An Alien's Love

Chapter 5

I don't like this chapter for some reason. It felt stilted but I hope you guys like it all the same. Please leave a comment and vote if you like.

And thanks for the 1K reads!!!

Please note that this is a continuation of chapter 4.5 so you probably would want to reread the ending of that and pick up here.

5
Insight p.t 2

Christy

The cushion barely made a sound as Christy subtly shifted in her seat.

Good padding, she thought, reaching for a biscuit on the tray the assistant- who Grace had called Marv- had not too long brought in.

The goody tasted salty and crunchy, much like Earth's salted crackers. Guess there were a few things they did have in common after all.

"Conception in these cases are usually stunted." Grace continued after a slight pause.

"Stunted?" As in children cannot be born from intercourse anymore? Christy leaned back in her seat.

Grace nodded, her hair with a streak of white at the sides, bobbing.

Interesting. She couldn't imagine that being a problem though. It seemed a tad bit redundant wasn't it? Since sex, she now knew, was practically illegal here on Jude. What did it matter if a couple who weren't expected to have intercourse couldn't produce a child naturally? If anything it sounded like this little fail-safe was a good thing if a couple wanted to keep their nightly activities hidden. If they wanted a child so bad they could simply do what everyone was doing and get inseminated artificially.

Jude, such strange people, and even stranger culture.

"Quite so. But as with everything in life, there are always anomalies. A few cycles ago a child was born from this natural act. It was kept hidden since the way it was produced was, as you say... forbidden. If anyone were to find out this child was born it would've been carted off to be experimented on.

"The child's mother kept the secret well hidden, thankfully, no one knew it was created naturally. But what is done in the dark must come to the light..."

Grace looked off into some unseen distance. "The infant was merely a couple cycles old when the mother noticed it had some strange traits- it didn't look completely like modern day Judes- and soon after others started to notice this too. It wasn't pretty. Officials attempted to take the child..."

"Did they?"

Christy's voice appeared to draw her back. She looked down at the little human, her eyes a bright orange. "No. The mother must have had a tip-off at the time, for when they showed up the child was gone."

Wow. "Why were they after him? I mean I get it that he was produced naturally. But to take someone's child based on some stupid societal rule is just plain unbelievable. So what if he was different?"

"To you, it might seem unbelievable. But just like your ancestors, we tend to fear the unknown and strive to eradicate possible threats before it becomes a danger. This generation has never seen a naturally born offspring before, what we know of this comes from drawings preserved from a millennium ago. To those officials and others who'd seen the child, they'd seen a threat."

"Kind of ironic, dont you think? Since Jude is a sesspool of strange looking creatures?"

"Irony is one word for it."