by Elin Wyn
“Let’s try to get this stuff unloaded quickly, I want to get back home,” Jalok said.
“You just want to get back to Dottie, now that she’s moved to Nyheim to be near you,” Navat teased.
“Shut up.”
We laughed and joked with one another for the next hour as we unloaded things meant for Sauma and reloaded things meant to go to Nyheim and Aramita.
We flew back to Nyheim, landing not at the airfield, but in the lot of one of the warehouses.
“Hey, what the hell are you guys doing? You can’t land here,” one of the workers was yelling as he came running out. “Goddammit, should have figured it was you three morons.”
“Hello to you, too, Dent,” Navat smiled as we stepped off the shuttle. “What, you don’t like front door service to make your life easier?”
Dent threw his arms up. “You’re supposed to park in the back if you’re going to do this skrell. Now I need to redirect everything through the warehouse.”
“Oh, boohoo.”
I held back my laughter as I turned my head away. Navat and Dent were always messing with one another. “Hey, do you need me?” I asked Jalok.
“No, we’re good. Dent is in charge now and Navat is doing his best to piss him off. It’s what they do. I think the humans call it something stupid like a ‘bromance,’ or something idiotic like that. Go, you’re off duty.”
“Thank you.”
I took off, jogging for the armory. The people of Nyheim still had the winter decorations up. The tradition, we had learned, came from old Earth. While the actual holidays were no longer relevant, the people were always happy to have a reason for a good party.
And with the decorations was the snow. The rest of the team had already gotten over the snow and were close to being tired of it, or sick and tired of it.
Sk’lar was almost on the verge of hating the snow, but that might have had something to do with him slipping on a patch of ice hidden under the snow and bruising his tailbone. The nonstop teasing from the rest of us when he struggled to sit, or stand, probably didn’t help, either.
Me?
I loved the snow. It was beautiful, peaceful, and delicate. The artistry of the snowflake was a magnificent thing, unable to be duplicated without losing the soul of the artwork. Then, when you put it all together into something as simple as a snowball, or a ‘snowman’, the creation was extended into something completely different
After dropping off my gear, I jogged over to the children’s clinic a few blocks away from the armory. This was what I was really looking forward to when I came back to Nyheim.
These children were all dealing with various illnesses that the local doctors were still unable to find a cure for.
I wasn’t a doctor, but spending time with them was something that I could do to try to make their days better.
And children were less afraid of the ‘big bad aliens’ than the adults were. They were much more willing to hang out with me, even with my deformity.
Years ago, during one of my wilder nights, I had gotten into a fight with a drunk, thinking I could handle him easily.
Unfortunately, I had been wrong. The fight ended with me in infirmary, my left ear missing, and a long cut from my ear to my mouth. Now, that cut was a long scar and my left ear was missing.
Luckily, these children didn’t care about that.
“Cazak!” a few of them called out, their smiling faces making me so much happier than I had been at the beach.
Seeing their faces was the highlight of my day, better than anything else that I could ever see.
The kids didn’t care about my ear, or lack thereof. They didn’t care that my skin was red and scaled, or that I’d been born too far away to even explain.
They cared that I played with them, brought them what presents I could, and visited every chance I got.
And the parents and staff cared, because I was good at research, and had started to look up symptoms of what these children went through, comparing them to similar illnesses throughout the Valorni, Skotan, K’ver and Urai databases.
So far, while I hadn’t found any cures, I had found a couple of ways to make things easier for some of these children.
“So,” I said with a clap of my hands after hugging all of the kids. “Who wants to build snowmen and have a snowball fight? And for those of you that can’t, who wants to, anyway?”
The kids cheered.
I smiled.
Life was good.
Sybil
I woke up with a start.
It was another evening. I must have slept through the whole day again.
It probably made sense, given that I was out all night.
Then I remembered the previous morning. I’d snapped at my friends. I just couldn’t stand to see them acting so horribly to the people who had saved us.
My face scrunched in anger. The hell with them. They shouldn’t have acted like that. I figured I was rich, young, and the mayor’s daughter. I could always find new friends if they wanted to hold a grudge.
When I finally dragged myself out of bed and got dressed, it was nearing the time my father usually came home.
I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it, but headed downstairs to our main floor and drank a cup of coffee, so I could at least be somewhat awake when he arrived.
The front door opened, and I headed into the foyer to greet my father. He came inside, and stared at me with a blank expression. All he did was blink for what seemed like an eternity.
“Uh, hello, Dad.” I waved at him in mock sincerity.
He continued to stare for several more seconds before speaking.
“Hello, daughter.” His voice seemed oddly hollow, as if he were reading mechanical instructions rather than greeting his only child.
“Daughter?” I mean, yes, technically that was a correct description of my relationship to him.
But he’d never called me that before, not in that tone.
I narrowed my gaze at him. “Did you have a rough day at the office, or something?”
My father blinked a few more times, then spoke in the same monotone.
“Or something.”
Right. Time to get out of here, get to anywhere at all.
“Okay. I’m heading over to the Landing tonight, so don’t wait up.”
I rushed up the stairs before he could begin to lecture me. From what I could hear on the second floor, he just stood in the parlor without moving.
He didn’t take off his coat and hang it up or head into the kitchen for a quick snack, which was his usual routine after work. My father remained still as a stone the whole time I was getting ready.
Trying to ignore his strange behavior, I picked out a black fringed dress that was so short I wore opaque hose beneath it, just in case I got a little energetic on the dance floor. Next, I pulled my hair back and up into an elaborate braid, the whole time straining my ears to see if my father had moved in the slightest.
As near as I could tell, he had not.
I finished my look with a pair of dangly ruby pendant earrings that my father had given me at Yuletide. Then I slipped on a pair of shoes that, while sexy, had low enough heels I could still dance in them, and headed downstairs.
I found my father right where I had left him. After giving him an incredulous look, I attempted to walk around him and head out the front door.
“Well, I’m leaving. Don’t bother waiting up.”
“Where are you going?”
I was taken aback by the ferocity in my father’s tone. Even when he’d been angry with me in the past, he never shouted like that.
“To the Landing, for a party, I just told you—”
“You’re doing no such thing, daughter. Look at how you’re dressed. You look like a slut.”
“What?” My cheeks burned. Never before had my father called me something like that. Spoiled and entitled, maybe, but never a slut. “You bought me this dress.”
“I bought everything here, you spoil
ed brat. You’re living off my labor.”
“I’m not going to stand here and listen to you scream at me.” I walked around him and put my hand on the doorknob. Suddenly his hand clasped my wrist. “What are you doing?”
“You’re not going anywhere.” I tried to fight him, but his grip was surprisingly strong. Not only could I not budge his hand from my wrist, but he pulled my arm up in the air away, from the doorknob.
“Daddy, you’re hurting me.”
He had no response except to turn around and half drag me through the house. Stumbling in my heels, I struggled to keep up as he took me into the living room. When did my father get so strong?
With a snarl, he hurled me onto the sofa.
“You are a most disappointing offspring.” His face was a mask of rage, but his words and tone seemed oddly precise. “I labor all day to provide for your upbringing, and all you do is lie about and contribute nothing. You are a waste of resources and matter, and I am ashamed to be your father.”
“Daddy?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Sure, he been acting odd when I came home on New Year’s, but now he’d taken it to a whole new level. “Have you, have you been drinking? Do you have a headache?”
I was grasping at straws, looking for some way to explain my father’s odd speech and behavior. He really didn’t act like he’d been drinking, but it was all I could come up with.
“I have imbibed caffeinated beverages and water. You will imbibe my words, daughter, and stop behaving like a member of the monarchy, and more like an obedient offspring.”
My wrist ached terribly from where he’d grabbed and dragged me across the house.
His face shone with sweat, though the living space had a lot of windows and was frequently chilly, as it was that evening.
I began to wonder if perhaps he were coming down with a virus, when he snapped again.
“Just the sight of you disgusts me. You’re spoiled and revolting.”
I shrank from the sight of his fury, confused by his strange speech and manner. My father, a man to whom I could look for comfort and security, even if he were angry with me, loomed over me like an angry titan. Never before had I seen him so consumed by indignant anger.
Just when I began to fear that my father would actually physically strike me, he abruptly changed again. The rage drained from his face, replaced by the original blank expression he’d worn when he came through the door.
He turned away from me and walked, quite calmly, into the kitchen. I heard cabinets opening and him rummaging around in them.
“What do you want for dinner, daughter?”
I was flabbergasted, utterly discombobulated. A moment before, he’d been the portrait of pure, mad rage, and now he seemed utterly placid.
Once upon a time I’d thought about being a nurse, had done a little bit of reading, before my father had decided that I needed to stay home to be a hostess for him.
From what I remembered of my reading, such a rapid shift in moods was usually the product of drugs, or mental illness, but there was no history of either in our family.
“What do you want for dinner?”
His voice came again, still calm but with an insistent edge. I stammered out something, I don’t even remember what, and then I gingerly rose to my feet.
Checking on his position the whole time, I crept through the living space and moved with as much stealth as I could muster up the stairs.
Once I reached my room, I shut the door tightly, then locked it after a moment’s thought.
Then I curled up on my bed, my back against the headboard. I hugged my knees and buried my face in between them, sobbing in helpless fear.
What had happened to my father?
Cazak
The guys were getting tired of my constant admiration of the snow, but I didn’t care. Snow was possibly my favorite weather phenomenon.
It was something that we didn’t get to enjoy as much back at home. Skotans occasionally left a few fields and parks filled with snow so the children could experience it, or so we could train in it, but it usually melted away too quickly to enjoy.
Here, the humans left the snow where it fell. They moved it off the streets and the sidewalks, but generally, humans enjoyed the snow and had fun with it.
So, instead of letting me do patrols with them or help them on some of the reconstruction projects, I was told to go do what I wanted to do, so I was spending my day with the kids and their parents.
At least until lunch, when Jalok called me.
“What’s going on, cousin?” I asked, as I held off a small mob of little fingers, determined this time to find the ticklish spot under my scales.
“I need you to come with me and Dottie back to Kaster. I’ve already cleared it with Sk’lar and the general.”
“Okay. Not to sound repetitive, though, but what’s going on?”
I could hear him sigh into the comm and I could hear the frustration in his voice.
He hated it when I questioned a request or an order from him.
He always thought he was second-in-command of the team, and we didn’t really argue the point simply because the rest of us didn’t want the responsibility.
“Dottie received a call from her friend Sybil. Sybil thinks there’s something wrong with her father and Dottie is thinking it might be a possession. The symptoms and description sound right.”
“When do we go?”
“As soon as you get to the airfield. Dottie and I are headed there now.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you there. Standard load from the armory or full gear?”
“Standard load. We’re not trying to scare people and create a situation. Oh, minor note. Sybil’s father is the mayor.”
“Great. Thanks. See you there.” I turned off the comm and looked over at the children. “I’m sorry, guys. I have to go to work.”
“No.” “Why?” “Please stay.”
“I don’t want you to go.” “Oh, come on.”
I did my best to hold my laughter in check because it was funny, it was cute, and it really felt good to have them want me around. “I’m sorry. I really want to stay, you know that. But I have to go help someone.”
After another minute or two of saying goodbye and receiving hugs, I was finally on my way. I had to wait a little while for Jalok and Dottie to arrive, but it was long enough for me to get my armor on and make sure my weapons were properly loaded.
“You got here fast,” Jalok commented with a grin.
“Well, since you said this was just a business trip, I just grabbed my spare suit from here.”
“You actually store your armor here?”
“Not my armor, per se, but a spare that I borrowed from someone,” I answered, turning my head away from my cousin as I answered.
“Oh, you son of a three-titted markant. That’s where my extra set of armor disappeared to, you bastard.” Luckily, his voice was filled more with humor than rage, so I wasn’t worried about any sort of retaliation. “What happened to your spare?”
“I’m using my spare as my primary. My original primary armor was destroyed when the Vengeance blew up. I’ve been using my spare set ever since.”
“Why haven’t you requisitioned another set?”
“Keeps slipping my mind. Are we going, or standing here all day to talk?”
“He’s right, we need to go. Hi, Cazak,” Dottie said as she walked past us towards the shuttle.
“Hey, Dottie.”
“Let’s move, boys.”
Jalok and I looked at one another, shared a smile, and said in union, “Yes, ma’am.” Then, as we chuckled a bit to ourselves, we joined her on the shuttle.
“You boys talk too damn much, you know that?”
“What? We’re just staying in communication, that’s all,” I explained, the smile on my face as big and non-creepy as I could make it. She smiled in return and shook her head as she turned to Jalok.
“He thinks he’s funny, doesn’t he?”
My cousin shrugged. “He tries. He’s a lot less serious than me or Sk’lar, but not quite the funny man as Tyehn or Sakev.”
“Oh, so he’s one of those lighthearted serious guys then.” It wasn’t a question, it was her making a statement of how she saw me. I couldn’t argue, really.
Jalok shrugged. “To a point, yes.”
I started whistling as I launched the shuttle, getting us into the air and flying towards Kaster.
“Aww, he doesn’t like us talking about him,” Dottie mocked playfully.
I looked back. “It doesn’t bother me as much as you think. Just figured I’d let the two of you converse since, according to my cousin there, you don’t talk much when you’re around each other. I mean, there are noises but no conversation.”
Her squeal and the slapping sound that quickly came from behind me were music to my ear.
For the next few minutes, I heard Jalok trying to explain to Dottie that I was lying - I was, and that he didn’t talk to me about their sex life- he didn’t, usually.
But cousins are for teasing, right?
Eventually, we landed in Kaster, where Dottie already had a car waiting for us. We got in, she gave directions, and we were on our way.
Authorities had discreetly been putting out the word that if people saw something strange, they should report it.
So I had no way of knowing if what we were walking into was something serious or someone being trigger-happy with their emergency comms.
A byproduct of the Xathi war and the hybrids that had been created was to make people ever fearful that their family, friends, and neighbors were switching into mindless automatons.
Once Command figured out how to explain the Ancient Enemies and their ability to possess humans to the general population, everyone would report their neighbors for looking at them sideways.
Ten minutes and a few dozen turns later, we were dropped off at the mayor’s house, where Sybil met us at the door.
Her gray eyes were different than any other I had ever seen. They radiated and sparkled with a light that I had never seen before.
