Maysie's Galaxy ONC 2023

Dull

She woke to the sound of laughter rumbling around her...well, waking was the wrong concept, but it was essentially the same. "Talon" she muttered against his chest.

And they stayed like that for a good half an hour, just in contact, nothing more.

Maysie pulled back a bit so she could look at this God of a man. Sun-kissed reddish-blonde hair, jewel green eyes, slight stubble, a wicked-sharp chin--it was something she could look at all day. Although his being fully dressed wasn't what she had hoped for. "Why haven't we done anything more than lay here?"

"You want to do something, do it." Talon always radiated joy, no matter what he said. Even now he looked happy to hold her, nothing more. He'd look the same while he corrected her math mistakes, too. It was a touch infuriating.

"But I want you to show me how it's done."

Talon sighed and shifted them from her miserable rabbit robe under the stars of the abyss to a bed like the one she vaguely remembered as a child, with soft deep red sheets. After that, he pulled her in tighter. "You've freely admitted that I'm the second man you've known in your entire life, and we both know this is a mental act."

She started to pull away, "You can just say you don't want me."

" Calm down." He rubbed her back, not letting her go. "That's not what I meant. May, you're about to go into a world of breathing, living people, and you probably will settle with one and raise a family. I will become an otherworldly connection that doesn't mean much. Besides, just looking at you, I can tell you've never seen yourself in a full-length mirror."

" What?!" She scrambled out of the bed and found what he spoke of--a long mirror. While she chose nudity, there was no real definition past her shoulders. Looking down, she saw everything in its place and back up--still nothing.

Well, with no reason to be undressed, she thought about her clothing, leaving her more comfortably herself, but glancing in the mirror, she still saw the same distortions."Help me fix this."

"I can't."

"What do you mean you can't?!"

"If I give you a body you don't like or don't have, it will nag at the back of your mind until it becomes an emotional wound. "Why can't my legs be longer, why did he give me such weird hips? My people have found it best to leave body image alone, no matter how different the mind is from the body--even in your blank state. At least without some serious therapy, which I'm neither trained nor inclined to do."

" So, what haven't you accepted? "

" There's a lot. But we do have limited time. It's going to be harder to get you to hallucinate without a chamber once you get out on the back of the bird, so when is the next asteroid going to make it here? "

"I didn't see any. "

" Well, I'll help you wake up, and see if the landscape has changed when it is time."

Talon went right back into teaching Maysie all her brain could hold, but this time he rubbed her shoulders for most of the instructions, a definite shift in their relationship.

But did he do it beyond basic affection? Even though he didn't wholly reject her, she had tossed herself at a man and lost. This would be even worse if it turned out he was just a ghost in her head.

Just dealing with this accepting but closed-off man made her wish she was still a child dealing with Alder, where none of her notions about becoming an adult were ever in play.

That was the thought that jarred her from her study--she wouldn't be clinging to this messed up dream lover if her father still lived.

"You're losing focus, May."

"I'm wondering why I'm here."

Talon sighed and sat next to her. "This is why I didn't start a thing. You still doubt I exist, and doing things to me that you wouldn't do to a real person could mess up any future relationship we do have."

She didn't say anything immediately, thinking. "You think I'm a child, don't you?"

"No. A child tries something like that with me and I'd permanently sever the connection, find someone else to take it back up, or wait a few years before establishing a link. Maysie, we are currently turning our bird towards yours and you can see me for yourself--if you make it that long. 70 years is hard on a body, especially without our level of technology. But if you make it, I will descend on your people like a God and raise you to my side. People who connect over these distances are rare, so what you are is too precious to waste on mistakes."

"Holy hell," she stared at him in shock. "You're really real, aren't you? I would never compare men to gods as we are just parasites on an egg."

"Took you long enough." Talon's laugh was light. "I'll come in more like the God of parasites, then. But it's too long a life to ask you to wait for me, May."

Now she understood why everything had to be started by her.  She had a finite life, and he was closer to infinite. "How old are you, Talon?"

"Lived years? Somewhere in my early 20s. In this dream state, searching endlessly across the void for someone to talk to? It's hard to estimate because time asleep isn't the same as time awake. That could easily be a thousand years or perhaps a million. They leave you in here long enough to both go insane and learn an old man's patience--that is unending when necessary and absolutely none for foolishness. And years passed since my birth? Based on a 400-day 22-hour cycle? 200 years? All that means is I'm falling behind the times and have to have these same cramming sessions."

"So you're saying this is all you know how to do?"

"Makes me quite the dull person, right?"

Maysie leaned over and kissed his cheek. "I lived survival and education. I think we're the same kind of dull."