“What do you mean, pa?” she asked, pretending to munch a piece of Baldor meat. She was full half an hour ago. In the last few months, he had fed her until she regained all her curves in the right places. She was at the brink of romancing age. She had to look fertile, to pair with a son from a good lineage. As all loving fathers do, he wanted to give his daughter the greatest head start in life. For all his efforts, he was successful in getting rid of the visible ribs and the unsightly bump of the sternum on her chest. Her wrists plumped up as well, a good sign that she was getting enough to eat.
“They’re piling up here one by one; everyone wants a piece of our land. Like rot-flies to carcass”
They were in a transitionary period. The invaders came back after the Great Wall swept to the equator. Mektian ships staged forces thousands strong on lands they had already conquered. This time, it wasn’t just Mektians and Narbuls. They came with the backing of the Empire. The white-gold ships came from Earth, and they idled in orbit, biding their time menacingly.
“But we’re getting everything we want?” She was puzzled. Oddly enough, this was the most prosperous time in generations.
The rumor was that Mars played their part, banking on the opposition. Tales emerged of Solarii finding caches of supplies: brand new unmakers, bombs to flatten the dunes, food for years, war machines, new knowledge. Few had even seen the ships that dropped these gifts and vanished over the horizon.
Her father was quite concerned for the future, but for her, things were actually better. Her parents no longer needed night hunts or expeditions for resources. Their lifestyle changed to fit this new mold. They had all the food they could eat, colorful sticks that grew twenty times their size when water was added. These new meals worked better with small amounts of meat from leisurely hunts. She didn’t have to eat these marrows, but her father was a traditional man with traditional beliefs. He wanted her to eat more marrow—"real food," as he called it.
“Getting everything you want is not always good” He told her, his tone accusatory. “Depends on who’s giving and what they want from you”
A war that had been raging for millennia before them had made its way to Solarak Prime. It was mainly in opposition to the territorial ambitions of the Earth-imposed Human Galactic Empire, hubristically called ‘The Final Empire,’ one that ended all ambitions of intra-species conquest, uniting humanity against the stars. All who disagreed with the economic and social policies had no choice but to pick up arms against it.
The Anuhamure, the supreme leader of Solarii tribes, announced neutrality in the turbulent matters of the Sol system. But rights were only suggestions without the might to back them. The Solarii were a forgotten people, doomed to a harsh planet as one of the first colonization projects. They had their way of life and passing of lineage; they were adapted nomads because of resource scarcity. They were far from being technological equals with the Sol system or their peer colonies, the Mektians and Narbuls.
Other new arrivals landed in Solarak Prime as well; neighboring colonies sent their warfighters, warriors, and mercenaries. There were more factions now, all of them rapidly assembling on the red dunes, the new battleground of the galactic empire. The Solarii were one other faction in this new world order that was established in mere months. They had the rightful claim to the land, but they were seen as expendable by both foes and allies.
A month later, her opinions on these new luxuries flipped. They were on the run again, this time scattered down to the level of families. The new arrivals were demons compared to Narbuls and Mektians. Her people became refugees on their own planet in months.
They had plenty of food, but no water.
“I’m so hungry,” Mienna whispered in her ear as she carried her up a rocky path. The food-sticks dissolved with saliva, but they tasted horrible that way. Mienna never got used to it.
“I looked everywhere” Their mother was back in their hideout after an excursion. “There’s nothing out there” She picked Mienna off Liera’s back.
“No plants either?”
“Everything’s dead. I saw a crater. They dropped something here. We can’t trust water from around here” As Mienna held on to her, her mother combed Liera’s hair. This was an involuntary habit of hers. She had an obsession with looking neat and well put together, and whenever she saw a family member not being exactly what she wanted, she simply grabbed them to fix it. This was one of many quirks her mother had, one that she found less annoying. “There, that’s better, Lili,” she told her, giving her a gentle kiss on the cheekbone.
“What can we do, ma?” She had to bring the topic back to the issue of thirst.
“Tomorrow, Pa and I will go further to find a new cave; this land should have bigger ones. I can feel the water, we’re close” She had great intuition about the land; she came from a lineage that poured a lot of their resources into instilling that into their young. Terrain knowledge and intuition made the difference between life and death on Solarak Prime. This was the reason why she was still part of the expeditions that were mostly a masculine affair.
“For now, this will do” She gave them the last bit of water from her bottle.
They had to ration by priority. Physical work required more hydration, but her mother had thoughtfully saved the last sip when she couldn’t find any new sources. Mienna needed a lot from it, and Liera sipped the rest, saving the last bit to drench a little chunk of food stick as a snack for herself.
The cave expedition the next day changed their lives for the worse. Their parents didn’t return until it was dark. She had to keep lying to Mienna about how safe it was going to be when they returned. Her father came carrying her mother. Mienna was asleep by the time they returned.
She saw their silhouettes in the dark. He placed her on the ground and sat there, one hand resting on the ground. Liera ran to help; she knew something had gone wrong.
She couldn’t tell in the dark how wrong it had gone.
“This will hurt-” Her father whispered. “This will hurt you”
“W-what’s wrong!” She hadn’t brought a light with her in her panic. She hunched over and touched her mother, she had to know. Her heart raced to her throat on the first touch. It was cold.
“WHAT HAPPENED!” she screamed, ripping clothes off her, trying to listen to her heartbeat again. Her father didn’t answer. He sat there like he was part of the cave, a man-shaped rock, watching the stars. Liera couldn’t process anything; it came all at once, she screamed before tears, it stuck in her throat. She punched the body, trying to get her mother to yell in pain, to bring her back for a second.
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When she ran out of energy, her tears came like rivers. Her limbs fell limp next to her mother's. Her father listened, but he didn’t make another sound.
“TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED!” she screamed, hitting him with all she had. She had to know. He ignored all her pleas, punches, and screams. When she was completely spent, when the corners of her field of vision started blackening, she felt his rock-sized hand on her shoulder. It crept up to her cheek, and his other hand came in to cup her face. His face was angled just enough for her to see his face for the first time that night. He had no tears on his cheeks. He had rage, like she had never seen before. His orange eyes twitched as they tried to focus on hers, his mouth zipped in a permanent, trembling line of pure hatred.
“What do I tell her” She cried, “What do we tell her!” The thought that she had to let Mienna know at some point scared her to her bones. Her heart couldn’t take it.
“Don’t cry.” Her father wiped her tears and kept wiping them as they came. “Stop crying,” his voice cut like blades. “You have to earn it. Let it burn for now; you have to earn your right,” he continued. He had tears in his eyes too, but he held them, balancing them on his eyelids. “Don’t cry,” he repeated.
He only let go when she eventually showed him that she was capable of holding back her tears, when she showed him she had rage like his.
She lay on the bed, with the thinnest slice of meat cut from the block that Varul left for her. She didn’t need to eat it; Calan hadn’t left a spot in her stomach for it. Just the taste was enough. The resulting neurobit artifact pushed her all the way to one of the most unpleasant memories, souring her mood immediately after reemerging from it.
This wasn’t good. Varul was still on her. As it turned out, he wasn’t looking for anything categorically sexual. He wanted to lay on her chest, to feel her skin against his, and he found the most optimized pose to do it for the whole three minutes. Her dress was pulled off her shoulders; he was only interested in the overall sensations, not arousal. He was looking for something so extremely specific. She had bothered with her lips for nothing. He did kiss her for a bit because the option was there and they both felt sparks flying in their millennia-old brains, but he was a very restrained man with laser focus on his goals.
“We can do that later” He whispered, pulling off after cleaning her lips with his own.
“This is a poorer performance than I expected,” she told him bluntly. His other partners didn’t exactly keep things private. He was a popular man in the Red Sect. Many priestesses had tales of epic pleasures with him. Some held him in such high regard that they shuddered at his touch alone. Granted, Liera was the worst at this; her neurobit score wouldn’t help her feel 30% of it, but she hoped to feel at least some of it after so long. She was curious herself. But this was more than underwhelming.
“Well, three minutes isn’t enough” He told her, flipping the slight insult back to her. It was fair, she didn’t have a remark for that.
Their blunt wordplay aside, he was attracted to her head over heels. Every physical sign was there. Liera was bad at telling these things, but even she could tell there was a disparity of some sort here. His fingers trembled when he touched her. He kept whispering how beautiful she was, how pristine. She didn’t care much for these compliments.
“Since we’re done with the mouth, can I get a taste of that Baldor meat?” She asked sweetly. She tried to hide it, but she was eager to try it.
“Sure, but don’t keep eating it. I don’t want to hear chewing sounds”
“I won’t, only for a taste”
When she returned to the bed with a thin slice of meat resting on her tongue, he loosened the straps at her hips and pulled the dress down from her shoulders to her arms. Her anticipation for some pleasure, however, went in vain. He lay on her, wrapping his huge arms around her. It was uncannily similar to the way he was sleeping with that long pillow of his. He rested his head on her chest, directly above her heart, and relaxed.
His body was completely limp; she could feel his relaxation seeping into her. She was fond of sleep, but not relaxation. She only had two modes of life: work to death or sleep to death. This middle ground was a bit unpleasant. It was also the reason for that bad neurobit artifact. She was too relaxed; surely there were other happier instances of her life where she ate this meat, but the solemn mood Varul set for her was a bad start. When the taste properly marinated her brain, she was on a fast track to one of the most painful memories. After reemergence, she played along for Varul. At least one of them needed to enjoy this little arrangement. Her chance was already over. She swallowed the slice of meat in one gulp. It had served its purpose.
“This is all you need from the most beautiful girl you’ve seen in decades?” She whispered, wrapping her own arms around his large head, giving him more skin and warmth.
“Yes” he murmured, his head bobbing up and down with her breaths. “For now” he added, ever the entrepreneur, he kept his opportunities open.
She counted two minutes like this. The reintegration sickness hadn’t come at this point, and she was confident about keeping this up for two more minutes. There was no hard limit, and she knew she prolonged this at her own peril. She stood to get hit by a mighty unpleasant wave of nausea when it finally came for her. She wanted to push it because she was just beginning to enjoy this subtle sensation. It had been a long time since she felt someone else’s warmth on her skin. She had gone far longer than Varul without any chance at intimacy.
She began to notice things when she paid closer attention to him. Neural paths that hadn’t been utilized in millennia reignited. His body language was a mess since the beginning, but now she gained intuition about it. He wasn’t completely relaxed. She could feel his heartbeat through his sculpted layers of muscles. It wasn’t beating to a slow rhythm. His breathing wasn’t regular, either.
She felt a small cold spot on the middle of her chest, where his face rested. It was easy to ignore if she wasn't paying such close attention. She slowly raised her head to look at him upon noticing it. She wasn’t in tune with her body enough to make deductions based on that data alone. She had to confirm with her eyes. Varul felt her neck bones shift on his forehead. He raised his head off her and leveled his sharp orange eyes with hers.
She saw her eyes dancing, glazed over with moisture. His chin dug into the softness of her chest, and they both moved ever so slightly with their synchronized breaths. His eyes stared deeply into hers, taking in every detail, every fiber of her iris. She did the same, but they were disconnected in their intents, noticing different things about each other. He still looked at her with great adoration. She was simply puzzled.
*Were those tears?*
The pieces fell together. This was a trade. A trade of memories.
He had given her the meat to go back to her past, and he wanted this from her to go back to his. Varul wasn’t obsessed with dreams. He was obsessed with memories. Unlike her, however, he had planned his meticulously. He already knew what he wanted to remember. Liera didn't have a good guess about what this was.
Obviously, her stature and her beauty mattered a lot for this. The only other female that Varul brought up from his past was his sister. She remembered it very vaguely. He had obviously lost someone that gave him this exact sensation that he yearned for. The level of intimacy and skin contact, however, threw her off.
A sister-wife? A girl that he fell in love with? His mother? Liera couldn’t tell. It would be great information to know about Varul The Second, but the way his lips remained zipped in a small, content smile as he stared at her, told her this was all that she was going to get out of him. This was his way of telling her, by showing her.
She slid her hands gently over his back and grabbed his face. His eyes were slightly pink, tell tale sign of more tears to come.
She couldn’t allow it.
“Don’t cry, Varul,” she told him, infusing the cutting force of a klin beam with the sweetest, kindest voice that she could push out of her lips. She felt her own rage boiling beneath as she said it. This was the most genuine connection they’d ever experienced since they both left their cursed home planet so many millennia ago. It had taken this long to happen.
There was a lot that she could do from here—favors she could ask him, plans she could get him to agree to, the sweet next times that she could promise him in exchange for things she wanted from him. He had shown her a crack in his soul that he had no filler for. She could offer to fill it for a price.
She didn’t do any of it.
She knew only rage when she saw tears in his eyes. These were tears that she couldn’t allow to fall. He hadn't earned the right. None of them had earned the right. Not Varul The Second.
“Don’t cry,” she told him. “I won’t be able to respect you if you do” The words left her clenched jaw, filtered through kindness but sharpened to a surgical point with vitriol. She saw it pierce his heart. It made him skip a breath. He blinked his tears away, without letting a drop fall from his eyes.
He laid his head back on her chest. He needed a little more, with new found resolve.
She was kind enough to allow him.