Page 81 of Alien God

After passing through the tunnel into the Day Tower, we had a brief lunch in the kitchen, meeting up with Shoshen, who was just coming in from his chores outside. We had the same awkward moment of him trying to address me as “My lady,” and me basically begging him not to. He accepted the informality of the relationship much more quickly than Aiko had, and I snickered at the frown she shot him as he so instantly agreed to call me Torrance.

He’s definitely the younger brother.

“Didn’t even have to shovel a path to the sontanna’s enclosure and the barn this morning!” Shoshen said, grabbing a chunk of bread and leaning against the counter, sounding half-confused and half-grateful. “I suppose that was Lord Wylfrael’s doing. Can’t think of anyone else who could have made such a wide, smooth path in snow that deep. It’s incredible.”

There was a note of awe in his words, and for the first time, I fully understood the gravity of the situation from the Sionnachan point of view. They’d been taking care of this castle, generation after generation, waiting for Wylfrael to return. He must have become like a legend to them, a mystical figure of ancient history with extraordinary power. And now, they were seeing first-hand that his powers were real. That their grandparents’ bedtime stories about him were actually true.

I chewed my bread, suddenly finding it hard to swallow. I decided not to tell them that the reason he’d cleared all that snow was so I could walk through it, and so that we could have a midnight sontanna ride that turned into a fucking marriage proposal.

After lunch, Aiko and I continued our tour through the Day Tower. This tower, Aiko told me, was the largest – both the tallest and the widest at the base. Many of its rooms were devoted to practical uses. Rooms for drying herbs and meat, the room where laundry was done, a room with what looked like weaving and sewing materials. It also had the servants’ quarters, which I hurriedly told Aiko she didn’t need to show me, not wanting to invade her privacy.

“Most of those rooms are unused, now,” she said. “The castle used to have a much larger staff.”

We continued upwards. My legs were beginning to get shaky, but I wanted to see more. Now that I was allowed to move freely through this place, I was more curious than afraid. The incredible nature of what I was doing struck me, several times, as we climbed the stairs. I was walking through a real-life, honest-to-goodness alien dwelling. Seeing an otherworldly culture – in fact, the blending of two cultures, stone sky and Sionnachan – up close and personal. It was fascinating, and despite the violence of how I’d ended up here, I found myself touched, tenderly grateful, to Aiko for sharing all of this with me.

Our tour ended rather abruptly, not because I got too tired to keep going (although my legs were rubbery by then) but because I found a room I didn’t want to leave.

“This is the library,” Aiko told me as we entered. “Oh, Father! Good! You’re here.”

I could barely take in the expansive sprawl of the room before I saw the man Aiko had spoken to. I would have known he was related to Aiko and Shoshen even if she hadn’t told me – he had the same orange colouring, though his was a little duller. His tall form leaned on a cane when he rose from where he’d been sitting.

He advanced towards us, and we met him halfway through the large room.

“Hello, hello!” He greeted us warmly. “This must be our new lady of the house!” He said it with so much obvious pleasure that I almost felt guilty when I asked him to just call me Torrance.

“Torrance, then,” he said easily. I was surprised, and grateful, that he’d agreed so quickly. I’d worried that he would be stuck in his ways, older and stricter about rules than his children. But he was much more easygoing than I’d expected. Like he was just so happy about the way things were turning out, he didn’t care what he had to call me.

“What do you think of the estate so far?” he asked, a keenness entering his eyes, as if very interested in my answer.

I hesitated, unsure how to phrase what I was feeling, how to describe the gorgeous place they called home that was both a palace and a prison.

“It’s... Well, it’s beautiful,” I said, settling on something that was objectively true. “And huge! I’m impressed only three of you have taken such good care of everything.”

Aiko’s tail fluttered in something that seemed like shy pleasure, and Ashken grinned.

“Of course, Torrance, of course! We always expected Lord Wylfrael to return. We have been diligent, and happily so, in our duty to the castle in his absence. And, of course, now that you are here, you may direct us in whichever changes you wish to make. So that you may feel at home here.”

His kindness made my throat feel like a rock was lodged in it.

So that you may feel at home here.

There was no more home for me now. I’d been taken from Earth, from the doorstep of the house that held my whole heart. My parents were gone, and even if I got out of here, I wouldn’t be safe on Earth again. Not with what I knew, what I’d seen.

The best shot I have at a home now is finding the other human women. Making sure they’re safe, and figuring out how we’ll all survive without being under the thumb of the ship’s military crew...

“So, tell me about the library, Ashken!” I said, my voice high and sounding overly cheery as I changed the subject.

“Of course, of course!” he said, turning and brandishing his silver crystal cane around the space. My gaze followed the sweep of the carved silver stick.

It was a truly massive room. It was about halfway up the Day Tower, and unlike other lower, wider floors of the house which were broken up into more than one chamber, the library dominated the entire floor. The ceiling was also much higher than most of the other floors, and unlike the tower I’d been staying in, this one was green, giving everything a rich verdant hue. A massive fire rock blazed in the centre of the room, and it took me a moment to realize it was encased in a sort of crystal grate which hardened into a chimney that arched up towards the ceiling. The silvery crystal was so thin around the fire that it was nearly invisible, allowing the golden-orange light to disperse around the space. Arranged in a circle around the fire were cushions, large crystal chairs, and fur throws.

Apart from the fire and the furniture, though, there wasn’t much more I recognized in the room. There weren’t bookshelves like a human library. Instead, the entire circular perimeter of the room had massive rectangular frames jutting out from the walls, with what looked like fabric stretched over the frames. Some of the rectangles were pressed close together, obscuring the fabric on them, others were splayed wider apart. It reminded me of rug stores back home, where the rugs were stretched and suspended in transparent plastic rectangles that you had to turn on the walls like pages of a book. Or, like how posters were displayed and sold in shops, if posters were more than ten feet tall.

“This is amazing!” I said, completely fascinated. If Orla were here, she would lose her fucking mind. Orla was our resident linguist among the kidnapped women on the ship. I wondered grimly if she would have seen this anyway, had Wylfrael not returned when he did. If we would have found and taken over this property and hurt the Sionnachans.

Knowing humans, probably.

But that reminded me...

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