*Mae*
"Please, help move this along now, my people! We work as a collective unit, not as a singular being, yes?"
From afar, I watched with the hint of a blossoming smile as Zaxton ordered the community of Palace guards that he assembled on such short notice around the Palace Grounds, the guards fully clothed as they were making quick work of the heavy lifting for the reconstructed metal objects for the Calypso Number Two but Zaxton was currently shirtless and I could see his skin glistening with sweat even from this far away.
It was a hot day on the Zubine planet, and yes I was finally able to pronounce the name correctly after Zion corrected me more then half a dozen times before going on a grumbling fit about how my "little human brain" couldn't comprehend the complexities of their language to himself, and while almost all of the hard workers were still fully clothed, since it was a bit of indecent exposure for them to undress themselves in front of royalty, I was perfectly fine with admiring Zaxton from afar as I leaned against the balcony terrace belonging to our wing of the Palace.
That's right.
I said wing.
As in, we were no longer sleeping in the servant's quarters, which I never had a problem with to begin with but that's beside the point here.
As in, Casimir had somehow convinced Zaxton to contemplate taking over the throne as the rightful ruler of the Kingdom. I wasn't sure how he did it but the big oaf of a man must have been convincing enough to make the love of my life say that he would look into possibly reclaiming the throne as his own.
Don't get me wrong, I had nothing against Zaxton reclaiming the throne as the rightful ruler but I was also a bit worried about that kind of power.
To know that something as simply as having authority over everybody and everything could go to his head and make him turn into a fucking lunatic who went around assaulting individuals much like his younger brother, Zephyr, previously did made my stomach churn and acid bubble up with anxiety.
But there was something major separating Zaxton from his malevolent blood sibling.
That something was that I trusted him.
I trusted him with my life.
I trusted him before I even knew him that well.
I trusted him to get me to safety and to look out for me when I didn't know I even needed looking out for.
I trusted him and then…I learned to love him.
Learned to love somebody that wasn't biologically related to me.
Learned to understand that I could feel something as strong and as intense of emotions that Zaxton gave me.
That I wasn't unlovable or a freak.
That I could be as gentle and as soft as I was the rough and tough badass as I still consider myself to be on occasion.
I said occasion here because I couldn't actively be as badass-y as I wanted to be all the time.
Not for right now, that is.
Right now, I had to be cautious of people, of life, of my life.
And the life that was slowly being created inside of me.
My hand reached down to softly palm the swell of my belly beneath the exotic ribbon of silk that Casimir had the servants twist and turn into a gown for me and the baby growing inside of me.
I had told him that it was too much, too expensive for somebody of my stature and I would never be able to repay him for his kindness and generosity.
Don't worry, I still haven't forgotten about the fact that he did act less than civil towards my arrival when we first met but I have put it in the past.
It was water under the bridge, so to speak, and I wasn't going to allow one bad interaction towards each other to come in the way of the livelihood of my unborn child.
Nevertheless, the former man in power was stubborn and he still insisted that I keep the finest silks that their Kingdom had to offer for clothing options available.
Even though I wanted to object, the secret little girl inside of me who still wanted to live her life as a princess in a magical palace far away was more willing enough to go along for the ride and I had simply smiled and thanked him for his kind gesture towards me, an outsider.
Though it's no wonder where exactly Zax gets his stubborn attitude from, the man is as coarse of sandpaper and as solid as hardened oil.
But that doesn't compare to how Zaxton is.
He may have learned it from viewing his father's behavior but he also got a good dose of just how harsh and unforgiving his kind could be sometimes when he was exiled, much like how his brother was now.
Casimir gave me the backstory to why Zaxton had to give up the throne, apparently he had been displaying some reckless and life endangering behavior in the form of petty vandalism, though he didn't exactly use the word vandalism so I'm paraphrasing a bit here, and he was relinquished of his title as rightful heir to the throne when he nearly destroyed half of the outlying homes belonging to the Kingdom when he tried to recreate the invasion that nearly wiped out his entire population and took away the female species of their race.
Finally, I had learned what exactly had happened to their women and it turns out, it was more devastating than the plagues that ran rampage back on Earth.
Supposedly, many, many years ago, the Zubines had lived in peaceful harmony until they were invaded by a neighboring planet that has since long disappeared into the vast abyss of the galaxy.
The foreign alien race had been dying off, slowly and surely, and they stole the women from this planet, took them away as if they were property that needed to be requisitioned. It broke my heart to find this out, mostly because I had expected it to be something along the lines of enemy lines being crossed, soldiers going off to war, families being torn apart by famine and poverty.
I hadn't expected mass genocide to be the clear indicator and my eyes still stung with unshed tears, tears that I wouldn't allow myself to cry even in the privacy of the balcony terrace, because they weren't mine to shed to the light of day.
Nevertheless, as much as I wanted the moment to shed a few fluid droplets, I still refused to cave as I kept the tears at bay as whilst watching the love of my life create a new spaceship that would not just be for our own use but for the community as well, as I watched him recreate pieces of the land that had been destroyed when his brother was exiled far away and former King Zephyr tried to ruin anything good that had came out of my abrupt, and mostly unwelcome at first, arrival on their home planet.
Most people would have backed down from the grueling tasks set forth but Zaxton still continued to surprise everybody, including me.
Especially when, almost immediately after Casimir had rightfully crowned Zaxton as the Ruler, Zaxton came up to me shortly afterwards into the night and he asked me if I had been experiencing strange physical reactions to living upon their atmosphere, one of the bigger symptoms being audible hallucinations.
At first, I was confused as to what he meant, why would he be asking if I was having hallucinations unless something was off with their atmosphere?
But then, it clicked inside my head and I spilled to him about the visions and encounters I've had with my mother whom I wasn't even sure was alive or not.
The fallen expression on his face told me all that I needed to know and when he explained the truth about what I had been seeing, that their planet had strange properties lying just below the surface, such odd emissions bubbling up from the core of Zubine that ultimately could cause hallucinations or otherworldly experiences such as astral planes colliding in a sort of middle ground, the realm of the living and the realm of the afterlife somehow merging into one as encounters with former ancestors had been reported throughout the planet globally over the past several decades or so.
My heart just about snapped in two when I heard the news and that night, I couldn't stop myself from crying myself to sleep as Zaxton cuddled me, holding me within his strong arms and protecting me from something that he couldn't see himself.
The demons that haunted me.
Since the news, I haven't had unnatural encounters with my mother and part of me felt almost lonely after the lack of responses.
Maybe part of me was still hopelessly clinging onto the fact that somehow, somewhere, she was trying to communicate with me while she was still alive but I knew deep down inside that it simply wasn't the truth.
That she was gone for good this time.
It was rough after learning the truth about why I was experiencing these encounters with my mother but it became easier with time as I was able to share those experiences with Collette who had decided to join me along with Indigo in staying on Zubine.
I had been pissed when I found out about their sudden arrival just before Zephyr was exiled, so pissed that, in fact, I tried to tell Collette and Indigo that they should leave because it wasn't safe for them to be here as I had been unsure of my own place in this chaotic world.
But my younger sister, who grew up way too quickly in this fast paced lifestyle, put her foot down, both physically and metaphorically, and insisted that she stayed there because she was done with living on the Celestial.
That she was done with wondering where she belonged.
That all she wanted was to be with her sister and to not have to keep fearing that she was going to lose the only connection she had back to our family back on Earth.
She wore me down with those words and that heartbroken expression upon her face, leaving me with no choice but to have her and my best friend stay on this planet.
It hadn't been easy for any of us at first, trying to adjust to this place, but we were slowly figuring out how we fit into this unique society, one that wasn't too accepting of women in general but Zaxton also had some new rules that he was going to start implanting once Calypso Number Two was completed.
Starting with the abolishment of the slave/ownership trade-offs and arrangements made between the commoners and the higher ranking officials, all for the greed that came with owning a female.
And even though it wouldn't fix the many years that were tainted by this law, it was a step in the right direction, a law that I would no longer have to fear if I were to give birth to a daughter.
But that's only if.
Maybe we'll have a boy instead.
A tiny smile appeared on my face, would it be so carelessly wishing and helplessly hoping that I would have one of each?
Both a boy and a girl?
My wandering mindset was, however, interrupted as Indigo rushed onto the balcony terrace from the double glass doors, a perplexed look upon her reddened face as she huffed and puffed for air, my eyebrows raising up as it became obvious to even the most idiotic fool out there that Indie had run all the way from somewhere down in the lower levels of the Palace right up to my balcony to tell me something rather important, it seemed.
And I wasn't too far off from the truth either.
"Mae! You need…to see this. I think…there's a beacon…signal coming…from a station!"
She panted heavily with exertion as she motioned me to follow her back inside and I quickly hurried my way back into the Palace.
I wasn't quite yet to the waddling stage of my pregnancy, that would happen in about another couple of months or so, I was only nearing the end of my first trimester, after all.
"What do you mean by a beacon signal? Those are usually only deployed in case…"
I trailed off as I hurried to follow up with Indigo, my mind spinning in a million different directions.
In case of an emergency.
That's what they were used for. Like a worst case, last minute ditch effort, beacons became the flare guns for our stations and ships alike throughout the galaxies.
Indigo's grim face only reflected the same look back onto my own features and the air fell silent with cautionary heaviness as we headed down into one of the empty rooms on the second level of the Palace, one of the rooms being deemed our designated communication room as it was the easiest to gain quick access to if or when the need arises.
And that need had arisen, apparently, as Indigo was quick to enter the room and turn the projector monitors in my direction, my eyes squinting as I came closer to the screen to visually identify just what it was that I was witnessing.
"That's not just a beacon signal…That's a medical emergency signal. They're requesting our help."
Looking up from the monitor screen, I watched as Indigo's eyes hardened as her lips pursed, her gaze flicking to and from the screen repeatedly.
My heart ached at that sight.
Because I knew what that look meant.
"They're requesting medical help…You're going to have to help them."
It wasn't a question, it was a statement and not one that Indigo wasn't used to by now.
And even though we both knew that she wasn't one to back down from a challenge, I didn't want her to go.
I didn't want to throw my friend into the whirlpool of caution and tell her to contact me when the job was done and the issue was solved.
That wasn't like me in the least.
But I also knew that Indigo was going to insist that she was the one who needed to go.
I had no formal medical training like she did and I was pregnant with my love's child, I couldn't be risking my life for some strangers, logically speaking here.
And so, I could only hope that Indigo would be alright on this journey to the beacon signal on a foreign ship light years away.
Because if she wasn't alright, if something happened to her….I wasn't sure how I'd even be able to handle it.
But that was a story for another day and it wasn't mine to tell.
It was hers.
A/N: Well, that is the end to Crash Landing, you guys! Stick around though because the next book in the Crashing Series, Collision, will soon be released before you know it!😊
P.S., there will also be a new Q&A that I will be answering shortly so please make sure to send in all your questions!😁
Feel free to comment, like and share, y'all!
-Ro♥️