Majgen Ch. 016

"You were sick. You even tried to kill yourself. I had to do something," Aejoa defended himself. Her accusation hurt him, but her feelings of revulsion towards him hurt more.

"You could have let me die, Aejoa. You could have let me end my misery."

"I am going to make your life better, Little Human. You weren't happy with the humans. You felt trapped, captive. I am a wealthy man. My home is large. I have my own gardens. Lots of space where you can move freely."

"Did the doctor tell you what amount of space would be appropriate for a human pet? Was he specific on what amount of running space, sleeping space, and eating space a human pet needs to be well taken care of?" asked Majgen, anger flowed through her.

Before the translator was done, she spoke on, keeping her voice low so Aejoa would be able to hear the translation of her first sentences.

"It is true I lived a life of captivity amongst the humans, but none of them held me captive for their own sake."

Aejoa listened carefully to every word the translator offered, before replying, "I am not keeping you captive for my own sake, Little Human. I am protecting you."

"Do you really believe that, Aejoa. Do you really think you are exposing me to a lifetime imprisonment for my sake?" she asked, analysing his emotions closely.

"I am indebted to you, Little Human. I will repay my debt by protecting you."

"And who will protect me from you, Winin?"

"I won't harm you."

"You already did, and you plan to do again. And again."

"It's the only way, Little Human."

"No."

"Yes."

"No, Aejoa, it's not the only way," Majgen reminded him. "You could let me die."

"No!"

"Even those of your own kind considers it best, Aejoa."

"They don't know you, Little Human."

"Do you?"

"They don't care about you," Aejoa blurted out.

"True. Do you?"

"Why do you ask that, Little Human? You can feel I care."

"To me, Aejoa," Majgen began, "it seems you are afraid of living without me."

"I..." Aejoa halted.'She is right.'

"To me," Majgen continued, "it seems you are so terrified of losing me, that you are willing to harm me - to keep me."

"I don't want to hurt you, Human."

"Are you willing to endure watching my love for you change to hatred, just to keep me close, Aejoa?"

"It is not about me," Aejoa again tried to postulate, but even he could feel it was not entirely true.

"It is about you, Aejoa. Your needs. You want me in your life." Majgen moved her gaze from him, and her eyes became vacant. Her focus was on her thoughts not her surroundings. "I just want my suffering to end. I'd prefer if my life ended before such a time that I should come to regret sacrificing myself for your sake."

"You sacrificed yourself to torture and death for me once, can't you sacrifice yourself to life imprisonment for me?" asked Aejoa, without thinking.

"What?" Majgen was baffled. "Did you really ask me to sacrifice myself for youagain?"'He did, but he didn't realise it consciously until I asked.'

"I chose my words badly," admitted Aejoa, and raised his mind shield to contemplate in private.'It was just bad word choice, wasn't it? I wouldn't expect her to do more for me, would I? Of course not.'

"Do you really think a mind shield will keep your thoughts from me, Aejoa?" said Majgen. Bitterness churned in her stomach from sensing Aejoa's continued attempts to convince himself his actions were righteous.

"That was a strange question to ask a Winin, Little Human," replied Aejoa. "Of course I am aware that a certain part of my emotions transmit through my emanations."

"You don't realise I can sense more than that?"

"What do you mean?"

'He really didn't realise yet,' thought Majgen, it was clear in his emanations.'He scanned me so many times, I was sure he knew.'

"I am not a normal empath, Aejoa. You can have no privacy around me."

"What do you mean?"

"That's why I was at your interrogation in the first place, Aejoa. I can sense more than others from emanations," explained Majgen. "This very moment, I can sense your attempts to convince yourself, that keeping me alive against my will is right. Even though youdo understand it is wrong and selfish of you."

Majgen's anger and bitterness rose while she followed Aejoa's emotions, as her words were translated.

"Stop lying to yourself! You know forced sex is wrong. Youknow it. And you also know it is wrong to keep a human as a pet."

'Keeping her as a pet would only be a facade. In reality she would be a friend living with me,' thought Aejoa.

"Wrong," said Majgen, in response to his unspoken thought. "I wouldn't be staying at your house as a friend. You abuse me. You show no respect for me. You degrade me and want to control me. That is not how friends treat friends."

'She is right,' realised Aejoa. Then denied,'No, she isn't. She doesn't understand.'

"Stop lying to yourself!"

'How could she reply to a thought hidden behind a mind shield?' thought Aejoa,'Intuition? Is she very good at guessing?'

"I follow your thoughts as easily as if I... " Majgen stopped talking, as Aejoa entered her mind.

'Get out!' she thought, her emotion unmistakable.

"I won't take long," promised Aejoa, his own mind shield still raised.

'Suit yourself, Sewage Slime Licker,' thought Majgen, and searched for the part of his emanations that would show her what he was looking at in her mind.

"Have a look in the mirror, Winin." Majgen had found the correct stream of emanations.

Majgen sensed Aejoa scanning Majgen for what she had sensed the last few minutes, while Aejoa sensed Majgen sensing Aejoa sensing what she had sensed the last few minutes and sensed Majgen sensing Aejoa sensing, last minutes and now, Majgen perceiving Aejoa sensing that now Majgen was sensing Aejoa sensing what Majgen was sensing, and...

"Iiiiiii," whined Aejoa, and left Majgen's mind.

Majgen raised her mind shield and laid down on the yijejo seating. Realising she wouldn't gain control of the nausea in time, she crawled to the edge and vomited over the side. The gooey substance of stomach acid, and a few not yet digested gelatinous remains of synthesised food, made a splonching sound when it hit the floor two metres down. The sight and sound triggered a second round of regurgitation reflexes and Majgen upped the rest of her stomach content.

While Majgen's body dealt with her nausea by emptying her stomach, Aejoa stumbled to the bathroom to pour cold water over his head.

After spitting to the floor, multiple times, ridding her mouth of the taste of vomit as best she could, Majgen rolled to her back on the yijejoan seat. She closed her eyes, but opened them almost instantly. When her eyes were closed, it felt like the seat was swaying below her.

Within moments Aejoa came back, still walking unsteadily.

"How did you do that?" he asked, still too nauseous to even think of finding the answer in her mind.

"I told you already, Aejoa. I'm not a normal empath."

Supporting himself against a chair, Aejoa tried to clear his thoughts.

"You are a weak empath," he thought out loud.

"I don't have the brutal empathic force which you do, but I can still perceive more than you can."

"That's not possible," claimed Aejoa. "I am a Winin, revered amongst the Eieie. You are..." Aejoa didn't finish, but even through her own nausea Majgen caught his thought.

"Inferior. Go ahead, Aejoa. You believe it. Why not say it out loud and proud? You think I am inferior to you. You consider all of my kind inferior to you." Tears formed in her eyes. "I want to hear you say it. I want to hear you speak full truth. Tell me that I am inferior to you, that all humans are."

"You are..."'What is she?' "We are different."

"Admit it, Aejoa. You can't hide it from me anyhow. Why try?" Majgen's nausea was dissipating. She sensed more clearly every second passing.

"How did you create a mirror effect while my mind shield was raised, Little Human?"

"Your emanations. I caught the real time memory stream. Saw your memory of the present while it was being made."

"I don't understand what you are saying, Little Human. I am still affected by the mirror effect. I feel horrible."

"May I have some water please?" asked Majgen, thinking,'Best to ask before he remembers I did this to him on purpose.'

"Of course," replied Aejoa.

With a staggering walk he fetched the purified water, which the doctor had supplied for his human. While Majgen rinsed her mouth, and quenched her thirst, Aejoa seated himself.

'The answers can wait till my mind is clear,' he thought.

"The answers you want can wait," said Majgen. "But I still want you to admit how you truly feel about humans, and me. And that you don't need a clear head for, Winin."

"I prefer when you call me Aejoa," he corrected her.

"That's only because it helps you retain the illusion that we are friends, Winin."

'Full truth. She believes her own words. Why does she think of it that way?' "You care for me and I care for you, Little Human. We are friends."

"We were friends, or we could have been friends. Now we are captor and captive. Empty words won't change that, Winin," said Majgen, and thought,'I sacrificed my life for him. I refuse to cower in fear for him.'

"How did you create the mirror effect, Little human?"

"I can sense your every emotion right now, Winin," stated Majgen, "and right now, you are more worried about me claiming we aren't friends, than you are curious how I can sense things I shouldn't be able to."

Majgen drank another mouthful of pure water, before continuing, "I can also sense, why you chose to ask about the mirror effect. You asked about that to distract me from my thoughts of not being your friend."

'Full truth again,' perceived Aejoa, and thought.'But she is wrong.'

"Are you sure, Winin? Are you sure I am wrong?"

"How do you do that?" counter-asked Aejoa.

"The big question to ask yourself right now, Winin, is: Why do you not really care about the answer to the question you just asked?"

'Because I care more about her friendship than about an empathic mystery,' realised Aejoa.

"Exactly, Winin. The thought of friendship with me is important to you," said Majgen, yet again demonstrating she could follow his thoughts. "Listen very carefully to me now, Winin. If you can't treat me like a friend, your friendship is worth less than nothing to me."

'Please don't say that,' thought Aejoa. The human's words cut through his mind, leaving bleeding pain behind.

"If you stop pretending we are friends, Winin, then maybe I will stop pointing out that we aren't." Majgen mercilessly pushed her point.

"Do you consider me your enemy?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure," admitted Majgen, and noticed those words hurt Aejoa almost as much as he had imagined a confirmation would.

"Do you understand that I never meant to hurt you, Little Human?"

"Yes," replied Majgen. "But do you understand that you are hurting me?"

"Ei," said Aejoa. "Yes," the translator translated.

"You cannot force me to keep loving you, Aejoa."

Her words brought him both joy and suffering at once.

'She still loves me,' warmth and joy.'But she is right,' cold despair.'No matter what I do, I am losing her. If I let her die, she will be gone forever. If I force her to live and keep forcing the treatment on her, she will come to hate me.'

"I feel your pain, Aejoa. I too am sorry we cannot be friends. That I cannot live with you as a friend. That we cannot happily grow old together."

"The prospect of having you around, for the rest of my life, made me so happy, Little Human." Aejoa was crying, his whole body shivered with the sadness he felt.

"Me too, Aejoa, but our hopes were in vain. Please let me leave life while I still have some dignity left in me."

"I will," he said, pushing the promise past his pain. "The doctor can do it painlessly. He told me he would if I asked him to."

"I would prefer it to be painless," agreed Majgen.

"Can we wait please? Till you get sick again?" asked Aejoa. "We can have the rest of the day at least, before it gets bad, maybe some of the night too." Aejoa was referring to a yijejoan day. Amongst humans Majgen's treatment had been four days apart, which equalled the passing of the waking hours in a yijejoan day.

"If you promise you will not back out when the time comes, if you promise to let me die when I ask it, then we can wait till I ask it, Aejoa."

"I promise, Little Human."

"Will you be my friend until then, Aejoa?" Majgen reached her arms out in his direction, like a human toddler would when asking to be held. With so little time left, she wouldn't waste it on holding on to a grudge.

Instead of talking, Aejoa hurried to her and picked her up to hold her close. Once again, Aejoa and Majgen shared minds, desperate for the intimacy of sharing emotions.

One thought and emotion they shared more tenderly than any others, over and over, in between the sorrow.

' 'I love you, Friend,' '

----=(o)=----

"Go to bed, Aejoa, you are tired," said Majgen. She herself had just woken. "It is night time in your day cycle now."

"I won't go to bed. You might not be here when I wake up." Aejoa's sorrow was evident in his emotions.

'I'd wish this didn't hurt you so much,' thought and felt Majgen.

'I'd wish you would stay with me,' thought and felt Aejoa.

"I don't feel bad yet," said Majgen.

'We both know it will come,' thought Aejoa.'The first signs are already rising in her semi-conscious mind.'

"Let's not think of it, Aejoa. Let's watch another dance show instead."

"If you desire. The ship has come so close to home I can buy one of my favourites from a broadcasting service," said Aejoa.'Tomorrow evening I will be home, but she won't last that long.' The concept of returning to the safety of his home alone made him feel empty.

The dance show Aejoa purchased was a three hour performance. Aejoa fell asleep in the comfortable seating less than one hour into the show.

'Sleep well, my friend,' thought Majgen, and rested her head on his chest.

She had water and synthesised human food within reach, and decided to relieve herself in a bowl when needed rather than wake the sleeping yijejo.

'I will miss you, Aejoa. If it is possible to miss people when dead.'

Majgen had a long time yet to think about life and death, and what was liveable and what was not. Only five human days had passed since Aejoa had abused her - treated her - she still felt clearheaded.

'Not too long back, my biggest hope of all was to get a friend. Now that I finally have one, I've convinced him to let me kill myself,' thought Majgen.'Femaron Baglian would consider it cowardice. Would he be right?'

She tried to imagine what Baglian would have said.

'Student Majgen is such a prude that she would rather die than let a friend relieve her Brakwan symptoms,' she imagined Baglian saying to his old friend Loke.

'Ah,' Majgen imagined Loke replying,'but if you gave her a choice between drinking ten bottles of Bonka, or allowing her pal to relieve her symptoms, what would she choose then?'

'The Bonka, without a doubt.'

'She really must be a prude then.'

Majgen smiled bitterly, at the imagined conversation.

'I really am a prude aren't I?' she asked herself, but didn't reply. Instead her thoughts trailed off to other matters.

'Did you make it out alive, Femaron Baglian? I really hope you did, my genius, dutiful and utterly arrogant teacher.'

Majgen didn't really have loved ones to worry about, or miss, back in the human world.

----=(o)=----

"Wake up. Wake up, Aejoa."

His horror dissipated, as he emerged from the dream.

"Eeejow Juman," -Little Human, he said, opening his eyes Aejoa reached around Majgen to hug her. "I think I fell asleep, Little Human."

"You were having a nightmare."

"Ei," he admitted.'I shouldn't have fallen asleep, I don't want to miss a waking moment of the little time we have left together.' Opening his senses, Aejoa hugged his human with mind as well as limbs.'She is worse. How long have I been sleeping.' Anguish swept through him as he glanced at a clock and saw the time.'A miui, I slept a full miui.'

Miui, a yijejoan time measurement, one yijejoan day cycle consisted of ten miui. Measured by human standards, a miui was almost twenty hours.

"Why did you let me sleep so long, Little Human?"

"I don't like to feel you suffer, Aejoa, you were so tired."

'I don't like losing time with you,' thought Aejoa, but didn't complain further. He didn't want to spend their last few miui together fighting over who should have done what.

"That is a wise approach, Aejoa. Let's stick to it and not fight."

Majgen cuddled in his reaching limbs, enjoying the warmth of his body. She had napped on his chest several times while he slept.

"Would you like to see the rest of the dance show now, Aejoa? You fell asleep in the middle of it."

"No," he said.'I just want to be with you in the little time we have left before you start losing your senses.'

"Since my parents died, no one has ever truly desired my company. Until you."

"You have been very lonely," Aejoa stated.

"Yes, very," Majgen admitted.

Out of words, Aejoa remained silent, just sensing the emotions of the human in his hold. Majgen remained silent too, enjoying Aejoa's presence and the absence of loneliness.

Sometimes he caressed her, gently, friendly and without lust. Like any other adult unmated yijejo, Aejoa received hormonal treatment to keep his mating response inactive until such a day might come that he should get a mate.

The natural hormonal response of an unmated male yijejo to the pheromones of a yijejo female in heat often induced a state of primal lust in the male. A primitive state that could easily evolve to primal rage if too many competing males were present. During such a primal lust response the male would release pheromones too, causing a natural hormonal response in the female, often inducing a primal state in her too.

By nature, yijejos copulated only for reproduction, and by nature copulation led to permanent mating. Biological love, from the side of both the male and the female. From the side of the male, also sexual tuning. A yijejo male who had once had sexual intercourse with one female could biologically never have sex with another female.

Amongst yijejos the ratio between female and male was one to nine. In ancient days, before the yijejos had an evolved civilisation, most females had around nine mates, but that was many millenias prior to Majgen's birth. At Majgen's time most yijejo females only gathered three or four mates, hence many males spent their whole life as bachelors.

Thoughts of yijejoan mating were not on Aejoa's mind, however, nor on Majgen's. But sexual feelings and thoughts regularly coursed through Majgen, her current emanations would have had a quite severe effect on an unaware human empath, if one had been near.

'Poor Little thing,' thought Aejoa, and petted her comfortingly yet again. Accidentally, he brushed one of her nipples through the sheet. Her whole body jerked in response.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to." Aejoa lifted all his limbs off her to demonstrate his intentnot to abuse her again.

'I know,' thought and felt Majgen.

Knowing Aejoa would catch on to that empathically she didn't speak it out loud. Instead she bit her teeth together to fight the sweep of lust his unintentional touch had woken. Losing the fight against lust she writhed on his chest, missing the comfort of his limbs, yet dreading his touch.