Starfish

Eighteen

Ardus lay awake in his bed niche hours after he'd walked Nina back to her apartment. He didn't feel the bed beneath him or the cool air from the open window blowing across his skin, rather he felt the brush of Nina's arm against the back of his hand. Warm, light, soft as blueback fur, and as intentional as if she'd grabbed him. She touched me, she stood beside me and touched my hand. Why did I not do anything? They had been alone, he could have done so much more. At the moment, though, he had frozen. Idiot! Rubbing his face, he stared blankly up at the light fixture in the ceiling of his bed niche and wallowed in regret. I could have done something. I should have gone back down on my knees and told her everything. At the very least I could have offered her my hand. But he'd merely stood silently beside her while the tide and moon rose, the back of his hand and one finger touching her arm. I want so much more, what is stopping me?

He rolled to his side, a hand between his face and the pillow. It has been so long, I barely remember how I am supposed to react. Next to his bed, a native fern loomed in the dark smelling of loam and spice. The plant was supposed to temper the air, refresh it and calm the mind by bringing a natural element indoors. It had been a tiny seedling no bigger than his hand when it had come into the room – a gift from someone he missed dearly – now it stood almost half his height. So many years have passed, and I have done nothing but work. He'd done so little besides work, he realized, that he remembered little of the time that had passed. 

Something in his chest twisted painfully. Sea gods, I am old. Am I wasting my years? I promised I would not, yet I have nothing to show for it except work. He looked at the plant, felt its presence in the dark. I used work to fill the void you left behind, and what do I have to show for it? Awards, recognition, funding, support, none of it means anything without you.

For a time he had ignored the void in his apartment, the cold absence in his bed. He filled the apartment with collections of books and specimens, filled his time with meetings and projects, filled his mind with theory and information. But his heart remained empty, a chasm that once opened would not be satisfied with writing forwards and footnotes in books, would not be occupied by conservation efforts or the acquisition of knowledge. For the first time in so long, however, the chasm was beginning to fill. It was hardly a drop in the sea compared to the depth of the ache, but the broken-glass-edge of the pain that had lived with him for so long felt blunted now, like numbing balm on a long-open wound. Curling around a pillow and holding it tight to his stomach, Ardus realized he was afraid. Not of Nina or of his feelings, but of what they implied.

I may not care that Nina is human and I am Dreen, but it could destroy what I am trying to do. Nina seemed to understand. 'I'm always worried about making a bad impression', she had said. There was so much more to it than that. If I do not use caution I could do more than hurt Nina, I could hurt relations with all humans. I cannot do that, not after all the time we spent searching. Not only that, but this...rapport that seemed to be growing between himself and the human woman was unique, unprecedented, exciting and utterly baffling. No one could have predicted this, no one would have even imagined this could happen.

What do I know about humans? Next to nothing, he realized. He knew they were mammals, that they were as intelligent as Dreen. They walked on two legs and breathed air, they birthed live young and had mastered language, they had discovered the concept of the wheel unassisted and they had finally mastered space travel – not to the level of Dreen faster-than-light ships, but they could manage. Humans had created the spacecraft with its golden disk asking the universe if they were alone by means of music, photographs and a greeting in more than fifty of their languages. They had been searching for life other than themselves for over four hundred years by the time the Gaan intercepted the unmanned Voyager, while the Dreen had been at it for more than three times that. They had ideas, dreams, feelings, they were complex and unique and so very strange. They are like Dreen, but they are so different.