Chapter 2Cetius

Chapter 2

Cetius

I looked up at the clouds suddenly gathering in the sky. I should have expected this: the weather was mercurial on most of Aquaria, and it didn’t ever take much for a sunny day to turn into tropical storms here near the planet’s equator. The wind had already been starting to pick up while I was waiting for my bride to arrive.

I’d known I had been matched with a human, but nothing could have prepared me for just how small and defenseless my Vera was. She had neither scales nor spines to cover her and protect her from the sun’s damaging rays, and she appeared to have been born with only one set of eyelids. Did Starlight Brides really believe she was the right match for me?

I wasn’t the first male of my kind to request a bride from the galaxy-wide mail order bride company and I wouldn’t be the last, not with our lack of females. I’d never heard of any instances where the female was not compatible. It was one of the things the company guaranteed. Considering the steep price I’d paid for Vera, she’d better be.

Except my female was sure she was here for a job and not to be my wife. I’d also seen the words in her contract change right before my eyes.

But I’d paid handsomely for a compatible female, and I wasn’t returning home without one. Especially since I’d already confirmed that Vera was on the planet and safe in my care when I saw her walking my way earlier. If anything happened to her now, Starlight Brides would never entrust a female to me again.

Vera’s skin was pale and smooth. Tiny spines too soft and fine to hold up on their own sprouted intermittently over her body; they were so thin and downy they’d never protect her from anything. The longer quills on her head—hair, or was it fur?—were too soft to offer any protection either. They were the color of dappled sunlight filtering through calm waters, blowing wildly in the wind right now even though the storm had not yet started in earnest. Her eyes were the same gray as the storm clouds that blew in from the ocean.

Hmm. Now that I’d had time to really look at her, she was much more attractive than I’d originally thought.

But it wasn’t just these features that caught my attention. Many human females were more voluptuous than our streamlined females. Thalassonians were shaped in a way that reduced drag from the water and helped improve our mobility. Our females usually sported small breasts that swelled only when they were breeding or feeding young.

Human breasts, on the other hand, were always on display. It was a show of fertility that I, like many males of my species, found quite alluring.

There were more than a few human females who lived with our kind now. Some of them had come from the Starlight Brides program, while others had joined us from their colony on one of the few stationary islands on the planet. I’d always wondered what their soft, rounded bodies would feel like. Were they as soft on the inside as they were on the outside? It seemed I was about to find out soon.

“I know you weren’t expecting to join a male under the waves, but it won’t be safe up here soon. A storm is coming, and there is no human colony on this island. Come with me. I will keep you safe.”

She scanned the waves nervously; the sea was starting to churn from the brewing storm. “I hate to burst your bubble, but I can’t go with you. I can’t breathe underwater. I don’t know what Starlight Lottery or Brides or whatever told you, but I can’t go with you even if I wanted to.”

“I have a pair of artificial gills for you. They will help you breathe.” I detached the gills from my harness.

She eyed them warily. “How exactly do they work? To me, that just looks like an elaborate, frilly, pink shawl necklace. The ones that drape over the shoulder and chest.”

“Our scientists created them so we could take mates and partners from beyond the sands. They take material from our own gills and grow artificial ones out of them. I don’t know how they do it, but I know it works. Trust me: there are many land dwellers who live in Coral’s Deep now, and they have yet to drown.”

The rain was coming down zealously now. The storm was almost here. Vera looked to the sky and sighed.

“I don’t think I have much of a choice. But I really didn’t sign up for this. Promise me you will bring me back to the surface when the storm is over. I know there Is a human colony somewhere on this planet. The job might not be real, but the colony is.”

“It is. But from my point of view, I paid Starlight Brides a hefty sum for a bride…and technically, we’re already married.”

Instead of answering, she struggled against my arms and tail, trying to get away.

“Be calm. I will not force you to stay with me if you don’t wish. How about we make a deal? Stay with me and pretend to be my bride until my grandsire leaves our world. He is very old and does not have long to live. He’s why I went to Starlight Brides. He wishes to see me happily mated before he goes.”

Vera stopped struggling. “You got a mail-order bride because you wanted to make your grandfather happy?”

“Partly, yes. But also because we do not have many females left. And I do not wish to spend the rest of my days with the ones who remain.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t catch the attention of our remaining eligible females. I most certainly did. But it wasn’t me they saw, but my family’s fortune. At least with Starlight Brides, Vera had signed the contract without knowing what I was worth. Well, technically, she’d signed the contract not knowing she was going to be a bride at all. But it was too late to fix that mistake now.

“Be my wife, just for now. After we put my grandsire to rest, I promise I will bring you to the human colony on the main island if you do not wish to stay with me.”

She didn’t look like she believed me.

“How do I know you’re not pulling my leg?”

I considered her shapely legs. I knew what she meant; our people had a similar saying but with tails. I told her the truth. “I don’t really want a wife. But my grandsire has been pressuring me to contract with one of our females, so I told him I’d already gone to Starlight Brides. He’s very excited to meet you. If you choose to leave later, I won’t be offended. I’m not worried about losing what I paid, so long as he is happy.”

“And what if he lives a lot longer than you expect?”

“Then I will rejoice at having more time with him.”

“You said Starlight Brides wouldn’t match us up unless we were ‘compatible’. I am assuming that means biologically?”

“Our species is on the brink of extinction,” I admitted. “Any spawn we create will be greatly treasured and live a spoiled life. I am well off.” That was the understatement of the year.

Thunder boomed, shaking the air around us.

“One journey around the sun,” I coaxed, realizing I didn’t have much time. I knew how bad the storms on the surface could get. “Be my wife for just that long. And then, even if my grandsire is still with us, we can cite incompatibility, and I will bring you back to the surface. That is, if you still wish to go. If not, you can also choose to stay in Coral’s Deep.”

Thunder rumbled overhead, and a gust of wind blew by, strong enough to knock her right off her feet. She sighed. “It’s a deal. One planetary year. Then I get to choose to stay or not.”

I eyed her unwieldy body coverings. “Your clothes will hinder your movements underwater. You will need to remove them, unless you are a very strong swimmer.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “This better not be a ploy to get me to strip.”

I drew her attention to the chest sitting against the wall of one of the huts with the Starlight Brides logo on it. “That is for you. Maybe it has more suitable clothing for you inside. Something more streamlined.”

She brightened. “Oh! I didn’t even see that! A drysuit would be amazing.”

She opened the chest, and her smile dropped. “Ugh! Whatever. At least I can put my luggage and phone in here. I don’t think they’d survive a trip to the bottom of the ocean.” She grabbed whatever it was she’d found inside and disappeared behind the wall to change.

I didn’t understand her shyness regarding her nudity. My people went around mostly nude, wearing only harnesses to carry our supplies and sometimes decorations to enhance our beauty. Besides, if things went well, she’d be my wife soon in every sense of the word, and I’d see her with no barriers, physical or otherwise.

When she returned, she had only three scraps of fabric covering her body: two triangles up top over her teats, and one larger one between her legs. I swallowed hard at the sight.

She stuffed the clothes she’d changed out of into the chest angrily with the rest of her belongings and closed it.

“You are not happy with the clothing they provided,” I remarked.

Personally, I found them very intriguing. They played up her curves and made me think that perhaps being matched with a human wasn’t so bad after all. With my people’s lack of females, fertility was a highly revered trait. She oozed it in spades; it had me wondering if perhaps I was ready to raise young after all. Coming from me, that was a shocking sentiment.

I wasn’t ready for spawn. I wasn’t even ready to get married! I wasn’t finished going on grand adventures, exploring the open ocean and the various floating islands like my grandsire Cetion had done in his youth. But with my older brother the way he was, I knew I had to step up. Our grandsire had already announced that I would take over the company when the time came, and I couldn’t disappoint him. He had dealt with enough heartache in the past decade.

“I would hardly call this bikini clothing. I’m freezing.” She rubbed her hands over her arms.

Indeed, the skin there had started to pebble strangely, making the downy quills on her arms stand up. I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to keep her warm, but it was obviously a reaction to the dropping temperatures. It was noticeably cooler now than it had been just minutes earlier. That was the thing about air; it changed temperature quickly. Under the water, in our city, the temperatures were relatively consistent. It made it easier for us to control the climate artificially.

“It will be warmer in the water.”

The look on her face told me that she didn’t believe me one bit.

“All right, Cetius. Let’s see what these external lungs of yours can do.”

“Gills.”

“Whatever.”

I draped the elaborately engineered collar around her neck. The skimpy top she had on left much of her skin bare. That was important. Now that the artificial gills had detected that they were on a living, breathing creature, they came alive. The tendrils that had once hung limply latched onto her skin.

She gasped and struggled, trying to pull it off even as the gills molded to her.

“Be calm, female.” I grabbed her hands so she couldn’t tear apart and damage the gills.

“It’s trying to burrow into my skin.”

“Yes. It needs to become a part of you to help you breathe. Relax, it is only temporary. You can remove it again once you are somewhere with breathable air.”

Now that it had latched onto her chest and neck, it sent little silver vines up her jawline and cheek and into her mouth and nose. She opened her mouth and gasped for air, like a fish out of water. I’d never actually seen these gills attach in person, just in vids, but I’d seen others wearing them, so I knew it was safe. Then it was done.

I cradled her in the coils of my tail, my arms holding her until she was still.

“How do you feel now?” I asked.

“I…I don’t know. I don’t really feel it anymore, except maybe a bit of weight on my neck and shoulders.”

The gills looked like part of her body now, and the delicate network of pink that covered her chest, throat, and lower face had turned a shimmering silver, the same iridescent silver as some of my own scales. The pattern reminded me of the coral that grew in the shallows. If I didn’t know what it was, I’d assume it was purely decorative, perhaps a necklace like she said.

“Why don’t we give them a try,” I said.

Then, with my temporary bride in my arms, I started toward the water.