by Zoey Draven
Her mother had always believed in forgiveness. In moving on.
Tavak had growled those terse words to her last night, which had endlessly played in her mind even during sleep…but he’d apologized for it. Stella knew that many males wouldn’t have.
Hell, working on a merchant ship, with males from all over the Quadrants, she could only remember an apology once. And it had been from Haase, after her mother had died, even though it wasn’t his fault. It had been no one’s fault.
Tavak didn’t talk much, that was certain. But he’d sought her out that afternoon to make amends and so Stella wanted to respond by moving forward.
She slid the goblet across the counter to him, wiping some of the thick brew off on the rag in her pocket when it sloshed over the sides.
She felt strangely shy as she regarded him.
“Good evening,” she murmured, a polite greeting that she’d never quite understood. Even if an evening wasn’t ‘good,’ it was an expected greeting. But her mother had always greeted everyone she saw with it, even when they’d been in space, where it was difficult to keep track of time. And so, Stella did as well.
“Kasuri,” Tavak rumbled, inclining his head to her, keeping her gaze.
Stella leaned her front into the bar slab, the edge of which came up to the middle of her belly. It was built with a much larger bartender in mind, like Reji.
Just looking at him made her want to smile. She felt those familiar stirrings in her belly begin to shift their way into her chest, tingling in her throat.
Pressing her luck, she asked, “How was the rest of your day?”
Tavak rarely answered her. At least with words. Sometimes, he’d level her a long look, one she held, unafraid, and wouldn’t back down from. Other times, he’d grunt, lift a shoulder, and then seem irritated that he’d done so.
“Uneventful,” he rasped, a male of few words. Well, Stella had more than enough for both of them.
As if he’d asked, which he definitely hadn’t, Stella responded with, “Mine was too. Though there was a little hiccup with the Dumerian root delivery. And because of that, I didn’t have enough time to slice them and bake them. Poy’ra is very upset, naturally.”
She nodded her head to the Gharatan sitting at one of the tables on the main floor. The older male quite liked the Dumerian root ‘chips’ that she made. She always made sure to have a small batch on all the tables, an extra expense that Reji didn’t like but approved of nonetheless.
When Stella told Poy’ra there were no root chips that night, one would’ve thought she’d stolen his firstborn child. The male had been crushed.
“I’ve decided that tomorrow, I’ll make an extra batch just for him. To make up for it,” she finished. She gave him a small, teasing smile, “Not that you would understand the love that Poy’ra has for them. Because you’ve never tried one.”
Even though she always left out a small little basket of them near Tavak’s stool every night, without fail. Poy’ra usually waited until Tavak left, and then with a sigh, Stella always bagged them up for him so he could take them home.
Tavak was watching her as she spoke. For a brief moment, his gaze had dropped down to her lips, watching the words form there, before he met her eyes once more.
Stella swallowed hard, especially when the silver and gold threads in his eyes moved and swirled and shifted, something she’d always been so mesmerized by and something that was distinct to his race.
She was surprised when he answered her teasing jab because he so rarely ever did.
“Keriv’i only need to eat once or twice during the week,” Tavak told her before taking a long draw from his goblet. “Anything more is unnecessary.”
She frowned. There had been a Keriv’i on Haase’s ship. Diruka. He’d eaten at all the meals with them, hadn’t he? Though, thinking back now, perhaps he had skipped a few. Stella had only ever spoken with him on occasion so she’d never thought to question it.
“Even one tiny little chip?” she asked, leaning towards him on her elbows. “It hurts my feelings, you know.”
His eyes flashed. And there it was. That long, endless, mildly exasperated look she loved so much. As if he was saying: I know what you’re doing and I won’t fall for it.
“You drink,” she pointed out, peering at the silver rim of the goblet, at those impossibly soft lips curling against the hard metal when he took another sip. She cleared her throat, straightening, flicking at some invisible dust on the counter. “Isn’t that the same thing?”
“You honestly cannot expect me to forgo my Luxirian brew, now can you?” he said, sliding those strong, muscled blue arms onto the bar as one of his brows lifted.
Did he…was he teasing her?
What universe was this? What wormhole had she unknowingly fallen into?
As Tavak looked at her, she swore she saw the left edge of his lips quirk up. Ever so slightly. A hint of a smile. And Stella knew that this was an alternate reality. Because she’d never seen Tavak smile. Or even come close to one.
She hoped she wasn’t staring. She hoped she didn’t look completely flabbergasted.
“If you can drink then you can try one of my chips,” she decided, a small laugh bubbling up her throat. She covered up her surprise with a wide grin just as she saw one of the patrons wave at her for another round.
She nodded at the Laoti male and his female mate and then pushed back from the counter. Turning, she could still feel Tavak’s eyes on her, making her highly aware of his presence, not that she wasn’t already. She called them her ‘Tavak senses.’ She could probably find him anywhere.
Once she delivered the drinks and wiped up some spilled brew on a recently vacated table, she made her way back behind the bar. She washed out a couple goblets carefully before drying them. Then she neatly aligned them on the shelving above the chilled kegs of brew.
She refilled more drinks, washed, wiped down tables. The patrons kept coming in, keeping her busy that night and she felt the long stretch of tiredness pull within her.
Reji was due back in another few weeks and she was looking forward to a slight break. She worked every day, on only five or six hours of sleep usually. She hoped that he would hire another helper, at the very least, especially if he was going to be off-colony for the foreseeable future.
When she looked back at Tavak, a little while later, his gaze had shifted out the large window to his left. One hand was wrapped around his goblet and his other hand was lying flat on the bar slab. His black claws were dull but she watched them curl into the counter unexpectedly. When she inspected his face, his expression was blank, his lips firm, his eyes swirling but unseeing.
She’d caught him with that expression more times than she could count. She knew he wasn’t looking at anything but her gaze darted out the window regardless, only to be met by the quiet main stretch of road that ran outside the bar towards the transport depot and port.
Stella approached him carefully. Not for the first time, she wondered what he thought about when he got that look in his eyes. Because it wasn’t nothing. She wondered where he’d come from because she knew that his home planet, Kerivu, had been destroyed close to thirteen years ago now, during the last war. One of the few planets that had been completely obliterated, wiped away.
She wondered if he’d lost loved ones. Family. Friends. Lovers. She’d finally discovered, with certainty, that the other Keriv’i male he came into the bar with on occasion was his brother. But, with the exception of Khiva and one other Keriv’i she didn’t know, she’d never seen him interact with anyone else on Dumera.
Stella had so many questions about this male. And she knew that he wouldn’t answer most. She could sense that there was a reason he was so closed off, so…cold.
“Hey,” she said quietly, wanting to reach her hand across the counter to touch his. But after last night, she knew that was off the table. “You want another?”
His brew was almost down to the silty dregs. His gaze was unfocused when he tu
rned from the window but it sharpened quickly. He straightened, looked down at his drink briefly, seemingly surprised to see that most of it was gone. A rare flash of expression across his face, one Stella lapped up hungrily.
He looked around, as if he’d lost track of time. Then his eyes came to her and…it might’ve been her imagination but it seemed like his shoulders loosened. Like he relaxed a little when he saw her.
He shook his head and Stella couldn’t help the sharp sting of disappointment that crashed in her belly when he stood from his stool. He pulled credits from his pocket—square, heavy, shiny, and new—issued from the firestones lab with its seal, to pay for his brew.
Tavak was already leaving for the night and it would be another day before she saw him again. She felt like she was addicted to his presence, drawn to him in a way that made time stretch endlessly long between her fixes. She’d never felt anything like it. She should be worried by it. It wasn’t the first time she’d wondered if Keriv’i males…well, if they emitted some kind of pheromone to attract females to them.
Because that was what it felt like. Addiction, sharp and sweet.
Those swirling, mercurial eyes lingered on her. He seemed to pause. Stella wondered if he could read her disappointment. She wondered if he could read everything she was feeling. Her mother had always said she was an open book, though she’d never seen a book in her life, so the expression had fallen flat. It had stuck with her, however.
“See you tomorrow,” she said, giving him a small smile.
Something shifted in his gaze. She didn’t know what it was but it was a tangible thing.
Realization.
He…he seemed disturbed by it. Whatever he’d just felt, whatever he’d just decided.
Without a single word, he turned quickly.
Stella watched him leave, watched him hesitate at the door, his hand reaching out to grip the wood of the frame. She held her breath, wondering if he’d come back inside.
But then his fists squeezed. He shook his head, as if trying to clear it…and then he was gone.
“Stella,” came a voice.
It was Poy’ra, wanting a refill.
She gave him a small smile she didn’t feel, wondering what the hell just happened.
“Be right there.”
Chapter Six
When Stella woke, she was standing next to one of the small windows in her room. She blinked, a breath whooshing from her lungs, and when her fingers touched her cheek, they came away wet and shimmering.
A shuddering sigh came next and she walked to her bed, feeling a strange but familiar heaviness in her mind. Her eyes stung. Her skin felt tight across her bones. The blankets were tossed around violently. She’d barely gotten a wink of sleep, except in the last half hour, she assumed, since she’d walked from her bed.
Her head fell into her hands as the first murky blue shafts of light from Dumera’s sunrise began to light up the darkened space.
Whenever she used to sleepwalk, her mother had always woken her. Gently and softly, so she wouldn’t be frightened.
After her mother died, the first time Stella had done it, it had been when she’d been with Ixavo. A Luxirian who’d come to work on Haase’s ship for a short time. She’d thought him a perfect distraction from her grief though she’d never loved him. But when he woke her from her sleepwalk, he’d seemed annoyed and confused, shaking her roughly. Stella had come awake in Haase’s—thankfully empty—control room, her feet bare, naked and vulnerable and shivering.
She’d burst into tears because it had hit her all over again that her mother was truly gone and she hadn’t been able to stop crying as Ixavo led her back to her room that night.
Now, Stella stared around her small room above Reji’s bar, unseeing. The room always smelled vaguely of sour brew because the cellar was just down the flight of stairs but she’d gotten used to it, she supposed. She’d gotten used to not having her mother near. She’d gotten used to the lack of sleep. She’d gotten used to the feeling of the gravity on Dumera, to the heat.
For a brief moment, Stella let herself be unhappy. She let herself mourn for her mother. She let herself feel the long pull of a sleepless night. She let herself wallow in her loneliness and wonder if she could do this much longer or if she should just return to Haase’s ship, the only place that had ever felt like home.
But she couldn’t go back. She didn’t want to.
As the bright rays of Dumera’s sun speared across her old wood floor, Stella took a deep breath in. It would be a long day, she could already feel it. She was getting overworked but Stella had wanted to prove herself to Reji, to show him that he’d done the right thing in hiring her. She didn’t want to disappoint him.
Silver lining, she reminded herself.
And the silver lining was she was living on a peaceful colony, with work, with a roof over her head, and food in her belly. It was that she had friends, both here and far, who cared for her, who looked out for her. Like Lubbina. Like Haase.
She wanted Dumera to be her home. She wanted to put roots down here, to make a life here. She wanted a family. She wanted a male, wanted children. She’d only been here two months but Stella thought she was doing a pretty damn good job of navigating this new place, as best as she could.
She knew she should give herself some more credit.
And she had such hope for this place. She believed that she was meant to be here.
Nodding to herself, Stella took a deep breath, feeling much better, wiping at the dried tears on her face to erase any evidence of them.
She looked out the window at the sunrise and admired its beauty. The swirls of gold and lilac and orange. She smiled, thinking her mother would’ve loved to have seen this.
Then she started her day.
When Stella was busy slicing the Dumerian roots for that evening—for Poy’ra in particular, making sure to slice his extra thick because he liked them crunchy—she heard someone come into the bar.
She frowned, wiping her hands, and left the cellar, which also acted as her temporary kitchen and prep space. The cellar connected to the main bar through a door to her left, which she kept open most of the time. Just to the left of the door were the stairs that led up to her room.
To her confusion, she saw a Laoti boy peering around Reji’s bar curiously but she smiled at him, approaching.
“Hi, sweetie,” she murmured. “Is there something you need?”
The boy glanced up at her, though he didn’t have to crane his head back far. Even though he couldn’t be older than 7 or 8 years, he almost came up to her shoulders already. Laoti males, though not as big as the females, were still quite tall. In another couple of years, this young boy would tower over her.
“Are you a female named Stella?” the boy asked. “The one who works here?”
Her brows rose.
“Yes.”
He thrust something in her direction. A bundle wrapped in black paper.
“What is this?” she asked, cocking her head to the side, hesitantly reaching out to take it from him.
“A gift,” the boy said, pursing his thin lips, his sharp canines poking out slightly. “I was told to give it to you.”
Flabbergasted, she asked, “By who?”
“Can’t say.”
Stella stared at the boy, a laugh bubbling up her throat. “Really? Even if I ask really, really nicely?”
The boy simply blinked at her. “I promised.”
A boy with principles. She could respect that.
“Very well,” Stella said, giving him a little grin, letting him off the hook. “Would you like something to drink for the way back?”
He brightened, a conspiratorial smile flashing across his face. “Like Luxirian brew?”
Stella almost sighed. “Um, no. Definitely not. But how about a fizzy?”
The boy nodded. Boys in most Quadrants were always alike. Always wanting things they shouldn’t have. Stella found a semblance of comfort in that.
She we
nt back to the cellar, the squishy, light package in her hands, and snagged a bottle of the purple fizzy drink that Reji kept on hand for children especially, who were not that uncommon in the taverns and bars, especially if they tagged along with their parents. On the Earth colonies, such a thing was unheard of. But they weren’t on the Earth colonies.
Stella herself preferred this drink, even if it was meant for children. It reminded her of a flavored, sparkling soda that she remembered having on Genesis.
When she returned, the boy was inspecting the bottom of his bare foot. Laoti very rarely wore shoes, she’d noticed.
“It’s sticky in here,” the boy grumbled.
“Sorry, I haven’t mopped yet from last night,” Stella informed him, handing him the purple bottle. “Here. For your trouble.”
“Ohh, it’s still icy cold,” the boy murmured, his ire at his sticky foot forgotten, a delighted smile lighting up his face.
Stella’s heart swelled at his excitement. She reached out to pat his hair as he touched her hand in thanks.
She loved children. And there had been no children on Haase’s ship, except on one leg, when Haase’s second-in-command, a Gharantan named Jee’phe’a, brought his daughter along for the trip when his wife had to visit family in the Second Quadrant. That short stint had been wonderful and Stella had spent every spare moment she could with the babbling, clumsy girl.
“What’s your name?” Stella asked him.
“Ewwin,” he replied.
“Well, Ewwin, thank you for delivering my mysterious gift from its mysterious sender,” Stella told him. “Drink your fizzy while it’s still cold, okay?”
Ewwin nodded.
“O-kay,” he repeated, as if he’d never heard the word before.
And then he was off, disappearing through the main door of Reji’s, though Stella heard him punching through the seal of the fizzy already.
