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“No, no, no! There has got to be more to it than ‘second star to the right’,” Stoarna said for approximately the tenth ekaddi time.
“Look, I told you like a billion times now. That’s all there is.” Pyewacket jabbed at the dispenser’s code keys with one brown-skinned finger until it gave her the blue-green foamy stuff she liked so much. It tasted like whipped cream, cherry, a hint of lemon, and something sort of like coconut—all at the same time. Pye was pretty sure she could live off it forever and not get sick of it.
Going back to the control pit, she climbed up into the empty Second’s chair using one hand and both feet, carefully balancing the small but deep bowl of food as she went. The Pilot and Second’s chairs were apparently called ‘cradles’ in Stoarna’s language, but cradles were for babies, and neither Pye nor Stoarna were babies—Pye had never met someone like Stoarna lir-biori before, but had been assured that she was a grown-up amongst her kind; and Pye certainly wasn’t a baby anymore, not at 8 Terran years.
Slouching in the curve with her ankles at the front of the chair, the lower edge of what would be the neck-rest for an adult smooshed Pye’s wildly-curly black hair just far enough over her forehead to resemble a fringe. She peeled up the utensil strip from the rim of the bowl, pinching the paper-thin substance and sliding her thumb and forefinger along the shaft before pinching the slightly wider end into a shallow oval concavity; it firmed slightly, becoming a reasonable facsimile of a spoon.
Stoarna’s slit-pupilled amber eyes—and Pye was envious of them, much more interesting than her own plain old brown eyes—studied her thoughtfully, and the not-hair on her head rippled subtly, as if in a scant little breeze. “You must have some maintenance food this cycle as well, Pye.”
“Mmf,” Pye hum-grunted in answer after stuffing a little mound of blue-green into her mouth. It wasn’t that the maintenance food wasn’t okay, and the dispenser would give it to her in little food chunks diced into different shapes —it was more than a little tempting to build things with them instead of eating them—sometimes in a thick liquid like a milkshake, or even in varying layers like an oddly colored sandwich. But it was the principle of the thing, choosing the treats and only having the stuff that’s nutritious when nagged.
“Also, Pye, is it the second star to the right above, or below?” Stoarna waved a pale lavender, speckle-skinned hand at the main navigations screen, her long, slender fingers like and unlike the human version; mostly, the unlike part was her having another thumb instead of a pinkie, as well as a middle finger with one extra joint than the others. They were agile and Pye loved to watch Stoarna weave trinkets out of the long shimmering threads and glowing coils growing down like multi-colored grass from the ceiling of the ‘garden chamber’. Stoarna had made Pye a vest, all greens and purple-blues, but she had to dribble water on it every few days to keep it from going dull and lifeless. “Pye?” Stoarna’s voice, on the firmer side of a questioning tone, pulled the girls wandering attention back to the moment. “Are you attending?”
Nodding, Pye guessed there had been more complaints in there somewhere after she’d stopped listening, but she responded with as innocent a voice as she could. “I am, I am! It’s not my fault I’m just a kid and no one gave me an address, only directions.”
Muttering some words she hadn’t taught Pye the meaning of yet, Stoarna sighed heavily, lowering her head and closing her eyes. “’Second star to the right’. We cannot even be sure our approach is from the proper direction, Pye. Is it my right coming in or yours coming out? I was assuming the latter, but how do we know which is true?”
Pye looked at the nav-screen, studied the starfield with the three most prominent stars glowing bright blue-white amidst the lesser spangles in the blackness. “It should be the upper right,” she decided, imagining the picture in her favorite book. “I saw the vid and read the book a zillion times, Stoarna. Even if they got asploded with the colony, I still remember. He was pointing up.” Pye demonstrated, pointing with her fake spoon, and said in a confident tone, “Second star to the right, and straight on till morning!”
Stoarna’s hair—cilia, she called them, but that didn’t mean anything to Pye; it was just weird, not exactly hair—made a soft whispering sound as it puffed up a little and settled again. “I feel you, Pye,” Stoarna said quietly, eyes wide, pupils enlarged, and the lighter speckles on her skin darkening. “I have not given up on attempting to find this place for you.”
Sighing as she looked out at the lights in the vastness, Pye nodded longingly. “It’s just… I can’t go home again, and that’s the only other place I ever wanted to go.”
“Come, nibling,” Stoarna urged softly, holding out one arm. Pye set her mostly-empty bowl aside and clambered over to sit in Stoarna’s lap, careful not to bump any of the buttons or slides on the console in front of her temporary guardian. “When I rescued you from the slavers I promised to take you wherever you needed to go.” Gentle fingers stroked over the tight curls springing from Pye’s head like a paused explosion in black, weaving them into loose braids as they passed, and it was truly soothing. “I cannot bring back your colony, or your kin, but I will see you happy somehow, little one.”
Pye petted Stoarna’s forearm, not moving it from where Stoarna’s fingers were spread on the primary control cluster. Where Pye’s skin was a slightly translucent warm brown—Momma used to call her ‘my gingerbread baby’—Stoarna’s was matte lavender, speckled with what reminded Pye of freckles, only uncountable freckles in all the paler shades of purple fading to almost white. When Stoarna was really happy, sad, or angry, some of her speckles would lighten or darken, depending on what emotion it was; when she’d found Pye in the stinky cubbyhole in the cargo hold of the monster people who’d stolen her, shivering with cold and fear, Stoarna’s skin had been deep purple with a smattering of black specks in swirling patterns Pye almost couldn’t make out. Stoarna’s hair—which Pye had since learned to call cilia—had stood out from her head like someone in the commix who’d touched a bare circuit. Pye had been afraid of her at first, seeing her as just one more scary creature amongst the others, but Pye’d since learned to love her like family; of course, not as much as her Momma, Daddy, or Papa, but maybe like Auntie Lu.
“You saved me,” Pye almost whispered, remembering Stoarna’s calming voice, multiple tones crooning nonsense as she used some device on the metal grille covering Pye’s cubbyhole, melting the locking part. Once it was open, Stoarna had slowly, so slowly reached in toward Pye—not grabbing, not yanking, like the others had done when they’d found her hiding in one of the ore bins—and soon Pye didn’t need to understand Stoarna’s words to know she was being rescued. She’d clung to Stoarna with all the strength left in her skinny arms and legs, not even crying, and Stoarna had held her tight the whole way out, turning Pye’s face into the satiny fabric of her evac suit so she wouldn’t see the bodies of the monsters in the corridors on their way out. The memory made Pye burrow closer to Stoarna. Worried, she said, “I’m happy about that, for sure. I really am.” It wouldn’t be right to let Stoarna think Pye had forgotten, that she wasn’t glad every day-cycle to be alive and safe and not in whatever horrible place those slavers were taking her.
“I know, Pye.” Fingers making order out of the chaos of Pye’s hair, Stoarna’s voice sounded like a smile. “You are not ungrateful, nibling. We will keep looking.” Pye let her head rest on Stoarna’s flat chest, hearing the triple cadence of Stoarna’s heart beat beneath her ear, along with Stoarna’s voice. “If we cannot somehow find your Neverland…” Though Pye would have made a fuss once upon a time at the idea of not reaching her goal, she only gave a bit of a pout and a huffy sigh this time, not actually saying anything. Stoarna’s hand came to rest lightly on Pye’s head. “Would you like to keep travelling with me? I do not propose to replace your own parents, just to honor them as best I can by keeping you safe and seeing that you prosper.”
The mention of her Momma and Daddy and Papa made Pye's chest ache and her tummy clench, but it was a little less now than it used to be, and she had fewer nightmares than before. Though she often wished her rescue hadn’t meant the death of Stoarna’s co-pilot, whom she was rarely willing to discuss, other than to agree to share a name—Allio lir-leati—and to assure Pye that none of it was her fault. Stoarna wasn’t human, but she was good to Pye, fun to be with most of the time and, even when she had to act like a grown-up and nag Pye to eat and wash properly, she was never mean about it. Pye knew she was safe with Stoarna, which meant a lot. A lot a lot!
So, nodding, Pye said, “I like travelling with you, Stoarna.” She looked up at the nav-screen, feeling sad and hopeful at the same time, which was such a strange mix. “But we’ll still keep trying for a while longer?”
“Yes.” Stoarna reached out and selected the uppermost star to the right on the screen, which made a glowing yellow circle appear around the bright blue spot, and little symbols immediately began to flicker next to the circle, showing the calculations on vectors and distances, as well as the time it would take to cross them. “And here we go,” Stoarna said with a pleased expression as she locked the course in and initiated the jump sequence.
With a big, happy grin, Pye watched as the larger screen beyond the nav-screen swirled into a kaleidoscope of mixed colors and flickered to dark for a moment, and then the simulacrum view slowly came up to show stars and other celestial bodies in a faint grid pattern. The grid had whorls and declivities to show gravitational fields and similar irregularities in the fabric of space. Stoarna had explained more of how the controls worked to Pye than the little girl could actually understand when she’d first brought her onto the ship, including that the ship only had a technical designation of class and registry, rather than a name. Stoarna’s people did not generally give proper names or implied personalities to inanimate objects. Pye thought that was kind of a shame, really, and privately called it ‘The Space Whale’ after some old Terran artbooks her Papa used to share with her, and because Pye thought the ship looked a bit like a sleek, metallic whale—if maybe not equipped with fins or a tail.
“Now, Pye,” Stoarna said as she tipped her chair—cradle—back into an angle conducive to resting, which led to Pye’s almost lying atop Stoarna instead of just sitting in her lap. “We will be some time getting close enough to see anything, so we should sleep a little.”
“I’m not sleepy,” Pye objected, though she was kind of tired. It was nice cuddling up with Stoarna, so she didn’t really mind, but she still had to protest on principle.
“Then we will just rest.” Settling further, arms holding Pye loosely enough not to feel restrictive, but still comfortingly present, Stoarna hummed softly. “Now, tell me the story of this Neverland again, nibling.”
Pye spoke of pirates, mermaids, fairies and secret hideouts. Of course she spoke of Peter Pan, his sometimes-detachable shadow, flying by pixie dust, and Tinker Bell. Stoarna murmured and hummed in response, asking leading questions—even when she already probably knew from all the previous times Pye had spoken of it. All the while gentle hands soothingly petted Pye’s loose braids, or her arms, or legs. Pye’s happy babble ran down after a time, her words continuing on in her sleeping mind, and Stoarna drifted into her own dreams soon after.
Sometime after Pye and Stoarna both slept, the nav-screen’s image grew misty at the edges, the deep nothingness between the spots of light fading through gradual shades of black, to purples, to blues. The mist became a corridor of faint clouds, thickening as the ship continued onward, and slowly dissipated when the fabric of the space around them changed to something other. The navigations system initiated the drop back into normal space, and then switched over into atmospheric protocols when the sensors detected all the signs of gravity and air, as well as what scanned as a planetary surface below.
The trill of the notification chimes sounded moments later, waking the two sleepers to their arrival.