Star Seed

And after that...she shivered in happy anticipation. The only reason I'm going to get out of bed before Monday morning is to pee or eat, she thought.

But what then, her treacherous mind asked. Do you really think she's going to take you with her, wherever she goes? You might be in love, but for her, you're just a quick fling.

Shut up, she replied. Just...shut up. Don't ruin my good time.

Pushing the unhappy thought into the back of her head, she walked down the street with Chara. The cold, gloomy weather of the past few days had broken. While not warm, the sun was out, and the sky was a deep, rich blue. Snowmelt filled the gutters with the sound of trickling water.

"Here we are," Andi said, pausing at a small store. "Chamberlain's Antiques, Used Books, and Oddities." She tried the door, but it refused to open. She frowned and peered at a hand-written note taped to the inside of the door. "Closed for baby." She gasped delightedly and fumbled her phone out of her purse. She accessed her Facebook feed and squealed. "Hilda had her baby yesterday! What a cutie!" She held her phone so Chara could see the picture.

Chara nodded, a strange expression on her face. "She is beautiful," she said softly.

"Would you mind terribly if we visited her at the hospital?" Andi asked. "Hilda is one of my best friends. I would like to see her and the baby. And we have plenty of time before we have to get ready for dinner."

"Of course."

*****

Chara seemed nervous as they walked through the halls of the hospital. She gripped Andi's hand tightly, as if she were seeking comfort.

"I don't like these places," she said. Her normally golden skin was pale and sallow in the harsh glare of the florescent lights. "So much sickness. So many people who will never come out again."

Andi nodded. "This is true. But there is also life. New ones being born all the time. I'm not scared of death. I had to be put under anesthesia once, for surgery. One second I was lying on a gurney, and the next I was waking up. I imagine death to be like that. Just a blank. It doesn't frighten me."

"What does?"

Andi opened her mouth to give a flippant answer, then paused. "To live a useless life. That frightens me. To die and have no one remember my name. To have contributed nothing, to have been a cipher, a zero. That is terrifying."

She paused outside the maternity ward. "I have to warn you," she said. "Hilda's family is a little...odd. They have a strange religion. They worship a Goddess, not God. So some of the things they say might seem a bit weird."

Chara smiled. "I'll try not to take offense."

After a minute or two of searching, they found Hilda's room. "Knock knock," Andi said, tapping on the doorframe. "Is it okay if we come in?"

"Andi!" said the figure in the bed. "Come on in. The gang's all here."

Even dressed in a hospital gown and lying in bed, Hilda Chamberlain was a stunning young woman. Her beautiful tan face was framed by red hair which was fanned across the pillow. In her arms she cradled a tiny bundle, wrapped snugly. The gown was parted at the middle, exposing a milk-swollen breast where her daughter was nursing contentedly.

Andi entered the room and stood at the bedside. "Oh, Hilda," she said softly. "She's beautiful. Congratulations. What's her name?"

"Maureen Ingrid Chamberlain," she replied. "For my grandmother on Mom's side, and for Steven's mother." She nodded at a tall, thin young man, standing next to two older women, who was watching the scene with an air of smug pride. "Steve, this is Andi Selene. I'm sure I've talked about her before." Her eyes strayed to the doorway, where Chara was standing. "By the Goddess," she breathed, her eyes widening in wonder. "Andi, who is this?"

"Hilda, Steve, this is my friend, Chara. I've been seeing her for a few days."

"Mom?" Hilda said. "Do you see the same thing I do? Her aura?"

"If you don't see it, you might as well be blind," said the younger of the two, a tall, slim woman with long brown hair. Her companion nodded agreement. "It's so bright it practically hurts to look at her." She blinked, as if her eyes were dazzled. "It's almost a match for yours, Andi."

"Oh, yes," Andi said dismissively, not wanting to be drawn into that conversation again. "Me and my wonderful aura. Hilda and Agatha have been telling me about it since we met." She changed the topic hurriedly. "So, Steve. I'm glad you finally got this one to settle down a bit. I never thought I'd see the day." Indeed, she had gone out with Hilda for a few months when she first moved to Des Moines. But Hilda's inability to commit to a monogamous relationship had doomed them. Nevertheless, they had stayed good friends.

The young man gave a small smile. "I'm not really sure I have, you know. Pregnancy didn't slow her down much."

"Just wait until I get out of this bed," Hilda agreed. "I am so fucking tired of screwing cowgirl style. I know it was the only way that really worked, as big as my stomach was, but it got old real quick. I'm going to lay on my belly and have Steve do me doggy until his cock is raw."

Andi bit her cheek to keep from laughing. No, motherhood wasn't going to tame Hilda Chamberlain. "So where's everyone else?"

"John and Susie and Agatha are coming home tonight from Champaign to see baby Maureen here," Claire Chamberlain said. "And Eleanor's at work at the grade school."

Baby Maureen stopped nursing and gave a tiny burp. "Can I hold her?" Andi asked.

"Sure," Hilda replied, as she folded her gown over her bare breast. A drop of milk still clung to the turgid nipple.

Andi came over and carefully transferred the swaddled bundle into her arm. So small! She easily fit into the crook of her elbow. She traced the curve of one tiny cheek with her finger as blue eyes looked up at her solemnly. Beneath the knitted pink cap on Maureen's head, a curl of strawberry blond hair escaped. Her eyes fluttered close and her mouth opened in a yawn.

"Chara? Would you like to hold her?"

"I would be honored." After she had taken the baby into her arms, she stood long, her head bent over her, her dark hair falling around her face. "Beautiful child," she said softly. "You will grow up strong, brave, and true. Your light will shine brightly, wherever your path takes you."

She turned to give Maureen back to her mother, but Hilda was sprawled in her bed, snoring gently.

"I'll take her," Steve said. His mouth quirked. "I'm going to need the practice, I suppose."

*****

They stayed at the hospital for nearly an hour, talking while Hilda napped. But eventually they had to go back to the hotel to get ready for their evening out.

Wait until Chara sees this, Andi thought smugly, as she put on her makeup. Dark red lipstick made her mouth look appealingly kissable. A hint of blush gave color to her cheeks.

And then there was the dress...

Midnight black, it clung to her like a second skin. The scooped neck showed off her bust to good advantage, while the sheer fabric flowed down her sides to her hips. It was slit at the thigh, allowing a generous glimpse of her legs to peek out whenever she took a step. Around her neck she wore a velvet choker with a single pearl dangling like a teardrop.

She had never felt so indecently dressed, and she smiled at her reflection. She had left her bra off entirely, and her erect nipples tented the dark cloth invitingly. Lower down, the black g-string she was wearing was already growing damp with her juices.

Let them look. I am dressing for Chara and no one else. And later tonight I will be undressing for her.

A tap at the door. "Andi, darling. We must leave soon."

"One second," she called back. She slid her feet into a pair of black shoes with three-inch heels. Straps above and below the ankles gave her plenty of support for dancing later. She stood up, the heels wobbling slightly in the thick carpet, and stepped into the main living area.

"Oh," she gasped, when she saw her friend. She reached her hands out and caught Chara's fingers. "You are beautiful."

"So are you," Chara replied. Her dress was the pale green of spring leaves. When she moved, some trick of the light brought gold highlights gleaming from it. She wore a golden necklace, studded with tiny diamonds that flared in the glow from the lamps. Her chestnut hair was piled high on her head, held in place with a pair of ivory hairpins. A few small tendrils escaped to curl beside her smiling cheeks. "Are you ready to go?"

Andi nodded voicelessly and turned to leave, her heart singing.

And then it happened. Unused to walking on deep carpet in high heels, she caught one spike in the thick nap. She stumbled forward, arms flailing.

Just before she fell face-first into the glass coffee table which sat in front of the sofa, Chara lunged forward and caught a trailing sleeve of her dress. She was able to arrest her forward momentum, but the seam at the shoulder parted with a ripping sound. When Andi regained her balance, the entire sleeve was ripped away and hanging uselessly in Chara's hand.

Andi stared at the sleeve in horror. Her hand reached up to fumble at her bare shoulder, as if to convince herself that the evidence of her eyes was somehow in error. When she touched the ragged edge of the torn cloth, she slumped to the couch, her mouth working helplessly, her eyes pooling with tears.

"No! Do not cry, my friend!" Chara said quickly. "I can fix it." She took Andi's hand and slid the sleeve back over her arm. Her fingers worked at her shoulder. "There, you see? Good as new."

Andi stared disbelievingly. Where her dress had been torn and ruined, there was now only undamaged cloth. Her fingers probed at it, searching for the tear which her waking mind knew was there. But it wasn't. The dress was whole, as if the rip had never occurred. She turned her awestruck face to Chara. "What are you?" she whispered. "What have you done?"

Chara sank to the couch beside her.

"Oh, damn," she said. "I didn't mean for you to find out like this."

*****

"My name is not only Chara," she said quietly, after Andi had finished a very short bout of hysterics. "Among your astronomers, I am called Beta Canum Venaticorum, and I am a star."

"I am Chara, also known as Beta Canum Venaticorum, and we will not drink the house red."

"You don't mean like in movies or sports." The words were not a question.

Chara shook her head, her chestnut ringlets bouncing softly. "No. When I say I am a star, I mean it truly. A star. In your night sky."

Andi blinked. "Don't take this the wrong way, Chara. But I learned in school that stars are made up of huge amounts of incredibly hot gas. You seem to be a little small."

Chara raised her eyebrows, her expression faintly insulted. "I could just as easily say you are a hundred-odd pounds of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and calcium. But I don't. Gas is what a star is made of. Not what a star is. No more than you are only what elements you are composed of.

"I am a star. Your astronomers would call me a type G main-line star. Not all that different from Aurora, your own star.

"And you're in Iowa?" Andi's voice was frankly disbelieving.

"Why not?"

"Well..." Andi floundered amid the wreck of the conversation, her mind trying to come to grips with what Chara was saying. "Why aren't you floating around in space? Were you born a star?"

"Ah," Chara smiled. "Now we come to the important questions." She frowned. "This is not how I imagined telling you about this. I have been inexcusably clumsy in revealing myself to you in this fashion. But I could not sit idly by when you were in so much pain.

"To answer your second question first, no. I was not born a star. My birth-world is hundreds of light-years from here. And I was born when your species still thought the invention of fire was a really neat idea.

"I was born in the ocean," she continued, her glorious green eyes hazy with memory, "Like all my kin. Our world was a water planet and we lived our entire lives in the sea. We had no technology as you would understand it, but we were civilized. Our people were called the eklykti. We had art, and poetry, and literature. We had music. Oh, such music. Our voices rang through the seas in carols of extraordinary complexity. Someday I will play it for you, Andi. It is so beautiful it could break your heart.

"And one day I met a strange male. I was not much older, for my kind, than you are now. I had not yet chosen a mate or born children. And I had separated with the others of my kin-group. Our families are not so closely knit as yours, and we might be apart for months or years at a time after we reached adulthood.

"Ah, but this male. He was fine. His skin was supple and smooth, and his eyes were bright and clear.

"And he asked me, my love, if I might want to leave my world behind and be a star. He told me of a star, ready to be born. One that needed a soul. For all stars need a soul in order to shine. He told me of the eternal dance, as the stars and planets wheel about each other. He told me of the long life I could live, and the power I would have to change my form and to manipulate matter. He told me how I would not be bound to the star, forced to while away the eons in terrible solitude, but able to travel throughout the galaxy when I chose. He told me of how he too was a star, one who dedicated his life to finding others who might bring forth light to push back the darkness.

"He told me all of this. And I accepted. For the last half-million of your years, I have been a star. I have seen wonders you would not believe. I have known grief as my kin have died. And I have come to your Earth to learn about your people."

Andi swallowed through a throat gone as dry as a desert. She knew, she knew, that she should discard Chara's words as the ravings of an unhinged lunatic. But they were spoken with such simple sincerity she could not. And to add to her confusion, a dozen troubling details about her time with Chara suddenly made sense.

Democracy is a good form of government, for beginners.

Your people are really quite clever.

It's so bright it practically hurts to look at her.

"You can..." she trailed off. "You can change forms?"

She nodded. "This is not the first body I have worn. Or even my hundredth. But I have to say," she said, her dimple appearing, "it is one of my favorites."

Andi stood up. "I want to see you. I want to see you change. Show me..." she floundered. "Show me your original body. How you were born."

If she expected Chara to make a feeble excuse which would prove she was lying, she was disappointed. Her friend rose to join her. "I can't do it here." She pursed her lips. "Did you bring a swimsuit?"

Andi nodded.

"Change into it. And bring a towel. We're going to the pool."

*****

They rode down the elevator together, neither one speaking. Andi was dazed by the events of the last few minutes, her thoughts careening between reflexive denial and feverish curiosity. She pulled her bathrobe tighter around her shoulders, thankful she had remembered to pack her bikini. She had not thought she would need it, the time of year being what it was, but she was glad to have it now.

At her side, Chara was resplendent in a dark green one-piece bathing suit. It was cut high at the hips, displaying far more of her golden thighs and rear than Andi would dream of doing. In her mind, she wondered if Chara had brought it with her from wherever her last stay was, or if she had somehow conjured it out of thin air.

If she can repair my dress without needle and thread, I am sure making a swimsuit out of wishes and dreams is child's play.

She pushed open the door to the pool area, holding it open for Chara to slip in behind her. Happily, it was deserted at this hour. Andi shrugged off her robe and stepped into the shallow end, where a slowly sloping bottom allowed them to ease into the warm water. She turned to see Chara only a few feet behind her.

"Is this a good spot?"

"A little deeper, I think," Chara replied.

Andi shrugged and moved a few more steps along, until the water had risen past her navel.

"Here," Chara said. Andi raised her eyes from the water to look into her friend's face. "You still don't believe me, do you?"

Andi opened her mouth, but Chara quickly laid a finger on her lips. "Don't lie to comfort me, my love. I know it is a lot to accept. I was the same when it was my time." She closed her eyes. "Now, stand away, please. I don't want to catch you in the backwash."

Andi shuffled a few steps backward, never taking her eyes away from Chara. She seemed to stop breathing. Her body stilled. Her face was serenely calm.

Suddenly, her body changed. It seemed to melt, head and shoulders and proud, beautiful breasts flowing down into the water. With a terrified scream of loss and grief, Andi lunged forward. Struggling and splashing, she reached the spot where Chara had stood. She looked down into the water, and her reeling mind refused to grasp what she saw.

It was vaguely fish-shaped, a sleek, streamlined body that seemed built for speed. Perhaps five feet from tip to tail, it swam in a circle around Andi's legs. It was colored a deep gold, and when it rose to the surface to look her in the eye, Andi saw that its skin more closely resembled a snake than a fish. Thousands of overlapping scales glinted in the overhead lights. The fins seemed to be bonier and more rigid than those of a terrestrial fish, and the backbone was a solid ridge, with articulated plates that shifted in time with Chara's movements.

Andi's hands rose to her face in shock. It was true. She caught the creature's eyes with hers. They were the same as before, a deep green. But Andi sensed a deep inner hilarity in the way they looked at her. "Chara?" She cradled the head in her hands. "Is that you in there?"

The creature bobbed its head. Andi laughed, though she felt perilously close to tears. "Okay," she gasped, her heart tightening in her chest. "I believe you. This is..."

Insane. Madness. Crazy. Unbelievable.

"...Incredible."

Chara squeaked her agreement. With a flip of her tail, she disengaged from Andi's hands. Dipping back beneath the water, she darted into the far end of the pool, then raced back towards her. She broached the surface, shooting towards the ceiling, then fell back into the pool with a tremendous splash like an exploding depth charge.

When Andi had wiped the water away from her streaming face, Chara was back in her human form, clad in her swimsuit, standing only a few feet away.

"Let us go back to our room," she said. She pulled her hair over her shoulder and tried to wring out the sopping mass. "I love the water. I always will. But the chlorine humans put in swimming pools is not good for my other form. It can damage my skin if I stay in it too long."

"You know," Andi said as they made their dripping way back to the elevator. "When I first saw you, I thought you were insanely hot. But I never thought you would turn out to be this hot."

"About five thousand degrees," Chara agreed with a giggle. She took her hand. "Come on. Let's go."

****

"Chara?" Andi said. In her own ears her voice sounded high and frightened.

They were back in the penthouse suite. Chara had produced a pair of large, fluffy towels, and they were vigorously drying off. Chara's quizzical face emerged from beneath a damp cloud of hair.

"When we first met, I called myself Estelle DeLight," Andi said with nervous honesty. "After that, when you guessed my nickname, I let you call me Andi. But my name, my true name, is Andromeda Estelle Selene. I don't know what my parents were thinking. It always made me wonder if they'd gotten high the night they named me. But I was named for the stars. Andromeda is our name for the closest galaxy to ours.