Gallus is a phenomenal pilot – and while we could have had the autopilot take us to and from our destination, I know he finds the mechanical act of flying soothing. It’s like meditation to him.
In fact, we didn’t need to have taken the shuttle at all. We could have walked back from the doctor’s house, just as we’d walked there – but on the return journey our hands were full, literally. We came home with not one, but three original paintings we’d purchased from the old collector.
As we land, Gallus gathers the artwork up. He carries them like a child.
"These will be the pride of our collection.”
He can feel my satisfaction through the Bond, too – but unlike his own, mine is incomplete.
I enjoy this pursuit, and I feel a thrill from making a good deal. In some ways, it’s almost as tactical as combat – albeit you get to dress better.
But acquiring beautiful objects is Gallus’s passion. Mine is the thrill of the deal itself. Some deals have a clear winner and a clear loser – but I prefer the deals in which my opponent thinks he's won victory over me, while it’s truly the opposite way around. The victory is then twofold.
Was that what occurred today? Arguably, perhaps.
The human doctor was thrilled with the price we agreed to pay him for his paintings – earning a sum far greater than the value of his luxurious house, in the expensive Sector 2, for just three old sheets of canvas daubed with colorful oil.
But in a few hundred years, they'll be worth infinitely more. Not the price of a house, but an entire village.
So, the victory seems bittersweet. We only came out on top because humans can’t help but think in the short term. We have centuries to live – and those centuries will multiply the value of our acquisitions beyond measure. The doctor will be dust and memory by the time we reap the rewards of today’s purchase. In his position, he had made the winning deal…
…and how could you blame him? When humans live for barely the blink of an Aurelian’s eyelid, and then rot, and die?
In truth, though, neither of us are truly thinking about the paintings. They’re a distraction. For weeks, that coveted work of art has been all Gallus has thought about, or talked about – but suddenly Mia is in the back of both our minds.
That girl! I can’t get her scent out of my nostrils. I can’t get her body out of mind. Her face is seared into my memory…
…and that’s a very bad sign.
You can’t get attached to a human woman. It’s a guarantee of heartache and misery.
I made that mistake once. We Aurelians live for centuries – hundreds of them. Already, my battle brothers and I are over 500 years old, and barely out of our youth.
Compare that to a human woman. Within a beat of the heart, she’ll go from a beautiful rose to withered stem; and then back to the dust we all come from.
We’ve seen it ourselves, and the pain is still fresh – even after all these years.
The very first woman of our harem was perfection.
Lalana – that was her name. A name that still tastes like music on my lips.
She was a harsh lesson, to be sure. Back in those days, I was free. I let myself feel. Lalana was the first to join our harem, and perhaps she would have been the last; if the universe and the circling planets weren’t so cruel.
She and I would laugh by the pool together. I’d feed her grapes from the palm of my hand. I bought her everything and anything she wanted – I gave her everything; and she gave me infinitely more back with her smile, and laugh, and kisses and more.
Together, we spent those early days filled with smiles and happiness.
During that time, Gallus and Cyrus continued adding women to our harem. They liked Lalana – and we shared her, often and roughly. Yet, their eyes roamed. Their desires surged. They kept looking for the next virgin to pluck – the next spin of the interstellar roulette wheel that might, one day, deliver them their Fated Mate…
But not me.
I stayed faithful only to Lalana. She was my first human woman, and my first love, and I gave myself only to her for decade upon decade…
…until she withered away.
She turned from a fresh-faced beauty to a withered crone. To her, it took a lifetime; but for me, it was like the course of a single week.
Eventually, Lalana died.
It was peaceful. She was content. Neither of us could have asked for more of her short, beautiful human life…
…but she left me to spend the next hundreds of years trying to forget her.
I still remember the first time I saw Lalana – as if it was yesterday…
I still sniff the air and recall the scent from the first time I smelt her…
She smelt… right.
I let myself embrace that. I opened my heart to her. I gave her everything of myself, and a little part of me died the same day she did. I feel a part of my heart is buried alongside her – in the walled-off corner of our estate, where the worms and dirt have long since bleached her bones.
And the scary part?
The scent of Lalana… The desire for her…
It was a fraction of the pull I feel towards Mia.
Which is why this new girl is troublesome.
I feel disloyal to the memory of Lalana for even feeling that about Mia. I’m scared of Mia, knowing already the pain of losing somebody you feel a connection to. If my attraction to her is so sharply amplified, so too will be the pain of watching her age and die – as all human women do.
All human women except one – the one we Aurelians never, or rarely, get to be
