“Yes,” Ag’hana said. “Is this unusual to you? Here, you should try this robe on, I think. The blue will complement your eyes.”
The dress passed into Charlie’s hands, and she stared at it as she tried to wrap her mind around the idea of being able to bear children so late in life.
“Honestly, yes. Human fertility usually comes to rest sometime between our forties and our sixties, varying from woman to woman. That didn’t change even when health care extended our average age beyond one hundred years.”
“Only one hundred years! Well no matter, our scientists can help with that, I think. How distressing, though, to know that you are only fertile for such a short handful of years,” Ag’hana observed, her eyes widening as she herded Charlie along, handing her more clothing than she would ever need over the course of her stay. She thought of objecting, but the female’s mind was clearly focused on human fertility, for some odd reason. “That would force you to have your offspring all within a short time. Doable, but ill-advised among our doctors. My brother and I were close in age, due to circumstance, but it is rare. Tak’sinii females typically wait ten solars between births to give us adequate recovery time.”
“Well, no, we spend quite a bit of our life fertile,” Charlie said. “But for human women, pubescence hits when we’re still basically kids. I was nine years old when I hit my first cycle, but I wasn’t a legal adult until I turned eighteen.”
“That still seems like a very short period. But your lifespan is half of ours, and I find it almost frightening to imagine having such a short time. Our people, perhaps because we are so long-lived, physically mature in many ways as we reach adulthood but are not fertile until about forty to forty-five solars. A female’s fertile period will end typically around her one-hundred and fiftieth solar, though later for some females, like my dam. Rh’ystmal and I were born in the latter part of her fertile solars.”
Charlie shifted the clothes in her hands so she could regard Ag’hana directly. “Why do you call him Rh’ystmal?”
“Hmm?” Ag’hana hummed as she lifted up what appeared to be gold arm and wrist cuffs and a matching necklace, all set with sapphire gems. “Oh, I do it partially to annoy him, and mostly because I disagree with the way our a’sankhii are treated. Unmated, pushed to the outer wall, and even divorced from the names their dams and sires gave them. It is a disgrace. We are told that it is to give them a new identity so that they are focused on their service to our san’mordan. Regardless of intentions, it is cruelty. So as much as it is improper, I refuse to call him by anything other than Rh’ystmal. I try to advocate for a change in policies dealing with our a’sankhii, but it is difficult when our citizens and the a’sankhii males do not speak up. Talking to my brother is like speaking to a wall of stone,” she snorted.
Ag’hana added the jewelry to the pile, ignoring Charlie’s protests. She had never owned any kind of jewelry that wasn’t cheap metal or plastic. She had ceased wearing even that many years ago when she kept having allergic reactions to the cheap metal. Nothing that Ag’hana picked up appeared to be cheap, however, and that was alarming. Maybe the jewelry was something that Ag’hana was buying for herself and she was overreacting.
Ag’hana’s face lit up as she found a long pale blue scarf. It felt finer than silk beneath Charlie’s fingers when it was handed to her. “This is a must!” the Tak’sin female declared,
She went to sweep it around Charlie’s shoulders, but then paused and leaned forward to admire the—until then unnoticed—f’anril kit, who had taken residence at the crook of her neck. Charlie felt its ear tickle the side of her neck while the cottony fur brushed her skin.
“I think this is the first time I have seen a f’anril with my own eyes,” the other female murmured, her shopping momentarily forgotten. “Naturally I learned of them from the knowledge orb, and know that they are common all over the mountains, but it is not the same as seeing one. Our an’dangal are trained to keep them away from the cities and crops. F’anril typically live in family colonies, and a f’anril population in the wild can decimate a crop if they