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Occtis Tachonis isn’t certain if he’s human, anymore.
It’s not that there’s something else he thinks he should be—he has four limbs, a standard facial arrangement, imperfect symmetry, iron rich blood and oxygen based respiration. Humans are pretty much the only known species to have all of those things and also be capable of space travel.
It’s just that sometimes, despite what his body tells him, Occtis feels the human part of him was left behind. Humans don’t need electrical stimulation, they’re persistance predators. Humans don’t eat primarily algea, they’re omnivorous. Humans don’t—
He first spots her while his thoughts are drifting on a space walk, and he doesn’t think she’s real, at first. But his oxygen levels are still high, and the helmet uncracked, and there’d be wierder things to hallucinate then whatever this is.
Green, pulsing light, just out of reach. It seems to self-propel based on expulsion of trailing, sparkling, dust, and emit a sound that is high and musical, though initially incomprehensible.
He’s entranced. There are other life forms on the ship—plants, tardigrades, the aforementioned algae—but nothing like this. Nothing he can hear. Nothing that dances around him, leaving bits of life as it goes.
After an hour, his oxygen tank alerts him it needs a refill and he blinks for the first time.
The next time he sees her, she saves his life.
There’s been a minor impact, and some damage has been sustained. Or, rather, it should have been a minor impact, but it hit right at a joint that hadn’t been reinforced on the inside because of awkward angles and low risks, and now the air seal between wings of the ship was threatening to be broken.
Which would suck, majorly. It would suck more to die while attempting to repair it, though, and as much as Occtis loved the Pincushion, maybe this leg just needs to be replaced. Replaced? They don’t exactly have shipyards in space. Wait, no, you don’t take a space ship to a shipyard. You don’t—
He doesn’t realize there’s a crack in his helmet until a flittering green light reflects off it like a kaleidescope, and as enchanting as it is, he suddenly realizes the danger he’s been sitting with. It’s not too difficult to connect the wires properly, after that, even if he narrowly avoids stabbing his hand more than once.
He decides to name the green light ‘Thimble’. Rewiring a ship isn’t exactly like sewing, but he’s done plenty of repair of both types (you run out of clothes after a while) and he would have stabbed his thumb without her, so. It works.
Thimble is a she because Pincushion is a he. Occtis has always disliked the assumption all ships are female—as if carrying their cargo or passengers is akin to pregnancy—so his is named after his childhood dog. Likewise, it has always rankled him that when humanity first encounters alien life, in most fiction, it is assumed to be masculine.
He has no idea how Thimble would reproduce anyways. He’s an astronomy researcher, not a xenobiologist. So she works just fine. It’s not like anyone is going to read his logs, he thinks, or at least not till he’s been dead long enough he won’t have to answer questions.
The third time he sees her, she boards the ship.
Well, technically, she was probably onboard before that, having followed him into one of the double-gated entryways and gotten stuck in one of the air ships, but when it depressuris enouch for him to open the door, she drifts right into the main hull. He’s not even wearing a space suit, and for half of a terrible second, he thinks, this is it, this is how I die. Glowing green space waste I wanted so desperately to believe I was not alone that I convinced myself it was alive. But then she hits the wall and does what can only be called a recoil, and he takes a breath and nothing smells or feels off, and he realizes that maybe it’ll be okay.
Now she’s on the ship, he watches her almost constantly. Like a child trailing a stranger in the park with a parrot on their shoulder, he spends a good portion of his days just staring at her.
Her membrane must be porous, and her bioluminescence is limited. She absorbs water rather than anything visibly changing to allow it entry, and the glow comes off and on, not just as pulses but for hours at a time. She’s like a jellyfish, primarily drifting, but not affraid to dust the air with an acidic mist and propell herself away.
She’s magnetic, which he discovers when he is shaving down a piece of metal into a repair gear and the metallic scraps float to her from a few feet away.
She smells, for some unexplainable reason, like what Occtis remembers rasberries tasting like. He’s been in space for years, though; he can’t possibly know if that’s accurate.
She’s not like any life he’s ever known. She’s not like home. And he knows she’s not actually magic. But there’s something indescribable about this otherworldly being, something fantastical, a hook for a not-quite-human drenched in longing.
She’s an alien.
She’s a mirage.
In the cold void of space, she makes him smile, and the pinprick of terminal loneliness slots itself in the guard, for just a moment, of a Thimble.