A Vast And Endless Sky 8 (Patreon)

Endless Sky 7 

Endless Sky 6

Endless Sky 5

Endless Sky 4

Endless Sky 3

Endless Sky 2

Endless Sky 1

Why am I still writing this! (also writing book 3 at the same time!) Comments appreciated!

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The lio led Rees across the ship to what seemed at first to be a large alcove in an array of similar alcoves. Each one was the size of a loopball court with room enough for the stands, which was to say quite overly spacious, and curious inasmuch as there was nothing in the alcove and their path quit in a dead end. Though once they reached the center of the room, the entire open face whirred and snapped shut. Rees jumped.

“We’re taking a quick shuttle to the embassy ship,” Velk said. “It will just be a moment.”

This is a shuttle?

The gymnasium-sized room didn’t feel like it moved at all besides a slight vibration of the floor. There were no windows in here, much less built-in screens to give an outside view. The lio just stood there calmly.

“Uh, Miss Velk?” Rees asked quietly.

“Yes?” Velk asked.

“You’re… the first lio I’ve ever met.”

Velk nodded.

“Do you also fight the krakun?”

“I did once,” she said. “Thirty years of service in orbital defense, aboard various ships. Engaged the krakun once in all of that time.”

“So it’s rare to actually see combat?”

“That was just the krakun,” she said. “I fought the turek in at least fifteen engagements.”

“Turek? There’s another?”

“Yes. The turek are a very proud people who have no fear of death and enjoy the spoils of war. We have been on and off adversaries of theirs for even longer.”

Rees tried to swallow again, for effect, but couldn’t force the lump out of his throat. “Erk.”

“They are nowhere near this sector of space,” Velk said.

“Even so.”

The shuttle resounded as it came to a halt, and the back door opened. Velk led Rees out to a different ship altogether, with a different design hard to describe other than ‘brighter’. The ssarith seemed to love dark steel, but the lio liked theirs white and shining like a knight out of a storybook.

They met up with several other masked lio, to whom Rees waved shyly. He couldn’t tell if they noticed him, as the lio all wore the same kind of expression-concealing masks, possibly because it gave them some advantage in communicating with the ssarith?

One of the lio handed Velk a large container, then she gestured for another hall—this one leading into something finally resembling a bathroom, at least one that was lio-sized, which was close enough for Rees.

“Please prepare yourself how you see fit,” Velk said, laying the case on a counter and opening it up to inspect it.

Rees excused himself to one of the stalls. Thankfully, it seemed that lio expelled waste more or less the same as montrose did, so the toilet wasn’t terribly hard to figure out. But the way it washed him up afterward was more than a little firm and invasive.

After that, Velk showed Rees the showers. He preferring to remove his makeup before he did any bathing, but he didn’t bring it up because it probably wasn’t going to be super important to aliens. The shower was, thankfully, water and not some sort of acid, but the sprays were limited in time, and not wanting to waste their ship’s water, Rees lathered himself up with the provided soap and had the shower rinse him off. The soap didn’t smell like anything, disappointingly.

After that, the blowers on every side of the stall buffeted his fur, and an automatic brush popped out of the wall. Rees considered for a moment using it, but seeing how it moved, he imagined it wrapping around his tail and yanking him into the machinery. He just exited the stall with his fur sticking out every which way.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a—” Rees started, but Velk had already laid out on the counter not only a fur brush, but a nail clipper, tweezers, files, and a small box with Tannic writing on it that Rees opened immediately. “A make-up kit?”

“Most montrose males wear make-up, yes?” Velk asked. “This is not uncommon, though the lio have no such use for highlighting facial features.”

“Because of the masks?”

Velk tilted her ears, then laughed. Rees’s ears burned in embarrassment.

“Oh! Oh, no no no…” Velk quickly corrected herself. “The mask is for breathing and keeping our eyes covered. Carbon monoxide is poisonous to us.”

“Oh… I guess that would make sense. If you breathed the same air as the ssarith, they could just settle one one of your worlds…”

“To that end…” Velk tilted the large case so Rees could see over the lip. Four white masks of slightly different shape laid in divots meant for each. “There are four different helmets in here. Don’t worry, they should be quite comfortable and reshape to your head size. They will take oxygen and carbon dioxide out of our air and convert it to carbon monoxide for you; this is made to be wearable for a hundred and fifty hours before the filter needs to be changed. Pick whichever one you like, someone will be in to fetch the case when you’re ready.”

Velk closed the case and turned to leave.

“Miss Velk, um,” Rees said, “should I… I mean, you gave me the make-up kit…”

“It is up to you if you want to use it,” she said. “It’s not required. But please try to make yourself minimally presentable for the ambassador so he doesn’t think your species is a bunch of backwater throwbacks…”

Rees winced a bit as Velk left him in the washroom. He sat on the bench and got to brushing his tail first, as he usually did, before finally getting around to the rest of his fur. He scrubbed the make-up removed over his face and washed it again with a washcloth, before considering.

His face was going to be covered, certainly, but he’d grown used to looking a certain way. He just didn’t like how he looked without make-up, but maybe that was just because he’d been told over and over that he had to wear it. Nevertheless, he couldn’t really look in the mirror of his cleaned-off face without thinking you’re very ugly, boy.

He sighed. At least it would be covered, but if he was going back to the ssarith ship soon, he’d rather he looked presentable. Even if the ssarith didn’t care, he’d know. So carefully, he reapplied his eyeliner, patted his ears with a slight green blush, and clipped any stray hairs or bent whiskers as he did most mornings. This kit had a bit of everything, so he applied eye shadow again, as well as the rest of the liner to make his eyes and nose have a desirable pop to them, making them look larger than they actually were. The lip liner wasn’t exactly his preferred shade, but he tried it anyway, sliding a thin sliver of deep black along his lower lip. The effect exaggerated his mouth, and he flexed his jaw into an ‘o’, seeing how it subtly shifted with the shade of the bathroom lights.

It was a bit ‘experienced male’ for him, but maybe he could grow to like it.

There was more than just the face, too—adding a bit of fur shine to his chest, he then pulled a stood up to the sink and climbed on top, considering for a long while his sheath and testicles.

He’d never really drawn attention to them before. Young males were discouraged from it, but he was an adult now, and being presentable as a male adult meant leaning into sex appeal, just a little. He took a small ribbon from the make-up kit and tied it under his balls and around the back of his sheath. It was cute, certainly, but he looked like such a slut. He hated when his dad dressed like that. So instead he opted for just a dab of green blush—subtle, but it’d certainly whet the appetite of any montrose female.

“Why the hell am I even thinking about this?” he asked the mirror, and his voice rang in the empty room. “You’re stuck in the middle of space, surrounded by aliens, and like a stereotypical male you’re still thinking about being presentable to a female you may never actually meet again.”

“Now hold on,” he said, in response to himself, “You’re doing this for yourself. You like looking pretty for its own sake.”

“Yeah, I always say that. But beauty is a social standard, isn’t it? You’re surrounded by aliens who have, clearly, very different standards than you.”

“That’s better though. This way you can look pretty without worrying about being accosted by strange females. You can just… be pretty.”

Rees blinked. He hadn’t really known where talking with himself was going to lead, but it was a valid point he’d made. Being pretty without the downsides of being seen? Yes please. This was a golden opportunity.

Feeling unusually freer, Rees considered again wrapping the ribbon around his genitals, but decided against it. Maybe another time. Rees just moved on to the fragrance. He recognized it—they probably picked up the kit from somewhere on Ar, after all—but he couldn’t place where it was from, only that the label was written in Lombri. It smelled pretty nice, so he filled the slow dripper with the perfume and buried it into the fluff of his tail.

Finally, he picked out one of the masks in the case. One of them would have covered his ears, which he didn’t prefer, and the other mostly just covered his mouth and nose. He much rather liked the full face mask that Velk had been wearing, but it looked so plain without anything on it. Thinking quickly, he took the lip liner and drew a little face on the mask much like Velk had. He wasn’t exactly a brilliant artist, but he did know how to make a face look symmetrical, so he could still look fairly cute even with it on.

The mask slid onto his face easily, the inside padded and resting easily on his head. But it was entirely dark on the inside. He’d been wondering how Velk could see through the mask, since there were not obvious eye holes. So, replacing everything into the case except the mask, Rees finally took it out to Velk, waiting outside.

“How do you wear this thing?” he asked.

“I’ll show you, but I promised that you could call your mother,” he said.

Rees blinked. “Uh… you’re not saving that until the end?”

“No, should I? We just managed to tap into the Ar satellite phone system. You can call your mother right now if you still want.” She handed a device that looked more like a brick than a phone to Rees. “But the line is being monitored. It will disconnect if you mention anything about a space fleet parked in this star system.”

“I understand. I don’t think they’d believe me, anyway.”

Rees looked up into the rest of the room. Dozens of lio were milling about, lounging, and he supposed, waiting on him. But he did really need to call home. He needed his mom to know he was okay.

“Excuse me,” Rees said, handing his choice of helmet to Velk and retreating back into the washroom. The phone was simple enough to figure out, the face turned on when his paw hovered over it, and it just had one option on its screen. In Tannic, it read ‘ready to connect to 45-45-99302’ and a little yellow button. Rees tapped it.

The phone rang for an uncomfortably long time. At least five minutes passed before someone picked up. “Hello?”

“Dad?” Rees said. Not his genetic father, mom’s other husband.

“Rees?” the voice exclaimed. Suddenly there was a lot of shuffling on the other end, before the voice came back. “Rees, where are you? We’re worried sick!”

“I’m fine,” Rees said. “I’m… in a safe place.”

“Why did you leave? Where are you—we can come pick you up right away.”

Rees immediately started tearing up, threatening to undo the nice eyeliner he’d just put on. “Dad, no, I… I don’t need picking up. I’m staying here for a while.”

“Did a female take you?”

“No,” Rees said. “I just… can you tell mom that I really needed some time to myself?”

Dad was silent for a while. “Is this about the fight?”

“Yeah,” Rees said. “I… dad, I don’t feel welcome at home sometimes, you know? I know, I’m still just a teenager and I don’t know any better, I’m always so over dramatic. But I’m just… I don’t feel like I fit in.”

“Rees… are you leaving?”

That got a sob and a sniffle out of Rees. “I’ll come back when I feel ready,” he said. “Can… can you make sure Mom doesn’t go through my stuff? Or sell anything.”

“She wouldn’t—”

“Dad, please. She has done that and I’m really tired of feeling like I’m not being listened to or respected. I don’t care if you pack up all my stuff and put it in a storage locker, I just don’t want mom to rifle through it.”

His father was silent a moment longer. Then he said, “Okay. But I’d really like to know where you are.”

“You’d just have the police drag me back.”

“I won’t. Rees, we’re all very worried about you. I need to tell your mom something.”

“Just tell her I’m not too far away,” Rees said. “If anything does happen I’ll come home immediately, I…” he was about to say ‘I promise’ only to recall he was lying about that part. “I’ll get home somehow.”

“Rees… do you need any money?”

Rees sniffled. “No. I’m okay. My host is being magnanimous.”

“Who’s your host—”

“Dad, please stop. I have to go now, I have some people I’m meeting. They’re very nice, don’t worry.”

“Okay. I’d really like it if you can call again soon so we don’t have to worry so much.”

“I’ll call you again when I’m done.”

“I love you, Rees.”

Rees creaked out, “I love you too,” before finally tapping the slash button, ending the call. He broke into a fit of homesick crying again for several long minutes. Then taking a few deep breaths again, he approached the mirror, touched up some of his make-up again, and went out to meet Velk again.