This story follows Twice Nuptines 70,000 years later. 

 
Messiah noun \mə-ˈsī-ə\- One who is anticipated, professed, or accepted as a savior or liberator.


If you want to find the secrets of the universe,
think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.
-Nikola Tesla

The room was dark when I awoke.  Pitch black.  It was never this dark in my room, there was a streetlight at the end of my driveway that stayed lit until the Sun registered on it’s light sensors.  Now I was feeling all around the wall which produced no light switch but at last I found the doorknob.  I let myself out of the room, the hall was just as dark as the room.  It was dizzying, like I was going to lose my balance even though my feet were firmly planted on the ground. 

This isn’t my house.

A familiar song echoed with a crackle from somewhere deeper inside the darkness. 

It was one of my favorite songs by the Beatles that I liked—and sang often.  However, this was not John Lennon singing, and a different instrument played the accompaniment.    The voice was competing with a constant hiss and sharp clap of water against a tiled surface. 

My legs went stiff suddenly as the voice became familiar to me then… It was me singing, and that hiss-and-splashy sound was the shower.

Shocked and slightly heated that someone had been spying on and recording my shower time, I pressed into the darkness carefully, thinking each step I took would surely be down a steep staircase.

Feeling around with my hands, I couldn’t find anything that resembled a wall.  As I grabbed for it, I felt a handful of cloth.  It was loose but the more I pressed into it, the more taut it became.  It made it extremely difficult to tell where the hall turned or ended.  It gave me the sense that this building was being remodeled.

“Hello?” I called, my voice sounded as if it traveled through a deep cavern, echoing back.  There was no answer, no stir.  No indication that I was being held captive here, I hadn’t been tied up at all. 

I didn’t feel like I was in danger, I was a tough girl, not small by any means.  Broad shouldered and thick calved.

But there was something off… my eyes at last had adjusted to the darkness.

…Then, I noticed my long reddish blonde waves of hair were arranged neatly about my shoulders in curls.

Stranger still, I was wearing a frilly dress with buttons up the front and a big bow tied in the back, ballet flats with stockings.  I immediately guessed that this was Tayla’s work.  She was notorious for getting me to try on many of her creations, which were usually dresses and something I didn’t usually wear. 

“Tayla?” I called for her.

There, from an opening in the wall off to my right side was a strip of light, welcoming me into a room.  The music additionally seemed to be coming from the room.  I stepped forward toward the light, entering the room.  The room was complete unlike the hallway’s draped blanket walls.  The walls in this room were solid white tiled squares, I had found my way into a simple, square, washroom.  The light was daylight streaming in through an unfinished part of the wall to the right of where I had made my entrance.

The light pointed me to a bathtub in the center of the wall to the left of me.  It reflected off the white floor which brightened the room slightly.

I was drawn to the opening in the wall, padding silently to it in my ballet flats.  I looked out from, standing on my tip toes slightly.  Outside was an orchard in bloom with pink flowers dotting the branches.  I knew instantly, they were bitter almond trees.  Inhaling deeply, I could smell the blossoms sweet aroma in the air.  I saw a flicker of movement perhaps an acre away. 

I struggled to focus on the movement, as it was hazy and steamy in the distance, but it took the shape of a person.  The shape of the person became a tall, healthy, warm reddish-brown tan complexioned man with wide shoulders. His hair was black, and long down his back. I caught a glimpse of a single feather and shiny beads adorned within the locks.

Traditionally the act of wearing feathers was reserved for the bravest warriors. Each feather represented a brave act, having different meanings each. 

Only a certain few were worn in the hair, and it was only during a war. 

Where’s the battle?

He seemed to be moving with great long strides towards the house until a closer tree blocked him from my view again.

Is he the owner of this house?

I was taken in by the warm feeling of late spring, I could hear the bees buzzing in the flowers, inspecting every filament for pollen and feasting hungrily on the nectar produced by the nectaries nestled between the petals.  I felt suddenly safe and warm; calmed by the soft music and the warm spring day view.

My attention was ripped away when I heard a sharp intake of air, like a stuttering gasp, behind me.  It almost sounded as if someone were breathing hard through a fan.

I turned my head back to see behind me but I could see nothing in the darkness. 

“Hello?” I called again.

This feels too real to be a dream…

There wasn’t an answer.  My eyes followed the light back to the front of the tub which created a halo around the bottom of its basin.  However, the light did not stretch far enough up the side, that I could see inside the tub.  Walking over to the large white basin and kneeling down I peaked over the side, half expecting to see a dead body, but my eyes focused on a dark rippled surface.  I curiously placed my palm over the top of the dark round shapes, pulled one out and held it down into the light.  Grapes... but they were nearly the size of ping pong balls.   Some were on the vines still.  The others, too heavy and ripe to stay attached were tumbling off.

I wasn’t curious as to why grapes were in a bathtub, I was curious as to if I were supposed to eat them or squash them down and make wine. 
 

If I’m dreaming, I’ll make the most of it.

Still under the enchantment of the serene scenery just outside, I began humming along with the music as I began to remove my heart dotted stockings and stepped into the tub, bringing my other leg in, testing my weight on the grapes.  A protesting wiggle and throaty whimper escaped from someone beneath them.  A wave of panic came over me; I awkwardly jumped away from the tub, landing on one foot that slipped out beneath me.  I fell on my side, my heart jumping wildly in my chest; I laid there shocked but unhurt.

This isn’t a dream!

Hoping I didn’t do too much damage to the person inside, I scrambled across the floor quickly on my knees and started scooping the massive lime sized grapes out of the bathtub.

Strangely instead of shouting words of encouragement, I spoke in a rhyme that matched up with the singing in the song.

“I’m here to get you out of there. 

All these damn grapes are everywhere.  

Who would even put them here?

Someone from another universe?”

The bathtub became deeper than it originally looked but I was sure I was just imagining it, I couldn’t really tell in this dark.

I need more light! 

As if on cue, out of the corner of my eye I saw the golden strip of light on the ground creep over the rim of the tub.  Then at once it started shining over my right eye.  I blinked and shook my head, I couldn’t escape it regardless of what direction I looked.  I reached up trying to shield it with my grape stained hand against my eye, but it was no use.  I was now blind in my right eye, seeing nothing but white light.

But the grapes began moving, prompting me to plunge my hands back into the grapes.  They squished and popped under the force but I felt nothing of the shape of the person that was beneath the heavy load.

Now the light was blinding both eyes.

The music was growing louder.

I shouted over it, “Give me your hand!”

Before I was completely blinded by the bright rays of sun coming from the small window, a light started to shine beneath the grapes.  The pile of squashed grapes that I had moved over started to tumble down and a bright light emerged in the shape of a hand, reaching out for help.

As I reached out towards the fingers, the walls began to close in around me.  They were no longer tiled walls but the same blankets from the hallway.  The fabric flew over the tub, the hand fought with the fabric, glowing brighter.  For a moment I thought the hand would set fire to the fibers. 

Another sheet snaked its way around me, up over my face, blocking my already failing vision and wrapped around me, restraining my legs and arms.   I fought through the fabric, trying to grab for the hand that waited on the other side.  The man was there suddenly, pulling and ripping the blankets away from my face, bound arms and feet, yet hopelessly as more white sheets kept floating in through the door way.  We both fought with the sheets, me trying to free the person trapped in the tub as he was trying to free me. 

I could hear the beads and shells in his hair clatter together as he yanked and ripped the fabric.  He squatted down beside me, pulling the sheets up from my feet, his hair, long black with small single braids and free tendrils, feathers, shells and beads fell over my knees and tickled my skin.  I lifted my chin up to look at his face, but just as I did, he turned his back to me. 

His breath heaving, his wide shoulders and heavily muscled arms strained under the weight of a thousand sheets of white fabric, destined to swaddle us and bind us together.  His face turned to mine then and our eyes locked briefly before a white sheet shrouded his face and pulled taut, I could only see his sharp nose and jaw features from beneath the cloth, both of his hands went to his face but the five hundred pounds of linen he had been holding back fell on top of us then, and yet, the light still pierced through the fabric, blinding me completely.

I felt like I flipped upside down, and I tumbled blindly, out of my body for a moment, I saw myself asleep on my bed, fighting with my own sheets I had purposely tucked in around me the night before.  I felt I was falling then, and before I could even blink, I jolted awake, with that unnerving feeling of losing your balance.   

The sound of my heartbeat throbbed in my ears.  Squinting to block out the rays streaming in through the curtains on the east wall of my bedroom, the sun shone through my eyelids, blinding me still, yet waking me from my musical, fruity, bathtub nightmare.  I turned my head away from the blinding sun and gently rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.

The song continued to its ending.  I tried to time my breathing to the tempo to calm myself down.  It was a recording I had done of myself singing in the shower while my friend, Cassidy played accompaniment with his zither.

With a sigh of relief, I was thankful it was just a dream, but I blamed my overactive imagination.  It was recorded with the intention Cassidy would edit the song and master it later, but we both got caught up in our courses at school and it was mostly forgotten about.

The zither he plays sounds almost like a cello and banjo in one instrument.  I’ve insisted he could make it big but he always modestly brushes it off as a hobby.  He plays for his older sister’s belly dance class, but first and foremost he taught youths self control, self defense and Parkour.  It was a sort of parkour/martial arts fusion class that could train one to incapacitate a predator then escape to a safe place. 

He used to live in a nearby cabin for a while and was my neighbor when I first moved here two years ago.  I met him on his birthday.  He was sitting outside his cabin playing his zither and swearing about how the cold kept forcing him to retune his steel strings.  He was inebriated but I accepted his invitation to go inside and listen to him play.  I met his sister and her friends who were happy to show me some of their tribal belly dance choreography.    

Cassidy and I had been on a few dates here and there before and had fun together but we kept it friendly usually.

There was one date in particular that sealed out friendship.  A hot headed drunk decided to take a liking to me the moment we walked in the door of the bar.  At first I thought it was a case of mistaken identity, but when he put his arm around me and pulled me toward him calling me his “Ginger kitten” I knew he was just drunk.

Cassidy swiftly took me by the hand and twirled me in a circle, out of the drunkard’s grasp.  The man sized Cassidy’s small frame up.  Cass was easily a foot shorter and at least 60 lbs lighter.  In a rage, the man grabbed for Cassidy who only effortlessly dodged his attack, sending the man to the floor.  The man got up and staggered back over to us, his weight the driving force behind his speed.  Cassidy held his fists out causing the man to run, gut first into them, which knocked the wind out of him. 

We were asked to leave even though we hadn’t been the aggressor.  We never went out for karaoke again.  Instead he bought his own set up, and brought it over whenever I threw parties at home which I hadn’t done in nearly a year.

I should have another party soon.

I hated laying in bed awake, especially on a sunny day.  Sitting up, I pulled my arms over the front of me and stretched my shoulders and twisted back and forth to stretch my spine.  I succeeded in knocking over a very crooked stack of books off the nightstand onto the blankets along with several pages of notes. 

The notes were from my old research for my thesis dissertation I had published in the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology (IJBET) three years ago, when I was 24.  I was reviewing them a few nights ago out of a sudden inspiration to improve upon the design blueprints of a Nanobot I built when I was 23.

I was currently taking the last of my remaining required courses to start my residency period to become a licensed Osteopathic surgeon.  I already had my MS in Biomedical Engineering, and was awarded a PhD in Bio-robotics at the age of 25.

Dad liked to joke that I wasn’t the youngest doctor in the world only because he couldn’t afford to send me to medical school when I was 5.

It had been a long few days of being stuck inside this cabin by myself.  Not literally stuck, but I had locked myself away to study, which was not uncommon for me.  I even had a reputation among my colleagues about my reclusive studying habits.

But today I craved the company of another human. 

That’s probably why it seemed like I was stuck inside that house in my dream…

Here, in Alaska, it was easy to stay inside when it was cold and rainy outside, but now that the sun was shining, I felt a strong urge to feel it on my skin.  I’ve been studying for final exams which were still a couple weeks away but I was determined to finish school early.  I was anxious to begin my residency and work towards becoming a cardiovascular surgeon.

I pushed aside the books, some of which I had taped to together across their spines with special painters tape so as not to damage their covers.  I had written page numbers on some of the pages to look up in the books they were taped to for reference and research.  

Taping them together made it easier for me to keep them in the same place, unable to be stacked in any other way than right next to its corresponding book.  My friends sometimes picked at the tape which was a huge pet peeve of mine.  If the tape should come loose, I risked having to find which book it was taped to, and worse lose the connection.  This reason made me keep these books in my bedroom, under my bed usually.  I was given the suggestion to simply photocopy the pages I needed, but the books themselves held more information that I referred to than just the pages I had marked. 

I had only taped together at most five books, but my friends sometimes alluded that I had taped an entire shelf of books together.

I heaved a fixed together stack of four books: The Human Anatomy, Microbiology, Biomedical Mechanics, and Biorobotics, off the bed, onto the ground and tucked them beneath the bed. 

My hand fell upon the book I was reading last night.  Last night was a night off I had promised myself three days ago.  I put my theories aside and indulged my love of Greek mythology and was reading The Odyssey, again, for the seventh time.

I touched the spine of the book; why couldn’t I have dreams about being a Greek goddess or siren, a creature of the skies.  A lucky nymph maybe that became the plaything of a very rich and beautiful person… 

Why in the world a bathtub full of grapes and a glowing hand reaching from it?  What of that man in my dream?  Did I know him from somewhere? 

I wonder if he’s single.

I laughed at myself and swung my legs over to the edge of the bed, placing my feet on to the carpet.  Standing, I went to the window and pulled aside the right curtain to survey the sky.

Three weeks of icy rain in the lower lands and icy snow up here in the foothills just needed one loud windy night to bring in this crisp cloudless morning.  It was the first sign of a beautiful spring day of early April in Alaska.  There was a cold snap, about 36 years ago, back in 2025, nearly 10 years before I was born.   There were theories of global warming before that but the decade long cold snap destroyed the concept and scientists began studying more possible factors to climate such as the amount of radiation we received from the sun during its solar maximum cycles combined with volcanic activity.  They instead called it Climate Change. 

And it was changing; from one extreme to the other.  The summers were hot and the winters were freezing, it snowed in deserts across the globe and the ocean would rise in the summer.     

Here in Anchorage, earthquakes have become more frequent.  As the summers warm up, the permafrost begins melting and in turn loosening the soil into a soggy mess which makes it easier for the ground to shift and settle.  Winter is lasting far longer into spring than it should, and summer seems to rear its head in between a week of frost.  One day it’s a few degrees below freezing and the next it’s in the high 80’s.  Now it’s year 2061, nearly 50 years after the Mayan’s prophesized the end of the world.  Some theorists believe that the Mayan Calendar was miscalculated and the real end of the world was still on its way.  However, people have been predicting the end of the world for thousands of years and none of them have been right since.

I sighed happily, it’s been a couple of weeks since I've seen the sun and I was unsure of how long it would stick around.  Letting the curtain drop back into its closed position, I walked over to my stereo by my bed, and turned it up louder.  I felt the vibrations of the strings of the zither rumbling from the speakers.  Cassidy’s strumming fueled a beat that was easy to dance to.  It made it easy for me to brush aside the negative feelings of my dream and embrace the good happening in my reality.

My eyes darted to my phone on my nightstand as I fathomed calling him to tell him I was thankful for his beautiful music.  Though if I were to call him up right now at this hour, he might think I needed him for something important rather than an innocent thank you and I decided I’d casually mention it the next time I saw him.

Opening my closet, I lifted my yoga mat from the shoe rack and began shaking out my limbs as I walked into the den of my cabin.  Yoga was part of my morning ritual.  My grandparents on my mother’s side were both yogis and with their influence, I too picked up the skill of balancing meditation. 

The wall to my left had two large windows on both sides of the front door that faced to the east.  I liked putting my yoga mat on the ground near there for morning yoga and to see the sun.

Moving my feet over the middle of the mat, I took a deep breath and released it.  I breathed deeply several times until I felt the tingling sensation of oxygenated blood flowing beneath my skin.  My head felt clear and I closed my eyes, inhaling softly yet deeply, I raised my hands above my head and then exhaled as I began the Surya Namaskara routine my grandmother taught me.  As I got down to the sphinx pose, my eyes roamed over my posters and pictures of my family on the wall.  I stared straight ahead, feeling the muscles in my arms and upper back stretch.

The posters consisted of a few prints of Leonardo da Vinci’s work that I bought over the years of schooling in Italy.  I visited the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Florence many times.  I had a number of reproductions of Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of his inventions and a print of his most famous Mona Lisa, which is said to actually be a painting he made of himself as a woman.  I found the story behind the painting very interesting as was a lot of his work.  I loved the unique and mysterious style of da Vinci’s art.  I also had a print of his painting of St. John the Baptist.  It was another favorite of mine.  In this one, St. John was posed in an untraditional fashion, his head was tilted to the side, his eyes staring out of the corner and his smile seemed very provocative.  Stranger still, the hand that he held his staff in was pointing to the sky in sort of a “come hither” gesture.   

My eyes then rested on the picture hanging on my wall of my father and me, hugging at his wedding on a cruise ship in Seattle four years ago.  There was a faint prick of guilt as I realized I had lost track of how long it had been since dad and I last spoke. 

Five months ago, maybe? 

The photo of my mother hung next to that one.  She was lying in a hospital bed and I was asleep in her arms, I was about one year old in the photo.  My mother had battled a heart condition that she had had since she was born.  She died when I was three.  When you looked at the photo of her holding me, the smile she wore looked healthy and happy.  She had the same high cheekbones, a thin elegant nose, green eyes and dark blond hair that my Grandmother Mindy had.  I had inherited my Aunt’s red, wavy hair from my father’s side. 

I switched from the Sphinx pose to the downward facing dog while exhaling then inhaled as I stepped forward with my left foot to rest even with where my hands were placed on the mat.  I slid my right leg as far back as I could, as if to do the splits but I kept my left foot planted on the ground, stretching out my leg in a very low lunge.

This was not usually a difficult pose to keep my balance on but I was suddenly rocking side to side.  I noticed it wasn’t just me rocking but the chandelier in the hall swayed as well.  The house system chirped as it too, sensed the earthquake.  The screen by the door blinked in red “3.8 earthquake” with the option to call for emergency assistance.  I remained still in my “Anjaneyasana” pose, unfazed by the earthquake, stretching my right leg to its limit then switched feet, stretching my left leg back, supported on my right foot.

I wouldn’t need respond to the prompting because it was not a large earthquake.  Though, 4.0 was a decent sized earthquake, people only really worried when it was 5.5 or more.

Once again, I looked at the picture of my mother.  After she passed away, dad chose to move us up to Alaska to be near his only sibling, my Aunt Helena.  I had just turned four when we moved up here.  My mother’s mother, Grandma Mindy, argued that Alaska was not the place for a little girl to grow up, and that we should stay in Washington where civilization existed easily.  My father refused, insisting that Alaska was just fine, after all, that’s where he grew up. 

And my childhood was far from lacking, it was rich in dance, choir, art, archery, hiking, viewing the northern lights, and midnight suns.   My father was a great single father, he worked a lot and taught me how to hunt and live off the land.  When my dad couldn’t watch me, Aunt Helena stayed with us or we stayed over at her house.  She was the head of a company that mined gold not just in Alaska but she had bought land in different countries as well.  My father even worked for her off and on for a while.

My fondest memory of my Aunt was when she had called my father and I over to visit and have dinner with her a few days after we had moved here.  She had sent me a stuffed animal prior to us moving here.  It was a “Mr. Pandajijii” plush from the cartoon “Thank you, Sincerely” that I enjoyed watching as a child.  It taught children Japanese and about Japanese culture.

When we knocked on the door she called for us to come in, but when we got inside, she was nowhere to be found.  I followed him into every room and we both called for her.  Then when we returned to the dining room where the table had been set, she jumped out from behind the curtains and said, “Hello Hello, konbanwa!” In a voice which sounded uncannily like Mr. Pandajijii.  I was shocked yet delighted at the same time, causing me to leap back unsteadily and fall to the ground in surprise.  At the same time, my shoulders jerked upward so hard that I lost my grasp on the plush Panda and he leapt into the air. 

My father kneeled down to look me over and then turned to his sister, his look clearly displeased with her.  She had succeeded in frightening him as well, but Aunt Helena simply said, “Lighten up, Hagan, I saw a little hint of a smile!” though he only quickly took her aside to tell her in a not-hushed-enough tone, to be kind to me because I was only a little girl and had just lost my mother.

I stared up at my aunt, not wanting her happy smile to leave her face, not wanting her to hug me with tears in her eyes.  My Aunt looked at where I had fallen and smiled.  She held her hand out to me, helped me up and combed my hair with her fingers.  “We should eat before the salad gets warm and the soup gets cold!” she said.

I felt a weight lift from my tiny, four year old shoulders then.  Aunt Helena did not remind me I had lost my mother, unlike the other people that had been around me.  All the other adults I had known at that time were mostly doctors and friends of my parents.  They often spoke to me with pity and unsmiling faces because I didn’t have my mother at such a crucial time in my very young life.  However, in my innocent, child mind, I only wanted to be away from the unsmiling faces and pitiful words of sorrow and sadness, and I wanted to be happy and laughing.

And I had found my happiness and laughter with my Aunt Helena, the loud, fearless, robust woman who always had a smile on her face for me, who embraced the very essence of happiness.

It wasn’t difficult for her to make me smile and every time I did, she remarked, “There’s that great, big ‘Rosenthal’ smile.”

It was true, I did have my dad’s wide smile which I sometimes felt self conscious about.  I thought, I might smile too wide if I laughed and it would frighten someone.  I once told my dad my concern about my big mouth and he laughed at me, saying I’d eventually grow into it.  He was right mostly, I never frightened anyone and I’ve been told I have a good straight smile; I get more compliments on my eyes than I do my smile though.  My mother and I are similar from the tip of the nose up to our blonde hair though mine is a little more strawberry like my Aunts.  Even though I had my father’s smile, he insisted I looked just like my mother whenever I smiled.

My dad was living in Washington now with his new wife and my half-brother.  I stayed in Alaska.  I felt like I belonged up here in the “frontier”.  I felt almost as if I were needed here because I was one of few who could live harmoniously with it.

Just then, the sound of crunching gravel down the road interrupted the calming meditative thoughts of my life.  

“An aftershock?” I said to no one, but seemingly the house system answered back with a friendly cricket sounding chirp followed by a crackle over the two way speakers that were placed in different points of the ceiling of the cabin.

“Groundskeeper Jake here, are you alright in there Miss Deililah?”

The speakers on the ceiling lit up with a flashing green light, flashing green indicated it was getting a feed from a grounds mobile unit.  The house systems in the cabins where I lived, here, were all linked to the main office so that there was an instant two way connection.  It was also part of their mobile units as well, they could drive by any cabin and put in the corresponding code to the house system to open a communication link instantly.

“Good morning Jake.” I called to the nearest two way speaker, it was attached to the top of the window frame, barely noticeable aside from the blinking green square of light around it.  I moved my feet back together, and stood, “I didn’t think you would be checking on people over a 4.0 earthquake.”

“It is a good morning indeed, the sun is shining, Miss Delilah.  I was already out and about, salting the walkways and figured there wasn’t any harm in checking on people.” He answered.

“Have a good day, Jake.  I hope the rest of the check up goes well for you.” I said, walking over to the main screen on the wall near my bedroom door.

“And you, Doc.” Jake said and I pushed the ‘close connection’ option on my screen.

The cabin I lived in from “Countryside Cabins”, a large Cabin campground, was owned by a friend of my dad’s.  Tourists would pay a premium of $150 a night for the cabin I lived in but I was able to work out a deal for $755 a month.  It was great, not that it was one of the ones with a view of Anchorage below but I liked it because it was somewhat secluded.  Not just liked it, but I loved it, whenever I had a group of people over, we could get pretty loud without bothering any neighbors.  The cabin itself was up to date with a whole home control system for everything from dimming the lights to setting the temperature for the floor in the bathroom.  The vaulted ceilings made plenty of room for the loft up the stairs.  Just down the stairs from the loft was the door to my bedroom, the bathroom was on the opposite wall of the bedroom.

Strange enough, the bathroom had a funny way of drawing a crowd, ever since Cassidy found the acoustics of the small room to be very nice.  He’d bring his zither in there and play music and people would sit on the sink cabinets or pile some towels up to sit and listen.  The shower curled around behind the wall that the sink was on, so the showerhead and sink were back to back, sharing the wall.  This architectural design was called a “snail shower” because it was a spiraled hallway, like the shell of a snail.  I believed the sound following the conch like curve had something to do with the richness of the acoustics.  It was usually the first thing people marveled about when I gave them a tour of the cabin. 

I too obsessed over it, making sure every grouted square was as pristine clean as the day it had been laid.  I keep telling myself that I want to buy a small cleaning bot for the bathroom but after looking at the prices of some of them it made me want to build one myself.  It wouldn’t be too complicated, it only required some time, a month at the most and it would be a lot cheaper.  Instead, I continued to clean the bathroom and complain to myself about it.

The living room had a fireplace, the kitchen was situated somewhat in the middle of the room and a large sized upstairs loft where I’d sometimes let a friend sleep but usually used it as my library and study.  Often, my books would follow me down the stairs, into my bed and sometimes, depending on the friend; they’d follow me down too.  My room was just below the loft.  The whole cabin sat on a1/4th acre of land with a wooden fence and evergreen shrubs and trees encircling the property. 

… And once you opened the door to the outside, you couldn’t help but marvel at the Alaskan landscape.  The high latitude sunlight has a way of casting dramatic shadows across the entire scenery which can’t be seen anyplace else.

I admired the view of the mountains so much so that I painted them from time to time.  Never melting snow and glaciers were just a ten minute drive up the mountains which was convenient for any artist craving a view of the typical snowy Alaskan terrain.  

However the thing I loved painting most was female bodies and features.

My love for drawing and painting female figures started from the innocent age of five.  My Aunt Helena was often my subject; she would watch me whenever my dad was working.  She would bring magazines over to our house so she could read them while I drew her over and over.  She also would let me keep some of the magazines so I could draw the women in them too.  I loved the gentle slopes and curves of painting a woman’s body.  Men had boxy bodies, no real waist definitions and were nearly straight up to the chin, with no beautiful voluminous breasts for interest of landscape.

I appreciate the male figure of course but I love the female figure the most.  My father tried buying me dolls but I didn’t play with them much.   I left them in their boxes.  I instead played with them in my imagination.  I drew them with different heights, face expressions, face features, nose shapes, eye shapes, body shapes.

I could draw them up in beautiful ball gowns strolling with a group of friends in their own unique body shapes and own dresses and colors.  It became more than a hobby for me, it became a source of income before I had reached the age of 10.  I had an ever expanding collection of digital images that could be bought online.  When you get involved with the World Wide Web, you suddenly have access to millions of ideas and people who are willing to pay to have their imagination brought to life in a painting for them.  The skill I mastered at ten helped pay my way to attend school in Italy at the age of 16. 

Though I loved the female form, and drawing it, I was attracted to thoughtfulness, special characteristic quirks, and real human emotion.  I personally feel that it’s not the gender that determines the likability of someone; it’s the mind and the personality.  It is the logic and creativity of their thoughts and not just their words but their actions that really matter.

Thankfully I figured that out when I was younger and gullible.  I was wrapped around the finger of an older guy named Troy, for a year at the age of 16.  I liked him because I thought he was brave, strong, and handsome.  I had serious puppy love for him.  He had aspirations of joining the military and was interested in combat robotics.  I had aspirations of becoming a doctor and working with medical robotics at the time so we had that in common.  However, there were often times when we’d talk that I would go off about something about art or science and he would quickly become bored with the conversation.

Despite him not enjoying our conversations he still asked me to marry him.  However over time, more and more he disliked my infatuation with painting and drawing.  He bought me books on robotics for me to read so I no longer “wasted time” on painting and drawing. 

Then, one day he became so furious with me because he had caught me staring.  It was true.  I had been staring at people, the women, any sharply dressed individuals, the clouds and the scenery.  He said I needed to fix my staring problem and focus on our future together.  I couldn’t understand why he was so against it, I thought maybe he was jealous.

I don’t know if he was just mean spirited or he thought mocking me would change my natural behavior.  All it did was make me feel like there was something wrong with me.  Then I began dreading not being able to make him happy which ruined maintaining my own happiness.  He wanted my attention on him at all times and to focus on robotic technology, the thing he was interested in.  Though I was interested in robo-tech as well, I had a love for art and health science.  He believed we would soon be integrated into robots and I insisted that there would need to be a lot of scientific research before that happened.

I gave it a try, for him, giving up the things I loved.  After a year of being treated like I was a child and constantly told I needed to focus only on robot science to get ahead in life, I didn’t feel like I would be happy if I married him.  The logical explanation was I was right for him but he was terrible for me and I needed to break it off and find someone just as enamored with me as I, them.  I needed someone who was in love with my staring problem and love for drawing the beautiful, female form.

When I broke up with him, he begged for me to work it out with him but I knew I wasn’t the one that needed any work.  He was demanding and self centered.  He was the one that didn’t care about my passions.  He never gave me time for myself so giving him a second chance would be rewarding him.  I would not reward him for all the times he made me feel strange or my thoughts insignificant. 

The door to freedom was much more tempting than getting back into a relationship that needed a serious turn around and I did not want to wait for it.  I didn’t want to change him.  I wanted to change where I was going and what I was doing in my life.  I hardly even knew who I really was at 16.  I needed to do the things I wanted to do instead of have someone tell me what they wanted me to do.

No one really has time for anyone unpleasant that ceaselessly demands attention from them and within the first week of being single, I began selling an invention I had been working on since I was ten.  I could have begun selling it sooner if I hadn’t been so distracted by my teenage hormones and Troy’s handsome smile.

It was a simple concept.  Instead of using a large dishwasher to wash many dishes you simply fed the dish into one of four slots on the front of a machine the size of a microwave.  Each slot had its own shape for different dishes, plates, bowls, cups and cutlery.  The machine would pull the dish through a high pressure wash and heated steam clean.  It would then emerge from the side, clean, dry and slightly warm within ten seconds.  It did away with having to hand rinse dishes first and it was environmentally friendly because it didn’t need soap. 

There was no waiting for a long cycle to clean a load of dishes.  They were instantly dry and ready to be used again.  Whatever food debris from the dishes was collected into a receptacle and could be emptied and thrown away or used for compost.  The first model came with its own set of dishes but with more tinkering, I was able to get it to accept a wide range of dishes, added a gentle stemware wash option and a silverware compartment that could clean a set of 20 in 30 seconds.  A plate took less than 5 seconds to clean.

When I was a 10, I had called it the “Dishwasher 5000” but at 17, I had patented it as “DW 5000”.  I was very successful selling it to many restaurants and it inspired me to make the “SS 5000” or the “Stewpot Soaker 5000” which could fit pots and pans, large and small and clean them in 15 seconds. 

After my success, Troy tried to rekindle our relationship but I had decided to go to school in Italy and I wouldn’t commit to a long distance relationship.  Besides, I had become much wiser on my own without him.  I had recently read a scientific study done on couples from all over the world.  The couples agreed to have MRIs done to determine what parts of their brain lit up when asked questions about their relationship.  The couples tended to fall into three types.

Type one was an actual caring and want of well being for each other, their brains would light up areas that suggested long term attachment, comfort, low stress and someone they recognized as their best friend.  It seemed to be the most successful kind of relationship though not completely safe from separating.  Type two was steered by lust.  There was great attraction but lust had a tendency to suggest short term attachment for at least one of them.  It was stressful and rampant with jealousy as the two struggled to find emotional understandings between them.  It was the least successful kind of relationship. 

The last type lit up parts of the brain that had feelings of entitlement but also showed long term attachment.  There were no real feelings of care or kindness but a feeling of owning each other with jealousy.  They seemed to be together only because they didn’t want someone else to be with them.  It was evidently animalistic in a way, like how dogs sometimes protect their territory but don’t see their territory as their mate.  Some couples who were physically violent toward each other had more entitlement mentality than couples who had never been physically violent toward each other.  This relationship couldn’t be determined to be successful due to the verbal and physical abuse, but it was often long term.

I feel true love is accepting me for everything I am and letting me do the things that keep me happy.  Love must be comfortable and caring.  Love is joy.  If I did not feel joy being with someone, I would simply disconnect myself from them.  When I told Troy this, he said that love like that didn’t exist and there would always be complications, but I was skeptical.  It wasn’t that there should never be complications but true love and joy would exist even through complications.

Now, 10 years later, I was living for my own happiness and it felt great.  I was living back in Alaska and enjoying my last year of college, meeting people who inspired me and were inspired by me.  I wouldn’t change anything going on in my life right now.

My skin felt hot as the blood flowed through my body.  My heart was beating at a healthy, steady pace.  I was grateful to be alive.  The sun was shining and it seemed spring had finally come.

A curly haired figure zipped in front of the window on the back door blocking the light through it.  At once, the light rapping of two knocks followed by three in rapid succession pattered against the wooden frame of the door.  The familiar knock brought a smile to my lips and I hurried to make myself presentable for her because I knew once I opened the door, she’d take my breath away. 

Sliding the elastic tie from the end of my braid I combed my fingers through my elbow length strawberry blonde hair.  “Hey Delilah!” she called against the door, “your gate fell over… probably in that earthquake we just had.”

I glanced in the reflective screen on the house system computer one last time before I opened the door.

Tayla, a beautiful woman who I’ve been seeing quite regularly since meeting her three months ago stood against the door frame.  She was shorter than me, not by very much.

Her face was beautifully made up, flawless brown skin glowing with gold on the inner corner of her eyelids swept across blending into a dark brown on the outer corner.  Smart little lines of black kohl lined the ridge of her eyelids.  Her lashes were perfectly curled, giving her brown eyes a shadowy, sultry and exotic look.  Her lips were natural but glossy and they parted into a smile as her eyes made a quick darting path over my pajamas and plain, makeup-less face.  Her dark tight curls were pinned up behind a gold colored bandana, swaying in the breeze.  Wrapped around her neck was a bright teal scarf.  With a white fur trimmed brown vest and gold knitted long sleeve shirt beneath it, she wore brown wool leggings with a vertical twist pattern, tucked into her boots.

Though things between her and I have been very casual; there are some moments, like right now, that I wanted to inspect every item of clothing, admire her dark eyes, look at her from different angles all at arms length, imagining painting her in different perspectives.  She was stunning and it was a new feeling to me whenever I saw her in her impeccable style.  I loved her serious attention to detail.  Today was a lovely pairing of gold, browns and a smart bit of teal.  Her knee high socks were teal, peaking above her dark brown boots.  Her boots looked heavy but stylishly tailored to the shape of her calf.  They must have cost a fortune, yet she could afford it.  She was doing well in the fashion industry.  She had a lot of people buying her designs, online, and in sections in some boutiques that keeps her floating well above most of her peers.

“Well good morning my lovely lady friend!” She said as if she were pleasantly surprised to see me in my pajamas, “I had a dream about you last night!”  She smiled a cute little sideways grin, but she didn’t go into detail what the dream was about.  Instead she pointed a thumb behind her in the direction of my fence that must have collapsed sometime last night from the strong winds or in the recent earthquake, “Hey, I wanna ask you something.” She said

“I’ll help you with your fence… If…you’ll cook me up a delicious dinner tonight! Just you and me…” she seemed to hesitate, “err…I mean…” she said, as if to think of a better way to ask me to improve the chances of my answer being affirming, “I know it’s early but… I wanted to hike together and maybe catch a male for dinner, if they’re out.” Succeeding in not asking me a question at all but stating what she wanted.  Her eyes looked back and forth into mine.  She turned her head and squint her eyes a bit, puckering her lips slightly.

Ah, this girl was all about body language.  Very cute.

Her eyes peered at me out of the corners, with a hint of concern, as if she, herself, was unsure of the question I think that I’m being prompted to answer.

Of course I’ll take you for a hike in the mountains, lady.

She wasn’t exactly dressed to go hunting but I knew I could keep her well hidden long enough for me to catch something.

‘Catch a male’ is her term for hunting male spruce grouse and her want was mainly for their tail feathers, which are colorful.  She used them sometimes in her clothing designs and jewelry making.  Not that she didn’t like the term hunt, or that she was vegetarian or anything but she’d just rather call it “catch” them.  I found that endearing about her.  Sort of like fishing I suppose since that’s what her father did for a living. 

Ever since that hike where I “caught” a male with my arrow, she said she’d never thought to get a spruce grouse for the beautiful feathers.  It also provided us with dinner for the night, and I happened to be out of meat in my fridge these past few days.  I had been eating yam soup and naan for nearly every meal.  Not that I couldn’t afford to go to town and get meat from the grocery store, I just found it easy to do without.

 “Mysterious lady,” she called me, I smiled in amusement.  She called me mysterious when I was being quiet which was often, though it’s only because I was only thinking.  “Will you take me for a hike in the mountains?” she asked at last.

I shivered as a breeze picked up, “Come inside already!” I said and tugged her coat pockets.

“Thank you! It’s about time you woke up!” she giggled through her words, as she half stumbled over the threshold, embraced and tickled me which I responded by laughing and backing away until she trapped me against the sofa and threatened to throw me over it.

“Tayla! I’m plenty awake already!” I squealed and wriggled to get out of her grasp.
She stopped tickling and raised her eyebrow at me tilting her head slightly.

“Well! What took you so long, Miss Mystery!”

“I was just admiring your outfit.” I said with a sheepish grin. 

She giggled and nodded, as she adjusted her vest, pulling it down a bit, “Don’t you just love these boots?”

I nodded with an excited smile, just as I was about to ask her where she got them, she started on me again.

“So?  I help you fix the fence and you’ll take me for a hike, right?” her eyes never left mine as she started taking her scarf off and draping it over the back of my leather arm chair.

“You broke my fence didn’t you?” I asked, hiding my smirk and feigning concern.

She let out a surprised laugh, which sounded like “Ohohaha!” and she started walking toward me with menacingly tickling fingers.

I squeaked “I’m already stretched and warmed up just give me a few minutes to change!” as I hurried back into my room to change into my hunting clothes.

She clapped her hands together excitedly, as she usually did when I was up to going on adventures with her.  She laughed then shook her head at the large stack of books taped together in the seat of the arm chair, and set it aside to sit down on coffee table. 

I was excited to get out into the sun since it had been so long since I last felt it.  Getting away from the books and studying I did over the past few days felt like a good way to clear some brain fog.

As for Tayla, books were a bore to her and preferred being out, discussing high fashion, complimentary colors and designs, and studying at the same college as I.  She’s currently working on a city play that her cousin is in as one of the costume designers which is also probably why she wants the feathers.  She likes to say that fashion is similar to fishing because it has to be colorful and attractive to get bites. 

I wonder if I being a hunter’s daughter was the reason why I was often the quiet one, noticing my surroundings while being unnoticed, camouflaged, picking the weakest to prey on. Though I think most of the time I just notice things that others do not.

Even though she was spirited and loud, while I was tranquil and soft-spoken, our dynamic together was stable and we respected our differences.  Though from time to time, she would try to encourage me to go out to more parties.  However, I would encourage her to stay home and work on her projects as well.   

After pulling some warm brown pants over my thermals, a white, long sleeve shirt and brown vest I ran a brush through my hair, then, I was out to the living room where Tayla looked me over and nodded approvingly.

“Beautiful! And beautifully fast!” She stood, wrapped her scarf back around her neck and helped me into my coat then pointed to my compound bow and quiver.  Grabbing it, we headed out the door, arm in arm. 

With her help, we attempted to right the fence but only managed to steady it against a few large rocks and a bush.  Giving up, we headed to her truck.  She opened the passenger door and I slid in.

There were two coffees and scones waiting on the dash.

As Tayla opened her door, I tsked, “You were so sure you would convince me to come with you that you bought two coffees? Thank you.” I said, surprised and touched at her thoughtfulness.

“I know you can’t say no to me Lilah, but, you’re very welcome.” She replied.

I was about to chime in and say I just turned her down a couple nights ago when she asked me to a concert to see a band but decided that would probably just hurt her feelings.  I happily bit into my scone instead, and hummed in delight as the light floral taste of pineapple and honey filled my mouth.

“Actually if you had said no, I would have used it to bribe you.” A smile played on the corner of her lip.  I contained a giggle behind a mouth full of sweet pineapple scone.

The mountains we were about to hike around loomed in the distance, fog hugging the spruce forest surrounding it.  The snow that never melts at the top looked thin and the glaciers were much smaller than 3 years ago.  This cabin campground used to be a lot more populated with tourists then and the luxury log cabins would bring people wanting to get that “out in the wilderness” feel.   Not getting as many tourists these last few years meant they were now being rented out as apartments which were easily affordable and not a terribly long drive to Anchorage for college, besides I took most of my classes online.

I just finished my scone when we reached the end of the trail in her truck.  We had to make the rest of the journey on foot but it wasn't far, we only needed to get into the forest, not really climb up into the ice.  I took a big gulp of creamy coffee.  Tayla went to work on her scone and coffee, looking over and smiling.  

“I’ve got a good feeling about today,” she shared with me after she finished her scone.  She wiped her fingers on a napkin then drank down her coffee.  She seemed to be in a hurry because as soon as she was done, she quickly let herself out and started stretching her legs, preparing for the hike.   She lifted her pant leg, exposing her soft, brown skin, and tugged her wool sock up over her knee, tightening the laces of her boots.
Her socks were the teal version of the ones she had given me.  They were gingham patterned making them a peculiar choice for socks.  Her socks brought my thoughts back to when I met Tayla at a fashion show four months ago held inside the shopping mall in Anchorage.

It was these same bright teal socks that I had met her in.  She had them pulled up over her knees where her white boots came just below her knee.  She wore a white jumper with the teal silk scarf around her neck.  I had seen her before at the University but I hadn’t met her until the fashion show.  I watched her directing the models and helping them into her designs.  There was something fascinating about the way she worked.  She was thorough in inspecting the outfits, making sure they were perfect before she sent them down the runway.  I noticed most of the models towered over her, she was short but not meek.  I loved her form and her demeanor, she was special, different.  About halfway through her show, she caught me staring at her and we took turns stealing glances at each other.  

After the show, she was the one who approached me first, telling me that I had this special feature about me.

She had stepped closer to me, her face was immaculately made up, her thick eyelashes curled, soft beiges and pinks on her eye lids and red lipstick.  I felt a rush of heat to my face as she inspected me as if I were one of her models.  Looking my face over, she reached out as if she was going to touch my hair and I unintentionally reacted by gasping.  I wasn’t used to strangers reaching out and touching me, maybe because I gave off a “don’t touch me” vibe, not intentionally though.

Tayla’s lips puckered into an ‘O’ at my reaction and instead placed her hand under her chin, sensing my apprehension, smiling she said, “I am in love with how your hazel eyes have golden-brown specks in them.  There are a lot of gorgeous colors I could imagine you in.”

She then remarked on my womanly curves, saying she knew the perfect dresses for my figure.  She said because she was thin and petite that dresses didn’t suit her and she always wore pants, or shorts.  Indeed, she did not have large womanly curves but she had an eye for tailored clothing which worked well with her shape that suggested her femininity.  She often wore scarves or button up blouses, and certain shirts that had gathered fabric in the front that accentuated her womanly silhouette.

Shortly after meeting, she suggested we grab a cup of coffee together and we soon found we had a lot in common.  We both had a love for drawing the female figure and our imaginations were limitless together.  We both loved to dance and we both had a love for nature.  We’d been constantly in each other’s company since we met, that is, whenever we weren’t working, studying or in class.

Though we held hands while we shopped, and I humored her whenever she wanted me to try on her designs, she had never suggested anything more.  We gave each other back massages, and had movie nights and sleepovers.  We hadn’t kissed and I believed it was because of a drunken dare at a party we had been to a couple weeks after we had met.  Someone tried to get us alone in a closet but I was quick to suggest it was a cheesy way to share a first kiss.  Maybe that comment squashed any romantic feelings, but I wasn’t in a hurry.  I liked her so much as a friend, I didn’t want to push her into intimacy either…

I know that the moment she feels comfortable enough to kiss me would mean she was influenced only by her heart and nothing else…
even if my curiosity was killing me.

I wanted to see the expressions on her lovely face she made, maybe I could capture it in my mind and paint it and sell it in a gallery, I’m sure it would be a masterpiece.

Tayla waved her arms above her head to get my attention, pulling me back to current time, she had finished stretching and was looking at me through the windshield. 

She raised her hands palms up as if to ask what was taking so long.  I stuck my tongue out, making her grin. 

She quickly headed to the passenger side to open my door,

Perfect.

I was going to apologize for the delay and tell her I was lost in a daydream about her and her lovely socks.  I counted on her response being laughter and a light tickle or even sweeter, a kiss on my cheek.

It felt like a beautiful day, the sun shined, the sky was blue.  As she mentioned before, I had a good feeling about today.  Maybe today she would be comfortable enough to kiss me... Then maybe I could ask her to be my girlfriend?  I could convince her she needed me to take her on hikes, and I needed her to make me a wardrobe of all the things she’s ever wanted me to wear.  Human nature is bazaar but also fascinating and this woman made me feel on top of the world!

I watched as she struggled through a deep part of snow and I giggled behind my hand.  

Just as she reached for the door, the cab started rocking side to side, I turned to see if it was Tayla pushing it, but she’d backed away from the truck and crouched on the ground.

With a loud rumbling, the earth shook.  Then slowly it rocked back and forth until it came to a halt.  The earthquake had lasted almost two minutes though it seemed an eternity.

Suddenly I saw Tayla jump up.  She yanked the passenger door open and pulled me against her, hugging me tightly as if she needed it for strength.   As she tightly hugged me, my chin rested on her shoulder, I smiled, somewhat glad for the moment of closeness.

I saw a flicker above us and my eyes were drawn to a flock of several different birds flying out of the thick trees in all directions.  The reason was at the top of the mountain; I saw a large shelf of cracked glacier and snow tumbling down and we were directly in its path.

“Tayla,” I said, switching in to survival mode, I hoped my voice sounded calm enough that I wouldn’t alarm her, “let’s get back into the truck...”

She turned her head, following my gaze.  Upon seeing the avalanche, she let out a hoarse croak, “Oh my go—“  looking back at me, her eyes clenching tight and her mouth frowning as if she were going to cry.  Without a second thought I pulled her into the cab, throwing her across the seat on top of me.   Instantly I was crushed between her and the gear shift.

It pressed hard into the middle of my ribs, son of a bitch, that’s going to be bruised tomorrow.

The avalanche grew louder and we waited for the snow to cover us.

I was already looking around for some tools we could use to dig ourselves out.  Suddenly it was silent.  There was no rocking of the car indicating impact.  I opened my eyes to see Tayla’s tightly shut eyes, her teeth chattered and she shivered in fear.

“Listen… it stopped before it got us.” I said, squeezing her shoulders.

Tayla’s eyes opened to mine; she looked beautiful even in this moment of fear, I felt the throb of her heart beat so close to my own.  The pain of the gear shift in my side quickly dissipated as I was more aware of each breath from her lungs and each beat of her heart.

This is the moment… I’m going to kiss her…

She turned her head to look over the dashboard however, her body pressing down on my sore ribs.  I groaned in pain, she gasped and looked down at me crumpled beneath her.

“I’m so sorry Lilah! I’m sorry; I thought for sure we were goners if that ice had crushed us!”  She said hastily, climbing off me she helped me out of the truck.  I sucked in a breath of cold air painfully as she pulled me from the cab and I leaned back on the vehicle, I felt woozy.  We both looked around at the snow that had piled up just ten feet from the front bumper.  The forest was covered in churned snow, ice, rocks, and bushes.  

“Let me see, did I hurt you very bad?” she asked and her warm hand cupped the curve of my hip on my left side, just below the area that was throbbing with a dull pain.

“You didn’t do anything, Tay.  I was the one that pulled you inside the truck on top of me.”

I flipped a wave of my hair over my shoulder and pulled the side of my shirt up a few inches to examine the damage.  Examining my ribs by pressing a finger lightly over the bone and between the spaces, nothing felt broken.

“I think I’m ok, I just need to sit a moment.” I said to her worrying expression, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a change in the light, “— wait, what is that?” said I, pointing to the big mess of snow, at a massive boulder of ice that had fallen down with the debris.  Large cracks had split it open in some places and reddish muddy water gushed from the cracks.  It was a large sized block of ice, bigger than a refrigerator.

The bright sun was shining through the broken ice like a prism while simultaneously reflecting off the sharp cracks, creating a rainbow on the ground with bright dapples here and there.  There was something strange about this ice; it was clear and in the shape of a rough cube.  Not to mention, there was unfrozen water trapped inside of it, it continued to spill out the sides of the cube.  This is not a natural formation, glaciers are white because they are compacted snow and though water can freeze clear like this, it was too square; not round.  At some point, there was a 7’ft by 4’ft rectangular pool used in the making of this ice cube.

“It looks like something is frozen inside… but how did it get up there?”  I asked, now oblivious to the pain of bruised ribs and awake with energy again.

“Your guess is better than mine.” Tayla answered.

My mind ran through a list of practical ways to transport a large block of ice through that thick forest that hugged the bottom of the mountains or how it was pushed up the steep craggy cliffs.

Could they have brought the water and the giant ice cube maker up the mountain with them?  Was it brought in by helicopter?

I set up my camera on my phone while Tayla stepped up to the ice boulder and pushed aside a few chunks of cracked ice.

She was about to break away another chunk of ice when her hands froze in mid air.  She turned her face toward me looking as if she had seen a ghost and ran over to hide behind me.  I pushed myself off the car and stepped inside Tayla’s fresh tracks up to where she had been standing by the broken ice boulder.  My eyes fell upon what had startled her so bad.  A healthy, tanned hand peaked out of a slushy hole in the ice, with several bands of silver and gold rings, some had crude shaped slivers of gems and bright colored stones, embedded in them and arranged to form the shape of birds in flight.

“Delilah, we should go, we should call the police.” Tayla said through a shiver, clinging to the side of her truck for support.

I wondered if this was some sort of crime scene but there was something very odd about the hand.  The fingers were striking with those magnificent rings but the skin looked healthy in color.  Undamaged by the cold, they were mucked with some sort of brownish red colored liquid… blood?  

Setting my phone in my front breast pocket with it recording, the lens just peaking out, I took a glove off and dipped a finger into the reddish water that turned out to be rather oily; I held it to my nose to identify it by smell.  It had a hint of orange, honey and coconut, it wasn’t blood. 

“Now is not the time to be playing doctor, Delilah!” Tayla said between her teeth, “You shouldn’t touch anything, this could be evidence for something!”

“There’s something very strange about this Tayla, I don’t even think this is a real woman’s hand.  I think it’s a life size doll.”
 

“A life size doll?  How do you know it’s a woman?” Tayla asked.  She stepped closer, her fear subsiding.

“I can tell by the length and shape of the fingers…”  I paused in midsentence, moving the fingers apart, “They are rather large hands though, this must be a very tall doll.”

The skin was supple but cold, and her fingers moved easily.  Her skin creased perfectly and snapped back as I pinched the back of her hand.  It reacted eerily as if it were a real persons hand.  Yet, her skin was surprisingly unmarred without a hint of frost damage which told me, her skin was artificial.  Perhaps the reddish mixture was part of its synthetic skin care.  It still didn’t answer the question of why it was all the way out here inside a block of ice.

Tayla stepped forward tripping a bit in the snow to get a closer look.

“Ooo,” she said with slight distaste as she peeked over my shoulder, “You mean like those life like love dolls?”

“It’s a very life like one, her skin is unnaturally flawless and it maintains a life like color and elasticity.  If she were real, she’d be blue.” I pulled its index finger up so she pointed at the sky. 

The finger curled around mine then and my instincts kicked in.

“Oh my god…” I muttered in disbelief.   

Tearing my glove off, I pressed my fingers to her wrist, a very slow pulse throbbed beneath her skin.  The hand then sprang to life, grasping my hand desperately, twining its fingers between mine.  It coated my hand in the red, oily mixture.  Tayla screamed and stumbled backward, onto the hood of the truck.

I rummaged in my pockets with my free hand to find something to pry open the ice.

“Get that shovel axe from under the seat in your truck, quickly.” I shouted to Tayla.  “She could go into shock at this temperature, hurry!”

But I knew she should be in shock already at this temperature, she should be growing weaker or unconscious but the fingers held onto mine with a fierce strength.  She seemed to grow stronger.  I clutched it in both hands as if to try to warm her up, though I knew it was in vain.  I stared back at Tayla but she only stared in horror, she was locked by fear.  

The hand let go and scraped its nails helplessly at the ice surrounding it.  Oily red-orange slush and water spilled from the hole around her arm.  My heart galloped in my chest, I turned to Tayla once more but realized she could not act.  I rushed to the truck through the snow and stepped wrong on a rock hiding somewhere beneath, painfully I felt my ankle stretch just to its limit and I crashed into Tayla, sending her into the snow.  I half apologized and half swore to Tayla as I quickly picked myself up and threw the door open. 

Clambering on the cab floor to look beneath the seats, to my dismay, the shovel axe was not under the seat.  I instead grabbed one of the heaviest, steel arrows in my quiver and ran back, carefully this time.  I began stabbing it into the cracks, prying and wrenching and pulling away small chunks of ice.  The ice wasn’t yielding easily to the steel arrow and it had begun to bend, but it was working better than just my fingers. 

I worked my way into the block of ice until at last I pulled off a large portion of ice, revealing an arm and shoulder and part of a woman’s chest that was clothed in intricately designed gold and silver chains.  The rusty oily water dumped out and I saw a pocket of air form around where her head was inside the ice.  I felt a small moment of relief as the threat of her drowning or suffocating diminished. 

Squeezing my fingers between the cracks I managed to lift a heavy block of ice away from the woman’s face. 

I heard myself scream inside my head but I did not do it physically. 

Crimped tentacles twitched and wiggled, straightening and curling all about the woman’s face and head.  The woman creature broke the silence with a groan, obscured by the liquid in her throat.  She whipped the tentacles out of her face by throwing her head back. 

That’s when I realized they weren’t tentacles at all but her hair, heavy with congealed coconut oil, yet each strand was alive with tiny lights trailing down the shaft. 

Fiber optic hair?

The hair strands began vibrating and began peeling themselves apart from another, the water falling off in, red, stringy-oily drops. Two bright orange and brown specked eyes stared, unblinking.  They locked on to mine fiercely, I saw its pupils dilate and the creature seemed to look at me with a hint of fondness or in the very least, gratitude. 

I felt something I had not felt in years; my mother’s presence.   I felt her so strongly I thought I could see her, her face flashed before me and the image burned into my vision so that where ever I looked, her face followed. 

I stared down at the she-aliens face.  She lifted her free hand up to my cheek.  The warmth from her body had started to turn the poultice of coconut meat, and orange peels with their oils into slippery, waxy goo.  Her hand smeared the sweet smelling, red oil on my face but I did not flinch. 

Her face was kind.  She looked like a normal human.  When I blinked, I could see my mother smiling and when I stared upon the she-creature, her smile was mirrored on her lips.

“Delilah!  Go!  Run!” Tayla’s voice was a breathy shriek. 

“It’s ok, Tayla.” I said, and moved aside to give Tayla a better view of the she creature.

Tayla began pulling me away from the woman, still half stuck in the ice. 

I pushed her hands away, “Stop, Tayla.  She needs help.”

“We’ve helped enough!  Let’s go away from here.” she argued, grabbing for my hand.  She gasped and winced as her hand slipped over mine from the oily substance coating it.

“No, we need to get her to my cabin.” I turned to continue to help the woman.

“I’m not putting that slimy thing in my truck!” she said in fearful disgust.

“Fine! Take me home and I’ll get MY truck.” I said quickly, knowing I could get here in 5 minutes if I drove ten miles over the speed limit.  The ice had melted on the road by this time of the day, I could risk it.

“Are you kidding me? I take you home and you call an ambulance to get her!”

“That would take even longer!  I’m the closest medical care this woman has.”

“It’s not a human woman, can’t you see she’s… she… she has SNAKES for hair!” Tayla looked so furiously frightened, tears began to well up in her eyes. 

“Go, we can walk back to my place.  Two hours tops.”

I made my way back over to the alien creature, and sank into the snow, which tripped me forward onto the broken ice.  I was face to face with her just as a cough erupted violently from her throat.  It was a productive one that spat out flecks of red goo and a silvery liquid across my face.  

A soft ticking or clicking of gears sounded as the she-alien tilted her head away from me.  She frowned in pain as she struggled to breathe.  Gurgling, her tongue fought inside her mouth, she looked as if she were choking.   She reached into her mouth with her right hand, and pulled out an egg shaped box, which was connected to-- what looked like, deflated silver colored Mylar balloons connected to the end. 

A special kind of lung system?  

She threw it to the ground, where it shattered into pieces and the foil lungs became punctured and torn.  It seemed to destroy itself. 

A strange silvery liquid substance leaked from her eyes, nose and mouth then.  It dripped down her chin onto her chest with a sickening splat.  The silver liquid began stretching its way down her body and over her face, taking up the melted oils as if nourished by it.  As soon as the metallic liquid encountered the ice, the ice began to shrink away from the woman, steam rising up in a thick fog around us. 

Waves of unexpected heat brushed against my skin.  As the ice fell away, I expected the liquid silver to continue its course determined by gravity but it retreated into the gems of the strange suit she was wearing.  It disappeared completely, as if it had never existed.

The body jewelry the creature was wearing was fully visible to me now, loosely braided strands of silver and gold chains wrapped around her and held together coins of different shapes.  Trailing up the center of her jeweled dress was a row of seven pendants.  Each pendant was a flower, each a different color, but they were arranged in the order of the visible spectrum rainbow. 

The chains and ribbons of precious metal gathered at the chest and formed a vague bodice that connected to a hood of gold chains woven like a net, over the woman’s hair like some ancient crown.  Her crown was intricate, a flower made out of a mosaic of pale violet gems. 

I was not an expert in costumes as Tayla was, but I had a strong feeling it was some ritual wear or something. 

A robotic high frequency pitch sounded as bright beams shone from the gems, and quickly before my eyes, the remaining ice was reduced to steam.  The alien-woman was blanketed in the fog, sinking down through the melted ice onto a large boulder beneath her.     

I tried in vain to fan the fog away with my arm, trying to find the creature in it.  I was afraid she had made her escape though.  Reaching blindly, I managed to grab her hand.  Her skin was hot to the touch. 

I started to pull her to her feet when I felt a blast of heat which parted the fog and pushed me back onto the snow next to Tayla, who was cradling her head in her hands in terror and disbelief.

Tayla looked at me, as if she thought I was crazy to want to help the creature.  I suddenly questioned it myself as I wondered if the alien had just shot me with some sort of laser from her jeweled bodice.  I was unharmed save for my bottom which had cushioned most of my fall.

Eerily, the celestial creature rose upright from the boulder she was laying over, using just her legs rather than pushing off with her hands.  Tayla and I stared in complete silence.  She moved a lot like a dancer, without throwing her torso forward, she slowly lifted herself upright like a cobra. 

The silence was broken again.  She moaned as she stretched, much like someone who just woke up. 

The sound of her voice gave me gooseflesh. 

The deep resonating tone of her voice reminded me of someone I knew, I couldn’t put my finger on it.  She pointed her arms up, clasped her hands together above her as she straightened her spine, stretching, shaking her legs and arms out.  I found it similar to my own morning routine, waking up and doing yoga. 

“Hello… my name is Delilah… do you understand English?” I called to her.  I had not even gotten back up from my fall.  Tayla’s chattering teeth buffeted the silence.

A blast of hot air brushed against my skin again, the churned snow and ice from the avalanche around us began melting as if someone had built a fire.  The heat was coming from the direction of the alien, however.  The woman creature opened her mouth and inhaled a deep breath; the force of her breath whipped the air into a vortex.  The steam rising from the melting snow swirled around us.  The woman sucked in thick throngs of the fog she created.  I watched as her body flashed brightly then dimmed to a hot red shining coal.  It was reminiscent of a squid changing its colors.

Was she drinking water or giving herself a big breath of fresh air?  Where is all this air going?  Surely her lungs are not made of black holes… they must have a limit.

My hair and clothing whipped forward toward the creature but it was not so strong that I felt I would be pulled in.  Tayla let out an ear piercing scream, and then covered her face with her hands, her bandana had come loose from her hair then.  It flew into the face of the medusa like creature.  She only simply pulled it away and held it tightly in her hand.

The woman’s thick, curly hair stood on end, waving back and forth and was now crackling with static like a plasma ball.  The gold and silver chains that adorned her body surged with electricity.  Her whole body began to brighten again from a reddish gold, almost pink, light to a familiar blinding, white hot light. 

Am I still dreaming?

Tayla clawed at my jacket in fear, trying to grab a hold of it for strength. 

No, I’m not dreaming.

The woman-creature is either reflecting the light and heat from the sun somehow or… impossibly… can turn INTO a star, like our Sun.  

The ground and sky lit up around us, and the snow began melting and trickling down, dripping from the trees leaving puddles around us.  Tayla and I shrank down as our cushion of snow melted beneath us.  The woman remained standing there, glowing as bright as the sun, I began to feel uncomfortably warm in all the layers of clothing I had on.

At last the woman collapsed where she stood, kicking up a plume of dry dirt, parched by her superhuman display of solar projection.  Her skin no longer bright like the sun, it was a deep dark color of indigo brown, even darker than Tayla.

Now that she was free from her ancient prison of glacial ice, I expected her to fly up into outer space; never to have the chance to study her any deeper than with just my eyes, but here she remained.  Her face showed no emotion but she seemed to be very sensitive to the cold suddenly and was out of breath entirely.  I saw her shudder deeply and she clutched her knees to her body.  Her amber eyes fixed on me; there was something unnatural about them, the reddish gold tones in them were an impossible trait for being human. 

She gently inhaled, as you would expect someone to do before they said something but instead she held her hand in a manner that seemed very familiar to me.  Finger pointed to the sky, palm facing herself; I thought for a moment she was giving me the bird, but she pointed with her index finger.   

It wasn’t strange sign language she used to communicate, no, she was pointing to the sky exactly in the manner the painting of St. John by da Vinci was pointing, in a “come hither” gesture. 

Tayla pulled my shoulder toward her to look at my face.  I could see in her eyes what was happening inside her mind.  Everything that we had grown up believing was completely proven wrong this very moment.  I turned toward the alien, standing with the intention to communicate with it. 

Tayla let out a strangled whisper of protest, reaching for the sleeve of my jacket. 

“No! Delilah, no please…” she begged, “It can’t be safe, there’s no possible way something human…could...  I know you want to play scientist but it isn’t… Delilah we should call the police.” Tayla lost the ability to form full sentences, gripping my arm and pulling me to a halt.

“I’m as shocked as you by everything happening too…” I stared off dreamily in the direction of the alien, “But I think if she wanted to kill us, she’d have done it already.  See that hand gesture she’s doing … it’s just like the da Vinci painting.”

Tayla did not release her hands, but clasped them even tighter around my elbow.

I tugged away from Tayla’s grip; whose fingers held fast to my arm, her nails were beginning to cut into my flesh.  

“What are you doing? Let me go!”  I demanded and twisted my hand away from Tayla.  Her fingernails scraped several jagged lines from my wrist to my knuckles.  “Jesus, Tayla…” I said in shock, backing away from where she laid, crumpled and beside herself in fear.

The alien she-creature grunted, we both looked to her, seeing her hands out.  She held them in another gesture that made me feel like she was posing for a picture.  I felt like I had seen her posed in a painting like this before, her fingers were in a sign of peace and the other was cupped as if asking for change.  I stood up straight, leaving Tayla behind and walked over to touch the woman-alien’s open palm.  In silence, she smiled through chattering teeth, both hands grasped mine, manipulating the small muscles of my palm, petting the back of my hand with her thumb once again, very gently. 

Turning, I looked at Tayla and indicated to look at what the creature was doing; did she notice that it was not killing me?

I took my jacket off and draped it around its shivering shoulders and tried to help her stand.  Her legs didn’t seem to have much strength.

I looked to Tayla, she stood shakily from the ground, staring back. 

We both knew that we had to get this person… this… creature… into the warmth if she were to survive.  I mean, perhaps we weren’t certain she would die but she was shivering violently, like a human.  Tayla let out a sigh and started forward, she paused before she touched the woman’s skin as if she would catch some deadly disease or if some kind of metallic slime would get onto her clothes.  The reddish brown oils that had coated her flesh had been cleansed away, either by the extreme heat or the silver liquid globs that had disappeared into the gems of her suit. 

I opened my mouth to express my dismay to Tayla but she saw my face, and quickly slipped her shoulder beneath the woman’s arm, lifting her up between us.

We half dragged, half walked her to the truck and managed to fit her in the back even though there wasn’t a seat but a small bench, barely a foot wide.  I shut the door and leaned back against the truck, Tayla stood a few feet away, looking at me with concern. 

“I don’t even know where we should take her Lilah, we don’t even know if she speaks our language.” She said, arms folded across her chest.

“We should take her to my house and get her some clothes.  I have several different language books and programs on my laptop that may be of some help.”

“Do you really think an electrical Nymph creature would know any Earth languages or be able to use a computer?” Tayla retorted.

“I’m not ruling that out without trying it first.” I could not help the tone I had with her, I was disappointed that she did not show the same interest in communicating with a new humanoid species.   However, I supposed it was the four years of studying genetics and evolution in human biology that made me feel confident I could figure out what this life form was.

Tayla looked at me in disbelief.  It was the same look she had earlier, as if I were the light bulb skinned nymph. “I think we should take her to the hospital.  We don’t know if she needs food or is hypothermic.” She argued.

“I would know the signs of hypothermia and the woman doesn’t seem lethargic or pale in color, just weak...and I have food at home.”  I insisted.

“She belongs in a laboratory.  Locked away from the rest of us.” Her words were harsh.  I felt a shiver as the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

“Locking her up in a laboratory would just be cruel” I said.  How could she ignore the peaceful demeanor of the alien?

Tayla squinted at me then she shook her head slightly, “Can’t you be concerned for your safety a little bit?”

“I am always concerned for my safety, but the situation presented no risk to my safety.  The only one who had any safety risk was the woman herself… besides… she used some sign language I recognize and she touched my hand in a way that makes me believe she isn’t trying to hurt us.”  I argued but doubted Tayla would find this as any clue of the safety of the situation. 

Sure enough, Tayla’s eyebrows furrowed slightly, her eyes stared into mine with discontent.  The scratches I had acquired from Tayla, tingled painfully on my wrist and I lifted my sleeve to examine it.  Tayla dropped her face, looking away from me.  She took her keys from her pocket and put her hands on her hips.  She stared down at my shoes, then at her own shoes.  I had the sense that she wasn’t finished arguing with me but instead of saying anything, she walked around to the driver side and got in.  I quickly got in the passenger side, relieved to be heading back to the cabin.  I was sure to see Jake again.  He was likely checking on everyone again after that large earthquake well past the 5.5 point on the Richter scale.

I turned the radio off the second the car turned on so the drive home was quiet.  The creature in the back was asleep and I didn’t want to disturb her.  I had so many questions to ask her but there was no telling how long it would take to bridge the communication gap.  I turned around to look at the nymph, her eyelids were open just a fraction of a centimeter and her breaths came slowly but deeply.  Her face fell to the side as Tayla rounded a curve in the road.  Her face shape was oblong with a convex profile. 

I imagined making the sweeps with my brush on canvas, drawing her face in my mind.  Studying her bone structure further, I saw her top lip rested slightly over her bottom lip, her jaw line curved up at the junction of her neck and chin, lean muscled arms crossed over her chest.  The woman was perfectly proportioned; skin smooth, beautiful dark chocolate tan, dewy with a sheen that made me wonder if her diet consisted mainly of avocados and oranges. 

Perhaps the waxy oils she was covered in had something to do with her healthy skin and hair.  She showed no damage from being frozen in a block of ice.  Her hair, black, soft shiny curls, laid still and lifeless, how it should have been. 

It was then that I saw the tattooed circle on the top of her hand and the two lines connected to it, trailing up her arm and rounding around a second circle tattooed over her deltoid.  Her other hand and her feet as well shared the same design; a circle with two lines trailing up the limbs with a second circle over the joint that connected the limbs to the torso. The lines parted off into different directions, coming together and forming their own series of circles over the middle of her chest and down over her belly.  The lines all led to her back.  It was hidden to me only giving me more desire to get back home as quickly as possible.

I suddenly wished I had picked up the remains of the breathing apparatus she had coughed up.  I had a feeling it played a key part in her survival.

“So,” Tayla said in a soft tone, as if finding a way to break tragic news to me, “after I drop you off, I’ll take the woman to the hospital—“

“I told you we’re taking her to my house; I am well equipped to take care of her there.” I said, and it was true.  After all, I was studying all there was to know about human health and anatomy, I have done some stitching up and I’ve had to set a broken leg before while out at a gold mine my Aunt ran.

“... she’s better off at the hospital--!” Tayla started.

“Stop,” I shooed her with my hand to silence her, “That’s ridiculous, you know that she may not even speak English and the clothing she’s wearing… if you can call it clothing… it just isn’t suitable.  If you had just been unfrozen from a block of ice, I think you would appreciate being given time to decide for yourself if you’d like to have people jabbing you with needles and testing you... Let me take care of this please?” I said. 

“I would never have lived from being frozen in a block of ice…and what’s ridiculous is, you are so excited to have extraterrestrial guests in your cabin without a thought about me... I am worried for you.” her voice started strong but softened.

“It sounds like you’re jealous!” I interrupted her.

“Maybe I am a little jealous!” she nearly shouted.  

“I don’t need permission from you.” I said simply in a hushed tone.

“Oh… That’s right, because we’re not in a serious relationship?”

“And if we were, how do you think I would still need permission from you?”

“Whatever, I’m not jealous…”

“That’s not what you said ten seconds ago.  You said you were a little.” I pointed out to her.

Tayla looked angry with my reply, but she stayed silent the rest of the drive.  As we neared my cabin, she parked on the street rather than in the back this time, curiously, as the back door was closer than the front door was from the drive way.  

I opened the door, pulling the seat forward and stopped, waiting for Tayla, but she kept her face forward.  She made no indication that she was going to get out to help me. 

I quickly realized she was punishing me now by deliberately making it a longer trip than necessary for me to carry the creature by myself.  I scoffed lightly but said nothing.  I knew she was set on being this way and I had no desire to try to turn her mood around.  The idea of getting the alien safe inside my cabin was much more appealing. 

Wrapping my hand around the alien woman’s wrist, I pulled her forward into a sitting position, her head was down, eyes closed asleep.  As she fell toward me, I carefully slipped my shoulder beneath her to carry her on my back, something I had learned from my dad to do if I needed to transport someone injured.  She was actually a lot heavier than I thought she would be.  I had to steady myself each step I took as I slowly started down the walkway.  Thankfully it was shoveled and mostly free of ice by the groundskeeper. 

For some reason Tayla was still idling in the front of my cabin, as if she were making sure I got inside safely, or rather to see me struggle on my own with my incapacitated alien guest.

I had never witnessed Tayla being so jealous.

She was really scared though… I can see why she’s still concerned.  I shouldn’t be worried though, I know she’ll come to her senses by tomorrow.    

At last just as I reached the front door, Tayla revved her engine and drove off. 

Fumbling to open the door I swore when I realized I had obviously locked it before I left.  My jacket had my keys in it but I had put the jacket on the nearly naked alien creature.  My mobile phone chimed from one of the pockets as well. 

Another swear.

Clumsily I leaned against the side of the cabin and reached up, groping around for the pocket that held my keys and my phone.  They had been put together in the right pocket and I looked at the screen on my phone.  My dad’s number blinked on the screen.  He was calling from his home in Washington.  I shoved the phone in my pants pocket and jammed the keys into the lock, unlocked it then pushed my way into the cabin. 

I gingerly kneeled by the couch and hoisted the woman onto its cushions, she nestled against the pillows.  I quickly got my phone out and dialed my father. 

The home system screen by the doorway blinked red, indicating that it needed a response from me to tell the main office that I was ok after the 6.7 earthquake it had monitored.

Wow, that was a big one… I guess it DID shake the boulders off the mountains

I pushed the button on the house control system that would tell the main office that all was well in cabin number 1452 as I held my mobile phone to my ear.

My father answered the call on the first ring.

“Hey dad,” I said, “What’s up?”

He sounded winded, I imagined him pacing; and in a slightly annoyed tone, “What’s up?... What’s up with you?!  I called the main office, they said they would notify me when you had logged in at your monitor and that was almost a half hour ago.”

“I wasn’t home,” I said quickly, almost irritated.  I had reason to be off the phone and hoped this conversation would be over quickly.

“Why didn’t you call me?  Did you forget I still exist and I care about you?” he spoke fast, obviously relieved but stern.

“Of course not,” I said, cupping my left hand over my right elbow as I turned around to see the alien-woman laying with her head on the armrest, her amber eyes were following me.  I suddenly felt nervous, “I wasn’t aware it was such a strong quake.  I was out with a friend hunting and it slipped my mind...my main thought was to get to a safe place,” I said lightly, wanting to give my father a sense of comfort in that I could, in fact, take care of myself. 

The feeling of the she-alien’s eyes on me tested my own comfort and a feeling of urgency was upon me again. 

“Are you in a safe place now?” he asked

“Yep, I’m home in my cabin.”

“Don’t stand below your loft because if there are any aftershocks, those books could tumble down and crack you over the head.”

“I understand.”  I said hastily with a sigh.

“Hey, I’m just trying to check on my only daughter.” I used to be his only child until his new wife got pregnant and had a baby boy. 

My voice softened but I spoke quickly, “I know dad, I’ve got to go though, and I’m fine.  I’ve just got things to do right now so I’ll call you when I’m free, ok?  Love you!” I said and hung up before letting him respond.

I let out a big sigh, but there was no feeling of relief.   

Just then, a low voice called, “Love you!” mimicking my sing song goodbye to my dad, quietly from the couch. 

My face flushed red and I turned to stare at the woman. 

She can’t be making fun of me right now can she?

 She then let out a big sigh just as I had.  I felt slightly mocked but the feeling quickly subsided when the woman lifted her head and smiled at me. 

She looked very well and awake.  I smiled back which seemed to make her happier.  She tilted her head, her eyes squinted slightly as her smile widened.  The moment she stood up, the hair stood up on my neck for some strange reason.  Had I not just dragged her completely sapped body into the house not 5 minutes ago? 

She saw my smile disappear and her reaction was walking to me and taking my face between her intensely hot hands.  Her thumbs lightly lifted the corners of my lips, making me smile again.  Her hot fingers slid into my hair and she lightly massaged just above my ears.  The tension of the spat with Tayla and guilt of the rushed conversation with my dad, melted away as the heated methodical circles against my temporal muscle made my eyelids feel heavy.  The smell of her reminded me of a crisp spring day in the forest after a fresh rain.

“What is your name?” I asked in a murmur, shutting my eyes.

“Wha-hot ees your nehm?” she repeated back in a deep purring voice.

I looked at her in surprise.  She seemed just as eager to speak to me as I was to her,

“Delilah” I said, pointing to me.

“Delilah!” she dropped her arms down then tapped me just below my left collar bone, over where my heart was.  Her voice seemed broken, but it was husky and warm.  I wondered if her vocal chords had been damaged from that breathing apparatus.  Her eyes widened, they danced back and forth as if she were memorizing my face.  “Delilah…” she confirmed, softly as she reached back up and through my hair with her fingers.    

As she stroked my hair, my knees weakened.  Her fingers stroked in neat little circles, up and down, pinching lightly in various places on my scalp.  They were all key pressure points and her technique was masterful. 

My heart galloped in my chest.  What sort of creature meets someone and within twenty minutes of knowing them, gives them a scalp massage? 

Tayla’s face flashed into my mind, I knew she’d be furious if she saw what was going on right now.  I wasn’t exactly trying to stop this woman from invading my personal space.  But, hadn’t Tayla invaded and abused my personal space by scratching the heck out of my arm earlier? 

Even if she was genuinely scared or not, what in her mind told her the right thing to do to me was to dig her nails in like some animal. 

What other situations will there be where she reacts this same way?  Am I comfortable with the fact she reacts that way at all? 

Maybe I’m over reacting. 

She was really scared after all, and I knew she was more emotional than I.

Tayla slipped from my mind as I was lost again to the alien woman’s expert massage.  The woman worked her fingers down over the back of my neck.

My eyes couldn’t help but roll back and I wearily lifted my head to kiss her instinctually, but she moved her head to the side and hugged me instead.  The hug was better than any kiss I had ever had, she glided her hands down my back now and she hummed a gentle sweeping tune.  She held me to her, gently rocking side to side as if we were dancing but her hands pressed into different points of my back and neck. 

“What is your name?” I asked again.

With each pressure point manipulation, I grew sleepier and sleepier.  The tune drifted into one long drawn out note as her hands followed the curve of my shoulders and neck then back down the center of my spine.  She did this motion over and over then whispered “Yak-Shni” in her strange, airy yet husky voice.