I’m not exactly sure where this is in the story. Most likely very early into known Susanne, but when she’s comfortable enough with Brian to open up. This could even predate Susanne coming to live with Brian. Brian had just talked about his life with Hara and how he was happy, but fucked it up. For reference since many readers haven’t read my little biography of Susanne in the “Summary”, Susan is her daughter who died only about eight months before this. Also Temnere are “despised” races who are seen as unclean and generally unsavory. Temnere include Vulpids (“foxes” like Susanne), Procyds (raccoons), Mustilids (weasels) and Mephids (skunks).
Susanne sighed and looked up at Brian with her large, brown, oddly-human eyes. “It sounds like you had a nice life with her.”
“Yeah,” Brian looked her in the eyes and then away quickly. He didn’t want Susanne to see his eyes getting teary. It was the first time since he’d gotten here that he’d talked about anything that personal with anyone.
“I wish I could be that happy,” Susanne said and glanced at Brian then away quickly to whatever distant object Brian was looking at.
He didn’t want to be consoling a hurt woman right now. He’s own wounds were beginning to show and he didn’t think he could hold it in. Finally he asked, “Why do you say that?” She looked at him like she couldn’t believe how dumb of a question that was, so he continued, “I mean you’ve had a hard life, but you’ll be happy at some point, I’m sure.”
She breathed in a wavering breath and let it out. She swallowed and said, “I miss William.”
“Who’s William?” Brian wasn’t sure whether he should put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her or not. He could tell from her voice how he was to her.
She sniffed and rubbed the tip of her nose, “He was the first man …” she dropped to a whisper, “the only man, I’ve ever loved.”
“What happened?” He put his arm around her and she took his hand.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” She looked at him and gave him a pained grin. “Do you know how hard it is for a temnere like me to find someone who’ll treat them good?”
“What about,” he didn’t want to get into their arcane caste system, “another temnere?”
“He was one,” she squeezed his hand, “I …” she laughed a single chuckle that almost sounded like a sob, “I can’t say you don’t know how lonely I am.”
“I know,” Brian squeezed her hand back, “Do you want the truth about me and Hara?” Susanne nodded. “She was the first woman I was ever in love with.” Brian sighed and thanked whatever god there was that she couldn’t see him, “I had dated some, but nothing major. I spent most of my time in school to myself. It wasn’t that I was too busy, I just wasn’t interested. By the time I was twenty-five I realized I was a third of the way into my life and I’d never loved anyone.” He tried not to sound like he was breaking down, “Starting to seriously date at twenty-five isn’t easy. I’ve never been good with woman and I had date after date that ended in nothing. I went out with a woman who my friends said probably didn’t even like me for almost a year before I broke it off. The next one wasn’t much more than someone to have sex with. She didn’t want anything else and simply stopped answering her phone one day. Another basically told me that she liked me but was leaving me for someone who wanted to be more serious. I didn’t know how to tell her that’s actually what I was wanting, too.”
Brian sighed and stopped for a long moment and he could feel Susanne turning to look at him. He knew he looked like shit. It was finally breaking through. Months upon months of being around people who weren’t even his own species. He hadn’t even thought about Hara. What if four months had passed in his world too? What would she be thinking? She was angry, but there was no way she wanted him dead. That what it would have looked like, too. He hated seeing Hara cry. She was such a strong woman — stronger than him even, both physically and emotionally — and when she cried it made him feel worse. He took his arm from around Susanne to wipe his eyes.
He continued in a breaking voice, “I met Hara when I was twenty-eight. To me she was unattainable. There was no way someone at her age, who looked like her, wasn’t married. Or engaged. Or something. And I’m sure she was when we met.” He sniffed, swallowed hard and looked away from Susanne. “One day, probably two years after I met her, she called me at work. It happened all the time so I didn’t think it was anything special. When she asked me to dinner I thought it was professional so I wore what I always wore to work. A polo shirt and slacks. I even had a notepad when I met her that night,” Brian smiled at the memory, “she had on a dress that I would have expected to see on a runway model.” Brian didn’t care that Susanne didn’t know about half of what he was saying.
He wiped his eyes and rubbed his checks to try to make himself more presentable. “After a few months I realized that she was ‘the one’. Even Epiphany, she was the one I was with for a year, never made me feel like that.” Brian stopped because she already knew the rest of it.
“But you got to be with her,” Susanne said quietly, “I was with William for only a few months and then he went away.”
“Why?”
“He was a Jipsee,” she said and laid back on the bed. “He told me he was going to take me with him and then … the day he left … Nell made sure I didn’t go.”
Brian had learned to loath Nell over the past couple months, mostly through Susanne. “You really loved him, didn’t you?”
“Sometimes I think more than I did Susan,” she looked uneasy, “but in a different way.”
“You’ll find someone,” Brian said, but wasn’t sure if he meant it. He couldn’t tell if she was attractive at all. She had a decent body. Almost no chest, but she still had a nice body. Very short. If she were human … and about 10 or 15 years older … he’d have considered her. He liked short and petite, despite marrying Hara who was tall and shapely.
“No I won’t,” Susanne looked sullen, “I’m too plain. I mean look at me. I look like I’m twelve. I smell like a Vulpid. The only reason my fur doesn’t look ratty is because I work in the palace.”
Racism always pissed off Brian. He’d seen enough of it with Hara. Between her father hating the gora she married and her being so dark that some people decided not to give her full courtesy. Brian said in a firm voice, “Don’t ever badmouth yourself for being a Vulpid! In my world I was in the majority race in my country. My wife,” Brian didn’t even notice the slip, “wasn’t. She put up … We put up with a lot of shit but she never said anything bad about who she was. She was proud of it.”
“You just don’t understand what it’s like here …” Susanne said in a weak voice.
“You have Jim Crowe laws,” Brian said and didn’t bother explaining, “my second focus in college was American history. After the Civil War, the blacks in the South put up with these arcane laws that kept them basically subjugated. There was even a law in Arizona that would have specifically made sure that I could never have married my wife.”
“Ex-wife?” Susanne said meekly.
“Ex-wife, thank you,” Brian said and decided to stop his rant.
“Nothing’s going to happen here,” Susanne said sitting up, “Even if the king somehow decreed it, the council of Dukes would reject it.”
“Just don’t say anything bad about being a Vulpid or a temnere,” Brian put his hand on her shoulder, “I don’t care about it. Everyone treats you badly because of it. I won’t. I really don’t care.” Brian tried to break the tension and said, trying to laugh, “You all look like animals to me.” Susanne laughed despite the animal remark being insulting, “And you know what?”
“What?”
“I always liked foxes.” He said and grinned.
“Really?”
“When I was in summer camp one year in the Boy Scouts there were some so tame from being around people all summer that you could basically feed them out of your hand,” Brian laughed, “It must have been female because it had a litter living under the rifle range.” Susanne giggled. “It pissed off the camp councilors because they didn’t want us feeding them and making it rely on humans for food.”
“Did you name them?”
“Yeah,” Brian leaned forward to stand, “Robin and Marion. We called their litter the merry men. Ehh … you probably don’t get it …”
“Not really,” Susanne said with a smile.
“I’ll explain it later,” Brian said as he picked up a sheaf of papers and walked to the door, “I should really be getting this stuff to the king.”