The problem with charm, Sarah thought, was that people who had it were just so bloody charming.
It hadn't been charm that had turned her head – chalk that up to the pretty face and tailored waistcoat, as always – but charm it was that had Sarah buying into that cockamamie scheme hook-line-and-sinker.
And for what? A kiss on the lips and a boot in the ass, that's what she got for dealing with pirates. Never again, she told herself. Never again would Sarah Fortune cast her lot with deep-space scallywags.
Not that she'd actually get the chance, mind you, because here she was, jettisoned into space the moment the pirates decided they'd be better off without her. They'd left to suffocate in her insulated suit with nothing but an abandoned planet for company, whose atmosphere would someday immolate her drifting shell as friction tore it down to the atoms.
Charm. What a dog.
The stars laughed at her, distant, cold, shaking with a mirth she could feel like a trillion freezing pinpricks. She cursed them, breathlessly, reckoning that her oxygen-starved brain had just about reached its limit. Random sparking neurons, desperate to make relevant connections and failing to do so: that's all she had to look forward to in the minutes she had left in this universe, free-floating among the laughing stars with a bronzed planet overhead showering her in borrowed light like a second-hand sun.
The suit they'd shoved her into had provided breathable air for all of five minutes, which Sarah presumed was more of a parting gift than most "passengers" warranted. Charm was a universal language, and she figured she must have made her own mark on Pretty Waistcoat. Not an impressive mark, no, not a mark that amounted to much in the grand scheme of things, but it was a cool consolation to know she might be remembered for at least a day or two after her death.
Sarah watched the silent freighter arc away from her, though all she could see at this distance was a grid of geometric light cutting across the fixed starfield. Then she lost track of it altogether, brown haze crawling in at the sides of her vision, choking back the view. She would have sighed, had she the air to spend. Instead, she closed her eyes on this life and waited for the next.
It was the singing that held her back from the abyss.
She faltered in what felt like a slow descent, her awareness narrowed down to a single dab of warmth sinking under an endless cold sea. The voice, if that's what it was, felt like a thin gold thread winding its way through the black, seeking her and urging her to listen.
The sea was very very cold, and reaching up towards the golden thread seemed like such a very very impossible task. She wondered if it was worth it, or if it would be easier to sink, sink all the way down to the very end of the universe. As she wondered, she continued to sink, and it was so easy to fall. But the song surged forward, resolute, tangling itself around her like the arm of some mysterious sea serpent.
Sarah couldn't gasp, couldn't breathe against the sudden crushing heat of it; and then it was through the suit, burning her skin, seeping between the weave of her muscles and singing with a voice like molten gold in the forefront of her mind. If this was what death was, she had been sorely unprepared for the sheer fervor with which it clung to her, filled her, buoyed her up – up out of the dark ocean and up and ever up –
Blood crashed in her ears, and her insides seemed to want to re-organize themselves according to some arcane alignment, but the song's crushing heat and the waves numbing chill were equally vanished. Sarah felt – she felt – she felt like a little girl, clutching at her mother, who stooped and gathered her up into the most comforting embrace she had ever imagined. It surely wasn't a memory, since Sarah had never known the luxury. But she felt the soothing warmth of her mother's arms as if no other experience had ever been as real, and the golden song draped over her like a blanket, lulling her to sleep.
(\_(\_(\
When she awoke, the first thing she did was roll over and vomit into the dry grass at her side. She was too busy doing that to wonder what her hands were doing in her hair, until the shock of stones digging into her elbows and the cut of the wind across her cheek told her that not only had she made it to the surface, but someone had removed her helmet.
She didn't know which of the two unlikely facts surprised her more.
Shaking, Sarah pushed away from the spot and crabwalked as far as her protesting limbs would take her, collapsing down under the spotty shade of some alien flora that seemed to be made more of bone than branches.
She could sense it, even before she had stumbled back into consciousness she knew something was there, watching her. She had caught a glimpse of it (a dark, gossamer stain against the powdery yellow of the sky) as she sprawled under the skeleton-tree, refusing to tackle that head-on until she had her wits properly about her.
Breathe, Sarah, just take it one breath at a time. Remember breathing? You've always liked to breathe.
She got two steady lungfuls of dusty air before sputtering a hysterical laugh, her head going light at the miracle of it all. Her mysterious companion – savior, surely? – flickered at the sound. She thought immediately of the old saying her mother used to chide her with: they're more scared of you . . . .
Only this was no spider, no magma crab, no sandy-haired boy in the grade above. Lifting one weak arm to tremble accusingly at the thin shadow, Sarah Fortune exhaled with a shaky grin. "What the hell are you supposed to be, then?"
If not for the brightness of the sky, it would have been hard to look at. As it was, the figure stood out cleanly like a silhouette projected on an invisible screen, the contrast giving it a sharp edge. Inside the shape, though, it was all contorting shadows and layered darkness, wholly undefinable as it shimmered and hovered a few cautious feet away.
Sarah sat up and squinted, trying to make sense of it, fighting another wave of nausea caused by the attempt. It gave a deliberate ripple, top to bottom, and she flinched. She could only assume this thing had saved her from certain death, but now what? Uncertain death? She really didn't feel up to this right now.
It rippled again, and then there was a . . . pressure, almost, at her temple, and a general sensation that the thing before her was . . . waiting. Sarah felt the hair on her arms rise under the suit-sleeves, and began to sweat despite the persistent and lonely wind. She tried to suss it out, tried to second-guess the thing's motivation, but the shadow gave nothing away. It merely waited.
She risked a glance out past the thing, into the stretch of unfamiliar land beyond. Browns and tans, dirt and rocks, bone trees and a whole hell of a lot of nothing. Just one misfortunate Sarah and some sort of patient space ghost, and no one else on the whole of the planet to witness or step in. Like a reminder, she felt the pressure . . . tap the side of her face. She blinked back to it, resigned, and it rippled in the pale light. Well. Not like she had anything else to lose.
At her hesitant nod, the pressure thinned into a brief but sharp pain, causing her to gasp. Lights seemed to blossom across her vision and she blinked to clear it, and panic gripped her when it wouldn't clear. She watched, breath caught, as memories, dreams, thoughts – pieces of her identity – were thumbed through like a stack of cards with crude drawings inked on them. Like it or not, her life was literally flashing before her eyes.
It was over before she had a chance to object, the whirlwind of a lifetime's experience leaving her speechless. In the space of a moment, the images winked out, the pressure abated, and she realized she had one hand dug into the dirt and the other clutched to her chest over her pounding heart.
-/Apology/-
The voice shone clear and bright above her tousled thoughts, like the smooth flash of headlights passing across a bedroom ceiling, there and gone without a sound. She knew in an instant that it was the voice that had dragged her out of the depths, the voice of the specter who had just now ransacked her psyche.
-/Violent – injustice – apology – adapt – adapting to – understanding – your physical aspect – body – bodies are not familiar – to us/-
As each word or phrase beamed across her mind, the thing shifted according to the same rhythm, becoming more and more coherent as she watched. She blinked, boggling at the impossible physics as light and shadow seemed to bend together until it abruptly stopped and she realized she was looking into the golden eyes of – no, no, it couldn't be—
-/Language, too, is rather . . . interesting/- the thing said without speaking, some approximation of a smile gracing its newly formed face. The face of a young woman, dark skinned and iridescent in the foreign light, set atop a sculpted pair of shoulders and a torso to match. After that it all went sideways – instead of giving itself legs, the thing had chosen a sleek, muscular tail with glittering scales and a gauzy fin. Stubbornly defying all logic and physics, it continued to float there, watching her. -/But, fun/-
Sarah carefully moved her hand from her chest to her jaw, which she lifted back into place. "Not trying to be rude here, but are you telling me you're a bloody mermaid?"
/-Apologies-/ The response was lightning fast, and the thing suddenly frowned, glancing down at itself. -/There is no name – no image – for us in your mind. I . . . scavenged. I am MARAI/-
The last word came with a sensation of light so searing that Sarah clapped a hand over her eyes. It made no difference, it wasn't light at all, only a fragment of knowledge that her brain could barely grasp to comprehend. It burned.
"Don't—" she choked, reaching out with her other hand as if to ward off the intangible danger. "No—"
There was a flash of that same sharp pain at her temple, the same pressure but in reverse – and the blaring light dissolved, leaving her thoughts mercifully empty and dark.
Something grasped her outstretched hand, chilling her even through the glove, and she shuddered. She felt faint, weak, coming slowly back to the surface like she was emerging from the void for a second time. Then came a smooth and cold touch on her cheek and she dropped her shielding hand from her eyes.
The thing with the girl's face hovered close, her cool hand stroking away a tear Sarah didn't remember shedding. Its golden eyes were bright with concern, with compassion, and Sarah found herself gripping back, holding that impossible hand tight in her own.
-/Apologies/- it said, the light-sound not nearly as firm or vivid as it had been before. In some ways it felt like the voice was coming from farther away; but at the same time, she felt it less in her mind and more in her cheek, her hand – the places where they joined.
-/I've never tried to communicate with one of your kind before. I do not mean to hurt you/-
Though distant, Sarah could hear the earnest distress in the voice. She remembered the dream of a golden voice twining itself around her and decided she believed it. As she looked into its borrowed face, it nodded, as if agreeing with the image.
Besides, if it had meant to hurt her or kill her, "apology" probably wouldn't have made it into its vocabulary.
"You just want to talk, is that it?" With the pain of undecipherable meaning rapidly dismissed into memory, a bit of that unlikely humor found its way back into Sarah's reading of the situation. Or maybe she was just losing her mind. "I'd love to believe you, but that's what all they all say. I've learned not to trust a pretty face."
-/You seem to have forgotten that lesson fairly recently, if you don't mind my saying/-
The thing's lips curled, and Sarah couldn't help but smile back. That's all it took for the coiled tension to unknot from her muscles, leaving her tired and boneless. She sagged, sprawling out on the rocky ground as the gravity of the day caught up with her. Though it was strange, surreal, and oddly intimate, the way the thing held her seemed just as comforting as it had when it was just a voice carrying her through the darkness.
"You got me there," she drawled. "But when a sweet young thing in clothes like that asks you to dance . . . well, you know how it is."
She glanced down the smooth curves of the chimeric shape and the green-gold highlights glinting off obsidian skin and recalled the shifting shadow it had been originally. Curiosity got the better of her, once again, and she asked, "Or, do you?"
There was a pause as the thing seemed to search her for understanding, and then the fingers on her face dug in the fraction of an inch and – oh.
Images floated up, slower than before and with none of the sharp pain from the earlier experience. The search was also distinctly narrowed, nothing but memories containing soft caresses and dirty whispers filtering through this time. Memories that Sarah had in spades, the thing taking its sweet time flicking through each and every languid second as if nothing had ever been as important to get just right.
It was just a moment, short enough that her lungs hardly burned with the breath that had caught just a moment before, but as the connection fizzled out she thought she could feel laughter in the voice that sang against her skin.
-/I do now. Thank you/-
Her face was flushed, she knew it, and suddenly the way the thing held her seemed less comforting and just slightly more . . . was it possessive? Sarah licked her lips.
"And how—" she cleared her throat, "how can I thank you? I think all this is because of you, right?" She flopped her free hand against the yellow grass. "I suppose I owe you my life."
-/Yes/- the answer buzzed through her, heady with all the impossible implications. She tried not to think back to Pretty Waistcoat and the terms of their agreement, and especially did not think about the specifics of the advance payment. But the thing, connected to her as it was, read every thought as it scrolled by, and grinned a decidedly hungry grin. -/You are mine now/-
If a Sarah Fortune whimpers in the middle of a desert, and only a space mermaid is around to hear it . . . .
"The name's Fortune. Sarah Fortune," she declared when she had found her voice. She summoned whatever remained of her bravado and tried to think of this as just another business arrangement. A mutually beneficial business arrangement. Her specialty. "Bounty hunter extraordinaire. Pleased to be at your service."
The thing's toothy smile parted, and for the first time its dark lips moved to speak. "I am . . . Nami," it said, its voice a golden tremor falling like notes into the clear air, "I seek, a relic. You have, experience, finding treasure. Help me."
One day, Sarah Fortune was going to learn that charm was a deceitful mistress. She stared up at this iridescent impossibility and knew without a shadow of a doubt that today was not that day.