Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
MARIA
I straightened my hair, excitement and nervousness warring in my belly like I was walking down the stairs on the way to meet a prom date.
I'd gotten so used to walking around half-naked that figuring out what to wear was an entirely new problem, especially because I didn't have much time to try to figure out how to design something new using the manufacturing bay.
I'd settled on getting a large chunk of flowy fabric and trying it around me like a sarong.
"Can I talk to her yet?" I asked, impatient as I gave myself one more look over in the bathroom mirror. I had already invited Lyrien into my rooms to set things up for me, so I knew he could hear me. "Is it ready?"
"He only just accepted the com device," Lyrien replied. "I am uncertain as to how long it will take for him to give her access, and for her to figure out how to activa... oh, there she is."
"Hello?" a soft voice called out from the other room.
I rushed back into my bedroom, crossing over to the new door on the far side that led to a new room Lyrien had shaped out for me.
My bare feet stepped from the carpeting in my bedroom to the exposed strands of his neurofilaments.
Right now, the room was just his exposed filaments, with a large flatscreen taking up most of one wall.
I was already plotting out how I would set it up.
I was torn between having a private movie theater or making it more like a sci-fi command center.
I would do both, of course, but which to start with was the real question.
Leija's face was there, right in the center of the screen. Behind her were the strands of Eun's neurofilaments, pulled back to create a blank room. She stood in the center of them, her hair ruffled but her posture relaxed.
"Leija!" I called out as I moved in front of the screen. "Are you okay? Lyrien said you would be, but that must have been intense being in the center of all that."
Her eyes snapped wider as I came into view, a sudden rush of liquid shimmering in them.
"You're a human," she said, her voice cracking. "I haven't seen a human in... weeks? Months? I'm not sure how much time has passed."
"Yes, my name is Maria," I said. "I was the person in the MECH suit. I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself sooner. Lyrien didn't think it was safe to let anyone on the planet know that I wasn't a robot."
"Lyrien?" Leija asked, lifting the back of a trembling hand to wipe at her eyes.
"Lyrien, he's my mate. He's a Vaurelcar, like Eun," I said.
"Do you know what is happening to Eun?" Leija asked. "He isn't waking up. I think... I think I'm inside his hair? What is even happening?"
"It isn't hair," I said. "They're called neurofilaments, and they are a major part of a Vaurelcar's body. Lyrien, can you explain what is going on?"
The screen split in half, and an image of Lyrien's face appeared.
"Hello Leija," he said, sounding stilted and uncomfortable. "I am Lyrien. Welcome aboard. Can you tell me who severed Eun? How long ago did it happen?"
"Severed?" Leija asked, worry flashing across her face. "What do you mean by severed?"
"Who cut him out from the rest of his body?" Lyrien said. "If it happened recently, we can restore him, and it will help with his healing. If we could get to the rest of his body before it dies off, that would be ideal. Regrowing an entire new body is far more traumatic."
"I don't understand," Leija said. "What do you mean by the rest of his body?"
"His neurofilaments, or his hair as you've been calling it," I said. "They form the rest of his body. Who cut him away from them?"
"His family has been cutting his hair short since he was a little kid," Leija said. "He only stopped cutting them when he got away from them."
Lyrien's face was pure horror.
"They've been cutting his neurofilaments short?" he hissed, his voice laced with rage. "His whole life, he hasn't been able to grow? Who would do that to their child?"
"They aren't his parents," Leija said. "They bought him because they wanted him to have children with their daughter.
They said a whole bunch of really weird shit about that.
I mean, it is one thing to adopt a kid, it is an entire other thing to purchase a child because you want to add their genetics to your family tree. "
"I need a minute," Lyrien said, his tone dark, and he dropped off the call, leaving us alone as a light tremor ran through the floor, like his entire body was reacting to his emotional state.
"They hurt him, didn't they?" Leija said, her voice sad.
"Vaurelcar's neurofilaments are the majority of their physical body," I said.
"Cutting them off is like... if you gave a child a paralytic drug so you could keep them in a wheelchair their whole life when they would be completely healthy without the poison.
Obviously, it's not exactly the same, but from what I understand of Lyrien’s species, it means the people who bought Eun have been severely physically abusing him his whole life to keep him weak and under control. "
Leija buried her face in her hands, her shoulders hunching.
"He's safe now," I said. "You're coming with us, and you both are safe here."
She let out a shuddering sob.
"It's all my fault," she said, her voice muffled by her palms and her tears. "He's like this right now because I did this to him."
"You cut off his neurofilaments?" Lyrien asked as his face snapped back onto the screen, his tone filled with a sharp fury.
"No," she lifted her face from her hands, tears streaming down her face.
"No, not that. He was only protecting me!
He didn't want to fight because he didn't want to go crazy and eat those aliens!
This whole time, he has been struggling to control himself, but he had to fight to protect me, and then he just lost it, and it's all my fault! "
Lyrien's expression softened.
"It isn't your fault, Leija," he said. "His body has been desperate to grow his whole life, and it hasn't been able to.
It's likely that because of the repeated damage to his neurofilaments, his body was saving up for a moment of rapid expansion, so that it could get large enough not to be cut back.
It is no surprise that the moment he got around enough calories to shell lock and finally expand, he went into a catatonic growth stage, a state that is made worse by the fact that he has to process the toxins out of it all.
Right now, he has completely taken over the small ship you arrived in, but his growth has slowed.
I can continue to supply him with enough to grow at a more moderate rate once he regains full consciousness. None of this is your fault."
"You got him to safety," I added. "If it wasn't for you, he wouldn't have gotten off that planet with the one transport that understood what he was going through."
"He could have found another Vaurelcar at the spaceport," Leija said, as she wiped her face, the flow of her tears stalling as she listened even as she protested.
"No," Lyrien said. "This is Calicium-controlled space. No Vaurelcar would risk going to a populated planet in a Calicium-riddled zone if there were any other option. If Eun had tried to leave the system with anyone else, there is a very high probability that he would have been caught and enslaved."
"You got him to safety," I repeated, knowing she needed to hear the words again. "You made that happen."
"You saved me," came a soft, familiar male voice, as if waking up from a long sleep.
"Eun!" Leija cried out and flung herself out of the view of the camera.
"Lyrien, how do I turn this off?" I asked, doing my best to ignore the sounds now coming from out of sight.
The connection turned off, and the screen went blank.
"We can build a control system for the view screen in the manufacturing lab that makes sense for you," Lyrien said.
"In the meantime, as you are already aware, Eun has woken up.
He will have a long recovery period, but will be better able to attend to his mate's immediate needs now.
I've already sent him a list of structures he needs to build internally and put all of the materials within his reach. "
"So they will be able to come out soon?" I asked.
I was so excited to have another human on board.
"He is in a fragile state," Lyrien said.
"And likely will be anxious for her to leave him.
His shell lock was violent and sudden, and given his repeated history of damage to his neurofilaments, he might have more difficulty breaking free of it.
I will create a social gathering area near where he is docked so that she can spend time with you initially without going far. "
"He doesn't get to control her just because he is anxious," I pointed out.
"Do you think she will want to go far from him right now?" Lyrien asked.
"No," I shook my head. "But rather than set up a new area near him, why don't you just move him closer to all of my things. Wouldn't that be faster?"
I’d taken a walk back to the ship to check on Eun and Leija in person and discovered that the distance had almost tripled. Lyrien had moved us farther apart when I was sleeping.
I didn’t blame him, given how nervous he was about me being near a hostile member of his species, but at the same time, I wasn’t going to ignore that entirely.
"I will talk to him once he is available for a conversation," Lyrien said. "Right now, he is sitting on the metal plates of my docking bay. I'd have to touch him to move him, and I don't want to do that without a clear conversation about it beforehand."
"Okay," I said. "Then, in the meantime, I have some ideas for what I want to do with this room."
"I'm sure you do," Lyrien said, a delighted note in his voice.