Page 83 of Invasive Species
“Who are you?” Of course I’m going to be rude to anyone who might have hurt Gara, and any woman here is a suspect.
Her scales, smaller and more tightly packed than Gara’s, kaleidoscope across deep ocean blues and verdant vermillion, before turning blood red and then settling into a cold, pale silver. “Your work, this talent… it’s very remarkable,” she says, voice almost a hum.
“Uh huh.” The markers creak in my hands. I place these ones back in the box before I accidentally snap one.
Finally, she tears her gaze away from my artwork. Her eyes are limitless silver pools, and now it’s my turn to shiver. She’s alien in a way Gara and the others who crash landed on Earth aren’t, and the sharp intelligence in her eyes is almost cutting.
She softens her severe look with a wide smile, nodding at the plastic hanging around my neck. “I see you got the headphones. They will help you to understand while the nanites in those around you slowly get to know your language. I have become fluent from another visitor of your world. How is she?”
“What, assuming everyone on Earth all knows each other?”
She inclines her head. “I assume the woman who came here in my personal craft, which I had gifted to another woman, would know her, yes.”
Rats, she had me there. Cheeks heating, I mumble, “Ellen is fine.”
The alien woman comes closer, silks unfurling across the floor like water pooling over her pretty shoes. “I hope everything is to your liking while our finest Selthiastocks work on you?—”
“It’s not,” I blurt out, and out of the corner of my eye I seeEzla go very, very still. “Everything is perfect, I mean, apart from the fact you… you…”
I can’t say it, and yet this woman needs to hear it. “You killed him!” I shout, pointing at the picture now dominating the room. All the lines are wavy like I could hardly hold the marker. Gara, standing looking down at me, arms loose at his sides like he might lift them any moment to welcome me back.
Who am I kidding? Gara's gone. I can't keep clinging to a false hope, I can't smile and nod and carry on regardless. I slam my hand over my chest. This thing is pure delusion, the demented demands of my brain, not reality.
The woman puts a hand over her mouth, those scary silver eyes fathomless. “Killed?” she breathes, like she can’t believe it.
“Euthanized,” I grate out, dropping the rest of the markers to plop into the bed and sinking my head in my hands.
What does she care? Gara's not important to her. I gulp back a hitching sob. She won't understand.
A soft touch on my shoulder makes me look up, and then the woman envelopes me in her arms.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she murmurs. “I thought… but I…” She shakes her head, tears dripping onto my shoulder and staining my smock.
It shocks me more than anything else. I thought all the women here would be heartless, haughty with all these men’s lives in their hands. Gara had certainly made it seem that way.
This one does seem to genuinely care.
Wiping her eyes, the woman straightens up, her eyes not leaving my drawing. “My name is Shara, but to the clones, I am known as the All-Mother.” Her eyes fill with tears again, turning them into a pool of sadness. “Please, may I have this?”
I glance at my work. It’s not fully Gara, not everything he is and could have been to me.
Shrugging, I say, “I’ll be making others. Take it.”
“Thank you,” she whispers, like I just gave her a planet ona plate. She beckons to Ezla who leaps to take it off the wall and hand it to her.
“Thank you so much,” Shara says again, holding it at arm's length. She looks angry now too, like she might actually do something useful. Too late for Gara, but it gives me a flicker of hope for those like Ezla.
I grunt, “Bye,” and turn away, grabbing another slick canvas for the next picture.
Ezla approaches, a turquoise blue like the ocean around a tropical island. “I… I need to…”
I carry on drawing as he gathers his thoughts, another image of Gara unearthed by my brush strokes. Wish I could summon the real one just as easily.
“I will return with… essentials,” he says, ducking his head. “Please return to the bed to rejuvenate yourself.”
“I just want to finish this bit right here…”
The desperate look he shoots me breaks through my hyper focus.
