1 - ALUMA

Content note: This story contains sensual content between consenting adults, strong language, a motorcycle crash with minor injury reference, references to the deaths of family members, and discussions of aging and mortality. It also includes light surveillance and coercive research themes.

1 - ALUMA

Meridian storms were unpredictable, but that wasn’t what alarmed me.

Usually, you saw them collecting beyond the western fields first, great blue-gray shoulders piling over one another while the wheat bowed under the sky.

There was enough warning to put away the wooden chairs beneath the awning, latch the maintenance shed and apologize to our guests about whatever the weather decided to rattle.

This one gave me less than thirty seconds to come up with a strategy.

Lavender light spread across the evening sky, bleaching white at its center.

Every bulb in the Motor Lodge flared at once, bright enough that I saw the bones inside my own fingers where they rested on the front counter.

Then the building went dark.

Rain hammered the roof.

“What in the heavens was that?”

I was reaching for the flashlight near the desk when something screamed across the road.

Metal.

Not thunder.

It sounded like something enormous being dragged over pavement.

The sound ended with a violent crack.

I peered through the office window, past the peeling paint along its frame.

Nothing but a torrent of spring rain.

Meridian Town sat several miles east of the lodge.

Wyatt’s repair shop occupied the property beside mine, but it had already closed for the evening.

A long detached garage sat between his shop and the Motor Lodge, the sort of building that had somehow become half his storage space and half mine over the years without either of us formally agreeing to it.

Beyond that were farmland, open road and a gas station Etien closed whenever he got sleepy.

There was enough empty country between here and town to make a person reconsider whatever big-city grievance had brought them to Meridian in the first place.

Living here meant nobody was coming quickly for anything.

The reasonable course of action would’ve been to lock the office and call the Feiramerian authorities.

I pulled on my coat and boots. I took an umbrella and my flashlight and walked into the storm.

Water ran over the road in silver ribbons.

The drainage ditch had already filled halfway, and wind drove the weeds nearly flat.

I walked toward the curve where I’d heard the impact.

The first thing the light found was part of a tire.

Or what looked like one, at least.

The second thing it found was a man.

He knelt beside what remained of a motorcycle.

At least, motorcycle was the nearest category my mind could produce.

Like the familiar vehicle, it had two wheels, handlebars, a seat and lights. I imagined it had an engine too, though I couldn’t tell where one part ended and another began.

After that, the resemblance deteriorated.

Its frame was matte black until my flashlight struck it.

Then a gradient moved underneath the surface—blue, violet, then black again. The material glistened like an oil spill stretched across glass.

Sleek panels folded into one another without obvious seams.

The rear assembly had been torn halfway apart.

The man had both hands inside it.

“Hello there! You hurt?”

His head snapped toward me.

I gasped.

His eyes—

There are some things the brain refuses to understand immediately.

His eyes were one of them.

They were a luminous purple gradient. Indigo gathered deepest around the pupil, bleeding outward into lilac, violet and finally an electric blue ring near the edge.

Fine points of light shifted inside them.

Actual light.

Tiny cold sparks suspended in color.

Like somebody had taken a pastel sunset, scattered stars through it and compressed the whole thing into his eyes.

For several seconds neither of us spoke.

Rain slid down his face.

Dark hair had been tied at the back of his head in a small ponytail, though several wet strands had escaped around his cheekbones.

He wore black from throat to boots.

At first I thought it was leather.

Then he moved and the material moved differently.

Water didn’t absorb into it.

Droplets gathered on the surface, skated sideways and disappeared along channels I couldn’t see. Sections tightened across his shoulders when he turned, then relaxed again, almost as though the clothing responded before he completed the movement.

There was blood at his temple.

“Oh, my! You are hurt.”

I approached but stopped a few feet away.

His gaze moved over me.

It wasn’t the way I knew a man looked at a woman.

The closest comparison I had was Wyatt examining a machine he’d never seen before.

“On the surface,” he said.

He had an accent, but not one I recognized.

“What?”

“The injury. It is superficial.”

“But you’re bleeding down your face!”

I pointed toward the motorcycle.

“What happened?”

His expression barely changed.

I waited and he said nothing.

“Why ask?”

I blinked.

“What do you mean, why? Because you’re bleeding on the side of the road in the middle of a storm.”

He considered this.

I almost cursed at him, then remembered the eyes.

“Can you stand?”

“Yes.”

He did not stand. His hands reached deeper into the ruined machine.

I stepped closer, trying to make myself look as harmless as possible while holding the flashlight like a weapon.

“I run the lodge over there. Do you want to come inside and rest for a while?”

“No.”

I let out a dry laugh. Not because anything was actually funny. Mostly because I couldn’t believe him.

Whether he was stubborn, frightened or too dazed to understand me, I couldn’t tell.

His head tilted.

“That vocal response.”

“What?”

He imitated my laugh. Not mockingly. I think. That might have been worse. Perhaps I should have been more offended.

“You never heard somebody laugh before?”

“I have.”

“Okay…”

He studied me.

A tiny movement happened around his mouth, resembling a smile. I wasn’t sure.

Then his attention returned to the motorcycle.

I debated whether the headache of continuing this interaction was worth it.

The Beale family had never been good at leaving people who needed help alone.

“Listen.”

I crouched beside him.

“Whatever is going on, you aren’t fixing it in this rain.”

He ignored me, but I had the feeling he understood every word. Water spilled from the edge of my umbrella onto his shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice. One hand stayed inside the broken machine, fingers curled around something he wasn’t ready to leave behind.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

Those magnificent eyes shifted back toward me.

“Sylph,” he said eventually.

“Sylph Astrophel.”

There was no way on this green earth that man came from Meridian.

“Right. I’m Aluma.”

He studied the name like I’d handed him another strange machine.

“Where is this?”

“The Motor Lodge at Meridian.”

No recognition, but I expected that. Very few people would know about our humble business.

“Meridian Town?” I asked.

Nothing. Okay, a lot weirder. Who actually made it out here without passing through the town?

“Feiramere?” I asked.

Not even a flicker.

That was when I became truly stumped. Perhaps he had come from outside Feiramere, though that hardly explained not knowing which country he was in.

“Tacitra?”

He didn’t even look at me. At this point, I was losing all hope of communicating with Sylph Astrophel.

“Nepenthia?” I joked.

I laughed again. Partly in nervousness.

Sylph did not.

The rain filled the gaps of silence between us.

He turned toward the horizon.

There was nothing beyond us but flooded farmland, sleeping cows and one dying utility light.

His eyes lifted toward the storm.

The violet gradients in his irises brightened against the darkness.

“I do not know this world.”

I stared at him as the night wind moved through the grass.

There were definitely people in Nepenthia who came from strange places.

Everybody knew stories about extraterrestrial things in Ariga.

The Crown had agreements nobody in Meridian understood.

Noctalune had people walking around Sangclaw City right now with fangs and wings concealed inside coats while everybody minded their own business.

But there was something about the way Sylph said it.

A factual statement: I don’t know this world.

“Please come inside,” I said.

His attention returned to the motorcycle.

“No one is touching it, yes?”

“Nobody’s touching it. I promise.”

I nodded toward the buildings.

“We’ll get it into the garage between here and Wyatt’s shop once this rain calms down. That garage has held worse.”

He studied my face for several seconds, then finally reached for my hand.

His fingers closed around mine.

I helped him stand.

For someone who insisted he was superficially injured, he swayed hard enough that I had to catch his arm.

The black material that made contact with my hand tightened immediately around his body.

I jerked back.

“What happened?” he asked.

This man was seriously getting on my nerves.

“Your clothes moved!”

“Yes?”

“By themselves!”

He glanced at his sleeve.

“Your clothing does not? Perhaps it is poor design.”

That almost-smile returned. Then disappeared.

I was too bewildered by everything to be offended.

Together, we walked toward the Motor Lodge.