Dreams

Femeri station bustled around Alwen, people of every size and shape pushed past one another in a rush to reach their destination. The bitter rich scent of Uq’ot wafted over the nearby space and tickled at her nose. Dump truck sized elevators soared up and down through crystal clear glass tubes. Silver bullet trains roared through glass tunnels of their own, transporting hundreds of people as efficiently as possible. Above and below Alwen were two enormous glass domes that capped off either end of Femeri’s great crossroads sector, creating an enclosed capsule of tightly packed walkways, elevators, and monorails.

Beyond those glass domes, cargo and passenger ships pulled into the station’s interior berths. The confines of the space were tight, and the spaceships had to dance around each other with the grace of Temple Dancers on All-gods day. All dancing to the tune of intergalactic commerce through this single vital linchpin in the Femeri sector economy.

Alwen watched the space with awe and growing trepidation, everything was so large and strange, completely alien to anything she’d seen before. She wandered on from where she had been gawking, following the scent of Uq’ot to a familiar café where a four-armed simian Carkic was operating the polished chrome of his Uq’ot machine. As Alwen walked she examined the store fronts she passed, looking for any telltale dark patches of old blood, or maybe some remaining char from the fires. But try as she might, she couldn’t see any sign of damage or battle.

Wait, why was she trying to find evidence of a battle? Why would there be any blood splatters or fire damage? This was her first time visiting the alien station. Right?

Just as Alwen began to question her own memory she pushed through some sort of invisible barrier in the throngs of aliens and emerged into a wide-open space around the café. She glanced around and saw several Station Security officers in their light brown uniforms, their various manipulator limbs resting on pulse pistols. Some of the large alien strangers had stopped to stare in fear at the back of someone leaning on the bar of the café, chatting pleasantly with the Carkic owner.

Alwen glanced around at the strange scene before she stepped forward and approached the hunched bipedal figure. As if alerted to her approach the bipedal mammalian person perked up and turned their head, finally giving Alwen a good look at her face. She had a fine delicate looking face with crystal blue eyes, pale white hair, and light violet skin. She had bone like protrusions on her cheekbones that highlighted the beauty of her eyes while also breaking up her face in a striking fashion.

The violet skinned woman stood up straight and smiled at her with perfectly white teeth. The crowd recoiled and the SS pulled their guns, but the woman ignored them as she smiled at Alwen.

The woman was Alwen, but also not. She was the same height as Alwen, and her features were exactly like Alwen’s, but her figure wasn’t quiet right. The other Alwen had thicker arms, more defined muscles, she was still thin but not in the same bulimic way as Alwen was. She also stood straighter and taller somehow despite being the same height as Alwen. And most of all there was something sharp and dangerous about the air around her. She wore strange robes in the colors of Ashendra’s healers, with two curved swords at her hip. The sleeve of her left arm stopped at her elbow giving the clothes an uneven feel while also revealing a black intricate tattoo just below her wrist.

“Who are you?” Alwen asked.

The other Alwen laughed “I’m you.”

Alwen shook her head “You’re not me, I’m not you” she spluttered in confusion.

The other Alwen smirked to herself, “Not yet, but you will be. Come, sit.” She said while patting the bar stool next to her. Alwen hesitated, but seeing as the crowd of aliens had now turned their hateful glares on her it wasn’t safe to stay with them. The other Alwen looked to the Carkic and held up two fingers. “Two coffees please, no milk.”

The Carkic made a hacking sound in its throat, “This is Uq’ot, not that Hellworld drink.”

The other Alwen laughed as the four-armed man went back to running his machine. She turned to Alwen as she sat down and leaned in to whisper something conspiratorially “I usually prefer tea, but given a choice between Uq’ot or coffee, I always choose coffee.”

Alwen stared at her other self and felt her confusion grow “Who are you?”

“I told you, I’m you, or I will be.” She said cheerily. “In fact today’s the day you start to become me.”

Alwen blinked “Today’s the day I become you, who is also me?” this conversation was making her head spin.

Other Alwen laughed “You can just call me Bones if that makes it easier.”

“Bones?”

“Yeah, old Terran byword for a doctor, something about amputations.” Bones explained.

“Terran? I was just hired by a Terran ship.”

Bones nodded “Yup, it was the dumbest thing we ever did.”

“Why.”

“Because it’s not just a cargo ship, it’s a pirate vessel hiding under the guise of a cargo ship.”

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Alwen felt alarmed “We joined a pirate ship!”

“Yes, the dumbest decision we ever made, also the best one. Funny how they tend to go hand in hand.”

“It’s the dumbest, and the best, how?” then something clicked for Alwen “The fire, and blood splatters” she said in horror.

In fear Alwen looked around the station, but the scene around her had changed dramatically. The once pristine storefronts were now ablaze, and the crowds of busy pedestrians panicked and began to stampede. The air filled smoke and the sounds of terror, and a creeping feeling of fear crawled up Alwen’s back.

Bines smiled sadly as the fires cast her face in shadow, and put a hand on the large sword at her hip. “I won’t deny that there’s been some pretty bad days, days like this one” she said with a gesture to the growing inferno. “But if I could, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Alwen watched the burning station and felt a vise tighten around her chest, she looked down and saw her hands were covered in blood. “this, this is going to happen to me?”

Bones nodded.

“Then I should just go home-”

Bones shook her head. “I wouldn’t recommend that.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s nothing there for us. The greatest thing I ever learned out in space, was that we were meant to be more. We were never going to fit in and be happy down there, not the with the way things were. Maybe if I went back then I might be able to make something of our life; but you as you are, wouldn’t be able to change anything.”

Alwen looked down, partially in shame at being so weak, but also because she was scared to take that step and become Bones. “I don’t think I can become you knowing how hard it will be.”

Bones smirked again, she held up her hand a urged Alwen to lean in with a finger. Alwen leaned into her future self and Bones put her lips right against Alwen’s ear to whisper conspiratorially “you already have.”

~~~*~~~

Alwen woke with a jerk in her bed, her heart was beating a million miles a second and her breaths came in shivering heaves. Gato was awake the moment Alwen jerked and was rubbing a paw up and down her back.

“It’s okay Vi, you just had a bad dream.” He said soothingly.

Alwen didn’t say anything a just worked to get her breathing under control. It took a while but eventually her heart settled down. Gato leaned away from her for just a second to flick on a lamp by their bed. She was blind for a second as her eyes adjusted to the light, but when she could focus her vision she saw the plain interior of their apartment in one Temple city’s many step pyramids. The room was undecorated and had a bare bones feel to it, but it was a familiar emptiness.

She looked around, confirming each little detail to help remind herself what was real and what wasn’t. She wasn’t on Femeri, she was in Temple city on the planet of Pandemonium, an out of the way planet colonized by the pirate fleet she had pledged herself to. It had all been just a bad dream, one of the many she had since moving into Gato’s apartment. The ancient stone city had many empty rooms within its mysterious indestructible pyramids, so rent was cheap, not that she was worried about money. Despite the cheap rent she had moved into Gato’s place without a second thought.

Typically they both lived on the Terran cruiser the Astaroth, but after their harrowing flight from a Draxori sneak attack their home had been too badly damaged to inhabit, especially now that it was going into a dry dock. Much of the ships old crew had been transferred to other ships, or given their own command in the expanding Hellworld fleet. Leaving those who remained with the task of training up a new crew while the ship was repaired.

Gato, and her best friend Alice had been given new fresh-faced recruits and spent most of their time out of Temple city on training exercises. Alwen had been promoted to the Astaroth’s chief medical officer and she had little time to spend searching for a place to live, and even less to actually live in said place. Gato had offered to let her to stay at his place and she had accepted without a second thought. It only later occurred to her that she had just moved in with the guy she had only been dating for a few weeks when her old friends from Torwen pointed it out. She had only been looking at the convenience and hadn’t even stopped to wonder if things were moving too fast.

If Alwen was honest with herself, she wasn’t sure how she felt about their relationship. Gato was a wounded man, not that any casual observer could see that from a glance. His powerful Feliniod body was sculpted to perfection, the result of countless hours dedicated to growing stronger and stronger. His species was already very well known for their monstrous strength, matched with the hyper advanced synthetic muscles boosting his strength even further, and it was easy to see why many were intimidated by him. But beneath all that power and muscle was the heart of a very wounded man, who wasn’t even sure if he had anything to live for.

She used to think he was just a melancholic and solitary person and had tried to soothe him with her presence. But when she had actually learned what had been done to him she had tried to pull away and approach his psychological scars from a cold professional distance. Which lasted only a day before she enticed him into kissing her while he was in the ship’s med-bay recovering from a stab wound.

A stab wound he had received while trying to save her life when Draxori had boarded the ship.

Alwen felt ashamed of how she had manipulated the injured man during a time when he was vulnerable. Sometimes when her doubts began to overwhelm her, she wondered if he had only kissed because of the painkillers in his system, impairing his judgement. He had been very clear on how he didn’t want any romantic entanglements. But on nights like this, with him gently rubbing her back, she was happy she did it. No matter how selfish it seemed.

She was already having issues back when the Astaroth was still active and she had the daily hustle to distract herself, but now that she was living a quiet life on Pandemonium it was like her mind was trying to drag her back into the hellfire of her own nightmares. And she wasn’t sure if she could handle that alone.

Alwen’s heart calmed down and she leaned back into his embrace.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yeah, it wasn’t too bad tonight, just strange.” Alwen said, confiding in him. He had gone through far worse than her, and knew how dark it got sometimes.

Whenever her nightmares woke her up like that he would always just sit there, calmly soothing her until she could talk. Then he would softly ask her about it and walk her through what she had just experienced. It wasn’t much, but it helped her feel like she wasn’t alone, and in her darkest moments that was all that kept her going.

“Strange how?” he asked.

“I was on Femeri, but it wasn’t like the other dreams on Femeri. It was like a cross of the normal hellscape and the first time I visited, just before I joined the ship.” During her stint with the Hellworlders they had been ambushed on Femeri by a group of rival pirates, it had been the first time Alwen had seen someone die in battle, let alone hold them as the life left their body. It was when it really sank in for her that she had joined a pirate crew and this sort of thing could happen any time.

She had been through other traumatic events, her mad scramble on Parox, the fight with Kazlum during the Battle for the Confederacy, Ah’ared’s revenge and the enemy boardings, or the desperate attempt to escape the Draxori and their super-ship. But her mind always dragged her back to Femeri, when she first saw someone die in battle.

Gato didn’t say anything, he just waited for her to get her thoughts in order and quietly urged her to get it all out.

“I, I was myself on that first day, just before I joined the ship. Naive and clueless. I met myself, the me I am right now. Bones, but from the perspective of the dream she was my future self.”

He tilted his head, “You met your future self?”

“No, in the dream I was the me from two years ago, and she was me right now.”

“Sounds confusing.” He rumbled.

“Yeah, but the strangest part of all was that the future me wasn’t acting like me, she was acting like Astarte. She had that devilish glint that Astarte gets in her eyes when she’s toying with someone.”

“I’m not sure I’d call it toying, more like teasing.”

Alwen snorted “Maybe that’s how she sees it, but take it from someone who has dealt with her teasing before. Its like being caught within a strixas paw.”

Gato chuckled, he had known her long enough for her to relax and start using metaphors from her home world. He knew that a strixa were Torwen’s equivalent to a cat, though they were pattern more like Jaguars, with similar misshapen ringed spots on their fur. He reached around her and pulled her in close, “In the strixa’s paw?” he asked wryly as he spread the fingers of his paw out on her chest. Gato was a melanic jaguar and most of the time just looked to have black fur, but if one got close they could see dark rings in his black fur.

Alwen laughed and snuggled in deeper. “Yeah, but fuzzier.” She murmured as she yawned. “I’m okay now, it was just strange not scary. I have things to do in the morning.” She murmured as she listened to the beating of his heart.

He relaxed his hold into a more comfortable embrace and let himself sink back into the mattress. He reached over and turned off the lamp, and Alwen closed her eyes, ready to face whatever her own mind threw at her.