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LANTA LIFTED INTO A sit-up. Sweat dripped from her forehead and rolled down her face. She blew the drops away as they tickled her top lip. She straightened her back and pushed the heavy hand weights above her head. After tapping them together, she lowered them to her chest and laid back. Her stomach, shoulders, back and arms burned, but that didn’t stop her from repeating the movement, as she’d been doing for the last twenty minutes.
Exercise used to be a good way to clear her mind, but today it did nothing. Thoughts of Melis scrambled her head. He was still looking for a mate that wasn’t her. What had she thought? That after a few wonderful hours he would forget about his plan and declare his love for her?
Maybe.
Why couldn’t she leave him alone? Nothing good could come of it, and if they were discovered the fallout would be astronomical. Not only would her reputation as a guard be ruined, but she could kiss this contract goodbye and any other contract of significance she’d hoped to gain in the future.
I’m here to guard Princess Una because I’m qualified for the job. I am a warrior trained by the Oncuns. Don’t let that training, and everything I’ve worked so hard to obtain, go to waste.
The Oncun people did not engage in extracurricular activities while on duty. This fact was true from the gardener to an advanced warrior. It was a part of their make-up, just as showing minimal outward emotion was. They were known for their dedication and commitment. She wasn’t a true Oncun, but she’d always thought she was more Oncun than the Oncuns were themselves. She never had the luxury to be herself.
To be human was to be weak. No one respected, feared or revered humans.
Humans were protected and sheltered. She was none of that.
She was on a course that could ruin everything she’d worked so hard for, and the guilt was all consuming. Since returning to the suite late last night all she’d thought about was how she’d failed. Done something an Oncun would never do and, if he asked, she would do it again.
I’m better than this. I can forget about him. Forget about how he felt inside me and how it felt to have him hold me in his arms.
Forget.
But how?
Being with Melis was the best thing that had ever happened to her. How could she forget feeling that loved? That at peace?
She did another sit-up.
She didn’t know. But she would have to try.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
Lanta ignored the doorbell and continued the sit-ups. Whoever it was would leave once they realized no one of importance was in the suite.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
Ugh. Lanta laid her back against the floor. Her breath came out hard as she stared at the ceiling. Who could it be? Another guest? They should all be with Melis. Was it their attendant?
Go away.
“Lanta? Are you in there?” Payton’s voice came across Lanta’s comlink.
Lanta activated her comlink. “I’m here. Does Una require me?”
Lanta frowned. If she was needed Elkah would reach out to her. Unless there was a situation or emergency where she couldn’t.
Lanta jumped to her feet. “Where are they? I’m on my way now.”
“Who? What are you talking about?”
Lanta was at the door and had it open before Payton could finish her sentence. A startled Payton, wearing her hair in five plaits, lowered her wrist and glanced up. “I was interrupting you?”
Lanta was well aware of how she looked. She was in a half shirt and shorts, and drenched in sweat. Except Lanta knew the real reason Payton stared at her. The decorative jewels covering Lanta’s face and scalp were absent.
“It’s fine. Where’s Una and Elkah?”
Lanta tapped her comlink and brought up their locations. Una, Aiko and Elkah were together and located in one of the dining rooms on the main floor of the palace.
“They should still be at breakfast with Melis. At least that’s what’s on the agenda for today.” Payton breezed past Lanta, leaving her standing in an open doorway.
Oncuns didn’t enter another’s place of dwelling unless specifically invited. This must be a human thing. Payton dropped into a chair.
“Themba and I make it a point to memorize each day’s agenda. We want to stay as far away from Melis and his fan club as we can.” She rested the back of her head against the chair. “Sometimes avoiding them can get exhausting.”
Lanta stepped away from the door and it closed automatically. “Elkah? Una?”
Payton lifted her arm to wave nonchalantly through the air. “Are fine. I came here to visit with you.”
“Visit with me?” Lanta hadn’t called her, nor had she asked Payton to stop by. Lanta tilted her head. “Why?”
Payton straightened and frowned. “Um, maybe because you’re, like, the only other human on Ipakethe and I miss being around someone who’s the same species and from the same place as me.”
“But I’m not from Earth. My mom was. I was born on Luur.”
Payton lifted her shoulder. “Semantics. Besides, we’re friends, and friends visit with each other.”
Friends. Lanta wanted another friend. She tried not to scream for joy. She’d done that on Luur once, when she’d made Personal Guard Rank Four, and the villagers had shunned her for months.
“What’s going on...” Payton gestured around her face. “I wasn’t sure if the jewels were embedded in your skin or not.”
Lanta ran a hand instinctively over her smooth cheek. “I took them off for cleaning. Once dry I’ll put them back. The Oncuns get their jewels embedded underneath the dermis of their skin. I couldn’t undergo that procedure.”
“So, what? You have to take all those jewels off and put them on? How often?”
“Every two to three months. If I try to keep them on longer the adhesive fails and I lose some of them. They’re very expensive to replace.”
“You’re gorgeous, I mean, with or without the jewels. But without them you have a more natural beauty.”
“Um, thank you.”
Payton tapped her comlink. A hologram projected in the air above her wrist. “Sorry I don’t have any personal pictures to show you. I got my new cellphone just before being abducted from Earth. But Esme, my friend who was taken when I was, has a cellphone. She’s coming to visit soon and we can look through her pictures together.”
Lanta nodded even though she didn’t know what a cellphone was. All she grasped was that she would meet another human and this human would have pictures of Earth.
“To tide us over, I asked Themba to buy some files about Earth for us.”
Lanta stepped closer for a better look. There were people—humans, standing around. Water seemed to squirt from openings in the ground. Greenery was in the background from either overgrown bushes or leafy trees, and beyond that were tall buildings and a round, odd-looking thing.
“This is Centennial Olympic Park,” Payton explained. “I’ve been to Atlanta a few times, but this place only once. That’s where the Summer Olympics were held a while ago. A lot of people still go there to this day though. It’s a tourist attraction.”
Lanta had seen pictures of her namesake before. The Earth files were accessible from all the major sector libraries. Studying the picture more, she realized she’d seen this exact one. But this was the first time she’d viewed pictures with someone who’d actually been there and was able to tell her what she looked at.
Lanta pointed to the water that spouted from the ground, repeating what the captions on the pictures had taught her. “Those are water fountains. It helps to cool people down. The weather in Atlanta can get up to one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the summer months. I read that. Is that correct?”
Payton nodded. She pointed to the larger structure looming in the background. “That’s called a Ferris wheel, particularly the SkyView Ferris Wheel. When I visited, the line for it was so long my husband at the time didn’t want to wait, but I did. I waited thirty minutes and it was worth it. We were so high in the air and we could see everything. Everyone on the ground looked like little ants.” While Payton talked she raised her hands high then lowered them towards the ground.
Lanta’s universal translator picked up on the word she didn’t know. Ants. A small insect that lives in a complex social colony with a breeding queen.
“Can I show you a picture of a different place? If it’ll make you too sad to talk about and look at old pictures from Earth, it’s alright to tell me no.” Lanta wanted this so badly that her body vibrated with anticipation. But she was also prepared for the letdown.
When she was younger, she’d tried to get her mom to look at pictures of Atlanta. She’d begged her mom to tell her about the city she’d been named after, but that had only resulted in her mother crying and spiraling into a deep depression. Lanta had stopped bringing up the topic.
“Of course, you can show me. That’s why I’m here. I thought you might want to know more about where you’re—I mean your mom was from.”
Lanta accessed the pictures stored in her comlink and pulled one up. “This is called the Fox Theater. Have you ever been here?”
Payton shook her head. “No, but is there anything particular you wanted to know about it?”
“I understand what a theater is and what they do there. I was just confused on why it was named after a fox. There are two species of foxes in Atlanta and they are considered nuisance pests. I don’t understand why they would name such a prestigious place after them. I didn’t know if the translation was off or if the information was wrong. The information from these files are pieced together by scholars who research Earth but I can’t trust half of what I read.”
Payton chuckled. “It was most likely named after the person who’d built the theater. Like your last name, Moore. Some people have a last name of Fox. If you had built the theater you may have named it The Moore Theatre or something like that. Same principle.”
Lanta nodded. She’d spent countless hours trying to figure out why the people of Atlanta had erected a building in honor of a particular animal, and now her question was answered with a few sentences. “I guess it was a stupid question.”
“Hey, it’s not stupid and that’s why I’m here. What else do you want to know?”
Lanta started to sit in the seat opposite to Payton’s but, with her clothes still wet from her workout, she lowered herself to the floor instead. “I understand that a ‘peach’ is a fruit on Earth. But I don’t understand why the people who reside in Atlanta are obsessed with it. Everything is named Peach there. They also erected a giant peach in its honor. I suppose this is to worship it?” She furrowed her brow. “I wanted to ask my mother about this fruit-worshiping but...”
Payton burst into a laugh that she tried to stifle with a hand over her mouth. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at how ridiculous it seems from the outside. The peach is the official fruit in Georgia. I guess they do worship it, but not in the way you think.”
Relief washed over Lanta. “I tried finding a fruit that would remind my mother of this peach. I thought that if I could give her back her city’s deity, she would be happy again.”
Payton became somber. “I doubt her unhappiness had anything to do with a peach. I know how your mom felt though. I miss Earth too. There’s really nothing there for me, but it’s the idea of never going back that gets me teary-eyed sometimes. Things weren’t so great for me there, and I would much rather be here with Themba, but still, not being able to ever return does something to my heart.” At the mention of heart, Payton rubbed her chest. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it, but it’s getting easier to cope.”
Lanta nodded her understanding. Payton seemed to be coping better than her mom had. But, then again, Payton had a mate who was taking care of her, while her mother had had a child.
Lanta touched her comlink, bringing up a picture she’d studied for countless days and hours. It was one of humans milling around tables and tents on a bright sunny day. The sky was a pale shade of blue and fluffy-looking clouds dotted it. She’d studied every minute detail of the picture, even down to the evenly spaced cracks in the ground.
There was nothing out of the ordinary about the place in question. Everyone in it was human. Besides that, the place could have been on any planet with advanced lifeform.
“They’re so happy here, smiling and laughing. I wanted her to be like this. I’m sure that if she could’ve returned home, she would’ve been happy again.”
Payton scooted to the edge of her seat and placed her hand over Lanta’s. Her touch was light and soft. The Oncuns reserved touching for lovers and sometimes for their children. Lanta had been neither of those. This kind of affection had been absent from her life a long time ago.
“Not everyone on Earth is that happy, Lanta. You’re looking at a photo taken from what looks like a festival. Of course, most would’ve been happy there. I’m not saying Earth wasn’t a good or happy place...” She looked off to the side. Her eyes weren’t looking at anything in particular. “But for some...a lot of us...there was sadness and pain.”
“My mother was happy on Earth. She told me she was.” Lanta changed the picture and brought up another. “She used to talk about being happy at a playground. Is this one? My mom tried to explain what they were to me but I couldn’t picture it right in my head. This is the closet picture that I could find.”
“No. This is a scrap yard.” Payton tapped her comlink and another picture projected. “This is a playground.”
Lanta’s mouth dropped open. She’d spent so long looking for pictures of a playground. She’d looked for some place where children would be able to run around and where they would seem happy and carefree. The objects in Payton’s picture were colorful and she could easily imagine her mom and herself there.
Lanta raised her hand, touching the air within the hologram. “It’s more beautiful than I’d ever imagined. I think my mom was right. I would’ve loved playing in one.”
“You didn’t have access to a playground on Luur?” Payton asked softly.
Lanta shook her head. “We worked as soon as we were able to. Everyone had a job.”
“Even children?”
“It was expected. The Oncuns don’t do anything for joy. Everything is done because of necessity. There is always work to be done.” When Payton gave her a pitying look Lanta straightened her shoulders. “Don’t pity me, Payton. It wasn’t easy growing up on Luur, but it’s the only home I know and had.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t pity you. I pity your circumstances, and I think about how any children Themba and I have won’t get to see or grow up on Earth and it makes me sad.”
“I don’t really think about not growing up on Earth and I can’t miss a place I’ve never been. That’s not why I bought the files and study the pictures. I do all this because it makes me feel closer to my mom. I miss her. I miss talking to her and hearing her voice. These files and pictures are the only thing I have left, and I just wish there was something of Earth that I could connect with her about. Something that didn’t die when she did.”
“The only thing I have from Earth are some weapons and Jack. You can’t have Jack, but maybe I can give you something else.” Payton seemed to think on it. “Did your mother teach you English?”
“I used to know the language. My mother insisted I learn it. She wanted to hear her native tongue. Then as I grew older, she stopped teaching it to me and made me focus on learning the universal language instead. She said there wasn’t a point learning English when we would never get to Earth.”
“Switch off your translator. Let’s see if you still remember. We may not be able to go to Earth, but at least you can hear your mother’s language anytime you want.”
Lanta reached behind her right ear and double pressed on the indentation in the skin, turning off the universal translator embedded underneath.
What was the English word for hello again?
“Can you understand me?” Payton asked. “If you haven’t spoken it in a very long time you may only be able to pick up on a few of my words, but not all.”
Lanta opened her eyes wide and, despite her happy surprise at hearing the language from a distant past, her eyes watered.
The memory of sitting with her mother on the floor of their house came to mind. Her mother had written the English alphabet on pieces of paper and they would review the lesson of the day together. Every time Lanta read the word correctly her mom would clap and smile.
That was one of the last times she remembered her mom laughing.
“I-I can and it’s beautiful.” When Payton spoke, it was as if she were singing. The words seemed connected in a song. Tears overtook Lanta’s eyes. “You sound like my mother,” she said between sobs.
“Oh, my God! I didn’t mean to make you cry!”