Aphelion

Night Blindness

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Nothing of importance happened today.

Cadet Quibilah Abdel sighed as she wrote that in her daily log. It had been a few days since she spotted Tito; now all her surroundings turned up dull in comparison. Originally, she had come to the Academy with high hopes and a love of space motivating her, but the monotonous drag of drill, studies, and PT had finally gotten to her. Not that she was not grateful for such an adventurous opportunity, but not every moment of Academy life invigorated her thoroughly.

Even worse, her empathy levels seemed to be acting up as of late. As someone susceptible to a sensitivity for other's feelings or emotions, she had to be careful when dealing with extremes from other people. It is well known that smiles are contagious at a microscopic scale. However, intense happiness in cadets around her as well as gloomy sadness could impact her mood unusually more than others. Her mother said that it was her being dramatic which meant over the years she had tried to mask it by laughing at life around her whether it was appropriate or not.  With the first round of Midterms around the corner, cadets exhibited stress, irritability, and frustration so that meant it was harder to laugh than before; even still that did not stop her from trying.

Often, it could cause people to see her as grating or annoying; however the alternative would send her to therapy. Of course, her minor mood swing, or the worries over a certain Physics Midterm would not wake her up in the middle of the night.

Nightmares did though. Breaking out in sweats, she wondered why recurring nightmares of a crazy man shrieking he would kill her kept happening. As a child, she had never been prone to watching horror movies.

Thirsty, she placed her bare feet on the floor, put on flip flops and went out in search of the women's locker rooms. For some reason, the water fountains had been closed lately so running the tap and filling her water bottle should do instead.

Unfortunately, a strange sight greeted her once in the hallway.

"Tito?", she muttered. Green slime oozed all over his pores, dark brown skin glistening underneath. This time, he did not utter a word, just panted inaudibly.

"What happened?", she asked as the lights went out. In a moment, his visage vanished from her sight when the lights came back on again.

For a while, she had doubted his existence, but if his reappearance was not proof something was wrong, then what is?

Peering around the passage, she glanced at the void through the thick glass, wondering if aliens truly existed for the umpteenth time since that first encounter.

Recalling the original purpose for her excursion, she reached a locker room, and tried the seal. Finding it unlocked, she went in, resolved to relieve herself as well.

Only to find the shock of her life.

"I'm so sorry," she said, turning quickly around in shame as a sculpted young man of medium build with a towel over his lower parts stood, flabbergasted at a female coming into a men's locker room. Coming from a conservative society as he did, he placed the blame on himself, and hastily put on a shirt and pants before opening his mouth.

"I must not have locked it beforehand, sorry," he said to a bashful Egyptian cadet. Slowly, Cadet Quibilah inched her way out of there, facing him once she exited the locker room.

"No, that was my fault for not checking...", she protested. "Truly it was not my intention..."

The young man waved his hand, saying, "Let's move on from this." Currently, his embarrassment was even greater, especially when he recalled the Sexual Assault Prevention lecture they had when he arrived. Should someone accuse him...no, he must not let his anxiety get the best of him in space.