Conrad stood on the balcony and watched the stars below him. They were the lights of the Oldazzi, albino octopi people who floated amongst the stalks of the plants below him, picking bioluminescent fruit from the branches. At his back came soft sitar music and the laughter of his mother as she told her fifth filthy joke of the evening. He’d heard every one of them. In his hand was something red and very, very alcoholic.
He wanted to think about something, because that was what you were meant to go onto balconies for, right? But he’d had a bit to drink and all he could think was of how much the view below him looked like a mirror of the night sky.
“—And that one on the right with the red in the center is the Pathi Tanni Ka Universe, where Treun Danikos founded modern particulate transmogrification. Dude was a badass, he actually took on an entire army using only sand and omnus circles he tattooed on his hands.”
For the past few minutes Ellie had used Conrad’s silence as an excuse to regale about the Hub unusually gorgeous night sky, though of course she related the distant galaxies and universes that rose over them to the horrendously complicated history of Omnus magic. It all went over Conrad’s head, but still she had a sparkle in her eye as she spoke about these funny names and archaic techniques, a sparkle that had been missing since all the Dexys trouble started. He’d missed that sparkle.
“Now, of course he founded it, but it wasn’t until Xhan Tlo Bai’s exile to Chaucher’s Folly that it really became useful.” Ellie brushed her wavy locks out her eyes, each strand doped with OcuTone nanobots to form a film playing silently in her hair. It was some ancient Sumaji movie she had a liking for, and the slightly blurry image of a solar goddess danced hypnotically in the shifting locks. Ellie turned her head and looked at Conrad silently for a moment, the galaxies in her eyes shade-matching the scholarly cobalt that was pulsing slowly through her dermal markings.
She gave a nervous laugh and smiled. “Shit, this is probably really boring, isn’t it?”
“What?” Conrad turned to look at her, the movie in her hair reflecting off his ebony eyes. Then he smiled. “No, no! This is awesome stuff. I had no idea there was so much… stuff out there.” He brushed a hand through his own hair - he’d dyed it the same color as hers, shimmering karzantium. “Sand warrior dude sounds awesome. And Chaucer’s Folly… tell me more about that! How’d it get that name?”
He wasn’t actually interested in why Chaucher had ended up with some place christened after his stupidity. He wanted to hear Ellie talk, see the patterns in her skin light up, listen to her laughter. It was amazing to him, and sorely missed after the Dexys stuff had driven her to be more… quiet. He missed the light from the early days, where it had felt like a risk to even date her. Now her dad was practically family. The man had held a blade to his neck! And now he was swapping parenting stories with his mom.
Ellie opened her mouth to continue, but as her head turned up to the sky her gaze drifted to a distant light lost far away in the black night, a ghostly echo of something long gone. The name she spoke was old and whispering, almost hissed against the back of her teeth. “Uhur, the grave.” She brought her arm up and pointed towards its faint dust. “It’s actually part of my home Universe, though it’s a lot brighter there. My people called it Zla’or, the crystal princess. Mom used to tell us stories about Zla’or’s conquest against the Aurora King, and how she slew the Azerox of Dolyia and shackled it to the stars of Mir.” Her markings had changed and become a color that didn’t have a name in Arkadian, a shade of bittersweet nostalgia with breaths of loneliness shot through like gem veins in old stone.
Her hand went up and turned over, and with a trained flourish she cupped the moon with her manicured nails like a seer’s orb. “And Zla’or plucked dying Huhlya from the night and brought her down upon the soil, and at the eight rivers of emotion she planted her. Zla’or spoke to her, and her smiling words soothed Huhlya and she went down into the earth to sleep forever. Zla’or knew she had lost her friend and tears came forth from her and the rivers of eight surged onto floodplains, and Huhlya’s gravesoil became mud. Zla’or saw this and her tears became crystal seeds, and they came down upon Huhlya’s grave and burst open, and all became covered in beautiful flowers and fruit trees, and the riverbanks became heavy with Talli’ka reeds that unfurled themselves with the songs of this tragic bounty already written upon them, so great was Zla’or’s grief.”
Ellie’s markings matched the color of Uhur far gone in the Hub sky, a tarnished silver lost in the lightless waters of dead worlds. Somehow it didn’t feel sad, however, because there was a new look in Ellie’s eyes that Conrad had never seen, a deep, ichorous black that would have seemed like utter Stygian grief if it wasn’t for the trillions of glittering stars that shone out from inside. It was the Stygian equivalent to awe, Ellie utterly enraptured by her own tellings of her dead mother’s stories of their utterly annihilated culture from the sunblasted wasteland they had once called home. But the look in her eyes said she had forgotten all that, and the only thing that mattered was the crystal princess, swinging her starlight sword slowly through the multicolor dust seas of the eternal Stygian night.
Conrad had absolutely no idea how to respond. He didn’t have stories like that to tell. His mom had talked about things that ate worlds, when she was drunk. His dad’s tales were in much the same vein, and weren’t romantic in the slightest. They’d never had… myths. Not really.But the look in her eyes…
He laid a hand on her shoulder. Maybe there was one story.
“Somewhere out there,” he said, turning his eyes to the constellations above him, “my dad’s on a ship that’s kilometers long. He’s crossing the stars, looking for horrible shit. Things that eat planets, things that forgot what death is, things that fight because seeing worlds burn is like a day out for them. Things that we have horrible nightmares about. And then you know what he does?”
He grinned, and his family canines glinted in the light.
“He beats the shit out of it. Just like he’s done all his life.”
He pulls something from out underneath his shirt - a tooth, about an inch long, that must have come from one mean shark. It hung on a simple thread.
“One day, about… a year ago, we got a delivery on our door. No return address, no marks, no nothing. But we opened it, and it was a skull about as big as my torso, that came off of something that was probably fifteen feet tall. Dead and cleaned completely, like a medical model.There was also a sword made out of bone. Mom freaked out about it, but now they’re hanging over the fireplace at home.”
He tucked the tooth back, and looked back up. Ellie’s colors shone off his hair, suffused his face and brought his eyes into glittering relief as he stared up at the night sky. His hand left her shoulder and twined his fingers into her own.
“Somewhere out there, my dad’s defeating undying lords of ancient dynasties, wrestling warrior-kings into submission, and turning back tides of ravenous monsters. Because… because he has to. That’s how he is. And it might kill him. He might be dead already.”
The memories (memory? they were starting to compound together now) of his mom came back, crying, slumped over the kitchen counter… But she was laughing behind him, having fun. She would be okay. For now.
“But I believe he’s out there. Because if he sent something like that back home to his family, what the fuck can stop him? I don’t have a lot of myths about the stars, Ellie, but that’s what I got.”
She didn’t respond with words. Ellie hand reached out and found the back of his head, and despite her height she still had to stand on her toes a bit when she brought him in for the kiss. The color her markings made would be categorized by the infobots climbing their eyelashes and later sold to Ballimar dye merchants for knock-off handbags, but for now it was nameless and new, raw emotions of hope and love crashing like waves into the shores of her alien biology to express the fact that she felt safe with him. Despite all the death and destruction and ungodly sorrow of everything around them she felt safe. She pulled him tighter and—
Bozidar knocked on the doorframe. “Getting along well with my daughter, I see.” Jonesy let out a cliche whistle from the fainting couch, glass of unpronounceable wine still half full.
Conrad, to his credit, kept his cool in the face of massive embarrassment. The grin he put on was slick and easy - woops, my bad, it said.
“Well,” he said, “Uh, she’s easy to get along with.”
“Separate rooms for you two! The walls are thin here!” Jonesy cackled.
“Jeez, mom!”
Bozidar face softened into a light smile that looked odd on him but surprising natural. “I’m sure.” He turned and trotted back in, brandishing his glass carefree. “I wonder how much it would cost to import Zloti hogs and Ahacdi Kol to the Hub, eh? Hefty penny I’m sure!”
In a split second, Ellie suddenly turned the deepest, most embarrassed blush Conrad had ever seen. “Shöka, Vat!”
A grin was crawling into Boz’s face. “And the mirrors? Oh, only Stygnic hands for those, and only the traditional methods would be enough!”
Somehow she was getting even pinker. “Dah Shökil, Vat!”
And there it was, the multiversally accepted definition of a sleazy grin. “But I guess the costs wouldn’t be too bad on him. The bride’s family pays for the ceremony, after all.”
Ellie groaned like she’d just been shot and sat down on the edge of the balcony, hands over her face and pink embarrassment giving off a neon glow from her markings. “Kill me.”
Despite his permanently silver markings, Bozidar’s amusement showed thoroughly clearly in the first laugh Conrad had ever heard the man emit. It was hearty and deep, and it was the kind of laugh that made you cackle just from its enthusiasm.
“But what do I know, I’m a drunk old soldier.” He glanced over at Conrad and gave him a wink before spinning in his heel. “Now, Ms. Svilzerian! Did I regale you yet with the story of how Krezna got her axes? You absolutely must hear it; truly the story of my people!”
Jonesy grinned. “Not yet, buddy. Top me up and tell your tale!”
And that left Conrad, wishing he could express his mortified embarrassment as clearly as Ellie could. He’d had a vague idea of what Stygnic marriage ceremonies entailed, but the actual idea had never entered his head. Trying to ignore the word, the idea, the concept dancing in his head, he sat down next to Ellie, blushing furiously.
“Um.”
He drummed his fingers on the wood.
“Uh.”
He looked down at the fields.
“At least we could afford it?”
Dumbass.
There was a moment of silence.
And then Ellie burst the fuck out laughing. She collapsed on the balcony giggling like mad, hands against her stomach, finally taking in the absurdity of everything. Tears ran down her face and she didn’t stop until her breathy gasps of gut pain brought her down. She wiped her eyes and stood up, putting an arm around him.
“God I love you.”
With a little buzz, she activated her musecomm. +Mirdath, why don’t you go to a VR spa and leave us alone.+
Ellie’s third eye flashed “GROSS” and flickered off. She swirled her free hand over her forgotten wine glass and twitched her fingers just so, and the red liquid jumped up and slammed the balcony doors shut with a crimson hand.
The last thing they heard was a muffled shout of “Nerrrrrrds!”
Fin~
