JENNA
I was just returning from the Earth Garden when the playful commotion drew my attention. When I rounded the corner of the closest dome I saw Jade’s five boys attacking Wraith, Piety’s mate. But it wasn’t a serious attack, more a game that involved not only a lot of shouting and punching, but a lot of laughter too.
Smiling, I walked closer. Now I was starting to feel like my old self again, I took pleasure from being around people who laughed and enjoyed life. I didn’t even mind that those people were often Danans, mostly the young, but occasionally the adults. It was more evidence that I was healing from the trauma of being pack-raped by Danan renegades. Another Danan, Kius, had taken much of my pain and fear from me, leaving me fragile but hopeful that life would one day go back to normal.
There had been nine of us ‘Victims’ initially. One killed herself on the day we were rescued, thinking she was going to be raped by more Danans. Of the rest of us, Marissa and I were the only ones who had made an effort at letting go of the trauma of our abuse. The other six were still caught in the vicious cycle of bitterness and pain. Though I’d tried to convince them they’d feel better if they let Kius heal them, so far none had been willing to let their hatred go.
As I got closer, I realized the Danan I took to be Wraith, because he was white and bore no brands, was someone else entirely. Someone much younger, if I didn’t miss my guess. Though fully grown, there was a freshness to his face that told me he was young. And if he bore no brands, that made him very young. Maybe six or seven?
Danans matured physically faster than humans. Three times faster, in fact. They gestated in three and a half months, and were more like three year old toddlers by the time they were a year old. So this boy really had the maturity of a human guy about my age. Twenty. I was still twenty, wasn’t I?
But just because Danans were physically mature didn’t give them life experience. So they spent the next twenty years catching up with their bodies. Then, at about thirty, which if you stuck to the three human years for every one Danan year, would make them ninety, they’d go on a quest to find their podmate.
Of course, that wasn’t exactly the biology of it. Once a Danan reached maturity they sort of leveled out and barely aged at all. That’s why a one-hundred-year-old Danan didn’t look all that much different from a twenty-year-old Danan. It was the way every human would love to grow old. Age to optimum maturity fast and then sit there in perpetual youth until you got to about a hundred and thirty when you aged quickly and died. Yes, that would be ideal.
Unfortunately, it didn’t happen like that for humans. Except human podmates. I’d heard that they tended to retain their youth, so they could live as long as their mates.
I wouldn’t be signing up to be a podmate just for the perks, though. My life was on Earth, or Gaia as these people called it, and I was getting back there as soon as possible. I had stuff to sort out. I needed to see the man I thought I was going to marry, who had some explaining to do.
“Get out of here!” a woman screamed.
I was jolted out of my revelry by the fury in that voice. It was Hayley, leading the other five Victims forward, stones in hands.
The white youth stilled, which allowed one of the M&M babies to get in a solid punch to his face. The shock he displayed then had more to do with the approaching women than the punch.
“Fuck off!” Shawna shrieked, her wild red curls looking like Medusa’s snakes in that moment. “We don’t want your kind here! This is our place!”
She pitched her stone at the youth, but it missed its mark.
The other women yelled their agreement, arms lifted, ready to throw their missiles. The boys, still little more than toddlers, turned in the direction of the women, their eyes wide with terror.
“Jade asked me to watch her young,” the white Danan said nervously.
My heart went out to him. And to Jade’s boys. What had they done to deserve this attack?
I was about to speak up when Piety dashed in from out of nowhere,