HASH: Human Alien Species Hybrid

Chapter Three

She wasn't my mother. Even as a child, I recognized that. My mother wasn't so unnaturally tall and slender, and my mother didn't have gleaming metal, which swirled and looped around her body, twisting in patterns that caught the descending sunlight as she lay there, staring over at me, her eyes so dark that they were a crayon black.

She reached out toward me, and my child form made its way over to her, half walking and half crawling. I was searching for comfort, for someone to wrap their arms around me and tell me that everything would be okay. Even in my dream, I remembered that confused toddler need.

I watched on, in my dream, knowing I wouldn't wake up until the end part was done. Couldn't it, just once, stop short of this point?

The long, thin woman stared at me. Her eyes were large, much larger than any eyes I had ever seen. She spoke in a language I didn't understand. When I did not reply, she tried again, and in my dream, it was in English.

"There, little one. Come here. You're hurt."

I crawled to her, unable to help myself. She effortlessly lifted me into her lap. I could remember how safe I felt there even though I knew I wasn't. Her arms wrapped around me the way my mother's arms would when I was scared of the dark. I closed my eyes and imagined it was my mother, and I slowly leaned in and rested my head on her chest.

Her voice, as she spoke to me, was slightly deeper than my mother's voice and it was desperate. "I'm hurt, too. Maybe too much. We weren't supposed to be here. Celenia was secure. The Devourers could not touch us. We were traveling to talk about helping our neighbors. How could we guess that our own people would betray us?" She stroked my hair. "I know, sweetheart. I know you don't understand now. But you will."

I looked up at her and she went on.

"We had to run. We were aiming for home, but something went wrong. Sabotage. We..." she gestured to the wreckage. "My husband and son were in there with me, and now I am dying. Even with the key holding me together, I am dying. When I do, it will die, too, and then, what will become of all of us?"

I'd long since stopped wondering how I could remember the words, let alone understand them at that age. I didn't care. All I cared about was what came next. Despite my resignation before, I fought to try to make myself get away. I needed to do something other than sit there stupidly hurting, trusting this woman because she spoke so softly.

She reached down behind herself, touching her neck. Something came away in her hand. Something that I looked at, fascinated in my dream. Something that shone as brightly as anything I had ever seen before. She held it out, obviously growing weaker with every second.

"If there were another way...but there isn't. I'm sorry, child."

She pressed the cold metal to my skin, and it burned as if it were as hot as the sun. As a three year old, I screamed for it to stop and even as I woke from my dream unable to tolerate the pain, my screams, although deeper in tone, were as fierce and desperate as they were when I was a child. For the thousandth time, my first thought was that I wished that this dream would let me wake up just a second or two earlier.