1
Our bodies could never adjust to the strange Lalitan day, so we took to working in shifts. While one group worked with the Lalitans, the other would sleep in a dark cave, to simulate the night. Somehow, I fell into Marko's group. I was never able to talk to Sorula again - she was placed in the Lakan's group, so the mystery of the soul-colored fur was never solved.
At any other time in the past, this would have been a horrible thing, having to work with Marko. But lately, there were many things I couldn't understand, and over time I pushed the memories of the mean things he'd done to me aside. Here, I was beginning to see the things he could do as a leader. I supposed he wasn't son of a king and queen for nothing.
He started to resemble Lakan in his most serious states, throwing himself into the work completely. He was like a machine, and it scared me. Every time there was a new task, his eyes would flash, and in a moment, he'd have a solution, delegate the work, and turn back to what he'd begun. Whenever I reported to him, he'd give me the same absent stare he'd given the others, his mind still on all the other things Lakan had put him in charge of.
Weeks passed. We decided that helping the Lalitans rebuild their shelters was the most important thing. We found that once we gave the Lalitans supplies, they were quick builders. They were determinedly scrappy, and sang as they worked. It was hard not to be humming some alien tune at the end of the day.
As the need for shelters diminished, we began studying alongside them how to bring life back to their fields. Many of the wiser, orange-furred Lalitans had stored pouches of seeds beneath the earth, and they gladly dug them out and shared them. The amount seemed barely enough to feed them all, and us spacers as well, considering we were going to stay for a while... But there they were, their claws outstretched, offering what they could to their people. Maggie cried, because they had the capacity to be happy with what little they had.
Soon the work became less and less, and as the first blue shoots began to poke up through the gray soil, the old Marko seemed to return. It didn't take long, I guess, for the Lalitans' singing to get to him, for soon he was joking over meals, horsing around with the crew, and running through the plowed fields with a bunch of lizard children skittering after him. If there was work, and he had to lead, he did it with cheery demeanor. I could tell that once again, he'd endeared himself to an entire planet.
As for myself, something seemed to rise inside me as I watched the whole thing happen. I was happy for the Lalitans, who, once given the chance to rebuild their lives, were a model for peace and contentment that I began to aspire to. And because of this, I found it in me to be happy for Marko. We were now suddenly far away from Mirandus and the petty competition of our childhood. Whatever pain I'd seen in his eyes, on the ship, seemed to gradually disappear as we spent more time on Lalita 1. The world was an all right place, despite the war.
I never talked to Marko, however, or at least not till the summer ended. I spent more time bonding with my fellow cadets, and the thought of returning to the academy never crossed our minds. Until we got the order to pull out, we were going to be here... Marko spent his time, if not with the Lalitans, with the crew of the Celerity. On both sides, the conversations began to reach past space, sailing, and orders, and into our dreams, desires, and beliefs. We learned from the lizard-people to simply be.
Something about the planet seemed to reduce everything about us into the simplest forms. If anything ever passed between me and Marko on Lalita 1, it was no longer a menacing sneer, a blank stare, or a rude word, but the simplest, purest, and truest part of a smile.