by Loki Renard
“You come from the stars?”
“From beyond the stars, and beyond time, too,” he says, his palm moving over my back in a slow caress. I don’t know if he is even aware he is touching me, he seems distracted by his own words as he pets me. “I come from a time after this world existed.” He looks down at me. “Does it seem strange to you, to know that these rocks themselves had an end?”
“All things do,” I say simply.
“Not quite all,” he disagrees. “I do not intend to have an end.”
If what he is saying is true, then he is as a god. He might deny it to me, maybe even to himself, but I am in the arms of a creature which has been spoken about in whispers. There are those of us who have looked to the skies all our lives and made up stories about what might live up there. We never imagined it would be something like this.
“Why did you come down here? Did you come to save me?”
He hesitates, his hand stilling on my spine. “Yes,” he says, finally. “I came to save you. So stop thinking that you are meant for death, because there is much life ahead of you, little human. You must embrace it. You must fight for it. And you must never allow the idiot tribe you arose from to define the limits of your being. Do you understand?”
He is lecturing me now, though I do not know if he means to. He is angry at Trelok for what was done to me, but I think he is also angry at me, for allowing it.
“I am sorry,” I say, burying my face in the hard lines of his body. He is warm to the touch, his skin much thicker and rougher than human skin, but not unpleasant to feel beneath my own naked body. I know the sharp ridges and blades I saw before are still lurking beneath the smooth surfaces and channels of his body, waiting to spring free. I do not want to anger him.
“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “Get some sleep, and in the morning, find your courage.”
He squeezes me tight and resumes the slow rubbing motion of his palm which lulls me toward a deep, rich sleep.
Chapter Three
Vulcan
Tres falls into a very human slumber. She is exhausted. I do not sleep. I sit awake in that human cave of bones and I let the night wash over us both. I half wish that this Trelok would come and attempt to hurt her again, but she would not like to see what I did to him, of that I am sure, and I am also just as sure that it would cause serious damage to human history as a whole.
I lose track of time in the night. The stars spin by outside the cave entrance. I wonder if my brood is watching, what they might be doing to try to rescue me. Strange. I don’t feel the need to be rescued as keenly as I did before. I know I don’t belong here. I’m aware I’m a danger to this world. I am sure the only reason Krave is even trying to get me off the planet is because he’s worried I’ll destroy something important. But right now, with Tres on my lap and the stars burning in the distant sky, I feel an intense sense of belonging which I’ve never experienced before. If I was lost here forever, that might be all right with me.
Dawn slowly breaks. Tres still lays sleeping on my belly. Looking down at her, I feel a surge of warmth. I have never had anything to protect before. My kind are offensive creatures. We attack and destroy. We do not tend and care. But so far, I believe I am doing an adequate job. My tenderness and protective urges catch me by surprise. In my previous life, any sign of weakness was something to be sneered at and destroyed. I do not know what has changed now. Perhaps it is the fact that, sickening as I may find it, I too am weak right now, vulnerable on this planet. I may be far stronger and more dangerous than humans, but I am still a scythkin alone, and that will not do. We move and fight with the brood. A single scythkin is a pathetic creature. Not quite as pathetic as a single human, but still, fairly useless.
Tres stirs and I slide her gently down onto the ground. I want to go outside and look around, relieve myself, take stock of my position.
Stepping out of the cave, I feel fresh Earth air wrap around me, reaching my lungs with a crisp coolness which invigorates. I am beginning to understand why this planet and these people always held such significance to our kind. Scythkin have visited Earth from time to time through its history. Nobody got up in arms about that, because they blended naturally into the way of things, and it was the first timeline. You cannot break what has not yet happened. But this, according to Krave, is a kind of cosmic do-over. I am an anomaly in this world, a foreign object in a second timeline which may override the first and change everything forever. It is impossible to say what the true consequences of that will be, because time warps like this one are so rare as to essentially never happen at all.
If I were to meet scythkin visitors, I might be able to get them to take me off planet, along with Tres - if they didn’t kill me on sight. Our clutches are often hostile to one another.
Stretching my arms, I feel the golden glow of the sun begin to blaze across the planet’s surface, bringing light to the world below. I look down at this pristine place, and I see….
“FUCK.”
The old human curse escapes my lips in a growl.
In among the rolling valleys, between the trees, down by the river where Trelok’s tribe of captive women work fields of grasses, I see a pattern bent into the stalks, a large shape made up of several interlocking circles and lines. They do not echo any human pattern, because they are not human. It is a symbol is written in the Galactor universal script.
When I found myself on this planet after the timesplosion, I assumed I was the only one to be sucked down into this world. Those markings tell me I was wrong. What I am looking at is an SOS of sorts, an attempt by the Galactor aliens to call for help.
“Idiots,” I growl under my breath.
Galactor has never had any reverence or care for humanity. I know they will tear this planet apart to try to get back home. That massive sign is several hundred feet wide. If that does not work - and I imagine it will not work, because there is every chance they are too stupid to realize that they have been trapped in time as well as space, then they will resort to evermore desperate attempts to free themselves.
I’m going to have to remove the symbol. Hopefully none of the humans have seen it yet. It’s unlikely that they would recognize it as anything other than a trampled field. They certainly won’t after I set it on fire and destroy all evidence of it ever having existed. But… I stop myself before I stride down to do just that. What will become of the people who rely on those crops for food? They are Trelok’s people, and they deserve to starve, but I cannot be the one who brings that about.
I curse under my breath, loathing how complicated this situation has just become. It was already a mess, but now, with Galactor minions skulking around the planet, the stakes are even higher. I cannot allow them to make a mess of this pristine planet, pollute the time line, and potentially make it impossible for me to be rescued.
I cannot kill any humans, but I can kill them. I have to kill them. That is a little silver lining to an otherwise difficult situation. Once again, I have prey to hunt. I am thrilled at the prospect. But… I also have the human to protect. She cannot be returned to her tribe. They would likely kill her on sight, and then I would have to kill them, which I am already very tempted to do. If not for the order not to disturb the timeline, the chief of that village would be wearing his guts as a necklace. However, he seems to be an prolific breeder, and there is every chance that his genetics have an important role to play later in Earth’s history. So I must leave him the use of his testicles, even if he deserves to have them removed violently and pushed back down his screaming throat.
With thoughts of Tres on my mind, I return to the cave. There, I find that she has woken. She’s sitting up, looking alert. She is strong, this little human, even if her flesh makes her weak. But what do I do with her now? I have an impulse to keep her with me, but like the desire to kill Trelok, that may not be one I can give into. Certainly not in the long term. She needs to be with other humans. There is that tribe on the other side of the mountain. She may be able to make
a home there. She might be able to find her father there, find some joy in her life.
“What am I going to do with you?” It’s a rhetorical question, asked more to myself than to her.
“Keep me,” she says. “You saved me from death, and so I am yours. I have no life but you.”
Her words are so impossibly sweet, and delivered with soft earnest tones which once again threaten to unmake me on the inside. I cannot keep her. Krave would never allow it. He would never remove her from the planet, not without some serious leverage. But I also cannot bring myself to tell her that.
She thinks I am her savior. She thinks I am some kind of dark god, a daemon who has saved her from vicious humanity. I cannot tell her the truth of my origin. I cannot get to know her any more than I already have. I have to keep my distance from her until I deliver her to some friendly humans who will treat her properly.
Tres
I cannot read his expression. I wonder if he wants to be rid of me. He saved me, but I am a pathetic little creature compared to his powerful being. Trelok did not have any use for me. How could Vulcan?
“I understand if you want me to go. I will go. I was made for the other side of the world, for the volcano and the ancestors, and…”
“I want to keep you,” he says. “But time is the master of us all, and I do not belong here, in this time.”
I don’t understand. “What is time?”
“What…” he begins to repeat the question then falls silent. “It’s the distance between one sunrise and the next. Many, many thousands of those have passed between this moment and the one I am from.”
“That does not make sense. Does it matter what the sunrises do if we are together?”
He makes a rough sound, as if I have somehow hurt him.
“You are an incredible little thing,” he rumbles. “Think of time like a place, but strung out very long and very thin, a line we must all walk along, a line which has gotten tangled up on itself and now threatens to choke the life that lives on it out of existence if it is not smoothed out.”
“You cannot change the coming up and the going down of the sun,” I say. I do not think I will ever fully understand what Vulcan means when he speaks. His head is full of things which are beyond me.
“Perhaps not, but I can try to fix what I broke. We need to move, Tres. There are enemies close by, and I do not want any harm coming to you before I kill them.”
“What enemies?”
“Other… other beings from the tangled time, the space beyond the stars.” I can see how much effort it takes for him to try to explain these things in a way I can understand. I feel so dull and foolish compared to his intelligence which burns even brighter than his gaze. “I was not the only thing to come here, but I will be the last to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he says, reaching for me and slinging me up into his arms with an easy motion which makes my stomach quiver. “I was at war when this happened. I was fighting the warriors of another tribe, and I was winning, but something must have happened and now we are all stranded down here. I will finish the battle before they do damage to this world and this time.”
“You are so brave,” I say, my hands wrapping around his horns for grip as he boosts me up onto his shoulders and carries me aloft out of the cave and down over the ashen mountain.
He makes a powerful mount. My weight is no physical burden for him, but he says so little to me I don’t know if I am being rescued or abducted. I don’t know if it matters. Being sacrificed was painful and frightening, but it also meant that my struggles were over. I was waiting to die, ready to let myself pass. There was no fight left in me. A life of being the other primed me to accept death without question.
Now I feel as though my life might have some meaning outside being a sacrifice. There might be a future for me, one Vulcan claimed for me. Maybe fate is not the deciding force in a human life. Maybe we can fight it, and carve our own channels of destiny. I am excited by the thought as much as I am scared by it.
“There is another tribe down here,” I tell him. “They are much larger, and much scarier. They are warriors. Trelok is afraid of them. He appeases the mountain so it will keep them from him and his hidden river. It’s the tribe where my father comes from.”
“Do you want to try to find your father?”
I stiffen at the suggestion. I thought of it a few times when I was younger but I was too afraid to travel so far.
I was also angry. I saw how Trelok guarded his women, and I knew that my father must not have guarded my mother. If he still lives, he is worse than Trelok, to my mind. He abandoned me, and he let my mother die. For that reason, I will never forgive even the concept of my father.
If Vulcan notices that I didn’t answer the question, he doesn’t comment on it. His hands tighten on my shins as he descends carefully toward the world which exists on the other side of Hyrrm. I have always known the world to be river and mountain, but there is a great deal beyond both which I am seeing for the first time. Plains stretch on forever, the world rolling itself out for the both of us, wild and open, going on as far as I can see, and I suspect, into a great beyond.
Vulcan
The little human clings to me with such easy, perfect trust. Her earlier request was a difficult one, one I avoided answering completely. I want to keep her. I never want to be separated from her, but it is clear that staying on this planet is not an option for me, and removing her from it is not one either. I have already failed my clutch, and put the whole of humanity at risk by being sucked down onto this planet. If I pursue selfish desire again, it could be disastrous for everyone, including her.
“There’s another cave here,” she points out happily as we descend. “If there aren’t any bears in it, it might be a good vantage point to camp in.”
She has a natural knack for survival. I suppose all humans do, but I am surprised at how quickly it has come to her when mere hours ago she was willing to sacrifice herself for her village, to die for those who hated her and surrender herself to ancestors who could not possibly care one way or another. I do not know what happens to humans when they die, but I do know that innocent, sweet girls like Tres cannot pay the price for the sins of those they leave behind.
One day the bastard Trelok will be an ancestor, along with so many other bastards who do not deserve light or life, yet have it. And one day, some small part of them may eventually do some good. This is no way to run a reality, but that is not up to me. As powerful as I am, I do not control all of existence.
“This is a good cave,” I say as we dip into it. I set her down, marveling at her lightness and yet strength. It barely feels as though I have put anything down at all. “Good spotting.”
“Thanks,” she smiles. “I am used to finding places to hide.”
“That is an excellent talent for any prey animal to cultivate.”
Her eyes cloud. “I am not a prey animal.”
“No,” I say. “I suppose you are not.”
She’s right. She may not have sharp fangs, a dorsal ridge, or even the most rudimentary claws, but her eyes are set in the front of her head and she has the temperament of a human, which is dangerous in spite of its weakness.
“I’m not weak,” she says. “It takes strength to be born to die.”
“I know you’re not weak.”
She nods curtly, her small strength so obvious to me, and yet so strange to behold. It is easy to think of humans as weak. They look it. They sound it. They even act it, most of the time. The subtle stubbornness of this species is easy to miss if one is only looking for raw power and absolute might. I am still not certain that Tres has chosen to survive. For the moment, she depends on me to will her into existence with every passing breath. It is not her fault. Her entire life she was told she only had one purpose, and now she finds herself in a realm of ultimate confusion, with a monster for an ally who cannot be relied upon to stay by her side.
I know I do not belong here. But I
also know that Tres is the only creature for which I have ever felt anything resembling love. I am utterly devoted to her, though it breaks every rule I am familiar with, and many I am sure I am not. Our first meeting was so passionate, so wild. I want to take her fully, but I know the consequences of mating with a human. We will be irrevocably bonded if I mate with her. We will become one within the other. I saw it happen to Krave with his human mate. I watched with horror when I realized that he had transferred his loyalty from the brood to the girl who claimed his heart.
Tres already consumes my thoughts. I do not know if I could ever leave if we were to mate. The idea of leaving her to her own devices on this cruel world where humanity is only beginning to discover the concept of humanity, where many thousands of years of unspeakable cruelty is about to unfold, makes me sick. But Krave will not take a human from ancient Earth. So, I am beginning to realize, I may have to choose to be marooned here until the end of her natural life, protecting her from the monsters who call themselves men.
“I want you to stay here, in this cave,” I say to her. “I need to observe this tribe. See what kind of people they are.”
“Why?” She narrows her eyes in rightful suspicion.
I do not know if I will be given the choice to stay. My coming here was not of my doing. My leaving is not likely to be of my doing either. The presence of other aliens on this planet is of serious concern, as is the possibility that war is still raging in the future, potentially affecting life on this ancient world. There are too many variables to account for, but I know I do not know enough.
“Because we don’t know anything about them, and we need to know who our allies, or enemies are.”
Tres presses her lips together. “Trelok said that other people aren’t to be trusted.”