It was the one good thing about them, or so it was said.
They weren’t fast. They weren’t strong. They were hairless and not much smarter than everyone else. And so breeding fodder to keep every single other species of the Seven Piece Nation from devolving was all they were good for.
So when it came to humans, the question of whether they were found attractive didn’t even enter the picture. And the less said about whether humans found others attractive, the better.
Not that it mattered to Michael; He wasn’t raised with humans after all.
“So it’s that a yes?” Michael pushed.
“Oh fuck you,” Justine replied.
In the end, the conversation kept going until they each had to part for their homes.
“Mom?” Michael called out as he came inside his house. It was a three-story building that had been built for a large family of large people in mind.
But so far as Michael could remember, it had only been him and his Ma.
And sometimes Aunt Laz. Or rather, a lot of times Aunt Laz. She made the place feel lively.
He passed through large portraits in the walls full of people he was never going to know and had taught himself to ignore.
“Mom?” he called again, putting his bag in one of the sofas of the living room, and walking towards the kitchen. So far, nobody had answered, but that wasn’t really indicative of anything.
Sometimes his mother was coming late for work.
“Honey?” his mother sleepily called out as her room from the second floor opened and she came out. And some other times were like this, with his mother taking a nap right after coming from work.
“Do you want me to cook, Mom?” Michael asked as he went directly to the fridge.
“Oh, thanks love,” his mother’s husky voice called out and Michael paused as just her voice made him tingle, “But I gotta be back at…what time is it?”
“Five after three?” The young human asked and he heard his mother shut her door.
One minute after, she was running down the stairs.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she was grumbling as she was putting her work shirt on. She was juggling a briefcase with one free hand as she also simultaneously tried to smooth her skirt down.
She also inadvertently made her adopted son turn away from her.
At eight feet in height, Yasmine Yokebreaker was an impressive example of both a minotaur and a member of her gender. Of average height for a minotaur, she had long flowing hair that draped her horns and shoulders like a silky cascade of brown.
She had a brief beautiful snout that framed her deep blue eyes. She had a slender neck that widened into slender shoulders that somehow managed to hold on to two humongous mammaries the size of her own head.
Her stomach was thin, but her hips and ass were humongous. At least enough to suffocate Michael if she ever sat on him. Her thighs were meaty, her feet had absolutely fabulous hooves, and the almost white-brown fur that went through most of her skin was smooth.
And in that moment of struggle, Michael managed to get peaks of it all.
“Oh Fuck,” she muttered again as she managed to push her shirt past her tits and managed to push her skirt down to her knees, “Oh shit, why didn’t the timer work?”
“You have to go back to work?” Michael frowned.
“I-yes, momma has to go back to work love,” Yasmine huffed, calming down, “But don’t worry, this might be the last time I do so. I am so close to being done.”
“If you say so ma,” Michael replied as he opened the refrigerator to see what to make for himself.
“Oh, wait, where is the vial?” Yasmine gasped as she opened her briefcase and searched for it, “I can’t return to work without it!”
Peering at the refrigerator, Michael noticed that there was a small bottle that looked a lot like one of the unmarked fruit preservatives they had.
“You mean this one?” Michael brandished the one that he least recognized. And, since he was thinking about it, he also pulled out the jam; if he was going to be eating by himself he might as well make it easy.
“Yes, that!” Yasmine happily walked to her son.
“Oh you are life saver hon,” the Cow bent down to place a kiss on Michael’s brow.
“What was that doing in the fridge anyway?” Michael asked as he flushed.
“A colleague took a sample by accident,” Yasmine confessed, “And asked me to take it since I was going back to work.”
“Oh, is it dangerous?” Michael looked at the sample.
“No-yes-maybe?” Yasmine struggled to say, “It’s for aurochization, but this is just one of the formulas we are working on.”
“Wait, you are working on aurochization?” Michael asked and his mother immediately cringed as she realized what she had said.
“Never you mind that hon,” she replied as she put the vial down on the table and spread her hands, “Now come give me a hug.”
Putting the jam down, Michael did as his mother bid and hugged her neck tightly.
“Oh baby I love you,” Yasmine said as they both enjoyed each other’s comfort.
“I am eighteen, Mom,” Michael reminded her, but there was no heat behind it.
“You’ll always be a baby to me,” she replied and let him go.
“Now don’t stay up late, got it?” she told him as she picked up a vial and put it in her briefcase.
“Yeah, yeah,” Michael replied as he opened his jam and took crackers out.
Aurochization, huh?
It was what had taken his mother’s family away. And what had given her to him.
When the deviation index of someone from the greater species got too high, they underwent an atavistic devolution that affected everyone in a different way. Some people started to suffer organ failure as their bodies changed into forms that it could no longer sustain.
Some “merely” went insane.
There were many theories about why this was, but most of them had to do with the interdimensional physics of the world they lived in. Connected as it was to other times in space for brief stretches, it had gathered the best most valuable species able to survive it. It was they who had studied the storms that broke time and space, and who had painstakingly developed the biomes that even now were expanding under the strange rays and lights of a mind-breaking storm.
But in mastering the world, the great species had lost themselves.
Aurochs were the ancient form of monsters that the body of Minotaurs wanted to turn into when their deviation index was too high. And although every single species devolved into something else, the change in Minotaurs was so violent and sudden, that the name in reference to them stuck; Aurochization.
Thus far, the only way to keep it from affecting an individual was to start with their parents. Or more to the point, one of their ancestors. Fresh blood that did not suffer from this malady lowered the index, and it was enough that someone spread this genealogy every now and then to keep a community healthy.
It was why humans were valuable. It was perhaps the only thing that gave humans value.
They were not affected by it. Supposedly, because they were already as devolved as they were going to get. Or so the jokes went.
Simply breeding different species into the other had been tried in the past. And while that did lower the index somewhat, it also put a time bomb on the community that did it, as their deviation index became harder and harder to stabilize afterward.
And what came from different greater races combining their blood? Monsters.
Their bodies did not fail as they changed into different competing forms, and their minds slowly gave way to different instincts. These things, these creatures, were called Chimeras and they made each of the species develop a distaste for each other, if only for practical reasons.
Which put humanity in an awkward position, because they weren’t exempt from this distaste.
But all of that was irrelevant to Michael.
Because as human as he was, he was the son of the minotauress Yasmine Yokebreaker, senior researcher at the Sundane Institute.
At thirty-eight years old, she had worked there long enough to develop both social and political capital to make his situation…relatively comfortable.
But for some time now, Michael’s aim had not been to just be comfortable. To just be content.
Rather…he wanted his mother.
He was fine with marrying, being the concubine of, or studding for any one of the other species. He found just about everyone irresistible. Everyone except, ironically, other humans.
But if he could, if it was his choice? He would pick his mom.
It was his quiet shame, the thing that he hid deep inside his heart. And it hurt because he loved her in so many other ways besides that. And yet he knew that he could never be with her.
Because that was not his purpose.
He was there to make a good go of replacing the family his mother had lost to the whims of a high deviation index.
And he was supposed to be content with that.
Sighing, he spread his crackers out and opened his bottle of jam.
He wrinkled his nose at the somewhat off smell that it gave, so he scooped up a little bit of it and put it in his mouth.
…it was slightly citrusy, but it tasted like nothing.
“Oh geez, Mom,” Michael grumbled to himself, “Stop buying the diet jam.”
But all the same, he put some in one of his crackers as he thought about maybe just eating some cereal instead.
Decision made, he put the vial back in the refrigerator.
Not knowing that his mother had taken the wrong vial to work.
Michael did not sleep well that night.
He stirred and tumbled as he felt himself come down with a heavy fever. He felt hot and yet shivered as if he was going to freeze over.
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