Chapter 35
Scarlet
Aside from the peeping tom-bot, this was actually pretty relaxing.
The drone was quiet, flitting around the room, dark and silent, watching them without making a nuisance of itself. She didn’t like it, and she wished that it was gone, but the fact that they couldn’t do anything about it meant she had to just live with its presence.
The angered look on Tuvo’s face promised retribution for whoever that drone belonged to anyway, so she ignored it in favor of leaning into Havali’s side with a carefree grin while Peony wrapped her blanket around Atem’s head and pulled him close so he wasn’t paying attention to Havali and Scarlet.
The four of them weren’t trying to get romantic, not with Alanna and Tuvo there, but there was a certain intimacy about this place that couldn’t be denied.
“The lights really are pretty,” Allana said, sitting beside Scarlet.
“Just wait,” Havali grinned at her as Scarlet picked at some of the fruit he had brought her.
The food provided seemed to have been deliberately crafted for a domini diet, meaning there was a lot of fruit, mushrooms, raw meat, and blood.
Only two of which the humans could safely eat – save for Peony who was sipping some blood even now.
Scarlet wasn’t mad about the lack of human inclusion on the menu.
The fruit was good enough to make up for it and, after realizing what had happened, Atem asked Tuvo if he could prepare a fire.
Peony might drink fresh blood because of the baby, but she didn’t like raw meat.
The texture, she said, was gross and chewy and made it too hard to eat.
Alanna tried to tell them it wasn’t necessary – the domini hated the scent of cooked meat – but Tuvo eventually found a portable heating stove in the supply closet that the scientists must use when they were up here for long periods, and he got to work grilling up the meat.
It was a space style backyard barbecue, Scarlet realized, smothering a grin. Even across the universe and among completely different people, some things remained the same.
Scarlet wasn’t sure what they were waiting for exactly, but she wasn’t concerned about it.
She actually liked things just like this.
Chatting with Alanna, feeling Havali’s warm arm around her shoulders, his strong chest at her side, ignoring Atem’s occasional grumble punctuated by chuckles from Peony, and the sweet scent of cooking meat as Tuvo grilled.
Family.
This was family.
The lights glittering out the window had shifted colors. The change had been so gradual it took her a bit to realize that they were no longer the same purple and yellow as when they first arrived. Now, they were green and orange, bleeding together and shifting in space around the ring.
“It’s a shame Hattie and Holly are missing this,” Peony said, sighing contentedly as she rested her head down on Atem’s shoulder. “Hattie really would have loved it.”
Scarlet couldn’t help but notice the new tension around Tuvo’s shoulders as he turned off the portable stove and brought the last of the cooked meat over on a plate.
He set it down beside the raw version – both were cubed and spiced, but one sat in a pool of grease while the other sat in a pool of blood.
The scent of the cooked version heavily overpowered the raw, however, and Scarlet felt bad when she saw Havali’s nose crinkle a bit.
“Thank you,” she said, speaking to all three of them. “You know, you don’t have to cook meat for us. We can survive without it.”
“But you like it,” Tuvo said simply, giving her a strange look as he sat down between Havali and Peony’s cushions. “It is worth it.”
Scarlet started in surprise, sharing a look with Peony. Not at the sentiment. She was used to their consideration for their human needs. It was the fact that Tuvo, the one who was normally putting his feet in his mouth, had said it that surprised her.
Alanna was chuckling behind her hand, no doubt thinking the same thing, as Tuvo, oblivious, put some of the raw meat on his own plate before sitting back to watch the lights.
They had changed again. They were silvery white and pale pink now. Swirling gracefully through the air, leaving streaks of light, just like the aurora borealis, but reaching out from the ring, into space itself, like the gently swirling arms of an anemone in an ocean current.
The ring itself was nothing to ignore either.
Some part of Scarlet still couldn’t quite grasp the enormity and majesty of the ring.
It was like being told the size of the sun.
Logically, she could recognize the number as being big, but her mind simply could not wrap itself around the true size in a way that made sense.
And the ring had been made by people. Aliens.
Over hundreds of years. Using technology she couldn’t begin to understand.
Now that she knew that the different districts alternated between urban and natural, she could see the pattern.
The two on either side of the district holding the energy plant were empty, but those beside them were natural.
And, from up here, it looked like one was a desert and the other was an ocean.
Incredible. Unbelievable. Beautiful.
This view alone would have been worth the trip.
It was something no other human had ever been privileged enough to witness, and since coming here was so rare, it might be a long time before anyone else was given the chance again.
It was a story she would be able to tell her grandchildren.
An experience that few ever got to have.
Then, the shuttle began to move.