“C’mon. Do it.”
“Uhhh…”
“What’s the matter, shy?”
“No. No!”
“Oh, is it your first time? That’s okay, you know. Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s-”
“Don’t go lying to me right now. Look, just do what comes naturally. Bite me right about here, where my skin is ten times thicker than yours.”
The blue shark would’ve blushed if he were physically capable, but he wasn’t, so he didn’t.
He did, however, sink his teeth directly into the other blue shark’s side.
“Oww. Oww. Ouch. Ouch ouch ouch.”
“Fowwy.”
“No ouch ouch that’s ow fine that’s ow how it’s ack meant to ow feel. Argh. I’m extremely turned on now ow ow ow this is actually very hotaaaaaaaaagh.”
“Fokay.”
There was a very prolonged pause filled with several awkward things.
“My cloaca’s farther down.”
“Fowwy.”
Goddamned virgins. Ignorance was okay, but never asking questions?
***
“What light through yonder web breaks?”
Good, good. He was getting her curious.
“It is the east, and you are the sun!”
Oh, now she saw where this was going.
“Impossibly huge and powerful, ravenously gorging yourself upon the universe! I am a trapped gnat before you, humbly serving no purpose save to feed your divine flame!”
Okay that was enough. “Come here you little dirty-talking slut,” she told him, and pounced.
“Thank you very much, my lady,” he said as she started working on his relatively tiny and feeble extremities.
“Less talk more action, loverboy,” she said, halfway through his first leg. “I’m absolutely not slowing down after that intro.”
Tragically he only got to sixth base before she chewed through his abdomen. Damn her weakness for smooth talkers; they never lived up to their own hype.
***
Solitary the Komodo dragon sat, ten feet long and hundreds of pounds, strong-tailed and scaly-backed. Her mouth was closed, her tens of serrated surfaces tucked away beneath bloody gums and firmed lips, backed by idle muscles that could tear flesh from bone and limb from life.
Stomach half-full of yesterday’s deer, body warmed by the afternoon’s heat, spine pleasantly supple with the relaxation of a day spent doing nothing in particular, there had been few more happy times in her life.
She stared at the sunset’s sea and thought about things that had nothing to do with life or death or self or other, and then something inside her ovaries went ‘plunk.’
“Aw fuck,” said the dragon. “Not again.”
This was her THIRD YEAR IN A ROW undergoing parthenogenesis. Damn her stupid biological clock.
At least maybe this time she wouldn’t eat all of them.
***
The flight was beautiful – loops, twirls, drunken corkscrews, spinning through a sky far above the ant colony. The tunnels and the workers and her fat flightless mother all suddenly so far away that she could’ve blotted them out of her mind just like that – like THAT – they were so small and pointless.
This was what she wanted to do! What she wanted to do was fly!
She also wanted to do someone, and so convenient it was that the air near her was thick with drones. One of the tastier looking ones was looping around her right now, and the attraction was looking very much mutual.
A bit of petting in the air, but that was nothing at all – just a touch that made her want more. She wanted to fly and fuck and nothing else, a little squeeze wasn’t going to cut it.
So they went down to the rain-damp ground where there was more leverage and then it started and was immediately over.
“Well, bye,” said the drone, and took off again.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“Job’s done. Gonna go starve to death now,” his voice echoed faintly back at her.
“Excuse ME?” she asked.
Then her wings fell off and landed in the mud.
At that moment she finally, completely, and fully understood why her mother had always seemed so crabby.
***
“New guy today.”
Lisa blinked. “Huh? Didn’t hear about that.”
“It was late last night; you were out swiping that hyena kill with Lottie. He popped up early morning, swatted Leo stupid and sent him whining off.”
“Oh.” Lisa rolled over and aimlessly pawed at the steaming savannah air, her fluffy tummy rippling in the breeze. “Is he hot?”
“If you like older guys I guess? Looks like someone ate his ear though.”
“Kinky.”
“Like, a crocodile.”
“Oh. Less kinky.”
“Yeah, it’s not a clean bite.”
“Gross.”
“The ol’ twist-n-tear.”
“Gross gross.”
“Like, that thing where you’ve got a good grip on a gazelle’s leg and you just give it a turn and a YANK and-”
“Gross gross gross. Hey, is that Lenore?”
“Aw fuck it is. Don’t make eye contact.”
“Too late, here she comes. What’s eating HER?”
“Not her, her cubs. And it was new guy.”
“Oh right.”
“God, she will NOT shut up about it though. You’d think she’d never had her offspring killed to stimulate her reproductive readiness before.”
“I know, right? Queen, please.”
Lenore sat down right in front of them.
“All my cubs are dead,” she said.
“Yeah, we heard.”
“Yeah, she told me.”
“He just offed ‘em! The little shits had finally stopped nursing!”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yep.”
“And NOW I get to go through that ALL OVER AGAIN. Teething and everything!”
“Sucks.”
“Ayuh.”
At least the sun wasn’t the most tedious part of midday anymore, Lisa guessed.