Have Tail, Will Travel

Chapter 1-2

But did she really want to leave Earth? To give up everything and move for somebody she hadn’t met in person…

Was she serious about finding a husband or did she want to wait and take her chances doing the same old, same old?

She turned thirty last month. Maybe her existential angst about aging influenced the mail-order bride scheme, convincing her it was a good idea.

No. She knew her own mind and could hardly think of a reason to stay on Earth besides her ancient aunties. Maybe her houseplants. Her university friends all drifted away into their own lives as they married and had children. Invitations for dinner and drinks dried up as their schedules filled with football practice and ballet lessons. She didn’t have any work friends to speak of as she’d rather put in long hours than go for a pint at the local pub.

Why not, indeed?

Kal downloaded the application, ticked off the box that said she read the terms and conditions, and filled in her details.

Merit“Uncle Merit!”

Clarity rounded the corner; her brother Dare hot on her tail. Literally.

Merit snatched the kettle of boiling water from his nephew’s paws. Dare broke so many rules it made his head spin. No running in the house. No chasing your sister, with or without boiling water.

How was he even going to keep these two alive when they actively tried to injure themselves?

After inspecting Clarity and Dare for any potential scalding hot water burns, he said, “Are you trying to burn your sister?”

“She has fleas. I’m helping her,” Dare said innocently, large amber eyes peering up and blinking slowly.

For a moment, Merit felt his resolve soften, but he shook himself out of that. Dare was too good at manipulation. He’d wonder where Dare learned all his tricks, but Merit knew damn well that Dare learned it all from his father.

“I do not!” Clarity shouted, scratching behind her ear. She paused, grimaced, and hid her offending hand behind her back.

“Clarity—” he said.

Her ears twitched, obviously itching. “Fine! I’m itchy, but it’s not fleas.”

“Come here.” He pulled his niece into his lap and combed his claws through her dark amber hair. He found the critters he expected. “What you have is common, everyday head lice.”

“See, fleas,” Dare crowed in triumph, tail lashing behind him.

“Which means you have them too, Dare.” And as did he, given the way Clarity crawled into his bed whenever she had a bad dream, which meant damn near nightly. He bought her a nightlight, but that didn’t seem to help.

He couldn’t send them to school until they were treated, and he couldn’t leave for work until he treated the entire house. He also couldn’t go to the pharmacy to pick up treatment and leave the kits home unsupervised. He’d have to ask his sister, Amity, to make the trip. She’d be more than happy to help, complete with the s**t-eating grin and a little lecture about how a single male just couldn’t manage two kits on his own and really should think of transferring guardianship to her, for the sake of the kits.

“Think of the kits,” she’d say.

Bad enough he had to deal with her passive-aggressive comments about being in over his head, he didn’t need the lecture.

Their brother, Prospect, died in an accident three months ago. Shortly after, Reason’s heart failed, leaving the kits orphans.

Clarity and Dare lost both their parents in the span of a moon. The fact that they could function at all and find the strength for a bit of laughter astounded him.

Merit lost not only his elder brother but his best friend. He half-expected Prospect to walk in the door one morning, ready to work as if he had been away on extended holiday and not caught in a collapsed mine shaft. Of all the ways to go on this planet, Merit would have bet good credit on a mornclaw attack or a dust storm, not a mine shaft collapse, especially considering that Prospect had no reason to be in the mines that day.

The fact that Prospect’s body was still buried in the mine compounded Merit’s anguish. Too unstable, his body had to remain there under the rubble.

Half the time, he wanted to dig his brother up and shake him, demanding to know what he had been doing there when the mine collapsed. The other half, he found himself glancing at his communicator to check for messages from Prospect or he’d read something that would be sure to amuse his brother. Then the reality of his brother’s absence crashed down, and his grief felt raw all over again. Every time Merit forgot that his brother was gone, it hurt twice as hard when he realized that he forgot. Not because Prospect was gone but because he forgot about his brother, even for a moment.

“Finish your breakfast. I’ll let the school know you’re not coming in today,” he said.

Dare and Clarity erupted with jubilation.

“Don’t wake up your aunt! This isn’t a holiday. You’re getting a medical treatment, and then we have to wash all the bedsheets.” In addition to washing all their clothes, jackets, and hats in hot water. And spray every piece of furniture with louse-killing chemicals. His ears lay flat thinking about all the tasks involved. He’d have to contact the Watchtower and tell them not to expect him that day. “We have serious work to do.”

The kits sighed dramatically before shoveling their food in their maws.

Truthfully, he was in over his head. He knew enough to keep the kits fed and clothed—he wasn’t completely helpless—but the two created more chaos than he could manage. Just when he wrestled a bit of control over the situation, something else popped up. He needed help. Another adult. Amity had come from the home planet, Talmar, to help him get settled, leaving behind her café. He got the kits ready in the morning. She took care of them in the afternoon when they came home from school.

Frustratingly, he felt like he and the kits would never get settled. Leaning on Amity served as a temporary stop-gap, not a long-term solution. She was a city girl, besides. Life on a sparsely populated planet, let alone in a rough mining town, did not suit her.

Merit sent off messages to the mine and to the school while Clarity and Dare planned out their day between bites.

“I want to take my kite out,” Clarity said.

“I’m going to ride down to the river and look for fossils,” Dare announced, not to be outdone.

“Can we look for interesting rocks?” Clarity asked, ears perked with interest.

“You’re not going anywhere today. You have to sit still while I comb through your mane,” Merit said. Both groaned even though he would be the one doing all the actual work.

He needed a partner to help share the work, someone like a mate.

Perhaps he could hire someone for housekeeping and watching the kits while he was in the field? No. There was no one in town that he could think of suitable. He’d have to hire out from one of the distant cities. Plus, his erratic schedule meant that the person would have to live there and he could not afford that expense.

The kits finished their meal and dashed off. Merit grabbed Dare by the collar. “We need to talk,” he grumbled.

“Am I in trouble?” the young male asked.

“Why did you say your sister has fleas?” Hearing the slur drop from the lips of his ten-year-old nephew disturbed him.

“She has bugs.” Dare shrugged.

“But fleas? That word? Do you know what it means?”

Dare stared downward, his toes worrying the floor. His ear anxiously flicked forward. “I dunno.”

“Has anyone said that word to you?” Merit kept his ears as neutral as possible. The idea that someone used a slur in front of Dare infuriated him but not as much as the idea that someone called the kit a fleabag. Terrans had many names for the Tal, all of them feline-centric. His people were nothing like Terran felines and to suggest they were carriers of parasites…

His tail lashed against the legs of the chair.

Dare’s eyes went wide. “N-no. I heard some males in town say it.”

“Who?” Most likely, the male in question was a co-worker of Merit’s. The idea that someone could casually fling such a vile, filthy phrase at his nephew...

“He didn’t say it to me! I just overheard him call someone a fleabag in the general store.”

“Do not use that word. It is crude and ugly.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” Dare’s lower lip trembled.

Merit sighed. He could have handled that better. Anyone could have done better. “Come here.” He enfolded Dare in an embrace and rubbed the scent glands in his jawline on top of the kit’s head. Dare purred on instinct. “I’m not upset with you. Please do not use that word again. It is mean and hurtful.”

“But Clarity does have bugs.”

“And you probably do too. They are easily spread. Now, get your shoes on. We have to go to the pharmacy to get medicine for the bugs.”

The day flowed from one task to another. The kits helped but aged ten and eight, their limited ability to focus required frequent direction. Amity came downstairs after breakfast and helped but muttered under her breath the entire time. He knew she did not believe he could cope with the kits, but he was named guardian, not her. He would not fail Prospect and Reason in this.

The brothers came to Corra a decade ago, fresh from military service and looking for a place where two young males could make a future for themselves. Far from a rough and underdeveloped colony planet—as had been the original plan—Corra desperately needed population growth. Having suffered an environmental disaster two generations back, the planet was left with an invasive and aggressive species, the mornclaw, that bred rapidly and killed without discrimination. The initial infestation devastated the planet. The mindless creatures slaughtered a huge portion of the population.

In the following decades, the mornclaws were controlled but not eradicated completely. One would occasionally wander into a secured area, especially after a big storm.

The large population centers had since recovered, but smaller towns and homesteads vanished. Huge swaths of Corra remained uninhabited. The arable land had been abandoned simply because the mornclaws made life too dangerous.

Not a member of the Interstellar Union, the planet sat on the far fringes of known space. Corra had resources to spare and land to give away for free, but no workers. Attracting desperately needed workers and immigrants to an empty, isolated planet remained a concern.

That’s what brought Merit and Prosper to Corra. Merit bounced from post to post, but Prosper settled immediately to Drac, a small mining community. Merit visited frequently but finally settled in Drac a year ago. Outside the secured area, the mine and the town that supported it required around-the-clock security. Being a glorified exterminator and sometimes bodyguard proved a good opportunity for two ex-military Talmar males.

Opportunities to court females had not proven as plentiful.

Drac was a mining town. Everyone either worked for the mine directly, supported it with shops and cafés, or had family connected to the mine. Small but prosperous, the town offered a school, a modest medical clinic, a general store, one saloon, and two cafés, but it did not have a lot of unmated females.

He gave a half-hearted thought of courting Serene again, for the kits. Pretty enough, she had a sharp personality and a cold demeanor. Perhaps she would be warm in bed...

Merit rejected that idea at once. She smiled as cold as her attitude. He had tried his hand at courting her once and their personalities clashed from the start. He could not bring himself to marry her, not even for the kits’ sake. He wanted there to be some chance of affection between him and whoever he married.