Keleon smiled and started walking back towards the space craft, and, on autopilot, I followed him.
Oblivious to my confused state, Keleon started telling me about the meeting with Aryk. He told me what the bowing meant, how Aryk seemed happy with the offer that was made and other details that I wasn't really paying too much attention to. The walk back to the craft felt surreal, like I was thinking too much, but at the same time I wasn't really thinking at all. I could hear the words Keleon was saying, but they sounded distant and flowed past me like a river, disappearing into the distance without me really hearing them. I couldn't tell whether the walk back to the craft was fast or slow, because time felt a little meaningless, like I was in a trance.
When we arrived in the cockpit, Keleon offered me the pilot's chair, but I shook my head and slipped into the co-pilot's seat. I couldn't focus properly, so there was no way I'd be able to concentrate on getting a space-craft out of the atmosphere.
I buckled up, and, as Keleon did the same and started the engine, the question that had been in the forefront of my mind, made its way to the front and out from my mouth.
"What was the holographic thing you did back there?"
"What holographic thing?"
"To give you blue skin. To make you look like one of them."
Keleon was acting like it was no big deal. He continued working on take-off like I'd asked nothing of consequence. I felt the craft rise into the air as he spoke.
"There was no technology involved, Damon." He pulled the controls and pushed the necessary buttons, while observing our surroundings with the monitor. "I'd forgotten you hadn't seen me shift before."
He smiled lightly in my direction before continuing with his navigation.
Keleon continued to make sure we were clear of the atmosphere and went about setting a course back to Epsilon 4.
Meanwhile, my body felt like a plethora of contradictions. I was too hot but had cold shivers running through every part of me. I sat rigidly but could still feel myself shaking. Time was moving too fast and too slow simultaneously. I felt like I was feeling every possible emotion at the same time as nothing at all.
All the time I was thinking. About all the strange things Keleon had ever said. About the way he needed explanations for things that I took for granted. About how it felt like we kept talking at cross-purposes when we first met. About the things he hadn't understood or taken literally along the way.
Oh God, I'd been so blind. What kind of childhood leads you to a place where you've never seen a kiss before? A childhood where you've never seen a film involving a kiss, or never seen your friends or your parents kiss?
I knew the truth before the words had finished forming on my tongue, and it turned my stomach.
"You're not human." It wasn't a question.
"Correct."
My stomach constricted so tightly that I felt compelled to double over to try to stop the pain. With my elbows on my knees, my palms pushed against my forehead as I tried to prevent the contents of my stomach emptying out. I felt my whole body trembling, and I wasn't sure whether it was coming from me or from the craft.
"Oh, God. You're not human," I repeated, processing the information more fully this time.
"We established that already," Keleon replied casually.
In that moment, my heart shattered into a million pieces. Confirmation that he wasn't what I had thought he was seeped through me. All those experiences we'd had together suddenly all felt fake. It was like I'd been punched in the gut. With hurt and anger battling for dominance, my vision became blurry. I blinked and felt my cheeks get wet.
A low rumble crept through the craft. A rumble that sounded like ... like the one I'd heard in the hanger on Epsilon 4 when I'd been angry before.
"Why the fuck didn't you tell me?" I asked, voice shaking as more tears escaped.
"You didn't ask."
"Didn't you think you should have mentioned it?"
"No, why would I have?"
"We've been kissing!"
The tears were still flowing along with the hurt and anger.
"Yes, because we like each other. And we both like kissing. What does that have to do with whether I'm human or not?"
Keleon finished making sure the autopilot was set and turned to face me, looking confused. Why did he not understand why I was upset? The anger was building.
"Because you ... you made me think I'd been kissing a human!"
The Pavo sounded like it was going to buckle under its own weight. Keleon looked around, concerned.
"Damon, I don't understand what's going on, but I think you may need to calm down before you rip the space craft apart," he responded gently. "I want to help you. I've never lied to you. I've never claimed to be human. Maybe you assumed I was. If I'd known it would be important to you, I would have told you, but it didn't occur to me that it would matter what species I was."
On some level I recognised that the Pavo may be reacting to my anger. No matter how annoyed I felt, it wasn't worth putting our lives in danger. I actively took a deep breath and counted to ten, as Keleon reached out and took my hand in his. I focused on his claim that he hadn't done this intentionally. I counted to ten a few more times, breathing deeply, calming down, but not enough to stop the tears falling. The craft sounded like it had stopped reacting to me, so I tried to form another question.
"So, if you're not human, what are you?" I managed to look up at him.
"Humans refer to our race as Vacillators because we can change how we look," he replied.
"So, you're a shapeshifter?"
"Correct."
"Jesus Christ!" I could feel my temper flaring again and the Pavo rumbled in response. "Do you even really look like this?" I gestured up and down his body.
"What a strange question," Keleon replied. "Of course I look like this."
"But you sometimes look like other things," I pointed out.
"Yes, and then I look like those other things. But right now, I look like this."
This conversation wasn't going the way I wanted it to. Maybe I worded my question badly. My mind was so confused that it was hard to tell.
"I meant, what do you look like when you're in your natural state?"
"I'm always in my natural state."
I ran my fingers through my hair and put my hand back in his. I needed answers. Which meant I needed to ask the right questions.
Deep breath. Count to ten.
What were the right questions?
"OK then. What do you look like when you're not pretending to be something else?"
"I never pretend to be something else, Damon. Humans also change how they look. Right now, you look like that." Keleon gestured towards my body as he spoke. "But you weren't born looking like that, were you? And when you get older, you'll probably look different as well. The way you look changes over time, but it's all still you. At each point in time, if you were asked, you would say you're in your natural state. Why would you think it would be any different for me?"
"Because I don't get to choose the way I look."
"Neither do I."
"But ... wait, what?"
"I don't choose my appearance. Nor do I choose when a change will happen."
"You're ... you're not choosing this?"
"No. It just happens."
"So ... if I asked you to turn into a mouse right now, you wouldn't be able to do it?"
Keleon smiled.
"That's correct. Although I'm not sure why you'd ever want me to be a mouse."
My head had never felt so jumbled. The tears had slowed down, but not stopped. The knot in my stomach was still tight, but the anger had dissipated somewhat. I wanted to understand. I needed to understand.
I'd heard of shapeshifters in stories when I was young. Were the stories exaggerated? I didn't know anybody who'd ever seen one, and most people believed they were a myth. There were still more questions I needed to ask.
"When we needed to get the disrupter module, you changed into a Kikorangi girl to get the best deal," I challenged. "That looked pretty deliberate to me."
"I can see why it might appear deliberate," he replied carefully. "I guess it's a bit like you breathing, or blinking. You don't think about doing those things, they just happen. Your body knows what it needs on some subconscious level and just does it. In a similar way, my body knows what appearance to use that would be most beneficial to my circumstances, and just does it. The meditation I do helps with that. Some of my kind believe that we have an extra-sensory perception, some kind of subliminal intuition, that means we can pick up on the subconscious thoughts of others and use them to best suit our immediate environment. Our 'instincts.' I might appear as your most trusted ally, or your greatest fear. I usually don't know until it's already happened. In order to get you out of that facility you were being held in, I guess my intuition told me that the highest priority was that I needed you to come with me voluntarily, so I probably appeared to you as someone you'd be the most inclined to follow."
My head was spinning.
"But now I know it's all an illusion." I could hear the sadness in my own voice as my dream was still shattering around me.
"You make it sound like some kind of deception," he responded. "There was no intent to trick you. My body just decides on the best form to take on its own. It's not an illusion – it's just what I look like right now. Just like that's what you look like right now, and you'll change over time too. I just change shape on a different timescale to you."
Keleon held my hand tighter in his own. We sat in silence while I tried to process what he was telling me. It was all very logical, and I couldn't fault his explanation or reasoning. But it didn't stop the hurt, and I still couldn't hold back the tears.
"Hey," Keleon started again after a little while. "I don't want you to think I've tried to mislead you in some way. From my perspective, I've just been doing what you would consider breathing and blinking, without thinking too much about it. Nothing has changed for me. I still like you, and I still like kissing you. And I still want to be your boyfriend."
My boyfriend.
My boyfriend.
The words turned over in my head until they started to sound strange.
The question was, did I still want this relationship, knowing he wasn't human?
"It's a lot for me to think about," I managed. And then I had another thought. "Is boyfriend the right word? Are you even male?"
"Vacillators don't have genders. The concept of male and female is relatively foreign to me. It's something I'm still getting used to."
"Which is why you have no preference? Why I thought you were pansexual?"
"As I said before, gender doesn't mean anything to me," he reminded me. "But I've become accustomed to you considering me to be male and referring to me as male. In this form, my body has human male organs. As such, boyfriend seems like the most logical description."
We sat in silence for a bit longer while I tried to process what he said. Keleon broke the silence first.
"Are you OK?"
Ever caring, his voice was full of concern. He seemed to understand that I was finding this difficult, even if he didn't know why. I could see he was trying to help me. I owed him honesty.
So, the question was, was I OK?
"I don't know Keleon," I ventured. "I don't know. You're not human? It's a lot to take in. I need to think."
"OK," he replied sadly. "I need to start getting ready for landing on Epsilon 4 anyway."
Keleon was hurt. I could hear it in his tone. Nevertheless, he buckled up and started focusing on flying the ship, leaving me to think as requested. Now that I was over the initial shock, and no longer felt like vomiting, I rested my head on the back of the chair and stared at the ceiling. Tears still rolled towards my ears when I blinked, and I just let them come. I was aware of Keleon talking to Mia remotely about opening the hatch and landing, but their conversation seemed distant. Thoughts swirled round my head like smoke, dissipating almost as quickly as they came; I couldn't hold onto any of them for long. I recognised that on a practical level we'd achieved what we set out to do today, and I probably should have been happy.
But when I adjusted my head slightly so that I could see Keleon, I felt numb.
I knew I had to start accepting that I'd fallen head-over-heels for someone who didn't really exist.