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“Jenny, my darling: you do not have any interest in the rougher sex, do you?” Jenny’s ears pricked up. If not necessarily an inauspicious start to a conversation, then certainly an unusual one. Certainly it was not one Vastra had ever thought to ask previously, even on the occasions where fate and the course of an investigation had led them to use Jenny’s ‘feminine wiles’ to distract a man, or insinuate her into his confidence. “It is just, if you do, recalculating and updating the star charts will be such a hassle.”
Jenny blinked. Whatever insecurity or latent desire she had thought might have underpinned that question, it was almost certainly wrong. “I’m sorry, love, what?”
Vastra blinked back. “Ah, yes, my apologies. I forget humans don’t keep track of their moieties the same way my people did,” and, at a further confused look from Jenny, launched into a lengthy discussion about being born under a constellation associated with the night or with the day, and about the various castes that men were born into, and how one gendered partner from each moiety made up a relationship. “Women were always soldiers if born under a day-themed constellation, or mothers if born under a constellation of night, for we always needed more of each. Men had different expectations attached to their stars. The Judge meant you were destined for law or criminal justice - straightforward enough; the Watcher put you on the path of art or science.”
Jenny blinked a second time. “That seems like a bloody confusing way to organize your society.”
“Oh, it was really fairly straightforward once you got used to it. And it made sure we had enough of each profession to go around. Really, I was quite fortunate to be born a soldier, to leave my eggs to be fertilized and raised by others. To take my physical comforts with my sisters at arms.” Vastra shrugged. “And really, most humans’ careers and stations in life are set by the circumstances of their birth.”
“But luckily not all,” Jenny countered with an affectionate bump of her shoulder to Vastra’s. “I reckon I like my station pretty well, all things considered. Why do you ask?” Jenny panicked a tiny bit. “You aren’t looking for a man to join us or,” she thought back to the relationship structure Vastra had described, “Lord forbid, two?”
“No, no,” Vastra hastened to assure her. “I am quite contented. You are enough for me, my dear. I expect part of it is that we are rather multi-talented, rather than the specialists my people were expected to be. A little bit of the artist, the scientist, the enforcer of laws, and the diplomat, all wrapped up into one. And part, I expect, is that we are supremely well-suited to one another.”
“That’s a very polite way of saying I keep your feet warm at night,” Jenny teased, and soon they fell to bantering and laughing and kissing, and thought no more of ages past for the night.