“So pretty much everything on this menu is going to be offered either raw or cooked,” He pointed to the first page of the menu where there were selections like rabbit and ox and fish, as snake and aviary. “But most countries require they include that little symbol right there,” He pointed to a red triangle next to ‘rabbit stew’, “So if you don’t see that, then it’s not going to be fresh, which some people won’t eat – pick anything you like, my treat!”
“Oh, um,” I scanned over the menu while Willow said he’d order first, telling the waiter he wanted the daily special, with potato wedges instead of salad. I studied the menu and tried to find something quickly, but wasn’t sure.
“Take your time, Lawrence – can we please get some drinks,” He looked at me, “Do you like sweet tea, Lawrence?” I nodded and Willow smiled before he looked back to the waiter. “Two teas-”
“And whiskey,” Claude said, still staring at his paper.
“No whiskey.” Willow shot back, his gaze locked with the waiter, “Can you get him a sour drop?”
“How strong?” The waiter asked as he wrote on his pad of paper. I focused back on the menu.
“Very,” Claude said.
Willow gave a little laugh, “One finger, please. He’s driving.” The waiter left then and I glanced up to see Willow turning to stare openly at his brother. “Did you eat?”
“Yes.”
Willow didn’t look convinced. “Did you, though?”
“Yes,” Claude said, a little harder this time.
Willow’s lips thinned. “Okay, but did you?” Claude lifted his gaze to stare at his brother and Willow stared right back. “Your medication doesn’t work as well on an empty stomach, you know that.” Claude’s eye widened briefly before he looked back down. Willow stared at him for another minute before he looked at me and met my gaze. “You can go ahead and talk to him. You don’t have to be afraid of talking to Novus here. You should be wary, but not scared. Sapiens are largely on equal ground, so unless a Novus is an asshole and tries to be aggressive – which some do! - then you don’t have to cower. You are as equally important to the stability of our country as every other adult.”
I laughed a little, feeling very uneasy as I looked back to Claude, then back to my menu. “Are the sandwiches here good?”
Willow perked up, “Oh yeah – they don’t have pork products in the colonies, do they?” I frowned and shook my head, as I had never heard of bacon before. “Alright, I know what you’re eating.” He took my menu and set it atop of my own before he set it down on the table. “There are a lot of foods they didn’t allow in the colonies because it lowered sperm count or messed with women’s hormones, so you are going to have an entirely new world of tastes.” He sat back, “Go ahead and ask Claude something – we need to reprogram your brain with Novus interactions.”
I nodded, my stomach tightening as I looked to Claude to see he was still reading his paper. “Do you enjoy your job as a peacekeeper?”
“It doesn’t have the perks I hoped it would.” He said blandly to his paper.
Willow frowned at that, looking at his brother briefly before looking at me. “Claude is looking for a mate, he thought being the MAN would ensure he’d get one sooner, but…” Willow shrugged a little, both brothers wearing similarly unhappy looks on their faces then.
“How does that work, with Novus, I mean…” I asked, chewing on the inside of my cheek. “It seems to be different than with sapiens…”
Willow nodded a little. “It is different. It’s more about biology than about attributes. They say a Novus’s desires what is in the bones of their mate while a Sapien desires what is in their mind. So while you and I could spend months and years trying to figure out if our partner is right for us and that might even change over time, a Novus will know with one sniff if someone is the person they will spend their entire life with.”
He looked to his brother and his brother shook his head a little. Willow’s smile fell before he looked at me, clearly dejected. Strange. It didn’t last long though because Willow’s lips twitched back into a smile as he turned a little to fully face me as the waiter brought us our drinks, Willow and my own with a lemon wedge on the rim of the tall glass while Claude’s was a clear liquid with a thick, dark green cloud down the center.
“That’s a big finger, sir,” Willow said as he stared at his brother’s drink, eyeing Claude as he picked up the large glass and begin quickly drinking it down. He looked to the waiter and I saw the other man quickly walking off like he would rather be anywhere but here. I looked back to Willow and his tense look as he watched Claude finish his drink with a gasp. “Happy?” Claude belched, smacked his lips, and returned his gaze to his paper. Willow shook his head and looked back at me. He gave me a wry smile and I returned it with a polite one of my own. “Typically there are several steps when a Novus courts a Sapien, and they are highly dependent on cultural expectations and the laws of the land. But in general, the Novus must obey the expectations of the culture and laws of the Sapien’s country.”
I nodded. “And what are the expectations of Liliport?”
“Well, most of Victoria follows the same expectations. You met a Novus, they agree to your terms of engagement – in your case, you want his clan to give you custody of your niece. You then begin your courtship, where you two meet up at agreed places and get to know each other.”
“Not if they’re an A,” Claude mumbled as he turned the page of his paper.
“Well, it’s a little different with Class A because they have far fewer choices available and have less time to figure things out,” Willow explained, “But typically a Novus and a Sapien will court for at least six months before they start counseling, where a third party will sit down and ask the hard questions and they can discuss them in a safe and private environment.”
“What would the hard questions be?”
“It depends. The two separate parties usually submit a list of things to the third party, and the answers will be recorded and written into the marriage agreement. Things like…” He thought about that for a beat, “Where the family will live, questions about future children, an agreement on what both will have for a career...like some couples agree the Sapien will have a career until they have children, and then will remain at home until the children are out of school, or that the Novus will or won’t work in a certain field or will or won’t enter the circuit. The most common agreement is the level of conflict the Novus is or isn’t allowed to work in – some jobs have low chances of conflict, like say a factory job, while others have very high levels, like peacekeepers. I told you about Miguel, Victoria’s MAN?”
I nodded, not missing how Claude licked his lips and seemed to jerk a little at the name.
“There’s a rumor that it was part of his marriage agreement that he would be allowed to enter local circuits and the continent one, but not the worldwide one as they are more dangerous, but the only people that know that for sure are him, his mate, the third party, and the Matriarch. Most people keep marriage agreements private because they are the most intimate agreements between a mated couple. Some don’t even share them with their children.”
I nodded a little. “And then what?”
“It can take months before a final marriage agreement is settled and the Matriarchs won’t move forward until she sees that all points on both sides have been agreed upon, and once that’s done, the Matriarch’s of both clans with sign off on the marriage and settle any discussion about future heirs – for instance, in some cases, it’s agreed that all Novus offspring will belong to one clan while Sapien offspring will belong to the other. Some have it where a clan will only get one of the children in their clan, or maybe just the females or just the Sapiens.”
“Does it matter which clan the child belongs to?”
“Ooooh, yeah.” Willow laughed as he took a drink. “It’s all about assets and power. So, like here in Victoria with Desiree, our current Matriarch. Her father was from El Valle, which is this tiny country down south, and her mother was from here in Liliport. When they got married, it was agreed that any children would be from the father’s clan except for the Novus females. So her parents have six children, but only one is a Novus female...and that was Desiree. So all legal aspects of her life were through us, and when she entered the circuit, it was under our flag. She was also a candidate for Matriarch and has now won the title. So it’s really a case by case situation and entirely depends on the two clans that the mated pair belong to. As you belong to Deatherage, with is part of the family of clans that falls under the jurisdiction of Victoria, they will negotiate the offspring rights for you two...though you and your mate will both be men, it’s best to have that decided in case, down the line, you decide to adopt. The rules would still apply to any of those children as well.”
I nodded slowly, smiling at the waiter when he came with our food. “Is it hard to adopt?” I asked as the waiter left, looking down at the sandwich in front of me. It smelt good, so that had to be a good sign.
“It’s a process, but not terribly awful. You could also go the underground route as well – spend some time in New Haven and bring back a baby from there, or pay to have someone do it for you. I was exploring doing that when I was younger, but I decided to stay local to be closer to Claude.” He said with a little laugh, his brother opening his mouth so Willow could stick a potato wedge into it.
“New Haven.” I recognized that name. “That’s the country that the newspaper said was starting a birth control-”
Willow made a noise a that, nodding hard. “That’s right. New Haven is our neighbor west of Claymoore, they’re right there up against the pacific ocean. You’ll hear about them a lot in the news. Nasty country. All Sapien, militantly against Novus – they used to be a colony, you know.”
I frowned at that as I took a bite of my sandwich, and I decided right away that I liked it.
“They were actually the first colony that Campora started up, about five hundred years ago. Long story short, they decided they didn’t want to rejoin Novus society and declared independence, had a very nasty war to ensure that happened, quickly grew ten times their size, and have been largely isolated from the world ever since. We trade with them, but they don’t let any outside citizens in or out of their borders...and they’re fucking nuts. I would talk about it over food, but it’s a bad place. Occasionally a Novus is born there and there is a church group that sneaks them out of New Haven and into Campora, so usually, that’s the easiest method to adopt. Most kids go to kin if their parents die. And then of course you have the babies born in the colony, but those are getting rarer and rarer now.”
“How...how often does that happen?”
“Novus babies born in the colony? Oh…” He thought about that as he ate, taking a drink before answering “Probably one every ten births, yeah. Occasionally the mother will leave the colony with her Novus child, but for the most part, it’s just the baby.” He reached over and patted his brother’s face, Claude scowling and jerking away a little as he continued to read his paper. “It’s a lot of drama whenever any sapien is pulled from the colony. People don’t like to hear that the place they are paying taxes to are dipping into the honeypot before the general public gets a go.”
I frowned.
‘Gets a go.’
What an interesting choice of words.
I took a bite of my sandwich before I asked “Could I possibly just….skip over all those steps and just go straight to marriage?”
Claude lifted his gaze to stare at me and Willow looked conflicted at that, telling Claude when he caught his gaze “He’s trying to get his Novus niece from East Campora.” Claude grunted and returned his gaze to his paper. “I really don’t suggest you skip the steps. We can put you on a speed run where we do a step a week, but there’s a reason why these steps are in place.”
I nodded a little, thinking how long it would take to ‘speed run’ them, as Willow said. All those days that Joy would be off with strangers.
After a minute of eating quietly, Willow said then “We’ll go for Gideon if they offer him, since he’s closer.” He took a drink and I met his gaze. “I think we could push through with him in two weeks, as long as the first meeting goes off good – but who knows what the matchmaker has to offer. We have an appointment for ten tonight and we’ll get a better idea of what’s going on then.”
I nodded as I quietly ate.
Whatever the matchmaker had to offer, I would be choosing the quickest route to Joy, regardless of what that meant for me.
If there would be anything that came out of this horrible situation, it would be getting to be with Joy.
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