Slipstream Messenger (Neutrino Book 1)

by Daltea Francis

  “Couldn’t sleep either?” she asked.

  “On that bed? Not really. How long have you been out here?”

  “Since about five minutes after I went to bed. All I did was toss and turn. I went for a walk and before I knew it the Nilfrits had led me here.”

  “They have good taste,” he said. He decided not to tell her that the Nilfrits had also led him to this spot. “I didn’t see you leave.”

  “You were already asleep, although you didn’t look very peaceful.”

  “It’s hard to be at ease when you’re about to throw yourself into an almost certain doom.”

  “Are you that worried?”

  “Have you met me? Of course I’m worried. Aren’t you?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Nothing I can do about it now, I agreed to this mission and I’m going to complete it.”

  “I wish I could be so casual about it. I never even wanted to stream again, let alone pilot a strange, new, half-finished vehicle right under the nose of a destructive monster.”

  “You can’t be that terrified; you’re here, aren’t you?”

  “Only because I had no choice. I’m a coward. I hate it, but it is what it is.” He had tried to say it off-handedly, but the intensity of her gaze made him turn away, embarrassed.

  Lylia didn’t respond at first. “I don’t think you’re a coward,” she said quietly. He looked back up at her.

  “Of course you do, everyone does,” he scoffed.

  “You’re such a Stream brat,” she said with a touch of anger in her voice.

  “I’m just being honest. I’m not a hero, Lylia. I’ve never excelled at anything in my whole life. I’m constantly terrified, and if I could just run away I would. I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand.” Neutrino parroted back the words she had told him at their first meeting, not sure if it was insulting to her, or to himself.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, you know. You’re one of the best, top of the class. How could you possibly understand what it’s like at the bottom?”

  “Maybe I don’t know what it’s like to be at the bottom of the class, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t recognize a real failure when I see one, and you’re not it. You could have quit, you didn’t. And you’re not a coward either. You only wish you could run away, but a real coward would. You don’t have to be heroic in order to be a hero; you just have to stand up when you’re needed.” She paused, examining him with her deep eyes. Neutrino couldn’t meet her gaze, so instead he watched his fingers moving through the water and the ripples that danced around his hands.

  “I’ll admit, I didn’t think much of you when I first met you,” Lylia continued. He could still feel her looking at him. “Most Slipstream Messengers are so thick they couldn’t find their way out of their own house without a navigator to guide them. But you’re not like them. You’re intelligent; you just don’t bother to use it. You’ve been so beaten down that you’ve begun to believe what everyone says about you.

  “I heard them talking, on Venthall, in the Launch Room. Even I couldn’t believe what they said. I knew you had been in the Academy for four rounds but…” she paused, recalling the stories she had been told. Neutrino wished she didn’t know about them. Lylia swam closer to him and pulled his face up to meet her gaze.

  “Look how far you’ve come already. You saved my life, remember that? And you didn’t even hesitate, even with the ylmax breaking down the door. A coward doesn’t do that. You said you wanted me to come with you on this mission because if things got messy you knew I would do the right thing. Well, why do you think I agreed to come? For the same reason, about you.

  “You wear this cowardice like it’s some kind of badge of honor, something to be proud of. But it’s just a wall to hide behind, so if things go wrong it doesn’t have to be your fault. So people won’t expect anything of you. But you’re the one they need now. You are. Quit complaining and start living up to it.”

  Neutrino wasn’t sure what to say. They stared silently at each other as a gentle breeze blew through the treetops. He felt Lylia wading gently in the water beside him and her fingers still softly on his cheek. For a brief moment, he had the impression that if he should move in to kiss her she would not resist. But he hesitated, and the moment passed. Or maybe he had just imagined it.

  Lylia let go and moved back from him, content to lazily wade in the water. Neutrino watched her, this strange and wonderfully hard to read creature, so angry most of the time, but unexpectedly kind, and tried to make sense of all that she’d said. It was nice to be complimented by her, even if it was in a backwards sort of way, but he still didn’t really believe it. How could he? Everything he’d done just seemed like some kind of crazy mistake. A mixture of desperate acts that had somehow come out okay, but did that really make him any less of a coward? Or even any better than he was the day before?

  “You only said all of that because I have to pilot you in a brand new, prototype ship. You’re just trying to boost my confidence,” he said as she turned away towards the shore.

  “Probably,” Lylia looked back over her shoulder and smirked, “But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.” She turned away again.

  “Lylia…” Neutrino called out to her, but then he didn’t know what to say. He just stared at her feeling like an idiot. “I…”

  “It’s getting dark,” Lylia saved him from having to say anymore. He looked and saw the sun half gone below the horizon. “We should get going before it’s too dark to find our way back.”

  “Don’t go yet,” Neutrino said, wanting to delay as long as possible, “I mean, I’m sure the Nilfrits can show us the way back.” She seemed to be avoiding his gaze slightly. Was she embarrassed by what she’d said before? Was she as uncomfortable as he was? Or was she just contemplating what to do?

  “Shouldn’t we be trying to get some sleep though? This may be our only chance for a while,” said Lylia.

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Me neither,” she laughed with a slight roll of her eyes. Lylia returned to where he was and Neutrino once again felt her movement in the water, somehow connecting them through the waves.

  Then a miraculous thing happened, in Neutrino’s mind at least: they waded in the water and talked, just talked long into the night. Unlike their initial intense discussion, the conversation that followed was about mundane things: the Academy, the base, Arnasi, but it was no less wonderful. So contented was he, that Neutrino even went through all the stories Lylia had heard in the Launch Room and verified which were embarrassingly true, and which were exaggerated. He felt freer, at ease with her. Even with danger looming but a few short hours away, he felt calm and relaxed.

  22. Night Spots

  The three moons, one full, the others waning, were already hanging brightly in the sky when they finally agreed it was time to return. Lylia swam towards the shore and Neutrino followed shortly behind. Trying not to stare as she exited the water with her standard issue undergarments clinging tightly to her body, something caught Neutrino’s eye.

  Lylia pulled her long dark hair over to one side and began wringing it out. On the back of her neck, standing out from the deep color of her skin, were creamy white spots that seemed to trail onto her back. He looked downward and saw that they continued down the back of her legs.

  “You’re Tellasian?” he asked. She looked sharply over her shoulder at him.

  “Half,” Lylia said, turning back around. She continued drying her hair. “My mother was Tellasian.” Neutrino was stunned. The Tellasians were a secluded society. He had read about them in school and seen pictures, but he had never met one and he had never even heard of a half-Tellasian before. Neutrino stared at the spots on her neck, spots that were supposed to only show themselves in the dark. They were actually quite attractive, more so with the light of the moons illuminating them. He felt a strong urge to reach out and touch them.

  “Do you have wings?” he asked. He hadn’t seen any hint of th
em, but maybe she just had a way of hiding them.

  “No,” she snapped. Lylia and Neutrino began putting their uniforms back on, the ultra light material of their undergarments already nearly dried. “I don’t have wings or webbed toes and fingers. All my mother left me were a bunch of night spots, slightly longer than normal extremities, and a moody, stubborn disposition. Nice, huh?”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” Neutrino said as he fingered the yellow handkerchief before placing it carefully inside his left sleeve.

  “What?”

  “You said, all my mother left me. I assumed you meant she was dead.”

  “No, she’s not dead. Not that I know of. She just left when I was little. I hardly remember her,” Lylia shrugged.

  “At least you knew her. I’ve never even met my father.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know; my mother never wanted to talk about it. I think he left though, she never has much of anything nice to say about him, no pictures or anything either. Well, except the one, at least I think it was a picture of him,” Neutrino said, trying and probably failing to pull off nonchalance. He shrugged and pushed his still dripping hair out of his face, then shook his hands out into the nearby trees, annoying a few Nilfrits in the process. The Nilfrits didn’t seem to like the water, but now that Neutrino was once again on land and mostly dry Fizz was more than happy to find a perch just under his chin, carefully avoiding the still wet hair.

  “What do you mean?” Lylia asked as they began following the Nilfrits back towards the cabin.

  “My mother had this ancient desk in her room; I think she said my great-grandmother owned it or something. Anyway it had a lot of drawers and compartments in it so I used to dig around in them a lot and one day I found a picture mixed in with a bunch of old papers. It was my mother sitting on our old orange couch with a baby in her arms, I think it was me, but she never kept many photos of anything so mostly it’s a guess. There was a guy sitting next to her with his arm around her. I always kind of thought it was my father.”

  “Did you ever ask her about it?”

  “Are you kidding? At six I had already learned that we didn’t talk about certain things, my father being one of them. She never wanted to discuss him, and it usually just made her cranky if we did, as if I needed more of that. So, I kept it to myself. For weeks I snuck into the drawer to look at the picture. I think I memorized every crackle in the paper. I don’t know, I guess it was kind of stupid-”

  “I don’t think it’s stupid,” Lylia flashed him a smile and his heart beat a little extra.

  “I just wanted it to be him so badly, you know?” Neutrino continued, “I don’t know anything about him, finding a picture somehow made him more real. I was furious when it disappeared.”

  “What happened to it?’

  “No idea, my mother I guess, but I have no clue what she did with it. She probably burned it,” Neutrino snickered, but inside something tugged at his core.

  “I think you were better off, not knowing him I mean. It’s hard loving someone and then watching them leave,” Lylia paused and Neutrino tried to read her expression, but she just stared ahead, “I don’t really blame my mother for leaving though.”

  “Why not?”

  “It was hard for her on Omin Prime. It was a small colony and most of the people there were not very welcoming to a strange Tellasian woman with wings, but she had no choice my parents couldn’t stay on Tellasia anymore.”

  “I didn’t think the Tellasians let anyone on their planet to begin with. How did your father get there?”

  “They don’t let anyone in now, but it wasn’t always like that. Thirty years ago, the Tellasians welcomed the first off-worlders to their planet with open arms. They enjoyed the newcomers, and they wanted to learn about them. Scientists like my father were among the first to arrive.”

  “What happened?”

  “What always happens when the Commonwealth is involved? They wanted to make Tellasia their own, but the Tellasians weren’t interested. They believed that the Central Worlds were corrupt and would be a bad influence. The argument elevated and eventually the Tellasians kicked all of the aliens off their planet and went into seclusion. Since the Commonwealth had not discovered anything of great value on Tellasia, they more or less gave up trying to take them over; it wasn’t worth the cost of a long drawn out conflict. But the damage was done. Do you know what a Kumrarii is?”

  “No,” Neutrino shook his head and had to smother an inappropriate giggle at the feel of Fizz’s not fur under his chin. Lylia didn’t seem to notice.

  “That’s not surprising, although there are some medialites that have taken to using the word in their vids. They think it sounds all stellar or something. Kumrarii means ‘one true love’, which is how the medialites use it. But for the Tellasians it is much deeper than that simple translation. You know how there are some birds that mate for life? And if their mate dies, they never take another?” Neutrino nodded but he really had no idea what she was talking about. He decided just to take her word for it as they climbed towards the cabin.

  “Tellasians can only love one person for their whole lives.”

  “Really? How do they know who it is?”

  “My father told me it’s their choice. They choose someone to bind themselves to, and once they do that, they are completely committed to that person and no one else. Normally, it’s a mutual choice, since all Tellasians have Kumrarii.” Lylia stopped and looked at him with a strange sadness in her eyes, “My mother chose my father as her Kumrarii, but he couldn’t do the same for her. It was a lot to risk, since he wasn’t bound by it.

  “When the Tellasians kicked all of the outsiders off their planet, my mother had the choice to either stay and be alone forever, or go with him,” Lylia turned and continued moving along the path behind the Nilfrits. “My father might not have been bound by Kumrarii, but he did love her. I think they really tried to make it work, but… he was always so focused on his research, and she had no one else. She tried to get along with everyone, but she was always an outsider. I can’t ever remember her smiling. And the disappointment of having a daughter so completely different from herself didn’t help much either I suppose.” She roughly twisted her hair over her left shoulder, trying in vain to chase away any remaining dampness. Though her voice had been calm, the tenseness of her body was anything but.

  “I doubt you could be a disappointment to anyone, even if you’re not fully Tellasian,” Neutrino surprised himself with such a bold comment. Lylia gave him a shy smile over her shoulder. “Have you ever tried to go back to Tellasia and find her?”

  “No, they probably wouldn’t let me in. And I really have no desire to see her again anyway. She left me. Even if I can understand why and how hard it must have been for her to go, I don’t think I’m done being mad at her yet.”

  “If you choose a Kumrarii, will you be bound to him the same way she was?” Neutrino asked as they stopped outside the cabin door. It was a very personal question he realized, but there had been a lot of personal questions flying around the evening air, and she didn’t seem to mind. Lylia turned and looked at him as she leaned against the frame of the door, her long dark hair now free to dry in the warm breeze.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “There aren’t many half-Tellasians out there to ask. But it doesn’t matter; I’ve already decided I will never fall in love, it’s better that way.” They shared a peaceful silence, neither uncomfortable nor pressured. Neutrino watched her pull a small pendant from inside her shirt and she gently wrapped the long fingers of her right hand around it. He had not noticed the pendant before, and in the darkness of the evening, it was too obscured by her delicate fingers for him to get a good look at it. Apparently deep in thought, Lylia raised the pendant to her mouth and ran it along her lips as though to kiss it while she stared absently at the ground. He felt sad for her, that she would choose this path. He also felt something in his chest that was very
much like his usual fear, but it was not anxious or destructive. It was a longing, and an understanding of a man he had never met, but with whom Neutrino felt he had much in common.

  “What’s your name?” Lylia asked, pulling the pendant from her mouth and waking him from his contemplation.

  “Neutrino.”

  “Okay, idiot, let’s try this again: What’s your real name?” She smirked and stuffed the necklace back into her shirt.

  Neutrino knew what she had meant, but he had no intention of telling her or anyone else his real name, it was far too embarrassing. Which was why he was so surprised when he blurted it out anyway.

  “Mynophales Erythilon.” Predictably, she laughed out loud.

  “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” he said wryly. Neutrino looked at her sourly, to which she warmed slightly and stopped laughing.

  “It’s not that bad, it’s just so old fashioned. I didn’t think anyone had two names anymore, especially not such long ones.”

  “It’s a family name,” was all Neutrino could say. It was the same defense he’d used for ages and he wasn’t even sure it was true. His mother had told him it was a family name but she never said who in the family. He supposed maybe his father, but she seemed to hate him so much that it seemed unlikely. “You can’t imagine how grateful I was to join the Academy and get a new name.”

  “I don’t know, Mynophales Erythilon has kind of a nice ring to it. It’s not much worse than Neutrino, really,” Lylia laughed.

  “Sure, just make fun of both my names.”