Had you told me before I first agreed to come to find Meditati that I would have been saddled with some life bond between myself and a clan of Blidda I would have left her sitting in the Queiie crap that she had launched herself into.

Well, no, that isn’t entirely true. I still would have come to save her regardless because I said that I would. But dang it Meditati!

My thoughts were pretty grim as Kivasa spoke to me and offered to give me a tour of her clan’s life ship. This was how I found myself wandering the dimly lit and smokey pathways inside her ship while she explained her life to me. She explained how, during the wars with the Tela, her kind had built ships to live between the stars in order to survive. Some clans, like her father’s, had devoted a large portion of their ship’s space to research and espionage instead of simply surviving. Generations lived and died on these clan vessels, occasionally being able to switch ships when they had decade-long clan reunions.

“What about your home planet? Does it still exist after the wars?” I asked. Their ship reminded me of a vast cave system. When I was a child my father had taken me on a guided tour in the mountains of Thailand through some dark and scary caves. Everything about this ship was built to accommodate the Blidda heritage and physiology.

There were no elevators in this vessel, no, instead, there were shafts with knobby handholds that the Blidda would climb up or down to different levels.

“Yes, indeed! It has returned to its former glory before we advanced to the surface and took over the surface land. There are Blidda who still live in the caves, but no longer on the surface.” She said with an odd tone.

“What happened to the surface? Did the Tela nuke it?”

“Hmm? Oh, nothing happened to it like that. The Tela do not use such weapons. They solely focus on wiping out percentages of populations. Somehow they knew the exact percentage of life that they would need to extinguish to cause our civilization to crumble back nearly to cave life. By doing this it allowed the hostile animal life of the surface to return in force. Without a population to counteract it, the surface was lost and the Blidda were forced back into the caves.”

“But… surely you still had advanced weapons to defend and to clear out the hostile animals?” I asked.

“No, the Tela would use their hidden cr weapons to make all but a small percentage of our weapons inoperable. We only had enough to defend our cave entrances and to hunt with. This, we learned later, was done through a planet they parked in the near orbit of our sun. It would monitor our people and follow protocols set down by the Tela before they left my people to just exist.”

“An Arbiter.”

“Indeed.”

“My people have one sitting in a near orbit around our sun as well,” I said as I thought of all the devastation that it could cause to my home.

This declaration seemed to shake her to the core of her being. Her skin color changed from a green shade to a light shade of gray.

“But? How can this be? You possess a weapon that can defeat their secret technology!” She hissed as she froze in place. Her ears were actually shaking.

“Kivasa? Are you ok?” I asked as I watched her. She seemed to be struggling with something internally.

“Are your people in league with them? Are you the Tela’s new army?”

“Heh? No! Why would you think that?” I asked as I studied her closely.

“Then how did your people develop this new technology with an Arbiter present? I’ve seen recordings of what they do to worlds that meddle with their secret technology. They wipe out whole sections of the planet, leaving them devoid of all life.” She said as her eyes went glassy.

“My people don’t even know that cr exists. Shoot, we only recently made it to our moon. I don’t mind telling you my story, but it will have to be later though. Needless to say, my obtaining these abilities and powers, as you put them, was kind of an accident. A huge, cosmic accident.”

“What?” She asked before shaking her head. “I feared for a moment there that I had just life bound my clan to serve the enemy. I almost died.”

“So about that. Why did you do that? You didn’t have to.” I finally asked when I couldn’t take it anymore. There had to be a way to untie this crazy life bond thing she had done.

“But I did. You fulfilled your part of the deal and made it so that our people, and even our entire race, could escape the destiny that was coming for us. Had you just left you would have negated our bargain. But no, you used your power to make the bargain complete and more.”

Ah, crap.

“So… what does the bond mean? Please explain it like I am an alien who has no idea what you are talking about.”

“That, and I quote: You will accept the lives and service of all aboard this ship in exchange for our escape. It is as simple as that. We are your servants now.”

“People.”

“What?”

“People. You will never be servants. If you will be anything, then you will be… my…. people.” I said as the word stuck in my mouth. I am too young! I felt like I just had a shotgun wedding happen to me. What was worse, it wasn’t to some hot chick, but rather a race of bat-like aliens.

Kivasa’s head tilted to the side as she looked at me.

“Um… Kevin… do you hear that?” Nurse asked me.

“No. What is it?”

“Have your helm listen for sonics.” She said in reply.

I did so and suddenly found that the hallway that we had stopped in was awash with voices. They sounded like ghosts. Most of them were repeating the same words over and over as though they were telling other ghosts who might not have heard.

“People, not servants. People, not servants.”

“Truly?” Came a question through the din of the other voices. It was a soft voice amidst the masses of other voices yet somehow it floated over the top of them all to my ears. I thought that it had been Kivasa who had asked the question so I replied, shrugging my shoulders.

“Yes, truly,” I answered simply. I wasn’t about to say that they were my people again. It was just too hard to say until I figured more things out.

My answering the question caused all of the voices to grow silent in an instant after one ghostly voice cried out “He hears us!”

“You hear your people? You can hear like a Blidda?” Kivasa asked as she studied my smaller ears and my face intently. “You even answer questions from children.” She said almost without sound.

There was no way that I would have heard her say that if it wasn’t for my helm catching and magnifying it for me. It was doing its utmost to make sure that I didn't miss anything.

“Yes. Like I said, a huge cosmic accident.” I replied as I tapped my head before I remembered that I had simulated removing my helm earlier. It was still a part of me, just not manifested. Anyways, she wouldn’t have known what I was referring to without me spending hours telling her my story and about the helm.

“Look Kivasa, I need to leave. I left my pet Leva on my ship and I need to get back to her.” I said as I turned myself towards the nearest airlock and started to head towards it.

“Ha ha ha!” Kivasa laughed at me until I turned to glance back at her. It was only then that she started to follow me down the hallway. “Wait? You are being serious? You have a Leva inside your ship?” She asked as she raced to catch back up with me. For a second I felt her fingers against the surface of my arm before she took her hand back quickly.

“Please forgive me!” She said suddenly, holding the hand that touched me in her other hand.

I rolled my eyes as I turned back and looked at her.

“Ah, thank you!” She said in relief as she watched my eyes.

“What the heck did I just do now?” I cried in exasperation, it felt like I was stumbling all over the place with human and alien translation mistakes. First, it was by not understanding what the heck the Skii had been trying to say back in the shop and now it had made these Blidda bond to me. A life bond too! It was beginning to become like a hidden minefield that I had to navigate blindfolded through.

Her head tilted to the side again before she answered me. “I entered your personal space as though you had given me family permission and you used your eyes to say that it was accepted and ok.” She said before reaching her thin hand back out to rest it against my arm. She gently ran her thin fingers down my arm a couple of inches.

“What?” I asked with wide eyes.

Slowly, as though she was trying to hold something in with great effort she stood there and stared into my eyes while her fingers slowly crept down to my elbow.

My eyes went wider and wider as my mind tried to make sense of what the heck I had or hadn’t done and how I could get out of this awkward situation.

It was that soft voice that I heard again that made me realize that Kivasa was teasing me.

It was the tiny sound of a little girl giggling.

When Kivasa saw my eyes change and my lips press together in suppressed mirth she let her hand drop and let loose with the highest pitch of laughter that I had ever heard in my life. The hallway was suddenly awash with the sound of ghostly voices laughing as well as those that had been following us and paying attention joined in the humor of the situation.

They laughed for quite a while, seemingly to laugh at my embarrassment and at the sound of the little Blidda girl’s laughter. It was as if it was a cathartic moment of release for them. I guess I could understand the need. They had all just thought that their lives were over as they knew it just a little while ago.

“I am sorry Kevin, that was mean of me to tease you like that. I was embarrassed that I tried to force you to turn around, I just am not used to having someone above me in the hierarchy aboard this ship. When I saw your eyes twirl in confusion I couldn’t help but tease you like I would have done to a friend. Please forgive me.” She said.

“Confusion?” I asked with a hidden evil grin, my eyes widening as I answered slowly. “No, when a human’s eyes twirl like that it signifies deep and budding affection,” I said in as serious of a voice as I could muster. I reached out and placed my fingertips against her slender arm and trailed them down against her smooth skin like she had done to me.

Her eyes widened as far as they could go and her ears rose upwards like stiff flagpoles.

I waited, hoping to hear that little giggle again, and wasn’t disappointed when she caught on to what I was doing.

It was my turn to laugh as I dropped my hand, hearing the soft little sound of a Blidda child giggling at the strange antics of adults.

Soon the ship’s hallways were roaring with the ghostly sound of laughter as the rest of the Blidda still in their pods caught on to the joke.

Kivasa just stood there covering all of her eyes with her hands in utter embarrassment.