I’m still reeling a bit at our confrontation. A tiny part of my brain is secretly thrilled that he stood up for me, that he put my well-being first, but the rest of me is still furious. I focus on the furious part, letting it consume any of the fuzzy feelings that have been growing since I fell in an icy pond and woke up in his arms.
This is honestly a great reminder that he’s analienand he has no understanding of humans and our motivations. We can all be friends in the community, but anything more than that is never going to work.
I’m too lost in thought to keep filling the silence with my one-sided conversation, and Dad makes no effort to do so himself, as I use thefood manufacturer to make one of the few pre-programmed human foods. Luckily, this was one of the useful things included in the orientation video. Within a few minutes, a small stack of pancakes and a pretty good facsimile of bacon slices are deposited on a square plate like a 3D printer. I slide the plate in front of my dad with a flat, three-pronged fork everyone uses here and slip out of the kitchen. The scrape of his utensil on the plate is the only thanks I hear from him.
After hopping into the lavatory in our apartment to freshen up and tease my long, dark brown hair into something a bit more manageable, I make my way back into the main corridor. Furga and I made plans to meet at the Supply Depot before I left with Khur this morning, and I have no trouble following her directions to get there.
It stands out as I approach, and I have no doubt I’m in the right place. Whereas the doors leading into subdivisions are plain and unobtrusive, if a bit taller and wider than doors back on Earth, the entrance to the Supply Depot is neither of those things.
Tall arches frame the entrance. It is almost as tall as the entire corridor, arching high enough for the flyers to swoop through the top from their level. There is no label or alien text explaining what the place is, I assume because it isn’t necessary. Everyone surely already knows what and where this is.
I step through the arches—they kind of remind me of walking into a store at the mall—and take in the interior of the depot. It is huge butno surprise there, the Originem must have macrophilia. Everything on this station is larger than life, like a big warehouse, but bisected about twenty feet into the shop by a long counter. There are no shelves or racks for people to peruse. There are a few screens against the wall on either side, but the few people in the depot ignore them in favor of waiting in line at the counter.
Behind the counter, tall chrome shelves stretch to the ceiling and far back into the station. The depot is so big I can’t see the back wall past the rows and rows of shelving. As I watch, Furga appears from the depths guiding a floating cart laden with packages using a small remote in her hand.
When my new friend catches sight of me, she grins toothily and waves.
“Destiny! I’m glad you found the place. Come on back here and I’ll give you a tutorial,” she calls.
Walking around the counter, I offer the other citizens there a friendly smile. The Silfan (that’s what the elf guys are called!) directly in front smiles back, but the Winged-One behind her scowls. You can’t win them all, I guess.
“I just finished assembling Tessin’s order. Do you want to help me wrap it up for her?”
I look at the Silfan woman in front of us—her nose barely passes the countertop—and back at the stack of packages Furga is gesturing at. How is this going to work?
“Suuure.” I reply.
I want to help, though I am uncertain how she is going to carry the load. Maybe Silfan people are stronger than humans. The Dhugaren certainly are, but they also look like huge, horned bigfoots.
Furga doesn’t notice my trepidation, though. She just reaches under the counter and pulls out what, to me, looks like a parachute made of rubber. It’s a tannish-gray color and thick. She puts it on the floor then widens the base so that it is about 4 feet round, with the sides of the thing, which I think is a bag, bunched around the edges. Then Furga gestures to me and starts to carefully stack all the goods on the cart into the makeshift container.
Still mystified, I grab an indistinguishable object and fit it into the pile. When we’re done, I step back and Furga pulls a little strap I hadn’t seen before. The edges of the bag rise of their own accord and seal over the top, so that the package looks like a giant sack. Then Furga tugs the strap again and it becomes a long string.
I leap back in surprise as the bag begins to expand and float upward, turning the string into a handle for a big rubber balloon floating above our heads. Furga hands the balloon to the Silfan woman and I watch with wide eyes as she carries it out of the depot. The balloon is floating just above the tallest Dhugaren’s heads, but still low enough to avoid causing trouble for the flyers overhead.
“What the hell is that?” I ask Furga, pulling my eyes away from the spectacle to glance at her.
She smiles down at me, sharp canines glistening.
“You didn’t have shopping bags back on your home planet? I have more to teach you than I realized.”
I want to argue with her; I’ve worked retail before, but this is a totally new ball game. The metal racks behind us tower over everything, disappearing into the darkness at the back of the room. It feels like a warehouse from a dystopian movie, where I’ve been sent to work myself to death. That doesn’t really seem like the Originem M.O.,though, so I try to shake off the creepy feeling staring into all that liminal space gives me and turn back towards the customers on the far side of the desk.
“Let’s get started then,” I say, squaring my shoulders and smiling at the Winged-One waiting at the counter.
He scowls dramatically and I find myself wishing the Silfa woman would come back. Of course my first customer… er, citizen would be a grouch. He has dark gray, almost blue-ish skin, black eyes with no white to be seen, and long fangs. Where the Dhugarens have carnivorous teeth that remind me of bears or wolves, the fangs on the Winged-One in front of me look just like vampire fangs. I just hope they don’t drink blood. His ears are tall and pointed. And of course, it would be a weird name for a species if he didn’t have wings. The wings are not what one might expect, stretching behind him from his shoulders like an angel from Christian lore.
Instead, their wings are oriented where their arms would be, if they had any. They only have four limbs, though, just like everyone else in our genetic family tree. Their wings are somewhat functional as arms, and they have four articulated claws at the tip of each wing that serve as hands. They look ridiculously sharp and I have a lot of questions about how they get certain things done without bloodshed, but that is not my business.
“Shemo, it is good to see you. Would you like your usual order today?” Furga asks, her voice strangely formal. I turn to stare at her and almost miss the way Shemo’s face changes.
Where once was a glaring and scowling Winged-One, there now stands a devoted dark angel. His sharp features soften and one of the fangs digs softly into his bottom lip. His whole body seems to pulltowards my friend. This is a serious case of pining, on at least one side of things. I can’t get a read on Furga, though. Is she being formal because she is nervous? Or because she doesn’t like him? I don’t think that is the case. I don’t know why, I can just feel the energy between them.
“Furga, dear, why don’t you tell me what to get from the inventory and you can catch up with… Shemo, was it?”
“You do not know where anything is yet. Shemo, welcome my new human friend, Destiny. She has just moved in. I will be back shortly,” she says in that weird formal tone, before grabbing the remote and fleeing with the hovering cart.
I turn back to the Winged-One in front of me, who is back to glaring.
