Scene Suggestion—anup and sourang 1 (Patreon)

@ArcadeDragon suggested (see https://www.patreon.com/posts/scene-suggestion-35540481) that I write about an anup meeting a sourang. I know I said that I wouldn't write these suggested scenes until late in the month, but I suppose I lied. I got very excited about this notion and had to play with it the moment I got some free time.

For those that need a refresher, you can find some anup reference here: https://refsheet.net/gre7g/anup

And some sourang reference here: https://refsheet.net/gre7g/sourang

———

 Lunsdie hadn’t panicked when he saw the alien creeping around town—none of the anup had, actually. They hadn’t panicked when the krakun came, after all, and that had worked out all right. Instead, they had discussed what they’d seen, pondered the creature’s strange way of moving, and—in typical anup fashion—prayed for guidance.

But despite not panicking, Lunsdie was starting to grow anxious at just how interested the creature seemed to be in him.

“By all means,” Lunsdie said, gesturing grandly with his span, “check all the other stalls, madam. You won’t find any fresher fruits. I drove these in from Asyut this morning…” But the sale had already been lost. He could tell by the way the older female held her long black ears back that she wouldn’t hang around to haggle. He watched as her eyes glanced over his head and he knew that the creature was clinging to the wall behind him.

She left without a word and the south end of the market turned quiet. Each day, fewer vendors had selected stalls near his, and those that had packed up earlier than the others. Lunsdie sighed and turned about, leaning his rump against the rusty cart displaying his wares. The creature was close—closer than he had seen before—only three meters away and one above his head, clinging to the red stone wall with all four paws, its head turned to study him despite how its body was pointed almost directly at the ground.

Lunsdie’s neck ached just looking at the thing.

The creature didn’t move, just stared at him with dark eyes, its ears frozen and expressionless.

“I don’t suppose I could interest you in some dragonberries?” he asked the thing. They were usually his best seller, but they’d been sitting in the cart too long now, getting overripe in the early summer sun. If he didn’t sell them this afternoon, they’d land in the garbage this evening. “Since you’ve already chased away my other customers,” he added under his breath.

The alien took a cautious step down and then another, walking on the vertical surface as effortlessly as he could travel across the ground. Lunsdie’s heart beat a little faster, his breath more shallow. The thing didn’t seem aggressive and there’d been no reports of it touching anyone, but at this point, its motives were just as mysterious as it was.

Lunsdie gestured to his cart—with his golden span, of course. To point with one’s paws was vulgar, bordering on obscene. He sighed. The cart was tiered so that passing customers could see everything he had for sale, but with the creature approaching it from behind, only the top-most row of flowers were visible. For a moment he considered turning the cart around, but he’d already set chocks beneath the wheels to keep it from rolling unintentionally.

So instead, he plucked a flat of dragonberries and set it on the concrete, midway between the alien and the cart. Placing one’s food on the ground—despite the berries actually being in a plastic package and not touching the filth themselves—was terribly rude, but the creature was leaving him little choice. The display cart was behind him and it wasn’t like he would ever hand them over directly!

His best friend, Sbarrie, said she would occasionally hand her mate the soap when they were alone in the bathroom together, but Lunsdie couldn’t imagine ever attaining that level of intimacy himself. Though knowing Sbarrie, she only did it to see how brightly she could make the insides of her mate’s ears blush. She was peculiar that way, crude. The fact that she would share such personal secrets with Lunsdie said more about her nature, frankly, than it did for the closeness of their friendship.

The creature stepped effortlessly from the wall to the ground without hesitation, without looking at its paws, just as casually as an anup might step from a vehicle.

Without even realizing he’d done it, Lunsdie spun his rod across the back of his paw. Such a display wasn’t a threat, precisely, but more a gentle reminder that every span was an extension of the anup; that it could be used as a weapon, if there were a need.

The creature ignored the berries and stepped closer, far too close. He raised his span and touched it to the center of the creature’s chest, stopping its advance, then he took a half-step backward, restoring the proper minimum space between them. His heart pounded in his oversized ears. It had been a long time since he’d been that close to another living creature, years certainly, back when he was still dating.

“Two meters back or two meters under,” he said to the creature, more out of habit than anything else.

The alien surprised him. It fanned its long whiskers, then opened its mouth, and said, “What?”

“Oh!” gasped Lunsdie. “I didn’t realize you could speak.” Not that it really should have been a surprise, he reasoned. The krakun spoke. In fact, they had quite a lot to say.

“Under what?” asked the creature. Now that it was so close, he could really get a good look at the thing. It was huge! It stood on all fours, but if it were to rear up, it could easily be another meter taller than himself, and Lunsdie was nearly three meters in height.

And its pelt was so strangely bright, yellow-orange, like the starshine—a far cry from the blacks, charcoals, and infrareds of anup pelts. Each of its ears was nearly the size of its head, decorated with piercings around the rim and nude of fur on the inner surface. One of the alien’s ears had been tattooed with bold black lines and the other remained bare. But its all-black eyes unnerved him the most. “Two meters under what?”

“Under… under the ground,” explained the anup. “It means ‘Don’t stand too close, or you could catch a disease.’”

“You are … diseased?” it asked.

“Well, no,” said Lunsdie. “But I don’t want to catch anything either.”

“I am not diseased.”

Feeling on the spot, he said. “You don’t know that. Anyone could be carrying something.”

“I am not diseased,” the alien repeated.

“Well, uh, well,” he stammered, taking a moment to rub the back of his neck. “That’s just our culture. We never get close to anyone. We have to keep a span’s length apart.” And with that, he gently tapped the creature’s chest with his rod, keeping precisely two meters distant.

“I doubt that. Your people would die out,” said the thing. Then it ducked beneath his outstretched rod, and stepped ridiculously near—its chevron-shaped nose nearly bumping into Lunsdie’s furry sheath. “Unless you have two meters of business packed inside that case.”

The anup shrieked in surprise, jumping backward and toppling upon his tail. With a trembling paw, he raised his span and touched it to the creature’s nose, holding it there, pressed gently against amber skin. “No!” he said firmly. Sweat blossomed beneath his fur. The alien was far too close. It could touch his legs if it only reached out. “No. No. No. No.”

Lunsdie scrambled to upright himself, careful to keep the span between them.

But if the creature sensed a threat, it showed no indication. With slow, almost casual steps, it turned and walked away—back to the wall and up. But as its long, bald tail retreated back the way the alien had come, it curled around the basket of dragonberries, lifting it off the dirty concrete floor and taking it with it.

———

What do you think of Lunsdie? Where would you like this to go next? Leave suggestions in the comments.

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/184lV5md_3K34Eoq3SM-UpeAZFucgu5dLX9WOMjOJIs0/edit?usp=sharing