Beneath the Violet Sky

The World I Didn’t Want to Leave The first thing I remember was the taste of blood and dust. Not the crash itself, not at first, because the crash existed in my head as disconnected flashes—the shriek of an alarm I had never heard during eighteen years of flying, the navigation display turning violently red, the planet swelling across the forward glass where empty space should have been, my left engine vanishing from the diagnostic screen, and finally that terrible moment when I understood that the Artemis was no longer a spacecraft but several thousand kilograms of metal falling toward a world nobody had intended to visit. Then I opened my eyes. I was lying on reddish sand beneath a sky the color of old brass, my back against something hard, my left leg refusing to move without sending a bolt of pain through my hip, and above me hung a moon so enormous that for several seconds my battered mind insisted it had to be another planet falling toward me. I tried to sit up. That was a mistake. “Jesus—” The word came out as little more than air. Behind me something burned. I turned my head far enough to see the remains of the Artemis scattered across the desert, its forward compartment buried nose-first in a ridge perhaps eighty meters away, smoke curling from what had once been the engineering section, pieces of hull glittering across the ground like coins thrown by an angry god. Memory returned in pieces. Survey flight. Uncharted gravitational distortion. Guidance failure. Emergency separation. Atmospheric entry at an angle that should have killed me. Then impact. After that, nothing. My name is Nia Bennett , I was thirty-one years old, and until that morning I had considered myself remarkably difficult to kill. I was beginning to reconsider. I checked myself the way training demanded, although training had never included doing it while half-conscious beneath an alien sun. Head intact. Vision blurred but functional. Right arm moving. Left shoulder bleeding. Ribs probably bruised. Left thigh cut badly enough that looking at it made me immediately decide not to look at it again. My emergency beacon was gone. The suit transmitter blinked twice when I touched it and then died with an apologetic little chirp. “Perfect.” Talking aloud made the silence less enormous. There was vegetation around me, if vegetation was the correct word for clusters of gray-green stalks that curled away from my shadow whenever I moved, and low glasslike plants shaped like open hands whose translucent tips collected beads of moisture despite the heat. Nothing moved beyond them. No birds. No insects. No distant animals. Just wind dragging dust across stone and the occasional metallic groan from the wreckage. I reached for the emergency pouch attached to my hip. Gone. Water pack. Ruptured. Sidearm. Still there. That fact made me feel considerably better until I tried to stand. I got one foot beneath me, pushed against the rock, rose perhaps twenty centimeters, and promptly collapsed again. I remember laughing. Not because anything was funny, but because sometimes terror and laughter are neighbors and the wrong one answers the door. “So,” I whispered, staring toward the horizon, “this is how Nia Bennett dies.” Something moved among the rocks. I stopped breathing. At first I thought it was heat distortion. Then it stepped into the open. She was tall. That was my first coherent thought. My second was that she was unquestionably alive, unquestionably intelligent, and unlike anything the human species had ever formally documented. She walked toward me slowly, deliberately, apparently making certain I could see her coming, and even frightened, injured, half-dehydrated and staring at the first extraterrestrial person humanity had ever encountered, I noticed something else immediately. She was beautiful. Not beautiful for an alien . Beautiful. Her skin was a muted gray-brown, textured with delicate lines that caught the sunlight almost like metal beneath skin, and her head rose into an elongated, gracefully ridged shape that should have seemed grotesque and somehow did not; she had no visible outer ears, only smooth contours along the sides of her skull, and her enormous dark eyes were set in a face whose proportions were strange but whose expression was unmistakable. Concern. She stopped perhaps six meters away. I reached for my weapon. She saw me do it. Her hands rose. Two hands. Empty. She looked at the gun, then at me. “No closer.” Naturally she did not understand. Or perhaps she understood tone perfectly. She stopped. For several seconds we simply stared at each other across the sand. Then she touched her chest. “Sa…ela.” The sound was strange, less a spoken word than a sequence of breath, vibration and a soft clicking note produced somewhere deep in her throat. I stared. She repeated it. “Saela.” At least that was what my brain decided it heard. I pointed at her. “Saela?” Her eyes widened. And then she smiled. It changed everything. I touched my own chest. “Nia.” “Nee-ah.” My heart did something entirely inappropriate under the circumstances. “Yes,” I said, and laughed despite myself. “Nia.” She pointed at my injured leg. The smile disappeared. “No.” She crouched. I raised the weapon again. She froze. There was no anger in her face, only patience. Then she pointed toward herself, toward me, toward the wound, and made a slow wrapping motion around her own forearm. Help. At least I hoped it meant help. I lowered the gun. “Okay.” That became our first shared word, although she had absolutely no idea what it meant. She approached. When she finally touched me, her hand was surprisingly warm. Saela examined my shoulder first, then my ribs, then the gash across my thigh, and every time I flinched she stopped instantly, studying my face before continuing. She spoke continually while she worked. Her language was beautiful. Low vocal sounds were mixed with clicks, breaths and tiny tonal shifts, some of which I could feel through her fingertips more clearly than I could hear them, and I began to suspect that the absence of ears did not mean she lacked hearing at all; perhaps sound simply entered through structures beneath the jaw or through vibration-sensitive tissue along her neck. Eventually she looked toward the wreckage. Then toward the horizon. Then she pointed downward. I frowned. “Down?” She repeated the gesture. Then she pointed toward herself. Home. Her home was underground. I understood perhaps one word in twenty thousand, yet somehow we were already having a conversation. She stood. Then she bent toward me. “Oh no.” She slipped one arm behind my back and another beneath my knees. “Saela, I weigh seventy kilos.” Apparently seventy kilograms meant nothing to her. She lifted me effortlessly. My arm went around her shoulders by instinct. Her face was suddenly centimeters from mine. And this is embarrassing to admit, considering that I was injured, stranded, possibly dying, and being carried away from the wreckage of my spacecraft by an extraterrestrial woman, but my immediate thought was: She smells wonderful. Not perfume. Something mineral and warm, like rain hitting stone. I began laughing again. Saela looked down at me, alarmed. “I’m fine.” She clearly did not believe that. “Actually,” I added, “I am very far from fine.” Her home was hidden inside what I had assumed was an impact crater. We crossed perhaps half a kilometer of desert before Saela descended through a natural-looking opening between rocks, and only after we entered did I realize the stone had been shaped deliberately. The tunnel spiraled downward. Warm amber lights awakened along the walls as she passed. The deeper we went, the cooler the air became. Then the tunnel opened. I forgot about the pain. The chamber beneath the desert was enormous, carved—or grown—into sweeping arches that resembled bones, roots and cathedral columns simultaneously, its surfaces covered with fine geometric patterns, violet crystals glowing inside recessed alcoves, bowls of unfamiliar fruit on carved tables, translucent vessels filled with colored liquids, fabric hanging from the walls in long metallic folds. This was not a shelter. This was a home. A beautiful one. “You live here?” Saela looked at me. “Yes, right,” I muttered. “Still working on that.” She carried me into a smaller chamber and laid me carefully upon a broad padded platform. Then she began removing the damaged outer pieces of my flight gear. That required considerably more trust than lowering the gun had. I watched every movement. She never hurried. When fabric was stuck to dried blood, she stopped and softened it with warm liquid. When I winced, she touched my wrist. When she uncovered the injury along my shoulder, she made a quiet sound that needed no translation whatsoever. “That bad?” She looked directly into my eyes. Apparently yes. The strangest moment came when she picked up a small object from a nearby table, something shaped like a flattened crystal, placed it against her throat, then pointed toward mine. I hesitated. “Translator?” She obviously did not know the word. She touched it to herself again and spoke. The crystal glowed. Then she handed it to me. I placed it against my throat. “My name is Nia.” The crystal flickered violently. Saela stared at it. I spoke again. “I crashed.” Nothing. “I am injured.” Still nothing. Then I pointed toward myself and said: “Nia.” The crystal pulsed. Saela touched her chest. “Saela.” Another pulse. We spent perhaps an hour like that. Names. Water. Pain. Home. Sky. Danger. Safe. The device was not translating sentences. It was learning concepts. And so were we. Eventually Saela pointed toward herself, then toward the chamber around us. “Saela. Var.” “Saela’s home?” The crystal glowed. She smiled. Progress. Then she pointed at me. At the bed. At herself. Then made the same gesture she had made outside. Safe. I swallowed. “Nia safe.” The crystal shimmered between us. Saela became very still. Then she touched her fingertips gently to my forehead. “Yes,” I whispered. “Nia safe.” The bath terrified me at first. Not because Saela did anything frightening, but because the liquid inside it was bright purple and appeared to emit its own light. I pointed at it. Then at myself. Then shook my head vigorously. Saela laughed. That was the first time I heard her laugh. It was lower than a human laugh, almost musical, and I immediately decided I wanted to hear it again. She dipped her hand into the liquid. Nothing happened. She lifted her arm. The fluid ran from her skin in glowing ribbons. Then she touched a small scrape along her forearm that I had not noticed before and immersed it. When she withdrew her arm, the scrape was gone. I stared. “No.” Saela smiled. “No.” I pointed at the bath. “That fixes injuries?” The crystal gave a hesitant pulse. She pointed at my shoulder. Then the bath. Then made a disappearing motion. I forgot fear. “You can heal this?” She nodded. Not because she understood every word. Because she understood me. Minutes later I sat waist-deep in warm violet liquid, still wearing the dark medical underlayer of my suit, watching something impossible happen to my body. The bruising across my arm faded. Not instantly. Slowly. Purple spread beneath the surface of my skin like light beneath ice, and wherever it passed the swelling diminished, angry red abrasions softened to pink, and then even the pink vanished. I lifted my arm. “No.” Saela watched me with amusement. I touched the place where a deep cut had been. Smooth skin. I looked at her. “No.” She made that musical laugh again. I laughed too. Then I began crying. That frightened her. She leaned toward me immediately. “No, no.” I grabbed her wrist. “Good. This is good.” I placed her hand against my cheek. “Good.” The crystal glowed. Saela repeated the word carefully. “Goo.” I laughed through the tears. “Good.” “Good.” “Yes!” She laughed. And there, sitting inside a glowing purple bath beneath the surface of an alien planet, I taught the first extraterrestrial woman humanity had ever met how to say good . By evening I could walk. By nightfall I had no injuries left at all. My flight suit, however, was beyond salvation. Saela examined it, pulled thoughtfully at one burned section, and produced a sound that I interpreted as extraterrestrial disapproval. “You don’t like it?” She looked at me. Then at the suit. Then shook her head. I laughed. “Fashion critic.” She disappeared into another chamber and returned carrying clothing. Her clothing. Or something very similar. The material looked metallic but felt softer than silk, fitting close around the body before falling into long divided panels around the legs, patterned in bronze and dark gray lines that echoed the markings of Saela’s own clothing. When I emerged wearing it, she stopped moving. For several seconds she simply stared. My cheeks became hot. Apparently that reaction had survived interstellar travel perfectly well. “What?” Saela approached. She adjusted the collar. Then one shoulder. Then stepped back. Her eyes traveled over me. The crystal hanging between us pulsed faintly. “Good,” she said. I laughed. “Very good?” She tilted her head. I held two fingers apart. “Very.” She considered this. Then smiled. “Very good.” That was when I kissed her. I wish I could tell you it was carefully considered. It was not. I had crashed onto an unknown world, nearly died, been carried underground by a woman who was not human, healed in impossible purple water, dressed in alien clothing, and somewhere during those hours fear had transformed into fascination, fascination had transformed into trust, and trust had become something warmer and considerably more dangerous. I stepped toward her. Saela went still. I touched her face. She could have moved away. She did not. “Nia,” she whispered. “Yes.” I kissed her. For the first heartbeat she did nothing. Then one hand settled against my waist. The other touched the back of my neck. And Saela kissed me back. Whatever biology separated us apparently had not abolished that language. When I woke the next morning, sunlight was entering the chamber through some impossible shaft in the rock, turning the walls gold, and for several quiet seconds I had no idea where I was. Then I felt Saela beside me. And I remembered. Not details. Those belonged to us. What returned instead was the feeling of the night—the astonishing tenderness of it, the patience, the curiosity, the moments when neither of us had understood what the other wanted until somehow we did, the laughter when our assumptions collided, the way Saela had watched my face as though every reaction mattered, and the almost frightening realization that a woman whose species I had not known existed yesterday had somehow understood my body, my hesitation, my excitement and even my nervousness with a sensitivity I had rarely encountered from people who had known me for years. I lay there staring at the ceiling. “Oh my God.” Saela stirred beside me. I covered my face with one hand. That was apparently enough to wake her completely. She turned toward me, watching with those enormous dark eyes, and I knew immediately that she thought something was wrong. “No.” I shook my head quickly. “No, no, no. Nothing wrong.” She continued staring. I looked at her. Then I started laughing. How exactly was I supposed to explain this? How did one tell the first extraterrestrial woman one had ever met that she was an astonishing lover? How did I explain that I had lived thirty-one years among humans, had loved women before, had been kissed before, touched before, had spent mornings beside women whose language and bodies and expectations I understood perfectly—and yet somehow nothing in my life had prepared me for last night? Saela touched my cheek. Concern again. I caught her hand and kissed her palm. “Good.” Her expression softened. “Good?” I laughed. “Very good.” Now she smiled. Apparently she remembered that phrase. “Very good,” she repeated. I groaned and buried my face against her shoulder. She laughed. That made everything worse. Or considerably better. I wasn't sure anymore. I should have been thinking about the Artemis . I should have been thinking about the emergency beacon, orbital traffic, rescue windows, oxygen reserves, whether anyone had seen my descent, whether Command believed I was alive, whether a recovery ship might already be looking for me. Instead I was thinking something completely insane. I don't want to leave. The thought arrived so naturally that it frightened me more than the crash had. I lifted my head and looked at Saela. I knew almost nothing about her. I did not know her age. I did not know whether Saela was actually her name or merely the nearest sound my human throat could produce. I did not know whether she had a family, a profession, obligations, enemies, lovers, whether people of her species paired for life or for an evening or for something I did not even have a concept for. I didn't know whether yesterday had been extraordinary for her or whether rescuing strangers from spacecraft wreckage was simply what she did on Thursdays. And yet lying beside her in the golden morning light, with the memory of the previous night still warm inside me, I wanted something I had absolutely no right to want. More. Not another night. More her . I wanted to know why she lived beneath the desert. I wanted to know what those violet lights meant. I wanted to learn the names of the objects on her shelves and what she ate and what made her laugh and whether she ever became angry and where she went when she left this dwelling. I wanted to know what she had thought when she first saw me lying beside the wreckage. I wanted to know whether she had been as frightened of me as I had been of her. And perhaps most dangerously of all, I wanted to know whether she wanted me to stay. Saela was watching me again. I touched my chest. “Nia.” She nodded. Then I touched hers. “Saela.” Another nod. I pointed toward the chamber around us. “Saela. Var.” Her home. She smiled. Then I pointed at myself. Then downward, toward the bed, toward the room, toward everything around us. “Maybe… Nia var?” The crystal translator lay on the table across the room, and even if I had possessed it I doubted it had learned anything remotely complicated enough to translate I met you yesterday and I'm already considering abandoning my entire civilization because you're extraordinary and last night rearranged several things inside my head. Saela stared at me. I immediately regretted trying. “Forget it.” Then she reached for my hand. She placed it against her chest. “Saela.” She touched mine. “Nia.” Then, slowly, she pressed our joined hands against the bedding between us. “Var.” I stopped breathing. Home. I looked at her. She smiled, uncertain this time, as though she was not entirely sure whether she had said what she intended. I understood anyway. Or perhaps I simply desperately wanted to. I kissed her. And somewhere far above us, the remains of the Artemis were still cooling beneath an alien sun, carrying transmitters, navigation records and probably several very expensive pieces of equipment that my employers would eventually want back. For the first time since opening my eyes beside the wreckage, however, rescue did not feel like salvation. It felt like a problem I would eventually have to solve. Because I had known Saela for less than a day. I could barely speak to her. I knew almost nothing about her. And I was already terrified that someone might come and take me home.