In the morning, Lightyear, for his relief, found Yoka still beside him. She had actually been awake for half an hour already, but something inside her had resisted to leave the post. And true was that yesterday's lassitude still affected. The air hung inert above there, placidly weaving the webs of calmness. Thus she had let herself rest, also in a way curious -yet a bit afraid- to see what would be his waking-up-reaction. With a firm grasp, the man kept her burrowed under his arm even asleep. But soft was his clasp, yet so full of some odd fire. Waiting, waiting, listening to his heavy breaths… feeling his chest go up and down under her cheek… she had waited. Had waited, light trepidation grilling her heart.

A gentle smile answered her. Then some English that did not bring her meaning in her own language. But the emphasis was mild, without an arrogant nuance. At the moment she was to shuffle up, but he drew her back down.

"No, no, don't go…please stay with me, Yoka…"

"Stey?" Blink. But what about the housework? She had rested already enough, and now perhaps could go on with the chores, as there was no threat of his anger clouding the sun.

"Stay, yes…" He pondered the issue for a minute. Buzz did not wish the girl to vanish like she had done yesterday. The bird must not fly away, but how to prevent it? After all the confuse it would be comforting to feel her beside him… to get to know her at least a little bit. Questions, questions, questions… what was she like when she was not working silently like a slave? What did she like? She had liked the stroking of her hair; that he remembered from the last night. Unobserved his fingers had run themselves through her locks, yet his hand kept her head resting on his shoulder. And in proportion, she had quaternaries teeming along her spine. Why did he voluntarily want to hold her like this? Why not just to let her go…? Where was the gruesome shooing away? Why, why, why…?

A bubble of ideas popped into his mind. What if Mira would be kind and borrow her wrist communicator just for this day? Maybe he could that way get to know her just a teensy weensy bit better. When there would be no murals in front of the tongues, would he dare to discuss something with her? Would she answer? What would she answer?

"Umm… Yoka? What if we'd get up now and go to see Mira? Emm… Sininen, tell-ta?"

Suspiciously she eyed at him. Did he try to fumble her language? "Yu tr-y ja say teltta?"

"Uh-huh."

"Yu… want go see-e Sininen ja… and she… pleice?"

An affirming smirk responded her.

Mira Nova goggled at Lightyear and his companion with wariness. The man looked cranky in her eyes. Those stoop shoulders and that tired gaze wandering on the floor did not belong to the stubborn proud hero she knew. Yesterday he had resembled a frantic hurricane, wrangling around the village. Had a trunk fallen on him, or what? Insomnia's purple shades were under his eyes, his cheeks sunken. Although he seemingly had dozed off blissfully yesterday, his rest had been intermittent, restless. And the company was not quite charming either, with her still succulent, fearful gaze.

"Umh… Buzz? What did happen to you?" the Tangean wanted answers. "You look… just awful." The shameful man took her somewhat aside, explaining blurrily what had occurred between him and the girl, and how much sorry he was even to Mira for his heedless demeanor. And… that he wanted to borrow her wrist communicator.

"But for what? I may need it. It's the most precious thing over here, and what if you break it?" she was reacting against the idea. But her crumple shifted to positive wonder, as he explained his purpose better.

"That's very kind of you, Buzz, to try to build up a peace with her." Her sonus turned yet very severe, while she folded her arms over her torso. "You owe her a lot, can you realize that? I've been watching with horror how you have been barking her from day to day, until… she evidently crushed and you woke up, that's right? I hope the lesson I lately gave you about your commissions, put you think at least a bit."

Lightyear frowned at the floor, but won his pride, admitting her every statement. And that it was quite much the credit of her speech that he had gravely began pondering the events the night before. Pride was hard to swallow, but instead of it, a humiliation had crept into his soul.

"But… I wish you'd give me this change and let me discuss with her. I don't know, will it do anything better, but… I want to try."

"Very well, then. I give you the translator, but be careful with it", Mira nodded. "And… if I were you, I'd… umh… square my shoulders a bit. For instance… you could comb your hair and slightly shape that horrible mess on your face…"

"Uhh… yeah." Lightyear skimmed his cheeks and chin. But his fingers met something unfamiliar there, or actually for the first time noticed the peculiarity. Nova understood his tumult, rising up a hand-held mirror in front of his waned visage.

"There we go. Now look at you, what have you been creating out of yourself? Did you just at this instant note that bush on your jowl? It's been like that pretty long."

Aback he slid his index along his bucca. It was true that Buzz had spend his weeks in a hallucinating bubble, been drawn forwards by his jumbled instincts. He had had no reason to study himself. There were evident little wrinkles under his eyes, permanent ones. Those had not existed before the crash-land. And… if his facial hair had been dark blue, that reflection could have belonged to a certain outergalactic foe.

"Craters, I or… my beard are not supposed to look like this! But hmm… well, it won't look bad if I shape it a bit."

"Like I said, I don't know what you have tried to create out of yourself, but I hope that you can control yourself better in the future…" she primed her lips, and disappeared behind a canvas to collect the wrist widget.

Yoka tilted her head back and forth in wonder when the Princess attached the Star Command communicator to her left arm. It would be simpler to carry this way, and palpably this model was way too small to be fit around Buzz' wider wrist.

"Now be careful with it. Although the case is reinforced with terillium carbonic alloy, these things can go broken, as we've seen already…"

"Sure, sure", Buzz puckered up, "I can figure out how important our last bit of more technological life is."

The seas opened instantly as the couple stepped out of Nova's teepee. It was strange to talk with two languages, but still understanding what the partner said.

-------

But silence conquered the morning. The duo could have conversed about everything between clouds and swamps, but the chants did not flow. They sat opposite to each other in Proud Crescent's tent, at the fireplace. Breakfast went down tardily, tasting like cardboard.

"Umm… how… how old are you?" he got something hacked out.

"Me…? I have seen one hundred and seventy-six cycles of moon Ilmatar", Yoka answered her mouth half full of bread.

So… they had an own calendar. Of course. Buzz could not assume a piece of asteroid based on that. She did not look old, but not very girlish either.

"Humm… what do you like to do? I mean… you were somewhere yesterday, I didn't… s-see you. Did you… do something you enjoyed?"

Odd questions. Indeed. She scratched her hair, meditating. "I was… in the forest yesterday, but I got all wet and muddy so it was not so enjoyable I thought… it to be. But I… usually like to wander in the forest. It is my second home. And sometimes I… -at least when I still lived with my honorable father- I read the writings of viisaat. They are interesting. I was taught to read, and that is a good thing for a woman to master. I like music… but I cannot sing very well. When I was little, I often went secretly to listen to the viisaat or someone who was an expert in singing lyric poetry and legends…" She amazed her sudden fluent telling. Her speech did not remain glued in her gums any more?

"Nature, that's nice. My home planet Morph is a bit of a place like this. There's a lot of woods, lakes, some mountains… Hmm, well I can't sing either. Heh, not really a culture vulture. I… I enjoy my work, or enjoyed. I don't know, what's going to happen to me now."

"What kind of work did you do? Are you a leader, eldest…?" she had nowadays the image of him being at least a king in his own universe.

"No, no!" his smirk widened, "I am a space ranger, well… I guess that term doesn't much tell you anything, eh? I defended the universe, fought the evil, foiled up the diabolic plans of the dark forces, no more no less. I'm a sort of a policeman. Well, heh, my father was an emperor. I guess that makes me a bit higher in the rank after all, but since I'm not gonna be any heir of throne any more, I should be just an average chap."

That revealed her almost nothing, except that the beliefs about him being some mighty, spoiled aristocrat intensified. He had been a prince? Well, well… not much of an average chap, she reckoned. The rest of his jabber was unknown definitions that had no linguistic analogues in Sivakka. But at least he had troubled himself to answer her something. The atmosphere was not so oppressing any longer, either.

"What would you like to do today?"

"Me?" she raised her head. Like to do? She would need to take the chores in her hands, and almost immediately. Clothes needed to be washed, food prepared, water carried… that was the part of a Kalevan woman. "Why… why do you ask such a thing, Proud Crescent? I am doing housework the whole day, like usually. It is not depending on if I… like it or not."

Lightyear's thoughts darkened. Another issue he had not even paid attention to, before. He had seen her toiling under heavy loads, and just had spat in that direction. Where had been his care, his helping hand? Nowhere.

"No, Yoka, not today. We… we need to go somewhere else place than this. I want you to spend some time with me, just the two of us. I… I want to learn to know you. We could for example, umm… go out, go out to the wilderness, if that's what you like. Didn't you say you like to wander in nature? Then when we get home I could help you, umh, with your chores."

She gawped at him her jaw on the floor. The bread had fallen from her fingers, gone crumbs on her shirt. Had she suddenly started to suffer from paranea? Or what was that totally egregious yackety-yak the bizarre male opposite to her driveled?

"Proud Crescent… you are not… serious, are you?" she lisped.

He could intuit the confuse. Usually he had barked to her like some rabid mongrel, and now pleading. No wonder it made her off the rails. Hence Buzz rose up, and knelt right beside her. A tender arm was slid around her shoulders. His tone fell, coming softly out. "I am serious. I guess… it sounds unbelievable after all the things I've mercilessly done to you, eh? But… as said, I'd like to learn to know you. I seemingly now got a wife, and I don't know her at all. Uh, well, that's why I asked Mira to give her translator to us so that I could talk to you better. If I'm meant to stay married with you, it would be a good thing for us to learn to like each other."

Her glazed goggle remained. Something to that direction he had sputtered yesterday, but as it now came out loud and clear, it made an eerie discord. Yet, that mien was honest. No frenzy was hardening the blueness of his irises; neither did hatred draw the corners of his mouth into a skull-esque grimace. His hand wandered along her shoulders, maybe attempting to console the chaos. She finally gulped, asking, "You… you really wish m-me to… stay with you? But…"

"Uh-huh. I wish that you'd stay with me, and you'd let me to stay with you. And that we could go somewhere… like a trip, or something. I don't know how you guys over here call traveling, well… heh, I don't know if you travel either, but…" he started rambling again. "But in any case, some place that you'd like. I know nothing about this planet, I can't suggest anything."

The years flied in front of her vision, gathering up to some kind of phantasm. There was a place that had always attracted her, a place that was obscured by the legacies, the sagas… beyond the miles loomed the great mountains, with a hidden conundrum. As Lightyear drew her to seat herself in his cuddle, she meekly began narrating a little story about her childhood. And he listened eagerly, being glad that she had courage to open up her mind.

"As I told you, Proud Crescent, I like to listen to the vocalist masters of this village. Well, they sing legends, and I do not quite much believe in them… but they are imaginatively attractive. I especially like the story about the destruction of Suur-Kaleva, which you heard my honorable father to sing in the celebration. It… it enchanted me already as a child, and later on, as I heard that there was a truth basis in it, I decided to find out more. Well… I believe I never was the most well-behaving child of this village. I wanted to know, if this mysterious city truly existed… so… I ran away from home. To have my own adventures."

Buzz' merry chuckle came from beside her. Now there was a thing he could clearly see, that wild tomboy having her own odysseys. "Suur-Kaleva, eh? Go on, go on."

"It was the warmest summer then, I was a pre-teen, I think…"

"A daredevil, what?"

"Uh…" she turned her leer to face his expression. His abrupt, playful mood convulsed, like a whole room of potatoes to be peeled by hand. And as he grinned there that over-smug smirk, his big teeth pressed together, she could not determine anything any longer. Were there any normal people living in the skies? Or was the most atypical individual of the unknown universe just by some statistic whim plopped down to be her owner?

"Just kidding, please go on with your tale."

"Umh, I… ran away from home, intrigued by the myths. I had carefully learned by heart a map, where the location of that ancient city was drawn. The whole thing was not actually a challenge for me, since I was taught to hunt, to survive in the nature already in my very early youth. I took a canoe, paddled down Plutinaklutina-Noro, and met the fork of it and the majestic Lirilirilori. It was hard work for a half-grown girl to row upstream, but I made it. A few days with my strength, it took to achieve the destination, but it was worth it. I loved my freedom, the liberty to explore what I wanted." Her sonus cracked a bit, since recalling her state now. An unequal marriage, bound to serve a peculiar man for the rest of her life… "There was indeed a city, buried in lava. Of course the vegetation has quite much taken over it now, since it has been tens of thousands of Lapanen-moon cycles since the Purkaus. No one ever came there, since it is regarded as a graveyard, a place not to be disturbed. I do not know why, maybe some honorable citizens are just superstitious. Well, I climbed up the mountainside, spent a few days in a little tent. No beasts usually move there in the summertime, so it was safe, well… I thought it was safe. But I had my escapade."

She brought her fingers to her collars, picking up one of those exotic necklaces jazzing up her long neck. This particular one looked older than the others, patinated by unknown eras. Purple and yellow stones gleamed in their light metallic brackets, and some striped black ones were additionally dotting it. They had originally formed some kind of complex figure, but it was gone now. As well as the other jewels, this one had likewise been in the claws of sabotage. Having a bit sense yesterday in his puny brains, Buzz had dragged its pieces to a smith. As the alloy was somehow molded back, he with a bucketful of apologies had pressed it in her palms… amidst last night's mayhem.

Initially his hand approached hers over her anconal. It raised up the object, being as ashamed as the whole male. "You… found this from there? Uh… I'm sorry I broke it, I… Mister Ilmarinen tried to restore it for you."

She exhaled with some regret. It was a deformed Quasimodo after Lightyear's raving madness. But it would not crochet any fine tablecloth of peace, if she started complaining about his deeds. And who knew, his fury might blaze up again. Those fingers that now blandly brushed her neck, might turn violent, and maybe crumple into a deadly grip around her throat. There was the size of her confidence.

"Yes… I found it from there", she decided to pass the awkward side comments, "Actually from a building that had partly survived the disaster. Some more forceful landslide had brought a part of it visible, and through a window-hole, I crawled in. I remember there were all kinds of strange objects lying around there, but I liked only this. It was a larger structure, there were dusty rooms continuing and continuing deeper inside… It was like if the mountainside had just eaten the metropolis, but not chewed it. Intact chambers… but my courage ended when I… well I think I saw a skeleton lying in one corner. I am not afraid of such things any more, but as a little girl, I was. So, there ended my exploration as I screaming ran away."

"What happened then?"

"Some days later I was back home, and my honorable father whipped me so that I could not sit for a week. But I learned how to behave in front of him. And never visited Suur-Kaleva again."

"But you'd like to go there now, wouldn't you?" he simpered.

"I do not know if you would wish to…" she began, but stopped while alerting to the grip of his arms around her.

"…but you'd like that, wouldn't you? The mysteries there still allure you there? I'm ready to go there if you want. I could finally share some private time with you."                       

----

"But, but, b-b-but Buzz! That's just… insane! I though you had got your senses back!"

"I am perfectly in my sense, Mira. I am not thinking that Evil Emperor Zurg is diabolically trying to conquer the Galactic Alliance or trying to turn everyone's pet kittens into man-eating mutant fuzzballs that stand at your front door with fork, knife and bib. I believe he is knitting peacefully a purple mitten in his house. AND I do not believe that Darth Vader is my cousin's brother's schoolfriend's old room mate. Thus I conclude that I'm now in my full reason." Lightyear folded his arms across his chest.

The Tangean frowned at him, "But this device is our only remain from the civilized world! You cannot just take it miles away! You'll break it for sure and then we've lost everything!"

His erect pose drooped. Yes, it was a stupid idea; even he admitted it. But how was he going to communicate with Yoka, if he had not that one valuable wrist communicator with him? The plans were ready to be thrown to the trashcan, then. Futile.

"I mean, it's not a trick to let you use it here, but somewhere out there? It's too risky!"

With a chest-tone, he defended his good intentions. "Mira, I'd wish you'd give me and my wife this change. I want to learn, I want to come to know her as a person. Didn't you yourself say that I should start treating her better? I thought of your scolds. Mira, you must understand that I need some privacy with her, in order to follow all the… uh… guidelines. I asked her what she would like to do, and that was the answer! I didn't come up with it, don't blame me. I'm just trying my best to indemnify her what I've caused, by trying to give her an opportunity to do what she'd like. Just… if you'd try to see it my way this time."

Shaking her head, the Princess gradually surrendered. Maybe he was right this time, although all the previous epochs his endocranial life had possessed the IQ of a rubber duck. It was she who had kept the homily running. And his goals were honest. Fifteen minutes of more murmuring and garrulity passed, and Buzz with Yoka walked out of Nova's tent… the Star Command wrist communicator furthermore attached to the Kalevan's left arm. The good feelings had won, giving a benevolent point for the couple. Or course the blue person was throwing the last warnings at the flap of the marquee, but the Captain promised to take good care of both the translator and the girl. So Sininen would need to survive a few days without technical aid, whereas the time would perhaps indicate to be very valuable for some others. Well, the aim of the absence was not left as any cabal. The coordinates of Suur-Kaleva were strictly given to Mira. And guidance what to do if the mates would not appear back in a certain time.  

After a few hours, a canoe left the river's haustrum, boating two unsure gestalts towards the snowy landscapes…

…to be continued…