Endosymbiosis

20. Endorphin

"If he's smart, he'll follow in his mother's footsteps and stay on Earth. But if he's brave, he'll follow mine."

My dad looked at me with a kind of pride I didn't deserve.

"And if he's smart and brave..." The creature crouched, coming up to my height as if to devour me; and down his throat I often fell into my worst nightmares. "Maybe I will even let him work with me at some point..."

Laughing, my father laid his hand on the creature's pointed shoulder, a gesture I had seen him make countless times with his friends on Earth, but which had never before seemed as powerful as it did at that moment.

"Only those who lose everything join your cause, Korrok... And if it's up to me, he'll never need you." But it wasn't...

Doxy opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, distant music reached our ears, saving me from revealing more than I should.

I quickly got up and offered my hand to help her up. She accepted it and, with an excited smile, pulled me into the music.

• • • ֍ • • •

The music seemed to be made of pure euphoria, entering our pores with an inviting warmth. It drew us into a cluster around a warm sphere of light that floated a few inches off the ground. Hundreds of beings covered with the same gleaming sand orbited it, moving in ways that perhaps we could call dancing, but I wasn't so sure.

Doxy's smile shone brighter than the fire... And the more the music enveloped us, the more she surrendered her body to some dancing god who was lusting after her from the skies. She moved like the tides before the moons, the curves of her body rippling like mountains on the horizon that rose and eroded into the surface of a world for eons. Beads of sweat sprouted from her skin and ran down the valleys of her body, while her hands penetrated through the thick layers of her hair and tossed it to the sides in a dark cloud that engulfed me. Her eyes closed to savor a pleasure the sight wouldn't catch... While I kept mine wide open.

"We were born to die!" Doxy laughed, fatalist. "So let's have fun while we can!" When her fingers touched me, I slipped into the music.

I didn't know if it was the fault of the night or the stars above, but when Doxy pulled me close, I saw something in her eyes that I couldn't escape. Her movements touched me, sometimes a flash of her hair, sometimes an arm, sometimes her hip, in front of me, against me, rubbing, tearing me, so close I could smell her... And I wondered if her taste was the same. She wasn't dancing for me, an intruder in her universe, but her movements held my eyes in a message I was begging, almost on my knees, that I hadn't misunderstood. The whole world was our stage, and there was nothing in it but our euphoria, distilled, intoxicating, burning us from the inside out like I was the match and she the box, the friction at every point her skin touched mine creating sparks.

I was about to pull her into my arms when her eyes fluttered at something she saw behind me... And then the moment had slipped away.

I turned and saw a being with royal blue skin and a huge stinger on his back having fun in the distance. It was a pione; a dangerous creature who accumulated poison to torture their prey with very, very slow deaths. But Doxy hadn't been frightened just because he was a dangerous beast, but because that particular pione had black clothes adorned with assorted brooches and decorations that only one of the Aulics could have.

"What is he doing here?"

"That's not the question, Kadi." Doxy whispered, catching my eye. "The question is: what are we doing here?"

Unfortunately I knew the answer to that question.

I took a vial full of white powder from my pocket that I had found in the bag of starstones Korrok had given me as payment. When we were at the Hasta, I asked him about that, to which he just replied:

"You'll know when it's time to use it." And I think it was now.

The stop in that world had not been to "relax" us, but for us to make one more work for the rebellion. When Doxy's eyes fell on the vial, all joy drained from her petrified expression of bitterness.

"Are you going to poison him?" She asked. I didn't know if that's what the powder would do, but it was a possible hypothesis.

"I don't have a choice..." I whispered. "It is a mission of the rebellion. If I don't do it, they'll hunt us to the ends of the universe." And I didn't want to think about what would happen if I didn't have their help...

Not hearing what she could say to convince me otherwise, I turned my back and walked to the Aulic. He seemed to have no shadow of malice and it didn't seem to make sense to risk Doxy's hatred to destroy him... But then the glow of his medals reached me and I realized how many wars he had won in the name of the Empire to have them, against any small insurrection that had arisen across the worlds of Itopis, without trying to understand them before crushing them.

Maybe he was just doing his job...

But so was I.

I held my breath and, peering through the crowd, I threw the powder in a pale cloud around his face, not staying to see the result.