Two worlds meet and have to work around language barriers. Time is against them and one will have to choose when, not if, to let go.
G'day, Hive!
This is the ultimate part to this short story, and here we'll definitely see something. The conclusion, the end, perhaps? Or, instead, a new beginning? Time runs short and catches up to Shelley and Sheldon. Was it enough?
Sheldon’s mouth stretched to the sides at her gesture of acknowledgement. She lowered her flat, white leaf and let out a sound Shelley hadn’t heard before. The vibrations were soft on her skin and flowed over her gills. Sheldon stood up and fiddled with strange equipment lying about on shelves against the walls. Inflating her siphon, Shelley drifted closer to the barrier.
“What are you doing, Sheldon?”
The alien turned around, grabbed the device from the table beside the air pocket, and returned to her mission. Shelley deflated and sat in the sand, resting her dizzy head against the wall. She’d have to birth soon.
“Ta-da!” Sheldon held up the recorder. He had spent the last two days and nights reconfiguring it to produce echoes based on those Shelley had made with each symbol. “Now to move on to oral communication.” He placed the recorder against the glass, pulled out his laptop from the drawer beside his bed, and connected the devices. Rubbing his burning eyes with his knuckles, he stared out of the small round window above his desk. The sun began its journey up from the sea.
Shelley echoed, puffing herself up from the sand.
“Morning.” He smiled as he switched the recorder on. “Sleep well?” Shelley echoed again. “See this? This will help me understand when you speak.” Sheldon pulled his pad onto his lap and wrote, ‘I want to record your voice when you say each symbol so I can understand’. He held it up. Shelley echoed and floated away from the glass.
Pointing to each symbol, he stopped and restarted the recording after Shelley’s accompanying echoes, then assigned them to letters on his laptop, into a program that would translate her echoes into words on the screen.
‘Testing can you understand’ Sheldon typed and hit the send button on the keyboard. The recorder played back the echoes. Shelley puffed up and floated forward, pressing her head against the glass.
“Too soft?” Sheldon adjusted the volume. He typed again.
She kicked away from the glass and jetted behind the castle. She echoed.
‘Yes’ came the letters on the screen.
Her ears itched from the vibrations and she rubbed her arms against them. “Yes, I can understand loud and clear, Sheldon.” She giggled.
Sheldon hit her tentacles against a contraption with many small mountains, and the device spoke again. “How did your people learn language?”
“We found symbols on metal walls a long time ago, with drawings of animals and objects. It changed the language we already had many generations ago.” Shelley knelt. Her belly weighed heavy today. It was almost time. The green and yellow light balls behind Sheldon were getting brighter and Shelley wished her mother was with them. She’d know how to guide her through this.
Sheldon’s mouth stretched open wide and her tentacle moved to cover it. She hit the device again. “I have to sleep now, Shelley. We will speak again.”
Shelley floated to the wall and pressed against it. “Sleep well, Sheldon.” She drifted into her shelter and lay down on the smooth stone-bed, staring at the still lights in space. Her belly ached and she drew up her limbs.
‘Good morning’ Sheldon typed into the program. The recorder echoed while he sipped on a mug of freshly-brewed coffee. The realisation of them understanding each other was only now beginning to settle and a tingling of excitement nagged his tired body to wake up. He had slept almost two days trying to recover from the late-nighters. He leaned closer, scanning the tank after a few seconds. ‘Shelley?’ he typed. The recorder echoed and Shelley floated out from her plastic castle. Sheldon frowned. The animal’s skin was pale and her eyeballs turned from black flawless orbs into a muddy dark grey. ‘What is wrong?’
Shelley floated to the glass and pressed two tentacles against it. ‘I must go home’.
‘Are you sick? Is there medicine at home that can make you better?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s my time. Genesis is happening and I’m carrying’ came the words on the screen.
Genesis? Carrying? Sheldon let out his breath. She was pregnant. But so young? Unless, she wasn’t as young as he’d thought. Shelley’s babies wouldn’t survive like this, would they? She was already so small. From what he’d seen of squids, her babies didn’t stand a chance in such a tank. He couldn’t do that, not to her.
He fished her out and placed her into the cylinder pod with some seawater. He walked out, up the stairs, and to the edge of the deck near the crossbow. A selfish part of him begged to take the chance and keep her. He held his hands, with her in them, over the side of the ship.
He smiled. “Good-bye, Shelley. I’m going to miss you.”
She reached out a tentacle and placed it on his thumb, rubbing his nail. Sheldon ran a finger over it, her smooth, soft skin and the thick slime over it sending shivers down his arm. He closed the lid of the pod and let it slide from his palm.
“Good-bye, Sheldon.”
The probe fell. She looked out the window at the alien and smiled. Drops of air fell from Sheldon’s eyes. The pod turned. A flying whale threaded into space and back down into the sky as it zipped past the window.
The green and yellow lights of the floating house blurred over its skin, changing its grey tone. The probe’s window faced the waving sky below, lights danced over them once more. Then it was gone and the probe broke through the sky, crashing into the coral outside the city.
She was home.
Shelley was sitting by the window, staring at the dancing lights while she told her daughter about Sheldon, when she saw the two probes falling from the sky. Clamence and Sandy. After all these years. They would no doubt rant about giants who could breathe in space and air pockets with invisible walls. No one would believe them.
An urge welled up from deep in her belly, stronger than Genesis had been. It pulled her toward the sky, to the dancing lights. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t resist it. Shelley stroked her daughter’s head then inflated her siphon and floated down through the window for the last time. Was this what Mother went to find? Looking back, Shelley smiled at Coral.
The youngling would find her own way, just as she did, and she was almost at her maturity age. Coral would always have her memories. Her daughter smiled at her, a flicker of movement in her eyes of understanding. How much she’d grown.
Shelley glided toward the launch geyser. It still spouted and whales still flew across the sky. But this night was special. This night, the lights flickered.
