Part 2 of...however long it takes.
"Lafiel," Jinto said out loud to the air, feeling breathless. The sight of the Abh girl always entranced him so that he felt speechless. In ancient times of man's confinement to Earth- one single, simple planet in the Universe- there had been times when countries had declared trade embargoes so strict that residents of one's country only wished for glimpses of outside worlds. There had been at least one man or two, so desperate in his curiosity for the unseen land from whence strangers had come, that they had thrown themselves into the sea to follow after strangers and forfeit all they knew and loved for that which they did not. So it was with Jinto, albeit with far more reluctance.
"Lafiel," Jinto spoke again the the Abh woman neared him. Radiant as sunlight, and slender of limb and waist as though she might have been modeled after a lake's heron, she shifted nearer to him, her hair blue like the water and just as shimmering. Her gown, too, seemed it would be soft under his thumb, with its folds of satin. White like the scent-strewing roses of her garden. Jinto closed his eyes with contentment then opened them, much like the over-fed, calico cat which had departed his lap.
"So you've come for me. I've hoped as much."
"I always do," Lafiel pouted almost imperceptibly as she lowered her long yet well-rounded face with eyes that seemed they would pierce for miles. Her voice was gentle chime, with almost a lisp. But not quite.
"Jinto," her soft voice snapped as fiercely as it was able. It was harsh slap of a moth's wing. A mere call for attention and acknowledgement.
"Yes...Lafiel?" Jinto asked nervously because he knew Lafiel did not shout when she was angriest. She was one of those who when she smiled- it might be the last thing one ever sees. Yet he had seen her smile a softer, more sentiment-laden smile. It was a smile she wore only for him. He took her hand into his own to kindle it. Like a mysterious light playing across the surfaces of the moon, a contentment which was uncertain rose.
"Jinto," Lafiel spoke again, although without much of the harshness of urgency. She leaned closer to his ear. As if to share a secret.
"Yes. My precious Imperial Princess," Jinto whispered back. The secret was shared. Her slender fingers tested his hair- finding the ends jagged with frays. "I want to show you how the colony I am building is progressing. Then we should speak of business. After you show me the secrets," Lafiel spoke. She dropped her voice lower as if one might hear them in the empty room. Yet only orchids in vases, chairs, and fountains of water remained with them after the cats had stalked off, back into the rose bushes of the lover's garden. For yes. Yes, that was their secret as an Abh noble and a Baron. "Show me Jinto," Lafiel said tipping him back with her fingertips as her long wave of hair lowered to his chest. "Show me the secrets of intimacy of the land people of Hyde."
So they were lovers, then. And as they rode up the long elevators to a viewing platform for the space colony, and to its command bridge, Jinto reflected on how long they had been. How pleasant it had been growing up alongside her. And yet now he was growing old, like a cat. And yet she was not. Being an Abh by birth had granted her a certain timelessness.
During the long ride up the elevator he studied her face. As if there might be a mirror to reflect back the questions he asked about himself on it. But then she caught him staring.
"Hm? Jinto?" she asked him. "Is something wrong? Are you feeling unwell? You are staring as if one or both of us might be fevered," she rounded out with the barest touch of irritation.
"Oh, no! I wasn't thinking of anything like that!" Jinto responded quickly. Nimble on his tongue when required to be, he spoke. "I was just thinking aobut how long it's been since I met you. And how long it's been since we've been here. How is the world building coming?"
Silent, head slightly lowered as she concentrated on a keypad, Lafiel lowered her guantled hand to interact with the surface of the keypad. There was a hiss nd beep as it slid back and the door to the command bridge cracked open.
"It is going well, I suppose," Lafiel said. "Although some of it is thanks to you! You give very good advice for a land person." Lafiel took up residence in a chair and crossed her ankle modestly. Jinto lowered himself in a similarly sculpted "U" beside her.
"Well, I am a land person," he joked. "So I more or less know what the land is supposed to be. And what things are useful. Like rivers!"
"Yes. You are," Lafiel stated bluntly, as if immune to sarcasm. She shut her eyes for a moment as if a great grief tired her.
"Jinto?" she asked speculatively. "You know I've asked you here for a reason. And it isn't just the rivers or the plans for composite minerals. It's something serious."
"Can't we tour the progress on the colony first?" Jinto joked.
"Very well," Lafiel said with a dignity Jinto could not match.
Incredible was all Jinto might say about the world... no worlds Lafiel was building. A Dutchess herself in holdings, the solar system she had been appointed at birth was a modest solar system in the galaxy named for its rosy red glow. No inhabitable planets swung within spiral orbits at its start, and yet soon it would for the Abh were destroyers of worlds. And their creators.
The afterburners of their spacecraft propelled them forward as Lafiel steered a modest space communication craft above the surface of a huge asteroid. In the distance, and entire fleet or space cargo ships and tug boats steered these asteroids and more towards a massive metalic knot as tall as any planet was wide. Sparks seemed to shoot out of its apex like dull fireworks.
"See?" Lafiel declared with modest victory. "That is the electromagnetic core. It will remain active until enough material and sentiments are moved into place that it will begin to seal itself. Then it will, by natural processes, distort and sink to become its natural core."
"Why?" Jinto questioned.
"Because it is naturally heavier element, of course," Lafiel explained with great patience, "and not a little, either."
"But won't finding a rapid route through space-time to your new planet from an established one be difficult?" he asked, willing to keep the conversation going. Up ahead of them, enough asteroids had been piled in rings around the metallic core so that Jinto might easy imagine them all pulling together to make a planet, although a very small and uninhabitable one.
"No," Lafiel remonstrated. "For the algorithm for finding the quickest route between any number of spaces between places is simplified if one takes into account of volume of a sphere, and deducts or adds within its three dimensional space in addition to calculating the least and greatest possibilities of distances traveled. Finding potential quick routes can be estimated using flat, two dimensional lines strung together by points, but such calculations tend to be inaccurate and are difficult to run by shear volume. So it is better to switch to a third-dimensional space when considering routes, even in terms of mileage."
"Oh," Jinto said scratching his face in perplexment. "Of course! But of course, Lafiel, how long will it take these planets to be built?"
"Hm," Lafiel reflected on it. "Forty years for the first planet at minimum. And the others won't be completed within my lifetime. But I hope to at least begin colonizing the first planet here."
"Will you take your roses?" Jinto murmurred in question.
"That was my intent," came Lafiel's reply. "Someday I will make it a planet of roses."
"Not just roses, surely!" Jinto laughed fondly.
"Not just roses, no. And how about you, Jinto? How is your novel coming?"
"Oh, me?" The man born on a planet much like Earth, so long ago, laughed. "It's going well. Sometimes not so well, but I like it so far."
"I like the characters," Lafiel observed. "It really seems that the teacher knows his pupil."
"Oh. That's just me," Jinto laughed at himself weakly. "Sometimes I think of the man who raised me."
"Yes?" Lafiel pressed after he had paused in sorrow.
"He was a good teacher in some ways although we had our disagreements. But sometimes it's both- I'm both the master and the pupil," Jinto sought to explain as he scratched his chin.
"Yes?" Lafiel waited with great expectation.
"Sometimes I'm me as a little kid," Jinto elaborated to his confidant. "And sometimes it's myself- the older and wiser me, wearing my master's mask, staring back at the younger and lost me," Jinto finished sadly to Lafiel. Their spacecraft shifted its course, then slowed to dock aboard a tall ship which stood apart from either the glimmering cluster of ships that was the space colony or the industrial complex building a planet off in the distance.
"Here we are," Lafiel stated as she pressed holographic buttons. A light reading, "prepare to disembark" flashed across a rounded, high-tech screen. "Now Jinto, you know there was something really important I wanted to speak with you about. Remember the laws of Abh about the three duties one must fulfill in one's lifetime?"
"Hm?" Jinto thought, thinking with exceptional slowness. "To serve in military is one of them... but the third... ahh!" Jinto paled as he recalled the third requisite of all Abh, especially nobility. He gaped.
"Exactly," Lafiel stated out loud for him as she pressed her fingertips against a door latch to open it. She stared back over her should at her aghast companion. "It's to raise Abh children. And with your having been born a human, it's been deemed necessary for the succession of your planet that you consider having children made for you, to act as your successors, sooner than later." From with the room they entered, a newer, unexpected voice spoke.
"That is exactly the case," a tall Abh woman declared with all the adornment and regality of a noblewoman. Jinto quickly bowed his head in respect to the Empress of the Abh Empire.