Liana's Ship (#ONC 2021)

1. Liana: Smashing Pumpkins

It started with that pumpkin.

You might be wondering why I was chasing after a sentient pumpkin through the corridors of a wooden spaceship. It's a good question, perhaps one day I might be able to explain it to you.

Right back then the only thing I was interested in was getting back my chocolate. Pumpkins, for goodness sake! You buy them before Halloween, chuck the insides and carve shapes into them.

You don't chase after them because they stole your chocolate. The only earth treat I had for the whole damn year.

The whole ship was a forest, literally floating in space just above the Earth. I read somewhere there was meant to be a great view of Earth from the observation deck but I had not found it yet. The place was one giant maze and I couldn't read the signs on board not being fluent in Xeran yet, if I ever would be. The many joys of being the last minute replacement to the recruitment programme. I found my way by trial and error, not a great plan to navigate a ship in the long run, but so far, no one had come to explain anything to me. My only instructions were to make myself comfortable and await orders. Two days went by, I knew this because the lights dimmed around midnight, supposedly simulating night time although it never got completely dark round here. I simply laid awake, wishing for the simple night of back home, trying to put off the toilet until the very last minute. The toilet was the stuff of nightmares, I shuddered at the thought of using it and the years of therapy I needed after this was all over.

So by day three, I left my room and decided to explore. The observation deck couldn't be that hard to find? I would find a seat, eat a square of chocolate and contemplate my life choices somewhere other than four walls of my tiny cabin. Within moments of crossing the threshold, something blue leapt into my arms and grabbed the chocolate. Thinking it was a blue dog at first but no it was definitely a vegetable, no, fruit. My training comes back to me, pumpkins have seeds, so fruit. Fruit that has stolen my chocolate, with arms and legs.

Another corridor loomed, wooden and bland like the rest, same old damp earth, deep forest smell, not what I had imagined spaceships smelling of. Raised on a diet of Star Wars and Star Trek, I imagined stark white, sterile pathways or brushed metal with side lights. Hell, even a smoky, sandy cantina felt normal to me. Anything except the living embodiment of Kew gardens on an acid trip. If I closed my eyes, I almost imagined being in the woodlands back home near where I lived. Though I doubted very much that the leaves there are reddish black and always twitching. Ducking and diving out of the way of various people, both human and our glorious blue Xeran hosts. I chose to ignore the puzzled looks on their faces. Both species probably wondered why a human woman in her mid-thirties was chasing after a sentient plant. "That pumpkin is a chocolate thief!" I yelled at no one in particular, in the vain hope that some human women will sympathize with me. Nope, they look like I've gone insane, probably the same conclusion I would have come up with. Perhaps they were right, after all.

My mind couldn't get around it.

The little walking soup ingredient had walked into a dead end, I just needed to corner the little bastard and the Cadbury whole nut was mine. I walked up to it slowly, as if approaching a feral cat. Seeing it up close, I saw the pumpkin appearance was only superficial. It was blue with tendrils that gave the rough appearance of arms and legs. There was a long stalk, on top of the fruit. It was fixed and rounded at the end, looking like a concave eye. That might have been where it had been attached to the mother plant once, if basic botany rules applied here.

"Here, pumpkiny," I said, in my best 'luring a frightened kitty with a tasty tuna' voice, "I'm not going to hurt you, I just want my chocolate back Please." Did walking alien pumpkins understand manners? I wondered, definitely not, I was sure they had no ears. Still I pleaded with the thing.

"Come on, Just hand it over and I promise you some..." What do sentient plant beings like? Something I never needed to worry about during my Horticulture degree.

"Fish, blood and bone! Yummy! Full of nitrates, much better for you than yucky chocolate. Now come here..."

I never finished my sentence, the dead end opened, the living tissue pulled apart to create an opening. Through this temporary doorway, walked through a large man. A Xeran man dressed in blue, complementing his blueish white perlescent skin and striking violet eyes.

My heart forgets to beat for a second. I dry swallow, not usually reacting to men like this at first sight and definitely not towards a man with a tail. I averted my eyes from his fifth limb and stared at his face instead. This was somehow worse as I realised, as he looked very annoyed. He looked at me briefly with disdain, then turned his focus to the pumpkin which emitted a squeak. it clasped around my precious chocolate harder, was it scared?

Turned out it was right to be. What he did next caused me to jump in horror.

The Xeran smashed his foot on the pumpkin squashing it and my poor confectionery into a pulp. Never once taking his eyes off me.