Once Untold

We all met in the captain’s lounge just after the transport ship had safely landed. My father wore some sort of military uniform, and he was completely dashing, as always.

“Girls, you both look lovely.”

I smiled up at him. “So do you, Daddy,” I said, and he patted my cheek.

My mom fluttered up to us in a cacophony of lime green lace and feathers. A large gold medallion was pinned to her breast and she had on the crown she’d worn for the nightly news. She reached for our hands, tears swimming in her eyes.

“I have something for you,” she said, her voice trembling. Captain Augustus stood behind her, looking just as handsome as my father. He held open a wooden box. Inside were two small, yet perfect, tiaras.

I gasped. “Diamonds.”

“These are not your true crowns,” my mother explained. “Those went missing during the confusion when we were trying to escape. These are just a substitute until we can find something better.”

I couldn’t imagine something better. The tiaras seemed perfect. I leaned over slightly so my mom could slip it onto my head, glad I’d decided to wear my hair up in a French twist. The tiara was beautiful. I admired myself for a few minutes in the mirror before looking at Astra. She and my mother stood side by side, their hair a riot of dark curls, their dresses positively painful to the eyes, and I sighed. I really hoped they didn’t humiliate themselves too much at the ceremony. They looked like clowns from a circus performance.

My father, of course, didn’t seem to notice. He bowed and kissed my mother’s hand gallantly before linking it through his arm and leading her out the door. I could tell it was a very emotional moment for both of them. They were returning to the home they loved after being exiled for so many years. Even I could feel my throat tightening up.

Astra walked up and took my arm. “Are you ready?” she asked, and I nodded. It was time to face the music, or the Vegonians, as the case may be.

We stepped out into a warm, sultry evening on Vega. Lights had been set up all around the landing bay, and we followed my parents to an elevated platform near the ship. People waited as far as the eye could see, and as soon as my parents stepped up to the podium, the crowd roared.

I stood arm in arm with Astra, taking in the moment. The city of Celesta glittered in the light of the fading sun, just beyond the crowd of people assembled before us. It sparkled like it was made of glass. I could see what must have been the royal palace on one side of the city on top of a small hill, and it made me think of Aladdin’s castle, all gilt and white marble. I decided I could definitely get used to living there.

As I stared at the people in front of me, I started to notice something odd. The women here were not at all what I’d expected. Supposedly the most beautiful women in the universe, they all looked a lot like my mother and sister, with short, oddly shaped bodies and large behinds. They also dressed just like my mother and sister, in a riot of colors and patterns.

A quick assessment told me that I was the only pretty girl around, other than Maya, and definitely the best dressed. Maya had been forced by her parents to wear some sort of Vegonian monstrosity made out of a hot pink iridescent fabric. Torture. I, on the other hand, felt like an elegant swan dumped into the middle of a bunch of plump, gaudy, peacocks.

I heaved a sigh of relief. I’d been a little teeny tiny bit worried when I’d heard about how beautiful Vegonian women were. It was good to realize those rumors had been pure exaggeration. No one in this crowd could hold a candle to me.

Another quick look around told me that there wasn’t a single bad looking guy here. I was completely devoted to Adrian, of course, but I couldn’t help but admire and appreciate male beauty when I saw it. The boys were all works of art. It was as if I’d been dropped into a huge candy shop full of the most delicious boys I’d ever seen, and knew I could have my pick. Of course I would never cheat on Adrian, but it felt like a candy shop here, nonetheless.

My joy proved short-lived. None of the boys even looked at me. At first I thought that several of them stared at me, which made me happy, but soon realized it wasn’t me they stared at. They had their eyes locked on Astra with the same sort of enraptured expressions boys usually reserved for me.

A cold wave of shock crawled over my entire body. Boys never looked at Astra like that, especially when I stood right next to her. Something was very wrong here.

I smoothed my hair, which was perfect and didn’t need smoothing. I stuck out my chest and turned my body so they could see my best angle, but none of them even noticed me. Astra had suddenly become the center of attention.

My mother gave a very lovely and heartfelt speech, which I barely paid attention to. The crowd roared and screamed her name, but I hardly even heard it. People waved and cheered with tears streaming down their faces, but I felt numb to everything.

When we were introduced to various dignitaries, everyone said “lovely,” and “a vision,” when they met Astra. When they saw me, they looked a bit confused and then mumbled something boring like “nice to meet you.” Something very strange was going on, and I had to figure it out.

I searched the crowd for Adrian, but he was nowhere to be seen. One sexy, appreciative look from him might have been enough to restore some semblance of balance and order to my universe. But he wasn’t around and I’d been cast adrift in a sea of beautiful boys to whom I was invisible.

“Art thou okay, Princess Starr?” asked Captain Augustus. “Thou art pale.”

I blinked as I digested his words. The Vegonians spoke English, but a weird form of archaic Elizabethan English mixed with modern slang. The only people who had spoken like that on the transport ship were the captain and the crew. All of the Vegonians who been on Earth for the last fifteen years spoke standard, modern English, although I’d heard a few “thou’s” and “thee’s” begin to slip into the language of the older passengers, including my own parents.

“I’m fine. Thank you.”

As the captain bowed and turned away, I realized I wasn’t fine at all. I stared around at the sea of happy, glowing, faces, including those of my parents and my sister, and understood that suddenly, and without any explanation, I had become the outsider.

“Thou art in hell, Starr Valentine,” I murmured to myself.

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PRAISE FOR MIDNIGHT BURNING!

My brother, Mani, once told me Alaska was the first place he had ever travelled where he knew he was somewhere different—somewhere decidedly not home—before he ever set foot on the ground. I didn’t understand what he meant until now. Outside my airplane window, the glassy waters of Cook Inlet reflected a bright blue late-summer sky. Dark and looming, the Chugach Mountains encroached from the east. Far to the north, the ghostly, snow-crusted visage of Mount McKinley rose above the landscape, an ancient king, high on his dais, surveying his kingdom.

By comparison, Mani and I had been raised somewhere a little more commonplace. Home was a small town in the foothills of North Carolina, over three thousand miles away. And this was the first time I had ever left it. I probably should have eased into long-distance travel in the same way I eased into a cold swimming pool—one toe at a time. A trip over the border into Gatlinburg. A weekend visit to D.C. But no, I had taken a plunge from the high dive instead, and boy, was I in over my head.

The captain’s calm and assuring voice spilled across the cabin, announcing our approach and descent into Anchorage. Seatbelt signs chimed and flashed. A pair of flight attendants swept down the aisles, collecting trash and reminding passengers to raise seat backs and lock away tray tables. I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath, and urged my heart to return to its regular pitter-patter pace, but it refused to obey.

I breathed in again and trapped the breath in my lungs. Chill, Solina, I told myself. It’s only a week. I could survive anything for one week, right? And I wouldn’t be on my own. My brother’s best friend, Val Wotan, was at the airport waiting for me. Val had texted me a dozen times to make sure I hadn’t missed my connecting flights or fallen out of the plane somewhere over Canada. Val was expecting me, and I was a glutton for fulfilling others’ expectations. I also owed this trip to my brother, to the honor of his memory. How could I ever look myself in the eye again if I gave in to my doubts? If I didn't give Mani my absolute commitment?

Val deserved my loyalty, too. In the few years I'd known him, Val had risen from casual acquaintance to something I wasn't quite ready to label, but just thinking of him made my heart beat a little faster, my breath come a little quicker. Val had earned my regard by being the sibling I couldn't be for Mani after he’d left home. He had watched Mani's back, made him welcome and comfortable in a strange and foreign place. He had even saved my brother’s life once.

I chuckled, remembering how Mani had loved to recount the story of the raging bull moose—deep in a rutting frenzy and crazed by the need to mate with anything female and fight anything that wasn’t. Not long after Mani had first arrived in Alaska, he and Val had gone off on a backpacking trip. They came upon the moose on the edge of a meadow and caught it off guard.

The moose turned its hostile gaze on Mani, lowered its rack, and charged. Stunned and uncertain how to react, Mani stood frozen in place and watched his life pass before his eyes. Meanwhile, Val calmly drew a .44 Magnum from the side pocket of his backpack and fired off a warning shot. The moose reconsidered his challenge and lumbered away into the woods.

If only Val and his gun had been there the night my brother died. Then I might have been coming to Alaska for an entirely different set of reasons.

The trip back to the office was short and uneventful. Parking her car was also characteristically nondescript. On her way to the front doors, Abigail realized that the entire car ride had been on autopilot. Along with that realization came the panic associated with losing a chunk of one’s precious life to monotony. And along with that came a sudden worry that she might have flattened a child without realizing it.

No. Surely that would have been memorable—right?

Right in the middle of a panicked mental recap of the events from picking up her book to arriving in the parking lot, she slammed face-first into a surprisingly warm wall of a person. She rebounded, only now taking in the red-and-black flannel shirt she had plowed into. Her hands shot out in an attempt to keep balance. A moment later, she felt someone’s hands on her forearms.

“Easy there,” came a gruff voice. Pulling herself out of her daze, Abigail looked up at the person she had run into, who was now also, kindly enough, keeping her upright. He was scruffy, a mop of brown hair bleeding into a full (if short) beard worried with the occasional silver strands. His eyes were an intense green, which, coupled with the red in his shirt, gave his appearance an unintentionally festive look. He was pale, but that was nothing out of the ordinary, considering Abigail had forgotten what the sun looked like in the weeks she’d been calling the Pacific Northwest home.

He was cute. In a ruggedly handsome way. Like a grizzled lumberjack.

Perhaps cute was not the word for it.

Abigail giggled, suddenly overtaken with the silliness of what just happened. “Thank you,” she said, certain she was coming across like an idiot. “You can let go now.” She smiled. The man obliged, returning a tight-lipped smile that seemed to err on the side of suffering-the-eccentric.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to…” he began before clearing his throat, “exist where you wanted to exist at the same time.” He looked every bit as awkward as she felt, which made her own discomfort slightly less overbearing.

She swallowed sheepishly. “It happens.” She suddenly felt the need to clarify what she meant, so she gestured back and forth between the two of them. “Existing at the same time and all.” She realized that the gesture didn’t seem to quite work in the situation, so she let her hand fall at her side as she averted her gaze.

“Try as we might!” he said with an exaggerated shrug. They exchanged unconvincing laughs before silence filled the void, mutated into a pause, then sat long enough to be uncomfortable. While the quiet was maliciously evolving, Abigail couldn’t help but trace her eyes up the man’s exposed and muscular forearms. When she caught what she was doing, she wondered where her unintentional partner’s eyes were glued—no doubt, here was another person in Whitewater who would take any opportunity to drink in the sight of the newest and blackest resident.

Instead, she was a little shocked—and pleased—to see he was staring at the ground. He was legitimately embarrassed for slamming into her. In the city, if someone ran into you it was either a pickpocketing or just a nonstandard and jostly hello. In her hometown, it had been met with an impertinent huff and followed by a subpar apology. Here… well, if this was the first, being bumped into was hardly the worst way to get to know someone.

Hey, mountain man Joe, why don’t we walk into each other in front of a coffee shop some time? she thought. This Whitewater-only pickup line seemed dopey enough to be charming enough to work—and she couldn’t help snickering at the thought.

“What’s so funny?” he asked. She looked up at his eyes which had made a momentary migration to her face.

The smile from her laughter remained unbroken, but grew a touch larger. “Nothing, just, uh…” She gestured to her temple. “I’m hilarious up here, trust me.”

He tilted his head back, enough to give her a full look at what she assumed was post-embarrassment face-saving stoniness. He nodded. “Sorry again.” And with that, he brushed aside her, carrying some intense body heat with him, and walked away. She looked over her shoulder at the man, watching him for a few seconds. Something registered as odd, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

Regardless of what it was that presently pricked at her brain, she shook it off. She had spent weeks feeling exasperated when people felt they were privileged enough to stare at her like a lab specimen; she wasn’t too keen on forcing that behavior on someone else.

No matter how green his stupid sexy eyes were.

She turned around to the glass doors and jolted at the sight of Lacy Renault, the woman in charge of business coverage. A tiny woman in her fifties with short-cropped silver hair, she watched Abigail come in with icy blue eyes and a gotcha-smile. She wore an immaculately tailored red business suit, giving her the appearance of a circa 2008 female presidential candidate.

Abigail stepped into the vestibule, grateful for the limited respite it provided from the elements. “Were you watching that the whole time?” she asked, trying not to look too confused by Lacy’s grin. The expression was becoming a bit too knowing for her tastes.

“You running into Collins?” She asked. She opened her eyes widely, teasingly, and nodded. “Oh, my, yes!”

Abigail shrugged. “Something I should know?”

Lacy gave an embellished frown. “No, no. Just, uh…” She trailed off in the way people do when overstressing a manufactured difficulty with words. “Glad to see you’re taking in the sights.”

Well, this conversation immediately failed the Bechdel Test, Abigail thought icily.