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jeriendhal* * *
"Alinadar, my love, what are you doing?" Lady Salli asked.
Ali flinched, trying to hide the portion of roasted glide lizard she'd wrapped in a napkin behind her back, even as she realized how pointless the gesture was. "Nothing, milady," she replied, her ears heating up. "Just getting a snack, for later." As was their habit, she and Salli had been eating their dinner at the dining table in their suite in the Governor's Mansion on Greenholme, the colony worlds Salli administered for her mother, the Countess Darktail.
"A snack?" The tall, elegant vixen raised an eyebrow, drawing attention to the white fur covering the scars that crossed diagonally over her right, now artificial, eye. Foxen like Ali, Lady Sallivera Darktail was tall and spare, compared Ali's compact, athletic frame. Her pelt an even dark brown save for her thick black tail, contrasted to Ali's black and white tuxedo pattern, with bright hazel eyes compared with Ali's golden ones. It would have made Ali feel grubby and small comparing herself to Salli, except for the knowledge of the Noble caste vixen's fierce love for her Commoner bodyguard and betrothed. "If you want something to eat for later, the kitchen staff is more than willing to fix you a plate of victuals."
"I… wouldn't want to bother them," Ali replied, feeling increasingly foolish, the meat filled napkin seeming to grow twice in weight as it sat in her clenched paw.
"It's their job to serve the household, as it's your job to protect me," Salli replied calmly. Her ears cocked forward, her expression growing more focused. "Is there something the matter?"
"No, nothing." Ali set the napkin back down on the dining table. "Sorry, I was just being…" The word stupid died in her throat at Salli's glare. If there was one thing that was guaranteed to make the noblevixen truly furious, it was Ali putting herself down, or otherwise implying the ex-pirate was not worthy of Salli's love. "Old habits," she finally replied truthfully, setting the napkin down on her empty plate. Then she shrugged. "It wouldn't make much sense to you."
Salli walked over to the suite's conversation pit, gesturing for Ali to join her. The shorter vixen sat and snuggled in against her, letting out a soft churr of pleasure. "Enlighten me, then," Salli asked gently, as she stroked Ali's cheek with her fingerpads. "I know food is important to you. You finish off your plate at every meal, even when I can see what you're eating doesn't please you."
"I got into the habit when I was Bloody Margo's slave." Ali had been born on a star freighter, owned by her family. When she'd been six, the infamous human pirate had attacked their ship, murdered all of her immediate family, and taken Ali as a slave. When she'd been old enough, Ali had been given a gun and forced into the ventilation shafts of ships Margo attacked, to hunt down other children that were hiding, killing the ones that resisted, capturing the others for Margo to sell as slaves, or worse fates. She was sixteen before she'd finally escaped, left for dead during an attack against one of Margo's rivals.
"Margo starved you?" Salli asked.
"Not starved," Ali said, shrugging. "I mean, if you didn't pull your weight on the Relentless, you'd be eating recycled protein instead of the good rations. But if you didn't pull your weight in front of Margo, you'd have bigger problems than just being hungry." She rubbed the back of her head briefly in painful memory.
Salli gave her a long look, and Ali could almost hear the silent but… forming in her mind.
"Okay, there was a time when I was.... Gosh, I don't know, twelve or thirteen. When everything was, um, changing." She cupped her breasts briefly in demonstration. Ali carefully didn't add, When I couldn't stop crying all the time. When everything was just wrong. "I starting growing, gaining height. Sgt. Jack, my squad leader, was afraid that I was going to get too big to fit in the air vents anymore. I mean, my family tends to be short, but the vixens are also a bit, um, wide."
"Having met your Aunt Razi and Aunt Karra, I understand," Salli noted, smiling slightly. Her expression grew serious again. "So what did this Sgt. Jack do, to solve your 'problem?'"
"Got me some pills, to kill my appetite," Ali said. She hunched down involuntarily as Salli's already concerned face grew darker, ears turning back in anger. "They didn't hurt me, like the combat drugs did. Just made me sick to my stomach, if I ate too many calories at one sitting."
"How sick?" Salli demanded.
"Sick... enough," Ali finished lamely.
She watched as Salli caught her anger, deliberately damping it down as her ears popped back up. "How long did this go on?" Salli asked.
"Until I got tall enough that it was obvious I wasn't going to fit in the vents, no matter what. Pissed off Sgt. Jack, especially since I was earning him some sweet bonuses for the, um, cargo I was securing." Ali raised a calming paw. "It wasn't all that bad. I could eat small meals. Fadah, the wazagan Lady Melanie rescued last year, slipped me a lot of goodies on the side when Sgt. Jack wasn't looking, and a few others on the crew did as well."
Salli nodded. "I'll bet you learned to be grateful for that."
"Yeah," Ali agreed. "Once I was taken in by Lady Melanie's crew on the Scarlet Claw, it took me a while to understand that no one was going to whack me on the back of the head if I took seconds in the galley." Or wrap her muzzle in cufftape for a day or two, if Sgt. Jack was in a really lousy mood. She decided to put that little fact away, in the ever increasing mental file she kept of Things Not to Mention to Salli.
"Did Melanie know about this?" Salli asked.
"The details, no," Ali told her. "She did figure out I'd been denied food as a punishment, once she saw how I put chow away. When she was, um, training me in how to serve her aboard the Claw, she tended to give me special delicacies as a reward for good behavior." She smiled in fond memory of being fed from her then Mistress' paw. In retrospect, it was no wonder Ali had worshipped her.
"It's been over a decade since you were freed from Bloody Margo's clutches,' Salli said, stroking Ali's head slowly. "Are the habits so ingrained, that you need to hoard food, even with a full cupboard nearby?"
"Sometimes," Ali admitted. "I'll admit doesn't make much sense. Except that, in my head, it does."
Salli stroked Ali's stomach lightly. "I shall endeavor to make sure you always have a full belly, if that is what you need for your comfort."
Ali smiled up at her. "I know you will."
