Wilds Born

Ishk, I don't like when I write everything all up and forget to add a chapter title so my Author's note is lost. Uhm, so to sum it up from before, keep an eye out for a clause that makes everyone legal. It's right there at the beginning of the next chapter. Just because legal age in the wilds is sixteen, does not mean that I can write about it. And also, when I gave a warning for sex, violence, swearing and such, I actually meant it. There's something about El and finding an available male that just ends in sex. Though... that one time it didn't have El involved at all...

*coughs*

For the chapters themselves, there's not much to say. The cousin is only ever named once through the entire story, so if you find her name and let me know, you get a cookie! If you don't find it or don't want to participate, don't worry, I'll still be posting chapters no matter what.

Besides that, there's not much to say about this chapter besides the fact that I'm surprised she walked out of there and wasn't carried...

Read, review and enjoy.




Father took his hand and led him towards the common area. People of the tribe peeked out from around the corner and then fled, whispering to one another. By the time they were in the common area everyone just happened to be gathered at the fire. Mei was not among the tribe people, he was still with the great-elder and would be until the great-elder finally passed on. Then Mei would bury the body and report back to the elders of the tribe only once the great-elder was at rest.

Syano stood at the fire, arms crossed and watching them. The other boy was dressed in his new deerskin pants and had on a necklace of beads. Beads of all things, the little objects made sounds and so the rest of the tribe would not use them. Only elders and children who liked to wander wore beads. Some had taken to wearing beads or feathers in their hair, but the hair cushioned the items and kept them from clinking together.

“Mysh,” Syano bent his head down and away from father, expressing his submission to the stronger male. Stronger for how long, though? Father was older than great-elder by almost a decade. Certainly, he did not look as old as great-elder had but that had to do with genetic sequencing and good blood, “people say the great-elder has left the tree, is this true?”

“True, yes, it is,” father stood and straightened his back and squared his shoulders. Leader or not, father was getting old. It could be seen in the fraction of a second it took him to adjust himself, in the way his body didn’t quite respond. The eyes, though, it was the eyes that put off any youths who had ideas of grandeur. Father could stop a person cold with those eyes. The man raised his voice just enough for all the tribe to hear him, but not enough to be heard clearly. This drew in the members who had been trying not to seem too interested, “great-elder has gone to mate’s side to be with mate. Will not be returning.”

Syano’s face went a funny colour. The other boy was tall and broad at the shoulders but didn’t match up with the adults’ sizes. His dirty blonde hair was cropped at odd angles, as were all their hairs. Those baby blue eyes he had, the ones he liked to boast about, narrowed to pin points. The information was processing and Syano was pulling his thoughts in tight against his inner mind.

That was the one thing he liked the other boy for. Syano was always able to hide his thoughts and keep his meandering ideas, feelings and fantasies to himself. It had something to do with his mother being Mother Mally, the woman who looked after all the children while the adults hunted or worked outside the tree. Mother Mally was good at picking up thoughts but even better at doing so with her own children. Eyes in the back of her head, the adults said.

Eyes in the tree itself, the children had always muttered to one another.

“And the ring?” Syano asked quietly, causing everyone in the tribe to lean in to hear better, “what of the great-elder’s ring. Is it to be buried with him after all?”

“No,” father responded, placing his hands on his hips as he did when he was about to say something important, something that he expected everyone to listen to and obey, “Great-elder and the elders have spoken at length about who should take the ring after great-elder. Were very worried about what could happen to one who takes the ring. Death. Pain. Melting eyeballs.

“Great-elder one day come to Mysh and say,” father paused, thinking back to the exact words, “great-elder say, ‘Mysh, I have made my decision’ and thus the next ring bearer chosen,” he spoke the quote hesitantly. Father never could seem to wrap his mind around pronouns and civilized speak, “this one was chosen because of capabilities, because this one speaks only after thinking. Because this one was found intelligent but.” Mysh paused and shrugged, “unable to hunt. This one appeared much like great-elder when great-elder was younger. Except better. This one not restrained by civilization was able to learn and be part of world.”

Syano looked quite proud of himself.

Which only made him wince and shrink away from the larger boy. Syano caught the motion and frowned, eyes travelling down to his hands to read any possible hints given away there. That was when the other boy spotted the ring and his eyes went wide.

“Him?” Syano snapped at father, motioning towards him like one did to a pile of refuse, “the dreamer and the one who sits in the tree top? He doesn’t even earn his own food, still suckling at his mother’s teat! What part of this world does he play in? What could he possibly know that makes him a better candidate to carry the ring than me? Or my baby sister, she’s still at the teat, why not make her the ring bearer?”

Father was silent until Syano stopped speaking. He then held up one finger to Syano, asking for silence and turned towards his son, “Ishteshtin.”

“Meaning anaconda, the Ishteshtin line is where the great-elder came from. He was a tenth generation, middle birthed child of the Ishteshtin, a noble household. Even the other genetic families stated that he was of noble birth. He had few to no alterations on him to show what a commoner would look like at tenth generation. The Ishteshtin line supported the bid of the Toleran family to usurp the Meita because of class four, five and six felonies along with the Meita council member who sat with the council of six-”

Father held up a hand to stop him from going on, he turned to Syano, “Generation.”

“… a…”

Father looked back at him, and so he answered, “a group of people born about the same time, each family has many generations. Parents are a generation, children are a generation. One’s cousins are one’s own generation just as one’s aunts and uncles are the generation of one’s parents.”

“Household,” Father looked briefly at Syano before looking back to him. The other boy was going bright red, he didn’t like being shown up in public and didn’t take well to looking like a fool.

“A household refers to a family or a group of people all living under the same roof, literally, inside of a house. This term applies to us, here in our tree, this is our household. The term household applies to a group of people living in any kind of shelter.” he didn’t understand the point of the exercise, but he answered each word as father asked it of him, explaining all of the big words that he had used when he had explained the term Ishteshtin. At the end of the words, father turned to Syano.

“Great-elder decided long ago that ring bearer need be historian. Not just worker of mind problem. Ring bearer know tribe history and world history, teach to little ones so none forget where tribe come from. Where people come from. More one knows, more one can help oneself. Syano cannot even answer household, how can Syano answer genetic alterations via amino acids applied directly to the neural cortex of an embryo?”

“Why would we need that information?” Syano protested, “it’s the old world, it’s done with.”

“That’s what made you,” he responded, drawing father’s eyes and the eyes of everyone in the tribe, “genetic manipulation was the altering of your blood. Without those alteration you would not be who you are, you would not be standing in a tree. You wouldn’t even exist. We are not the only people living in the wilds, there are short people, there are tall people from civilization still. We need to know what they know in order to survive.

“If the short people start doing genetic modifications, why should we allow them to make the same mistakes we made? We can trade them knowledge. What we know about genetic manipulation for land or trees or whatever our descendants might need.

“If we forget our past, we forget who we are, if we forget who we are, then we are nothing more than uncultured, uncivilized animals and we might as well run around naked, covered in plemmer dung. We walked away from technology, not intelligence.”

The adults murmured amongst themselves, the youths averted their eyes as he looked around them. It was only Syano, standing up against him.

“How is your intelligence going to feed you?” Syano spat out, taking a step towards him, “how is it going to protect you from the dangers of the wilds? The animals don’t care if you have the knowledge or previous generations.”

“Except that knowledge tells me how to kill those animals, tells me their weaknesses and their advantages,” he responded quietly, “and besides, you were hoping to become the ring bearer, so what are you complaining about? As ring bearer, you don’t leave the tree, you learn history. You are complaining about the thing that you wanted and then could not get. Do not blame me for the choice of the elders. If you want to question the elders, then.” he motioned towards the collected elders, “go ahead and question. But be ready for their reaction.”

Syano went bright red, stepping away from the argument as he looked down and away. No one questioned the elders, they were the final word and the utmost authority. Father had often threatened to throw argumentative youths from the tree when they began questioning the elders.

“Good, settled,” father said quickly, “now, about splitting the tribe in two. There are too many and great-elder wanted to wait until spring, will wait until then, but will separate the tribes now to give time of coming together and understanding. Other tribe, long time named cat.”

***

It had been a long day and now that he was alone, he recognised the buzzing at the back of his mind. The cringing that came about every time he thought about going to bed. He didn’t want to be alone. Mother said that the social interaction genes in him had been activated, that his parents and their families very likely lived close lives with no boundaries between the small family groups and the larger group.

Basically, he wasn’t made to be alone.

Stepping into his room, he sighed silently when he realised that he had locked the door that morning and now it was unlocked. The lock could be picked by nearly everyone, how many times had mother warned him? But he couldn’t figure out how to use the electronic locks and to pick his lock someone needed training or skill, not just a computer program and an access point into the mainframe.

There were few in the building who could pick old fashioned locks, they all relied very heavily on the electronics that genetics and tweakers had routed into everything basically. But electronics could be interfered with by power users and some power users were finding ways to hack into the systems, the internet and secure networks. Only one person, that he could think of, would want to break into his room.

Closing the door securely behind him he walked past the bed and the female form that was splayed out on it, “Cousin, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times, stay off of my territory.”

The bedside lamp flicked on. He didn’t have to turn around to know that she was eyeing him like a piece of meat. Didn’t have to meet her eyes to feel humiliated that a female would think of him in such a way. He didn’t want her, had never wanted her and hadn’t shown the slightest interest in her. They were cousins because his mother was a sibling of her father, not technically blood related but the idea of being with her made his skin crawl.

“I thought that maybe. You and I. Could… let off a little steam after today’s courtroom drama,” she said in her most seductive voice.

He closed his eyes, fingers paused just on his top button. He could do this, he could maintain control of the situation. She was just a slut who would sleep with anyone with a heartbeat and who didn’t care whether or not he didn’t want her. He had broken the arms and legs of male companions for less of a sin, but. Society, he thought with an eye roll, demanded that males not strike females.

Lowering his hands to his sides, he turned back towards the bed and considered her face, wondered what type of a mood she was in. That she was in his bed was no surprise, she almost always curled up there when she and her father visited. The fact that she was naked, now that, that was new.

He ignored the breasts, the shape of the hips, the flawlessness of the skin. Fact was, he wasn’t interested in her. He had been attracted to a few females but that had been more about breeding than actual interest. More males than not, and those, those were about wonton lust and sex, about letting off steam and channelling pent up aggression against a willing… victim…

“You fail to suit my tastes, get out.” he couldn’t take off his clothing while she was there, couldn’t shower while she was there. Couldn’t even sit down while in the same room as her because she would try to crawl into his lap. He did, however, pull off his tie and toss it to the side, she had once used that to try to pull him towards her.

Which was not unlike trying to drag an unwilling cat to a bath. Once he set his weight, he wasn’t moving no matter what was tugged on.

She looked him up and down, biting a finger delicately, as if that would entice him.

He would not hit a woman, he would not hit a woman, he would not hit a woman, he would not hit a woman. If he hit this woman, her father would tell his mother that he had been abusive or tried to rape her or. That just made him want to hit her more. He would not hit a woman, he would not hit a woman, he would not hit a woman, he would not hit a-

“Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to come join me?” she purred out, hand running over the blankets beside her.

“I would rather,” he said, approaching the bed, despising how her smell was on his blankets now, would be for weeks. He stripped off one blanket, pulling it right out from under her bare bottom, “put all of these blankets in the wash, burn the mattress and then fuck the flaming mattress. That, at least, would have some mild amount of interest to me.” he balled up the blanket, took it to the laundry shoot and stuffed it down the hole in the wall.

As he did this, she made a disgusted sound and stood from the bed, folding her arms just under her breasts, “we aren’t even cousins, what the hell is the problem? Every other man can’t get enough of me, why won’t you?”

“What, were you abused when you were small?” he asked, “so much so that the connection doesn’t get through that thick skull of yours? I don’t want you, actual cousins or not, you are not my type and I would rather vomit than kiss you. You are beneath my genetic material, having you is pointless.”

“It is not pointless,” she shouted back, “it’s about the pleasure!”

“If I want pleasure, I will find myself a willing male and mount him!”

There, he realised in the stunned silence, he had finally did it. He had come out to someone. There was nothing wrong with that, but his mother had warned him that however the world perceived him, would be how they perceived every person in the wilds. Thus, he had kept his sexuality a secret even from his own mother.

She looked horrified. Absolutely, her face went bright red and it crept downward, making her entire body glow. No, not metaphorically, it was the first time he ended up actually looking at her naked flesh and noticing her. She was literally glowing.

“What kind of creature was added to your genetic material to do that?” He asked.

“A firefly, you unkind bastard.” She spat out, “declining me is one thing, but lying to me as well? That’s low, even for you. I’ve seen you bring women back to your room, gorgeous women, genetic women, tweaker women, commoner women, but I’m not good enough for you? You are just terrible, horrible. You’ll hump anything that moves but I am not good enough for you. I have five star genetic material, I am better than a twelfth generation genetic and you think I’m not good enough. You cold hearted bastard.”

“Believe what you want,” he responded quietly. Those women had been about breeding, really. Not that he told them that. There was something about a woman on hormone treatments right before they were harvested that just got him going. Like a giant neon sign.

Truth be told, a few of those ‘women’ were men dressed in drag so that he could have them over to his place without anyone else making the connection. Drag queens, he had found, did not suit his taste. Some were dramatic, some were loud, some just turned his stomach. He needed a male with a bit of fire, a backbone without the random crying when his way wasn’t gotten.

She started snatching up her clothing, “here I am, offering myself to you-”

“You honestly see nothing wrong with offering yourself to your own cousin?”

“We aren’t actually related!” She straightened and pulled on her panties, shaking her head as she did so, “not in the least way or form. And even if we were, what the hell would stop us from having sex? Neither of us is viable.”

“I am.”

“No you aren’t-”

He shook his head, making her stop and go a funny colour, like a gray mixed with green, “No, I am viable. If you paid attention to your genetic lessons and my code, as everyone else in the family is doing, you would know that. My daughters will not be viable until they are twenty to twenty-three, the males are viable by the time they are able to… stand to salute. The timers written into your genetic code are the only temporary part about you, timers have to be written every lifetime and are why Ishteshtin and Toleran families cost so much to make. They are the only ones who still use timers.”

“Whatever,” she shook her head and snatched up her bra next, “I am not viable. A viable and a not-viable do not make a baby.”

“Unless of course the male is programmed to pass on his genes, a revved up alpha male who may or may not be able to get a non-viable female to begin ovulating with his mere presence. Again, if you paid attention to your genetic lessons, you would know this.”

“You. Are not. An alpha,” she snapped at him, finally getting the hook of her bra in the right place before she picked her pants off the floor, “you’re nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Maybe you should get yourself checked out,” he murmured, rocking back on his heels, “an alpha male in the wilds-”

“You are not an alpha!”

“Then assume I am beta, but I am above everyone else. And if I am beta, would you really want to meet the alpha?” he asked quietly, “besides that fact, it’s been theorized that there is not beta in the wild, there is alpha and then everyone else. I dominate over the eleventh and twelfth generation elders, oldest and olderest, where exactly does your claim come that I’m not an alpha?”

“Well, mister-pays-attention, if you actually looked at your own genetic code, you would see that you are not an alpha, you are just a well bred mutt. In here, in the city, you’re a big shot, but out there. In the wilds. You would be nothing. Creatures like you are a dime a dozen and if you actually lived out there, you wouldn’t even amount to the shit on the bottom of an alpha’s foot.”

“Then why,” he murmured quietly, trying not to let his hurt feelings show through, “are you so. Moody?”

She made an annoyed, enraged sound, snatched up her shirt and fled the room. This left him there, alone with only her words to keep him company. It was a fear of his, and that was why he couldn’t shut the words out. He feared that in the wilds he wouldn’t be as dominant as he was in the city, he feared that he wouldn’t be able to survive in the wilds. That if he went to the wilds everyone would be more dominant than him, that he only meant something because he was removed from his people.

It had been his mother who had first noticed this effect he had on women of breeding age. First it had been his nanny, getting pregnant the old fashioned way. Then his tutor, then his secretary, then his new secretary’s daughter. Once it was ruled out that these children were his, he had never laid a hand on any of the women, his mother had gone searching for the answer.

Turned out, some sub-clause of one of the genetic sequences, when allowed to grow without control, made some women more susceptible to male pheromones. A strong male, when presented to females, actually led to happier women who were more fertile and more likely to have happy, healthy babies than women who were presented with a weak male.

His mother thought that the same thing could happen when a dominant, strong female was presented to females as well, but all the females were programmed to be submissive just slightly to the males. The elders were male, the oldest were male. In the civilized world there was just no way to tell what a strong female could do to other females.

Combine a strong male and a strong female presence, the geneticists hypothesized, and nearly every female would have at least two children with the healthier, stronger ones having four or five. Which was why, in the thirteenth generation, the Toleran and Ishteshtin lines had already pledged a child to one another. The Toleran would create a strong willed, dominant female who was above the strong willed, dominant male that the Ishteshtin were creating. From these two, the geneticists would judge whether their hypothesis was correct or false.

All because of him.

If he was the least dominant from the wilds point of view, then. Well, imagine what an alpha male’s affect would do to a group of civilized women. There would be babies everywhere.

Barely controlling his urge to scream or cry at his own loneliness, he stripped the rest of the bed and stuffed it into the laundry shoot. Once the bedding, and his clothing, were in the shoot and the window was pulled open to air out the stench of his cousin, he went to the bathroom. There he brushed his teeth and made it to the shower before he broke down in tears. Some days were worse than others, some days lonelier than others. He was a social creature and in the civilized world, no one was social. No one wanted to be pet or snuggled or groomed, it was inappropriate to do any of those things.

So some days he cried in the shower, some days he didn’t.

Once showered, he dressed in underwear and pyjamas. He considered his reflection for a moment before he realised that he wouldn’t be able to sleep in his own room. Head down in defeat, he shuffled out of his room and down the hall. Knocking on the door gently, he waited for the invitation to enter before he opened the door.

His mother was sitting up in the bed, reading glasses perched on the end of her nose and a genetics magazine in her lap. She looked over at him and sighed.

“What happened?”

He shook his head and crawled into the bed, burrowing under the blankets. He didn’t want to talk about it, even though he knew that she would press him and find out what happened, he didn’t want to talk about it. He was just so tired. He just wanted to sleep.

She sighed again and switched out her pillow for the pillow he had under his head. Her pillow smelled strongly of her, a comforting scent, a reminder that someone was there and someone loved him. According to civilization this was wrong, very, very wrong. A nineteen year old male climbing into bed with his mother, that was perverted or twisted or broken in some manner. Tweakers lived like this, the Toleran family assured both his mother and him, it wasn’t completely unnatural, just awkward for someone who had been brought up in civilization.

“El, if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I can’t fix it.”

“You can’t fix it anyway.” he muttered in response.

In a very motherly fashion, she made the connection between his words and what happened. The growl that came from his mother’s throat was rare and meant that she had had enough, “your cousin again? That girl, I’ve told her multiple times to leave you alone.”

“So have I,” he groaned, burying his face in the pillow. The smell calmed him down some.

He looked up at his mother as she reached and opened the drawer on the bedside table. She pulled out a little case and he cringed away. Sometimes she gave him things to help him sleep, when things got too bad. Sometimes it was just a hormone to calm down his instincts and he would feel better for a few days before he started itching again. He didn’t like needles and wouldn’t allow anyone else to come near him with them.

“This is for me,” she murmured, sliding out of bed, “I will be right back. I don’t think you’ll need something to help you sleep, considering the fact that you’ve managed to lay perfectly still for several minutes. Just try to sleep.”

He tried and found that he could easily fall asleep. Instead of his usual dim dreams about his daily routine, he found himself running over forest ground, chasing someone, something, through the forest. Just when he had caught the lithe body, just as he turned the person over to look into their eyes, he jerked awake.

What the hell?

.