Chapter 5
Holly
It wasn't just raining, it was pouring.
Holly woke up that morning and, entranced by the falling water, hadn't risen from her bed. Instead, she sat cross legged at the foot of it, staring out her window. Over the canopy that rippled and rolled with the wind, jumping as the pounding water beat at the large, purple leaves.
She knew that the rainy season was coming, but she hadn't been prepared for just how hard the rain was going to come down.
It was so thick, it almost felt like looking into a fog.
It was also loud. Rushing like a waterfall as it beat against the windowpanes.
It was a good thing she had tested the glass herself early on or she might be worried about the wind breaking it.
It shouldn't have been a surprise. A forest this size required a great deal of water. If it were Earth, it would be a rain forest and it would likely rain every day.
But the dry season here had lived up to its name.
It hadn't rained a single day. Instead, she learned by asking Tilii, that the forest got its rain pretty much only through the rainy season.
There were some storms during the cold season, but, like a camel stocking water, the trees absorbed all the water they needed for the rest of the year during the rainy season.
The bottom of the forest would flood – which was why the domini didn't build anything down there – and the water would linger long into the cold season.
The nearby lake would rise out of its banks, and the entire forest floor would be under water for many tendays.
Holly was glad that the palace was one of the few stone structures built on a solid rock foundation. If she had been in one of the tree dwellings, that even from here she could see moving with the wind and rain, she would be terrified.
Tomorrow was the day that Romival was supposed to come here to interview her, but she didn't know if he would be able to make it.
She would never drive a car in weather like this, much less pilot one of the hovers, and the weather reports indicated this was going to continue, practically unabated, until the end of the season.
She checked her combot this morning, but he hadn't sent her a message to reschedule, so she assumed it was still on.
“Holly!” Hattie's voice came through the door as she knocked. “Are you up?”
Holly grinned, turning from the window and unfolding her legs. “If I wasn't before, I certainly would be now!”
The door slid open just as she was standing.
Hattie was on the other side, fully dressed in one of her pretty green skirts and a white top that cradled her breasts perfectly, silver jewelry practically dripping from her.
Not for the first time, Holly was hit with a pang of envy that Hattie was so pretty.
Seemingly without any effort and completely confident that she did, in fact, look good.
“You're still in your jammies, lazy bones,” Hattie laughed, fists to her hips. “Come on. Get up. Have breakfast with me.”
“Where are the others?” Holly asked as she crossed the room to her closet.
“Scarlet is studying. Please, hold back your shock and amazement. And Alanna already ate.”
Holly didn't bother to ask why she hadn't told her about Peony.
Since she was pregnant and her alien fetus was forcing her to have killer separation anxiety from Atem, she followed him around through most of the day.
They would have either already eaten breakfast and gotten to work ruling the planet or Peony was still snoozing and Atem wouldn't want them to bother her.
“There's a really cool solarium that the head chef was telling me about yesterday. I want to eat breakfast there and I don't want to be alone. Come with me.”
Holly was chuckling as she picked out her clothes. She hadn't done her yoga this morning – trading it for the meditation of watching the rain fall instead – so she did some basic stretches as she was getting ready in the privy.
A short time later, freshly changed into flowing pants covered in tiny pink and orange checkerboard matched with a tunic style, white top, she followed Hattie out of their suite and into the palace proper, Hattie chatting excitedly about the meal she had helped the chef cook this morning.
When Holly first came here, she had been too nervous to leave her room.
Her entire life had been upended and her room was the first 'safe' place she had.
However, as time passed, she was gradually becoming more comfortable going out.
First into the suite, then into the hall outside.
Now, she was well aware of what was considered Atem's personal home in the palace, a place not open to the public or the government officials, and she was more than happy to move around in those places where she knew she wouldn't bother anyone or be in the way.
It wasn't Earth, and it certainly couldn't replace her family, but this place was good enough to be a home for now. She was safe. She was comfortable. She was okay.
She really hoped, back on Earth, an untold number of lightyears away, her family could somehow know that she was okay, and that knowledge could give them some comfort.
Holly shook off her maudlin thoughts and focused back on Hattie's chatter – she was rambling about the new dishes she had been learning to cook and adapting her own knowledge to them so she could make more human friendly dishes.
Humans couldn't drink the blood that was such a big part of the domini diet – except Peony in her current pregnant state who depended on it.
And domini couldn't eat cooked meat like humans did.
The burning process ruined it for them as it cooked the blood and ruined the proteins in the meat for their digestive tracts.
Hattie, who was a caterer on Earth, was combining the cooking styles.
Humans could eat raw meat, theoretically – steak tartare was a thing – it was just dangerous due to the bacteria.
Hattie was working to make a menu with the chef that would work for both species that was safe, fully consumable, and delicious.
Holly listened, caught up in Hattie's excitement over her project even if she wasn't involved in it, as they got onto a rotating, circular staircase that brought them up.
The golden palace reminded Holly of ancient Mayan temples – though she thought that might be more to do with the wild forest aesthetic around it than any similarity of style.
It was wider at the base far below the canopy, but it came up in tiers that broke off into individual towers.
Atem's home was in one of the larger 'towers', the multiple tiers expanding up from a level below, through the canopy, and high above the tallest leaves.
The solarium Hattie had been told of was the highest tier.
A glass dome that was filled with all manner of beautiful flora.
Very little of it was green. The plant life of domini was predominantly purple, though blue and yellow weren’t uncommon colors.
Green seemed to be more like an accent color on the more colorful plants.
It was the color of some of the bright blooms that surrounded the stone paths they walked through, admiring the greenhouse – purplehouse?
Rain poured down all over the glass, the cloudy sky overhead darkening the outside completely, trapping them in a bubble of artificial heat and light.
“Ta da!” Hattie said when they took a turn off the meandering path and walked into a sheltered area by the glass wall.
The foliage around the clearing created walls for privacy.
A low table surrounded by comfortable cushions was laden with the food Hattie must have made this morning.
Holly recognized the abundance of fruit and fried mushrooms that normally made up their breakfast. Hattie had also cooked them up some steak of an animal with dark, almost black meat.
Most of the meat here was that color as the blood of the creatures of domini was a much darker red, almost black, compared to humans.
It tasted different from the meat at home, but it wasn’t bad.
“Wow! It looks great!” Holly admired, beaming as she came around to take a seat on one of the low cushions. The soft chair molded to her form in a surprisingly supportive way. It wasn't like an Earth pillow that she would just sink into.
“Check these out.” Hattie sat opposite her, reaching across the table to lift a glass bowl, decorated with filigree flowers, and filled with-
“Are those blueberries?” Holly gasped, reaching out to snatch one.
Hattie laughed, but her smile was sad. “I said the same thing. They're not. But... they look close enough, right?”
Holly had already bitten into the berry, its juice exploding on her tongue, before Hattie spoke, so she already knew the answer. Disappointment made the sweet berry surprisingly bitter. Because it was definitely not a blueberry.
The taste was too sweet. It didn't have that pleasant tartness of a blueberry.
The flavor, too, was completely different.
She never would have mistaken it for a blueberry if she had eaten it blind.
It was good. The flavor was powerful for such a small berry, but it wasn't what she expected and, for some reason, tasting it made tears gather in her eyes.
“They form in these little pod plants,” Hattie was saying, rolling a berry between her fingers, showing that it didn't have the little indention from a stem that a blueberry would have.
“The seed forms in the pod and the berry forms around the seed. Kind of like a pearl in an oyster. They ripen just as the rains begin. I saw a case of them delivered this morning and...”