Star-Crossed Puppy Love

When I was a child, I developed a crush for one of my classmates. It began when I was still very young, no more than six or seven years old. It first manifested as revulsion - there was something terrifyingly different about her that both titillated and disgusted my infantile sense of judgment. Beneath that surface layer I had an inexhaustible fascination with her. I wanted to watch her and I feared to be seen by her. I would stare furtively at her whenever I thought that I could avoid detection.

She was far more precocious than me, and infinitely more intelligent. She joked with our classmates easily, teasing just enough to stir camaraderie but pulling back gently before giving offense. I dreaded being called upon before the class, forced by the instructor to stammer out my ignorance for the snickering amusement of my classmates. Always conscious of my inferior capabilities and my strange appearance, I spoke rarely and without confidence. She, on the other hand, was wholly without inhibition. She would volunteer to answer any and every question. Never once did she respond incorrectly. 

She was perceptive and wise beyond my years. The longer I knew her, the more keenly I felt a strange covetousness - the desire to have her, but also a strange jealousy to be her. She must have recognized my awkward fascination with her, though I cannot recall her ever mentioning it directly. She never complained to the teacher that I was staring at her, though more than one instructor admonished me to stop misdirecting my focus. She never attempted to engage me with the playful banter that she served to the other, more confident, pupils. Perhaps, in her seemingly bottomless sympathy for others, she realized that nothing terrified me more than the prospect of being asked to explain or defend my churning mess of emotions for her. 

She clearly recognized my esteem for her, and eventually she began to exploit it. She would assign me small tasks that I could do for her, allowing me to be near her without the humiliation of speaking aloud. I would be sent to retrieve small articles from across the room and then to hold them patiently until she was ready to take them from me. 

As we grew older, this servile relationship expanded and formalized. She would often invite me to follow her, silently and helpfully, as she would glide across the play yard, mingling with her friends. By the time I was eleven, I even had the honor of personally escorting her home each day after classes. With her effects in one bag and my own in another, I would sit besider her on the gravtrain while she breezily chatted wtih more popular students sitting in the facing seats opposite.

Sometimes, the other students would tease her for her relationship to me. Perhaps they believed me too fragile, but such teasing was never directed at me. Instead, it would be directed at her, but about me - calling me her pet and complimenting her on the skill with which she had trained me to serve her bidding. I would blush deep red at the comments made in my presence, finding it both embarrassing and exhilarating to be dehumanized so gently but so publicly. Her replies were always effortless in their nonchalance and precision. She would note her appreciation for my attentions without ever expressing a direct compliment, and then she would redirect the banter to some other topic.

My feelings for her began to mature at the same time as my body did, growing more tumultuous and incorporating a new desire to embrace her - both physically, but also intellectually, spiritually. Suddenly, I wanted to speak with her, and to be heard by her. I wanted to profess the strange affections that had buffeted me for so long.

I picked my moment with care, asking on her thirteenth birthdate if I might walk her from the train to the front door of her family quarters. If she was surprised at the boldness of my unprecedented request for extra access, she gave no sign of it. "Of course you may escort me to my door," she said, as if it was the most obvious idea in the world. My heart pounded in my chest with nervous excitement as I ran last-minute rehearsals of my confession through my head.

My thoughts were frozen solid during the actual walk to her door. I could think of nothing to say, and would have been unable to force anything past the lump in my throat anyways. Before I knew it, we were standing before her door. "I'll need you to return my satchel before I can go inside," she said. Her words shattered the block of ice that had been freezing my thoughts.

"I love you more than anyone in the whole world!" 

I blurted it out, before turning beet red and then extending my arm to offer return of her satchel, my eyes pointed at the floor.

I felt the soft leathery caress of her ventricular pseudopod against my cheek, then lifting my chin. Her axial eyestalk bent down gently from atop her head, meeting my eyes in direct contact for the first time since I'd known her. I stared deeply into the swirling yellow clouds of her gaze. 

"Of course you do," she said. "And on another world, perhaps, you would have made a fine pet. But I need to be with someone who can be my physical and intellectual equal. You will need to find another human to be with in your rutting seasons." With that, she took her bag and crossed her threshold. "You will always hold a spot in my affections, though! You are the dearest human I have ever met, and that makes you beautiful to me!"

The door swished shut, leaving me alone in my dumbstruck silence.