Cerulean Wings
Marie watched the butterflies float around the yard, and held out her hand. A tiny blue one fluttered close, then rested on her finger tip. It flicked its wings open and closed for a second or two, then flew away again, over the fence and out of the yard. She looked at her birthday card again and sighed. She had turned six last week, and Mitchell, one of the older kids, had told her that the older you got the less likely it was that you would be adopted. He'd gotten told off for that, and apologized to her. He was a little odd, and didn't mean to be cruel about it, and even cried a little when he said he was sorry. She got along with him because he had the same problem she did; parents didn't want weird kids.
She looked down at her legs. It wasn't fair. The car accident that had taken her family when she was an infant had left her with legs barely able to let her walk on crutches. She'd done as much work as she could, and had grown strong, but to her it never seemed enough, not when the other kids could play to their heart's content on any of the toys at the orphanage while she had to mostly read books or just watch them have fun.
"Marie?" She turned around. Ms. Tolson, the nurse at the hospital where she did her physical therapy at was in the doorway to Marie's surprise. Mrs. Branson stood next to her with a smile on her face.
"Hi Miss T," she said with a small smile. "Why are you here?"
"It's something very special," Ms. Tolson said with a big grin.
"We have some people for you to meet, Marie," Mrs. Branson said. She politely waited as Marie stood up on her crutches, so skillfully for a girl so young, but a little sad that she had to learn to be.
Marie hesitated, and followed them through the house without much enthusiasm. Only one other time had she had, "Some people for her to meet", and though she had only been five at the time she could still remember the disappointment in their faces when they learned the severity and permanence of her disability. It was also the only time she'd ever seen Mrs. Branson angry; at them though, not her.
In the main living room a man with with light brown hair wearing a jacket with patches all over it sat on the couch with a smile on his face. He stood up when Marie came in. She smiled at him gamely as she entered, then stumbled to a halt. Standing next to him was a woman with skin almost the same pale blue as the butterfly, with long pointed ears and pure white hair even though she almost looked younger than the man.
"Hello, Marie," she said with a smile and waved.
Still stunned, Marie waved back, her mouth hanging open a little.
"Marie, do you know who I am?" she said. Marie shook her head, then thought for a moment.
"You're a lowree!" she exclaimed. The news sites had talked about almost nothing but the meeting with them for months when they first came to Earth.
The pretty lady held back a laugh. "Very close, Marie. Yes, I am a 'Loroi'. Do you know what we are?"
"Umm... You're a person from another planet?" Marie said. This was fun, nobody else in the center had ever met an alien before, she was sure! She couldn't wait to tell the other kids about it.
"That's right, Marie," the woman continued. "My name is Beryl, and this man's name is Alexander. It's very nice to meet you." The man waved at her as he said hello.
Excited, Marie forgot herself as she began to pepper Beryl with questions about her people and planet. She had always dreamed of visiting other worlds on a spaceship some day, and meeting someone born on another world, let alone not even human? So cool!
Eventually, Beryl overcame her bombardment and held up an omnitab. "We have something very important to share with you," she said. On it Marie watched a video of a big machine that looked sort of like the ones in the hospital, only it looked rounder and had some other blue ladies standing around it. One of them was laying on a bed that slid into the machine, some lights flashed, and then the bed slid back out. A woman talking in a strange language was speaking through the entire clip.
"That looks cool, what is it?" Marie said.
"It is called a 'bioform regenerator'. It can make your legs work just like everyone else's," the Loroi said.
Marie stared at her in confusion. "No it can't, they grew wrong," she said as she looked down, saddened. "Because it... it happened when I was too little, the doctor's said that."
"Marie, I was hurt very, very badly when I first met the Loroi," Alexander said as he crouched down next to her, "But even though they had never even met a human before it was still able to completely heal me. I'm alive because of a machine like this."
"We, the Loroi, have a lot of medical knowledge that humans don't have yet," Beryl said, "And we want to share it with them. But more importantly, I want to share it with you."
"I've looked it over, Marie, and it's really incredible," Ms. Tolson said. "As far as I'm concerned if it does what they say it can, you'll walk better than I ever could have helped you. Wouldn't that be wonderful?" Marie nodded.
"There's something else," Alexander said as he hugged Beryl with one arm. "We are married. But a human and a Loroi... can't have children. Not together, not like humans... can with other humans."
The Loroi lady's smile fell for a moment, but said nothing.
The man smiled. "We are looking to adopt, and you're the perfect little girl from everything Mrs. Branson and Ms. Tolson have told us, and from what I've seen here I'd say they were even selling you a little short."
Marie couldn't believe her ears, and staggered a little. Beryl jumped forward and caught her before she could fall any further. Marie was about to tell her she was alright when she realized Beryl's skin was a lot cooler than hers, and held on to her hand in curiosity.
Beryl smiled and allowed her. "We have a lower body temperature than humans," she said.
"Your skin is pretty too," Marie said with a smile, then momentarily forgetting her fears, "I'd like a mom with blue skin. It's really neat!"
Beryl put a hand over her mouth, and glanced at the man quickly, who put his hand on her shoulder. "I warned you, human children are fearless," he said as he stroked her cheek. She nodded quickly.
"I... would like to be your mother, Marie, but it will take some time. Is that okay?" Beryl said. She quickly wiped a tear away from her eyes.
"Sure! You want my legs fixed before you adopt me, right?" Marie said.
"No!" Beryl said quickly, "no, Marie, you're perfect just the way you are, but we want you to be happy, and your caretakers told us you sometimes get sad about your legs."
"I don't like them," Marie said. "I want to play with everybody on the swings, but it's hard. I fall off, and it's not safe. And I really can't play on some of the other 'ee-kuwip-mint' because they're a lot more harder than the swings. There's some special stuff I can use, but I have to play on it by myself."
"Well, we have to do a lot of paperwork, and that is what is going to take the most time right now," Beryl said.
"But it's the only thing holding us back at the moment," Alex said.
"Mrs. Branson says paperwork is a pain in the ass," Marie said with a nod, then after she thought for a second, "Sorry, that was a bad word."
Alex put a fist on his mouth and snorted as Mrs. Branson turned a little red.
~~~~
Marie yawned as she opened the front door. It was really late and she was a little annoyed that Stephanie had come down with a cold so quickly, and everyone had to go home instead of having the sleepover, but at least Aunties Talon and Spiral were visiting. They were fun to talk with. All their stories of space battles around far away alien worlds and stars thrilled her to no end. Totally unlike a lotta the Loroi that Marie had met who, unlike her mom, were kinda stiff and awkward around human children.
"Ack!"
She whipped her head towards the kitchen. Aunt Spiral was staring at her over the island with big, surprised eyes. "Hi, Aunty Spiral!" Marie said.
"Ah. He-hello, Marie. You are home. Early?" she said without standing up. She was quiet for a moment, as she glanced towards the bedrooms. "..because I thought-" she mumbled under her breath.
"Yeah, Stephanie came down with a cold, and she hadn't told anybody because she didn't want to cancel the sleepover, but she barfed after she had some cake, so then everbody had to leave," Marie said. She slung her backpack onto a hook by the door.
"Marie? Candy?" Spiral said. "Can you, uh, toss me a jacket? It colder out here than thought earlier."
A little confused, since it was a pleasantly cool early fall night, Marie took her dad's old TCA short coat off a hook.
"Oh, uh, can you give the other?" Spiral said with a forced smile. She was still crouched behind the counter. "Your mom's. I, uh, wanted to see how it fit."
Marie shrugged and with a sigh grabbed her mom's long wool overcoat. She made to walk over to Spiral to hand it to her.
"Wait!" Spiral said, "Toss! Is throw better word? Sorry."
"..Ooh-kay..." Marie said. The jacket sailed across the kitchen and Spiral snatched it out of the air with a bare arm. Marie raised an eyebrow as she ducked back down. After a moment or two of scuffling noises, Spiral stood up, holding the jacket close around her despite having zipped it up.
"So, sorry about your 'sleep over'?" she said. She popped the top off a beer that had been sitting on the countertop the whole time. "Are you, stay up more?"
"Nah, I'm tired," Marie said and yawned again. "Will you guys be around for breakfast tomorrow?"
"Sure, we not leave without goodbyes," Spiral said with a softening expression. She patted Marie's head, which among Loroi was something usually only her mother did, and Marie smiled.
"Okay, I'll see you tomorrow," Marie said. She hugged her and followed her back to the bedrooms. She stopped at her door and made to wave goodnight. "Uh, Aunty Spiral, that's mom and dad's room, the guest room is over there."
"Right. Right!" Spiral said as she spun on a heel just as she was about to open her parent's door. "I forget."
Too tired to change into pajamas, Marie flopped into her bed. As she closed her eyes she could hear a door being quietly opened, then closed, and muffled voices.
"..y were you nak..."
"..not know..."
Stifled laughs were the last thing Marie heard as she drifted off to sleep.
~~~~
"Why can't I join?!" Marie shouted. "You were in the Scout Corps yourself!"
"And my entire crew was killed on our first mission!" Alex shouted back as he slammed his fist on the table. "I still see them! In my dreams! Screaming!"
Marie stared at her father, as did her mother.
The latter was the first to recover. "You never told me," Beryl said as she sat down next to Alex.
"I didn't want to tell you," he replied. "I talk about it with my therapist, but no matter what I do, I still get them, the nightmares. Twenty-five years, and they're still there. It's why I resigned my commission. The real reason. I love you, Beryl, but... but you weren't the reason I joined the diplomatic corps. They offered me an Earth posting and we could stay together that way."
Beryl stood, then slowly walked away from him, a hand over her mouth. Marie, unsure, took her place next to her father.
"I didn't want to leave Earth again," he said. He stared at the table in front of him. "I couldn't bring myself to do it. I trapped your mother on a strange world away from everyone she's ever know for..."
"For you," Beryl said from the doorway. "It was worth it, Alex. I love you, and I love studying your world. There's so much to see and do. And we've had Loroi friends visit us many times, you haven't shut me away. I'm only sad and a little angry that you thought you had to hide this from me."
"But Alex," she said as she stepped towards them, "this is Marie's choice. You can't hold her to the same fears." She knelt down beside him. "You know that, right?"
~~~~
Streams of figures of wildly varying shape and size flowed around the spaceport rings, and Marie walked with them, ignoring the pleading Orgus and Neridi hawkers shoving trinkets at her, unaware she wasn't a tourist. As she was about to ask a Barsam cleric for directions, a voice rang out. "Marie!"
"Auntie Talon!" She spun to see her running towards her.
The two women hugged each other; the larger human even picked the smaller Loroi off the ground and spun her, much to the shock of other passing Loroi.
"I can't believe how big you've gotten!" Talon said. She beamed at the young girl, and tapped the TCA patch on her shoulder "And your father's caste. Congratulations."
Marie sighed. "He wasn't thrilled, although mom got him on board eventually."
"How is Beryl?" Talon said. She gestured towards a nearby cafe, and they sat down.
"She's teaching at a local college." Marie flagged down a server and with some tricky negotiations managed to get what she was pretty sure was a human compatible meal. "Loroi cultural studies if you can believe it."
Talon's smile dipped slightly. "Really. She has been on Earth over twice as long as she was a listel."
"I don't think she's stopped being a Loroi. Or a listel," Marie replied as she raised an eyebrow. The server set a plate down in front of her before she could say more, and she hesitated with a fork as she took a closer look. "Is this Perrein-based?"
The server nodded with a smile.
"Phew." She tucked in.
"I still can't believe humans can stand that," Talon said with a grimace.
"There's a Perrein restaurant next to the TCA academy, and everybody always stumbled in there when the bars close," Marie said. "Tasting it is like going back to college for me." The discovery that most Perrein dishes were seasoned and made with benign fungal-analogues fit for human consumption was one of the oddest flukes of cultural exchange between humans and Loroi. With misesa swapped out for wheat, they were entirely safe to eat and the flavors of the dishes were popular with many humans, to the shock of most non-Perrein Loroi.
"'nyways, back to Beryl," Maries said around a mouthful of noodles. "You shouldn't talk down about her like that."
"It's still..." Talon hesistated and looked away. "I wish she would spend more time amongst her sisters."
Marie sighed. "Talon, you can just say you miss her. It's okay. Send her a message. Say you want to talk sometime."
"My time is rather compressed," Talon said, then held up her hands as Marie opened her mouth, "I know, I know. I... I am sorry. I doubt she has forgotten her comrades. I'm just a bit stressed because I am up for caste transition to Torrai."
"Oh my god! That's fantastic!" Marie shouted. She leapt up and around the table, and hugged Talon to the her shock. "Is there a ceremony? How soon?"
Talon laughed. "Calm down, it's still... tentative. Mostly I am still worried if all the instructors and Torrai I pissed off in training are still around to say anything."
"You certainly have the experience though?" Marie said as she sat back down.
"I wish, humanitii," Talon replied. "I may be seventy of your years, but I'm still one of the youngest appellants for Torrai caste transfer ever, especially for a command, and in peacetime no less."
"Command? Really?" Marie raised her eyebrows.
"Mallas. It's actually a step up from my current rank as Tenoin Seinen, and that in and of itself is... I could become a Tenoin Mallas, but Torrai is the only path of further authority, which I am sure terrifies some who know me." She shook her head. "Is it rank by attrition? Do I deserve it merely for surviving this war? Dalid." She shrugged. "As you humans say, fornicate it."
Marie laughed. Then, looking over Talon's shoulder, her eyes lit up.
"Teider Fireblade!" she cried as she waved her hands. "Hey!"
Talon looked sideways, then laughed. "She says she was trying figure out how to sneak up on you, and compliments your human eyes. But also that she will wait to join us until after you clear your plate of that odious slop."
~~~~
She tucked her cap under her arm, and slicked her hair back. A few strands laced the cap's inside, and she frowned at the paleness of one of them. "Damn," Captain Marie Jardin said as she flicked it away. Loroi-developed longevity treatments worked, but they still weren't perfect. At least she certainly didn't feel her sixty years of age, that was good enough.
She knocked on the door, and a few moments later a young man with light brown hair opened it. Marie stared at him, hard. "May I ask what you are doing here?" she said as she put her hand on her sidearm.
"You're Captain Marie!" he said with snap of his fingers. "Beryl! It's your daughter. Wait, what?" He turned back to her confused. Marie rolled her eyes, and pushed past him.
"Mother, what on earth?" she said as she found Beryl Jardin sitting in the garden by the pool. "For fucksake, he's young enough to be my grandson!"
"Well nobody thinks anything of it when we're out walking around together," Beryl replied. Marie rolled her eyes again. By human standards of appearance her adoptive mother could still pass for mid-twenties despite being almost ninety. "And Chad's a nice boy. He's got a brother, by the way. Two years older." She gave Marie a look.
"I am not going to date a twenty year-old!" Marie said as she shook her head and sat down on a wicker bench hard.
"I'm twenty five, actually," Chad said as he walked up carrying a plate of drinks. "Bryce is twenty seven."
Marie rubbed her forehead with her elbows on her knees. "Chad, it's lovely to meet you, but I'd like a moment alone with my mother?" she said without looking at him.
"Say no more," he said, and scurried off to the house.
Beryl sat up and sighed. "Welcome home, dear," she said with a smile. "I heard about the contact with the Orgus refugee colony?"
"They... were terrified of us," Marie said with a sigh. "But I think we made good strides towards bringing them into the Union. Several of the Orgus from first contact had relatives amongst- really, mom? A college boy?!"
Her mother shook her head with a smile. "Is this really that big a deal to you?"
"Do you ever ask him to put on a TCA jumpsuit?" Marie said, then instantly regretted it in silence.
"Despite all biological reality, I sometimes think you have some of that Loroi outspokenness," Beryl said without dropping her smile. "Marie. It's been over ten years. In Loroi terms I'm not even remotely middle aged yet. I am not going to sit here alone, pining away for Alex, for the next three centuries." She moved over and sat down on the same bench as her daughter. "I still miss Alex every day when I wake up and see the empty bed next to me. The extension process... was adapted too late. Plus, even if they had been effective back then, they didn't reverse aging and he didn't want to be stuck as an old man for another two hundred years."
She placed her hand on Marie's shoulder. "If there is one Loroi regret about finding such a kindred race in Humanity, it is your brevity of life."
"I know, I realize that," Marie said. "It's mostly irritating that you still look the same as you did when I met you in the adoption center."
"Oh, my little Marie," Beryl said as she hugged the larger woman. "Don't be jealous. It's not becoming a captain."
They laughed together, then as Marie's laughter turned to shuddering sobs, Beryl held her close until she stopped.
"I miss him so much, mom," Marie said softly as she wiped her eyes. "Even now. I wish he could see the galaxy he helped create. So many worlds, so many people. And when Chad opened the door, with his hair..."
"I still see him in his absolutely hideous orange uniform," Beryl said straight faced, and Marie snorted. She shook her head.
"If only I was a listel," Marie said. "That I could see him in the clarity you do. Mom, do... Do you regret it? When you knew he would live such a short life compared to you?"
"We never considered it, Marie," Beryl said as she stroked her shoulder. "We were both barely more than children, and we fell into maddening, confusing, inexplicable human love, and as strange as it seemed to other Loroi that was all that mattered to us. Young and in love, the ultimate recipe for foolishness." She shook her head. "Really, in fact, we're the only Loroi-Human pairbond who lasted as far as I'm aware. We knew a few others, even met two of the couples, much younger than us, but the human men weren't like Alex. It seems even humans rarely pair for more than a dozen or two years most of the time, and the Loroi in those relationships didn't seem to have the connection to them that I developed with him. To be frank they seemed to be more eager at... having access to a male than companionship."
"Although," she said with a smirk, "I actually met a human woman who had a thing for an abnormally tall Loroi male with whom she was studying Loroi culture while he was visiting Earth for a conference, but she got cured of that infatuation once she found out how many women he slept with in a week."
Marie cackled at that and shook her head. "Boy, if she was expecting fidelity, she barking up the wrong tree there," she said, then changed tack. "Has anyone from the Tempest been by lately? Auntie Tempo or Auntie Talon? I saw Talon and Teidar Fireblade on Seren a few years back, and she was happy to see me, but I haven't seen anyone else in years."
"No, not recently," Beryl said, then with a twinkle in her eye, "you know, had things been a little different, and human-Loroi society a little more accepting, Auntie Talon could have been Mommy Talon."
Marie frowned. "What."
"Well, you know how Loroi usually don't consider males to be exclusive," Beryl continued.
"Oh god, mom, no," Marie said with an expression of dread crossing her face.
"We were all young, we were just having fun. Oh, and Spiral too? You remember her, she has green hair, a year or two younger than me?"
"I do not want to hear about my dad's spelf harem, mother!" Marie sputtered as she covered her ears in protest.
"Now that's a word I haven't heard in a while. Sometimes he called us that when-"
"MOM. STOP."
Beryl sat and sipped her drink with a thin smile on her face.
"That was payback for the TCA orange peel crack, wasn't it?" Marie said.
"All I'm saying is," Beryl continued, "remember how almost all your sleepovers at friends houses when you were a child happened when Loroi friends came to visit?"
"Alright, you win," Marie said as she slumped over and put her head in her hands. "How. How did I not realize this until fifty years later?"
"That summit Tempo attended to accompany Soshet Stillstorm for military negotiations," Beryl said as she went in for the kill, "They stopped by, you went to Suzi Perkin's birthday party after dinner, we had some drinks-"
"Okay, now I know you're pulling my leg," Marie said as she laughed and shook her head as she looked up at her. "That's funny though, Stillstorm and my dad, yikes."
Beryl sipped her drink again with the same thin smile. "She was impressed by the maturity he'd gained in the decades since they'd first met, and also thought his beard was very exotic. I don't remember that evening very well. I was nervous with Stillstorm there, so I was pretty drunk."
"Please don't tell me Tempo joined in," Marie said.
"Alright, I won't," Beryl replied holding the same smile.
"Jesus Christ, dad!" Marie threw her head back into her hands. "Thank god we can't interbreed, he'd have kids spread halfway across the Union."
Beryl's smile broke.
"Oh, mom, I'm sorry," she said. "I... I knew that was an issue sometimes... between you two. There was... research at one point?"
"Pure delusion," Beryl said as she shook her head. "DNA is DNA, across the galaxy, but I have- had as much biology in common with your father as an Umiak. Our listels worked with equally intrigued human geneticists; there was thought at the time that our unnerving similarities had to have a common origin. We even took part in interviews and provided samples out of curiosity. Nothing."
"But Marie," she said as she cupped Marie's chin, "we didn't need to. We had you."
~~~~
Bet everybody started this fic curious about how I was gonna make Alex and Beryl have a kid, huh? Sorry, no magic science babies here.
Sorry there's not much action, but with the world the way it is right now I'm even less enthused about battle "heroics" than I normally would be. And after all, you know what kind of "action" I prefer to create.
