Page 63 of My Tiny Giant
“He is not for sale.” I wrapped my fingers around Agan’s leg, as if the woman were about to snatch him off my shoulder.
“Not yet,” Agan said, deliberately adding a mechanical note to his voice. “The export agreement is still in the stage of tariff negotiations.”
“Oh, what a shame!” the woman exclaimed with clear disappointment. “He is simply adorable. A miniature Ravil!” she gushed. “I hope they’ll make them in other species, too. I’d love to have a tiny human male. Your men look so cute and defenseless in the pictures I’ve seen of them, completely furless and without any horns or claws.”
As she finally walked away, I muttered under my breath, “We may not make it far if that’s the way it’s going to go.”
“Hey, we can have fun with this,” Agan mused as I continued down the main aisle of the mall, searching for a fabric store. “Next time, tell them I’m an exotic pet, bred to your specifications. Or that I’m your modified human boyfriend who underwent a series of invasive procedures to become a travel size for you to fit me in your carry-on luggage on the trip to Neron. The fur and the tail happened to be the side effects.”
I turned around the corner into a side aisle and made my way around a large gazebo draped with vines and flowers. Several Voranians lounged in wicker chairs inside it. The mall drones served tea to them. Small birds with colorful butterfly wings and long intricate tails fluttered among the flowers.
The scene seemed more suitable for a garden party than a shopping mall. But since Voranians brought their gardens indoors, most indoor spaces looked like that in Voran.
“Oh, I know,” Agan wouldn’t quit. “Tell them I’m a hologram or even better a figment of their imagination. Only in that case, you’ll need to run away quickly before they start poking at me to find out if that’s true.”
“You’re just a fountain of ideas, aren’t you?” I consulted the screen of an information drone for the directions to the closest fabric store. “A hologram would at least have a mute button, I hope.”
“A hologram would not get you off in bed,” he quipped. “Which I’m fully intending to do tonight, by the way.”
“Agan!” I darted my gaze between the Voranians around us, trying to gauge if anyone had heard him, which of course they couldn’t from this distance, but still... “No dirty talk in the mall.”
“Well.” Smile dissolved in his voice. “I have the perfect position for that here, right next to your ear.”
“Please, don’t make me blush in public—” I begged.
“Hey, I know her!” A deep voice boomed under the massive glass dome of the mall. A group of Ravil soldiers exited the nearest establishment—a tea house.
There were six of them. Huge and of course topless, they quickly crowded me from all sides.
“You’re with the Earth’s Armored Unit, aren’t you? Number eleven?” one of them said excitedly. “I saw you at the Army Base on Tragul, without your suit.”
Many Ravil soldiers had seen me the day Agan and I had our talk with Rick and General Trulgadi. No one had approached me then—we’d left promptly after the meeting.
“Hi. I’m Emma.” I offered the Ravil soldier my hand.
He stared at it blankly for a moment, then pressed two fingers to the left side of his chest, giving me the Ravil Army salute instead. “I’m Aeveas. You’re on leave, too?”
“She’s here with me,” Agan’s voice sounded from my shoulder, quiet but firm.
“What the...” With a soft curse under his breath, Aeveas recoiled from us, as did the two others who stood the closest to me.
“Agan?” One of them said, squinting at my shoulder. “Is that you?”
“Who else?” Agan replied with thick sarcasm in his voice. “As far as I know I’m the only one in my very special Unit of Short and Stealthy.”
A roar of laughter erupted between the six of them as they shuffled closer again.
“By the Abyss of Krokkan!” one howled, grabbing his sides from laughing so hard. “You’re even shorter than your cock used to be!”
That sounded mean, but I bit my lip, holding back a snappy reply. I wasn’t a part of this group, and I couldn’t know what was acceptable here. For now, I let Agan handle it.
“Are you saying you’ve measured Agan’s cock, Hahlut?” Another one teased.
“No, but it couldn’t have been any shorter than this!”
“Hey, his size got him into the girls’ quarters at the entertainment unit, I’ve heard.” One of them elbowed the male called Hahlut. “Some women must like their men pocket-size.”
“Right,” Agan said flatly. “Lucky me.”