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This month, @Bobinator requested a story about a ringel who's been separated from his family and who grew up around geroo. What would it be like when he's reintroduced to ringel society? Let's find out!

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Py sat in the large waiting room, nervously touching the beads on his necklace. Three round tables sat evenly spaced across the room, each with two chairs a piece. No one had told him what to do beyond “Wait here,” so he sat at the central one and stared at the wall of windows that opened to a second room—just as wide but not nearly as deep. That one was empty, and the lights were dimmed low.

In frustration, he banged a fist against the table and returned to his fidgeting. “Why are they making me wait?” he whispered to himself. “They said they found my parents, so why can’t they just pick me up?”

Eventually, one of the doors opened, and an old ringel entered. She was definitely not Py’s mother. She didn’t look anything like the photos they had sent him, so he doubted she was his grandmother—or great-grandmother, for that matter.

Py looked at her as she approached and then quickly looked away. She was … hideous. Female ringel had breasts on their chest. He had seen plenty of photos in his language study books and videos, so he had tried to prepare himself for such a weird and creepy sight, but he wasn’t ready for how … deflated this gal looked. It was nasty!

She sat down at the Py’s table and set her tablet computer down beside her—face up! How rude! Didn’t she have any respect for him? Was she going to return messages while he tried to talk to her also?

“Hello, my name is Dr. Awyybrys,” she said in Geroo. His ears must have reacted, because she added, “A pretty strange name, huh? I understand that the geroo are fond of … simpler names.”

Py nodded. He glanced up at her a moment before looking away. Like all ringel, dark stripes covered her pelt, but so much of her fur had turned grey that she looked like a ghost.

“And I understand you’re going by ‘Py’ these days,” the doctor added. With a smile, she said, “I suppose Pyzuemzijootz must have been quite a muzzle-full for the geroo family who took you in.”

“I just call them Mom and Dad!” he spurted. They were his family, damn it, not just some geroo who “took him in”!

“I’m sorry, of course you do,” she said without even flinching. “They’re the only family you’ve ever really known, right? You were, what … two and half? Three? When you got separated from your parents.”

“Three,” he said without looking up. A silence dragged, so he finally met Awyybrys’s eyes. “Are they here? Why didn’t they meet me at the spaceport?”

“They’re here, Py,” she said, her voice very calm and even. “You’ll meet them very soon, but … life on Ringeltec is going to be very different than it was with your geroo family. You realize that, don’t you?”

He shrugged. “Yeah? So?”

“So, everyone felt that it would be in your best interest to ease yourself back into this world,” she explained. “Goodness! I think if someone picked me up and dropped me into the colony you just flew in from… Well, I don’t know how I’d cope! I’d want to take it slow, too.”

Py scowled. “So, ‘taking it slow’ means ‘I don’t get to meet my parents’?”

“Don’t be silly!” the doctor laughed. “Of course, you get to meet them, but they’d like for me to start with a quick evaluation to see how you’re doing. And then from there, you and I can come up with a plan to ease you into life in Ringeltec at a speed that you’re comfortable with. Does that sound okay, Py?”

He shrugged. He didn’t like the sound of it, but it didn’t sound like he had any choice in the matter. Just like back home, cubs have to do whatever the adults told them to do. He was amazed that they let him come here at all!

“So, I understand that you just turned sixteen,” the older ringel said. “This must be a very exciting time for you.”

Py shrugged. “Geroo graduate from school at sixteen,” he explained. “At sixteen, they let us go and get jobs, rent our own apartment, whatever.”

“And you decided to come home.”

He shrugged again. He didn’t think of Ringeltec as home, that was his parents’ apartment. “Well, I found out last year that my parents were still alive. I wanted to come visit them, but Mom and Dad wanted me to finish out the school year. They thought it would be foolish to leave before graduation.”

“Yes, I think that was very good thinking on their part,” Awyybrys agreed. “And I understand you’ve been studying the language since you found out. You probably didn’t know a lot of Ringel words when you first got separated.”

Py nodded but said nothing.

“Would you like to try this conversation in Ringel?”

He scowled. “I’m not… I’m not very fluent in Ringel yet,” he admitted. “No one spoke it back home, so there was no one to practice with. Mom and Dad learned some to help me study, but unless you want me to ask where the bathroom is or tell you that ‘Gert has gone to the library,’ then I’d much rather speak in Geroo. I mean, since you know it and all.”

“That’s fine,” she said, rudely tapping a note on her tablet. “We can talk about learning the language later. But I would really like to hear more about life in the geroo colony. Can you tell me what that was like?”

“It was … okay,” Py said. “I have some friends, and they treat me well. They teased me a lot as a cub—I mean, as a kit—for being different. But my friends accept me for who I am. I just avoid the bullies now.”

Awyybrys opened one eye a little wider. “And if I understand geroo society, a lot of focus in the teenage years is on finding a mate—something the geroo call … ‘dating’ right?”

Py sat back in his chair, wrapping one arm behind the backrest. “Well, geroo don’t have to date. Dating is just … y’know, fun. It’s something to do when you’re out with friends. A buncha guys find a mate, but it’s not like you have to.”

The doctor leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “I was really hoping you could tell me more about the process, Py. It doesn’t sound anything like life here on Ringeltec.”

Py’s eyes opened wide, and his heart beat a little harder. “No?” he whispered.

“Not so much, no,” Awyybrys said. “Some ringel do take mates. It’s not unheard of, but usually it’s much later in life. And it sounds like the process is so much more formalized in geroo society. The whole … asking a potential mate to go on ‘dates’, right? Have you done that? What’s it like?”

“Well, uh.” Py cleared his throat a couple times, avoiding eye contact. “I’ve only gone on a couple.”

“Yes? With males or females?”

Py’s eyes popped open wide. “Females, of course!” he shouted, offended. Did she think he was gay?

“Interesting,” said Awyybrys, stretching the word way out. “I had heard that the geroo were uncomfortable about same sex relationships, but it seemed so restrictive. I thought, surely that can’t be right.”

Py winced. “So … some of the couples here on Ringeltec … are gay?”

“About a fifth, I’d guess,” the doctor said. “We don’t really keep statistics on such things.”

“Oh,” said Py. “So, like four-fifths of all couples are straight?”

“Straight?” she asked. “Oh! As in a male and a female? Nah, that’s probably about a fifth too. I’d guess that maybe sixty percent of all ringel who consider themselves ‘mated’ enjoy a much more interesting mix than just two ringel that feel bonded.”

“They … do…?” The question came out as more of a squeak.

“Absolutely!” the doctor said. “Two males, one female. Four females, one male. More complex relationships where two groups overlap with some members but not all. Honestly, almost any permutation is possible, and I’ve never met a ringel who felt a relationship required a certain mix of genders.”

“No?”

“Definitely not,” she chuckled. “Besides, anyone who can afford it will probably have at least one sex reassignment in their lifetime.”

“They will?” Py yelled. He didn’t recall standing, but when he realized that he had, he excused himself and reclaimed his seat.

“Well, sure!” Awyybrys said. “Who wouldn’t want to try some other hardware on for size? How could you ever know what’s best for you until you’ve tried out some possibilities?”

“But… But…” gasped Py. “If you had a mate, and she changed…”

When his words trailed off, the doctor tilted her head. “Yeah?” she asked. “Would that bother you?”

Py frowned hard. “Well … yeah, I think that would be very upsetting. What if you didn’t want a guy as a mate?”

Awyybrys nodded and tapped a couple more notes. “Yes, hrm,” she muttered as she did, “I do think you’re going to want some time to get acclimated.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IMu9E_mkxPDi5GZqA0XA4xwR7OSIrnIyEygoDpiqdQw/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?