Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

The Audacity

It was dark again though dim light filtered in from the street, casting a square of bluish hue along the far wall. Sometime over the last few days' Krill had determined that Adam was no longer in critical condition and moved him to one of the private rooms in the hospital. Adam had been stable over the past few days sinking in and out of consciousness every few hours or so. His recovery was taking longer than krill had anticipated and that worried everyone, though Krill had also said it wasn't outside the realm of possibility.

There was always a chance his body would reject the nonhuman tissue.

She prayed to the architect that wouldn't happen.

Voices passed far below the window, a group of young Drev headed home after a night of dueling. She glanced out the window from where she sat next to Adam. Weird to think that she was that young once. Weird to think she was capable of feeling old.

She wasn't that old really.

She turned her head back from the window, where the dim blue light lit the small room, with its smooth white floors, softly beeping machinery and crisp white bed sheets, In the far corner, Kay lay asleep on the little couch wrapped in a hospital blanket and clutching his fish resting half his head on it like a pillow.

The two most important people in her life within arms reach.

The way she preferred it.

She glanced down at Adam and then back up at the door. It was around maybe one in the morning. No one usually came to check on them for another few hours, and at this age Kay slept like a rock, so Sunny felt safe as she turned her head back to Adam. The feeling began as a hum deep in her chest, building up softly.

Drev have music.

Almost every major sentient group has something similar to music.

Drev rely primarily on drums, the Tesraki use something between string instruments and an accordion. Celzex use wind instruments, but it had always seemed that only humans had the ability to bend their voices to any sort of use, at least naturally. Now that humans were a known actor around the galaxy, other species had attempted to learn the art of using their voices as instruments to varying degrees of success.

For Vrul it was basically impossible, tesraki could really only carry a tune in a hum.

Surprisingly Celzex could sing if they really tried, but it only worked with varying success considering the size of their lungs.

Technically speaking Drev had the greatest chance of mimicking the human ability, mocking it and perhaps outmatching it to some degree. For instance, humans have to rely on the use of their vocal cords, nose and mouth to make singing work. This includes the network of nasal passageways inside their head.

Drev have similar structures, and an entire network of nasal cavities going through their neck and chest. A drev can go much deeper than the average human, but, as sunny had learned, it was also possible to manipulate their voices to go higher. In the end, Drev voices were far more powerful than human voices, their lungs were bigger, and their extensive set of tubes and passageways made them much louder.

But she didn't need to be loud.

She just wanted to try.

To see.

She had practiced in secret for years now, since Adam was lost to Behemoth. At first it had been frustrating, almost impossible, but there were other drev who had managed it, and after more than three years, Sunny had taught herself how to sing. It was,'t necessarily pretty, and she wasn't gifted, but she liked to think she wasn't in danger of making people's ears bleed.