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“Oh my God—and I was fiddling with the damn Far Box the whole time I was saying all that!” Seline exclaimed. “Commander Sylvan told us it could alter time and space and I was playing with it and saying all that shit while we were folding space!”
“Seline, you can’t assume—” Nox began.
“Yes, I can! Nox, I did this!” she cried, looking up at him. “I made us either go back in time or go to a horrible new universe where the Kindred never came and the Scourge took over the Earth!”
Her brown eyes went wide with fear and then her face crumpled and she began to cry.
“Oh my God, I did this! I did this to us! It’s all my fault!” she sobbed.
Nox felt something almost like distress centered somewhere in his midsection. He had a deep urge to comfort her, though he was at a loss as to how to go about it.
Then he remembered some of the human vids called “movies” which he’d been watching in order to learn more about human behaviors and interactions. They often seemed to find holding and hugging comforting—at least they did in all the “romantic” movies he had seen.
Reaching out, he unbuckled her harness with a flick of his fingers and pulled her into his lap.
“Nox?” She looked up at him in apparent shock, her lovely eyes filled with tears. “What…what are you doing?” Her voice was thick with emotion.
“Comforting you,” Nox informed her. He cradled her close to his chest, noting how small and soft she was and how good she smelled. She felt right in his arms—he wondered why he had never held her previously. Possibly because he had never had the need to comfort her before, since she was generally quite happy.
“Oh,” she said in a small voice and gave him an uncertain look.
Nox began to wonder if he was doing this “comforting” thing wrong.
“Do you dislike this? Should I put you down?” he asked, not wanting to make her even more anxious.
Seline shook her head quickly.
“No, no—don’t do that. Hold me! I was just…surprised, that’s all. You’ve never, er, comforted me before,” she pointed out.
“I have had no need to,” Nox told her. “Since you generally have what I have heard humans call a ‘sunny disposition.’ But now you’re upset and blaming yourself for the situation we find ourselves in. And…I do not like to see you cry,” he added.
“I’m afraid you’re going to see a lot of it, if we’re stuck in this weird new reality.” She sniffed and leaned her head against his chest trustingly, which caused Nox to have another strong surge of something in his midsection. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew that he found holding and soothing the curvy little female intensely agreeable. He put his arms around her and stroked her long, auburn hair some more, enjoying the tactile pleasure of the silky strands against his fingers.
“I’m certain we are not ‘stuck’ here,” he said, hoping he was right. “Whatever was done, there must be a way to undo it. We must retrace our steps exactly. So…you were holding the Far Box and talking about the Scourge as we flew through the fold in space. And then we came out into this alternate reality.”
“I thought you said we might have gone back in time?” Seline asked, sniffing again.
“No, I don’t think so,” Nox murmured. “On further reflection, it seems more logical to assume that we are either in an altered reality or in a parallel universe—most probably the latter.”
“A parallel universe?” Seline looked up at him, wide-eyed. “As in…a whole other universe than our own?”
“That is the generally accepted definition, yes,” Nox told her. “Either way it amounts to the same thing—we are in the wrong place and we need to find a way to get home—back to our own reality or universe. There are two components to that: one—the Far Box and two—the fold in space.”
“Do you think it’s as simple as saying that we want to go back to our own universe, where the Kindred came in time to save Earth from the Scourge, while I play with the Far Box?” Seline asked, looking up at him hopefully.
Nox frowned.
“I’m afraid it’s going to be a bit more complicated than that. We also need to find the Kindred in this universe and get them to fold space for us so we can fly back through a fold as we state clearly where we want to go. Assuming there are Kindred in this universe,” he added grimly.
“Oh!” Seline sat up in his lap, putting her hand to her mouth.
“What? What is it?” Nox asked her.
“I just thought of something—we need more than just the first half of the Far Box and the Mother Ship to make a fold in space for us—we need the second half of the box too.”
