23. Tammy
TAMMY
Aliens under a starry sky… why is this the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me?
The night stretched above us, its stars scattered in patterns so familiar yet suddenly oh-so strange when viewed alongside three beings who had traveled through them.
We sat along the fence line, the four of us perched on newly reinforced posts that Vantor had installed, coffee mugs steaming in the cool night air.
It must be around two o’clock now. Early enough we could go to sleep and get decent enough rest, yet it also felt too late for that.
I was wired.
More awake than I’d ever been in my life.
Body humming with energy.
How could I feel so alive with these aliens right now, when I’d never felt that way around other humans?
Titling my head, I gazed upward. For a heartbeat, I wondered if the twinkling stars were trying to tell me a secret, trying to communicate in the same way that the aliens did when tiny bursts of light punctuated the colorful expanses of their real skins.
Unfortunately, my human brain couldn’t grasp the meaning behind either bright language.
But even beyond the foreign speech of sky, I didn’t comprehend much right now, not with three impossible silhouettes beside me.
I looked back down, glancing right then left.
None of them were bothering to keep their perfect human guises in check.
Kalith’s lower tentacles were woven into the fence below him, keeping him stable perched atop the barrier.
Vantor was using the tip of one tentacle to stir his coffee, frowning down at it and what he called its “pungent scent”.
And Cyro was currently tiptoeing four tentacles through the pasture grass, trailing behind a large group of musical katydids.
My body felt warm, heat radiating from my center. It wasn’t the hot coffee mug, or the woolen sweater; it was the company.
Kalith’s hovering lamps spilled emerald, sapphire, and amber glows across us and the landscape. Without warning, they grew more intense, dulling the stars above.
“Can you lower the lights?” I asked as I lifted my mug up for a long, life-affirming sip.
Without answering, Kalith pressed something on a strange watch type device.
I hadn’t noticed it before. The suspended lamps did not decrease in brightness, but instead lowered closer to the ground, coming to stop at about the level of the middle fence railing.
I laughed. “I mean; I guess that’s technically lower. ”
“Did you wish for a different outcome?” Kalith’s tentacle tip hovered over the watch again.
“The brightness. Could you lower that too?”
He nodded, and seconds later the tri-color glowing dimmed.
I took another sip of the hot coffee, letting the rich flavors envelop me as Kalith’s lights cast their enchanting effects over the scene.
It was all surreal and made more so by the blend of alien and Earth colors.
The katydids’ singing rose in pitch. Beside me, Cyro tried to mimic their sounds, joining into the chorus.
It was jarring at first, but he shifted his pitch and volume until his vocalizations melded almost seamlessly with the insects.
This should be incredibly strange.
I should be freaking out still.
But it already felt normal. Like Sunflower Hills had always had three alien ranch hands.
“I’ll have the stables back in order by tomorrow,” Kalith said absentmindedly. “The damage looked worse than it was.”
“Tomorrow?” I breathed out. “That’s amazing.”
“It is simple engineering,” he shrugged, tone humble.
“It’s simply awesome is what it is, Kalith,” I corrected. His skin flushed with happy hues, and he gave me a quick, boyish smile.
Less than twenty-four hours, and a burned-down stable would be useable again. How had I ever survived without three magical aliens at my side?
I had never imagined I’d feel so at ease with anyone, let alone an iridescent group of extraterrestrial beings whose mere presence had turned my life upside down.
When they left me, would they miss it here?
I knew I’d miss them.
More than I was able to admit right now.
“What’s your home like?” I needed to understand what they were longing to get back to, to find out how far away from their reality they felt. Maybe I could make them feel more at home here. “Could I go there?”
They exchanged glances, and for a moment, I sensed a quiet tension among them. Cyro ceased mimicking the katydids’ rhythmic chirps, pausing mid-note. He met my gaze, those metallic blue-lavender eyes shimmering under Kalith’s lights.
“Our home is not so different, yet very different from Earth,” he finally said, turning serious in a way that made my heart clench.
“It is a place of vast underwater cities, formed out of organic materials that breathe and adapt like living beings. The sky is dark most of the star cycle, with three moons that provide nourishment to our flora. And the creatures of our world swim in endless, migratory patterns. They have to, as most need different minerals from different oceanic regions throughout their life cycles in order to thrive.”
“If it’s nighttime most of the year,” I said, not exactly sure what a star cycle meant, “then how do the plants photosynthesize?”
“Photo…” Cyro let the word trail off, obviously thinking. “Create nutrition from light?”
I nodded.
“Our moons provide the same necessary catalyst for that. They are Mimasa, Nereida, and Nixa. They are life.”
He began describing the way the moons changed color during their cycles, how the tides shifted as the moons waxed and waned.
I leaned forward, captivated by Cyro’s description.
My mind painted vivid scenes of iridescent cities shimmering beneath waves, bustling with the life of creatures I could scarcely comprehend.
The image was so enchanting, so otherworldly, that I momentarily forgot about my own troubles—the impending foreclosure, the painful memories of Derek, the creeping doubt that threatened to overwhelm me.
Here I was, on my ranch, and somehow part of a cosmic tapestry that spanned more than just Earth.
“That sounds beautiful,” I murmured, glancing at the stars, suddenly filled with longing. “I guess all I have here are... well, fields of sunflowers and hope in a bucket full of holes.”
“We are here,” Kalith said.
“For now,” I murmured sullenly.
The world went absolutely quiet, even the insects ceased singing. I didn’t think I was breathing, my mind trying to fight against a crash. I didn’t want them to leave. How could I already feel that way?
Tension mounted.
And it was Vantor that pulled us up for air. Though, maybe they didn’t need it. They were all three used to living underwater.
“Your constellations look so different here… warped somehow,” Vantor murmured, his body arched back, too far to be natural, one human arm split into tentacles from the elbow down, clinging to fence rails so he wouldn’t fall off the barrier.
“On our world, we view them through azure waters. The light refracts, creating patterns that shift and dance with the tides.”
Part of me wanted to point out that viewing stars through water would make them appear warped, not viewing them through unfettered air, but I was sure to Vantor, seeing the night sky like this was strange.
I sipped my coffee, trying to imagine stars seen through an ocean ceiling. “That sounds beautiful.”
“It is,” he confirmed, his voice carrying a slight underwater quality.
I’d noticed that all their voices changed when they let their human disguises slip.
Now, that bubbling undercurrent in his words held an emotional note.
“As a juvenile, I would swim to the surface barriers at night and press my appendages against them, imagining I could reach through and touch the stars. Back then, only adults could breach the barrier. Young ones do not have developed enough lung systems. The moment I was of age, I felt air kiss my body. I breathed freedom. I saw the stars and wanted nothing more than to reach them. It is why I entered the Galaxy Exploration Force Academy.”
His words reminded me of a childhood memory I’d long forgotten.
“I used to climb onto my roof with a flashlight,” I offered. “I thought if I flashed it enough times, aliens would see it and come visit.” I laughed softly. “Guess it worked eventually.”
Kalith chuckled out of the blue, the sound bubbling from him like water over stones in a brook.
“My story isn’t nearly as poetic as Vantor’s.
I was recruited to G.E.F Academy after repeatedly dismantling colony systems to understand their functions.
It was incarceration at one of the coral mines or join. ”
“You got in trouble for taking things apart?” I asked, grinning at how perfectly that aligned with what I’d seen of him. I was pretty sure he’d snuck back to the tractor already. I’d probably find it in pieces tomorrow.
“Seventeen incidents,” he confirmed, looking sheepish but proud.
“Including the primary atmospheric regulation system of the third surface quadrant. I improved its efficiency by forty-three percent, but that was considered insufficient justification for the sixteen hours of emergency breathing apparatus deployment.”
“Surface quadrant?” I quirked an eyebrow, then took another long draw of coffee gone too cool for my liking.
“As our species expanded, it became necessary to build above water, bio-domes.” Cyro explained. “Compromising the water breathing systems was dangerously foolish.”
Kalith rolled his golden-flecked human eyes.
“Are the bio-domes filled with water?” I guessed.
“Precisely. Though, it is becoming harder to maintain them as our oceans fail.” Cyro sobered, at that, and I wondered if he was thinking about their failed mission.
It would be so selfish of me to want them to stay. An entire planet was waiting on samples of Earth water to try to repair things.
Silence blanketed us again. I didn’t like how serious the air felt around us.