Page 8 of Ahelno
Shahar: “What does this phrase ‘A-Hel-No’ mean in your language?”
Shahar was suggesting ‘Mate’ meant something different in Earth language. I started to tremble. I had a very bad feeling about this.
Andrea: “Um, according to some of our old legends, Hell is a place the souls of evil people go when they die. It’s a place of eternal punishment. In the afterlife. Saying ‘Hell No’, or ‘Oh Hell no’, or some variation like that is our way of saying ‘absolutely not.’ As in, I’d rather go to Hell than for this thing to happen, I guess.”
Understanding slowly dawned. She had never said ‘mate.’ She said ‘absolutely not’ in her language and pushed me away. She was trying to flee. She did not initiate the mating ritual, she was running away from a large male who pounced on her and mated her without consent. She did not fight me to force me to prove my strength; she was trying to fight off an attacker.
A rapist.
I fell to my knees andkeened.
Andie
Lanicar looked like he wanted to be anywhere but at that table with me. “Andie,” He said softly. “There is a ritual you should know about among the Ptexari. A mating ritual.”
Again, hell no, they weren’t going to pass off what happened to me as some sort of effed up mating ritual. Rape is rape. I eyed him warily. He was about to break the fragile trust I had in him, I just knew it.
“Females of our kind initiate the ritual,” he said slowly. “The male then chases the female and must subdue her to prove his strength and dominance. Our males and females are mostly the same in terms of size and strength, so it is expected that the female will fight the male to test his strength. Females seek strong males who will protect their nest and younglings. Well, that used to be the case. We are more civilized now, not living in nests, but the mating instinct and ritual are still the same.
The important thing to understand is that the female is expected to fight the male during the mating act, you see? This is why it is so important that the female is the only one who can initiate the mating ritual. She indicates her desire to mate, and if the male accepts, he will chase her and mate with her. She does this by saying ‘mate’ while touching him on the arm or chest. Then she runs to evoke his predatory instinct.”
“Are you saying I somehow initiated this mating ritual? I mean, yes, I shoved him and ran, but I didn’t tell him I wanted to mate. You can’t just believe that any female who runs away from you wants to have sex with you. That’s messed up,” I huffed.
“True, which is why she calls him ‘mate’ first,” he looked me square in the eye and paused.
“Well, I didn’t….oh shit. That’s why the investigator asked me to explain Hell, isn’t it? ‘Hell ‘or ‘Hell no’ means ‘mate’?”
Lanicar nodded. “Its AHHH-HELLLL-NOOOO,” he said super slowly, so the syllables wouldn’t be translated by the tablet.
I felt like my whole being locked up, my brain frozen and unable to digest what I was being told. My rape was reduced to a simple cultural misunderstanding to these people. An unfortunate translation error.
“I don’t understand,” I said, but that was a lie. I did understand. I just couldn’t accept it.
Lanicar sat quietly with me, allowing me time to come to terms with what he told me. A sinking weight settled deep in my belly, dragging me into a bleak, mental and physical abyss. I couldn’t take this in right now. Turning my face back to the wall, I whispered, “I’d like to be alone now.”
From somewhere down the hall, I heard a desolate cry - a long, wailing dirge of grief and utter despair. This was a hospital, so I assumed someone must have died. Lanicar quietly left the room, and I sat in my tears, listening to a mourner’s lament. It was soul-deep, reverberating through my bones. It matched my bitter mood perfectly. Mourning a loss of innocence, trust, family and friends gone. I curled myself into a ball and welcomed the sad song of loneliness from that other mourner into my soul.
Dakleth
On my knees, I mourned the loss of my mate.
She had never truly been mine, yet the grief tore through me all the same. Worse still was the crushing shame of what I had done to her. Yes, she had called me ‘mate’, and I was so lost inthe haze that I had accepted her word without question. She was an alien female from a species I had never seen, emerging from a wrecked ship into an unfamiliar world. And I had allowed instinct to overwhelm my common sense. As a result, my mate had been violated in the worst way.
By me.
“I will not fight the charges,” I said to the investigators. “Tell my father I plead guilty on all counts, and will accept the sentence he decrees.” I closed my eyes in resignation and awaited my fate.
CHAPTER 7
Andie
I was an empty shell. I felt numb. Lanicar brought some kind of food in a bowl, but I had no appetite and returned to staring blankly at the wall. I had no desire to talk to him or anyone else on this stupid planet. He took a sharp needle and inserted something behind my ear, explaining it was a translator so I wouldn’t need to carry around a tablet to understand people. He tried to show me a few commands to turn it on and off, and switch languages, but my brain felt too full to even acknowledge his presence at that point.
Part of me knew I wasn’t being fair. Since arriving on this planet, Lanicar was the only person who had shown me any real kindness. I was too overwhelmed to care about fairness right now. I just wanted to be alone. I was cold, and the trembling wouldn’t stop, no matter how tightly I wrapped my arms around myself.
The investigators returned to the room. “The prince has pled guilty,” Shahar informed me. “The King reviewed the testimony and requires your presence in the throne room for the sentencing.”
I made no effort to move. My limbs felt heavy. A blanket weighed on my brain. At this point, I couldn’t form a coherentthought, much less meet anyone new. I just wanted to burrow into my parents’ bed and hug my mom. I had never missed her so much.
