Ravok’s head is practically on a swivel as he monitors our surroundings. It seems wholly unnecessary but I’m also not gonna lie – it’s nice that he’s so serious about keeping me safe.
Ravok cracks the door to the garage open, checking to make sure the space is empty before holding the door open for me. As I turn on the lights inside, Ravok checks around the ship. Once he is satisfied with his inspection, I follow him into the dark interior of his vessel. I pause near his cryo-chamber as he heads toward the cockpit. I pause, not wanting to get in the way.
Suddenly, his graphite-skinned hand captures mine, gently tugging me forward. Without a word, he guides me to sit next tohim. He tucks me close to his side on the bench-like seat. I watch silently as his hands skim over the strange console, his touch light and quick.
Ravok taps various sequences into the panels, digits of glowing alien text flickering to life across the display. My eyes widen when a 3D hologram shows a majestic view of Earth from space. On the map are glowing pinpoints, reminding me of a map my roommate in college had, marking with pushpins all the places she’d visited.
Ravok navigates the spinning globe with precision, zooming in on the distinctive outline of the New England coastline. My breath gets caught in my throat as the map further zeroes in on our isolated neck of the woods.
Ravok does a double take before his deep voice breaks the silence. “The telrinite alloy is somehow located inside your home, Leelee.”
In bewilderment, I stare at the zoomed-in image of the cabin, which has a glowing dot marking what I think is the bedroom.
“That’s… I mean… I guess that’s good news. It’s just weird, right?”
“Not necessarily. This planet has more telrinite than my initial scans indicated.” His voice is hesitant, but he squeezes my hand reassuringly when he sees my concerned look. “Let me grab my scanner and let’s see if we can find the alloy.”
We step out of the ship together and Ravok grabs the long-handled scanning device he’d left sitting on a workbench the night before. He turns in a circle, waving the wand back and forth while concentrating on the small screen built into the handle. When Ravok stops moving, the wand is pointed back towards the cabin.
He looks up from the device and meets my eyes. I already know the answer, but I ask, “It’s in the cabin?”
“Yes, my scanner confirms the ship’s findings. Follow me, and let’s see if we can locate the telrinite, Leelee,” he murmurs, his luminous eyes turning back to the tracking tool.
I trail after him, giving him plenty of room as we leave the garage. Ravok strides back into the cabin with an air of silent determination. The device pulses and hums in his hand as he waves it around the living room. I keep expecting it to start beeping like a Geiger counter, but it stays silent other than a low steady hum.
The machine guides us, the screen pulsing with alien script as he approaches the bedroom. Ravok walks around the bed that is still covered in crumpled blankets and sheets that speak to what we were up to last night. He finally stops beside a small bedside table. Upon it, a nondescript bag sits. Inside is the gift pendant I’d picked up a few days ago from the craft fair.
I can’t stifle my surprise when Ravok’s machine starts to glow fervently as he hovers it over the bag. Inside the paper bag sits the necklace with the obsidian pendant I bought from the Malachite Maid for Aunt Zizi. He looks up from the scanner as if asking for permission to look into the bag.
I round the bed and join Ravok at the nightstand. Pulling a piece of thin tissue paper out of the bag, we peer inside. At first, I only see the small burgundy velvet pouch that holds Aunt Zizi’s necklace.
I empty the bag onto my palm and display it for Ravok. He waves his wand over the necklace. When he consults the scanner’s screen, he shakes his head at me. I’m about to question him if his scanner is wrong when I remember the gift the stall owner gave me. When the lady gave it to me, I barely gave it a second thought. I think it was like a small lump of silver or something similar.
I turn back to the paper bag and dig through it. My fingers close around a small, hard lump. Opening my hand, I showRavok what I’ve got. It looks like a lump of raw silver, small but shiny, gleaming even in the dim room. I’d forgotten it was in there, to be honest.
“Is… is this telrinite?” I ask, feeling a strange sense of unreality creeping in. Ravok looks confident that he knows the answer to my question but runs the wand over the rock anyway. The display lights up so quickly that it makes his face glow ghostly in the light.
“Yes, it is telrinite. How did you come to own some?” he asks after a moment of silent scrutiny of the metal.
“I… I got it in town. I told you about the festival they’re having, right? I found this lady selling pretty rocks and jewelry, so I purchased a necklace for my aunt. The woman gave me this bit of metal as a gift. How weird is that? She gave me something we desperately needed before we knew we would need it. Before I even met you. Totally for free. Then you crash, almost in my backyard, and now the exact thing we need to fix your ship, I just happened to get for free just a few days ago. Doesn’t that seem weird to you? It’s so random.”
His response, however, catches me off guard – a shrug of those broad shoulders, and a gruff admission that makes my heart skip a couple of beats. “Perhaps telrinite is not rare on this planet. Also, it might not be worth much if your people haven’t yet learned how to manipulate its properties. Either way, having it makes things easier. We should just be glad that we don’t have to search for it.”
Ravok is right, of course. But I can’t seem but to feel a bit suspicious about the coincidence of it all. But what am I gonna do about it? Go track down the Malachite Maid and interrogate her?
When I hand over the telrinite to Ravok, he looks at me with such gratitude and relief that I decide it’s worthless to worry andfret about our good luck. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all that.
A strange thrill pulses through me then, a rogue wave of delight that surges at his happiness. I blink away my troubled thoughts, forcing a playful grin. “I reckon that we deserve some good luck, Ravok.”
Unwilling to delay, he gets right to work on his ship. Not wanting to be left alone in the cabin, I offer Ravok my help, although I don’t know how much I can do. It’s not like I know a single thing about spaceship maintenance. He gladly accepts my offer, making me think that maybe he wants to spend time together as much as I do.
And that’s how I find myself sitting on an old creaky stool at Ravok’s elbow as he leans into one of his ship’s open panels. I have accepted the task of being his assistant, which primarily consists of handing Ravok tools while he works. I feel a bit like a kid who is ‘helping’ their grandpa in the garage. Not that I mind. I have no idea what he is doing but watching Ravok work is fun. I watch as he sets the chunk of telrinite into a contraption that makes me think of a super futuristic air fryer. His thick but nimble fingers dance across an illuminated panel, inputting commands in a language written in glyphs that I now realize remind me of musical notes but not like any I’ve ever seen before. There’s a low hum, a soft whirring sound as the machine gets to work. When Ravok slides open the tray, instead of the lump of rock there is now a bit of complicated twisty metal that makes me think of a strangely coiled child’s pinwheel. It looks so delicate and fragile in Ravok’s palm that it seems almost inconceivable that it was a lump of metal a moment ago.
“Amazing,” I whisper to myself, the usual process of creation – hours, days, even years of raw human toil and sweat – unfolding in mere moments before my eyes. Ravok removes a crushed and scorched bit of blackened metal from the engineand slides the new replacement into its place. He has me hand him a strange tool so he can affix it in place.
I don’t mind. This is kind of fun. Once done, Ravok runs his scanner over the area, looking pleased at the text on the display, before moving to another section.
“Hand me the—,” he says a growly word I don’t recognize, pointing at a rod-shaped tool. I grab it hesitantly, studying it before passing it over. “Like this, Leelee,” he corrects me gently, showing me the right way to hold the tool.
