Chapter 4 Shiloh
SHILOH
It took less than a week of half-hearted job-searching to realize that I’d already mentally said goodbye to New Toronto. Daddy was gone. There was nothing holding me here. I might not have had a tuition payment ready for the Elora Station art program I’d once been accepted to.
But I had another shot at leaving.
And I planned to take it.
That information packet I’d downloaded from the calendar on Mary or Bhavi’s locker (I still wasn’t sure which one of them it belonged to) contained a whole host of information about Zabria Prinar One and the specifics of this intergalactic marriage program.
Mary had been right. Zabria Prinar One technically was a penal colony.
But there was a lengthy report on Zabrian justice systems that followed that statement, and it very much seemed to me that someone was trying very hard to explain why, by human standards, the lonely, muscly cowboys from the calendar weren’t actually all that guilty of their crimes.
Which, apparently, were murder. All of them.
I should have been worried about that. Scared right out of my boots by it.
It should have been enough to wake me out of this haze.
To tell me I was being crazy. That New Toronto was shit, but it was the shit I knew.
And maybe I’d never get to see that pretty sky in person.
But I’d be safe from marrying an actual killer.
But, strangely, I found I didn’t care. Maybe grief had broken my brain. Turned off every element of self-preservation I’d once owned so that all that was left was the need to get out, to go, to change my life no matter what it took.
No matter if it meant marrying a murderer.
It was probably incredibly stupid of me. But I wasn’t afraid.
And the information packet outlined my rights.
I wouldn’t be a convict, trapped on the planet.
I could leave anytime, my flight out of there paid for in full by the Zabrian Empire.
There would be a two-week trial period where I could see if things were working out or not.
There were wardens who supervised everything, and other human women would be there – including an official liaison – to make sure I was safe.
There was more in there – some more background on Zabrian culture and even Zabrian male anatomy.
There seemed to be a lot about their ears and eyes and some other stuff I didn’t look too closely at.
I ignored most of it for now. The marrying-a-Zabrian part of it all seemed so distant to me.
Something necessary, but ultimately secondary to my main concern.
Which was getting off this planet. Escaping the walls of a world that constantly felt like they were closing in on me.
Less than one week.
And I’d decided.
I sent in my information at the link included in the packet.
Things happened quickly after that.
I was provided a paid-for ticket to Elora Station, the massive commerce hub I’d never been to before.
I was given sleeping quarters – also paid-for – and a medical appointment for a few vaccines.
I accepted the offer of a free Pulse treatment – a quick shot of energy to the ovaries that would prevent pregnancy for a few months.
I was technically going to be married, after all.
I probably should take any and all precautions.
It did strike me as darkly funny that I was being more careful about things like pregnancy when I was throwing all caution to the wind in the moving-to-a-new-planet-and-marrying-a-murderer arena.
The next morning, I boarded a shuttle for Zabria Prinar One.
Apparently, I could have waited at Elora Station for the program’s liaison to come and meet me.
But now that I’d started this journey, I didn’t see the sense in lingering.
Even Elora Station, a place of life and lights and colour I’d spent so long dreaming of, felt overwhelming and oppressive to me now.
Maybe it was because I was a little older.
I wasn’t an energetic nineteen-year-old optimistically applying to art programs. I was twenty-five now – still so young by so many standards. But I felt so damn old.
I wanted quiet. I wanted space to think. To stretch my arms out and not touch a grimy wall or a dirty machine or another person.
Well, except the husband in the scenario, I supposed. But I figured he’d be pretty busy with his own stuff. He’d be off doing alien cowboy things. And for once in my life, I’d be able to just stretch all I wanted to. As much as I needed to. My fingers tingled with the possibilities.
I didn’t pack much. I didn’t own much. My bag consisted of toiletries, painkillers, a few outfits, a couple of paintbrushes that were still in decent working order, and my one remaining set of acrylic paints, the tubes half-empty.
I didn’t have anything to paint on besides one small book with thick paper.
Larger canvases obviously would have taken up too much space in my bag, and probably would have gotten damaged anyway.
I only brought one painted piece with me. A small portrait of Daddy that, up until now, had been positioned on my bedside table.
It had hurt to leave the rest of my work behind, but ultimately less than I’d thought it would.
That sense of hurt, that ache of abandoning it all, was partially cleansed by the cautious excitement I felt at the prospect of painting new things on a new world.
It was like disinfecting an old, festering wound.
I boarded that shuttle feeling tired and raw and more than a little rudderless with nothing but my bag and an info packet downloaded on my comms tablet.
But for the first time in too long…
I didn’t feel trapped by my own life.
I was, however, somewhat trapped by my own body.
I didn’t know if it was the long shuttle journey, or the change in pressure upon entering a new atmosphere.
But by the time we landed on Zabria Prinar One, the hot, red throb of a migraine was building up behind my eyes and at the base of my skull.
I shakily swallowed a painkiller, knowing that at this point, with this much pain, it likely would barely take the edge off.
But I had to do something. The shuttle was landing. The door opened. Bright white stabbed into my eyes.
Snow. So much snow.
And there it was. That sky.
It was crisp, clear, and bluer than the best cerulean pigment.
Bluer than it had been in the pictures. Bluer than I could handle right now, as I scrunched my eyes shut and flinched away.
The shuttle’s pilot – a tall, slender human named Jo – hoisted my bag up in their tattooed hands and then passed it over.
“Thanks,” I said to them, trying to smile and hoping it didn’t look too sickly. Dry-swallowing that pill had sent my stomach clenching ominously.
“You alright?” they asked, watching me closely.
“Yeah,” I replied tightly. Talking was hurting my head. I needed to use as few words as possible.
Maybe not the most realistic idea, though, since an excited voice was calling me from outside, and I’d obviously have to answer it.
“Shiloh? Shiloh Jean-Baptiste? Hi!”
A human woman in a brown leather bomber-style jacket and a fuzzy white toque with matching mittens came into the shuttle. Long blonde hair framed her smiling face.
It was a face I knew. It took me a moment to place her with the migraine slowly turning my brain to mush, and without the context of the factory’s grey walls around her.
But there was no mistaking it.
“Tasha?”
“Yes!” She gave a delighted laugh. “You recognize me? I definitely recognize you! I knew your name was familiar, but I wasn’t sure it was actually you until you landed!” She held out her hand to shake, then laughed again and raised both her arms. “Can I give you a hug?”
I didn’t like to be touched when I had a migraine, but I couldn’t refuse this offer.
Seeing Tasha here was so completely unexpected, but also immensely comforting.
I’d never personally interacted with her in the staffing office, but I’d seen her around and had always gotten such good vibes from her sincere, open expression.
People talked about her on the floor, too.
About how kind and fair and competent she was at her job.
How hard she worked. When someone had a problem, she always did her best to solve it – as well as she could, anyway, within the confines of her role.
If she’d still been there when Rod had done what he’d done…
I wouldn’t have been the one getting fired, that was for damn sure. She would have done something to help. I knew it instinctively.
But she’d left.
And, apparently, had come here.
Maybe had been here all along.
I dropped my bag. “I’d love a hug,” I admitted, my voice cracking
Oh, no. No tears! That was going to make any pain in my head a billion times worse. I hugged her with firmly shut eyes, willing them to stay dry.
I was mostly successful, and when I opened my eyes again, the man standing in front of me shocked away the last of my bout of sentimental teariness.
The man was massive. A big, purple wall of a male.
Very obviously Zabrian. The little calendar on the narrow locker door hadn’t really given me a proper sense of the scale of these guys.
He filled the shuttle’s open doorway, the top of his broad-brimmed hat almost brushing the frame above.
His jaw looked like it could be used as an anvil to hammer ancient swords into shape.
Despite the winter weather (the cold outside air had fully filled the shuttle now) he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and matching pants.
He did have boots, but no jacket or winter accessories.
He would have been incredibly intimidating, if it weren’t for what looked to be a genuine smile on his lips, and a warmth that radiated from his eyes. Lovely colours, those eyes. Vermilion, with bright veins of orange branching out from the centre.