SPACE STATIONS > The Cancer

Droplets on a Razor's Edge

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DragonSong:
She stared at him, chest rising and falling rapidly while the gills along her ribs fluttered as she panted. The blue-green markings that covered her body flared once, then began to dim--she was grateful for it, as she had no conscious control over her bioluminescence.

Though the stranger spoke softly, his voice carried easily to her through the glass, amplified in a strange, echoing sort of way by the water. She winced and flicked her finned ears back against her skull: no one had spoken to her in a long time, and she was unused to the volume of one so close.

Her eyes flickered over him, equal parts suspicious, curious, and terrified. But she stopped banging on the glass, allowing herself to drift back down through the water so her tail curled against the bottom the tank and she rested on the finned coil of scales. She'd never seen anything like him before...

Carefully, as though afraid he could somehow hurt her through the four inches of glass, she raised her own hand to press against the side of the tank, lining her fingers up with his on the other side of the glass. The webbing between her fingers stretched thin, nearly translucent. She tilted her head at him, strange, floating hair twining around her face as though it had a life of its own.

Words. She understood them, could understand most, but she had never...

The creature's throat convulsed as she clearly tried to speak, lips parted to reveal a flash of sharp, serrated teeth. For several moments, nothing happened. No sound. She closed her eyes as though in pain, then clenched her jaw and tried again.

Her throat bobbed and, slowly, she forced out a soft, surprisingly raspy, "Don't...need to...be...scared..."

Daglobster:
"That's right," he whispered, and he dared to let a rare smile up to the surface as he splayed his fingers just a little wider to match hers. He studied the webbing, followed the line of her arm back to her face, and his eyes widened as he met them through the glass. He hadn't got a very close look at her before but now that she'd slowed, she... she was enchanting.

He could see that the volume of his voice affected her, so he made an effort not to speak too closely to the glass, even pausing to settle more comfortably on one knee. Mechanized joints clicked into place and he leaned his shoulder against the glass to rest against it.

"Sorry, just tired. Cleared a bracket," he said, and managed to widen his smile as he lifted a closed hand to peer at the dents and fresh, rusty stains on his knuckles. Chrome Warrior was a name that actually meant something to him. It was the closest thing he'd ever had to a reputation before the accident, and even though it'd landed him in a reconstruction scheme, well...

"I'm Torien, what's... your name?"

DragonSong:
The creature stared at him for a long moment, studying. Then she tried to emulate his smile—lips closed, as she had learned quickly that her teeth tended to scare people, and when they were scared they lashed out.

Large, liquid black eyes moved over his form as he sank onto one knee, and she even allowed herself to drift closer to the glass, one hand still pressed against it. She tilted her head when he said “cleared a bracket”, confusion plain on her face despite the inhumanity of it. Now that she’d calmed down a bit, the gills along her ribs began to flutter in a rippling, steady rhythm, revealing flashes of pinkish red flesh beneath the green-scaled skin.

“Tor...orr...ee...in .” Her voice was still low and rasping, and it was clear from her wince that it was painful to speak—either because she’d gone so long without doing so, or because her throat just wasn’t built for it in the same way. Still, she forged on.

Shaking her head at him, she offered another small smile and laid a webbed hand in the center of her chest. “No...name...”

Daglobster:
"No name?" he echoed, and his eyes fell a bit to hear that. He shifted a bit to better face this mysterious creature, studying her as she floated a little closer. The movement of her gills caught his eye and his eyes glanced over shapes that were familiar at a base level, but...

His eyes kept going downward, following the movement of her tail. He wasn't afraid of her, per se, but... something about her struck him as unnatural.

He put two fingers against his throat and tried to comfort her with a smile.

"Me too. Hurts if I talk too loud," he offered, and he broke his eyes away from her to look around the base of her tank. No name or anything, just a number.

"82641," he added, and he traced one of the stenciled letters.

"It's not a name, but... Six-Four has a good sound to it," he said, looking back up to her.

DragonSong:
She smiled again for that--not necessarily his shortening of her designated call number, but for the strange spark of kinship that bloomed in her chest when he touched his throat and murmured, "Me too."

She'd never heard that from someone before.

A faint glow pulsed through the markings along her body and she tilted her head the other way, hair swirling through the water around her. "Six...Four," she repeated slowly. Her voice held...some sort of accent, but it was impossible to place. Though still soft, her tone sort of trilled on the "r"s, hissed on "s"s, and lilted its way through the vowels in between, so that "Six-Four" came out sounded a bit more like "See-xa-Fohr".

Again, the markings down her tail glowed blue. She glanced down at herself in a panic and suddenly backpedaled, trying to curl in on herself to cover the light. The light brought attention, and thus far that had never meant anything good.

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