Rainbow Snippets is a group for LGBTQ+ authors, bloggers, and readers to gather once a week and share six sentences from a work of fiction–a WIP or a finished work or even a 6-sentence book recommendation (no spoilers please!). Check out all the other awesome snippets by clicking on the picture above.
I’m still posting from Onyx Sun, a science fiction novel that is currently in revision. The revisions are turning out to be more complex than originally expected so the release date is, um, to be determined. (I’ve given up trying to predict one, but I have at least one more round of revisions which I’m hoping to finish this month.)
This snippet comes directly after last week’s in which Ayess was explaining a bit about Araxians and Araxian society.
“I hate the word ‘it’.”
He shrugged. “You do not have any other word.”
“What is your word?”
“Ni. Ni-en for plural and ni-es for the possessive.”
“Thank you. I’ll try to use those instead of he, him, or his.”
“Why did you choose the male pronoun for me?”
Taliya flushed as she laughed at herself. “Because you’re taller than I am.”
Ayess joined in her laughter. “I do not mind if you think of me as male or refer to me as one,” he assured her. “I do not find it offensive. And, after all, I am taller than you are.”
Novel Notes 
Love this exchange, and the reasoning behind the original pronoun choice. Reminds me of that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation: whoever’s taller leads. ;)
I really really like him.
Sweet!
Absolutely loved it. Spot on. Loved the last line
Aww, nice exchange.
Ha! I guess that’s as good a reason as any. ;-)
Lol, that was cute! :-)
Yeah, that’s actually a good point about how we arbitrarily ascribe gender here, too! (Sorry for late comment.)