by Pippa Jay
THE PLANET WAS VORDU, a mostly neutral if not exactly law-abiding world midway between what counted as civilization and the less well-known and policed boundaries beyond. After dropping two of his ‘passengers’ in the cargo chutes and Nenek at the passengers’ depot in the main spaceport out near the planet’s furthest moon, Yoran slipped his requisitioned ship into geostationary orbit and put her on automatics. It had taken three days to get here. Three days with nothing but the grumblings of his three prisoners for company and the odd energy fluctuation in the engine core. Nothing from Soraya. Now he’d left the three brothers somewhere not exactly safe but at least alive and soon to be discovered, he wasn’t quite sure where to head next. He wanted to ask Soraya where she’d like to go. If she ever recovered. He couldn’t be sure, but this morning he swore he heard her voice whispering to him.
He went into the engine room, his eyes shielded against the fiery glare of the core. The radiation housing meant he was perfectly safe other than the danger of temporary blindness from the light. But that wouldn’t matter unless she was okay. If she wasn’t...his stomach churned. It was his fault. Her death would be on his conscience.
He leaned on the shielded glass of the core.
“Soraya?” He tried to project his thoughts, tried to hear her. He’d never been entirely sure how that worked, other than she needed contact to communicate. And right now, he didn’t have contact. His skin burned for it. Or maybe that was his imagination, hypnotized by the brightness of the core.
“Soraya?”
The light in the core flickered. Darkened. Black tendrils flowed across the underside of the glass, as though trails of black sand ran along it, defying gravity.
His heart skipped a few beats. He followed the sand as it travelled the length of the tube, heading for a waste vent and gathering above the locked valve.
Yoran opened it, and the sand pooled on the floor in a way no real sand would. It spread, becoming more like a puddle of black mercury. Yoran knelt beside it as the pool began to lift from the floor as though someone had put an invisible line in the center and tugged it toward the ceiling. Lines of energy as golden as the engine core streaked over the surface as the growing column took on sculpted curves. Her face flowed into shape, a soft oval framed by long tendrils of true silver hair, arched brows, wide forehead and full mouth, then shifted to modify her features somewhat. She looked as though she was sleeping. She didn’t look quite so much like Chevelle.
“Soraya?” His voice caught as she finished reforming. For an instant she stood still as a statue, then collapsed back into a shimmering pool.
“Soraya!” Panic crushed the air from his lungs. He dropped to his knees, hesitating just a microsecond before placing his fingers lightly on her surface. She rolled toward him.
“Yoran.” Tears filled her voice. “I can’t...”
“Can’t what?” Terror engulfed him. What had he done? What was wrong?
“I can’t hold that form.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No. It will just take me time to remake bones to take that form.” Her sadness rolled over him.
“You’re not damaged?”
“No, I’m fully restored.”
Relief made him dizzy, but her continuing tremors of distress pulled at him.
“You know, you don’t have to make yourself human if you don’t want to.”
Flickers of light dashed across her skin. Confusion?
“You’d...accept me in my own form?”
The surprise in her tone cut him to the core. Yeah, he’d been a jerk about that.
“After all you’ve done for me, that’s the least I can do.”
“Won’t that make it hard to visit some places? Chevelle’s brother...” Hurt sifted into him. “He...hated me.”
“Not everyone is like that.” Yoran considered the statement. “Actually, a lot of people might be like that. At first,” he hastened to add when Soraya radiated concern. “But when they get to know you like I did...”
“You were afraid of me. At first.”
Guilt punched him in the gut. “Yeah. I know. I was a jerk.”
Soraya shifted around on the floor. “Won’t it make it difficult to go places?”
“I don’t think anything’s going to stop you going anywhere. You’re not a breakable, soft and squidgy human like me.” He tried to make a joke of it, but it didn’t lessen Soraya’s anxiety.
“I mean places where there are humans.”
“Soraya, there are so many places in this galaxy we can go and never see another human being again. I won’t take you anywhere you might get hurt or where people will look at you like some kind of freak. It can be just the two of us. Just us and the rest of the galaxy.”
Her happiness set her glowing, and flowed into him too. “You mean that?”
“Absolutely.”
Soraya was silent for a moment, before starting to reform into a human shape.
“Soraya...”
“Wait.” She stopped halfway, her newly-formed eyes level with Yoran’s, “There’s nothing to prevent me taking whatever shape I choose, whenever I choose, other than I need to make some bones to be humanoid. And if I’m to learn about your people, I think it would help to have this shape sometimes. To understand you.”
He reached to cup her cheek. “If that’s what you really want. You don’t have to do any of it for me, Soraya. Only for yourself.”
A smile curved her lips as she leaned into his palm. “Thank you. I know you mean that.”
“Absolutely.” He said it with every atom of sincerity in his heart, hoping that Soraya would feel it. The glow of her skin said she did. “Now why don’t you come and look at the stars with me?”
Her smile deepened. “We made it to your stars?”
“Yeah. And now I’d like to show you as many of them as we can reach in a lifetime. If you want to.” He held his breath. Would she stay with him that long?
“For as long as it takes to visit every single one of them,” she promised.
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Watch for more at Pippa Jay’s site.