**There are a few parts in this where there are slight jars from the way that the technological levels of the participants tend to collide. Human culture on Earth has lost a lot, and the Xer are an interplanetary bunch. ~shrug~ oh well.... 0_o
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"I don't know what's gotten into him," Ny'Zeille said, "It doesn't make any sense to me."
This had been going on for the past forty minutes, and this was only today's installment. Ny'Zeille had been prattling, mostly to Arrax, for days now with no end in sight.
He'd been patient, but now the Xer male had lost interest in the griping of his female. Arrax was leaning over her, but now he sighed to himself and released the nipple that he'd been holding in his teeth gently and lifted himself up to sit on a bench across from her. He was slightly surprised that she didn't seem to notice that he'd done it yet.
"Love has never had to make sense," he said, "You act as though Dahlgren has taken leave of his senses."
"Well he has," she said bitterly, "He must have, surely. He has taken up with a Red Demon girl! He has mated her, they are a pair! This is insane."
"I know all that! You have told me that and nothing else for days!" he snapped, and it shut her up momentarily, but that was about the extent of it.
"What is your problem here?" she asked, "He's my son."
"But you act as though he was your property or a wayward piece of livestock," Arrax said, "And my problem is that I was under the mistaken impression that you wanted to mate with me since that was what you said to me. I seem to suffer from that delusion quite a bit these last few days. You actually say to me that you wish for my body, and each time, it becomes this. I have understanding and empathy, but if it is not what you want, then why pretend?"
"Well I have troubles," she said angrily, "I would think that the least that I might expect from you is a sympathetic ear."
"Which is what I have given," he said, not looking at her, "I listened and I gave support to my old friend and lover. But she is not interested in getting past what she cannot change. She would rather go over the same ground again and again. I am not feeling romantic at all anymore, thank you, and in fact, I am feeling a little resentful, though not over the loss of the intimate time. I have my own opinion of your fine son and hearing you natter has gone on long enough to suit my taste. He is grown, Ny'Zeille, and he makes a grown one's choices. You cannot change this."
"Oh, I can change it," she said venomously.
"I strongly advise you to shut your mouth," he warned, "There is only so much that I can allow to go past without filing a report -- the same as you. You may think that it would suit you to make an effort at what you call changing this, but it is not your place to act here. This is Dahlgren's choice, not yours."
"This is family business!" she almost shouted to him.
"It is not family business when what you think to do would affect the Ranger on this world. Xer has a stake in him as well as the masters who employ you. This would go far beyond the grumblings of an unhappy mother."
Arrax was looking down at the floor as she'd sputtered, but now he raised his head with something less than a smile on his face. "You know, you sound so much like my own mother," he said, "when she is talking about me."
"This is different," Ny'Zeille said with annoyance. She didn't know it, but she'd nailed two of his internal buttons squarely. First, she'd led him on by telling him that she wanted to mate when what she'd really wanted was a captive audience for her whining and bitter mewling and this hadn't been the first time. Now she was showing how self-centered she was by saying that any comparison that he might make was 'different'.
"How is it different?" he asked, "How much difference is there between how my mother moans of how I waste my life with a demon female who is not my kind, and how you rail about what your boy has done?
Who knows what happened? He found a willing bitch for himself and they liked each other so much that they felt that there was more to it than just fucking. It's an old story. It's how I came to love my first female, and it's how I came to love you. What the hell is the problem here, other than your selfish perception and bigoted point of view?
Ny'Zeille turned, her mouth open, "Bigoted?"
"Have you another name for it?" he asked, more than a little annoyed himself now, "Go on and tell me now that he is wasting the fine family seed that he was given on something which should never have it. And by the way, that's one of my mother's favorite songs to me, how I waste a noble family's seed filling something which should never have it -- meaning you, specifically."
"Your mother is a sour old titbag," Ny'Zeille began, "She's never liked me. She --"
One of the first warnings in any book on diplomatic dealings with the Xer is the advice to never insult the mother of a male Xer or the father of a female one. Without thinking, Ny'Zeille's finger was straying dangerously near his launch button.
The rest was an unintelligible gurgle as Ny'Zeille's eyes bulged from the pressure that his large pawed hand exerted on her throat while her feet dangled from where he held her up to the level of his face. He let her hang there for a moment as he strained visibly to retain control.
"You have just crossed a line, Ny'Zeille. I think that you will need another partner," he said quietly, "You will get no more attention from me."
He set her down carefully on the bench where she'd been sitting before now. Ny'Zeille choked and coughed for a moment while he watched her in silence. She was about ready to speak when he pre-empted her.
"You will want to file a diplomatic complaint, I am sure," he said. "I will have my response ready while I await my notification that I am to be relieved of duty. This would please me. I will include your remark concerning my mother. I would have thought that after these years between us, that you would understand the severity of something like this insult to a Xer.
But then it comes into my mind that you are not with me for love, are you? You wish only a hard prick sometimes when it suits only you and a Xer to show as though you are in a great love with him.
Perhaps my mother is right. Choose another for yourself now, and speak to me only as it pertains to my duty as contingent commander.
Mention my mother again to me in anything even close to what I might confuse and interpret as disparaging, and you will not survive it. Good night, Esteemed Ambassador."
As he walked down the corridor far from the surprised and angry demon, Arrax smiled to himself. By the time that he reached the door to his office, he was chuckling, and that lasted long after he'd closed the door behind him. He sat down at his desk to file his report and shook his head with a wide grin.
Sour old titbag, he thought, it was the finest description of his mother that he'd ever heard in his life.
He waved his hand over the lamp to turn it on. He had a report to write. But all thoughts of the report flew from his head for the moment as he saw the other individual in his office.
