PrincessColumbia

  “Mortan space control to Ad Astra SHRA-Five-Niner-Eight-Two, you are cleared for approach to the nding terminal at the provided pnetary nding coordinates. You’re cleared for three standard Mortan days and take off time should be no ter than 1000 hours Gactic Standard. Please enjoy your stay, and welcome back, Lost.”

  Diane was surprised enough by the st part of the message that she almost forgot to reply, “...uh, thank you, space control. Ad Astra SHRA-Five-Niner-Eight-Two acknowledges,” and with that she released the connection.

  “That...was surprisingly fast,” commented Russe as he entered the nding instructions into the helm console.

  Norma turned to look at Diane with a raised eyebrow, “Rolling out the red carpet for one of their own, you think?”

  Diane felt her cheeks pink slightly, “Membership hath it’s privileges, I guess, but I’d rather have my parents.”

  Norma smiled softly, otherwise saying nothing as she turned back to the navigation console and ran through the final pre-nding protocols.

  A little over an hour and a half ter, the ship settled itself neatly on their assigned nding pad. The spaceport was, frankly, a spaceport and not a lot to write home about. It rgely resembled, if Diane were to compare it to her twenty-second century life outside the pod, like an airport and a hotel had a baby. The vast majority of the smaller ports were off to one side of the gargantuan complex and were a blend of airlock-style docks like her space station (intended for species that couldn’t handle Earth...and, she supposed, Mortan-type atmosphere) and helipad-style nding ptforms. I suppose it’s more like an airport and an RV park, given the hookups for waste, water, and power they provide.

  It wasn’t a tremendous surprise to discover that most space travellers with their own craft didn’t bother with hotels. Those were clustered around another space port that was on the south-west continent, which was apparently more of a tourist destination than the more commuter-css spaceport they’d docked at.

  Of course, just like airports, there were several spaceports per ndmass. The north-western continent they’d nded on had sixteen, each either in or adjacent to a major metropolitan center. This one happened to be not only close to the business they were getting the part from but came recommended by Daffyd. This, it turned out, was not the st of the things he’d make recommendations on that would help them out, or at least Diane.

  “The name’s Rokyo Deki, Daffyd suggested you might need a friendly guide to the pnet when he called about your part order.” The other woman said. While not as physically imposing as Diane was capable of (in other words, Diane was surprised to find she was taller than the other Morvuck), she held a power and grace that only came from being older and thriving through the experience brought. Her blue suit was cut in a distinctly Earth style, but her blouse was a crossbody design that Diane could only recall seeing on some fictional uniforms or pseudo-period costumes. Her face was still youthful, but some age and ugh lines could be seen sculping it from ‘beautiful’ into ‘artwork.’ Her dark brown hair matched the color of her blouse nicely, an almost almond brown.

  Diane shook the woman’s hand, feeling for the first time the grip of someone with simir strength as herself since she started the game. “Ah, hi! Thanks for meeting us at our docking pad, but aren’t we scheduled to pick up the part in the morning?”

  Rokyo smiled sagely at Diane, “True, and I’ll be introducing you to my team when you do, but...well, you’re a Lost, and sometimes a member of the Lost Generation can be a touch...overwhelmed when they arrive on Mortan for the first time.”

  Diane shrugged, “I’m not really here to py tourist...”

  Rokyo gave her a grin that was equal parts wisdom and mischief, “If it wasn’t me staking first cim to welcome back a Lost, it would have been another Morvuck. It’s a bit of a point of honor to welcome back one of our Lost daughters. I’m afraid your choice is to hide in your ship until your crew gets your part or let someone take you under her wing for a bit to, ah... ‘welcome you home.’”

  Diane felt a bit uneasy, “...so perfect strangers are going to fight for a chance to say ‘hi’ and drag me around the city?”

  The older woman grinned, “That’s about the size of it. And don’t think you can wiggle your way out of this, the Lost have a scent,” she expined, tapping the side of her nose, “It comes from eating too much non-Mortan meat and your body excretes the scent of it through your pores. Non-natives can’t smell it, which is why the Lost are so easy to identify and why it’s so easy for them to get overwhelmed; a Lost without a...” the woman finally looked a little abashed, “A ‘mother hen’ is practically a beacon for other Morvucks. You’ll either get me pying tour guide or you’ll get women fist-fighting in the street to basically adopt you.”

  Diane heard a throat clearing and realized her predator instincts had hyperfocused on an apparent threat and she turned with a startle to see Norma with a very smug look. “Nope,” was all Norma said.

  “‘Nope’ what?!”

  It was Russe who answered from the other side of Diane, “‘Nope,’ you’re not going to go hide in the ship for three days.”

  “But, you heard her! They’re going to be fighting over me! It’ll be better for everyone if I just stay put and out of sight!”

  “She said they’d be fighting over the chance to welcome you home with loving arms,” reiterated Norma.

  Russe mirrored Norma’s conspiratorial smile, “It’d be an awful shame if there was a coont leak into the cabin spaces that meant we had to keep the ship clear of people for the next couple days, wouldn’t it?”

  Diane could tell she was pouting, but darned if she couldn’t keep the expression off her face, “...see if I ever sing for either of you again.”

  Rokyo giggled at the interaction, offering Diane no support whatsoever.

  Diane had never had a real solid concept of an entire species of just women. Sure, technically, someone could check the pants of the women in any given geo and come up with about 40% of them having the genitalia to ‘father’ a child, but tucked behind that (as Diane knew from her own checking in the character creation stage and every day she took a shower) was the genitalia to mother a child as well. And most importantly, there was no difference between the progenitors and proliferators that she could see as the people of Mortan went about their day. Once she noticed the ck of men, it was pretty much all she noticed. Morvuck women were performing literally every possible societal role, from waste collector to CEO, from mother to socialite, from cop to college student. If the view weren’t so pleasant (she wasn’t dead or blind, she knew an attractive female form when she saw it) it’d be haunting in its uncanny familiarity.

  After guiding the two humans to an Earth-style restaurant in the alien district of the city, Rokyo took Diane to dinner in the downtown sector. The dining industry was just as important on Mortan as it was on Earth, consuming a not insignificant portion of the pnet’s GDP. While Diane may only have her station and a handful of Earth credits to her name (she’d had a chance to check during the trip, her bank account was in a truly poor state, something a position as a station commander would change extremely quickly and yet another good bit of backstory for her character), Rokyo seemed to be aware of Diane’s inability to pay a bill on Mortan. “Just tell the waitress the kind of food you like, she’ll take your preferences to the chef who will make something that will appeal to your Earth-raised tastes.”

  Adjusting in the (to her) oddly proportioned chair, she frowned and thought. She normally restricted herself to varieties of Mexican food when she was preparing her own meals. Not so much that she preferred them over any other foods (though she really did enjoy it) but more that it was easy to make a healthy, fitness-program friendly version of just about any Mexican dish she could name. But when she wanted to treat herself, she usually wound up with... “Poultry cut into bite-sized pieces and served in a sauce with a tomato and dairy base, fvored with onion and ginger, spiced with a blend of herbs including cumin, coriander, nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper. Often some variety of heat is added by including hot smoked paprika and cyan pepper.”

  The waitress seemed at a loss and looked to Rokyo for crification.

  The elder Morvuck woman snorted in amusement over her menu, “Did you just list the ingredients for curry?”

  Diane smirked, “Oh, you recognized it?”

  “I’ve visited Earth, my host for the weekend wanted to take me to an Indian pce and we had to check if any of the ingredients were toxic to Morvuck physiology.”

  “Well, yeah, I like curry, and I like it spicy,” Diane grinned in challenge.

  Rokyo raised an eyebrow, almost in, ‘challenge accepted,’ and turned to the waitress, “If the chef has the ingredients on-hand, the house blend for araoshō shosh mixed in a dairy and bitter fruit sauce. Oh, and a bowl of steamed...zios, I think? Some form of low-protien, high-carbohydrate long-grain meal. Do you have any ftbreads?”

  Now on more familiar ground, the waitress looked up from her notes, “We do, yes.”

  “Bring an order of that with the rest.”

  “Very good, and to drink?” she returned her attention to Diane.

  “Jyantin Tonic, please.”

  The acrity at which Diane responded seemed to take the waitress aback. Rokyo raised an eyebrow, “Just the tonic? Why not the bitters?”

  Diane blushed slightly; quite aware she had an audience of women who were pretending not to watch her fumble about with as basic a thing as a drink order. “I’ve...never had the bitters.”

  “Well, all you’ve got in the morning is the meeting at my shop, so it’s not like I could begrudge you the indulgence of having actual Jyantin Bitters. Go ahead, give it a try.”

  Feeling timid (and aware how silly that was given that she was actually a little taller than the average Morvuck, it would seem), she turned to the waitress and nodded.

  “Very good, one Jyantin Bitters for your drink. And you ma’am?” the waitress said, turning to Rokyo.

  After the older woman pced her order and requested a Jyantin Bitters for herself, she leaned her elbows on the table, “So tell me about Earth. I’ve visited, but I hardly know what it’s like to actually live there, especially as one of the Lost.”

  How the hell am I supposed to talk about that?! Diane panicked in the privacy of her own mind. To buy time, she picked up the gss of water she’d been poured when they sat down and took a long, slow pull at it.

  Realizing that there were certain simirities she could draw from, including the fact that both her own youth as well as the life of the character she’d generated would be without parents and in the aftermath of a war, she opted to keep as close to the truth as possible and simply swap the pronouns and fudge a name or three as necessary.

  She described growing up without a mother or father present (her dad, as wonderful and kind as he’d been when mom was alive, had simply checked out after she died, so it was easy to embellish enough to paint a picture of him not being there) and a caretaker that made it clear they wanted to be anything but.

  “Tiffany hated me for...so many reasons, but mostly because she knew she couldn’t just get rid of me. She’d made me as miserable as she could for so long...or at least it felt like forever. Intellectually, I know it was just six years, but dealing with a woman that made it her life’s goal to drive you to suicide day in and day out?” she shook her head, “She made me feel so...worthless. I was already feeling horrible for how I was going through puberty,” this was true enough, even if she was leaving it open to a boatload of assumptions that she was talking about a Morvuck going through puberty on Earth rather than Dyn growing into manhood and feeling more and more horrified by his own body, “And then she...” she trailed off, throat tightening up as she dredged up memories of gaslighting, psychological abuse, and isotion.

  She nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt a hand wrap around hers. Realizing she was practically staring a hole through the table, she looked up to see Rokyo had gingerly csped hands with her and was giving her a sad, supportive smile. “We’ve...heard stories like yours. Earth is a wonderful pce, but just like anywhere else, they’re just people and some people are just bad...what’s a good Earth phrase to say that someone is a poor example of the species?”

  “Apple,” said Diane as she cleared her throat, trying to loosen the knot that had formed of her vocal cords. “The phrase you’re looking for is ‘bad apple.’”

  “Isn’t that a type of fruit?” asked Rokyo.

  Diane nodded, “It’s because when an apple is going rotten it’ll release a gas that’s not detectable to a human nose that triggers a catalytic reaction in any apples around it, causing them to go rotten as well.”

  Rokyo snorted in amusement, “Then it’s a good example of that type of person, your caretaker Tiffany was a bad apple.”

  Diane smiled wryly, “Yeah, she was. She died of a heart attack shortly after I turned 18. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.” she said with sarcasm.

  “Well at least we don’t have to form a hunting party like the legends of old and seek vengeance for your poor treatment under her. Why didn’t the agencies ever do anything to stop the abuse?”

  Even all these years ter, Diane still had difficulty thinking of what Tiffany did to her as ‘abuse.’ Abuse was what happened to kids with parents who beat them and broke their limbs. All Tiffany ever did to Diane was lie to her. Sure, she did it with the skill of a confidence artist and backed by an iron will that had nearly broken Diane’s spirit, but it was just words. She’d never have scars on her face or burn marks on her arms or limbs in a cast like kids she knew of that had actually been abused.

  “Tiffany was just that good at lying. She told just enough of the truth and yered it with enough of society’s expectations that she could get people to believe just about anything she told them about me. I mean, when she died the police suspected me, of course, and so there was an investigation. When the social workers and the cops put together all the reports she’d filed over the years about me and checked out the statements and compared timelines they figured out how badly she’d scammed the system and...maniputed me. All the charges got dropped and I got into some programs that pointed me out to the agency...” she was referring to the agency in the American Republic, the combination of the old NSA, CIA, FBI, and Homend Security after they’d been unified under The Second’s administration. It was just convenient that the assignments for seed stations were handled by a governmental body that could also be referred to using ‘the agency’ as a shorthand, “And the rest, as they say, is history.”

  Rokyo squeezed her hand sympathetically, but before she could respond verbally, they were interrupted by their waitress, who had been joined by another woman.

  “Thank you for waiting, the chef put together a meal for you based on the description provided, and...” she hesitated as she started setting dishes down on the table in front of Diane and Rokyo.

  “And I just had to come out and see if I managed it.” Finished the other woman. Diane looked her up and down, figuring that she had to be about the same height as Diane was, but where she’d created her character with an ‘amazonian’ aesthetic, this woman was more like the Renaissance paintings of Valkyries; plenty strong, clearly meant for battle on some level, but had a yer of fat that was appealing in a different way than Diane’s own lean look. Zaftig! She thought, That’s the word for it.

  Rokyo smiled over her own dish at the new woman, “Ah, would you be the chef?”

  “Chef Mikka K’Merse, at your service!” effused the rge woman, “When I heard we had a Lost and got the order...well, it was a unique challenge and I had to at least give it a try.” She turned to Diane, “Please, give it a taste, I’m dying of curiosity.”

  Diane smiled, being a hobbyist in the kitchen, she knew how demanding the woman’s profession was and understood the uncertain anticipation of that time between when the meal was finished cooking and how it would be received by the diners.

  Making a sincere effort to not look like a total tourist as she examined the food that had been brought to her, she first reached for the ftbread and tore off a piece rge enough to hold more food. Curious, she tore off another bite-sized piece and tossed it in her mouth and nodded in appreciation; it tasted like a wheat-flour based pita. Not naan, but close enough for this dish.

  It was when she saw the substitution for rice that she faltered slightly. The grains bore a passing resembnce to jasmine rice, but had little bck flecks at one end, somewhat like a bck-eyed pea. Shrugging, she used the provided utensil (an interesting variation on the spork where the tines of the fork were pointed to the side instead of the tip of the spoon) to scoop some of the grain into the ftbread and then turned her attention to the main part of the meal.

  It...kind of looked like curry. She could see the meat chunks in the sauce, and the sauce was the right consistency, but the color was just...not right. Rather than the shade of red she’d expect from an Indian restaurant, it was gray. It looked, she realized, more like the results of biscuits and gravy than curry. Sniffing the air, her nose was also telling her it wasn’t curry, not in the slightest. Nor was it breakfast sausage-based gravy. It was nothing like she’d ever had on Earth whatsoever...but that didn’t stop her mouth from watering and her stomach from growling.

  She added a scoop of the meat and gravy to top the grain in the ftbread, folded it to resemble a taco, and took a bite.

  Much like her first taste of Jyantin Tonic in the character creation stage, her tastebuds were pleasantly given an experience she had not expected. It was spicey like a curry, but the fvor was more reminiscent of sweet and sour sauce with a touch of cinnamon. The grain was pleasantly unoffensive and served as a good foundation, but the mild fvor was good enough to get out of the way of the rest of the experience, which was yered with hints of various spices and herbs she’d never tasted before and a hint of tang she was unsure of the source of.

  After chewing and swallowing her bite, she smiled at the chef, “I want you to understand that this is probably some of the best food I’ve ever had and if it weren’t completely undignified, I’d fall to my knees and beg for the recipe. That said, I’m afraid it’s absolutely nothing like chicken curry with rice on naan.”

  Fortunately, her intention of giving her approval of the meal nded with the desired effect, Chef K’Merse let out a guffaw and spped a companionable hand on Diane’s shoulder. “I’ll get you the recipe, I can’t imagine a Lost having a family araoshō shosh blend; I’d be honored to share my family’s with you.”

  Diane’s smile felt awkward even as she was sincere about it. She genuinely found herself feeling welcome by these women...who were probably just puppetted NPC characters...but damned if they didn’t feel like real people anyway. She found herself thinking her mother would have loved this restaurant and its chef.

  An hour ter, Diane was thoroughly enjoying a dessert made of fruit and something resembling whipped cream and pastry that she knew she’d butcher the name with as bsted as she was.

  Jyantin Bitters did not mess around.

  She’d been about halfway through the mug of an almost obscenely delicious ale-like version of her newest favorite drink ever (she would marry it someday; she swore this to the world) and was realizing as she was polishing off her main course that she was in no condition to walk straight let alone make it back to her ship unassisted.

  And the extremely delicious dregs of the drink seemed to pair perfectly with the dessert to do things that she dared not express out loud lest she inadvertently divulge just how much of a novice in the world of sex and sexuality she was.

  “Z’isis like an orgasm in a cup…an’ onna pte.” Oh, dear. She said that out loud. Apparently, she was that level of drunk.

  She was met with at least one amused ugh from the other woman at her table and a round of barely suppressed titters from the… ‘audience’ that was supposed to be just other diners but hadn’t budged from their seats since she walked in. She felt her face go fming red…again. That had happened every time she realized a bunch of women were staring at her with expressions that ranged from ‘Affectionate(motherly)’ to looking at her like she was the dessert option for the restaurant.

  Fortunately, Rokyo seemed to be one of the matronly types in the establishment and gave her a fond smile, “I’m sure Mikka will be fttered at the description of her dessert. That said, I think we need to get you into a bed to sleep this off, I don’t believe I’ve seen anyone get that inebriated off of a single Jyantin Bitters before.”

  Diane cupped the nearly empty mug close to her chest protectively, “Don’chu be talkin’ ‘bout my fiancée that way, zis the bestest drink ever!” So decred, she put the mug to her lips and tipped it back, moaning as the fvors coated her tastebuds. As the final drops hit her tongue, she lowered the mug and stared into the empty depths, “On no…iz gone!” Putting on her best puppydog eyes, she held the empty mug out to Rokyo, “C’n I have more, pleez?”

  Rokyo seemed to be stifling a belly ugh as she shook her head, “No, I don’t think so. I’ll make sure you have some Jyantin Tonic ter, though.”

  Diane giggled, “Yes! My other f-fiancée! Gonna marry’m both,” she sighed as she scooped more of the delicious dessert into her mouth.

  When Diane awoke, it was thankfully without the pounding headache she might have expected from a hangover in her normal body, but her mouth tasted like twenty miles of bad road and her tongue was numb. As in, hanging out of her mouth by at least eight inches and she couldn’t seem to retract it back in.

  Also, her cws were extended. Thankfully, the sheets on the bed were made of some seriously tough stuff or she probably would have shredded them in her sleep.

  Although speaking of; she wasn’t in her bunk. She blinked her eyes and looked around the room she found herself in to find it rather nicely appointed. If she were on Earth…outside her pod (she was slipping into thinking of this as her life far too much tely), she’d have called the décor, ‘Late 20th-century Wealthy American Northeastern.” There was lots of polished wood, brass fittings, and tastefully appointed pillows and drapes all over the pce. One wall held a shelf with a variety of physical books she couldn’t make out the titles for (and realized that her eyes weren’t properly focusing…Morvuck hangovers seemed very strange to her), and through a curtain and blind covered window she could make out the greenery of tree leaves, or whatever the Mortan equivalent was.

  She heard a knock at her door and, almost in a panic, scooped her tongue back into her mouth with her palm and held it in pce with her hand. Gncing down at her body, she was grateful to discover that she was still in the same overshirt she’d put on to go to the restaurant and her panties, so at least she wouldn’t be completely indecent.

  Turning to the door of the bedroom, she saw Rokyo standing in the doorway, fully dressed, and holding what appeared to be a steaming mug of…something. Diane’s nose felt absolutely clogged and she couldn’t smell anything.

  “Oh dear,” said Rokyo with an underlying and not-at-all-disguised giggle, “You’re one of those Morvuck. Lucky you,” Diane could hear the sarcasm, “Only about ten percent of Morvucks have the whole numb-tongue thing after drinking too much.”

  Diane couldn’t help the distressed whimper that squeaked out of her.

  “Oh, don’t worry, all that happened was you made a series of silly pronouncements about a wedding between you and the, and I’m quoting here, ‘Lovely Jyantin sisters,’ and fell asleep in the cab on the way here.”

  Diane gave an inquisitive, “Mmmm?!” as she waved with the hand not occupied with keeping her tongue in her mouth to indicate the room.

  “This is the guest room at my home. One of the perks of running a custom parts business is you can sometimes charge people through the nose if they deserve it. I’ve held not a few financial institution’s computers hostage because nobody’d updated their systems in a century or two. The bankers hate me but know they can’t get their parts anywhere else.” Diane now knew positively what this woman’s smug expression was as she was very definitely making it now.

  “Mmph?” Diane grunted as she held her hand up to her face in what she hoped was a universally understood ‘telephone’ gesture.

  Rokyo nodded as though she understood exactly, and given her response, perhaps she did, “I called your crew after we got here st night. They’re very pleased to hear about the pending nuptials and look forward to serving as the, ‘best maid’ and ‘man of honor’? I presume those are something to do with Earth wedding traditions?”

  Ooooh, they’re gonna have fun with this… Diane groused as she did her best to pout with one hand covering the bottom half of her face.

  Rokyo chuckled, “Well, you won’t be able to drink this,” she held up the drink in her hand briefly, “Until you get your tongue… un-numb. There’s a bathroom right there,” she pointed to a door off to the side of the room, “It’s got a shower so you can clean up a bit. By the time you’re done you should feel like an honest predator again,” Diane presumed that was something like, ‘feeling human again’, “And I’ll keep this in the warmer next to your breakfast.”

  “Mmm-mm,” Diane grunted in an approximation of ‘thank you.’

  “I’ll have you know I can hold my cider just fine.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” came the indulgent reply.

  “And I can drink beer, I just don’t like the fvor.”

  “Hmmm,” was the amused reply.

  “And vodka! Vodka is great in mixers and actually gives me a good buzz, really! I can even have, like, four or five before I’m really drunk.”

  Rokyo finally said something besides an amused vocalization. “It’s fine, really. We just now know that Mortan alcohol is clearly far more potent than Earth alcohol.”

  Diane huffed indignantly and would have crossed her arms, once again, indignantly, but she was holding a mug of the best damn Jyantin Tonic she’d ever been given, and she wasn’t about to spill a drop that wasn’t in her mouth.

  “The gentleman on your crew, Russe?” Diane nodded at Rokyo’s query, “He said they would meet us at the workshop. We were originally going to meet at the office, but your team seemed far more interested in the more ‘hand’s-on’ part of the business.”

  Diane nodded as she sipped her tonic, “Yeah, that tracks. I can’t imagine either of them sitting still in an office for too long.”

  The cab they were in crossed the ill-defined division between ‘city’ and ‘downtown,’ much like cities all over the Earth (and, apparently, Mortan), the one they were in had a cluster of high-rise buildings where the more affluent businesses liked to pay top-dolr to show off how expensive a plot of real estate they could afford.

  Tucked in between those buildings, however, were smaller pces, built prior to whatever real estate boom (or three) in Mortan’s history prompted the construction of the skyscrapers. These smaller buildings housed the less ‘prestigious’ businesses and organizations that had need of work space. Diane was thankful that their trip was routing them to one of those buildings, she was sure there was some tabloid showing pictures of her making a fool of herself st night and would prefer the ostensible ‘upper crust’ of Mortan society not giggle discretely behind their hands as she was paraded about for their amusement.

  One thing she was noticing was something she wouldn’t be able to investigate herself and couldn’t think of a good way to bring it up; the Mortan skyscrapers weren’t purely vertical affairs. They more closely resembled ancient ziggurats from Earth’s history, tall sections were built with a wide base, then they’d halt at some indeterminate height and then the next dozen stories (or fifty, she wasn’t sure how tall the sections were) would be the same as the previous ‘yer’ but taking up a smaller footprint. In all, they looked a bit like stacked cakes more than the towering edifices that poputed Earth’s cities. And she couldn’t figure out why they were designed like that.

  Once they’d reached their destination, a comparatively smaller building that sat amid the skyscrapers it shared a block with, they entered the workshop to discover that Norma and Russe had already started socializing with Rokyo’s team and they were quickly becoming fast friends. Diane tolerated the ribbing about her inebriated state the previous night and shook the hands of the women that had worked together to build the part they’d come to get. By the time Russe was talking shop and Norma was deep in conversation with Rokyo about possibly arranging for a satellite branch on the station for Rokyo’s business, Diane was somewhat socially tapped out.

  She debated with herself for a brief period, but ultimately decided it would be better for her depleting tolerance of other people for her to step out and get a breath of fresh air regardless of possible fallout from being a Lost and alone in the city.

  Diane didn’t deliberately sneak out of the workshop, but if pressed she wouldn’t lie about checking to make sure everyone else was occupied before quietly opening the door to the front entrance of the building and slipping through unnoticed.

  Aware of the scent…thing, she deliberately kept her distance from any other women she saw on the street. She did take the opportunity to take in the scents around her, as well as the sights. One thing she could appreciate was how the yered style of skyscraper simply let in more sunlight. It made a downtown walk a far more pleasant experience than compared to, say, downtown Houston, where the sheer verticality of the buildings meant that the street level often only got direct sunlight maybe once per day. She smiled pleasantly at a street vendor selling some version of Mortan food tried to wave her over before being distracted by another woman wanting an early lunch. She very subtly kept her distance from a pair of women that were holding hands and being rather flirtatious even as they talked about something to do with their jobs, whatever it was requiring an upscale business casual to Diane’s untrained and decidedly style-blind eye.

  This st part required that she furiously stuff down her church-trained reaction to a same-sex couple; she was in a game running outside the walls. Modern Babylon had that sort of thing happening all the time, it was accepted there and for her to behave otherwise would out her as an American in a heartbeat. The agency had received word through The Patriot Church that efforts to make such behavior socially unacceptable were starting to gain traction, even if it couldn’t be made illegal it could at least be frowned upon. However…when Diane looked back to see the couple approaching the food vendor, she couldn’t see anything particurly objectionable or problematic. They were just…existing. Short of getting far too involved in a couple of NPC lives than she’d ever really care to, she honestly couldn’t see anything wrong with their behavior. In fact, she felt…longing? Like she was seeing something she wanted but had never considered to be something she could have. Shaking her head, she turned back to her unpnned and uncharted route and turned a corner, putting the momentary interaction out of her head.

  There was, she discovered, a school in the heart of downtown, which gave her a chance to see a schoolyard full of girls at py. If it weren’t for the fact that all the girls were a single gender, it could have been any schoolyard in America. Well, there were some obvious sci-fi bits, like when a fairly rge bird, easily the size of a rge motorcycle and with a wingspan of twenty feet, tried to swoop into the apparently open yard as though hunting, it crashed into a shield barrier that fred into the visible spectrum upon impact. The bird was in a genuinely amusing state of animal confusion as it stood on, apparently, nothing and the girls it was hunting all had a good post-spook ugh at its expense.

  Abruptly, the bird itself spooked, as though a creature taking up the volume of space equivalent to a medium sized ground transport had something to fear. It had clearly lost all interest in its aborted hunt and began scrambling to get off the invisible box, finally taking wing and flying off. Rather than go up, which is what Diane might have expected, it seemed to be intentionally staying low as though avoiding something.

  Her attention was drawn back to the girls in the schoolyard who were all babbling excitedly and looking around and, surprisingly, up. Diane, confused, cast her gaze upward herself, just in time to see movement out of the corner of her eye. She turned and spotted something truly massive flying through the metal and gss jungle of the downtown area, and part of her felt the instinctual need to flee a flying predator and hide. She consciously reminded herself that this was a game and tracked the movement, spotting, as best she could tell, a long, sinuous body covered in scales and held aloft by titanic bat-like wings.

  Diane’s awareness of her surroundings told her the girls in the schoolyard spotted it, too. Their babblings turned into excited shrieks and cheering, a few shouting attention grabbing phrases like, “Over here!” or “We see you!” Part of her wanted to turn to see why the children were so excited, but the majority of her attention was on whatever was approaching.

  She didn’t have long to wait, though, as one of Mortan’s legendary megafauna banked around one of the skyscrapers and started heading down the building-lined canyon of the street she was standing on. The excited shouts reached a crescendo as a massive creature with an almost catlike body flew up to one of the ledges formed by the bottom most yer of one of the towering buildings and settled to nd. It…she took some ginger steps forward, using her snake-like tail to bance as she stretched her neck up and sniffed at the air, seemingly on the hunt. The creature’s head was wedge shaped, graceful horns curving aerodynamically back from where they grew out of her temples. Fins articuted almost like cat’s ears, sweeping up and down as she sought her prey. Her snout was more like a beak but instead of being a hard, bone-like material that sharpened to a point, it formed a full, almost crocodilian jaw, though with the smooth scales and sleek muscuture of a snake. She shifted her eyes about, taking everything in with a raptor’s awareness.

  Diane was looking at a dragon.

  Diane was looking at a god-damn dragon in the middle of the downtown of a major metropolitan area.

  She watched as the massive being took a deep breath through her nostrils and then bellowed a shrieking roar that could probably have been heard from orbit.

  There was an answering shriek, much quieter, from the direction the bird Diane could no longer think of as very rge. She gnced off in the direction but didn’t see anything, so snapped her head back to see the dragon snorting with what she could swear was a satisfied smirk.

  A few breaths ter, the creature’s entire bearing seemed to change, and it let out an almost barking chirp, not nearly at the ear-splitting volume of her earlier call. Diane felt like she was jumping out of her own skin when, led by (to her absolute shock) the schoolyard full of girls, every Morvuck in the area let out an echoing shrieking call of their own. The dragon leapt down to the street and for the first time since becoming aware of the megafauna, Diane realized that all traffic had drawn to a halt. Women were stepping out of building entrances and climbing out of cars to view the creature. For her part, the dragon very deftly maneuvered around cars and any other vehicles, obviously very aware of the space she was taking up and accounting for the Morvuck built obstacles with her body movements.

  The dragon stopped next to the school, which also happened to be about fifty yards from Diane, and looked down into the schoolyard at the extremely excited girls that were all cmbering to the fence to try and get closer to it. It let out another, only slightly quieter vocalization, this one more of a throaty, almost coughing sound. The girls replied as best their much smaller throats could, a sound that was echoed by the watching (and smiling) women around her.

  Apparently satisfied at the girl’s response, the dragon started to move in the direction of a longer boulevard when it stopped and sniffed the air. Diane noted that the women around her were confused, as though this was aberrant behavior, but they weren’t showing signs that this was something to fear.

  As she sniffed the air, the dragon turned her head first one way, then the other. Finally, she seemed to zero in on what had caught her attention and her eyes scanned the ground to settle on something in Diane’s direction. She turned to see what the dragon might have spotted, in case of some threat like the raptor that had tried to snatch a child, but upon seeing nothing she turned back around and realized that the dragon was moving straight at her.

  She felt her heart hammering as her brain suddenly seemed to go bnk. She may be a pretty impressive specimen of Morvuck biology, but she absolutely paled in comparison to this beast that had to be at least the size of a private jet. Even her human instincts seemed to have given up on her, freezing up when she wasn’t even remotely in any sort of camoufging surroundings.

  Very slowly, the massive snout neared her, deep breaths in to capture scent turning into clothing-ruffling breezes as the mega-predator investigated whatever about Diane caught her attention. She could see the pair of huge eyes focused entirely on her; each eye bigger her torso.

  A low, quiet croon came from the dragon’s throat as it nuzzled her. With the physical contact her brain seemed to reset, and as she shifted her feet to catch herself her hands reached forward, and she wound up steading herself against the dragon’s nose.

  “Uh…hi…” she said oh-so-intelligently.

  This, apparently, was encouraging to the dragon, she huffed a warm breath through her nostrils (again ruffling Diane’s cloths) and made another vocalization, this time a sound like a deep, tripping drumbeat.

  Deciding to take her cue from what she’d witnessed earlier, she inhaled and tried her best to mimic the dragon. It came out…rather weak.

  Giving Diane a look as if to say, You can do better than that!, the dragon made a louder noise, this one sounding almost like a train’s whistle with the register dropped about six octaves.

  Confused but less afraid, she breathed deeply in and shifted her voice into a singing modality, but aiming for as low a note as this particur throat was capable of producing. It wasn’t, of course, nearly as impressive as what the dragon had done, but it was far better than her first attempt had been.

  She saw the corners of the dragon’s mouth turn upward…and surprised herself when her own smile turned into a matching, almost challenging expression.

  The creature settled its legs like she’d seen cats do when they were intent on a hunt and her gargantuan hind legs shifted like she was about to pounce, which was all the warning Diane had when the creature opened her jaws and roared in Diane’s face.

  One foot moving instinctively back and her hands coming up into a martial arts stance she’d been taught during the agency’s boot camp drills, she inhaled and thrust out her chest before shrieking at the dragon, obviously nowhere near as loud nor as powerfully, but the higher pitch cut through the deeper notes the dragon was producing.

  Their combative roaring stopped at nearly the exact same time, the sounds of the street having gone completely quiet. The dragon’s smile seemed to grow wider just before she pressed forward and stroked her snout against Diane, all the way from the tip of her nose to the eye ridges at the base of her horns. The dragon abruptly rose to her full height and bellowed to the heavens, and if Diane were to guess at the emotion behind the sound it would have been something akin to victory.

  She didn’t even realize she was echoing the sound with a uluting cry of her own until she registered that every woman and girl in the area had joined in as well.

  The dragon’s roar finished, she looked briefly down at Diane with an extremely satisfied expression and made a quick skip-hop to unch herself into the air, and within moments was out of sight, lost in the steel and gss jungle.

  She heard the sounds of running feet just before Norma and Russe came up from behind her, Norma firmly grabbing her arm as Russe gently (as gently as he could going from a run to a dead stop, anyway) put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Diane! Are you okay?! What was that about?!” gasped Norma.

  It wasn’t until she tried to answer that Diane realized she was crying. “I…I don’t know…” she sobbed, huge smile stretching across her face from ear to ear.

  PrincessColumbia