Duel Citizenship

by Cassandra Chandler

  “I don’t know your name,” she said.

  “Ari.”

  “Ari.”

  His name on her lips came out as a sigh, like the wind in the new leaves of the tree above them. He wanted to hear it again. Closer—whispered in his ear.

  “Let me make you dinner,” she said. “Tonight. After I’ve had a chance to settle down.”

  “Sure.”

  Wait, what did I just agree to?

  It was hard to focus with her smiling up at him. He wasn’t used to feeling such a pull toward anyone. He’d been attracted to other shipmates—had even been involved with a few. None of them had affected him like Sarah.

  This situation was even more complicated than he’d thought. Looking into her eyes, he doubted it would become less so as his mission progressed.

  Chapter Four

  After several hours of lying in her bed, watching Cerulean…watch her as she stared at him, Sarah had come to a decision. She was going to seize every day and live it for all she was worth.

  She had nearly died.

  Near death experiences often inspired people to make changes. She’d thought she had already found her path to happiness. Now, she wasn’t sure.

  Moving here, she’d been looking for more than a home. She wanted to be part of a community. The people were great, but somehow, she didn’t feel connected to them. She helped them and they visited her restaurant or used the space below, but she still felt like an outsider.

  Corporate life hadn’t been enough for her. She’d been there, done that. Running her own company had been great, but she hadn’t felt like she was making enough of a difference there, either. She’d hoped that helping people individually, face-to-face, might give her more satisfaction. Building The Old Oak was part of her plan to save the world, one person at a time.

  She came up with sustainable recipes that were easy on the environment and extremely nourishing for her customers. She taught classes about vegetarian cooking, and had even branched out into vegan recipes.

  The Old Oak was a center for the community. Sarah vetted each class, interviewed every teacher, to make sure their teachings were supportive of a better world.

  Sure, it was Sarah’s vision of a better world, but her tree—her rules. And insisting that people be respectful to themselves, each other, and the environment didn’t seem like such an extreme position to take. She wanted to help people find balance and happiness. Including herself.

  And in honor of that cause, she had spent the remainder of her day in the kitchen, singing to herself—well, and her lizard friends—and cooking her favorite dishes to share with Ari. She wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t interested in her anymore. Tonight, she’d find out.

  “Sarah?”

  “Coming.” She quickly grabbed the last dish from the counter, then headed for the restaurant.

  Just like the first time she’d seen him, Ari took up most of the Old Oak’s entryway. He was even in the same outfit. Apparently, if he thought of this as a date, he wasn’t the kind to dress up for it. She sort of liked that.

  She, however, had cleaned up. After a brief but soothing self-spa session, she’d put on her favorite dress. It was made from a deep green fabric with a faint leaf pattern. The dress had a flowing skirt and halter-top with spaghetti straps. She hadn’t bothered with a bra, but had picked out her favorite lace panties. Just in case.

  She’d left her hair down and her feet were bare. The simplicity of it made her feel comfortable. And she could be naked in seconds, depending on how the evening progressed. She wanted to be able to seize the moment if it came up.

  Ari’s eyes widened when he looked at her. It made her feel like the most beautiful woman on the planet.

  “Uh, hi.” He grasped his wrist, covering his watch as he dropped his arms in front of him. It seemed to be a habitual gesture.

  “Hi.” She smiled, pushing away the nervous thoughts at the edges of her mind. It had been a long time since… Actually, she’d never done something quite like this. “I have us set up around the corner.”

  “Okay.”

  Most of her customers would take their food outside and eat on the picnic tables around the treehouse. Some sat at the counter and chatted. There was also a small round table in the treehouse that could seat four.

  And then there was the nook.

  Ari followed her to the small table that was nestled into the little alcove in the treehouse. It only sat two. Customers could call ahead if they had a special dinner planned and she would decorate it for the occasion. She’d never decked it out for herself.

  A string of clear lights illuminated the space like tiny stars, and a gauze curtain hung from the ceiling to give a better sense of privacy, even though it was only the two of them with the restaurant closed. The curtains were pulled apart so that she could easily come and go, since she was the server, chef, and diner that evening.

  Most of the food was already on the table. She added the last dish and gestured for Ari to sit across from her. He didn’t try to pull out her chair, which was a relief. She always felt awkward when guys did that on dates.

  Ari sat and looked around at the lights, then to the food resting on mismatched, colorful plates. His knee jutted out from his chair and he barely seemed to fit in the nook space. She could reach across the table and touch him without even stretching. Then again, that was sort of the idea of the spot.

  “Are you feeling better?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I’m just a little banged up and stiff. It’s still kind of a miracle. I keep thinking maybe I wasn’t as high as I thought or something.”

  “You were at the top of the tree.” His brow was furrowed and his expression grim. “I watched you fall, but was too far away to do anything.”

  “That’s probably for the best. If I’d landed on you, I would have squished you.” She was trying to lighten the mood, but he kept staring at her with that dark expression.

  “I would have caught you.”

  “Then I would have fallen into a trope.”

  “Trope?”

  She shook her head and laughed. “Forget it.”

  “Why weren’t you using a safety harness?”

  “I’ve never needed one before. I know how to operate in a tree. The only reason I fell is because of Violet.”

  “Violet?”

  “She’s one of my lizard friends. Frenemy, more like. I’m pretty sure she’s trying to kill me.”

  Ari sat straighter in his chair and glanced around the room, as if looking for threats. Maybe he was a soldier. His gestures and movements reminded her of people she’d known who had served in the military. But still, she was talking about a lizard.

  “Ari, I was joking.” Sarah laughed. “Violet is a lizard. Lizards don’t try to kill people. Unless they’re a Komodo dragon or something, and planning on eating us. And I seriously doubt Violet wants to eat me. I hope not, anyway.”

  “What do these lizards look like?”

  She shrugged. “Have you ever seen an iguana?”

  “No.”

  “How about a green basilisk? They’re the funny-looking lizards that can run across small stretches of water.”

  The crease between his eyebrows deepened.

  “Okay, that makes it harder to describe. My friends are bright green and have different colored stripes down their sides, sort of like a tiger.” She paused and smirked at him. “Unless you’ve never seen one of those, either.”

  He paused for a few beats before he smiled. It was just as dazzling, but seemed forced.

  There was no way he had never seen a tiger. Iguanas and basilisks, she could understand, especially if he was from up North. But a tiger? Who had never seen a tiger?

  Shaking away the uneasy feeling that gave her, she went on. “Anyway, their heads are rounder than most lizards, with more of a…forehead, I guess. And they have these little crests on the backs of their skulls, and a short spiney fin that runs down their backs. I think they kind of have a fringe around th
eir faces as well.”

  “Hold on a second.” He started tapping on his watch. It had a black band and a large, flat face. Definitely high-tech and high-end. After a few moments, he cocked his head to the side, his smile vanishing. “How tall are they?”

  “Tall? Don’t you mean ‘long’?”

  He smiled again, but somehow it seemed like a diversionary tactic.

  “Yes, of course.”

  Of course.

  Sarah was a pretty good judge of character. She hadn’t sensed anything from Ari that made her think ‘crazy person’. Not yet, anyway. He was starting to push it, though.

  “They’re about six feet long. Half of that is their tails.” She looked over to the closest window, sunlight fading through the branches. “I wish I could show you one. They’re really beautiful. But no one else has ever seen them. I can’t even get them to hold still to get a picture. They seem to just vanish. Do you think you know what they are?”

  “Hmm?” He was staring at the floor, his right arm resting on the table.

  Sarah glanced at his watch and saw a weird screen with a picture of a green basilisk lizard on it. The picture wasn’t the weird part, even though it looked kind of like a hologram. The bizarre symbols made up of loops and wedge-shapes scrolling on the side—that was weird.

  Ari caught her glance and covered his watch briefly. When he moved his hand away, the surface was blank.

  She’d studied many cultures while learning about holistic health practices. The closest form of writing to what she’d seen on his watch was cuneiform, but she was pretty sure people had stopped using that a couple thousand years ago. Human people.

  Stifling a laugh, she shook her head.

  Everyone misspoke sometimes. Ari’s earlier lapse—referring to “humans” as if he wasn’t one of them—after she’d fallen from the tree had been weird and a little endearing. She was relieved to know he wasn’t as perfect as he looked. But it had given her imagination too much to work with.

  For a moment, she wondered if the symbols on his watch were some sort of alien language. Maybe he was a bounty hunter looking for her lizard friends. Well, her lizard friends and Violet.

  Or maybe the lizards were the aliens. Sarah could imagine a story where Violet was a criminal mastermind, out to take over…the treehouse?

  Violet did seem to have a mean streak. If she hadn’t jumped out of the leaves—appearing from nowhere—Sarah wouldn’t have fallen at all. It had almost seemed like Violet had startled Sarah on purpose.

  A chill ran down her spine.

  She was being ridiculous. Lizards did not have vendettas against people—against anything. And the markings on Ari’s watch… They were probably some kind of computer code.

  Most importantly, she was not surrounded by aliens.

  She forced herself to smile, remembering what the evening was supposed to be about. “We should eat before the food gets cold.”

  Ari cast a strained smile back.

  Chapter Five

  The meal in front of him smelled amazing, but was completely bewildering. Ari wasn’t sure how to eat anything. None of it looked like the rich foods that Brendan served at Homeworld headquarters. Ari didn’t know where to start.

  He wished he could tell her the truth, but that was impossible. Perhaps he could give her just enough of the truth to help him with his current predicament.

  “I’m not from here,” he said.

  “I guessed that,” she smirked at him. “You’re from a place that doesn’t have tigers or iguanas and people communicate with a different alphabet. If you had an accent, I’d think you were from another country.”

  “I currently live in a home in the Absaroka Range in Montana. And the symbols on my watch…” He searched for more that he could share. “My watch was developed by one of the most brilliant communication technology experts on the planet.”

  She nodded, as if that didn’t surprise her in the least. “So, you’re with the military.”

  “Yes.” It was true. He was a soldier for the Coalition.

  “Well, you can’t weaponize my lizards.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You were curious about them.” She shrugged, then smiled.

  He smiled back, his face relaxing a bit.

  “Ah. They just seem interesting.”

  More than interesting. They sounded like Vegans. But Vegans were only legends. They supposedly hadn’t been seen in the Coalition for thousands of years. Not since just after the High Council was formed.

  Vegans had helped to found the Coalition after their own homeworld had been destroyed. To survive, they had poured all of their efforts into science and technology. Their race had still been devastated, and the few remaining Vegans had headed deep into space in what they’d called the Life Ship.

  According to legend, Sadr-4 had become their home for a time, but after seeing that the High Council no longer needed them, the Vegans had headed back into space to find other races to recruit for the Coalition. Instead, they had vanished.

  Ari had learned quite a bit about the Coalition since he’d first heard stories about the Vegans. Somehow, he doubted that the legend told the whole story—if any of it was true.

  The Life Ship was said to be a paradise, with a self-sustaining ecosystem that supported the Vegans’ reptilian physiology. They supposedly liked dense foliage and high temperatures.

  Ari looked out the window at the green leaves that nearly blocked the warm rays of the setting sun, even this early in the spring.

  “You won’t see one,” she said. “They’re very good at hiding.”

  Sarah’s voice pulled him back to the room—away from his ridiculous train of thought. The Vegans weren’t real. They were a story meant to bolster morale and instill obedience in other species. “Only the High Council had access to Vegan technology, making them the chosen ones of the Vegans.” It was just propaganda.

  Then again, the Tau Ceti had recently been found to have technology that far surpassed that of the Coalition. No one had figured out where it had come from yet, but it was doubtful they developed it themselves.

  Zemanni had also had technology that was beyond anything their team had ever seen, but said that he’d bought it from what Henry called “the space black market”. Zemanni didn’t know where it had originated—just that it had given him an edge in his bounty hunting.

  Ari shook himself inwardly. The Vegans were a legend. And even if they weren’t, they most certainly wouldn’t side with the Sadirians’ enemies. It was too terrible a concept to think about. A traditional “scary story” told while sitting in front of a fireplace, like the ones Brendan had introduced them to.

  Sarah was real, and sitting right across from Ari. She’d welcomed him into her beautiful home, helped him find shelter, and made him this feast. He needed—wanted—to keep his focus on her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay. The food might seem intimidating, but I promise you, it’s all good.”

  He laughed and looked back to the food. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I don’t know where to begin.”

  “I can help you there.”

  She scooted her chair closer, sitting more next to him than across the table. Their legs were almost touching. It made it hard to concentrate on what she was saying.

  “These are the appetizers.”

  She pointed at what looked like a tiny brown orb made up of plant matter and filled with diced vegetables and…something else. Then she gestured to a pool of tan puree next to several triangles of what he recognized as a form of bread.

  “What are those?” He pointed at the tiny brown bowl-food-thing.

  “Quinoa-stuffed mushrooms with vegetables and parmesan. And these…” She picked up one of the bread triangles and a spoon, then scooped some of the puree onto it and placed it on his plate. “These are a treehouse specialty. Homemade hummus and pita—somewhat fresh from the oven. Trust me, it’s delicious.”

  He didn’t do
ubt it. And it would probably leave him feeling weighed down and half-sick, the way the rich food at headquarters always did. Ari sometimes missed the simplicity of the nutrient bricks they ate aboard the Arbiter.

  She prepared a few more of the triangles, then turned to him and smiled. Whatever expression she saw on his face made her burst into laughter.

  “Oh wow, you look so nervous.” She gestured back to the plates and said, “It’s just healthy food. I promise it won’t hurt you.”

  “Right.”

  Maybe her healthy cuisine wouldn’t have the same effect as the cooking of Brendan’s chef. Ari picked up his fork, and Sarah laughed again.

  “The fork is for the main course. You can eat these with your fingers. Here.” She picked up the mushroom, then brought it to his lips.

  Did she mean to feed him? The idea was bizarre. If it was a custom, though, he didn’t want to risk offending her. He opened his mouth and let her pop in the tiny bite of food.

  Her expression was so hopeful, he steeled himself against the taste to make sure he could at least look like he was enjoying it. Rolling the thing on his tongue, he discovered he didn’t need to pretend.

  He bit into it and felt like his mouth was filled with earth and light, heightened by the freshness of the vegetables and sweetness of…something else. He wasn’t even sure what he was eating. The sharp salty tang of the cheese tied the flavors together.

  “Do you like it?” she said. “Please tell me you like it. You look so focused…”

  “What?” He swallowed reluctantly after mumbling around his food. “It’s amazing. I’ve never had anything like it.” He wished there was more.

  “Here, have mine.”

  She picked hers up and started toward him again, but he caught her wrist. Heat streaked through his body at the touch, her skin so soft against his. He stared at her intently, plucking the mushroom from her fingers.

  Following the apparent custom, he leaned forward till the morsel brushed against her lips. Her eyes widened, but then she opened her mouth and let him feed it to her. The skin of her neck had turned pink, the color spreading across her cheeks as she chewed.