Am I making the awkward silence worse or better? I honestly can’t tell.

Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Beyond Eternity
Current Date: July 11, 4023

Character: Kah’Sharin’Ma
Race: Alien
Age: 30, physically about 21
Current residence: Aboard the STS Tranquility
 

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One solar year later and I went back to get the not-cats. I got a pair so that when I have to leave them by themselves on the ship, they wouldn’t feel lonely. It wasn’t a decision I took lightly. It took me weeks after that first time I went and found myself not actually taking them with me as I left. The comment I’d heard in the market and the fact that I hadn’t really known what I was getting into was enough for me to not take them. I felt less than prepared, and my mind wasn’t fully made.

If I’d taken them back with me on that day, I would have regretted it. I would have probably found myself hating them before long and probably trying to blame them for so many things that wouldn’t even have been theirs to be blamed for. I’m willing to admit that I’m far from perfect and there have been times in my life when frustration took over and ugly things were said—not done, though. I might say ugly things and regret them sooner or later—not that it’s that common—but I don’t do ugly things. At least, that’s how I see things.

But really, it was weeks after I’d left the pair behind before I even started to really look up more information on them. I started on this little side project of mine to figure out if I really wasn’t meant to have that kind of potential companion or if I was. As a bit of a clean freak, the idea of having to pick up fur everywhere, having to clean up after them, or having to clean up potential messes did not appeal.

From research, it turns out that there are these things where they can do their business that are automated as far as the clean-up goes; I do have a just as automated vacuum setup which means I don’t have to take care of that, and the rest was easily taken care of.

Getting these two, it turns out, was a good thing for me. For one thing, they do offer some companionship without being over the top. Both are females that I’ve been told, they’re fairly independent but have both adopted the side of my bed where I usually do not sleep when it comes to doing just that—sleeping. They keep me company without being completely in my face, but I think that the best part of this all, at least right now, is the fact that any of the rare living transport I pick up tend to keep their distance.

I don’t have it written out anywhere that these two are not your every-day type of cats, but they seem to have this air about them that gets to people. I don’t know if it’s something that they find humbling or terrifying—it was the latter with the last transport—but it suits me. That last transport was three solar weeks ago and I still smile thinking about it.

I hadn’t heard from that one family with the exhausting, spoiled-rotten of a daughter since I’d dumped their case to another flyer. I knew he’d been happy to take the trio on as he was plenty willing to keep the daughter occupied, even while he was flying them through potentially dangerous areas but a month ago, they reached out to me about a potential transport and while I didn’t think I could handle it, things had been a little slow lately so I steeled myself to the idea and I went for it.

The parents weren’t an issue. The daughter wasted near to no time trying to make her way into my pants but the moment she saw the two cats sprawled on the bed, she just went sort of quiet and took a single step back. She looked between me, the cats, back to me and back to the cats again and I admit, I found myself smiling a little in amusement as far as the whole situation was concerned. I just watched her as she watched the cats and, eventually, I found myself asking in a way that I felt was only just borderline snarky if I was making that awkward silence that she had going on worse or better because I honestly couldn’t tell.

Mind you, I could tell just fine but it snapped her out of whatever it was that was going on in that pea brain of hers, she huffed, turned her nose as though I was below her and she left me alone for the three days it took to get them from point A to point B.

So, in this case, I think I’ve finally found the one thing that will keep her away from me. I’m not even sure if her parents will get in touch with me again after this particular transport and I don’t know if it was just the cats looking like earth cats or the fact that she possibly somehow could tell that they were not earth cats. In any case, I don’t care. I had wonderful peace while she was on board.

Final Word Count: 863

How did something like this even happen? I can’t believe you two. Always so much trouble when you’re around.

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Beyond Eternity
Characters: Kah’Sharin’Ma
Race: Alien
Age: 29, physically about 21
Current residence: Aboard the STS Tranquility
Final Word Count: 811 words
 

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Recently, I’d given thought to potentially taking in a couple of animals for company. I’m a big loner, I like being on my own, I like things being in their places and I’m a bit of a clean freak. I admit all of these things to myself. I mean. I still feel like there’s a partial presence in the ship from the girl and her parents from the last solar year and that bothers me. I scrubbed my ship so hard after I’d dropped them off too.

So that I’d been considering a pair of small potential pets—I’d seen sort of cute things that looked a lot like earth’s cats but with a little something hidden inside—is fairly big, I’d think. I know that I claim I’m fine on my own and, you know, I am. I have music to listen to, I have books to read, word games to work through when the work is slim, but I move from quadrant to quadrant and I usually at least have a little something to keep myself occupied with.

I guess, though, that in a way, I’ve been feeling as though I could do at least with a little bit of company. I’m not just sure I was ready for anything that might be able to talk and getting one of the furry things for company sounded almost like a good idea.

I’d made it to one particular colony that I knew was rather well known for raising these things. It was about the only place that had all of the paperwork and things were legitimate because, supposedly, the people who take in these not-cats—I honestly still don’t even know their real name—usually do so out of needing the security because they make pretty damned good protection detail… when they feel like it. So, you have to go through some background checking and all. Can’t weaponize a cute little thing like that now, can you?

The idea of an army of these things makes me smile, I can’t help it. The mental image is actually fairly amusing if you
stop to think about it. If you don’t know what they are, they do look identical to earth cats and there’s nothing threatening about that. So that they might be used for warfare is just very strange.

So, I’d gotten to the colony, I was on my way to the breeder’s place, but I stopped at a market on the way. I had a few things to pick up and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try and get them from this place. One particular stall at the market had two such cats on either side of it. I figure they must have been the same not-quite-cats as I was coming to get. What would the odds be that I’d see earth cats here when there was a breeder of the non-cat version right here, on the colony?

The owner of the stall looked completely exasperated. They were muttering under their breath about the mess these two had left in their wares, and how they couldn’t believe it and how these two were always just so much trouble when they were around. It made me pause a little. I admit that I don’t really know that much about cats and their potential behaviour. I know that, for the most part, they’re fairly independent animals but otherwise, I admit that I hadn’t done much research to figure things out.

That’s on me, I’m sure. What kind of guy goes out to potentially buy an animal he has little to no knowledge of, huh? Yeah. I mean, I figured that I’d learn plenty while out at the breeder’s place, they likely had some out and about and I’d have seen them interact, right?

In the long run, I did buy what I needed, but I didn’t buy the non-cats. I did go to the breeder, I did look at what was offered, I even spotted a pair that had potential but just watching them run about, tumble and play together made me hesitate. Adding to that, what I’d heard from the market person, I just didn’t know. I do like my quiet. I do like my peace. I’m sure that if I were to get one, or even a pair because somehow, the idea of just getting one and then that one getting lonely was a weird feeling for me, they would learn the layout and possibly just not make too much of a mess, but I knew I wasn’t ready.

I’m aware that I’m a little irresponsible for not looking up more information before I went, but I’m not that irresponsible that I would adopt a pair of them without being absolutely sure that I wanted to care for them.

So, I went back to my ship nearly empty-handed.

Truthfully, I thought if I agreed, you’d leave me alone.

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Beyond Eternity
Characters: Kah’Sharin’Ma
Race: Alien
Age: 28, physically about 21
Final Word Count: 715 words
 

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I tend to not make a habit of picking up transport contracts. They’re more trouble than they’re worth and it’s just not my cup of tea. I work better alone; I work better as a watcher and that’s usually what nets me the most credits. I’m sent to places, I’m asked to either retrieve something—an item or information—and that’s what. The fact that I can control my intangibility is a huge plus and the fact that I have some control over the general ‘look’ of my body is something else too.

Things have been slim in the quadrant I’ve been keeping around lately, however, and I’ve had to turn to transport. Most of the time, I transport goods but, now and again, a pretty high-paying contract comes along and I just have to take it, you know? A guy’s gotta eat.

A few weeks ago, these parents have asked me to transport them and their spoiled rotten daughter from their home and off to one of the many throwbacks. I don’t know why they got in touch with me; they very well could have simply gotten on any transport and called it a day, but no. I suspect it’s because their daughter didn’t want to share a transport with anyone else. I’ve heard of her through other contacts, she’s a bit of a nightmare.

She tried to come on to me several times during the transport and I even had to give up my quarters for the duration of the trip. That’s something I never do but the damned girl wouldn’t shut up and I agreed to let her have my room. I thought she’d finally leave me alone if I did that.

I was wrong.

I don’t know how often I felt the need to throw her out into space. I thought that behaviour had mostly been broken out of her but I guess it hasn’t. If she wasn’t draped over my shoulders, her breasts pressing into my back, she was standing in little to nothing in the door leading to my temporary bedroom trying to entice me into a game of—yeah no, gross.

It only took us a week to get there but it was a week too long and I was more than a little happy to get them off of my ship. The parents paid the extra fee I had to tack onto their bill because of her behaviour and that was that. I left that colony, landed my ass on one of its orbiting stations and I deep cleaned the ship. The things I found, I don’t even think it’s supposed to be possible for anyone to leave such a mess. My quarters reeked of sex and I don’t know how long I spent in there, just scrubbing everything from top to bottom. Everything that could be washed in the ship was washed and the rest was scrubbed down hard.

I can’t remember the last time I gave the ship such a thorough, down-on-my-knees-scrubbing sort of clean. I’m a bit of a clean freak, to begin with, so I’m sure you can imagine the kind of shit I found all around that required such a deep bit of cleaning.

They tried to get in touch with me when it was time for them to head back home and I told them that I was on another contract that would take me weeks of work to get through—I wasn’t—and I gave them the contact information of someone else I knew who would have likely been pretty happy to take them on. That person’s ship was as clean and tidy as mine, it was possibly even a slightly newer model and the guy, well, he’s the type to open his pants for any pretty eyes ask him to.

All in all, I figured the girl would likely get what she wanted from him and he’d potentially have a permanent new client out of that family. In the end, that had to be a good thing, right? Right. Nope, no remorse about sending them to him. I haven’t heard from him since and I figure they told him I’d sent them his way so I’ll take that as a no news, good news thing.

Look, this went terribly, but I promise it won’t be next time. If there is a next time.

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Beyond Eternity
Characters: Kah’Sharin’Ma
Race: Alien
Age: 26, physically about 21
Final Word Count: 559 words
 

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The look on his face was that of a small animal getting ready to be kicked. What is it with these traders that they have no backbone? At times, she wondered if it wasn’t just her that was the issue but wasn’t like she was overly threatening. At least, she didn’t feel like she was overly threatening. Unlike a lot of the other traders, she didn’t actually carry a weapon—she didn’t need one. She rarely yelled, she rarely threatened, she was quite certain that she’d never actually given them any reason to feel threatened by her and yet, here it was, yet again.

This one looked more like a kicked puppy—an animal she hadn’t seen in years as Earth wasn’t quite high on the list of planets to visit if you didn’t fit in with the rest of the populace and she didn’t fit in at all. All in all, now that she was giving him a more thorough look, he looked like a puppy as a whole. The slightly elongated face, the tail, the sharpened nails and the ears on top of the head instead of on the side like hers. They were fuzzy like the tail, a soft honey-gold colour. Not that she would call him a puppy to his face as that would have been a pretty bad insult.

His shoulders were dropped; his head low and his ear drooped. He was fussing with the piece of paper she’d handed him and he looked more than a little contrite. There was something just seriously pathetic around him and she couldn’t place why it irked her. Maybe some memory of a time she no longer could go back to. Was there even anyone who could go back in time? She’d change quite a chunk of her life if she could.

“Look,” she tried to keep her voice low and soft but the way he flinched made her breathe out a sigh and she had to refrain from pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’m just letting you know that the information you gave me about the pick-up point was wrong. I’m not yelling at you, I’m not going to report you, I’m just telling you that the information didn’t lead anywhere. At least, not anywhere good.”

All in all, the whole thing had been a shitfest. Through a pick-up that should have been as easy as land, walk to the building, pick up the items and come back, she had ended up landing in something of a sandpit and had required moving the ship to another location, that had then required an extra hour or two of walking because everything looked the same and the map made little to no sense and her GPS hadn’t been able to track anything, then she’d been shot at and had had to come back empty-handed.

“It’ll be better next time, I promise!” His eyes widened, tail wagging in what looked like a hopeful beat and she shook her head. There couldn’t be a next time, not if it landed her in another position like this. Being shot at wasn’t exactly something she was fond of.

“Maybe but I doubt it, okay? I’m sure that the information you usually give to others is good and verified information but not in this case. Good luck, really.”

There was no context.

Timeline/World: Main Profile
Characters: Kah’Sharin’Ma
Race: Alien
Age: 25, physically about 21
Final Word Count: 601 words

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My landing on this planet feels like forever ago but I know it’s only been a small handful of years. During the first while here, I discovered love, though it was short-lived and I was left behind for one of their own, I suppose I should not be surprised by that prospect. Inter-species love seems taboo on most planets I’ve heard of, not that I’ve been to many planets, only my own while it was standing and vibrant, full of life, and this one. I don’t know that I miss my planet but I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore, I’m not going anywhere.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of weird things since I’ve been here and most of them from a far-off vantage point. I want nothing to do with the wars or battles that are ongoing in this place. I know that this also seems to be the norm; there isn’t a place out there where there isn’t at least one war going on somewhere. There was a war going on somewhere on our planet, there has been a war here that I could understand, other planets have had their wars. War is inevitable.

Just like random situations that, without any context, make no sense whatsoever and I admit that even with some context, they make no sense at all either and I’ve seen a lot of those.

After having been left behind, though I admit I am a little at fault for what happened, I became a watcher more than anything else. I didn’t want to interact with anyone else, not while my heart was trying to heal from the fact that it was broken to pieces and I had never expected that to happen to me. I learned to control the tangibility of my body and it became even easier to just be a watcher, to be that one person that essentially wasn’t even there to begin with.

I’ve seen plenty. Men fighting over a spot against a tree while there were other trees just like it? Check. People arguing about the shape of a cloud in the sky? Check. Two women in gorgeous dresses just brawling it all out like the world depended on it, in a clearing out in the middle of nowhere, without anything to make it clear that they hadn’t just walked all this way just for that brawl? Check.

I always thought my people were the odd ones but I guess we’re not so strange. Sure, we get into pointless fights all the time, fights that, if you look at it from the outside without knowing what it’s about, might actually just be really hilarious to witness. Just like we do a whole lot of randomly stupid things because that seems like the right thing to do but, in the long run, it really isn’t.

I miss my people a little as far as that is concerned. When we weren’t struggling to survive and make it to another day, we were having the most pointless of arguments and generally, these ended up with both—or all—parties just laughing so hard they couldn’t manage a decent breath. I haven’t found that kind of camaraderie here yet and I admit that this place is getting lonely. There are a lot of people but not a single one of them really screams, ‘I’m friendly! Come talk to me! I won’t abandon you!’ Though I guess that in the case of that last one, you can’t ever really prepare for that kind of thing, it will happen or not, you can’t control it.