Outpost: Bisexual Version

He entertained himself for a while, playing a game with the alien, getting him to repeat words like suit or stone or fur. He wasn't sure if the alien was memorizing the terms or simply humoring him. After a while, the alien tired of play and rose to his feet, beckoning for Schaffer to follow him.

They ended up at the massive double door of the hall, a huge mass of solid wood that was secured with a long wooden beam resting in grooves. The alien removed it, hefting the huge log easily in his strong arms, and placed it upright against an adjacent support beam. The entrance was at a ninety-degree angle relative to the large room, perhaps so that wind or snow would not blow inside and put out the fires or lower the ambient temperature. Zagza pushed them open, and Schaffer was immediately assaulted by a wall of freezing air, penetrating his unheated suit like icy fingers. He crossed his arms over his chest, beginning to shiver almost immediately. Zagza watched him with concern for a moment, then closed the doors, replacing the log barricade.

The alien must want to know if he could survive outside, and now he had his answer. He left Schaffer standing there and walked over to where a small group of the aliens were sitting around a fire, gorging on hunks of the dried meat and apparently chatting. He spoke to a couple of them for a minute, two females, then they rose and returned with Zagza to where Schaffer was waiting.

The alien gestured to Schaffer with his clawed hand, and the two females examined him pensively. He couldn't even make out individual words in their language, besides his own mispronounced name, Shoofa. He noticed that the females were wearing jewelry made of what looked like ivory or maybe animal teeth. They had ornate necklaces decorated with beads and shells, strung together with wire or perhaps woven strands of hair. One of the women wore a copper bracelet, detailed with finely carved patterns. Their clothing was sparse, he assumed that the furry creatures did not require much more insulation than their coats naturally afforded them. Although they appeared to have some concept of modesty, the revealing garments seemed designed more to titillate than to protect. They wore flowing skirts or loincloths to cover their lower bodies, strings of beads, feathers and bone fragments dangling from their belts to draw attention to their hips and thighs. Their necklaces rested over their cleavage, drawing his eyes to their copious busts and making him feel rather uncomfortable. They were so like humans, and yet so different, it confused him.

They seemed to be sizing him up, and after a moment his suspicion was confirmed as they began to pluck at his suit, testing its texture and flexibility.

"Hey! What gives?" Schaffer protested, trying to dodge as their sharp claws threatened to rip his clothes.

"Shoofa," Zagza said, trying to get his attention. His tone was reassuring as he gestured for the man to calm down. Never mind calm down, they were going to rip his suit to pieces. Schaffer started to back up, batting away the probing hands, then he was lifted off the ground and restrained by an exasperated Zagza. He hugged the smaller human against his body, arms wrapped around his chest, pinning Schaffer's arms at his sides. He struggled against the furry embrace, the alien's beard tickling the back of his neck.

"Hey! Put me down! Damn it, you fleabag!"

He flailed his legs, kicking at the two women, but he was not strong enough to deter them. They worked out how his environment suit fastened, fumbling with the seals, their fingers too fat to operate them properly. Before long they had opened it, pulling the suit off him and leaving him dangling in Zagza's grip wearing only his underwear. The tall alien placed him back on the floor gingerly as the two women vanished to a corner of the hall with his clothing, examining it and chatting to each other as they turned it over in their hands.

Schaffer glared at Zagza, who looked apologetic. He said something that Schaffer couldn't decipher. Was he disappointed that the human didn't trust him? Either way, they had taken his clothes. Was this an attempt to prevent him from escaping? Zagza put a hand on his back, urging him forward and pointing to where the two women were hunched over a table.

Curious, he walked over to the gloomy corner. He stood on his toes to try and get a look at what they were doing, but he couldn't see past their bulk. Zagza must have noticed that he couldn't see, gripping him from behind and lifting him above his head. He was a good twelve feet off the ground. It was alarming, but the alien's grip was firm and his massive, fluffy hands were warm. Schaffer didn't feel as if he would be dropped.

As he looked down at the table, he saw that the women had needles and threads, they were sewing furs onto the environment suit. There was a pile of them at one end of the wooden table, animal pelts of varying shades of brown and grey, some patterned with spots or stripes. They looked soft and insulating, they were giving him an upgrade. They were breaching the integrity of the suit, likely not understanding that it was designed to be airtight, but it didn't really matter. The battery was dead anyway.

Zagza put him down, leaving him feeling a little ashamed for being so uncooperative after the fact, but how was he supposed to know what they intended to do? He felt cold now, standing on the dirt in his underclothes, and he gestured towards the nearest fire pit.

"Fire," he suggested to Zagza. The alien gave him a thumbs up, following him to the perimeter of the stone circle to sit down as Schaffer warmed himself.

***

Before long, the two females were finished with his clothes. What they returned to him more resembled a mass of mismatched pelts than an environment suit. They had covered the entire thing in a layer of insulating fur. He ran his fingers through it, it was incredibly soft and thick. What alien animal had these pelts come from? He donned the suit as they watched, sealing the clasps and stretching the limbs. They had left the hands and feet mostly exposed, but everything else was covered, even the hood. They had left the faceplate clear, however, very perceptive for aliens who had no concept of what a visor was.

He gave them a thumbs up, and they seemed pleased when Zagza explained the gesture to them.

Now that he was clothed, the alien gestured for him to follow, and they returned to the big door. Again Zagza removed the barricade and pushed the door open, stepping out into the snow, Schaffer following behind him gingerly. The furs did indeed protect him from the wind and insulate him against the cold to a certain extent, but it wasn't comparable to the heated environment suit. He estimated that he couldn't endure it for more than a half hour or so before he would need to seek shelter. He sunk up to his knees, wading through the powder as it stuck to his clothing, trailing after Zagza who waited patiently for him to catch up.

Why were they out here? Did the alien want to show him something? Zagza climbed one of the snow drifts, standing at the summit and looking out over the expanse of ice fields, his fur blowing in the wind. Schaffer struggled after him, stumbling as he marched through the deep snow. The alien became frustrated after a moment and hooked him with his dexterous, powerful tail, lifting him into the air and placing the human gently beside him.

Schaffer shielded his eyes from the sun, peering at the landscape, the dimming effect of his visor non-functional without the battery to power it. He couldn't make out too much through the snowflakes that were blown by the rushing wind, giving the impression that someone had upended a planet-sized bottle of baby powder over the continent. The landscape was subtly different from the one outside the outpost. This one had what looked like bleak, sickly patches of forest dotting the fields of snow like thinning hair, sparse and barely clinging to life. What manner of plant would grow under such harsh conditions? Where would they get their nutrients? That must be where all of the wood had come from. In that case, where was he? How far had the aliens taken him from the outpost? Would they even know the way back?

Zagza descended the drift, expecting the human to follow, and so he stumbled down the slope behind him. The alien seemed perfectly at home in the snow, his long, loping strides carrying him effortlessly over the drifts. Schaffer had to wade through it, making slow progress. He needed snowshoes or something, he wouldn't get far like this.

They eventually made their way to one of the sparse forests. The gnarled trees looked vaguely evergreen, although they didn't have many leaves. The trees seemed dead to Schaffer, but not knowing anything about the species, it was hard to be sure. Zagza scratched at the bark with his claws, was he checking for something?

The alien searched the ground, eventually finding a stick and picking it up, placing it in Schaffer's hands. He gestured to the snow, where Schaffer saw many other such sticks that had fallen from the branches.

Oh, he wasn't showing him some great secret, he just wanted him to collect kindling. Food and board weren't free out here it seemed, he would have to earn his keep. He started to walk around picking up the sticks and broken branches as Zagza supervised him, but after a while, it became apparent that his clumsy movement in the snow and his small size made him a poor worker. He was also losing heat pretty rapidly, beginning to shiver as the cold finally penetrated his furry suit.

Zagza noticed his distress, walking over to meet him and pulling the bundle of sticks from his arms with a single giant hand. He lifted Schaffer with his other arm, cradling him like a child and pressing him into the soft fur of his chest. It was embarrassing, the alien was treating him like some kind of incompetent. He was a grown man, but from the perspective of this massive creature, he must have the stature of one of their young children. Despite his discomfort, he had to concede that Zagza was incredibly warm, his body radiating heat and shielding him from the wind. The alien turned and began to walk back towards the hall. Schaffer's shivering soon abated, and after a while, the building came back into view. This was the first time that he had gotten a good look at it from the outside. It looked almost buried, piled with dirt and a layer of snow that covered the roof. From a distance, it would resemble a natural hill. Only the logs that lined the walls gave it away upon closer inspection, peeking out from beneath the mound.

They entered through the heavy doors, and Zagza deposited Schaffer on the dirt, who quickly shuffled over to the closest fire pit to warm himself. Zagza picked up one of the blocks of gelatin from beside the door, dropping it into the fire. It flared blue, giving off a smell like overcooked meat as the flames licked around it. It must be animal fat, perhaps blubber from one of the beasts that they hunted. God knows anything that lived in these conditions would need the insulation. Schaffer could feel the intense heat coming off it as it burned, he had to scoot back a little.

Zagza wandered off to talk to the two women that he had seen earlier, probably to tell them that the plan had failed, or perhaps that the skinny little monkey couldn't even pick up sticks and should be eaten. A new female trotted over to him, one he had not met before. This one was portly, even compared to the others, with exceptionally wide hips and large breasts that were barely supported by the leather sling that held them aloft. She sat heavily beside him, peering at him as he held his hands up to the flames. What the hell did this one want from him?

She spoke, and he didn't understand, so she pointed to the smoked meat that hung from the rafter with her clawed finger.

"Fud," she attempted to say. Schaffer was amazed, had Zagza been spreading around his extremely limited vocabulary? Was he teaching the other members of the group what he had learned? She gestured again, repeating the word.

"No thanks, I'm good for food," Schaffer replied.

"Fud," she insisted, rising to her feet and reaching up to retrieve a strip of the meat. She shoved it into his hands, the fur of his suit sticking to it. She sat beside him again, watching expectantly.

"I really wish you'd leave me alone," he complained, knowing that they didn't understand him. She just grinned at him, miming that he should eat. He took a reluctant bite, chewing the fat as she gave him a thumbs up. Oh lord, they were all doing it now. She made sure that he ate the whole portion, sitting beside him and nudging him when he slowed. She must think that he was too thin, perhaps sickly, which in a way was true. The aliens were all packed with insulating fat, while Schaffer liked to stay in shape. He was lean and trim, which would do him no favors in this arctic environment. He must appear starved to them.

When he was done, she hooked her clawed hand around his waist and dragged him closer to her, squeezing him up against her pudgy body. He struggled, buried in pliant flesh and downy fur that tickled his nose, but she was adamant. She must be trying to warm him in her own way, and he realized that he might have just been forcefully adopted. After a minute he ceased struggling, she was pushy, and he wasn't strong enough to fight her off.

"Shoofa," she said, tapping his belly with her claw. He watched her curiously as she patted her ample chest, making it wobble. "Osha."

"Your name is Osha?"

Another thumbs up. At least he had a name to go with the face of what was apparently now his overbearing alien mother. He had to admit that it was kind of comfortable, sitting in the embrace of his huge, fluffy creature by the fire. He had warmed up again, and the food had re-energized him.

She released him after a while, leaving to tend to some duty, most likely. He was starting to feel a little guilty that he couldn't help out. He was a super-advanced human that had traveled here across the stars, surely there was some way that he could contribute, he thought to himself as he watched the embers rise from the fire.

He heard a commotion behind him and turned to see a group of aliens entering through the main door. They were wearing those leather bandoleers, and they had long rifles holstered on their backs. It looked like a hunting party. Sure enough, they dragged a huge mass after them, so heavy that it took six of the powerful creatures to shift it. Schaffer stood to get a better look at it as they pulled it to the middle of the hall. Whatever it was, it was huge, at least the size of a hippo. It had grey, patterned fur that was camouflaged like dirty snow, and he realized that it matched some of the pelts that he was wearing. It had six limbs, now limp and trailing behind its rotund body. They ended in wide, splayed hooves, presumably to stop the heavy animal from sinking in the snow. It looked to him like some kind of a giant, mutated elk or moose. Its head was small in comparison to its bloated torso, with odd, insect-like mandibles instead of jaws.

The aliens set upon it immediately, crowding around it with knives and butchering the carcass. They tore it apart in short order, their white fur stained crimson by the animal's blood and viscera. It wasn't quite a frenzy, they were organized and precise, obviously practiced and efficient. But seeing them red in tooth and claw alarmed him all the same. They looked like polar bears eating a beached whale. They broke the huge thing up into parts, letting the excess blood drain into the dirt floor and carrying away what they could lift, like the head and limbs.

One of the hunters took charge of skinning it, preserving the pelt in one chunk and handing it off to one of the females, who hung it over a rack by a firepit to dry out. Others carried away the offal, drenched in dark arterial blood but seemingly cheerful and unperturbed by the grisly scene. Schaffer couldn't believe how rapidly they had disassembled the animal, they must have done this many times before.

When it was mostly broken up, three of the aliens carried what remained of the torso to a table where one began to butcher it, removing the meat from the bones and preparing it for either smoking or storage. A few of them moved over to the cauldrons full of melted snow and began to wash, splashing water on their fur and using their long, textured tongues to clean off the blood like cats.

Schaffer stayed by the fire, happy to keep his distance. All of his food came in vacuum packed portions, or on a metal mess tray, this was a little too...rustic for his tastes.

When the whole pack had performed their role in the preparing of the carcass, they roasted much of the meat over one of the fire pits, one of the aliens staying on hand to turn the spit and to monitor the progress of the cooking. The rest milled around, socializing and relaxing, their chores and duties apparently done for the day. Schaffer had chosen to sit away from the group, he was still somewhat wary of them. But the more that he observed them, the more they seemed to behave like a family to him, rather than a pack of feral beasts. They sat in groups and chatted, groomed each other using their claws as combs, sharing morsels of food. Life here must be deeply communal, they depended on each other to survive the harsh climate.

"Shoofa!" Osha called to him, waving him over. He pretended not to notice, staring intently at the fire. She called him again, and he waved, miming not understanding. The aliens meant well, but they were very grabby and far too large to handle him in the way that they did. Osha rose to her feet, walking over to his fire pit. He was in for it now. Before he could protest, she lifted him one-handed, stowing him under her arm and marched him back over to where her group was sat. Her cohorts were watching the spit rotate, waiting for their dinner with hungry eyes. They were like dogs waiting for scraps to fall from a table. He didn't blame them, it must take an incredible amount of calories for them to maintain their weight, they probably lost most of it to the simple body heat that they had to generate.

She dumped him on the ground and sat down beside him, cushioned by her considerable rump. Before he could rise to his feet and escape, she wrapped him in her arms and pulled him onto her lap. She pressed him into her heavy bust, the fat spilling around his head in an avalanche of furry flesh, the giant female trapping the struggling human in a bear-hug.

"Shoofa," she crooned, her tone soothing as she waited for him to stop wriggling. After a moment, he relaxed, fuming as a couple of the other aliens leaned in to get a closer look at him. There was a male, a runt by their standards at about seven feet but still a giant to Schaffer, and another female that he hadn't met before. They mumbled to each other, perhaps discussing what Schaffer might be. Osha seemed entirely content to keep him trapped in her lap, was she worried that he might be too cold? She was warm and fuzzy, her thighs as soft as memory foam beneath his rear. The fur on her boundless chest pressed against the back of his head, her bosom overflowing over the inadequate leather sling that she used to contain it, its weight pressing down on his shoulders. Her arms were crossed over his chest, her grip on him strong, but not stifling. The slow rise and fall of her chest was rather relaxing.

The one who had been tending to the spit called out something, drawing their attention away, and the whole pack of around sixteen aliens crowded the fire pit. Zagza had first pick, towering a head over most of his pack and selecting a chunky cut of meat, lightly browned by the flames. There seemed to be a pecking order, with each pack member knowing when it was their turn to get up and take their share. For some reason, Schaffer had expected some level of squabbling, but it was quite civilized and orderly.