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Apollonia felt hollow as she looked out the window.
For days now, she’d tried to work herself up to walking back onto that medical station.
But every day, she’d turned back.
Jaya’s words still echoed in her mind, and she wanted to hate the woman for saying something so stupid and basic and right.
She’d been on the margins her whole life. Surviving, but not living.
That wasn’t something she was going to get past easily, maybe never. But she had a choice if she lived in fear or took what control she could.
She felt the presence of Kell as he arrived in the lounge, but she wasn’t alarmed. The tension rose in the room, as everyone else sensed his arrival. Even if they didn’t see him, they felt it.
The Ambassador walked up next to her, staring out at the stars in silence.
And they stayed that way, for ten minutes.
The lounge had partially emptied by now, as the patrons – many still not realizing the source of their discomfort – went home or to another lounge.
Kell was slightly amused by it, she thought. As dour as he acted, he had emotions lurking beneath the surface, and when she wasn’t so keyed up inside she could get hints of them, even if his face gave away nothing.
Apollonia was the first to break the silence.
“Something big is happening,” she said.
The being nodded.
“If it is not dealt with, then drastic actions will have to be taken,” Kell commented.
She turned to look at him. “You mean you’ll have to take care of it.”
Kell gave only the barest hint of a nod. “No one will like this outcome.”
“Can you stop it?”
Kell shrugged. “Perhaps not. But it does not matter, as one way or another the events that follow will not bother me.”
“You mean – either you win or you’re dead,” Apollonia guessed.
Kell did not answer this time, but she felt that it was what he meant.
“I have to go back on there,” she said.
“But you are afraid,” Kell noted.
She hated that he could read her so well, glaring at him.
“I am frightened as well, on some level,” Kell said softly.
And it shocked her to realize he meant it. She could feel it now, an inkling of fear in the being.
“What do you think will happen if . . .” she asked, unable to give voice to the rest of the sentence. If they failed. If they did nothing.
“Something new will be born . . . beyond that, I do not know,” Kell replied. “And that is what frightens me. When it comes to times of action . . . rarely have they come quickly for my kind. We act on our own timetables.” He frowned, his eyes going down to stare not out at the stars, but at the floor. “We are not used to acting in haste. Our age can make such actions fall outside of our own consideration.”
“You contacted people, right? That was kind of a quick move, wasn’t it?” Apollonia said. “I mean, we’ve not really been that impressive for very long. Going into space for only like a thousand years.”
“And we were pondering the question of your people for a thousand before that,” Kell said, glancing at her. “Nearly two thousand years . . . and that was still a quick decision among my kind.”
Apollonia got a sense from Kell that she could not even quite understand; the closest she could equate it to was a certainty, a conviction so strong that it was more akin to the most intense emotions of people – like love or hate.
“After all,” Kell said, his voice tinged with bitterness. “Why should we usually care?”
Apollonia had little to say to that, turning back to look at the stars. These stars were a stranger to her; all her life, she’d seen them from her own system, and now they were deep in the void between them, lightyears from where she’d come from. Their positions were all wrong.
“It was good talking to you, Ambassador,” she said. “But I think I have to go.”
“I wish you fortune,” Kell said. “And I hope that I will not have to follow in your wake.”
Other Terrestrial 