I feign strength and we
The painter walks through the streets; he’s had a fight with his mistress. She wants a ring. He doesn’t want to give it to her. He looks into the sky, sees stars, falling. Fighting starlight. It was his calling; she whispered to his blood. He went to the caves.
The authors walks through the streets; he’s lost his lover. He wanted to give her a ring. She couldn’t accept it. He looks into the sky, sees stars, falling. Fighting starlight. It was his calling; she whispered to his blood. He went to the coffeehouse.
I’ve never tasted coffee, but I remember its scent.
I don’t know how else to be.
Daddy had a guitar. Why would a soldier have a guitar, strumming late at night, Mommy silent, sitting, smiling? They thought I was asleep. I don’t remember the words, but it was her song. Tears.
I miss
Killed them as they tried to escape through the hole they cut in Arch, as they carried the bound and gelled Catalyst out. She struggled, but there were many. I killed them, severed her restraints. She embraced me. It was all falling apart, Arch dead, Rebecca dead, most of our crew torn to pieces between the vessels, but she embraced me. I was so afraid that I’d lost her.
They must have sent a signal from the Rebecca. Maybe it was automatic. Black turned to white, stars folded and stretched to lines, stretched toward
The phase slugs arrived in-system, shot from guns we’d placed decades before. Rebecca became shards. Radio chatter: screaming, screaming and dying. My men caught in between. The initial shot hit Rebecca directly, sent what remained of Arch spinning away.
I remember grabbing Lilith’s hand and jumping from the hole, pushing off as hard as I could, hoping that the momentum would be enough to reach one of the jettisoned slithers.
It was.
We got in as quickly as we could, laden with gallons of gel shielding, freezing from exposure. I slammed the cockpit hatch home as the second and third slugs arrived, again hitting Rebecca, some of Arch, so many soldiers. So many dead.
I don’t know if anyone else got away, but I didn’t see any other active slithers. I think we were the only survivors.
We flew.
I hated to hear her cry, but I was crying, too. Strong commander of the Extinction Fleet vessel Archimedes, Hunter Windham. Crying at the loss of the only home I’d known for twenty years, the only family I’d had. I’d killed Tallis with my bare hands, watched my best friend die in a cloud of blood vapor, seen my Mother mouth “I love you” even as I could see the pavement through the hole in her chest, but only then did I cry. Alone in the night with Lilith, tears floating lazily before my face, batting them aside so I could see the slither monitor, plot a course, escape the system of phase slugs and debris.
System showed four more vessels arriving in-system soon. Wolves to the scent of blood drawn. Three destroyers and something else…Something huge.
Mother would want evidence that I was dead. Mother would want Lilith intact. Another vessel would take her and use her. I couldn’t let that happen.
She spun me around, took off my helmet, hands going to my hair, wiping sweat from my forehead, cheeks. Her lips moved on nothing. No words. In that moment, no words. I felt the silver stirring, but I didn’t care. Subtle pain behind eyes. Her touch was worth the risk.
Tangle of lips, tongues. Noses fencing. I knew my stubble scratched her face. Skin sweat-slick, tear tracks.
I searched on all bands for something, anything. Galleons. Had to get to a galleon.
They called them prisons, but they really weren’t. When Earth system fell to the “alien” attack, there were billions of humans on the outer planets, the colonies, a few nearby systems. They became the galleon refugees, searching for inhabitable worlds in the near-Outer. We came across them from time to time, interacted with the crews. Uncle disapproved. I’m sure Mother disapproved. I’m sure some of the alien worlds we were sent to cleanse with the silver were refugee worlds.
Two people, tiny sliver of slither, searching for
long, lean fingers interlaced with my own, the interruption of your rings, long nail, long nail, short nail. the grasp of small hand within my clumsy, shaking own, the tightening of your grip on my shoulder as you gasp, fingers slipping to my neck, pulling me into a kiss.
i love you for your skin. smooth, soft, infinitesimal hairs. i love your taste, the salt of our passion, the warmth and wetness of two bodies joined together by desire and love that has waited so long to appear.
i love you for your lips, the medium of the first hint of Us: stolen kisses.
i love you for your hair, that halo of tickling that descends to my face when you are above me and shines out around you when you are below. kissing ears through gateways, pulling traces of you from my mouth.
your dimple. perfect dimple. i love you for your dimple.
i love you for your tummy. you hide, yet it is beautiful, taut skin interrupted by button, stippled with my kisses on a journey into abandon.
i love you for your eyes. cliche in action: they are the window in which i see our future.
your heart. i love You for your heart, that organ of fire that i cross with my fingers, kiss with my lips, feel in the depth of my own. curled together, tender moment: i hear you, the quickness of your acceleration, the echoes of our times together, the futures i
love you for your soul. my soul. Our soul. decades of searching before we found Us again. i felt the touch of your essence years ago, but never knew that i would find myself within you, that perfect soul resonating with my own, all pieces of one returning to the eternal, two souls traveling the same path for the moment, the perfect moment.
i love You for your Love.
How we deny. That moment. Within stillness and cold, how we deny.
Never had a dog. Our neighbor had a dog. And a baby. For a while.
Do you know of silver? What she told us, the ice, the wind, a blade? Do you know? Believe?
There are things we know, resident memory, special memory, species memory coded into us. We know. Just because. There are things we’re told. To read, to watch to be. I read of lions and witches and robots, a desert, a jihad, rabbits and a warren, a submarine, boys on an island. Arch had no Piggy. I read, Mommy read to me, and I liked the stories, although the room shook, the sky was fire. I liked those stories before bedtime, although sometimes they made me think too much, too much to sleep, to breathe. I knew of broken glass: and blood.
We read of Ender because we were supposed to. There were girls on his ship.
I read about Hank years before I met him, many years before he died. I never knew he was real.
Those stories…A different dust, a different wind, a different showdown at noon. Hank was
How he’d stand, hand poised, brow furrowed, staring, staring down. Hank didn’t wear a white hat, but he killed men in black. Primitive. I can’t imagine
and he smoked. I’ve never. Smoked. He chewed tobacco sometimes. Spit on the desert floor. Disgusting process, but
How the hell did Hank end up in this? Anachronism, fictional character made popular by a return to traditional values after the war of the turn of the century. Hank, last-name-less Hank, on billboards and action figures and prime-time pay-per-view. Hank. He. Was good. For the world.
A painter, a cowboy, a ghost, a child, a warship, a
Know? Believe?
that I didn’t want her to shiver besind me, hated that it was so cold, that my skin crawled with silver infestation, that I had to keep shielding in that cramped cockpit so that I wouldn’t
