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“Look!” I cry out. “A shooting star!”
Anytime I see one, I imagine it’s Papa in the Lawanda, zipping by to the next planet.
“Do you know what a shooting star is?” Mama says in her soft voice she uses when she tells me stories before bed.
I do. It’s Papa. But she’s already sad from my mentioning him, so I bite my forked tongue. “No, Mama. What is it?”
She turns off the fire and walks over to me, running her claws through my hair. “Sometimes, there is too much happiness in the world, and it has nowhere to go. It gets sucked off the planet and forms into a tiny, glowing ball of happy. Then, it gets bigger and bigger until it explodes with joy, shooting across the sky, and sprinkling more happiness along the way.”
I still think it’s Papa.
“One day I’m gonna catch one,” I tell her, tilting my nog up to beam at her. I’ll catch Papa and bring him home to us. He’s our happy and we’ll have him back. Mama will smile more and laugh.
“You, my dear Theron, are the brightest, most brilliant mortling in all of Mortuus. Don’t ever forget that. Even when you’re big like me one solar.”
I snort, trying to imagine being as tall as Mama. She can touch the ceiling!
She grins at me, making my chest get all funny with happiness. “If anyone can catch a shooting star, it’d be you, my sweet.”
I bounce up and down, already making my plan. I’ll learn how to fly a ship and I’ll find a friend to be my co-pilot and I’ll zip across the sky. Papa will be so happy to see me, and we can link our ships and fly back home to Mama.
“What are you wearing?” Willow hisses, jerking me from my memory.
My chest aches as my mother’s voice lingers. Papa had gone on a mission, I eventually had to come to terms with, and his ship went down in a fiery ball of flames. He didn’t survive. Then, later, Mama succumbed to The Rades. I was passed around to other older morts until I grew old enough to make my own decisions. By that point, our numbers had dwindled to so little.
“You left me with no choice,” I growl, the bitterness from my past seeping into my tone. “Get out of my seat.”
“Finders keepers, inmate,” she smarts off, eyeing the unusual language on my pants.
I lift a brow. “I found you. And if you remember correctly, bright star, I kept you trapped in my arms as I drove my coc—”
“Gross. Don’t remind me.” Her nostrils flare again, but her cheeks are pink. Those lovely blue eyes of hers skate down my bare chest before a smirk tugs at one corner of her lips.
“Ever heard of a tanning bed, ghost boy?”
“No.” I blink at her.
She frowns. “Okay, so my jokes aren’t funny because you literally know nothing about Earth II culture.”
“Tanning bed is culture?”
“It…well, no, but…never mind.”
I stroll over to her and lean forward, grasping the armrests with both hands, caging her in. “Then tell me, bright star. I’d love to hear about your culture so I can laugh with you rather than at my expense.”
Her brows furl together. “You’re being a dick.”
I’ve heard this one a lot from the other females. They don’t mean the one in my pants either. It means I’m being difficult like Breccan. Not the worst thing. Breccan is a fine leader. Strong. Fierce.
“You’re preening,” she grumbles.
“I am not.”
“You are. Sometimes I wish I knew what went on in that acid trip brain of yours.”
I reach a hand up and tuck a strand of shimmering scarlet hair behind her ear. Her ears aren’t pointy and white like ours. Hers are pink, tiny, rounded, and if she’d let me, I’d lick them to see if they tasted sweet like her.
“I was thinking that by calling me a dick, you were comparing me to my commander. I must agree with you. If anyone is a dick, of all the morts, it is me.”
She snorts. “You’re so over the top, I can’t deal with you.”
“Top means best.”
“Do you always have to be the winner?”
“My mama said I was the most brilliant mort,” I reveal, flashing my fangs at her.
“Your mama lied.”
Her words sting and I jolt back, rubbing at the ache in my chest with my fingertips. Mama didn’t lie. She told me Papa had perished and gone to The Eternals. I chose not to believe her.
“Do not speak ill of the dead,” I hiss, storming out of the navigation bay to the supply closet. I rummage around, deciding to organize the shelves when I hear her at my back.
“Theron.”
Not asshole or dick or inmate or loser.
Theron.
I ignore the way it sparks inside me.
“I’m busy counting zuta-nuts,” I explain, my tone terse.
“You’re not counting them,” she says softly. “You’re just pretending to.”
