by Sky Winters
Zephyr rushed out from the bedroom to join her, wrapping his arm around her as they looked out the window together in bafflement. “Do you know who they are?” she asked him.
He nodded his head in a way that somehow suggested that he was not happy to see that glistening ship on the horizon.
“Care to enlighten me?”
“They’re the Yaargothens,” he told her, glaring at the space ship with narrowed eyes as though the ship itself could feel hit wrath. “They’re a rival planet from just outside this galaxy. They’re facing a bit of a crisis themselves, but I never thought they’d have the nerve to come here.”
Celeste turned to look at him, into his eyes. “Outside this galaxy? What kind of crisis?”
Zephyr sighed. Before he had a chance to tell her, however, the screech of a loudspeaker could be heard emanating from the ruby ship. “Citizens of Daskan,” a growly, booming voice announced. “We come in peace. Well, mostly. We are here because we have learned about your trade deal with Earth. As you are aware, we citizens of Yaargoth have also been suffering a fertility crisis. The last of our females has died. And so, we turn to you, as our… friends. We have come for your Earthling women. They should have been traded with us in the first place.”
The loudspeaker gave another screech and silence fell again.
Celeste looked at Zephyr with wide eyes. This was bad. This was very bad.
“What should we—”
“Look out!” Zephyr shouted before she could finish her question, grabbing hold of her arm and pulling her down to the carpeted floor.
He made sure to land first so that she could lie nestled against him. He wrapped his strong arms around her and she closed her eyes as some kind of projectile came into the mansion via that window. Celeste smelled smoke and the scent of what can only be described as burning hair.
She thought she was going to have a good day here on Daskan, exploring the hills and rainforest-like beaches. Letting Zephyr know that he was going to be a father. But no. The universe or whatever controlled these things had determined that Celeste just could not have nice things.
“Please tell me they did not just fling alien poo in here,” she muttered.
“No,” Zephyr replied. “Worse. They flung themselves in here.”
Celeste opened her eyes and looked at him as if he was crazy or making things up to get a reaction out of her. She tilted her head at him and arched an eyebrow. “You can’t be serious.”
The projectiles that had burst through the window were indeed moving on the floor a few feet away. She hesitated to even look as a sick feeling washed over her. The things appeared to be light brown, fuzzy balls and they grew and grew as they squirmed and writhed on Zephyr’s white carpet.
When they stopped growing, they reached quite an impressive size. Five gorilla-like beasts now stood before Zephyr and Celeste, staring down at them menacingly. Well, staring down at her. Zephyr rivaled them in size. They were wearing what almost looked like brightly colored Speedos, which she could not take seriously except she had to admit that they were appropriate for the temperatures on Daskan. Their thick fur, on the other hand, was not.
“Forgive us this intrusion, General, but we Yaargothens have reason to believe that you have impregnated your Earthen female,” the largest and most brutish of the brown aliens said. His voice was a low, deep hum like that of a vacuum cleaner.
He did not look at Celeste at all when he said this. In fact, he had not so far given her the slightest attention. She wondered if he thought she was not the Earthen female he was talking about. What might he think she was? Zephyr’s breakfast?
All that changed when Zephyr turned his blue face towards her. His mouth had fallen open a bit at this news. “Are you with child?” he asked her, his voice so soft and tender that she was almost able to forget that enemies were present.
She smiled a bit, biting her lip and nodding. “I was going to tell you…”
The large brown alien growled. “Then our informant was correct!” Suddenly, he lurched forward and grabbed Celeste by the wrist.
Zephyr leapt forward at once, but he was too late against the Yaargothen’s shifting powers. The fuzzy alien took off at a jump towards the window again, shrinking as he went and causing Celeste to shrink along with him!
The last glimpse of her mate that she got as she rose with her captor into the sky was Zephyr’s look of complete bewilderment and anger. She did not know what was going to happen to her now. She had no defenses against this new alien. She had barely learned his species’ name.
Suddenly, they crashed together onto a hard floor. Their bodies stretched and grew until Celeste was lying on the cool, metallic floor of the spaceship, writhing in space sick agony. The brown monstrosity stood above her, smirking.
“I can tell that you were not with that Daskani for long,” he boomed. “You are as puny and fragile as I always expected Earthen females to be. But no matter. If you are fertile, then you will come along with me back to Yaargoth, where we shall repopulate!”
Celeste was scared and overwhelmed, but she was not about to let this happen without a fight. Shakily, she stood up and looked the beast in the eyes. His eyes were beady and black, not at all the attractive green of her Zephyr’s. Was she really thinking of him as hers now? Had they really come this far? As she looked at the ruthless Yaargothen, she knew so well that she loved her Daskani mate and she was not about to abandon him!
“I am not going to Yaargoth with you,” she said. “And I am never, ever going to be your mate.” She was so much smaller than he was, so she was not quite sure how exactly she was going to prevent him from taking her. So, short of doing nothing, Celeste spat up and into his face.
The alien howled as if she had struck him with hot coals, rubbing at his eyes to get her phlegm out of them. Then he grabbed her by the wrist once more, making a shackle out of his claws. “Hyperspace!” he shouted to some unseen crew.
Without warning, the ship shook as they proceeded into hyperdrive. She was glad that he was holding onto her now, if only so she would not meet the harsh floor again. She was not sure how much her body could take of this, though. The baby moved in her stomach; the first real proof that she was carrying Zephyr’s child and was not just having a bad reaction to the food.
“General Zephyr will not let you get away with this,” she told the alien once she had regained equilibrium and could look him in the eye without her stomach doing a flop. She did not even know this alien’s name, and she hoped to keep it that way. She did not want to become at all familiar with him or his shrinkage power.
He laughed a cannon fire-like laugh and began pulling her away from the space ship’s big window and down a long, winding hallway not too terribly unlike the one on the Daskani ship.
“Help!” Celeste cried as she was dragged by her arm, appealing to the last glimmer of sunlight before she was swallowed up by the hallway, as if Zephyr could hear her cries from his planet which was far, far behind her now.
The Yaargothens, it turned out, were not so very different from the Daskani. The main one – the general? – placed Celeste into a small cell. She was provided with some water and a dry, unappetizing cracker thing. The ship was not stifling hot, but somehow, she missed that aspect. That aspect felt more like home to her now. The Yaargothens were apparently from a colder climate, hence their thick fur.
“I am Rawrgoth,” the gruff alien told her. “I am the leader here. You will respect me.”
Celeste kept her eyes down, as if the floor was the most interesting thing on the ship. She kept her mouth shut tight, not speaking. The being known as Rawrgoth soon got bored and left here there in her cage.
She was fuming. At least the Daskani had come to Earth to help them. At least it had been a peaceful agreement. This? This was kidnapping! This was slavery!
“Help me, Zephyr,” she pleaded there in the dark cell, far from her mate and the planet that had become like a home away from home for her in such a short time.
She had been at peace with him there, content. She no longer railed against the solution for Earth’s fertility crisis. But now it did not matter. Her child that grew in her stomach was in danger. She was in danger.
After a while, the ship stopped moving so quickly and Celeste knew that they had come out of hyperdrive. They were floating there calmly, and that calmness irritated her. The Yaargothens thought that they had nothing to lose now. They felt uncontested. Safe in their acquisition of her. She felt disgusted.
Suddenly the space ship began to rumble and roll as if a giant hand was pushing it. Celeste got up from the floor and moved to the front of her cage, hands on bars, to try and peek out and ascertain what was going on. She so wished she was still near the window. There was a loud crash as the window broke and then she changed her mind about her proximity to it. What now? she thought.
Bright red and gold flames burst into the hallway and Celeste jumped back to avoid them. Then, a giant blue and green dragon came into view. She could not be sure if that was indeed what it was, but she did not know what else could look like that besides a dragon. She had read enough fairy tales. It shimmered in the dim lights of the ship and looked somewhat like a genetically mutated rainforest newt. It had wings on its back that rustled as if they were made of paper, but they clearly were not.
Celeste sat there on the floor in the back of her cell and watched, mystified, as the dragon made its way past her. There was something strangely beautiful about it. Strangely beautiful and… familiar.
“fddddddddddddddddddddddtgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggtttttttttttttttttg!” Another cloud of flame and smoke erupted from the dragon’s mouth.
The dragon’s voice was not familiar, but she did not expect that it would be.
All at once, there was chaos as the Yaargothens were roused from their births and came into the hallway – or rather, opened their doors and looked out into the hallway – with much trepidation and fearful shouting.
“A Daskani!” one of them shouted in their garbled, growly way. “How did he get in here?”
“Through the window!”
“Look, the window!”
Celeste craned her head and neck, but try as she might she could not see the window. The dragon was mostly gone from her line of sight now as well, save for his long, shiny blue tail.
“A Daskani,” she said under her breath. Could it be her Zephyr? But that was ludicrous! He flew through hyperspace?
The dragon inhaled deeply, gearing up for another outburst of flames. “WHERE IS CELESTE?!” it bellowed instead.
She froze, spine going ridged. “Zephyr!” she said in a whispered exhale, too shocked to be louder. The Daskani were, after all, dragon shifters. It made sense that the General shifted. She just had never witnessed it before. It was breathtaking, to say the least. He was a monstrosity when he was in his normal form. Now that he was a dragon, he was a behemoth.
The leader of the Yaargothens came forth, eying Zephyr with his beady, dark eyes. “She is my mate now, Daskan filth,” he spat. Though he was much, much smaller than the dragon, he had no fear about size. It did not matter to his kind.
The space ship bobbed and tilted with Zephyr’s immense weight. The ship clearly cared about the size of this dragon.
“Captain, we cannot hold up like this,” one of the Yaargothen’s stated somewhat timidly. “Permission to land on the nearest planet?”
“Permission denied,” Rawrgoth snarled, not even bothering to look back at his underling. “I will take care of this.”
Celeste held onto the bars of her cell as the ship rocked and bucked forward, clearly starting to go down as the Yaargothen grew to match the size of Zephyr. She thought for sure that they were going to crash now, and all of them were going to die. All this because she would not mate with a new alien. She felt a strange sort of petty now. But oh, it felt good to know that Zephyr cared for her this much. He was willing to risk everything to save her and her honor. His honor as well, to be sure. No entitled alien was going to come around and steal his female.
There was much snarling and growling as the two beasts stared each other down. Neither seemed to want to make the first move, but even as they did not move the ship was sinking fast into the abyss of space. All kinds of sirens and flashing warning lights were going off but the monsters did not pay attention to such trivial matters. Zephyr lunged forward, moving only his head and elongated neck as he snapped at the now giant-sized Yaargothen. Rawrgoth managed somehow to dodge that and scratched Zephyr’s neck with his black, sharpened claws.
“Zephyr,” Celeste called to him pleadingly. “Zephyr, I love you! But you’re going to get us all killed!”
He snapped again, this time catching Rawrgoth’s head in his jaws. He chomped down as hard as he could, but the other beast used his long arms and claws to wrench himself free. Celeste could see a lot of blood now, coming from Rawrgoth’s head and the wound on Zephyr’s neck. There was blood in the dragon’s teeth as well. She could feel herself becoming a bit woozy.
“Captain!” another member of the Yaargothen crew shouted. “We are going down! Landing on the nearest planet is our only option!”
The members of the crew were in full-on panic mode. They rushed through the hall, doing their best to squeeze past the two alien monsters as they bit and scratched at each other. They were fighting as if in slow-mo, confined to the small space of the ship.
Suddenly, one of the crew members came to Celeste’s cell and unlocked her cage. The Yaargothen looked her in the eye. “You’re on your own. Good luck.” He said it in a way that did not sound hopeful.
Celeste thanked him by hastily pushing past him and going to Zephyr’s torso. He was so immense that all she could really make of him was a wall of teal. “Zephyr!” she shouted. “I’m here now. I’m with you.” She reached out and touched him. He was smooth, hot and semi-moist to the touch, like the frog she had always thought he resembled. She thought this was much more appealing. She found him oddly sexy this way, not at all like the slimy Earthen amphibian from her earlier imaginings.
The two fighting foes paid her no mind however, and as the ship careened downwards towards the first available planet, Celeste held onto her dragon and prayed that this would all end soon and maybe, perhaps, they could make it out of it alive. She was not even going to hope for unharmed, just alive.
When at last the space ship did land, the two monsters spared no time. Zephyr grabbed Rawrgoth by the head again and rolled with him out of the window. Well, actually, it was the side of the ship. Nothing but a jagged hole and slightly charred and melted metal remained in their wake. Celeste stood against the opposite wall, watching with a hand over her mouth.
The planet on which the Yaargothens had haphazardly landed was made of rock, thank goodness, though there were patches of lava where Celeste was used to seeing oceans and rivers. She was terrified to leave the safety of the ship, which she could hardly believe was the case were it not for the fact that these two brutal, deadly beasts were now out there in unknown, dangerous terrain, duking it out to the death, probably. She had once been flattered, but now she thought that what they were doing was extreme. She was never going to be able to forgive herself if Zephyr died for her.
Cautiously, she stepped out onto the rock of the planet. She walked towards where the two males were fighting over her. Though Zephyr was covered in glowing red gashes on his limbs and face, he was clearly winning the battle. Rawrgoth was little more than a flailing mass of bloody fur.
Her dragon was breathing heavily, a smattering of blood falling from his mouth. She could not tell if it was his blood or his enemy’s but it worried her either way.
“If you make it,” he said to Rawrgoth, “If you live long enough to leave this place, you go and tell your leadership that Daskan answered Earth’s call for help and that if Yaargoth wishes to enjoy the benefits of such a peace treaty, stealing and raping the women is not the way to do it. This is why no one ever asks Yaargoth for help.”
>
Zephyr was difficult to understand when he was in his dragon form, but thankfully he spoke slowly enough for Celeste to take it all in and decipher what came out of his large jaws. Once he had said his piece, he turned away from his injured adversary and looked down upon Celeste. She was no sure, but she thought that he smiled at her.
“Now let’s get you home,” he said through a growl that was almost docile.
She was unsure of what she should do now that the gargantuan dragon was done fighting. Zephyr could not simply go back onto the space ship and fly somewhere else. He had apparently flown through space, though… Feeling silly for doing so, but unable to think of anything better, Celeste carefully climbed onto his slippery back. There were not spikes like she had imagined dragons to have, but his skin was smooth and warm and not unpleasant to hold onto once she was situated. She held onto his neck, hoping that no sudden moves would make her go flying.
“Can you fly back through space?” she asked him only after she was sitting there, holding on as though he was seconds away from taking off. “I mean, there is the whole oxygen thing to consider.”
Zephyr chuckled deeply. She felt it through his long, thick neck. “I have ways of managing that.”
Walking back towards the Yaargothen space ship, he began to flap his wings and soon he was up in the air, a purplish ball of opaque energy surrounding him and the Earthling on his back.
“Wow!” she gasped out in wonder as she looked down and saw the space ship going further and further below them. Now she knew how her Daskani had rushed through space to find her again and rescue her from the clutches of Rawrgoth.
