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Without actually seeing myself in the mirror, I stared at my reflection, deep in thought about the encounter.
“Are you ready?” Lady Natoi yelled through the closed door, reminding me of my duties. I pushed all thoughts of the earlier, unnerving encounter aside, and hurried to meet her.
“Good, better.” She scrutinized me from head to toe. “This will do. Now come.”
I followed her like the obedient pet I was up a floor to a balcony, a sort of strato port. I had flown in these vehicles before, but they were still nothing short of amazing to me.
Each was the size of a small SUV, fully automatic, without a driver. They stopped in line like taxis or Ubers, opening their doors to any person approaching and taking said person to any destination they wished.
The windows were darkened to assure the occupants’ privacy, but I was still able to see out and watched a strato liner pass by. Strato liners were like trains or subways, moving through glass tunnels. I would have loved to ride on one of those and look at all the different aliens, but Lady Natoi had declared those were for the lesser class, people of common blood, workers. Making me wonder if the strato gliders were reserved only for the upper class. There were so many of them though, that I couldn’t believe this to be the case.
Emperor Daryus’s palace was covered by a large dome and was the size of a small island, something I noticed when I first came to Pandrax. So far we hadn’t left the dome yet and it didn’t seem as if tonight would be any different.
The strato glider came to a stop at a strato port, the doors opened, and I exited first, helping Lady Natoi out next. Curiously I looked around to see where we were, but didn’t recognize the area. Some kind of boardwalk, reminding me of pictures I’d seen of Venice, ran beside a canal to our left, the strato glider hovered just barely over the dark waterline. To the right was a wide passageway where people walked about like tourists in any city on Earth, only, they were aliens. Stores and restaurants took over the other side of the street.
Even though the idea of this place reminded me of Earth, there was no mistaking that I was on an alien planet. The streets were made from an undefinable white polished material, the same as the walls of the businesses. Streetlights gleamed with a strange halo, strato gliders moved by, and then there were the Pandraxians and other aliens, leaving no doubt that I wasn’t visiting a foreign city on Earth.
“Don’t stare and dawdle. Come.” Lady Natoi pushed me forward, toward one of the larger restaurants.
A droid approached us by the opening doors. “How may I be of assistance, Lady Natoi?”
“Sir Naximus is waiting for us,” she informed the droid in a manner that made it clear she felt put out for having to voice this information to the droid, as if he should have read her social calendar and realized where she needed to be.
Maybe you should invent an app for that, I thought, and nearly snickered but managed to hold it back, which was a good thing, because it would have come out as hysterical, maniacal laughter.
I didn’t feel in any condition to meet two, no, three more, prospective mekarry bonds. I really didn’t. Besides my unnerving encounter with the emperor, some days, like today, I just felt as if I were at the end of my tether. I needed some time to come to grips with the things that had happened, to me, to Earth, but everybody seemed determined not to give the one thing to me I needed the most.
Instead, I was paraded around, taken to stores, dressed and paraded around again, and I was getting a bit sick of it. It was an ungrateful notion, I knew that. I was safe where others had it so much worse than me, and yet, I couldn’t stop resenting the fact that I was being treated like… a broodmare.
“There you are, Lady Natoi,” a Pandraxian rose from a table where he sat with two other men, all of them were deep magenta red, shimmering with the metallic gleam of the Pandraxians. It was easy to see that they were father and sons as the two younger versions of him stood up, one was taller than their father and the other a bit shorter.
“And this must be the human,” the man I assumed to be Sir Naximus said, smiling warmly and curiously at me, the way I was becoming accustomed to.
“Heather Seymour,” I said, putting out my hand.
“It’s their custom,” Lady Natoi explained with a veiled eye roll, just humor her, her voice implied. “You are supposed to shake it.”
Hesitantly, Sir Naximus put his hand around mine and we shook.
“These are my sons, Vodin and Savious,” he introduced and we too shook hands, before Naximus pulled out a chair first for Lady Natoi, then for me.
“How do we know if she is our mekarry?” Savious asked his father, who glared at him in response.
“Mind your manners.”
“Good evening, can I bring you some drinks, sirs and ladies?” a disc-shaped drone arrived, reminding me of a Roomba, just thinner and flying and speaking.
“Vepo will be fine,” Lady Natoi ordered, looking at the men as if daring them to contradict her. I had already noticed that most alcoholic beverages were frowned upon, except at dinner at the palace, which I had attended once.
“I’ll order for you,” Lady Natoi offered generously toward me. “The poor thing is fresh off the ship and doesn’t know much about our customs yet,” she explained to the men.
Just like I did for the rest of the evening, I clenched my jaw and smiled pleasantly. “Thank you, Lady Natoi.”
The need to escape the confines of the palace grew until I couldn’t take it any longer and ordered the rest of my meetings for the day to be cancelled. The hammering inside my head abated some as soon as the words left my mouth and I made my way through the hallways.
Where I was going was anybody’s guess, since I wouldn’t be able to truly escape the palace or my trailing guards. But I needed air. . And with that realization, I suddenly just knew the place I wanted to go to.
The entire hundred and eighteenth floor of my palace had been turned into a large park. Domed ceilings created the illusion of day and night. It was caught in perpetual spring, complete with a large lake—fed by a waterfall and filled with fish. Birds cawed, sang, and flew through the crowns of trees that had long been extinct on Pandrax. Small animals scurried through underbrush or across the paved trails leading through a maze of a make-believe forest, centered around the lake.
