by Vivian Venus
“Listen, bitch,” he grunted. “You may not care about the money that’s at stake here, but I sure do. It’s my fucking business, you understand? My fucking business. Your work is going into my gallery, whether you like it or not, whether I have to buy every single fucking piece you put for sale.”
The front door opened. Gretta, who had been standing frozen to the side, took the opportunity to try and interrupt the moment. “Hello, sir, come on in.”
“Is something the matter, Ryn?” Daggen stepped next to her. Her face was strained and pale, like she was fighting to stay composed. He touched her shoulder and she flinched. “Is everything alright?”
“I…I’m fine,” she said, her voice choked. Her eyes were intensely locked on Greg.
“Huh,” Greg said, “Who’s this joker? Your boyfriend?” He laughed. “He always walk around without a shirt?”
Daggen moved in front of Ryn, squaring up to Greg. “Forgive me but I don’t think that she wants to talk to you.”
“Daggen, you don’t—”
He held up his hand. He could see that she was upset and frightened, and he wasn’t going to stand for that even if it meant breaking more protocol.
Ryn was afraid of where this was quickly headed. Greg was unstable and would not back down from starting a fight; he did MMA in his spare time and loved to be able to whip it out whenever someone was “disrespecting him”.
“Daggen,” she whispered, “Please, don’t.”
“It’s okay, Ryn,” he said. “Nothing will happen to me.” He smiled politely. “Now, I suggest you leave her alone.”
“Or what?”
“You’ll get hurt.”
Greg laughed. Then in a flash he lashed out and swung his fist and made contact with Daggen’s face. Ryn screamed, and Gretta gasped.
Greg’s expression shifted from intense anger, to intense pain. His fist was connected solidly to Daggen’s jaw, every bone in his hand broken. Daggen stared at him, his head not shifted one inch from when the punch had connected.
“F-fuck, my hand!” Greg shouted, holding his mangled fist. Daggen took a step forward and Greg fell backwards onto his behind.
“I think you should leave now,” Daggen said.
Greg scrambled away without looking back. The door to the gallery swung shut.
“Oh, my God,” Ryn said, grabbing Daggen’s arm and looking at his jaw. “Are you hurt?”
He scratched his chin. “He wasn’t very strong.”
“I’ll cancel his credit card payment,” Gretta said, hurrying into the back. “That asshole won’t be stepping foot in here again!”
“Are you alright?” Daggen said. He lightly gripped Ryn’s arm, and his touch felt like a jolt of electricity to her. She looked up into his eyes. “Who was that man?”
“He’s not worth talking about,” she said quietly. “Come on, let’s go. We should get you a new shirt.”
Ryn picked out a plaid t-shirt for Daggen from the thrift store, and the two of them walked silently down the street back towards the truck. Ryn found her body shivering despite the desert heat. The emotions of the situation in the gallery were catching up with her. She had never wanted to see that man again, and she had done everything she could to get as far away from him as possible. She had never expected him to come looking for her like this. She held her arms, trying to stop them from shaking, but it was uncontrollable. All the old feelings of fear and guilt and sadness were washing back over her. She was fighting to keep herself from crying.
Daggen grabbed her arm. “Hey. It’s okay.”
Ryn found herself burying her face into Daggen’s chest, hot tears rolling down her face. Shocked, he slowly and hesitantly wrapped his arms around her and held her closer. He had never felt this sensation before – a distinct urge to protect her, to keep her safe. He squeezed her tightly against his chest as Ryn sobbed. The longer he felt her warmth against him, the more hew knew he never wanted to let her go.
Was this…love?
Ryn pushed herself away and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For this, and for getting you involved.”
“I would do it again in a heartbeat,” he said.
She smiled. “Let me finish helping you know, okay? I want to get you back home.”
Daggen laughed. “I was fine back in the desert. That was my home. Well, sort of.”
“Don’t start with that again.” She guided him to the truck. “Come on, let’s go. Maybe someone at the police station can help you.”
At that moment, a black car with tinted windows pulled up to the curb in front of them. Ryn tensed up. The rear window slowly rolled down, and she relaxed as she saw that it wasn’t who she thought it would be.
Daggen froze when he saw the face of the man in the back, and understood what this was about. “Daggen,” the man said.
“Keln. I would never thought it’d be you.”
“You know him?” Ryn asked, pointing back and forth between the two.
Daggen nodded slowly. “He’s…an old friend.”
“Get in the car Daggen,” Keln said. “We have things to discuss.” The door opened, and Keln slid over on the black leather seat to make room.
Daggen turned to Ryn. “I’ll be okay from here,” he said. He didn’t want to leave her, not now, not yet.
She raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out what was going on. “Okay…”
“It was… It was a pleasure meeting you, Ryn Tilley. Goodbye.” Daggen quickly slid onto the seat. The door shut, and the car pulled out and drove away, leaving Ryn behind. She stared after it, confused about what had just happened.
And just like that, as quickly and as strangely as he had come into her life, Daggen Trys was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
“You don’t know how shocked I was to find out that you were my first delinquent, Daggen. Not just because we haven’t seen each other since the academy, but because you never seemed like the type to break the rules.”
“My feelings are the same, Keln. For both points.”
“What were you thinking? Making contact with a human like that.”
“Well, I never intended it to happen. I only wanted to bring the ship in for a closer look, I never actually was planning on meeting her.”
Keln shook his head. “I really hope it was worth it.”
“You know better than anyone how much I wanted to get into the human observation program.” Daggen sighed. “So what now. You going to take me home?”
“No...” He reached to his neck and lifted up a pendant that was identical to Daggen’s. “I’m just serving you the notice of the breach of protocol. This is a first strike warning. You are to return to your station, and continue working.”
“So…I’m not being grounded?”
“No, not yet.” A blue beam of light shot from Keln’s pendant to Daggen’s. “Notice served. So tell me, old friend—” He leaned in closer, dropping his voice to a whisper. “What was she like?”
Daggen looked surprised for a moment, and then laughed. “Amazing. Incredible. I…I’ve never felt this way before in my life. Just being around her…it’s impossible to describe. Women are amazing, and that one… Well I knew from the moment she wandered onto my scopes that she was different.”
Keln nodded slowly. “I won’t say I’m not jealous. It’s almost every school boy’s dream to meet an earth woman. You should count yourself lucky as one of the few who have.”
“You’re…going to wipe her memory, aren’t you.”
“Yes, of course.”
“When?”
Keln gave Daggen a suspicious look. “After I take you to your ship. What are you plotting, Daggen?”
“One day,” he said.
“What?”
“Just give me one day.”
Keln stared incredulously. “You must be joking. You’re going to go see her again. You know that a second strike means you certainly will be grounded? You’ll never see Earth or that girl again.”
“It won’t be my second strike because you wouldn’t have wiped her memory yet. Besides, it doesn’t matter. I’m willing to do it.”
“You’re a fool.”
“I might be, but I need to do this. Please, do it for me, Keln?”
“You’re asking me to risk my position out here, my very first assignment, just so you can go talk to some human girl you’ve fallen for?”
Daggen looked hopefully at his friend, silently pleading with him. Keln sighed. “Alright. One day. You have one day, Daggen. Now get out of my sight, you crazy bastard.”
A blinding light enveloped Daggen, and he shielded his eyes. Suddenly he felt a blast of hot air, and when he looked around he was no longer in the car with Keln. He had been transported back out into the desert, and was standing next to the boulder that was his cloaked ship. Yanking off his pendant he de-cloaked the ship and ran inside.
“I am sorry for not responding earlier, sir,” the computer announced. “I figured it would be in your best interest if—”
“Do that again and I’ll turn you to scrap,” he said. “Come on, we don’t have time. Let’s get this thing fixed.”
Ryn fidgeted at her easel. She brought the brush to the canvas, made a few strokes, and then stepped back shaking her head in frustration. She couldn’t paint. All she could think about was Daggen, and how she couldn’t believe how much actually missed him.
He had only been in her life for a day – no, less than a day total – and somehow he had affected her this way. And it wasn’t that he kicked Greg’s ass without even laying a finger on him. She realized she had felt this way for him far before that. From back when she watched him sleeping in her bed, from when she had bandaged his wounds and slowly gave him sips of water. The feeling had grown inside her since then, and she had found herself more and more intrigued by him until this moment – he was gone, and now she found herself wishing he were still around.
She cursed and slathered paint all over the canvas in frustration. She thought about his touch, how she had felt in his arms… Where did he go? Maybe she could ask around town and find someone who knew him? Surely someone did, if that man came and picked him up. “I’m such an idiot,” she whispered to herself. “Stop feeling this way, you’re never going to see him again.”
She stared at the ruined painting of the sunset, and then pulled the canvas down. She placed up a new blank canvas and stared at it, contemplating. She took a deep breath, and started to paint again.
Her brush danced over the fresh white space, laying down lines and shapes that slowly began to resolve into a form. Her mind blanked out as she began to lose herself in her work, completely zeroing in on what she was doing. She was in the flow.
She worked quickly but precisely, her brush conjuring the face she saw in her mind’s eye. Just a few more strokes and… Done. She stepped back from the canvas and exhaled a long breath. It was rough and impressionistic, but it was him. Daggen, his face handsome and eyes soft, just as she could see him so vividly in her mind. She felt a little better now.
Later, she sat in a lawn chair next to a small bonfire she had made by her camper and drank a beer as she thought about Daggen. She thought about when she had followed his trail out into the desert, and how he had his little delusional episode by that rock. She chuckled to herself and sipped her beer, then stopped.
That rock.
Something in her nagged at her about it, told her to go to it. He seemed attached to it, or at least that area… Maybe, somehow, she would find something that was related to him there?
She wasn’t going to wait until morning to find out.
Ryn got up and poured water over the fire, climbed into her truck, and then drove off into the desert night.
Daggen sat in the pilot’s chair and called up the holographic command board, and then punched in the thruster test diagnostic sequence. There was a low hum throughout the ship as the drives fired up in low power mode, and the dome display blinked to life. Data charts flashed up, showing the current status of the engines.
“It would seem that you did it, sir.”
“Ninety-five percent. Pretty much as good as new. Let’s get this thing fully fired up, I have someone I want to see.”
“Sir. It would appear she’s come to see you.”
“What?”
The displays blinked and showed Ryn’s truck pulling up on the top of the sand dune. The door opened and she stepped out, her mouth hanging open in awe.
“We don’t have cloaking on, do we,” Daggen said.
“No, sir. I didn’t think—,”
“No, that’s good.” He was grinning. “That’s good.”
She had come here to find him. He felt a thrill of energy well up inside him as he looked up at her face on the display, lit up by the outer glow of the ship’s hull. He turned and strode out to meet her.
The hatch materialized and opened in the side of the ship and Daggen stepped out, his hair ruffling in the desert wind. “Hey,” he shouted. “Miss me?”
Ryn found herself running down the dune hill to meet him, and then jumped and threw her arms around him. Daggen laughed and hugged her. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Me neither,” she said, surprised at her actions. “My God, you were telling the truth.”
He looked back at the ship. “It’s not much, but it brought me to you.”
“Who are you…? What are you?”
He took a deep breath. “Let me show you.”
Ryn walked into the ship, her eyes wide with wonder. “This is real,” she murmured to herself.
“Yes, it is. Computer, call up the star charts.”
“Yes, sir.”
They walked onto the control deck and the dome display switched to a blanket of stars. Daggen held up his hand and a holographic orb appeared beneath it. He wrapped his hand around it and as he manipulated it, the stars on the display wheeled and turned wildly.
“Here,” he said, pointing. “This is my planet.” A stunning emerald and white orb expanded into view.
“You’re an alien…” Ryn breathed. “Holy shit, you’re an alien.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when we first met.”
“What are you doing here? On Earth?”
“Well… In a matter of speaking, I’m here because of you.”
Ryn’s heart was hammering hard in her chest. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe it’d be easier if I showed you. Would you like to see the Earth? From up there, I mean.”
She could hardly believe her ears. “Yes,” she said.
Daggen smiled. “Okay. I’ll show you.” He leapt into the pilot’s chair and hit a command on the holographic display and a second chair formed out the ground. “Take a seat.”
Ryn gingerly sat in the chair, still unsure if what she was seeing was real.
“Take us into orbit,” he commanded.
“Affirmative. Thrust sequence initializing.”
The ship hummed and shuddered as its front end lifted out of the dirt and leveled out to hover above the ground.
“Are we…flying?” Ryn asked.
Suddenly the ship jerked as it rocketed out and up towards the stars. The engines gave off no more than a low hum, and Ryn was surprised by the unexpected acceleration.
“Oh shit!”
“Now we’re flying,” Daggen laughed.
The entire domed display showed the outside of the ship, as if it were a gigantic window. Information read outs and flashed across the screen, and Daggen’s hands flew across the holographic control pad. The stars filled up the entirety of the display until the ship swung itself around and the swirling face of the Earth came into the view. They were looking at the desert from orbit, the hills and mountains and dunes all laid out in front of them.
Ryn’s mouth dropped open. “It’s Earth,” she whispered. “God, everything is so small…and so beautiful.” She was fighting back tears. It was more spectacular than anything a camera’s photograph could
show. “I wish I could paint this.”
Daggen stepped out from his chair and motioned for Ryn to join him. She took his arm and they walked up to the display screen and stared out at the Earth. “I’ve spent four of your earth years up here,” he said. “Observing this desert. Geological surveillance. That was my job.”
