Getting Lost Ch. 02

Eloua didn't kiss one another. It simply wasn't a part of their culture to do so. Now it seemed he wanted to kiss her. That was much too strange to Lotus, even after having sex with him. Sensing her reluctance, he quickly looked away and the moment passed.

"I know your kind touch lips," he began. "I just thought you might like to try it after..."

The situation was just too weird for Lotus, so she drew back. She then crossed her eyes and made a duck-lips face at him. His little confused frown turned into a light chuckle. "You're ridiculous," he told her, but the tension was broken.

Sabrael's mood was brighter then, and it made Lotus happy that she could help him. They got up from the floor and returned to the bath. They cleaned themselves up quickly. Sabrael kept to himself, a small and still confused smile on his lips. The strangeness of it all still shook Lotus, so she sang a funny song to herself as she washed. It wasn't long before her own happiness won over— whatever that was. She was sure that everything would be fine.

*****

While they cleaned up after their initial mating, Sabrael kept to himself. He had hoped that Lotus would see his love for what it really was. It was she, after all, who had shown him what it was to feel love and passion. He knew her love and her devotion, but he also knew that her feelings came from a deep sense of gratitude. He wanted romance from her. It was a concept he couldn't seem to properly express, and she just didn't understand.

It was clear to him that giving her his thellimtok wasn't enough. So, he'd tried to touch lips. Showing her affection in her way might have worked, but perhaps it was too much too soon. It wasn't unusual for Lotus to retreat to the safety of her humor, and she'd gone goofy on him.

She'd always been silly. No matter how many years had passed, she never grew out of it. Whether she was nervous, bored, or even content, everything was a game. He remembered well a day he'd come home with the Elder Council to discuss Lotus' future among them.

She knew the importance of the meeting, yet he came home to find her playing. Lotus had pinned a blanket to her dress at the neck and sleeves. She flapped her mantle around her as she gracefully danced about the house. Sabrael was used to her eccentricities by then, but the Elder was concerned. "What are you doing, Lotus?" The Elder asked, "Are you alright, child?"

She just flapped right up to the councilman and replied, "We are Eloua. And yes, our health is optimal. Thank you for asking, Elder." Though she'd always been spoken to in her own language (common etiquette among the psychic Eloua), that day Lotus responded to everything in perfectly polite Elouan.

The Elder balked, but Sabrael had been secretly amused by his ward's display. Lotus wasn't trying to hurt anyone, and if the elder chose offense, that was his own issue. Her little game persisted for three full days before she'd finally let it go.

At that time, Lotus had been with him for about nine years, putting her at around fifteen years of age. Sabrael had been mildly chastised for allowing her childlike behavior to continue. Just as stubborn as she, Sabrael stood his ground against the Elder Council. He was tactful, but firm when he reminded them that Lotus was his charge; and that none of them really understood anything about rearing an ylf'nim girl. His home was her home, and so long as she did no harm, she would behave any way she liked.

Sabrael understood his fellow Eloua thought Lotus should develop as the human females they were accustomed to. And Sabrael also understood an unfair expectation. At eighteen, they took her from his home before she was ready. They made her live at Temple with a handful of other Oracles in training. She'd been distraught by the change, but she'd never lost her quirky sense of humor.

Before Lotus, Sabrael had never known what it felt like to laugh for real, or to even truly feel anything at all. For his own safety, he'd kept his secret by mimicking the behaviors of those around him. Only ever reflecting the emotions of others through their mental link, and never knowing what it was to have his own feelings.

Then there was his Lotus. She'd made him laugh and cry and love. She was the only being in the multiverse who could make him feel his own sense of joy. For that he would do whatever he had to keep her forever near him.

Sabrael had plans for Lotus and for Hibreon. Through her, he would manage a subversion that would begin with the ylf'nim. In time, he would be able to give his Lotus a world all her own. She would be his queen, and together they would rule as the Divines. There could be no greater gift, and she would understand then. Then, she would love him properly.

Lotus hadn't felt nervous until she walked into the navigation chamber. She'd been there before for practice during her training, but this time was for real. If she made a mistake they could end up way off course, lost in some unmapped part of the galaxy. If Lotus wasn't precise in her casting, she could put the Leviathan Class ship right in the middle of a star. Lotus shook those thoughts away. She was well trained, knew what she was doing, and her power was guided by the gods. There would be no mistakes.

A thick pillar dominated the center of the room, like a massive tree trunk with roots in the floor and branches in the ceiling. The fleshy roots and branches were woven around with wires and lighted tubes, an amalgam of life and technology. In the trunk was a tightly closed slit that led to the workings of the ship's mind, an integral part of Luma's brain.

Lotus felt Luma's positive response to her presence. He was nervous too, for the same reasons as she, but he trusted her. Briefly, she closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the warm pulse of the trunk. The slit opened and Luma extended a long tube with a cupped end. Lotus fixed the cup around her mouth and nose. Through this, Luma would give her oxygen in the cramped space, and also allow her to speak to Sabrael and the sil. She slipped inside the hole, and it sealed shut behind her.

Inside the trunk was hot, damp, and crowded with Luma's wires and tentacles. The only light came from her softly glowing marks. Lotus wriggled into her place in the center of it all. Once she was as comfortable as she could be, she extended a thought towards Luma, letting him know she was ready. Luma's thellim caressed her skin, and the light grew brighter as his tendrils made contact with her marks. Through practice, they knew one another's pattern, and their connection was set in seconds.

In the moment the bind was complete, Lotus was suddenly aware of much more than her own senses. She could feel and see every function aboard the leviathan, knew the status and location of Sabrael and the others. She knew and understood the space around her like her own skin. And she knew precisely where they were going.

She was both Lotus and Luma as she updated the crew. "Neurosynchrony achieved. All hands to stations. Thirty seconds to Aperture."

With her own power and that of the ship, Lotus cast her teleportation spell. In space, warped starlight flared around a leviathan sized pathway between one solar system and another. The Nephilumen passed through the Aperture, and into a new realm.

When Luma passed by the outermost planets of the solar system, Pol released several pods of drones. They would record and transmit information regarding possible resources back to the Nephilumen. Though these planets were interesting in their own way, the main focus was on Hibreon, the fourth planet from the parent star.

Where Arcadia was a small ocean planet, with a speckling of islands dotting its blue surface, Hibreon was much larger, with great continents spanning between its vast seas. The Eloua were colonizers, and this new world was prime real estate. The planet was alive and thriving. It was not only rich in life sustaining resources, it was home to a variety of sentient races. Eloua were fascinated by evolved beings, always eager to learn and to teach.

Arcadia had only two native sentient species, the Eloua and the Tenkaru. Others, like the sil, were imported from colony worlds. There were a number of humanoid sentient races who lived on this world including elves, like Lotus. The Eloua had encountered examples of many of these races throughout their travels, but Hibreon seemed to have them all. As knowledge seekers, Sabrael and his colleagues needed to understand the connection.

The people of Hibreon were not space farers. They hadn't even developed the ability to fly. Their technology was dark-age endeavors at best. Some races, like the giant horned Norrhim who lived near the arctic circle, were little more than barbarous cavemen.

Lotus wanted to learn everything about everyone, but she was keen to study the ylf'nim. They were far from the technologically advanced holy warriors that her parents were, but they looked like her, spoke like her. She hoped to understand more of herself through them. There was another hope as well, and it was one she kept secret.

She liked sex as much as anyone, and maybe more than some. But as she'd aged into her first century, Lotus had begun to want something more. She wanted someone to belong to her, someone she could belong to. She wanted a family of her own. Lotus wanted a mate, and Hibreon could fulfill that wish.

Though she'd tried to see her future, to catch even just a quick glimpse of the family life she wanted, the vision was always denied. Soarkine was touted an amazing gift from the Divines, but clairvoyance wasn't so great when she couldn't pick and choose what she wanted to see. Pasts, presents, and futures, all displayed before her mind's eye, for the Eloua or anyone else. Anyone but her.

When they approached the planet and Luma prepared himself to enter the atmosphere, Lotus and the others strapped into their seats. Sabrael hated entry. He shut his eyes and gripped the arms of his chair. Lotus kept her eyes open, only squinting against the bright light that scoured Luma's hull. Trusting her ship, she laughed through the jarring quake when they splashed down deep into the Hibreon ocean. There was a brief quiet moment of cool darkness while Luma readjusted, and in that moment, Lotus marveled at the strange and hopeful sensation of home.