CHAPTER 1
ELERI
“Whenever you’re ready, Eleri Lewis.” A bored giradey male urged her forward with a feathered wingtip. Eleri stared into the hungry darkness of the luxportal. She wasn’t ready.
But it was too late to turn back, and there was a line of impatient colonists shuffling behind her waiting for their turn. Besides, S’samph would be waiting for her when she arrived. The idea of meeting her future mate sent an odd sensation down her spine. But she was holding up the line. Eleri took one final deep breath, trying to remember the long droning lecture about the effects of portal sickness. The air around her hummed with an overwhelming brilliance just before her entire body fell out from under her, and she hurtled feet first into the void that would take her to her new life.
After getting spat out of the luxportal into the middle of a dusty blue landscape, Eleri had the lingering sensation of her stomach vacating her body through her nose. A few moments later, her suitcase was thrown unceremoniously several meters away. She debated crawling to it, but there wasn’t anyone around. She wasn’t home on Gaia anymore where a loose suitcase would get snatched up before she could blink. Instead, she lay flat on the ground and waited for the nausea to pass while the sun beat down on her face. Nothing she had seen about Laurus on her datapad could have prepared her for the heat. When she finally got the will to peel herself off the ground, she was certain she’d felt the familiar sting of a sunburn.
Blueish dust kicked up around her tired boots as she reached down and grabbed the handle of her manual suitcase. Most colonists could afford basic modernities like self-moving luggage, but she was stuck with a relic from her grandmother’s time. The kind of thing you drag out of a back closet when everything else has been sold to pay off the family’s crushing debts.
Eleri took a deep breath of the suspiciously unpolluted air and brushed the sweat away before it seeped down the collar of her IA-issued gray bodysuit.
She continued peering into the distance waiting for a sign of anyone approaching. Someone was supposed to be here to meet her. The male she’d signed a mating contract with, S’samph, was supposed to be here to meet her. But as far as she could see, there were no signs of any intelligent life. It was hot enough, and she wasn’t wearing sun protection so she could start to feel the familiar sting of sunburn on the back of her neck.
There was no way to check the time, so she scuffed her boot at a nearby clump of coppery rocks. It had been something of a fever dream when she stumbled into the IA headquarters nearly a standard year past with fingerprint-shaped bruises all over her upper arms and begged them to accept her application. Besides, the matchmaking services were supposed to select for high levels of both species and interpersonal compatibility. Eleri wasn’t sure she believed it, but it was too late to back out now. A few standard hours later, she’d received the notification of a confirmed match and a colonial placement along with instructions to report to the nearest IA outpost for processing. But where was he now?
She couldn’t wait here all day, if he wasn’t going to come to retrieve her, she would just have to find him. With a heave, she stood and clamped her hands around the handle of the suitcase, prepared to follow the dusty road to wherever it might lead. She spotted magtrack posts in the ground, which meant there must be signs of life if she walked far enough. Eleri pulled the cowl of her suit over her mouth and nose to block out the rising dust and trudged forward down the road. A far cry from the crowded, squalid apartment block where she’d grown up on Gaia, Cassiaq-IV was wide empty space dotted with farmlands and crossed with makeshift levibike magtracks as far as she could see. The dust might choke the air around them, but clearly, the land was fertile enough for the waves of blueish grain and the orchards of trees heavy with fruit.
Eleri made slow progress down the road with her dilapidated suitcase and aching feet, but she soon recognized other signs of civilization as she noticed irrigation lines leading to a lavender-hued canal. There was a footbridge a few paces to her left, so she headed in that direction, making note of some grazing, feathered animals that made eerie calls as she passed by. Finally, she made it to the bridge that hopefully would lead her to Laurus.
A loud, rasping voice called out to her in a language she couldn’t understand as she dodged to theside, nearly getting slammed by the glowing orange frame of a levibike as it careened down the magtrack. Eleri hit the ground hard, palms scraping against the packed blue dirt.
The vehicle screeched to a stop, and the figure dismounted while Eleri picked bits of embedded gravel out of her stinging hands. Blood welled up where tiny rocks had dug under her skin.
The figure removed their helmet to reveal a wide mouth with prominent fangs hanging down over his lower lip. Kyrot. A winged species with fine dark hair covering their bodies. This male was mostly dark brown with alarming streaks of coral threaded through the veins of his wings. Annoyance crossed his face as he said something that didn’t exactly translate.
“Do you speak Universal?” she asked.
The kyrot male sniffed the air before responding. “You’re bleeding,” he commented, this time in clear Universal. “What were you doing in the middle of the road? Don’t you know it’s designated for vehicles? I swear, the longer I spend here, the more I realize what a wasteland this is, with the idiots to go with it.”
Eleri realized she was staring without responding, like the idiots he just mentioned, and managed to scramble to her feet. He spoke at her like she was beneath his notice, but she wasn’t about to challenge a stranger for having an unlikeable personality.
“Sorry, I’m new here. I just came through the luxportal.”
“Oh.” He snapped his wingtips together with the sudden energy of an umbrella opening. “You must be S’samph’s mate! Where is the scaly bastard? Wasn’t he there to meet you?”
“Maybe I didn’t wait long enough,” Eleri shrugged. “I didn’t see anyone there.”
“Yes, well. He’s not particularly reliable.” The male’s wings flexed and then resettled against his back. It occurred to Eleri he must be terribly hot in this climate with all his fur. “I suppose I can show you back to the town. If it can even be called that. I’m Minio.” The last syllable he lifted his head back to echo the vowel into the air. It was a sound she could never have reproduced if she tried.
“I’m Eleri,” she said.
Minio blinked heavily and then seemed to catch himself. “Try not to get blood on my seats. You’ll want to visit the clinic, I suppose.” He hopped back on the levibike. “The town is just up the road. ‘Town’ is probably a generous way to describe it though.”
Not seeing any better option. Eleri pursed her lips and perched behind him on the levibike, trying her best to avoid touching him. She pulled the sleeves of her jumpsuit down to cover her scraped palms before clutching onto the handles of the passenger seat. Unbidden, he grabbed her suitcase and hitched it to the back of the vehicle.
“You’re human. From Earth? I met a few humans back when I was still living on Brasnia Prime, but I think you’re the first to land here.”
“Not from Earth. I’m from one of the Terran Colonies.” Eleri clutched the sides of the levibike with her injured hands as the motor growled to life. She wasn’t sure how much she should tell this stranger. Gaia wasn’t exactly a prime tourist opportunity.
“Ah. You’re a colonist.” There was a hint of derision encoded in the way he said the word. Eleri had met people like him before. Usually, people who could trace their lineage directly back to Earth or were somehow affiliated with the Five Houses had an air about them.
“I was born on Gaia. The original colonists came over hundreds of cycles ago.” She didn’t consider herself a colonist any more than a kyrot born on Brasnia Prime would associate themselves with their home planet of Hylos.
“Gaia. I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s similar to most Tier II planets, I would expect.” Eleri filled in the gap in his sentence with a kinder sentiment than what he clearly intended. Backwater or no, it had still been home. There was an unanticipated pang in her chest when she remembered she’d never see it again. The sensation didn’t last long when she considered what she’d actually left behind.
