Azyr: Drifting for His Mate

She turned down her alien match, only to be handed the paperwork for his arrival.

Azyr of the Veyathi had filed a first-contact request before she refused him, their score sitting at ninety-one point three percent, and as the officer who runs the Earth Liaison Office she is the only one cleared to receive him.

Now the tall, quiet traveler waits in her office, skin flaring cerulean whenever she walks in, while his translator names her the harvest and his booking lasts a single week.

He has charted eleven unnamed systems and stayed in none of them; she has kept the same windowsill herbs alive for twelve years and is certain a man who never remains could never fit a woman who never leaves.

The Intergalactic Dating Agency honored her rejection, but her post did not, and every extension he files keeps him across the desk from her.

For four years she has told other people they deserve the true scale of their own lives, and she has never once said it to herself.