Her Alien Protector: A Sci-fi Romance

Part 46

Ava

"What do you seek," says the strange being, offering a hand.

The sounds of Kayla's approaching footsteps are behind me. "Ava, don't—"

When those luminous blue eyes gaze at me, I'm so intrigued I reach to take the outstretched hand.

At the back of my mind, I wonder what this being's hand might feel like when I touch it. Will it be warm like a human hand or soft like Rigel's feathers? Or could it be prickly or painful or—

Nothing. Although my hand hits where the creature's hand should be, I feel absolutely nothing. Odder yet, my hand completely moves through the being's hand.

I turn my hand, looking at the yellow light around it.

"Oh, it's a hologram," says Kayla.

"I am and was the last of the Xindi," says the bright yellow hologram. Please select which of the following questions you would like answered..."

"Really? A recorded message," grumbles Kayla, stepping away from the Xindi hologram and toward the chamber walls.

"What? This is cool! How often do we get to hear the actual recording from an ancient civilization," I say, excited about what the Xindi hologram might tell us.

"Option 1. history of this structure; option 2. history of the animal guardians of the planet," says the Xindi.

Maybe I'm getting too excited because I can't resist answering the question and making a joke. "Thank you, Alex, I'll take the animal guardians for 2."

"Who is Alex," asks Kayla.

I am having too much fun to stop and explain. Either Kayla gets the reference, or she doesn't. Besides, I want to hear what the Xindi has to tell us.

The Xindi waves its hand at the wall, and it makes me think of a wizard. Pictographs that I had not seen before, little stick people, light up, and then they run, jump, and walk.

Moving pictographs? I glance back and forth between the Xindi and the wall.

"The Xindis were tinkerers, taking our planet's flora and fauna and modifying them to give us what we wanted. One of our most treasured creations involved altering the minds of some of the animals to give us companionship, creating pets."

The Xindi waves his hand and the pictographs with wings flutter about the walls.

It's when Glow Ball growls that I notice the new hologram on the Xindi's shoulders. This second hologram could be Glow Ball's twin; it has the same adorable shape and size as Glow Ball, although it doesn't have the same glowing coloration.

I scoop Glow Ball into my arms. "There's no need to be afraid. The Xindis used to have pets that looked just like you," I say and when that doesn't seem to stop Glow Ball from growling, I hug him.

"Like most inhabitants of a planet that starts to bend their environment around them, some of what we thought made a perfect world came with unpredictable effects. We inadvertently destroyed the protective layer shielding our planet from UV light from our star, causing sickness and even death among the Xindis. As tinkerers we made even more modifications, altering our skins and that of our beloved pets so that they too would live on with us in this new world."

The rahoni hologram starts to glow yellow, just like the Xindi. Finally, Glow Ball stops growling and now struggles to get out of my arms.

I put Glow Ball onto the floor. "Be good."

"What we did not expect was that our pets would acquire the ability to change colors at will and would learn to use this as a communication system between themselves," says the Xindi as his companion rahoni glows red.