The ship floating just outside the dome was about twice the size of the escape pod. While it did loom overhead in quite a threatening manner, blocking out the light of the local sun like a vastly overgrown potato, it still seemed tiny to Pea.

When she pictured a spaceship, she imagined a vessel as big as a skyscraper. Something that could sustain a whole crew for multiple weeks. A gigantic metal thing that a camera could pan across for whole minutes on end.

If anything was the opposite of a skyscraper, it was this ship. Chunky and bulbous, the craft was made up of two roughly globular shapes, the smaller of which was pointing a blunt cone, like the nose of a rocket ship, towards the pod dome. Above the cone was a wide strip of dark material that seemed to wrap around the entire ship. It was such a matte black that at first glance it seemed like the whole craft was made of two separate pieces, separated by the blackness of space.

Pea suspected this was a window. However the whole ship was so… alien, she couldn’t be sure. It might have been some kind of sensor, or even a decoration.

The rest of the spaceship was an organic brown, shading to copper in places. The nubbled exterior gleamed with an oily iridescence on edges where the sunlight managed to creep around.

It had drifted close enough for Pea to peer into the dark, void-like strip above the bow, but she couldn’t spot anyone looking back at her. She couldn’t see anything at all.

“OK, I can see your ship, but I can’t see you,” she said. It seemed a bit surreal that she was even trying to physically see someone in another spaceship. Shouldn’t they be talking via video? Still, maybe this was the kind of thing that happened with escape pods. Particularly with recalcitrant, bitchy, only-good-for-scrap escape pods.

“Can you see me?” Pea waved her hands over her head and jumped a few times for good measure. Her breasts bounced in a very uncomfortable way so she stopped that almost immediately and made a note to try and figure out where she could get more practical clothes.

“My… ship?” The voice seemed very hesitant and sounded even younger than before. “What do you mean? I…”

The alarm smashed through their conversation, making Pea start. As adrenaline pumped through her in a painful burst, she clenched her fists, then screamed. Her voice was pitiful under the shrill wail.

“Can’t you fuck off for five seco…!”

“We are on a collision course. I recommend evacuation.”

“Hey, no problem!”

Pea could just barely hear the other person- was it a girl? It was hard to tell with such a young voice- over the blaring alarm. The brown ship slid closer, so smoothly that Pea didn’t even have time to react before it made contact with the shield surrounding the dome with a gentle pop. A cerulean haze of static danced around the point of contact.

Without any fanfare, or protests about captain assignments, the other ship nudged the pod out of the way of whatever chunk of space debris was getting the pod computer’s panties in a bunch.

The alarm ceased as abruptly as it started.

“Thank you so much,” Pea spoke directly to the brown ship. She was still peering into its dark windows, trying to see her savior, but they stubbornly refused to reflect a single ray of light.

For the first time it occurred to the companion that she didn’t know what the girl in the other ship would see if she were looking back. Aside from the fact that she had noted in passing that she was wearing very uncomfortable clothes, Pea had hardly had time to think about her own appearance during this barrage of new experiences.

She lifted a hand to her face to check for… what, acne? Stray food paste? A muzzle? And realized she had absolutely no idea at all what she looked like. Without checking, she couldn’t have said what the color or texture of her hair was, or the color of her eyes, or whether or not she even had eyebrows.

Finding yet another blank space where knowledge of her self should be made her stomach roil.

Still, she tried to smile, and shifted her face into an expression of gratitude, rather than the horror that was bubbling underneath. For all she knew, there was some kind of high tech telescope reading her expressions.

“I don’t know what I would have done…”

The shriek of the alarm punched her in the gut for a third time.

If Pea hadn’t suspected the girl in the other ship was somehow watching her, she would have kicked the couch again.

This time she might have broken a toe.

“We are on a collision…”

“I know!”

“How about,” the girl yelled over the comlink, “I just push you completely out of the way of all this stuff?”

Pea could have wept. She didn’t have to force a look of gratitude this time.

“That would be so great, thank you!”

The companion collapsed dramatically on the nearest velvet sofa and surreptitiously punched it, hard. It was an absurdly pointless display of temper, but it made her feel a tiny bit better.

She stared at the pool of water in the center of the room. It was crystal clear. A slight wisp of steam rose from the surface.

Where did the water even come from? Was the computer maintaining it? The idea that an escape pod was spending resources on something so extravagant, so ludicrous, suddenly struck Pea as insanely funny. It took all her willpower to refrain from giggling hysterically.

A tiny wave of pressure pushed her back into the velvet seat as the little brown ship- that apparently could- nudged them out of danger. Chunks of metal and plastic, most of them jagged and blackened, streamed past the dome above her head.

Space debris. The remains of a violent encounter. The only memories that Pea had left were of what seemed like a battle between ships, and an enormous explosion.

People died in battle, particularly if ships were destroyed.

What if she was drifting next to his grave?

The companion squashed that thought like a bug before it could crawl up her spine and into her heart. After all, if she had made it to an escape pod, there was no reason he wouldn’t have survived. He was the captain of their ship. She was suddenly sure of that. He was the missing person the pod kept bleating about.

No doubt he knew what he was doing, spa pool or no spa pool.

The alarm stopped, leaving a ringing silence behind it.

“Is that better?”

The voice over the crackling channel sounded very pleased with itself. Pea had automatically labeled it as “female” but now she wasn’t quite sure. It had the high pitched, androgynous clarity of a kid on the cusp of adolescence,.

Well, whoever it was, the horrible alarm had been stopped, and Pea was eternally grateful to them.

“I think you fixed it.”

Pea lurched reluctantly off the couch and checked out the bridge. No more red lights or helpful neon outlines. She could still see huge chunks of spaceship littering the starscape around her, but nothing was close enough to be an issue, except for her chunky brown savior who swung into view of the control room.

So they were watching Pea through the dome.

The thought was somehow both comforting and disquieting.

“Thank you so much,” Pea said and waved out the window, hoping it was actually a window and not just a viewscreen hooked up to cameras.

“You’re welcome!” The voice said and the little junebug of a ship did a loop-de-loop, like an excited bird. Pea’s mouth dropped open in shock. Were all spaceships so… agile?

“You’re a Mother, aren’t you?” the voice said.

“God, I hope not,” Pea replied without thinking.

“Is that a human Child? Are humans like Mothers? Why isn’t your Child talking to me?”

Pea didn’t know where to start. She had found the pod computer frustrating to talk to, but this was a whole other level of cryptic.

“I… uh…. I don’t have a child here,” she said. “I am, ah… human? I think. Are you… not human?”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“No! I’m Quentith!” The little ship spun joyfully on its axis, so violently that Pea quickly became very certain that there was no human crew on board.

“I’ve never talked to a human before!” The voice sounded absolutely thrilled. “Your Child looks very strange. Is it an infant?”

Pea sat down in a red velvet chair and let the excited chatter spill over her. The alien didn’t seem to be waiting for answers as it burbled out question after question. Pea ignored them all.

She was looking at… she was talking to an alien species. The problem was that Pea had no idea if she should be excited. Or afraid. Or annoyed. Or anything at all.

She obviously remembered enough to label some things around her, such as spaceships, starfields, and unhelpful, shitty pod computers. She understood the concept of aliens, and the concept of space travel, but both these things still seemed surprising, even shocking, to witness directly.

This alien seemed to know fluent English (or at least it had a very good translator) and obviously had heard of humans, even if Pea was the first one it had met. All of that added up to this not being a first contact situation. Which meant that aliens were probably not all that surprising to most humans.

It should have been a relief, but Pea felt a mild prickle of disappointment. So she wasn’t making history right now. Still, it wasn’t like she was currently a stellar example of humanity, so it was probably just as well.

It occurred to her that a classic space battle would most likely have put humans and… and Quentith, on opposing sides, but there was no point in thinking about that. The companion was not unaware that she wasn’t so much a sitting duck, as one already roasted and waiting to be served.

At any rate, the alien seemed to be young, and friendly. Helpful even.

Maybe it was all a deception, or a translator misfire, but it wasn’t like Pea had a lot of options for company. And no matter how she strained, she couldn’t remember a single thing, good or bad, about an alien species called Quentith.

She decided to trust her gut.

“What Child are you talking about?”

Pea interrupted the stream of chatter somewhat rudely, but the alien didn’t seem to mind. Pea had a suspicion, based on how the glossy potato in front of her was prancing around like an excited puppy. When is an alien ship not an alien ship at all?

The potato lifted its snub nose in a very human gesture, motioning at the escape pod.

“Your… ship? All human Children- human ships- seem so strange to me. Um… very nice-looking, though!”

Pea bit her lip to hide a smile. She was certain the escape pod looked absolutely horrid. It probably had velvet accents, or had a disco ball attached to its rear.

At any rate it almost certainly looked nothing like the chubby brown ship… the chubby, brown alien, that was hovering in front of it.

“Mother told me not to be curious about humans, but I can’t help it!” The creature nudged the pod very gently and the view outside rocked in response. Pea allowed a tiny amount of fear to mix with the excitement after all.

“They’re so weird and I wanted to know everything. That’s why I… why I ended up here, I guess.”

“Are you still a… a Child?” Pea asked gently. “Where is your… uh… your Mother?”

“I’m just about an Older,” the voice said proudly. “I almost never have Mother with me and sometimes I don’t even have a Father! Like now…” The voice grew somber. “I didn’t mean to go towards the fight. We were practicing maneuvers in the human sector and I saw so many human ships all clustered together!” The ship- it was hard not to think of it as a ship- seemed to droop as it spoke. “I just wanted to take a quick look, and maybe ask them some questions… and then suddenly everything went dark, and then I was here.”

The voice cracked slightly. Pea wondered how her escape pod computer could be so dense, and yet still translate the misery in the alien voice so well. Or maybe it wasn’t Pod translating. Maybe the little alien just happened to know fluent English, or had some kind of built-in translator?

Pea was starting to wonder why she was so sure she herself was speaking English. She probably couldn’t even take that for granted.

“I can’t hear anyone now, except you,” the alien continued. “Not Fathers, not even my Mother. It’s… it’s not very nice.”

“Um… do you have a name?” Pea suspected she wouldn’t be able to pronounce it if the little ship did have a name. A species that lived in space was not likely to have a sound-based language.

“I’m Child of Delights in Iridium Pudding.” It paused, then explained, “Quentith don’t get our own names until we become Olders.”

And who was Pea to judge?

“My name is Pea. P-E-A. Uh… May I call you Junebug? It’s… a bit shorter.”

“A human name? Oh yes! Junebug! Thank you, Pea.” The creature twirled again, as if giddy with joy. Its emotions seemed to change very quickly. Just like a human pre-teen, Pea supposed.

As it drifted closer Pea noted that this Child was at least the size of a two-story townhouse. Pea had to look away from the spinning brown mass as her stomach dropped in response. She wondered how it could have mistaken her for a mother. Did this species get smaller the longer they lived?

“My ship isn’t… alive. It has a computer, and that’s what you might have heard talking to me. But it’s just a small escape pod, not even a proper ship.” She wondered if there was any way to explain human development succinctly to such an alien creature. “Humans don’t have that kind of child. We just make smaller versions of ourselves.”

“Like plants-animals?” The little brown alien moved even closer, filling the view screen with her pebbly, unmistakably-organic skin. The matte black area that Pea had assumed was a window, she now realized was some kind of sensory organ, and it was pointed directly at Pea.

The scrutiny made the companion squirm. A rising tide of nausea threatened to overwhelm her.

“Something like that,” she said quickly. “Look, I’m just going to go do something. I’ll be right back, OK?”

“Oh… uh, OK.” Junebug was instantly crestfallen. Her body didn’t seem at all flexible, yet still managed to sag as if it was a puppet whose strings were cut.

“Mother Pea, I will miss you.”

Pea suddenly felt like a monster.

How did the potato-like creature manage to look so anxious? It was all but trembling. Pea thought back to how it had talked about mothers and fathers and the pride in its voice when it said it went for brief periods without them. This little one was not used to being alone.

If Pea wasn’t right on the cusp of hysteria, she might have been swayed. As it was, she desperately needed a moment alone.

Pea worked as much warmth and reassurance into her voice as she could, even as she lurched to her feet.

“Of course I’ll be right back,” she said. “I’m not going far.”

There’s nowhere to go, she added to herself. Even if I wanted to.

She marched back into the main area of the pod, ignoring the movement in the corner of her eye that told her Junebug had swerved around to watch her through the dome.

Pea went straight into the one part of the ship she had not yet visited. The bathroom. She let the door slide closed behind her with a guilty wash of relief.

There wasn’t much to it. A closet-like enclosure that was probably some kind of shower, a silvery toilet, and a full length mirror, lined with strip lights. The whole room had a floorspace around the size of a queen-sized bed.

Pea took a deep breath, and stepped in front of the mirror.

Any hope that she would recognize her reflection was quickly dashed, along with every scrap of dignity Pea had managed to scrounge up over the past few hours.

Staring back at her was a curvy woman dressed in the most impractical space suit Pea could imagine. It was little more than a bikini made of white plastic with metallic accents. The acres of bare skin on display were tanned and poreless. A scattering of freckles across a tiny nose was the only thing she had that was even close to a blemish.

Her hair was somehow billowing out behind her in perfect, blonde waves that fell below her shoulders. Pea remembered the rough sleep she’d had only a few hours ago and reached up to the glossy, perfect curls in bewilderment. Her fingers combed through it like it was water. The curls sprang back into place.

“What the fuck?”

Her eyes were an implausibly-deep green and it looked almost like she had makeup- freakin’ makeup- on, with cherry-red lips and thick, black lashes. Pea rubbed at her eyes, then checked her hands. No mascara.

So… the future had really good plastic surgery? Some kind of augmentation?

The face looking back at Pea from the mirror was uncanny.

It felt more alien than Junebug.

Pea rubbed at an eye until it was sore, then checked it again. Not even a hint of puffiness. Each enormous lash was still stubbornly black and bouncy.

The sick feeling that had been growing in Pea’s stomach suddenly surged, and she spun around and lifted the toilet seat…. Or at least tried to lift it.

The seat was attached to the bowl. Pea attempted to get her fingers under the seat to yank it up, but there was nothing to grasp.

The whole toilet was a fake.

Pea ran to the shower enclosure instead, which at least seemed to have a drain in the floor of it, and gagged on the bile that was rising in her throat. She spent long moments on her knees arched over that grated, circular drain as her stomach tried to heave up what little was still inside it.

Eventually it gave up. Pea was almost sorry she didn’t manage to eject the so-called meal she’d eaten, what seemed like months ago. However, it was a relief that she didn’t have to figure out how to turn on the shower yet, since it had no obvious controls.

She staggered back to the phony toilet and sat on it, putting her head between her legs. Gradually her breathing returned to normal. She could feel her heart beating, her blood rushing through her veins. She could feel herself get scared, get angry, and calm down again.

She was human, right? Right?

She had to be.

A human who somehow felt completely out of place… but still human.

“I am detecting an extreme emotional response. Do you require assistance?”

The voice was still cold and judgemental, but Pea grasped at it like a drowning person grasps at a floating piece of garbage.

“Who am I? What am I? I don’t understand what’s going on.” Tears began to drip down her face and Pea knew with the horror of absolute certainty that they were only making her eyes look prettier.

“You are a Bright Companion.”

“I am fucking not.”

A surge of anger propelled her back to the mirror. Pea stared deep into the stranger’s eyes and then pounded her fist with all her might into the shiny surface.

The image didn’t so much as flutter, let alone shatter.

It occurred to Pea that punching the unyielding mirror, until all the frustration inside her dissipated, was a good idea.

However, just as she was about to start, a tiny shred of that dreaded neon-green caught her eye.

A minuscule pop of color, peeking out from behind the bouncy halo of blonde curls.

Carefully, using the mirror to aim, Pea reached out into what should have been the empty space behind her. She felt a tiny buzz in her fingertip as it connected with the green spark. A cheerful chime sounded and a neon-green box swung into place, hovering in front of Pea.

The box contained text, all of which seemed to be in a foreign language. It took Pea a few moments to realize it was English, only displayed back-to-front.

She looked in the mirror.

Written across the top of the glowing green square was the word HUD, and below that was BRIGHT COMPANION (Rare, Shoddy, Level 1).

Right below that was a gently-pulsing green button. It was balancing on a single line of text.

“Would you like to turn on Leveling for this Item?”

Pea considered asking Pod what all this meant. There was a lot of other text in the green box, and her brain was already deciding to read it all, take it all in, and understand it before she did anything rash.

She knew that was the sensible thing to do.

However, before she could do the sensible thing, she had already tapped the button.