Cygnus

Despite all the noise around her Cygnus Phi was experiencing palpable loneliness while making her way through the crowd of aliens which wandered around her. Even though she didn’t like her other selves very much, as most of them were arrogant, snotty, look down your nose types especially towards her they were still her sisters, and she had a complicated relationship with them. Before she had managed to get herself frozen for 22,000 years they had been so constant in her head critical of her choices it had been enough to make her want to wish them away for good, not that that was possible.

“You’ll always regret hoping for that,” she’d been told once, maybe it had been Omicron.

And now she was on her own trying to find a way off the ship she’d been frozen on without landing herself in even worse trouble, such as being destitute again. That was really the worst.

And her damned sisters were pretty much silent but for a few acknowledgments she was alive.

Only a couple of her ‘sisters’ seemed so far to have bothered to check whether she’s been defrosted but aren’t really interested in her.

“Oh, you didn’t die,” Cygnus Beta had noted. “Good for you.”

That one was what, an interstellar empress now, for the third time?

“Hope you had a good time being frosted,” Cygnus Theta had offered.

That one had consorted with most of the sentient stars in her ‘verse.

And even with them, it had just been, “oh hey she’s back,” and then it was back to the silent treatment when you have other sisters across the multiverse who were powers unto themselves and ran interstellar to intergalactic operations to change the evolution of whole worlds and whole civilizations. That one of them wasn’t of that status was treated as an embarrassment. Phi hated how they thought of her.

But still, she did miss the natter the nagging because at least it was attention and here on the Verindika asteroid hive there really wasn’t much attention paid to her at all. She was just one of the multitude of individuals of hundreds of species wandering around doing what they were doing paying her little heed.

But that’s what family was for right? They are there when you don’t want them to be there, and ignore you when you might need them.

Still, she wasn’t going to give the satisfaction of asking for help.

Where was Iain, the short lifer who’d released her, she wondered. Was he thinking about her?

Of course, he was. Short-lifers were always obsessed about reproduction as it was their only path to any kind of immortality.

After some searching and questioning, Phi finally found who she was looking for, pleased but bothered she’s all alone in making the deal she needed too. She had thrown away the awful clothing Skipper had provided, found places to properly attire herself that properly showed off her assets, and reached the collector’s asteroids, complete with the houses of hoarders who desired anything new, unique, valuable. Their home structures were gaudy dumps, but were filled with the smell of avarice and she needed to come across to them as a seller, and that meant dressing to the nines even if half the aliens her would come across as slobs.

She picked the one which seemed the least likely to collapse on her, or taint her with its smell, and stepped in.

“I have a property to sell you will be really interested in acquiring, she announced.

A horrible and disgusting looking blobby creature made its way out from the back and listened to her pitch. Not even her ‘Zos could disguise how revolting it was to her sensibilities, and tentacles of any kind were totally her thing.

“The antique you offer is of some interest,” A bulbous Mercator told her as they spoke in its bubble filled inner office. “We have not seen it’s like in recent years. But it's not exactly of much value. Do you have anything of high value to offer us?”