Snake Keeper by Alexandra Norton
CHAPTER SEVEN
I HALF-SURFACED FROMsleep shivering with cold. I groaned and rolled onto my stomach, feeling for the covers and finding none. Did Dad forget to turn on the heat again?
The chill sent me tossing and turning. Thankfully, warmth radiated from the wall next to me. Dad was right; our brick walls do retain heat. I pressed my back against it. “Five more minutes,” I muttered and drifted off in warmth, eager to get back to a good dream.
But then the wall moved. The remnants of my dream dissolved as my eyes flew open. Shit. I stayed very still as memories of the previous day (or week? Or month? How long had it been?) flooded back.
“You run cold, human.” his chest vibrated against my back when he spoke.
I scrambled from the bed. I felt naked, but was relieved to look down and see the skin-suit still fitted against me. The material was just so light that it felt nearly nonexistent.
“It’s freezing in here.”
The Snake propped himself up on an elbow, running a large hand through tousled black hair. He looked considerably less menacing with bedhead. And unlike me, he was not clothed.
Do not look down. Do not look down.
I forced myself to look into his crimson eyes, vertical pupils somewhat wider than I’d grown accustomed to. He still looked like a Snake.
“The ambient temperature is set to complement my kind’s natural body heat, which increases through the night. It seems your own body has different tendencies,” he explained.
“When will you fix it?”
“I’d rather not,” a wicked smile spread across his cruel lips.
I scowled, flashing back to my desperately seeking heat, crawling next to my captor to get it. Was he going to make me freeze just to force me to touch him?
“Go bathe, my Kept. We have to prepare to meet the Father. Zeetha is waiting for you outside,” he jerked his chin toward the door behind me. The Father?!
Too sleepy and embarrassed to argue, I did as I was told. I felt his gaze boring into me when I turned around, feeling all too exposed and all too cold in the barely there bodysuit.
Zeetha was, indeed, waiting for me right outside the sliding door.
“Who is the ‘Father’?” I asked her through a mouth full of bitter paste, which I was instructed to gargle in place of tooth-brushing (I had my doubts as to the effectiveness).
Zeetha sat on her stool, inspecting her long black nails as I bathed. It seemed she was mostly just there to keep me company. Not that I wanted any.
“The Father runs the entire station. The station is the home base of our species. As a result, the Father basically commands our species.”
“Is he your real father?”
Zeetha’s bubbly laugh rippled through the chamber. “No, of course not. We call him Father because he is responsible for the continued propagation of our entire species, through his leadership and strategy.”
“And I have to meet him?” I spit the disgusting paste into the stone cup given to me and stepped out of the bath, sliding my “silkskin” back on.
“Yes,” Zeetha looked serious. “He must approve of you if the process of integration is to continue. I know you aren't fully comfortable here yet, but you must be on your best behavior. The Father must approve of your match with your Keeper for it to be valid, otherwise it was all for nothing!”
“The process of evaluation,” I corrected her. I had no intention to integrate with these monsters.
Zeetha didn’t argue, and instead led me out of the bathroom. I did not know how she distinguished any of the doors in the seemingly infinite hallway. We kept going in one direction along the spiral, never back. How could that possibly work? Either way, she led me to a small room with a much fancier looking foam cushion than the one I’d sat on at the dinner table the previous night. And… shit… a mirror. I didn’t really want to see myself after the ordeal I’d been through.
When she sat me down on the cushion and I forced myself to look, I was somewhat surprised. I had expected to find a half dead, tired, puffy face looking back at me. This was not the case. My olive skin was plump, with only faint remnants of my old blemishes left on my chin. As for my under-eye bags… Well, let’s just say I’d seen worse after pulling an all-nighter for an exam. Full tawny lips looked relatively moist, not dry and chapped as I’d normally expect in the morning.
My chestnut hair was another matter: a tangled mess of tight curls flying in all directions around my head.
Zeetha reached into a wooden chest next to the full-length mirror and began to pull out supplies: a metal comb (“Titanium,” she said offhandedly), a selection of simple gold rings and bracelets, and a tiny pot of some sort. I could barely stifle my excitement over getting some insight into the aliens’ beauty routines. My university thesis was on the intersection of beauty standards across low and no-contact tribes! For a second, I allowed myself to dream about coming home and becoming a renowned academic, publishing acclaimed papers about the Xiorn cultural beauty standards.
So, in the interest of field observation, I allowed Zeetha to do what she would with no complaint. When she combed my hair into an even less ruly state, making it look like a halo of brambles around my head, I did not complain (despite having to stifle a laugh). She pushed golden bangles around my wrists, stacked thin rings on my fingers, and clasped a golden hoop around my neck. But the makeup was the most fascinating part: earlier, she had extracted a small pot from the chest. When she showed me the contents, it was simply a silver paste. She dabbed it on her finger, then tapped a small dot in the middle of my bottom lip. The dot immediately expanded and shifted to coat my lips of its own accord, much like the silkskin would wind itself around my body. When my lips were coated in the layer of silver paste, the tint of it began to shift. It slowly blended into my natural taupe to result in a darker, ever-so-slightly glossier sheen.
“How does it work?” I ran my tongue along the corner of my mouth, testing the staying power. The color did not budge, nor did it feel any different from the normal plumpness of my lip.
“What? You don’t have this on Earth?”
“Not like this,” I leaned forward in the mirror, making funny expressions with my mouth to examine the strange makeup
Zeetha continued by repeating the process of dabbing a dot of silver paste on each cheekbone, then at the outer corners of my dark brown eyes. The paste blended itself into a rusty rose on my cheeks, placing itself in positions I’d never tried to put blush on before. The result was a look of higher, highlighted, subtly flushed cheekbones. The paste slid from the corners of my eyes to cover my lash-line, shifting to a dark brown that made my almond eyes look more striking, yet still perfectly natural.
Talk about ‘No makeup makeup.’
It seemed the aliens appreciated a subtle effect. I studied Zeetha’s face in the mirror as she made some last adjustments to the bird’s nest she created on my head. How much of the silver paste did she have on?
“Do the males wear this, too?” I asked.
“Some; it’s come into fashion. But many still think of it as a feminine indulgence.”
Not so different, after all.
“Can I keep this?” I pointed at the paste pot.
Zeetha looked ecstatic. “Of course! I’ll bring it to your nest later today.”
When I got up and looked myself over in the mirror, I had to admit the aliens’ aesthetics were on point. The white silkskin was still too revealing for my liking, but I would have been a fool to deny that it cinched my waist in all the right places and masterfully accentuated the curve of my rear and lower back. The steep leg openings revealed my hipbones and tapered to a point at my waist, elongating my bare legs. My chest was collected upwards to form gentle mounds of flesh, but did not feel stifled like any push-up bra I’d ever worn. I looked good. I wished it were under different circumstances.
Each silkskin I saw on the aliens looked unique. Zeetha’s had sleeves and was much more conservative around the chest, but by contrast consisted of a long opening in the back which almost revealed the crack of her rear. I wondered how the silkskin’s form was programmed. Was mine the way it was to suit my Keeper’s preferences? To make me a more appealing toy for him to play with?
I didn’t dwell on the thought, because I had a plan.