He closed his eyes and could hear a clattering in
the distance. I must be dead, he thought before he
finally succumbed to the darkness suffocating him.
***
against a tower of cases. Her eyes were closed,
her head tipped down so that her multi-colored hair
covered most of her face. Her legs were crossed at
the ankles, and her arms folded over her chest as
she dozed.
The human lay like a broken thing on the cold
metal floor. His chest rose and fell with each
labored breath, but his eyes remained closed. Satal counted the hours restlessly as they past. She
had managed to drag his unconscious body to a
nearby storage locker before a team of Drakon
soldiers arrived to inspect the wreckage.
Trave shifted slightly, reaching for the Charger at
his waist.
Conflicting loyalties, those to her people and those
to her family, whirled about inside her. What other
choice had she? Her own people had denied her,
refusing to help her. Family was all that she had
left. He was her only option.
“Such a clumsy weapon,” she mused as she turned
it over in her hand. “So big and bulky.”
His dark hair fell across his eyes so that all she
could see was the stubble across his cheek, fanning over his chin. His skin was soft and warm
and very pink, like the flowers that bloomed in the
summer valley. He wore a black uniform, a flying
horse stitched in the upper corner of his chest.
They told her the humans were savages, but this
pretty, pink, flesh and blood man looked more like
an angel than the devil she had been warned of.
Perhaps he was her angel, sent here by the Goddess to protect those she loved.
If it had been fate that had sent him to her, then
she knew what she had to do.
***
She held up his weapon, “Looking for this?”
Trave shifted uneasily as she turned the Charger
on him.
From this distance he could see that the safety was
still on, the telltale glow of the light casting a red
hue across her thumb.
She smiled and with a nudge of her finger switched
it active. “And armed.”
Trave lifted his hands, his right arm groaning in protest. “Wait a minute . . .”
She clicked the safety back on and lowered the
weapon. “Don’t worry. If I wanted you dead, I would
have left you for the soldiers to find.”
That was probably true enough. Still, it made him
nervous to have his Charger in her hands. “What
do you want?”
“What is your name?”
Trave opened his eyes, blinking against the fog
penetrating his vision as