Page 37 of His Human Believer

And overhead, the whole time, the sky is changing colors. The signs of the alignment are breathtaking. Two moons are closing and I can actually see it happening, slowly, over hours. The gap between them narrows while a hundred kids run around underneath with buckets. All over the community, in the middle of walking, families stop and tip their heads back and look up at the phenomenon in the sky and then go back to whatever they were doing.

An older Hyrrokin male tells a small child that this is his second alignment.

I overhear Dagr explaining orbital mechanics to Kari and Loge Touchstone with enormous patience.

Mitry, from somewhere behind me, shouts at full volume, “Trick or treat.”

I turn a corner and see Vidar wandering on the walkway on the edge of the lake.

He’s so handsome, he again takes my breath away. Never did I think I’d find a gruesome Hyrrokin, who in reality looks like a creature from hell, so attractive. I want so badly to jump him and have sex with him all night long. But it’s true. I love his flickering barbed tail. The bald head with the thick black horns, it does it for me. And the smoke that often wafts from the nostrils of his crooked nose is simply the best. Well, the acres of red skin and that bare chest and the bare feet, I love that too.

He wears dark trousers with filthy knees because he’s been in the mud, a smear of it up one forearm, and he has clearly been out there since midday because there is a whole diurnal of the jungle on him.

Vidar stops at the edge of the drive and he just stands there.

I cross the street to go and meet him. “You should take a break, Dr. Coalstone. You’ve been working all day and night.”

“Margaret,” he greets with that deep voice that causes butterflies to take flight in my belly. “No, I can’t stop. My job is to watch all the instruments and keep in contact with Molten Lava.”

I stare at him, remembering how it felt to be so close to him, last night, in the hallway. I thought for a moment that he was going to kiss me and then I regained my sanity and told him to step back, for the both of us. Vows intact. It was basically one of the most difficult moments of my life. I literally deserve a medal for pushing that Hyrrokin away, instead of pulling down his pants and getting on my knees, right there, in the hallway. “How’s it going out along the back wall?” I manage to ask with a level voice.

“It’s on automatic right now. I’m here because I thought it would be a good idea for me to take a short break and see the lay of the land out here.”

“You haven’t seen anything unusual yet?”

“No, only Yarik Vail again, but that’s because he’s out here studying the alignment too.”

“Hmm.”

Then he looks at me properly for the first time. “Are you wearing a costume?”

“I am,” I laugh. “But not everyone realizes it’s even a costume and none of them recognize it. Avery is the only being in this community who understands what it means. I suppose this is why we are such close friends.”

“I only see you dressed in a long outer layer and you have that word pinned to your fabric. Believe. What does it signify?”

“It’s from a show,” I say. “A black market show I watch from Earth, the original planet of my species. There were these two highly effective investigators, a male and a female who eventually became mates, working odd cases and one of them believed in everything and one of them was a skeptic who believed in nothing, and they worked every case together for years, and the one who believed had a sign on his wall that said Believe.”

Vidar considers this. “Did they resolve their disagreement?”

“No.”

“Ever?”

“Not really, but it did not affect the longevity of their relationship.”

“Then it was still a functional partnership,” he says. “And possibly the best kind.”

And I have to look at the sky for a second, so I don’t wrap my arms around him and kiss him right there, in front of everyone.

“The alignment is in approximately one hour,” Vidar comments. He’s watching the moons. “Full dark is the window every account describes and it is the entire reason I am on this planet.”

“I’m coming with you,” I say.

“No. I still need to be alone out there tonight. Every sensor on that line is calibrated against one heat signature, which is mine. A second body in the field changes the baseline. If something registers tonight and there are two of us out there, then a Fellow reads my findings in six months and says there was an unaccounted signature in the field and the entire night goes in the bin. The second reason,” he says, taking my hand in his. “Is that I need to focus and with you nearby, I cannot focus.”

“Okay,” I sigh.

“Margaret, when this is all over, even if it is ten months from now, I’m going to take you to my bedroom and we will lock the door and spend an entire week in bed together. But right now…”