Radiant

by Naomi Lucas

  She looked up sharply when the edges of two wings caressed the sides of her body.

  A man stood slowly, his hands outstretched to his sides. She remembered him, and the strange way he said her name, but she barely recognized him.

  He looked far different in the morning light.

  She doubled over, chest tight, trying to find a breath that wasn’t there. She was picked up before she had a chance to fall in on herself as though she were nothing more than a disgusting vibrant orange puddle on the ground.

  The ground. Stay grounded, stay grounded, stay grounded.

  Large, warm hands clasped her back as she was pulled hard into a chest that felt too good to be true.

  Her body thrummed, her pulse raced, sweat was on the verge of pouring out of every pore, and yet as this strange alien’s embrace tightened, her panic ebbed.

  He caught her up in his arms, holding her into him, throwing her off-kilter when her body responded with something other than panic. It responded with heat.

  “Are you unwell?”

  She understood his words and whimpered. His piercings rubbed her chest as he situated her, the tease turning her whimpers into mews. Yahiro shakily pressed her hands against his chest and pushed some space between them.

  Her mind raced, her body twitching, erratic, heart-pounding, breaths thin, but her thoughts were straight, although not continuous.

  Has he poisoned me? Mind control powers? I don’t know anything about him or his species... Does he have a people? She pushed herself further away, his hold on her receptive, but he didn’t let her go.

  Yahiro pressed her hand against her lips and screamed in frustration and continued to do so until her throat ached and she came down from the cliff of her panic attack.

  When it was finally over, she looked up to Quist watching her with twisted, horrified features.

  “Yahero!?”

  She swallowed and wiped some of the sweat from her brow. “I’m okay now.” She felt like she needed to explain herself to this alien. She sniffled and pressed her forehead to his torso. I would want an explanation. Hell, I’d have run if he had an attack like mine.

  “What is wrong? The noises you made were...” He stopped and lifted his eyes to the skies as if he were trying to find the right word. “They were like the distant echoes in a cave, ones that get closer with each blink.”

  “So,” she sniffled again, watching him. “Not good?”

  “Scary.”

  She smiled in spite of it all. He didn’t look like a being that scared easily. The slight sway of his feathers caressed her.

  “Am I scary?” she asked.

  His golden eyes shot back to her. “Scary? No.” His accent reminded her of waves crashing against rocks, hoarse and airy, and so... inhuman. “Description eludes me.”

  “Escapes me too,” she grumbled and he cocked his head, his eyes questioning. She repeated the words in his language, “Eludes me too.” His lips are so close. They were a light bronze, pouty, and wide. Wider than any human lips but not obscene. They were sexy. They make his smiles devilish.

  Her hands, still on his chest, pushed some more. If she didn’t get away from him soon, her faked insanity wouldn’t be so fake anymore.

  Yahiro peeled his fingers off her skin, and Quist, unmoving, let her with a curious glint in his eyes. Until her belly rumbled loudly, and he let her feet touch the ground.

  She grimaced as her torn up foot mated the dirt with its wound.

  “Oww! Goddamn it,” she hissed and using his arm as support, lifted her sole up to look at what she didn’t want to see. It was mud encrusted, inflamed, brown with dried blood, and thickened with swelling. Quist whistled above her as she lowered herself back to the ground to inspect the gash further.

  “You’re hurt,” he groused, taking her limb from her hands and bringing it to his nose.

  “Ech, don’t!” She cursed herself and repeated it in his language. “From last night,” she gasped out. His fingers swiped across her raw instep. He smelled her foot deeply before she could jerk out of his grip and stop him. The damage was done and she was mortified.

  “Did I do this to you?”

  “N-no,” she stuttered, still trying to tug her foot back. “I cut myself on the stone.” Her eyes widened.

  The stone! She looked around frantically, forgetting her foot. “Where’s the stone?” It was nowhere to be seen. Her body squirmed until he let her go, and she moved away, searching on hands and knees. “Where is it? I can’t lose my light! I need it to see.”

  “It disappeared.”

  Her eyes snapped back to him. “Did you take it?”

  “No. It faded as the sun rose.”

  “That’s not possible. Stones don’t fade.” Yahiro turned back to scour the ground within her vicinity. “I had it in my hand, right here! It has to be here somewhere.” She tried to convince herself but she only saw strange plants, moss, and dirt.

  She was lifted off the ground and into the air, her hands still reaching out to search.

  “No! Put me down!” The need to have her talisman back was almost too much, and she felt her panic swiftly returning. She fought Quist until the ground got smaller and smaller and the spot became hidden by the tops of strangled trees that were covered in veils of lime-green moss. The air whooshed out of her throat. “Quist!” She screeched, “Don’t drop me!”

  “Never.”

  Her fear stopped her from moving. Her heart broke as the spot where she had been looking faded into the distance. The hands holding her tightened. She never got the memo to Not Look Down, seeing as she was already doing so after being lifted into the air.

  “I’m scared,” she whispered to the wind.

  “Look at me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Look at me!”

  Yahiro clenched her eyelids shut and gulped down a deep, chilly breath. The sound of wings hammering through the air, slicing the wind in half as if in battle did little to soothe her.

  I wish I never woke up this morning. Damn. She wished she had never woken up after the ship crash. If wishes were possible truths, she wished she had never woken up the day after William and his Snake destroyed her soul.

  “Look at me.” The lilting words repeated far off, beyond the walls of her memories.

  “Baby-doll, why hide in the dark?” he laughed, excitedly. It made her nauseous; it made her alert. Any moment he would switch on his flashlight and burn it into her eyes.

  She cowered like the scum she had become. She deserved this. She had gone too deep. And when one went too far, there was no turning back. What had been another undercover job had become her entire life. A clammy hand shot out and took ahold of her hair.

  It dragged her across the shit-stained cell, abrading her naked skin. Yahiro yelped and cried. Every day she thought she couldn’t be brought lower, and every day was a rude awakening.

  “Yelp, piggy, yelp! I’ll give you the pigpen for another yelp!” Light flooded behind her eyelids, but she squeezed them shut. The hand in her hair pulled, yanking her head up painfully. “Open your eyes, piggy. Today you’re broken.”

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. She didn’t dare refuse Snake. Her puffy lids opened and the light shot daggers into her eyes. It had only been a day since she last saw it, but spending twenty-two plus hours in the pitch still made it painful. Her hair was pulled. Snake waited, patiently, for her sight to return. He gave her time. He played with her head. Yesterday had been quicker. A month ago had left her sobbing. Three months ago, they had shared a pleasant conversation as he commended her on her witty mind.

  Yahiro always got to name the new drugs. The new dregs. The erotic stank of used-up pussy. It turned some men on. Spend enough time around it, it’d begun to turn her on too.

  “Cheez-its, man, Cheez-its. Can’t just eat one. Fuck, Smoothie, what’ll be the next one? Puppies?”

  “Look at me, Yahiro, see what I see. It’s a sight to behold.”

  She did what she was told,
but not before she moved her head toward Quist’s voice.

  When she opened her eyes this time, there wasn’t pain, only a golden-haired man with a face alight in rays. He was so beautiful, so handsome, this alien; it hurt her more than Snake ever had.

  It was beautiful and it didn’t involve a fist. Nor the choices, or eventually, the drug-induced coma afterward.

  His lips quirked down at her and she threaded her arms around his midsection. His skin was warm wherever she touched. She could find herself addicted to it, to him, if she didn’t keep the brittle walls around her heart erect.

  But when the morning sunshine hit his face, caught up and absorbed, like she was by his looks, she remembered the poignant truth: she had an addictive personality.

  Yahiro licked her lips. “You are a sight.”

  His wings flapped through the air behind him, and wayward feathers fell away and disintegrated into golden dust in the sun’s rays. They rained down on them and yet she couldn’t look away from his face.

  She had convinced herself that she would see Snake’s fist when she opened her eyes, or worse yet, the ground coming toward her. But what she got was bright, glorious gold.

  She suddenly realized they had stopped moving.

  The golden daggers of his irises pierced her and his lips lifted into a smile. “Look.”

  “I am,” she whispered.

  “Not at me,” he said, nodding his head. “At that.”

  It took all of her willpower to turn away and look. First, her eyes roved over the vast, bizarre landscape, and the green forest that vined out like weeds throughout it all. Around were plateaus and giant mountains that roiled outward for eternity, some so high they rose up far beyond, even at their altitude. The colors were the same as Earth, green foliage and blue skies. The only thing that was missing were the miles upon miles of metal cities and grey cement.

  On one side there was an ocean, as blue as the oceans she had grown up next to, bluer even. The coastline held a ping-pong of waterfalls leading away from it, as inlets and rivers flowed from the watery expanse. Far, far in the distance, there was a purple and grey storm hovering above it. The water rose up in a tempest toward the threatening clouds.

  “So beautiful,” she choked out, her eyes taking in the view, afraid that if she didn’t it would vanish.

  “Not that.” A single finger tapped her chin, gently turning her head. “Home.”

  That’s when she saw it. A dinosaur. One that had an unsettling amount of dirt in its wake. “Oh my god—”

  “—Lusheenn.” Luchen. The name still had no translation.

  “What is it?”

  The creature was huge, beyond comprehension huge. It looked like a brontosaurus but far taller and wider, many miles in its expanse. It was as tall as the tallest mountains, and even at her height with Quist keeping them adrift, they were barely level with it.

  After her initial shock, the only thought going through her head was what that beast ate. What and how much. She didn’t think there was enough forest to feed it, let alone if it was a carnivore. Her grip on Quist tightened, and she leveraged her body to straddle his waist.

  “That’s... home? What’s on its back?”

  You’re definitely not on Earth anymore, Hiro.

  She continued, “It won’t eat us will it?” The beast stood unmoving in its position, its head lifted toward the sun.

  “It absorbs the light. Like my brothers and I. My home is on its back. The City of Dawn isn’t following dawn, though, and I think I know why.”

  “It eats light?”

  “Absorbs it. Do you not absorb it?” He turned in the air until more of the sun’s rays hit her. They were intermittent as the sky slowly swayed with clouds from the ocean storm. “I feel your stomach against mine. It aches for nourishment.”

  “I don’t eat light.”

  He stiffened, bringing her gaze back to him. He was looking at her sharply.

  “You... don’t? What do you need for nourishment?”

  Her pulse thrummed. She became aware of how close they were, and how much she clung to him. The only barrier separating their skin was a little cloth and a lot of polyester.

  “I eat meat, vegetables,” she tried to find the right words in his language as options flooded her head. “Flowers?”

  “You eat Sonhadra?”

  “Yes, maybe, what’s Sonhadra?”

  His eyes sharpened further, narrowing. “This,” he flourished his arm, loosening his hold and making her screech before he re-banded it around her, “is Sonhadra. Did Lusheenn not tell you so?”

  “I don’t know who or what Lusheenn is and I-I—” Yahiro squeaked as Quist pressed her flush against him and the hand that had tilted her chin now curved her ass. A thick erection sat between their plastered pelvises and she promptly forgot what she was going to say, choking on the words.

  When she finally had the gall to face him again, he stared down at her, curious and horrified.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m a human.”

  She gripped him tighter, not liking where this conversation was going, that they were having it so high up in the air, and that her only escape was death.

  “Huuman,” he repeated, his lips pursing as if tasting the word. “Lusheenn never mentioned this word to me. But you found his—our heart. It sparked for you. Human.”

  She licked her rapidly chapping lips. “Can we land please?” The hand that was around her back snaked up into her messy, mottled, and quickly tangling hair. It made her skin prickle as he pulled it enough to keep her facing him. His wings flapped and moved upward until they blocked her view of the world. “That doesn’t help. I don’t know you. I don’t trust you to not let me fall—”

  “—Do you want to know me, Yahiro?—”

  “—I thought I wanted to die, but not like this!”

  His face shifted back into the golden sinister look he’d displayed earlier. It frightened her almost as much as being a mile above ground did, where her only seatbelt was the arms of a strange alien man with a large erection. The hand in her hair gripped tighter. Her nails dug into the muscles under the stems of his wings.

  “Death isn’t an option for you. Not while you’re in my sight.”

  Yahiro licked her lips as a breeze snapped loose tendrils of hair between them.

  She didn’t know this being. In fact, she didn’t even know whether or not they were compatible, but it didn’t stop her from wanting him and it didn’t stop her from considering his words.

  He doesn’t plan to kill me, but... he’s an alien. An A.L.I.E.N. If she hadn’t seen a world beyond her imagination, illusions conjured by drugged hallucinations, she considered that a sane person would’ve had a nervous breakdown.

  Oh, wait.

  “Quist...”

  They remained hovered far in the sky, her breaths short for many reasons, but he continued to look at her as if he’d spend enough time at it, he’d understand her.

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  The words caught her off-guard and instantly put her at ease. Maybe he can read me? Yahiro studied him as thoroughly as he studied her.

  “We will?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you...” The wind whipped their hair in a torrent around and between their faces.

  The dinosaur let out a long, low groan, like a deep vibration, and startled her gaze away from Quist and back toward the creature. Its head had turned in their direction and from as far as they were, she could tell the beast was staring at her.

  “It found me,” Quist answered before she could muster a response. “Sundamar, my brother, had it look for me. I never would’ve thought he’d let it off the world-path...”

  Yahiro glanced back to him but he was facing the dinosaur. Nothing you say makes sense.

  “You live on its back?” she asked.

  “No.” He licked his lips, catching her eyes, and making her tummy drop between her thighs. “I live among Sonhadra now. I’
ve never lived on Dawn.”

  The beast released another long vibration, straight at her and Quist. She decided she didn’t like it focusing on her with such intensity. “Why not?”

  “I lived in Light, the first city of Lusheenn, where I was created, deep in the Sonhadra deserts, but it was destroyed by the Psions and our Creator did nothing to protect my brothers and I. He vanished before the slaughter and has never returned—the coward. Afterwards, when we left the deserts behind and Sundamar took the last of Lusheenn’s creations and started anew, I left them and stayed in the wilds, searching endlessly for our Creator.”

  “Oh.”

  “I feel him being near you.”

  He gripped her tighter and moved her farther up his body until their faces were aligned. She had never held onto another being as hard as she held onto Quist. The golden beads sparkled like ocean sand across his face. His stern face.

  “I don’t know him. I have nothing to do with him!”

  “Are you a Psion?”

  His eyes narrowed and went dark all the sudden. Yahiro plastered her body as close as she could against him regardless, wrapping her legs around his waist, her arms over his shoulders, her hands still clinging to his stems.

  “I promise you, I’m not. I’m nothing. I’m not from any part of this world. Please...”

  The molo vibrated again but this time it went ignored.

  Their battle of wills raged and she felt him reading her once again. Her own will begged for him to see the truth. Not all the truths of her... but the truth that she had nothing to do with his past.

  “You’ll stay in my sight, Yahiro of Quist,” he said at last. Her heart fluttered with equal parts of both terror and relief.

  Quist rolled his wings, lowering them toward the ground. She couldn’t see it, his grip in her hair tight, but she felt the shift in altitude, the oxygen levels changing, her breaths becoming easier.

  I’ll live if I stay in his sight.

  Her eyes flickered over his symmetrically unnerving face and the golden piercings that dotted it. I can keep one vow if I stay near him. I only... have to stay where he can see me. I don’t have to trust him. She felt the shock of landing but not the shadow of trees above her. The babbling sounds of a creek replaced the gusty wind.