Page 113 of Invasive Species
As the All-Mother’sship is prepared for launch by dutiful Pranastock pilots, I hold Arra-bellah's hand tight in case she is snatched away from me. The likelihood is I'd be the one taken out of the two of us, but I still can't help feeling the operation isn’t over yet.
Arra-bellah keeps me distracted with multiple rapid-fire questions about the construction of the ship and its designs, but something about the Pranastocks digs at me like a sore scale. They sway when they walk as if constantly in low gravity; they don't prowl like Arture, our Pranastock.
“Gara,” Arra-bellah says gently, and I whip my attention back to her. Her lips quirk with amusement. “You're really jumpy. It's okay, you can relax. We're almost out of here.”
“Almost. Not quite,” I say, voice rough. “I won't relax until we're out of Olorian air space because at any moment they can?—”
One of the Pranastocks comes to my seat at the console. “The All-Mother and her guest are here to see you. You are to disembark and follow me.”
Drok na. “I knew it,” I mutter, scales hardening as I stand.
Arra-bellah rockets out of her seat, or tries to, the straps holding her fast. “Let me out! I'm coming too.”
The Pranastock can't understand her but he reaches for her, probably to undo her belt. I get there first, glowering at him. Our mate bond simmers at the idea of another male’s hands near Arra-bellah, settling when she rises to my side. Her skin throbs with warmth, and my scales melt as I wrap my arm around her shoulders.
“Let's go see what Shara wants,” she says with a chill as cold as the lake in her voice.
We disembark from the sleek stealth craft to find a set of tables and four chairs set up in the hangar bay. Two of the chairs are occupied, and clones stare openly from their workstations ringing the space, all labor halted. The All-Mother’s glittering silver scales are their entire focus: our mother, our genetic donor.
Next to her, an Olorian female gets to her feet, her green scales flashing as bright as Tibset moss under the harsh, artificial lights of the ship bay. They weren't that bright the last time I'd seen her.
“Gara,” she says in a choked voice, rushing to us in a flurry of skirts.
“Mother.” I can barely hear myself, but my voice is calm and steady, focus sharpening as always under stress conditions.
She stops a step from me, as if she suddenly remembers who and what she is. She’s an untouchable female to us lowly clones; she isn't going to throw her arms around me like my mate would.
We stare at each other across the short distance which gapes like a vast expanse between us and our stations.
“Holy shit,” Arra-bellah whispers, then louder. “What the fuck? Who do you think you are? Why did you abandon him, what's wrong with you?”
Possibly my mother’s nanites—no, the woman who raisedme as an experiment’s nanites—aren’t attuned to the Earth variety of trade speak yet. She doesn't even look at my mate even though she's an exotic sight to most, smooth and scaleless and tiny even compared to smaller Olorian females.
“Do you remember me?” the female asks, scales flickering to a dark, shaded forest green.
“Yes, female,” I answer. She doesn't need to know how much memories of her used to cut me, how our parting shaped me, giving me blunt edges that Arra-bellah softened. This female won't care.
But then tears rise in her emerald eyes, and the years fall away. “I've missed you so much. Look how much you've grown. You've done so much for our understanding of Selthiastocks, and you even have a special mate of your very own.”
She turns a smile onto Arra-bellah, who folds her arms across her chest with a thump and spits out more expletives at her.
She missed me? That doesn't compute. But there's one thing we agree on at least. “Yes, she’s very special.”
The All-Mother calls, “Let's sit and talk.”
Wonderful. Only a high-ranking female would feel comfortable taking refreshments in a greasy workshop with hundreds of clones staring at us.
But I have no choice, so I lead Arra-bellah to the table, the female who raised me following a few steps behind.
“Gara, please,” she begs as I hold a chair out for my mate.
“What can I do for you, female?” I thank my genetics that I can maintain such a stoic face despite my emotions churning like the river at the roots of the Milagrove.
“Gara.” Her plea hits my hearts hard.
I turn to face her, this female who once towered over me, who held my hand, who laid next to me in my sleep pod when my scales were too soft and uncoordinated to heat me on cold nights, and who left me at the Euthanization Center.
Pain and despair twist her face. “I never wanted to give you up,” she blurts. “When the Prif pulled our funding I kept you, we all did. We'd raised you from little scalelings, how could we not?
