“This is not about you,” I growl, forced to speak because she seems unable to make the necessary connections between her behavior and what happens to the tribe. I buried her beast because it will draw the ire of the stars. We know well enough what our ancestors told us: to destroy anything that comes from above. This star girl should be included in that commandment, but I will not allow harm to her, even if the huntresses are right and she should be destroyed with it. She fancies herself intelligent, but she learns very slowly.
“It feels like it’s about me!”
“Everything is about you. You come from the stars, but you are no sun. The planets do not revolve around you. You will learn to live on this world, as our ancestors did. You will follow our customs. We will not be dictated to by a spoiled little girl from the stars.”
With that, I cast the lash away and spank her bottom with my palm, big hand prints flashing bright pink over her welted skin. She believes this to be a harsh punishment, but this is nothing compared to what she deserves, and what the huntresses would do to her if left to their mercy.
“Let me go! You asshole! You destroyed my shuttle! I hate you! I hate you!”
She is learning nothing. She appreciates nothing. She does not understand what a miracle her survival is, how close she came to perishing at the hands of the huntresses, how her fall from the heavens could have cost her life. She wails and she whimpers and she complains though she is fed and protected. The simple goodness of her existence escapes her.
Her body is on the ground, but her head is in the stars. All of her must come to accept this new reality. Spanking is a childish punishment, usually reserved for whelps, but it suits her well. She is like a child in this world, unaware of her place in it, expecting things to be as they were, unable to understand that they will never be the same.
“Stop! Stop!” she cries out, giving me orders. I will not stop. I will win this battle of wills. I will tame this space girl and she will be mine.
Her bottom turns pink and then bright red and still she has not stopped. Her fight is furious. I ease back. I do not wish to seriously harm her, and she is close to having had more than enough. Her tender body is not used to rough handling. Her bottom is hot to the touch, whipped and spanked to the shade of a rosy dawn, but the rebellion is still in her. I can feel it.
I pull her up from my lap and stand her in front of me. I want to see her face. I want to know why she fights so furiously for this beast craft that spoke to her in such angry tones.
“Why did you do it? Just tell me why!” She is crying in misery. “That was all I had left. They’re going to kill me!”
“They?”
“The people I come from.”
“I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“You won’t be able to help me,” she says miserably, wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “They’re so much more advanced. They have machines that can… oh, I can’t even begin to describe what they can do. They make food from nothing. They let us speak at distances of lightyears. They will come and they will take me and there is nothing you can do to stop them.”
“I buried their beast. I will bury any more that come,” I growl, flexing. She doesn’t trust my ability to protect her, but that is because she does not yet know me.
“You should have left it alone. You should have left me alone,” she says, her lower lip quivering. “This is bad. This is very bad. I don’t know what they’re going to do, but I know they’re going to hurt me now. And maybe you too.”
She is deeply afraid of the men from the stars, but we know a thing or two about the star people. The stories have been told since the old times, and they are the reason I knew to crush and to bury the beast she rode down on.
“Your beast angered the huntresses, and brought danger to our tribe. It could bring down the wrath of the stars. So I broke its pieces apart. Now it will be no danger to anyone.”
“There’s still danger,” she sniffs. “My ship is still up there, in orbit. My people will come for me when I don’t respond. And they will look for me down here. You having buried the shuttle won’t change anything. They will still look for me.”
“But they won’t find you.”
“They will though. They’ll find me.”