Page 50 of Trove’s Purpose

“Welcome, guests, to Barbarda, jewel of Heava Yu. I am Krista, part of the welcoming services committee, and it’s my pleasure to help you find your way to your accommodations or, if you don’t have them yet, to help you obtain them.”

Grace stepped forward to take over the conversation. Tanin was their leader, but Grace was the one who did the talking. She’d already made reservations for a place to stay. Not only that, she made an appointment to speak with the collector they were here for. She was in charge of the logistics of the crew, and she did it well.

Chee tried to grab her bag out of the shuttle while Grace spoke to Krista, but before she had a chance, Trove did so for her. He had his own bag in one hand and now hers in the other. He offered her a smile, but she couldn’t look at him.

“I can take that,” she said, offering her hand.

“It’s fine. We’re going to the same place,” he said.

He wasn’t the only one to do so. Tanin and Sway and Vytln had all grabbed their mate’s bags. And she wondered if he was doing it because she was his mate, or just because he thought he should. She didn’t want to think about it, so she didn’t and instead walked ahead to stand closer to Grace. The two of them followed directly behind Krista, the others behind them, as they walked out of their parking spot – docking spot?

The inner core of the parking garage was a series of three lifts that went up and down, taking people and welcoming committee members up and down as they came and went. Krista took them onto an empty lift and used the console to activate it, sending them down.

The entrance of the parking garage was more like a welcoming desk at a hotel. There was a desk where two more people like Krista – Chee realized she didn’t know the name of their species, but it felt rude and wrong to call them aliens on their own home planet. She was the alien here.

As she stood there, waiting for Grace to get them transportation, she tried her very hardest to not be hyper aware of Trove standing just a few steps to her side. Not close enough that she could ask him to get away from her and not be considered insane, but definitely close enough for her to be aware of him in her periphery.

But, of course, the harder she tried not to notice him, the more he took up the entirety of the forefront of her mind.

She did have her attention completely diverted, however, when they stepped outside. She couldn’t help it, because now she was seeing the planet directly, and it was breathtaking.

It was midday, the golden sun hanging almost directly overhead. But the sky was alive with a stunning swath of colors. The area around the sun was all hot oranges and yellows and pinks, like a sunset, bold and beautiful. However, the further from the sun the sky went, the more those colors faded into the soft, airy pinks and purples and pale blue of a sunrise. Like an artist had painted the sky in every color a sky could be painted.

And streaked diagonally across it, like a milky way of diamond dust, was the ring that circled the planet. It glittered, it sparkled, against the vibrant sky. The fluffy white clouds that hovered overhead broke up the color and shine in a way that seemed artistic in and of itself. It was stunning. It took the entirety of her mind to just take in the view.

And even when she was able to lower her gaze, she was struck by the beauty of their nature. A hover shuttle was there, a few other aliens already sitting inside. All of them looked excited, exactly how Chee would expect tourists to appear. The long hover had steps in the back and a long body for them to sit in, and was also completely topless, allowing its riders to really appreciate the tunnel of greenery – purple-ery? – with white flowers that arched over the street.

The purple of the flora around her wasn’t a singular color. Almost every blade of grass, leaf, and bush was a gradient of light lavender to dark violet. And there was a riot of tropical flowers in white, yellow, orange, pink, and occasional splashes of red.

And it went deeper than just what she could see.

The scents were not what she expected. None of the florals or salt water that she would have imagined for a tropical style paradise. It definitely smelled fresh, the air clean and crisp and calm, but the scent wasn’t of flowers. She couldn’t describe it honestly. It was like those scent oils that were named after concepts like ‘tranquility’ or ‘joy’. A combination of scents that she was sure someone more skilled than her could isolate and identify, but to Chee just smelled exactly like what it described without being anything her nose could actually name.

She was soaking it all in, amazed by the idyllic nature all around her, but she still couldn’t miss the moment Trove sat next to her on the shuttle.

She stiffened, now once again completely focused on him. But it wasn’t like she could ask him to sit elsewhere. The hover shuttle was full, and it wasn’t like he was inappropriately close. There was enough space between them that, if they were strangers, it would still be acceptable.

But she was just so aware of him.

His size. His warmth. The dark blue of his skin matching the casual clothes he was wearing. The scent of him, so harshly metallic and different from the fresh air of the planet. How was it more enticing than paradise?

It had to be a mate thing. A biological imperative she couldn’t ignore. It had to be. She couldn’t accept it if she really was that weak to him.

Despite her mind’s obsession, she kept herself outwardly calm and unaffected. Her hands were neatly folded in her lap, and she remained focused on taking in the scenery. Only the initial shock of it had been enough to completely derail her thoughts off Trove.

But there was still plenty to see and admire.

The space port was set just outside of a city. The tower they landed in was one of five similar buildings, all of which fed back towards a single building that acted like an airport terminal. People came in and out, either aiming for the private docking towers or booking with larger public shuttles that would take them to huge transport ships that couldn’t land planetside.

It was busy and wonderful. Like the clouds, the architecture broke up the color with bright, pale colors – mostly white but accented with light grays and beige. Colors that, typically she couldn’t enjoy for how plain they appeared, but set amongst all the bright and vibrant nature around it, offered her eyes a welcome break that only served to enhance the beauty of everything else.

Since they already had everything set up, they were able to transfer from the hover shuttle to a rented hover that Grace had arranged beforehand. Chee found herself grateful for the other woman for taking on the burden of all this as it let her do nothing else but enjoy the trip.

She was just here for work. To see Hyde’s request through to completion. That was all.

But at least the view while doing that was nice.

The inn that Grace chose for them was not one of the big, expensive places, but it was still nice. It was reasonably close to the spaceport, not really close to the water, but it was near the city center where there were lots of restaurants and shops and plenty of nightlife. The city, like a rough quartz crystal set amongst the painted purple of the surrounding tropical trees, wasn’t very tall, but it was broad and filled with lights like it was Vegas, creating a hard contrast between the artificial and the natural that, somehow, still worked well together.