Chapter 12 #2
She offered a small shrug. “It was a kindness. Our world was dying. My family chose me to be the one spared from that suffering. With every clutch, the families would choose one of three to preserve. They had a clutch of three, and they chose me.”
Her lips curled into a smile. “And so it was easy for me to take my oath to serve. Even if that meant spending centuries on ice, traveling from ship to ship, from conflict to conflict. And waking up in strange places, with strange but endearing company.”
“Damn,” he whispered with a low, impressed whistle. “You really are a relic if my shenanigans have somehow endeared you to me.”
Fia smiled and shook her head, clicking her tongue disapprovingly. “Far from a relic. I am still rather young, relatively speaking. Roughly halfway through my first life cycle.”
“First life cycle? I don’t follow.”
“Once our bodies begin to degrade, we immerse in a spawning pool, enter torpor, and regenerate damaged tissue. Though without oceans to form spawning pools, I suppose we are all limited to just the one life cycle.”
Davik watched her face contort in a strange mix of contemplation and irritation. As if she hadn’t considered her mortality with this much intensity before.
“So, equal to … what? Late thirties, early forties, for humans?”
“Approximately. The numbers may not perfectly align. But accurate enough.”
“That tracks,” he said with a sigh and a shake of the head. “Always had a thing for older women.”
That earned him a laugh and an eye-roll, and he felt the tension melt away just a fraction more.
“You should get some rest then, young man.” She rose before he could stop her, and he groaned. “Now, now, you have a busy day tomorrow.”
“When isn’t it?”
Davik helped her carry her bags back to her shuttle. Before he turned to leave, she caught him in the doorway by the arm.
“Wait, there is something I wanted to give you.”
His heart leaped into his throat. She reached into her new backpack, fishing out a narrow metallic container, roughly the length of his forearm.
She handed over the slender package, and he turned it in his hands curiously.
“What is this?”
“Something you might find useful. Goodnight, Davik.”
Before he could say thank you, the door clicked shut.
The squawking of the digitally rendered crow on Davik’s wall woke him up with an alarming start. He was rising far earlier than his usual routine, but there was no time to waste.
As he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, he set to his game plan for the day: to come up with a plan. Planning the plan. The plan to woo the alien warrior woman.
Spontaneity had served him well enough in romance before. But, considering most of his relationships ended in some form of catastrophic fallout, his metric for “well enough” had worrisome standards.
And this was not a woman he would waste “well enough” on.
She was literally and figuratively from a different world, a different era.
But he knew he could do something for her.
He might not be a soldier, but he was a skilled fabricator.
If he could make that “diving bell”, give her something to make her feel more secure.
Then maybe he could convince her to linger with them longer.
Long enough for him to get the nerve to make a move.
But no good plan is made on an empty stomach.
The sounds of bubbly chatter hit his ears as he strode into the mess hall, and he gave Carissa and Fia a wave as he hid himself in the scullery to whip something up.
He had spied a few articles of clothing on the table, and it looked like the pair were indulging in a little show-and-tell, going over all the things Fia had bought on her shopping spree.
His plan to plan was already hitting a snag.
He thought he would have a few hours to himself, but he would have to settle for making breakfast. And, apparently, eavesdropping.
The word bra floated through the air and hit his ear like a bolt, and immediately he was locked in attention to the conversation.
Jesus, what are you, a teenager?
“I just think they are cute!” he heard Fia say, with a light note of mock defensiveness in her voice.
“Okay, they are. But respectfully, Fi? You’re not a mammal. What do you need a bra for?” Carissa retorted.
“We do not need them, but your kind act incredibly uncomfortable when we stride around topless. Plus, it is a fun accessory!”
Davik could hear a zipper being unzipped, and he held the pan in his hand with a furious death grip.
Eyes forward. Eyes on the pan. Eyes on the pan.
He could hear Carissa laugh before her own reply.
“Okay, that is pretty cute on you. I just hate having to wear one. But then again, I am fully mammalian. God. Incredibly mammalian as of late. I swear, between this little gremlin kicking me in the diaphragm and these things swelling up like balloons, I can barely breathe.”
“I thought that Icthian reproduction was daunting, but you make me think we have it easy. We just need a decent spawning pool, the right nesting corals, an egg tender or two, and a few nights of—”
There was some sort of gesturing going on. Davik was sure of it.
What could she possibly be gesturing? Eyes back on the pan.
“And then you just go back to life as usual,” Fia concluded.
Carissa let out a low whistle. “Shit. That doesn’t sound too bad. How does that get split up, though? Like, who stays with the eggs? Is this like a seahorse kind of thing?”
“It is flexible. There aren’t defined parent pairs. It is more like you have a gardener and pollinators. Sometimes, many pollinators. Sometimes just one gardener by themselves.”
“So, is it like, the women lay the eggs, and—” Carissa cut herself off mid-sentence. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. This is probably extremely rude to ask. Out here, every Icthian is clone-born, so this is all … unfamiliar territory for me.”
No, please ask. This is a very important topic, Carissa. VERY. IMPORTANT.
Fia let out a half-chortle. “It is not rude, it is just hard to explain. I do not lay eggs, I am a ‘pollinator’. Most of us are. We adopted the terms and linguistics that you use for men and women, but for us, it is a different distinction from reproduction. Literally, our interpretation of that dichotomy is ‘One who delves the depths’ and ‘One who walks the land’.”
“Why did you guys adopt it at all? Language is malleable. We took up some of your words. I don’t see why we couldn’t call you a, uh … water-delver?”
“Icthians struggle with self-identity. When you are always sharing the surface of your emotions in the Chorus, you sometimes feel unseen. Lost in the song. It is nice to have something to reflect a deeper understanding that you want others to know. An ornament, of sorts. “
Carissa, please. Please get back to the sex pond discussion. I really need to know if I need to get a snorkel to seduce this woman.
“Is that why every Icthian I’ve met asks me about my astrological sign?!”
“Oh, so that was not just a fad where I came from?”
Davik joined the pair at the table and did his best to enjoy his nearly charred breakfast sausage. He listened to them bubble and gush over star signs, personality tests, all the while reviewing circuitry schematics on his datapad.
He caught one small tidbit as the women swapped star sign stories.
December 18th. Her birthday is December 18th.