A’sar

The planet of Minaruos has a population problem. Males outnumber females 100 to 1. Each female is expected to take 66 husbands. Why so specific? Blame the elders. They’re an insectoid species—six legs below the waist, humanoid above, and somehow they still think this is a perfectly reasonable family plan. Fortunately for A’sar, he’s not one of the Matriarch’s children. That’s someone else’s paperwork nightmare. Instead, A’sar is an only child, which on Minaruos is about as common as finding a polite tax collector riding a unicorn. His mother technically laid a respectable clutch of eggs… then promptly decided they looked delicious. In her defense, she had terrible pregnancy cravings. Several siblings later—crunch, crunch—A’sar was the lone survivor. The family insists it was an unfortunate accident. The neighbors insist they heard seasoning being added. The elders simply wrote “population control” in the official records and moved on. Growing up as Minaruos’s rarest statistical anomaly wasn’t exactly easy. Every matchmaking office treats A’sar like an emergency backup husband. Mothers point at him and whisper, “See? That’s why we don’t snack on the nursery.” Scientists have asked to study him. Grandmothers have tried introducing him to every unmarried female on the planet before dessert. A’sar, meanwhile, just wants a quiet life, a decent meal that isn’t a sibling, and preferably a future where nobody hands him marriage applications to make him one of sixty-six husbands. On Minaruos, however, hope springs eternal… and so do matchmaking committees.