Chapter Seven:
So I have realized that Jim and I are going to get along just fine in regards to playing puppet and master. The fact that I find his company enjoyable is a shock all by itself but the fact that he loves solar surfing and the thrills that accompany riding through the cosmos at amazingly dangerous speeds like I do makes him all the more fantastic. I'm starting to feel like my mission has suddenly decreased in its difficulty by a megaton.
-K.A. xx-xx-xxxx
xXx
The crew has remained calm, silent, and unswerving, their actions betraying none of their true identities' viciousness. So while the space winds are still, Jim and I going to create some turbulence as soon as the notorious cook Silver—who he currently works under—releases him from his mechanical clutches.
-K.A. xx-xx-xxxx
xXx
Jim and I scouted the ship, from galley to crow's nest in an almost mock form of the races Amelia and I have but in the opposite way. I beat him to the top, (I'm a little more confident in my shroud-climbing skills than he) and when he finally made it I surprised him by diving over the side and free-falling my way back to the deck until I cut a rope in midair and swung the rest of the way down. By the time he climbed down—in a far less flamboyant manner than I—his eyes were sparkling like the cerulean sapphires pirates can only chase after in their dreams. I felt sure he saw a similar fire reacting in my own amber ones because he looked at me, smiled, and then challenged me to a race around the ship once again.
-K.A. xx-xx-xxxx
xXx
This energy I feel is amazing, it's absolutely the most phenomenal thing I've ever experienced. My joy is all-encompassing to the point that I feel it in my bloodstream and even in my very feet and toes! It's the driving force behind my accelerated heartbeat, why I've forgone a majority of my medication, and the unusual buoyancy in my step that leaves me barely contained by the ship's artificial gravity. These words are for naught because no language has the proper diction to describe what it is I am truly going through. This bliss I feel increases ten-fold whenever Jim and I are together. The fact that I have someone outside of my tightly closed circle to whom I can talk with about anything that's pretty much everything lightens my spirit and relieves my stress drastically but now that I've found it I don't know if I shall ever willingly let it go.
Jim… he's not my pawn, or my puppet, or just some boy I have wrapped around my little finger, he's the most kind-hearted, spectacular, gentle, and caring person I've ever met. Amelia is all of that and more but she is a feliae—a species totally different from me own—Jim is a human being, and he's real. He's real flesh and tissue, muscle and sinew, his heart beats so strongly I could follow its rhythm with my fingertips alone and my eyes closed.
Jim is… my friend and now he's the most precious thing I know, he's outside of all my life's boundaries and that is what makes him so beautiful to me.
-K.A. xx-xx-xxxx
Amelia threw the journal onto her desk where it landed with a crash that became deafening due to all the echoes that bounced in my ears.
"Kalena," the harsh way with which she said my name made me wince. "What has come over you? What are you thinking? Have you forgotten our mission, and your purpose aboard this ship?"
I kept silent throughout her onslaught of questions, I tried maintaining a blank-face which was difficult considering how much I wanted to show some sort of emotion, anything but stony silence, I'd seen that look far too often on Arrow's face I certainly didn't want mine etched like that. Instead I remained stationary, my arms crossed, and my body leaning against the cabinet that contained Jim's map.
She looked at me and sighed, her head lowering as her ears drooped as they did when she was greatly disappointed or saddened; she was only the former. Shakily, she opened the damning journal and turned to my latest entries, the ones that pained me now. What foolishness I must have been thinking to have written such tripe. But, I know that somewhere further within me I was lying to myself, I was hurting from the truth of the situation I had been refusing to come to grips with. The whole matter smarted like a firebrand that had been stamped all over my body and then afterward had salt rubbed into all the fresh etchings. Amelia turned her gaze back to mine, the corners of her eyes lifting as her movements lured me out of my pain-racked reverie.
"Kalena, I'm-" she started.
'Look Amelia, you're disappointed and let down and all other kinds of depressed emotions but do me a favour and lighten up. I can't help it if I'm lonely or that my target and I got too attached and I'm really sorry and I'll uphold my distance in the future so could you just-'
"Be happy for you?" Amelia smiled and took a step forward.
'What?' I staggered and almost fell but instead I found myself enveloped in Amelia's hug.
"Kalena, you've never been this elated and it does my heart an amazing amount of good. All I ask though, is remember that before others your duty is to yourself and your health, and then assure your priorities remain unchanged because our assignment does not up and leave simply because one of our crew becomes a tad smitten." She runs a gloved hand through my hair like I've just announced marriage plans or something to that equivalent.
I retreat a step back from her, and then another until I was undoing the latch on the door and was able to run to my stateroom. I slammed the door, locked it, and slumped against the other side of it. Then I, Kalena Aderyn, wept for the first time over a strange malady I've come to know as lovesickness.