Hey Mum & Dad!
Guess what: I’ve met this great girl out here on Quaxxis and we’ve decided to get married!
We met a few months ago at one of the embassy’s state functions.
She’s funny, clever, elegant and of high station. She’s so beautiful! She’s tall and slim with green eyes and a lovely athletic figure. I absolutely adore the way her copper pelt and blue snout complement each other.
She’s completely perfect and we love each other to bits!
Her Quaxxian name translates as: “She of the high house of Znarquis who basks openly on the shores of the deep red slime pools of Oorpt while a myriad of suitors vie for her sexual favours.”
I call her ‘Roxy.’ Seems appropriate, somehow.
I know what you are going to say…that whole “men are from Mars and women are from Venus” spiel…that Human males and females have enough trouble relating, let alone Human males and Quaxxian females. Trust me; I definitely don’t expect it all to be plain sailing.
There’s the issue of food, for one. You know how much I love my hamburgers! Glarx-beetles—hunted down and eaten raw—are Roxy’s staple. Glarx-beetles are weird scorpion-lizard things about the size of a guinea-pig. They are beautiful creatures but are also really scary: as vicious as hell and completely deadly to humans. All the best houses have live glarx-beetle runs, so naturally she is planning to have one when we set up our own clan-house. I’ll have to keep on my toes, I guess.
It’s traditional that newly-subjugated husbands are brought back to the family clan-house for a period before the couple sets up their own. I confess to being a little apprehensive about this but Roxy says that I’ll fit right in as a Beta-husband and she’ll defend me if necessary…sounds a bit ominous! She swears that she’s not planning on getting an Alpha-husband.
Then there’s language. Being both a tonal and a chromic language, Quaxxish is completely impossible for a human to master. The first time I plucked up the courage to talk directly to Roxy’s Alpha father, I apparently told him to go mate with himself (I was only trying to wish him “good night”). It’s auto-translator for me all the way from now on :-). Even that’s not 100% perfect; a while back I did an auto-translator software update and we nearly broke up as a consequence. Good job I decided to apply the bugfix when I did…
As for the “physical stuff” (as my colleagues so delicately put it)…well…we’ve definitely got compatible ‘equipment’ and remember: she’s got four arms. And a tail. ‘nuff said?
Roxy is great with kids; boy, girl, queeg, quaag, zork: they all adore her. We’re planning to have one of each…5 children, phew!
There’s apparently an interesting wedding ceremony planned. I obviously can’t go through the full Quaxxian betrothal-battle and Roxy won’t tell me exactly what is ahead of me but she assures me that I will survive…most likely. Gulp!
I’m so sorry that you can’t come to the ceremony: you know it takes 6 months to prepare the healthiest human for a visit to Quaxxis. Given Dad’s heart condition, I’m not sure he’d even survive the acclimatization process. I’ll send you lots of pictures. Promise!
Hope you guys are happy for me. It'll be fun! Roxy and I are just so in love! What could possibly go wrong?
Love you!
Ralph