Chapter 8

"Everyone be aboard the Luhra by sunrise." Alkina looks over all three of us and raises her chin. "I'll have a few friends of my own along."

Centauri nods slowly, still looking over at the floating ships in the cosmic harbor outside the thickly paned glass. Each one is massive in size and obviously some sort of warships. A voice above calls out departure and arrival times in a droning voice, then says the same thing I assume in many other languages. The Luhra is a gleaming ebony ship looking similar in shape to a megalodon.

"Where can I stay if at all?" Eridia asks in a soft voice, running her clawed fingers through her matted hair.

Alkina looks over, the tendrils bobbing with her movement. "I have room," she bows her head curtly and turns to go.

Eridia looks back at me then at Centauri who turns to look at ships with her hands clasped behind her back.

"I know this is all very hard to believe," Eridia sighs and scratched the side of her nose. "Just stick with the plan, don't get to attached to anyone. The faster we get this finished the sooner you can just go back to Earth."

"What? Don't want me here?" I joke.

"No. You're already endangering these people. I am too... its complicated. Now do you see why he never wanted you to be a cosmonaut?"

I stare at her and subconsciously scowl. "You don't even exist. You've got no right to pretend you know anything about me."

She looks momentarily annoyed, "Ceceilia I gave birth to you for one, and two you couldn't stay here. Humans get the back end here, they have no power in an 'alien setting'. So you were to go back to Earth with your father."

We stand there for a while, obviously having nothing else of worth to say to each other now.

"Are you done?" Centauri muses behind me.

Eridia crosses her arms and looks to Alkina who awaits impatiently. "Fine, don't listen to me. What do I know anyways?" With that, she turns heel and walks away as if she's never spent a day in prison in her life.

"Ah don't let her get to you." Centauri's hand clamps down on my shoulder, as if she just realised she had sharp claws she lets go just as quickly. "Come on."

I let her walk away for a second before catching up. "What did Yex mean about Celestial culture and the genocide?"

She presses a couple buttons on a holographic display and we step into some sort of elevator. While it rises with a faint hissing noise, Centauri looks down at me curiously. "Why do you care? Why not ask me a way out of here?"

"You know I would if I'd ever get an answer." I put flatly.

She raises an eyebrow and looks up at the approaching floors. "Everything was just fine until the humans had to show up and make their presence known. All flashy guns and ships trying to impress the council and Alpha Yex."

A small ringing of a bell sounds beside me and the bubble like box opens to a street with more terraced yards. We carry on walking until we reach one of the hundred of white buildings on the street like place. Outside the door, Centauri bends down to lift up some drooping flowers that let out a tinkling melody sounding like a music box. The little navy blue flowers glow in the center and down the tiny veins in it's stems.

"What are those?" I stoop down with awe to lift another ever so gently and am rewarded with the little melodies.

"We call them Praxidasies, they're pretty common but considered one of the more cherished things among my people." She lifts a few others and they stand upright making their quiet symphonies in the artificial breezes. She looks over at the one I lifted up and nods before standing upright again. A tiny holographic pad shows up next to where the door handle should be and she types something in before the door pixelates away, letting us in. The inside of the home is a lot different than I expected, with things strewn about the floor and oddly placed trinkets lining numerous shelves.

"What...where was I, with the cat?" I look around for Mimas and find an large empty feather bed meant for a pet.

"Mimas is not a cat," Centauri chucks a boot into a closet along with the other. Her feet also clawed and no less purple than the rest of her. "He's an Astridian. "

"Another one of the Celestial culture?"

She looks at me as if I'm incredibly stupid now. "No, real important Celestials don't need animals."

"Well they must lack some taste," I mutter and yelp when a poof of smoke beside me forms into Mimas. The creature looks at me with the same look of Centauri's before settling in its bed, breathing out a puff of smoke from its nostrils.

"We'd just come from Thule's infirmary." Centauri busies herself with something in what I assume is a kitchen. She pauses from lighting something with a silvery fire and looks at me. "Take your shoes off at the door."

My neck heats from the slight embarrassment and I do so, standing awkwardly next to Mimas's bed resisting the urge to pet him. "Seemed kind of up scale for a hospital."

Again she pauses to look at me, "What's a hospital?"

"It's basically the same thing," I give a smile and she shrugs.

"Thule takes a great pride in everything when it comes to architecture and style. Such a waste when it's led by incompetent leaders."

"As I've noticed." I take a risk and lay and hand on the astridian's back just below the spines and scratch it. Mimas makes a snorting noise and turns to look at me tiredly, but doesn't eat me so I think I'm okay.

"Here," Centauri brings a couple dishes to a little crystalline table and sets it down. I look over to see the strange grey liquid shimmer up at me like stars and sit when she says to. "It's not as gross as it looks. I haven't got anything else so suck it up."

I pick it up and sip it surprised at the sour punch it takes then the static it causes to my face. Centauri watches me and holds up what looks a spoon with raised eyebrows. Once again embarrassed by my own idiocy, I use the spoon instead, taking every bite with a repressed grimace. Once I've finished it, my face is basically numb.

"This one's called soup." She takes both empty bowls and walks off to the kitchen. I rest my head on my crosses arms and will away the static feeling. Mimas stalks to a dish on the floor and eats some sort of green jello looking stuff.

"Come sit." Centauri stands in the doorway of a little balcony overlooking a pool filled with eccentric and beautiful aquatic life. Two wicker looking chairs sit out there and a cool breeze plays at my hair. We both sit and stare down at the pool lighting up with glowing fish. "So you asked about Celestials?"

I shrug and glance at her while she looks down at the fish. I notice how her eyes glow dimly in the dark illuminating her face. Her jaw tightens and she looks back at me.

"Our kind were the rulers of everything you know? My whole family was in line for the throne and everything before Simon Glass had done what he did. I think he was angry that my kind were facing the discrimination from so many others like Yex." She says the Alpha's name with venom in her voice and shakes her head. "He ended up destroying half of what he was trying to control."

"So my father, an ordinary human, wanted the power that your kind of people had?"

She nods, eyes searing into me. "A weakened royalty is too easy to overthrow. So Yex and her league took over, stating 'they'd make it better and restore celestial power'."

"She didn't sound too sympathetic in that hall."

"If anything, she might just be setting us all up to fall. Could be working with Glass for all we know. But we're not here for conspiracy theories. Bottom line is, human kind is in danger if Alnilam and the Impics gets ahold of the bridge to Earth. If we get Glass to let go of the grudge, we can save basically everyone."

"I get it now, yeah."

Centauri stretches her great wings and yawns. "You're a lot more important here than you think. I need you most of all, to regain my family's honor."

I give her a half hearted nod and smile.

"Better rest now. We've got a council meeting to attend in the rise and then we're off to do what no one else had bothered to do." She leads me to a little grey couch that feels much like velvet and gives a thin blanket. I take it, my cold fingers brushing over her hand which is incredibly warm. Which must be fitting for someone named after a star. Once she leaves me, I sink back on the couch and recall Eridia's words.

"By the way," Centauri's head pokes out from a doorway, with a brush in her mouth she puts her hair back in a short ponytail and takes the brush in her hand. "You are pretty..."

Heat rises on my neck again and I watch her disappear again. Mimas clambers up to the couch and I lay so he might be next to me. Despite the spines that press into my stomach the astridan radiates the same warmth Centauri's hand did and I find my eyelids heavy again.