how wrong he really was.

And for a while, Tanya was content to hike through the land with her new alien friend, painstakingly cataloguing everything they could. Until one night, deep in the warm burrow which Kyshryn excavated for them (he was astonishingly adept at moving earth and soil), everything came to a head.

She'd taken him to be asleep until thoughts and sensations came floating at her on his pheromones. We need to talk about your attraction to me.

Tanya threw off her camp blanket, stuttering. You just--people didn't just talk about that out of the blue! But then, she mused, he's not exactly 'people'...

"How did you know?" she asked. There was no point in denying it. She didn't think she wanted to deny it.

The next cascade of scents had an undercurrent of wry amusement. Did you forget how I communicate? I smelled it on you, Tanya. Your body is screaming for me. Every bead of sweat, every glistening tear, even every breath are laced with olfactory codas of how badly you desire me.

"W-well," Tanya stuttered, "if you k-know, then--"

Wait just a moment. A sense of reservation to the smell, almost like a whiff of pines. He uncurled from the loose coil he usually slept in, sliding his length against the earthen wall. It struck Tanya as an almost unconscious act, something to soothe himself. You need to know more about my biology. A moment of scant hesitation. You recall that my species can breed with any other on our planet?

"Yes," she replied. She could still scarcely believe it.

Well, there is an effect to that. We cannot control it--it is as reflexive to us as yawning is to you. When our numbers thin, our bodies release hormones compelling other species to find us attractive to spur them to breed with us. We are virile beyond belief, and in defiance of your planet's laws, our offspring are always our own kind. He paused, scraping some dirt from the wall with an almost absent-minded air. We have developed inhibiting technology to prevent this, but it was lost in the crash. My glands do not realize that I am on a foreign planet. They only know that there are not enough of me about, so they are trying to fix that. He eyed her. I am sorry, Tanya. If it helps, your sapience appears to mitigate some of their effects. Were you a dumber animal, you likely would have succumbed a long time ago. But those feelings you have are false, and implanted by my hormones. You must accept this.

The smell died as he finished communicating, and Tanya reeled from the information. Kyshryn was saying that this was fake? How she felt was fake? Just a sort of... unconscious, uncontrollable breeding pheromone meant to make him sexy to her? She felt betrayed--uncertain--hurt. Somehow... somehow, she had thought that... that...

She shook her head. Wait. Wait. There was more to this. This... couldn't be fake. Sure, she could buy that the pheromone was real and having an effect--that smell on her hand the other night, for instance. But to say that it had single-handedly caused everything? No. That was something she could not abide.

Maybe the pheromone had a role, but it was only one of several aspects. This was real. Tanya knew it.

"...do your people know about prisms?"

An undercurrent of confusion. To refract light? Of course.

She nodded. "Exactly. You put in normal, white light, and it makes something fabulous. Like, a whole parade of colors."

Kyshryn pawed at the wall again, clearly put off. What was she getting at?

"The prism makes the rainbow visible and bright, but... it doesn't create the light. The light was already there. It existed first. The prism didn't make that." She huddled closer to Kyshryn, keeping her eyes on him. "The rainbow is incredible and intense, but it wouldn't exist without the light. The prism would just be a hunk of useless glass without light to filter into it." She rested one hand on his shell and her breath hitched. The touch of him sent feelings dancing through her like wildfire, unreal and ecstatic. "The prism doesn't make the light," she repeated, voice insistent. "It just intensifies what was already there." She let the implication hang.

Silence fell in the burrow, but that didn't mean that there was no communication. A tide of scents came from Kyshryn, but these were not aimed at her. There was no sense of words, but she got a sense of emotions roiling off of him. Doubt of his own words. Appreciation for what she'd said. Genuine affection for her. A quiet sense of loss from being cut off from his world and people. Uncertainty that this was the correct tack. And underlacing it all was a soft yet omnipresent beat of arousal. She could smell it coming off of him.

And if she could smell it, she could only imagine how intense he was feeling it.

...I want you to be right, he admitted. Not just to make more of me, but to have that closeness. To not be alone. I've found you fascinating... alluring. Yet how much of that is simply because you are of another species and spark my natural curiosity? And how much is my body screaming at me to breed the nearest available vessel? I'm afraid that I can't leave that doubt behind.

Tanya swallowed, thinking over his fears and doubts. Then she reached up a second hand to him, hissing out a breath as she did so at the magical touch. "Who cares about doubts?" she said. "Maybe you breed me and the urge leaves us both, and then at least we'll know and we can say we tried. But to just ignore this, forever... it..."

Would be worse than the worst loneliness, came the reply. I... agree. His body, already stretched out, began to curl about her. Tanya was so excited that she could scarcely draw in breath. It was just like in her fantasies. Him, coiled about her...

With deceptive dextrousness, thin, chitinous appendages reached out and peeled her out of the heavy clothes she slept in while roughing it. Soon Tanya's clothes were piled gracelessly on the floor and she was left in nothing but her skin. Normally, being so exposed would make her shiver at the night, even in such a warm burrow... but now, there was nothing but heat.

His body pushed against her, powerful and raw, and she realized just how mighty he was, that tightly-wound strength effortlessly pinning her in. That almost invisible arousal that spoke to her when she laid hands on him was now singing across her body, everywhere he touched--her hips and back and thighs and breasts and neck. Her body was a bonfire blazing with arousal and it screamed for her to yield to him already.

With a quiet, indomitable strength, the alien shifted, and Tanya's eyes widened. What had to be a cock had unveiled itself, unfurling from an almost invisible slit at the tail end of his body. It was a deep purpley maroon, incredibly thin and slender, yet amazingly long--at least a foot, probably longer. It coiled towards her and she marveled at its dexterity.

Are you ready, human? The question probed at her as the alien member slid against her labia, making her almost faint with anticipation. God, she was soaked, her cunt winking open as it screamed for her to just get fucked already.

"Please," she groaned. "Please, please, please."

As you wish. And then he slid into her.

Immediately, Tanya's voice broke in an inarticulate sob of raw bliss. She would have collapsed right then and there were it not for her alien love's body coiled tight and strong about her. It was incredible... to think, she was making love to an extraterrestrial. The sensation was unlike anything she had ever experienced.

Exuding a veritable ocean of scents, Kyshryn corkscrewed into her, his long and malleable penis slipping in easily. Tanya mewled as he stroked her; the sensation of being penetrated was beautifully exacerbated by the urging that Kyshryn's pheromones sent spiking into her. Her body was following some inexorable, brainless command--breed, breed, breed--and she did so happily, surrendering herself to him.

Kyshryn coiled even tighter about her, the pressure divine, and his flexile penis made her coo with xenophilic bliss. With a wordless moan, Tanya mashed her mouth against his exoskeleton, tongue tracing over his shell.

What--are you--The concepts came stuttering out of him, incomplete and incoherent. He was as much a thrall to the urges as she was.

"It's a human thing," she replied, and continued making out with his shell. He didn't seem to mind; he tightened even more, making her gasp delightedly from the pressure. With a smooth, ripple-like undulation of his body, Kyshryn slipped out of her only to pierce back in.

Tell me--human--is this usual--f-for--your mating--Ever the scientist, Kyshryn was probing for info even now. Instead of being put off, Tanya merely saw it as an extension of what she liked about him.

"M-more or less," she panted, cooing as his cock twisted and writhed inside of her of its own accord, stroking places that she had only dreamed of stimulating. "In fact, this is p-pretty vanilla. Humans can--ohhhhhhh--can g-get pretty, uhn, c-creative..."

A feathery touch to her shoulder made her gasp; Kyshryn was resting his head there. Fascinating, he replied, and then nibbled her shoulder. Mimicry of her own act; perhaps; whatever his motivation, the touch, coupled with a particularly luscious thrust, was enough to drag Tanya to orgasm, the sensation washing over her wholly and completely.

He came not long after, his fluid thin and watery and filmy; it clung inside of her, holding firm, filling her with satisfaction. She sunk, blissful, against Kyshryn, weary and happy. Perhaps their feelings had been manipulated by his chemistry, perhaps not. All she knew was that she adored the experience she'd just had.

---

Seasons, she called them--a cycling of the natural world as the planet spun about its star. Kyshryn's home planet had experienced minor changes, but nothing to the effect which was now unveiling before him. The vegetation outside had grown dry and wan, the leaves curling and falling off. Animals hid in the face of the coming cold. Ice, congealed into tiny, almost fluffy flakes, drifted down to bury the landscape in a blanket of white.

His people had considered that exoplanets might experience such cycles, and Kyshryn was eager to investigate the changes to local lifeforms, perhaps even see if there was life that only emerged in such conditions--but alas, he had other duties.

After all, his mate was pregnant.

Turning from the window, he scuttled over to where Tanya was sitting by the warm stove, the fire stoked inside. She was draped in warm clothes and blankets, the cloth doing nothing but accentuating her natural, healthy swell.

She'd began to show signs shortly after their first mating. Both of them should have expected it. After all, if his pheromones were successfully urging her to breed, then wouldn't that indicate she was viable?

She'd been surprised at the speed at which she'd developed. She'd felt somewhat queasy the following morning, and had begun to show only a few days after that. Kyshryn had felt it obvious. Perhaps mammals like her took time to develop, but a clutch of eggs of his own species? They came out fast.

("A clutch?" she'd said a week into her first pregnancy, rubbing her tummy in distress. She was already stretching out of her usual clothes. "That shouldn't be possible, humans ovulate one egg at a time!" Of course, his species' virility helped to encourage increased fertility in their partners, which he tried explaining. She didn't seem to get it. That was fine. They had nothing but time.)

The laying, though lengthy, had otherwise gone without a hitch. By the time it was over, there was a modest clutch of five eggs and one exhausted human woman on the other end. And poor Tanya had thought that would be it for her.

Did she know nothing of biology? Even arthropods on her own planet were known for exquisite fertility. From what Kyshryn had studied, the most prolific breeders on Earth--ant queens--mated only once and produced young for the rest of their lives, after all. Kyshryn's species was much the same... and in certain of their partners, their strong little swimmers stuck around, continuously impregnating again and again as soon as the previous clutch was laid.

Tanya had nearly fainted when she realized what it meant that she started growing once again after her first clutch was laid.

Kyshryn nuzzled against her tummy, clacking, the sound intermittent with the pops of fire inside the stove. Tanya rested a hand on him with a weary sigh. Even after months, she was still not used to being perpetually pregnant--laying clutches and immediately swelling up afterward, again and again and again. A two-week cycle repeating itself infinitely.

"What are we going to do?" she murmured. With a shift of movement, some of the blankets shifted sideways, exposing her bare tummy. She stroked a hand across the smooth skin.

We will figure something out, Kyshryn replied. Strange. His species were not like the humans; their familial bonds were not especially strong. But perhaps the Earth itself was rubbing off on him, but... he knew he couldn't leave her or their offspring. He had to stick around.

He'd put his young in her, but she'd given him something in return. Human sentimentality.

He was working on modifying the tech he'd recovered from the crash, and he felt he was close to building an ansible. It had been millennia since he'd left home; hopefully they had greater tech than ever. Perhaps they had developed a new way to access slipspace and come here in secret, taking away the eggs before they hatched and overran the planet with a bold new species. Perhaps they had a way to securely delay his offspring's hatching.

Whatever it was, he would do it. Tanya touched a hand to his shell and he rested his chin on her tummy in response, clacking softly. He was a scientist. This was just a problem to solve. It's what scientists did.

And they would do it together.