Chapter 10
Halley
Idon’t know how long I lie like that, my limbs heavy with bone-deep exhaustion. I fall asleep at one point, drifting in and out of hazy dreams that never fully make sense.
My thoughts solidify only when a gentle hand brushes braids off my face, and I lift my head a fraction to see Rin leaning over me. Her mouth is slightly open, displaying her two tusks and a mouthful of pointed teeth, so unlike human teeth.
She snatches her hand back when I meet her eyes, but she doesn’t run away.
With shaking arms, I pull myself into a seated position. My entire body aches after having stayed in the same position for so long, and my head’s spinning, as if I’ve been drinking sparkling wine and I’m falling off the edge of being tipsy into fully drunk.
“Hey,” I say, but my voice is strained and weird sounding. So I clear my throat and try again. “Hi, Rin. I’m Halley.”
Rather than answering, she tips her head to one side, staring at me with huge eyes. Bronze irises, I note. To match her golden skin.
For a moment, I wonder if she can understand me. Maybe her translator doesn’t know English. But I brush the worry aside. The expression in her eyes assures me she knows what I’m saying. The fact she isn’t speaking has nothing to do with her translator.
She’s wearing different clothes than the last time I saw her. More time must’ve passed than I realized. Maybe it’s tomorrow already.
Maybe we’ve already left Lyd.
“That was a bit of a mess, what happened back there,” I say into the silence, not practiced in the art of making small talk with kids. “Thanks for looking after me, though. I really appreciate it.”
I smile, but she flinches away as if the sight of my blunt teeth is unsettling. Perhaps she hasn’t seen a human before. I certainly haven’t seen any since being stolen from Earth.
Loneliness is a lump in my throat. Sometimes I catch myself wishing that there was another human with me, literally anybody so that I’m not by myself.
But how selfish is that—wishing someone else had been snatched from their bed in the middle of the night, wishing someone else had woken to find themselves locked in the cell of a spaceship, hurtling through intergalactic space faster than the speed of light?
Fumbling around, I find where I dropped my glasses and put them back on, bringing my surroundings into sharp focus.
To one side of me is the door through which I entered, sealed now and highlighted by a red light all around its edge. A warning, maybe, that opening it while traveling is a bad idea.
Don’t need to tell me twice. It’s a terrifying thrill thinking about how the metal hull of the ship is all that’s between us and the empty vacuum of space. Yet, I’d still rather be here than back at Xile’s.
To my other side, the corridor extends a few feet before splitting into a fork.
Pressing a hand to the smooth wall behind me, I push myself awkwardly to my feet.
It’s worse, in a sterile environment, being covered in sand and wearing clothes stinking of dried sweat. Xile never had the water to spare for me to properly wash my hair, or so he claimed.
“Is there a bathroom? You guys have a bathroom, right?” I’d take a bucket of water and a washcloth, if I’m being honest. A single cup of water, even. Anything to get rid of the grit on my body, leeching moisture from my already dehydrated skin.
Rin still doesn’t answer, just watches me, as if I’m a mildly interesting story and she’d like to discover the ending.
She’s got the most adorably pointed ears, like she’s dressed up as an elf for Halloween.
Which reminds me of the two others I’d seen with those same ears.
“Your dads—they, um…meld together.” I illustratively interlock the fingers of my two hands.
It sounds absurd out loud, and I’m immediately doubting myself. Perhaps I dreamed that part.
Except if aliens can exist, then why not shape-changing aliens?
“Is that normal for your species?”
Silence.
“Can you, er, do that, too?”
More silence. To nobody’s surprise.
“Right.” I head deeper into the ship, and Rin doesn’t try stopping me.
There are doors leading off the corridor in one direction, so that’s the way I go.
They’re automatic, sliding open as I pass, evidently controlled by some sort of motion sensor built into the ceiling.
The first one opens, revealing what must be a mess hall, judging by the stools set against a conveyer-belt-like table.
There’s a desk too, covered in machinery parts and stained black with lubrication and oil.
Clearly someone’s project, although I don’t have a hope of identifying what they’re in the middle of constructing.
For a mess hall, there’s an annoying lack of food, and my stomach rumbles.
I don’t press the issue, though, deciding my first priority has to be a bath.
I want to scrub away all the sand and traces of Xile’s repulsive stall.
I want to make a good—well, not first impression—a good second impression on my hosts.
If their dedication to keeping Rin safe is representative of how they treat everyone else, then being on their ship is my best chance for…
what? Getting home? Yes, please! If they know where Earth is.
Maybe I can ingratiate myself to them and then suggest it would be the right thing from them to return me home.
For that, I can’t stink.
The next two rooms, one on either side of the corridor, appear to be bedrooms. L-shaped, with hammocks instead of beds. One is considerably messier than the other—clothes falling out of open cubby holes and more machinery parts piled onto any free space, which is mostly the floor.
Rin stands in front of the other room, and she doesn’t have to say anything for me to know this is where she sleeps. Apparently, a kid showing off their worldly possessions is pretty universal body language even across species. She catches hold of my hand and tugs me into her much neater space.
“Wow, sweetheart,” I say, remembering at the last second not to smile and scare her with another look at my teeth.
“These are lovely.” Not that I know what I’m looking at.
A tablet of some sort, with a cracked screen and more alien writing I can’t read.
A box in which she’s stored a glass bead and a few amber-yellow rocks, not too dissimilar to the color of her skin. Tokens of her home planet?
“So beautiful.” And sad, too, because I’m pretty sure, even with my limited understanding of alien objects, that there isn’t a single toy amongst her stuff. Nothing like the Tamagotchi or the Rubik's Cube Mom bought me when I was about Rin’s age.
What’s more, the walls of her room are stark white, and closer inspection has me guessing that her clothes are all secondhand.
Not that there’s anything wrong with hand-me-downs, except that they’re clearly meant for a full-sized man.
Her leggings have been rolled up around her ankles, and her boots look comically large on her small feet.
“What’s through there?” I motion to the inner door, leading into the hollow section cut out of the L shape.
No answer, but Rin does open the door for me, and I gasp in delight. That metal circle the size of a dinner plate, set into the ceiling, has got to be an alien shower.