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Lavender Ginger Swirl
8bdb6a
>hug Mitzi
>stay until he falls unconscious again
Niraem grows angry. He rants through Mitzi. He tells me about flying, plunging in and out of atmospheres, learning how to maneuver, how to shoot, disguising against asteroids, in nebulae. He doesn't understand how he went from that to this. He doesn't know how long he's been trapped. Years, at least. He tries staying angry to stay awake. He realizes it's not working, but doesn't quit.
Mitzi's voice fills with remorse. Niraem doesn't think he'll ever escape. He doesn't know how to get home. Valcien haven't been part of interstellar culture in decades. A century spent as mercenaries, privateers, and pirates left them with more enemies than firepower, driving them to barren star systems at the outskirts of known space. He says Penji should relate. Niraem was raised on stories of defeat and lost glory, watching civilization from afar, relearning how to survive on biotech alone.
He still doesn't understand what Mitzi is, but she's all he has. He says valcien don't have a fixed life cycle. Some start as rooted creatures, or great, living, burrowing machines feeding on the metals and organic compounds of a planet's crust. He wonders if Mitzi is a larval phase. He hopes to meet her again some day.
His thoughts grow more disjointed, pleading for escape, pleading for us to contact his fleet, until finally, his connection decoheres, mentally and physically.
He's gone.
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