Bonus Short Stories
Open-Minded
I wasn’t sure why, but I found the image of a gnoll delicately working with an abacus hugely fascinating.
“What’re you gawking at?”
“Nothing, nothing. I was just admiring your dexterity.”
At first glance, Kevin, with his modest mane and black-spotted brown-gold fur, cut a pretty vicious figure. Like other hyenid gnolls, each of his fingertips ended in a sharp claw—and yet here he was, those same digits lithely running calculations on his decimal abacus. I just couldn’t help but think that the incongruity of his fierce demeanor and the way he set about his task—back slightly hunched over in concentration—was kind of cute.
“Well, yeah? I may have got claws, but that doesn’t mean I can’t write or stitch. An abacus is no problem.”
I’d come to the Inky Squid because I had something to ask of Miss Laurentius, but unfortunately she’d been absent. Aside from Kevin and a few other lifers and stragglers, the venue was pretty dead.
“Tch, you mensch—all you humanfolk, really—you just love your narrow little ideas about the rest of us. I can do anything I put my mind to, yeah?”
Kevin’s paws were covered in a rippling gray coat, pads on each finger, and the aforementioned claws at each fingertip. Each digit was fairly stubby, but true to his word, there was no fault to find in his figuring.
Werewolves were a lot closer, genetically and morphologically speaking, to mensch—although they were far bigger—and so seeing them do minute work wasn’t so odd to me; it was those big ol’ beans that gnolls and such had that made the difference. I think my sense of incongruity was further compounded by our first encounter. To think the man I’d found intimidating before, so intent on seeking out fresh prey for Miss Laurentius, was their accountant.
“Come on, some gnolls are knights and some are nobles. A body’s got every reason to know how to write a letter and balance their accounts.”
“It’s exactly as you say.”
Still, even judging a book by its cover just once put you in a frame of mind to make a habit of it; rewiring those perceptual pathways took work and time. That even went for more worldly people like me, who had seen nobles of all sorts of races in the capital.
“Y’know what’s weird though? For all your prejudices, you mensch lot are pretty open-minded in that regard.”
“Uh, in what regard?”
As I gave him a quizzical look, Kevin made an extremely vulgar gesture—the hip-thrusting kind that wouldn’t make it onto daytime TV. Yep, at least this side of him is adventurer-like.
“I’ve seen my fair share, and mensch do not hesitate when they’re down in the pleasure quarters.”
“I don’t think that means mensch are ‘easy.’”
“No, no, I get it. I’m a hyenid gnoll—I get the appeal of a strong woman. But mensch don’t do it for me and methuselah kinda give me the creeps. Demihumans, maybe, but I just can’t get it up for some types, y’know?”
I couldn’t help but wrinkle my nose at his brazen display of his tastes. Didn’t he think this kind of lewd talk was a bit lowbrow for this hour? Especially when I was here on his boss’s summons and neither of us had had a drop to drink.
“And that goes extra for those insectoid folk. I got nothing against them, but you’re a braver man than I, picking an arachne as a mate.”
I wanted to fire back, but he wasn’t wrong. I had made my own choices thus far, and I didn’t hide them so much that people thought I wasn’t interested in that side of life—whether the reason be some fundamental lack of interest, a deep and abiding cluelessness about Margit’s feelings, or in Kevin’s scintillating terms, trouble with “getting it up.”
I didn’t know what it was about Margit, but something about her had gripped my heart and wouldn’t let go. I wasn’t a vitality glorifier or anything—I’d never felt anything similar upon seeing floresiensis, dvergar, or other jumping spider arachne women—but she had ensnared me.
“But yeah, I’m not saying you need to stick to the same race. I’ve seen a fair few pretty werewolves in my time.”
I stopped myself from pointing out that I didn’t see that much difference, lest I receive another rebuke for my prejudices.
At any rate, the term “humanfolk” was simply a category decided by methuselah ages ago which bunched together a whole load of races that could produce viable offspring, so I didn’t see too much problem with mensch having a thing for various other races. After all, it was an irrefutable fact that mensch had settled down in a vast range of regions, and I had every obligation to respect our liberty in this regard.
In my own life I’d met a whole ton of mensch who had married someone of another race. Even Mister Fidelio had taken the bubastisian Shymar as his wife, and I understood what that said about him. I didn’t see the point in slapping the guy with some niche internet slur for his predilections; it was just a plain and simple fact that us mensch had all sorts of itches that only other fellow thinking species could scratch. Give it a think; even in a world with only mensch—sorry, Homo sapiens—there was a startling range of sexual inclinations. In a world where your neighbors could have cat ears or toe beans, I doubted that people’s preferences were all too surprising. Stuff like this made way more sense than the sort of work I used to see in the internet’s sleazier and more deviant corners—people turning into boxes, women with boobs bigger than their bodies, people whose personalities or memories had been excreted from themselves...
Ah, but I suppose the demihumans of this world go a little bit further than simply being mensch with animal ears on their heads. After all, Kevin has a literal snout, and Miss Laurentius is a giantess. You know, maybe we mensch are weird? ...No, stop those thoughts, Erich.
I stifled my runaway inner monologue before it led me somewhere that’d demand a Sanity check, then said goodbye to Kevin and made a mental note to return to the Inky Squid a bit later.
[Tips] Although they may look similar, mensch and Homo sapiens are completely different species.
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