She had nothing when she came to the small village of Amberley, besides three suitcases and her feline companion who called himself Valrr. He had vociferously protested his confinement from the moment she'd stepped off the landing pad at a small airfield and continued to do so now. Due south of the space tower where she'd be working as the lead archaeologist for the area, the little village really was just an outpost but boasted lovely architecture woven into the landscape so that you'd scarcely realize it was there at all. As first impressions went, it was particularly amicable on all fronts even with the Prylarian's rusty yowl echoing into the fresh breeze and the scent of particularly pleasant silver flowers.
Nyowww. Kyra, I know the space authority told you to keep me in this box, but we are here. Nyowww, let me out. There are things to chase, places to explore, perhaps work to be done if I decide to care. If he sounded aggrieved, she supposed she couldn't fault him. He had been cooped up for entirely too long, despite ample room to move about. The new world was calling to him as much as its secrets called to her.
Tell me you'll not go roaring after the next flying thing that you see and I might. The retort she got back, she was fairly sure didn't have a direct translation. With a laugh, she stopped and unlatched the front door. He was quite large and when standing, his lithe silver and rust spotted form reached almost to her shoulder and his head on level with hers. The whorls and spots were splashed across his deep blue-black black fur, which stood on end for a moment as he glanced up at her with bright silver eyes marked with rust colored pupils.
That's better, my Arillian friend. The next time we travel, you try sitting in a box like a pet. His voice was graveled and low, the rolled r sound more of a rolling purr and the s sounds elongated like a hiss.
"It isn't my fault, not that it was that much of a hardship, sitting in a veritable palace that took us seventy thousand units to procure. Mind you," Kyra said pressing a button on the massive carrier that folded the whole thing into a slim pocket sized square, "that was my pay from the last job, thank you." At least the carrier was larger than it might have seemed, for it transcended its spatial boundaries quite neatly. "Believe me, negotiations are still ongoing for your species and I spent nearly twenty-four hours arguing your case before the Interplanetary Travel Board. That's not including the six hours I spent in Renewal getting their voices scrubbed from my mind. Do you know how difficult it is dealing with a bunch of docupushers? They wouldn't come around and you didn't help by grinning at them like they were supper."
You tried. I suppose I can be grateful for that. These ITB idiots would do well to put down their visors once and awhile and reconsider that if I hadn't such a nice temperament, I would have eaten them all for a snack. Kyra actually didn't doubt that part. Velrr could have easily taken the committee she'd met with in a few moments and the two officers in less. He was formidable in many ways and she, one of the lucky Ambassadors his kind had decided to pair with, as they did every so often and when they desired to do so. The greater interstellar community was on the fence about their intelligence and how much one could put faith in their translators who they called their Voices, despite numerous tests confirming the psychic ties they had with their Chosen. Valrr himself had sat Council for almost three hundred years, which ought to have been enough to vouch for his own intelligence, before he set his sights on the stars and bonded himself with Kyra of Arill some fifteen years prior.
He maintained that anyone demanding further proof of sentience ought to see those who were not so patient as he, which Kyra rather thought contradicted the entire line of thought. Prylar, his home planet, was exclusively native to his species and definitively not habitable by those humanoids who deemed it too dangerous to settle. It was with great pride that Valrr mentioned this, for Prylarians were clearly superior to such species that could not survive the wild beauty of the planet they called home.
It was wild and for Kyra, it had become home for nearly ten years. She had found herself, after twenty-nine years planetary exploration and research, in the precarious position of crash landing on Prylar. She'd fought her way through the jungles, figured out which plants were safe and which were not, and held her own for three months against a great deal of predators by the time Valrr had found her. Kyra had brambles in her russet hair and a fierce fire in her light violet eyes as she prepared to square off against him with only a plasma dagger as her defense. Later, he'd told her that she was a true warrior and that it had pleased him to see someone finally drop from the sky who could give the wilds a run. He was the one that convinced the Council to let him keep her as his Voice and later, bond with her as they repaired her ship. Learning about the Prylarians and exploring the massive jungles and plains had lasted ten long but fascinating years before someone heard her beacon and come to investigate. Kyra had a difficult time getting them to not take ship and book it the moment she, Valrr, and a few of the younger pride came to investigate the noise. She couldn't blame the Humans for wanting to run, what with a wild alien woman and equally ferocious feline companions en tow.
Kyra was not the most opposing looking creature in the universe, short in stature by most standards and exceedingly short for her own species, she was only a mere four feet and nine inches of height. She was lean and all muscle, her skin nearly pale as the the third moon in the Prylarian sky, her eyes large, wide set in her face to the effect that it made her look nearly childlike to the Humans. But she was many years older than they and of a species very much known for their long lifespans. She supposed it was her strange eyes and her accent that finally persuaded them to take her at her word, that and the fact that her registry proclaimed that she was, indeed, Kyra Skyfinder of Arill, daughter to Koman, Skyfinder before her, and that she was that Prime Archaeologist who had gone missing a decade prior. So, they would get the reward for bringing her home and she would have the privilege of taking a shower and soaping herself down for the first time in many, many years. No power in her ship, no shower, something she had lamented daily. Besides, the extreme humidity did nothing for her hair in any kind way. It had been waterfalls for her and some strange smelling local variety of soap weed for her to get mildly clean. It worked far better on her felianoid companion than she.
Her arrival back home had been one large celebration to the point where she'd booked the next transport right off world with Valrr to escape the waste of resources and endless parade of diplomats and dignitaries from organizations that had sprung up in the years she had been absent. Outfitted in the best ship she could have built for her needs, she and her friend had spent the years until now, drifting from job to job and obtaining as much credit as they could to fund their next jaunt. That included fuel as well as provisions. It was lucky for them, the tower was giving them living accommodations at its own expense.
Valrr padded next to her in silence, though she could feel the curiosity he radiated as they walked. Honestly, they could have taken a shuttle, but the both of them were more than pleased to walk the few miles from the airfield to their new home. She wasn't expecting what she found waiting for them, neither of them could. It was enough to find a mostly habitable shelter, but this? It was beautiful. Most of the structures were crafted out of the materials around them, theirs was no exception. It had been, apparently, dug out for them in the years it had taken them to travel to Tesla II and its orbiting moons, Helene and Nigel.
Tesla II was a ringed planet, heavily so, and even during the day one could see the multicolored electric tones of them in the sky. They were all that was left of Tesla I after the planet's demise a great deal of years prior - an experiment gone catastrophically wrong. Or right, if one considered the benefit they'd bestowed upon Tesla II. Helene, the closest companion moon, was luminous at any hour in a delicate silvery blue and purple, her oceans a riotous explosion of color, though the rivers that ran her surface were blood red ribbons. Most of her bounty was buried beneath her waters that ran rich with sentient life.
Nigel was a teeming forest moon located in that sweet spot that made his surface curiously habitable with billions of uncatalogued species, some so ridiculous that they looked like caricatures of creatures they might have represented. Kyra called it The Little Moon of Laughs because try as she might, she couldn't take it seriously. Resort moons, both of them, when she'd the credits. For the moment, Tesla II was enough to explore.
The accommodations they'd been gifted with were carved into dense amethyst crystal, polished stone used for the doors that slid back at the touch of her palm, though she had to suck at her finger for a moment as the identpad registered her DNA and did the same to Valrr, much to his annoyance. The entryway was immaculate, with pale turquoise floors lined intricately with copper designs that were mostly to do with electricity and avians of a particular species. A white one with a mutedly lit golden eye ringed in copper emblazoned the central chamber and a darker turquoise line illuminated the path ahead, guiding them onward. Exchanging glances with Valrr, Kyra's eyebrows rose.
Someone is pleased to see us in the most eccentric of ways, Valrr remarked. Birds are good to eat, as long as they are large enough.
"You and your bottomless pit are going to have to refrain from eating the birds of this world. You know they don't exist anywhere else anymore, not since Terra was destroyed," she reminded him with a shake of her head. He looked dejected.
The avians that are called pidjes? They look tasty whatever name you give them. Valrr didn't sound the least bit apologetic. Still sucking at her forefinger, she gave him a particularly irritated look. She had always enjoyed depictions of Terra's birds as they were so different from those that frequented her own water rich homeland.
No eating them, she reinforced mentally, or you'll be spending the next thousand years frozen in a Prylarian cube and left on Helene for the merfolk to nibble. You think Port Authority are kidding? The last archaeologist sent here, six hundred years prior tried to make a meal and sure as the sun, Helene has him. Though, I'm not sure the mer actually ate him. Who wants freeze-dried archaeologist?
Fine. Not when you put it like that. It has been Ooh, look a couch all for me. Irreverent, as usual, and now acting like the kitten he hadn't been in entirely too long, she left him to his devices, which apparently included a nap. Kyra continued her tour and found a large pool filled with the highest grade Renewal to aid in her recovery and adjustment to the gravity differences, though she had done her best to mimic the change before arrival. Her instinct was to literally drop everything and shuck her clothing to the metaphorical wind and jump in. Despite the strength of that need, she did nothing of the sort. She kept moving, wandering past the kitchen where another pathway lit in red took her toward the bedrooms, all four of them.
"Why," she asked mostly to herself as the blinking lights stopped at an ornate door, yet again, emblazoned with a white pidjes, "are there four rooms?" Curious, she attempted to enter the others, only one slid open, the two remained lit in two flashing colors, red and blue. She stood there, her eyes narrowed in suspicion, watching the patterns shift over and over again before she sighed, shook her head, and moved back on the path leading to her door.
The pidjes split in half and grew smaller as if perching on a branch, their heads tilting back to eye her as she entered. Stepping forward, she found herself in possession of a room done in black with silver and copper accents and the bed in soothing blue with netting in silver draped and tied back with red cords. The ceiling projected the waters of Helene with her endless lit depths. Kyra watched the seamless display and for a moment caught the flash of a face and tail. As she was about to turn away, the creature turned back and her head tilted to the side curiously as if she was watching Kyra from where she was on her moon. A moment later, she was gone, leaving Kyra to contemplate the exquisitely carved panel someone had attempted to literally deface. All that was left was a pair of smirking lips and a jaw, presumably of the planet's discoverer. In fact, there were extremely faded letters that said:
"Neekoh-lah Tez-lah," she read aloud as she parsed the missing letters into the whole. "Nikola Tesla," she murmured once more. Her fingers traced the N and there was another sharp prick. Kyra jerked her hand back and heard some sort of strange mechanism clicking away like tumblers in an ancient lock. Blood certainly seemed to be the key to this place. It was no wonder no archaeologist had been sent for if they'd be pricked to death just in entry. This time, it had been her pinkie and she was left to nurse that, though thankfully the forefinger had already ceased to bother her in the least.
"You rang?" came a voice to her left and she whirled into a crouch, her violet eyes wide as she brandished her plasma dagger. "Oh come on, do you know how long I've wanted to say that? Let's be civil, hm? The last person I sprang that on thought this place was possessed and accidentally gained a one way ticket to flotsamville."