Your name is Mituna Captor, although you haven't heard that name in a very long time.
People call you the Ψiioniic or the Helmsman if they call you anything.
Well, hardly anyone calls you your real name anymore. She still insists on saying it. It's outdated, though. It's hardly you anymore. You're not that same little yellow blood kid anymore- not even a yellow blood anymore, not really, because every resource you can find says yellow bloods live twenty to thirty sweeps and you have been living for…
You do not know how long, anymore. You used to keep track, but that faded away, like so much else.
The screens in your block flickers to life, bypassing your optic nerves, forcing you to look. Orange-red shapes, nine of them, modeling a room in heat from a thermal-capture device galaxies away.
You wonder if the carrier has suspected the virus she carries. You decide it does not matter. Wondering will not bring you closer to knowing what she feels. The blood of your captain's blood, who is bowing in a series of sea-cool ripples billions of miles away.
You have not felt ocean in…
You still do not remember, vaguely think to check if you stored the memory in some far-off bank.
You have not felt the ocean in a very long time, but you recognize it in her as she traces a hand across your cheek, sea-cool hand rubbing your jaw line.
"What are they up to, my sweet?" she muses, and you twist, tendrils of ship, of you, coiling to form a seat for her. She sits like a queen, tracing century-slow circles across your flesh, fever-cool.
The empress drags a nail across the columns that hold you into the ship, draws distracted circles in not-really-yellow blood, stares at the thermal feed from oh-so-far away.
"Have you ever seen blood that hot, my sweet?" She asks, and you turn your attention to the screen where a stocky coal of a silhouette pulses with youth and fiery heat.
You consider lying. Seems pointless. She knows the answer anyway. "Yes."
She sighs, watching the figures still and stare and sit and fidget, but not really watching them. Just images of their heat signatures.
"Have you ever seen psionics that give of that signature?" She asks, watching the cool-hot pulse and crackle on screen, and again you consider lying. You crackle instead, cool-hot.
"Your descendant." She muses, and hers sweeps yours into an exited hug, new and innocent with the ages.
"His descendant." She says, and you look at the coal-hot pulse on the screen, flickering heart-bright.
"And his." She's pointing to another silhouette, two breath-cool membranes folded against his back, shoulders broad, heart lowblood-hot.
"And have you heard the news?" the heat-footage flickers away, replaced by news reports- robberies, ships sacked, low blooded crew taken, the rest of the boats lest to drift. Stories of a one-armed pirate with a white monster and powers unbefitting of a blue blood.
"Mindfang's spawn." She sighs, reaching to you, and you would hold her hand but you haven't had hands for…
You should check those old records. The curiosity is beginning to bother you. But you do not miss the hands. Have not for a long time. You coil a cable around her slender wrist.
"Did you know that we're paying a jade blood to stay on-planet? To take down the grub-mortality rates that have gone up in the past sweeps?" She tilts her head to the side.
"You're smart, sweet. You can guess which it is."
You sketch a picture of the mother in the air, psionics rendering her blue-red. You remember her. You shorten horns, round cheeks, dull fangs.
"Spitting image of the little dolorosa." The empress sighs, hangs her horn-heavy head, weary and old, so old. Older then even you.
"The little Ampora is on-planet with my descendant, too." She says, and you warp the image to sketch his love, his love in everything, and her executioner, in red-blue. Make them younger, like they might be. Could be. A question mark.
"We don't know about them, love. I haven't heard reports. But the teal blood, the legislacerator- she's back."
Redglare. You hum, let the ship vibrate under you. She smiles, twists, rubs a twined ear between her long fingers.
"They're all back, sweet." She smiles, sweet and slow-sad.
"Meenah." You say, voice creaky and dry. "Is he back too?" you let your light draw a picture of the grand highblood. You cannot make him young, only ape-large and sloped and feral, fanged and clawed and huge-horned and knuckle-dragging.
"Yes." She says, reaching out to drag her fingers through empty sparks. "He's back too."
"Should we send him?" You ask, and you picture him bloody and hanging and the last Capricorn watching and laughing. You do not have to explain. The ages passed make her understand how you think.
"Finish what he started." She laughs, dry as dust and musical as ocean wind.
"I suppose we should."
She stands up, dispersing your psionic sculpture into a cloud of purple ozone. She hugs you, shuddering and cool against you, and you wrap the cables around her, humming and tucking a heavy head against her shoulder.
"We're going to die soon, aren't we, Mituna?"
You just hum and shiver against her and whisper her name into her hair.
"I thought we were immortal." She says, and you just comfort her as you can. The way you must.
"I though we would live forever." and you cry, not-yellow and tyrian and dust and age.
And you will die, soon, someday.
AN: I want to say thanks again for all the support- I've been getting a lot of really positive feedback lately, and I'm really glad you're all liking it!
You're going to have to deal with a little bit of intermission before we get back to the main story, but I just wanted to check in and say thanks for tagging along.
-A