He told her how strained things had become. How the Bok were figureheads now, leaders of Earth, working directly for the Kel, and that shocked her in ways she would not have thought possible. It scared the hell out of her, actually, and as he dropped that bombshell his words for some time afterward went unheard, her mind locked to that fresh impossibility. The Bok were now leaders of the world? They were her creation, long ago, meant to make Earth a safe haven, a base of power from which to build a Golden Age, and they’d fallen. Done the exact opposite. They’d failed to uphold her legacy on this remote world and, instead, come forward in time as a secret society, plotting most recently to take it over and now, through other means but all the same had managed to achieve that end. The scary part, of course, was that the Bok were hiding secrets that could lead to the Codex Amkradus. The very Codes she sought. And the fact that the Kel selected the Bok to rule, of all possibilities on a world with 7 billion people, only scared her more. The Kel must also expect something of the Bok. She could think of no reason for it otherwise.
Time, suddenly, was of the essence.
And she felt her anger boiling again, enraged at her fallen prodigies, entrusted with her legacy. Traitors. Aesha had every right to be furious—it was her plans the Bok ruined—and again she saw an opportunity to spring it, to just say it; to tell Zac who she really was and drive home the importance of her ages-old quest, to let him do with it what he would …
He told her Kang was back with the Kel. She focused and brought her mind to the present. Looked around her room. As normal as it was, as quiet as things were right there in that little cocoon of comfort, laying quietly with the man she loved … it was, all of it, merely a façade. A thin veneer of truth. So thin. Like a pretty hologram or something, shimmering atop an ugly mess. Reality was infinitely more harsh. Things were bad and only getting worse.
Then Zac was rising, going across the room to get something. He came back with a picture and sat on the bed before her. The heavy movement served to drag her back from the brink, into the present. Each time he got on or off the bed, or even shifted, his weight bounced her dramatically.
Zac was a big boy.
Definitely.
“I’ve been looking at this,” he settled and held the frame in his lap for her to see. It was a picture of her, black-and-white, caught in a moment of gut-busting laughter; her favorite, the one she’d always kept on her dresser, and seeing it so suddenly in his naked lap made her breath catch. Zac made no notice but she was propped on her side, on her elbow, and without warning he was sitting cross-legged right in front of her and she was staring eye-level at a picture of her laughing face, right beside his—
She shuddered and sat up, pulling her knees to sit cross-legged with him.
Her arm was getting numb anyway.
“It was the only one in your room,” he looked down at the framed photo, oblivious to the rest. “I really like it.”
“Me too,” she made herself make eye contact.
“I found some of your poems,” he went on.
At that she swallowed, the image of her picture in his naked lap all but forgotten. “My poems?”
He nodded, got up again and went for them; one of her notebooks, stickers covering the front. She recognized it at once. Even after everything she and Zac had shared … her poems were so beyond personal, the idea of anyone reading them created all sorts of little twinges of apprehension. Each sticker on the front had meaning. Every little drawing inside, every little doodle. Every word. All of it had deep, personal meaning at one time.
“I read a few,” he returned to the bed and sat facing her, crossing his legs once more and opening it in his lap. He paused. “I hope they weren’t supposed to be private,” he looked at her as if realizing he might’ve made a mistake. She could tell he didn’t want to have violated her privacy, and must surely have caught a bit of her reaction.
“No,” she said and gave him a weak smile. “Not for you.”
He nodded and flipped the pages. “I wasn’t sure if I would ever see you again.” He found one and stopped. “This one I liked especially. Kind of like the song, it made me think of us.” He studied the poem, about to read it aloud.
This was so unreal. As nervous as she was right then she was … thrilled. Utterly, thrilled. Zac, her Zac, man of her dreams, was sitting on her bed, holding her poetry journal, about to read her words, her most private thoughts, to her … Her deepest observations on love and existence …
Her former life was so totally blown away.
Vaporized.
She wondered which one he picked.
“This one is called ‘Why’,” he looked up, then back down at the page. She didn’t remember it at first, but then he started reading.
“Why?” he read the first line. “Because We are. We are Here. We are Now. This is My time. This is Your time. This is Our time. We own this moment. Need there be a reason Why? We are, and We will always be. We are Timeless. We are why.”
She cringed. He looked up, a pondering expression on his face. Like he was imagining more meaning to it than there probably was. She almost said it was stupid, that it was years old, that she wrote it when she was, like, eleven, that she had no idea how the world worked back then; almost brushed it off as simple-minded, the ignorant whimsy of a pre-teen girl—any of a dozen dismissals of what she felt was not her best work—but caught herself. Instead she maintained her gaze as he gave his assessment.
“It’s pure,” he said. Clearly he found something in it. “This is our time. We own this moment. It made me think of us. We don’t need a reason for any of this. We simply are, Jess, and it gave me hope. That I would see you again.” He quoted: “We will always be.” He smiled. “Like there was no way we couldn’t.”
A little of her initial reaction faded and she smiled with him.
“Who was it for?” he asked, curious.
Hm? “Oh, no one. I think, I don’t know. I think I was imagining the future. Mostly just daydreaming, probably.
“I used to daydream a lot.”
He closed the notebook.
Carefully he set it to the side and announced: “I watched fishing.” The statement was so random it took her a second to even comprehend what he said. Inquisitively he looked into her eyes. “You ever watch fishing?”
“Fishing?” she managed.
He shrugged. “On TV. A few stations have been showing repeats. Most channels are showing news and I think a lot of that is being cut or edited. It’s hard to tell.
“Anyway, I caught a show with some guys in a boat and it was different so I stopped to watch. They were out on a lake fishing. Of all the chaos everywhere it just seemed so … peaceful. Before I knew it I was hooked.” And as he said that he realized his own pun and threw in a cursory, “budump bump”.
He went on. “So I watched. Very soothing. Man! I really liked it. I’ve seen a few episodes.”
She could hardly imagine.
“Americans take their fishing seriously,” he noted. “All kinds of gear. Boats. Big motors. Lures. I think it would be fun to do bass fishing. You know, take a really fast boat and race out to the best spot, claim it, shut everything down then just sit there in the quiet and fish.”
She stared at him.
“I don’t know,” he shrugged in response to her continued muteness. “I’d like to go. If we ever get the chance.”
Jess imagined Zac casting a rod. Flinging the lure over the horizon and burning up the reel. The thought of it brought a light smile to her lips. In truth the thought of him being interested in fishing at all was amusing, and as he mirrored her smile, uncertain, she resisted the urge to reach and put a hand on his cheek. He looked so cute sitting there, all eager and wanting to fish.
“We’ll go fishing,” she assured him.
That made him happy. “I don’t care if I catch anything. It just looks fun to sit there and do it. Like having something to do while you’re, basically, doing nothing.”
“I think t
hat’s essentially what fishing is,” she agreed. Now she could see his mind was going, envisioning a peaceful time and a place where they could fish. She could almost feel the weight of his determination; the sheer immensity of the real difficulties staring them in the face, hidden for this brief instant behind that promise of happiness.
She took a deep, cleansing breath.
“I’m starving.” She was. “When’s Willet coming?” She thought of him now.
“Sometime tonight, maybe tomorrow. He’s finding out what he can on the ground. He’ll call when he’s close.”
She climbed off the bed. “I’m going to grab something to eat. You want anything?”
“Yes!” he enthused.
She leaned across and kissed him.
“I’ll bring something up.”
Then she had an idea. There might not be another good chance. Following through on the impulse she turned and went to her dresser and opened one of the drawers. Everything was where she left it. She rummaged for her camera and took it out—pausing at her reflection in the dresser mirror. She could see herself fully from the hips up, taken once more with how sleek, how beautiful she’d become. The rich color of her tawny skin, taut curves and lithe frame, the beauty of her face centered by those captivating tiger eyes. Even her hair looked luxurious in that lighting; a tangled, sexy mess about her head. She turned away, finding herself a little embarrassed by this new her.
But was it really new? She looked the same, exactly the same only … refined. Which begged the question: What was beauty? That thing so heavily attributed to the body. Rarely did people speak of inner beauty, other than as a passing comment—if that. One made usually as a kindness, a way to offset a perceived outer ugliness. And Jess wondered, had her body just become a reflection of her inner self? A lens for something more; strength of spirit, of will, the things that really mattered, reflections of her and not the flesh? Her beauty, her power, and it struck her how very important the body was made out to be and yet how little it truly meant. This new refinement of image was less about beauty in the strictest sense, more … an aesthetic. A higher wavelength, perhaps. One you might attribute to things greater than mere skin and hair, and as she stood there trying not to stare at herself she had flashes of people she’d met in her life, people who might not have been physically beautiful and yet were beautiful, drawing others to them by virtue of that inner greatness. Something that made them more than what they first appeared. Likewise people who should’ve been beautiful and weren’t. The physically beautiful who were yet ugly.
She turned to Zac, camera in hand.
“Here,” she went back and stood by the bed, held up the camera and turned it on. She wrapped the straps around her wrist and held it at eye level. “Let’s take one of you.” As she raised it to frame him he remained leaning back, though he straightened to face the lens, adjusting his posture. She zoomed in and he looked into the camera and … gave the exact right look, turning it on like a switch. It was perfect. She snapped the picture.
“There.” She showed it to him on the small screen, then went and put the camera on the dresser. “Now we’ve got one of you.”
With a flirtatious little turn, she went over, reached down and grabbed his Kazerai shirt off the floor, snapped it out and pulled it over her head. She posed briefly in the heavy black tee.
“Looks good on you,” he said. Then added: “But then, you look good in anything.” And, with a sly wink: “Or nothing.”
She smiled. Not too clever, but the way he said it—coming from him—it made her tingle.
She headed for the door and caught sight of the Icon on the bookshelf as she did. Shining harshly through the momentary peace, serving only to remind her of the gravity of the situation. Of the things she had yet to tell Zac. Of all the problems, all the things wrong with her life.
But that could wait a little longer.
Right now she was going downstairs to get something to eat.
CHAPTER 3: TIMELESS LOVE
Kel warlord Eldron held a steady gaze on the shimmering blue and brown world below. Earth. He’d had his crew shift their orbit to bring a specific target into view, and his heavy cruiser now hung in space directly over the designated spot. Left and right across the breadth of the forward screen the edges of the curved globe spanned all the way to either side, the blackness of the void touching right up against the thin haze of atmosphere. It was daytime in this hemisphere, heading toward sunset over the area he watched, no clouds blocking the view, and it was a clear patch of land he looked down on, able to make out the larger details of the human city far below even without magnification.
The entire Kel invasion fleet floated in orbit at various points around the world, many craft such as Eldron’s moving freely, investigating or observing this or that area or event on the surface, some under direction, others left to roam. Things were somewhat lax; there was no threat with which to be concerned. Eldron was one of those left to his own devices.
As he stared outward through the bridge’s wide view screen his crew worked quietly around him.
“Update?” His eyes roved the land below. This world was warmer than Kel, and this time of year and in this half of it things were getting warmer. There wasn’t much snow left on the ground except at the higher latitudes.
“We’ve zeroed in on the geographic location in question but no further anomalous signals.”
Earlier they pieced together an aggregate of unusual readings and communications traffic that added up to a zone of interest Eldron determined bore closer scrutiny. His team narrowed the anomalies further to locations on the outskirts of a city known as Boise, in the country of America.
His interest began with a little pulse of energy that flashed among the background storm of electronics blasting from every part of the planet, quite possibly like the same signal that announced the arrival of Kang. Not an easy thing to detect in the current environment; Earth was putting out so much juice in terms of artificial electromagnetic waves … the planet looked like a damn star across those spectrums. Block out certain wavelengths and this little planet was brighter than its sun. And so a small signal, buried in the noise, was unlikely to raise notice. This one did. A flag was subsequently set, with a note to monitor traffic over networks in the area, and the data collection began. That in turn led to the intercept of more chatter, nothing too suspicious but, now that a bit of attention was there, Eldron’s team had added additional flags. Then a weaker signal of the same sort of energy signature and Eldron made the decision to move.
“What resources do we have in the area?” he asked. Not as much combat had taken place in America though some definitely had, leaving most of the Kel units deployed elsewhere.
“One squadron can respond in short order,” came the answer. “Tactical ground units could be inserted.”
So far this wasn’t screaming for a check. Still, it bore a closer look.
“What's the local resistance?”
“Nil. Civilians, mostly. As we’ve seen they tend to be armed in this particular Earth country, but unlikely we would meet much resistance on a forced sweep.”
Eldron paused. “Send the closest units. Have the ground commander check with me before he proceeds.”
“Yes, lord.”
**
Jess put down the knife. She’d been staring at it. She put the lid back on the jelly, then the peanut butter, took the jelly to the fridge, took out the milk and put the peanut butter back in the cupboard.
From there she went across to the pantry and grabbed a few bags of Cheetos. Nothing went better with PB&J than Cheetos. That and a tall glass of cold milk. She got down two glasses and poured, one for her, one for Zac, arranging everything on a serving tray. As she positioned the glasses she found herself caught up in the pattern on the tray. It was the same tray she’d used back in her “normal” days, making snacks and eating them in her room, or in the living room watching TV. Even once or twice in the backyard for an impromptu picnic, one
of those times with Bianca. Her family had had the tray a long time, since she was little.
It brought with it many memories.
As she capped the milk she wondered how her friend was doing. So many things to wonder about … it was overwhelming. According to Zac Bianca was safe on Anitra. Jess herself had just returned from an entirely different world. Everything that had happened so far was just … crazy. A fantastic set of impossibilities, yet in a weird way certain aspects were no different than a regular life. Right now, with her at home, making snacks in the kitchen, Bianca off somewhere else … it was kind of like she’d arrived home from college for vacation or something, and Bianca was off at school in a different town. Only in this case “school” was preparation to fight aliens, and the campuses were on entirely different planets. Same concept, such vastly greater scales … it was nearly incomprehensible.
But it was real. It was happening.
She noticed she was staring vacantly again. She took the milk back to the fridge. When she opened the door the light splayed across her legs and the tiles of the kitchen floor. It was getting dark; with no lights on in the house things were getting gloomy. As she put the milk back and withdrew her hand she watched the sleeve of Zac’s shirt slide across her arm. It was like a heavy weave T-shirt, tough—it felt like it could stand up to a lot, which it would have to if it were on a Kazerai—but at the same time fit like any other shirt, only bigger. An average guy’s T-shirt would’ve been big on her, Zac’s was like a dress. It hung nearly to her knees, the “short” sleeves falling below her elbows.
She loved it.
She closed the door.
With all the unbelievable bad in that moment there was yet the unbelievable good. Zac, her soul mate, was up in her room. She was standing in her own kitchen, safe, for the moment, making them sandwiches. Tugging her emotions simultaneously between the oh-so-normal and the oh-so-unreal. How the two could coexist, how the two had come to be, right there, at the same time … Insane/sane. Colliding harder than ever and she decided never again to ask herself how much stranger things could get, and instead resolved to simply leave herself open for any possibility. Though it felt wrong to be doing any of what she was doing under those circumstances, it nevertheless felt wonderful and she would continue stealing these moments when she could.
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 4
