A Curious Tale... 17.

She stared at me.  Long and hard. If I were white I would have blushed furiously. As it was, I couldn’t meet her gaze, at least not until she said my name.

“Tosoye”

She said it gently, soothingly. She intoned it perfectly, something most people struggled to do. I instantly relaxed and looked at her. She looked as if she was struggling with something, and I wondered what it was. There was a furrow to her brow, and she still looked absolutely amazing.  

She wasn’t beautiful in the way a movie star is beautiful. She looked like the only make up she had on was the violent blue of her lips, to match the navy of her hair. I was still trying to figure out if her hair really grew that colour – even her eyelashes were blue. I had no idea if eyelashes could be dyed – but I supposed they could.

She had a perfect figure – at least in my opinion. There were no bones sticking out anywhere, yet there didn’t seem to be an extra bit of flesh anywhere.

“Tosoye!”

She didn’t quite shout, but it wasn’t quite the soothing tone she’d used earlier. I realised I hadn’t responded the first time she called my name.

“Yes,” I said. I wanted to call her something else, something to show how much I’d fallen for her – for someone I hardly knew, but I realised it wouldn’t be smart. Or maybe it’s just my fear of rejection that held me back. Either way I didn’t say the words that were forming at the back of my mind – or was that in my heart?

 “I want you to realise I’ve known you far longer than you’ve known me.” She still looked like there was more she wanted me to know, so I waited for her to speak again.

“I can’t tell you everything now, but I want you to know that my feelings for you confuse me. They make me want to do things I wouldn’t usually do.”

I wanted to tell her that I felt exactly the same way, but somehow I realised she hadn’t finished talking and stopped myself in time.

“You must understand that we are here for a purpose, and my feelings have no real bearing on what happens to your planet.”

I had to ask.

“What are you people?”

“We are what your people would call an alien race. Our technology is roughly at the same level as yours, but because we are a nomadic race, we’ve developed faster in certain ways – space travel for instance.”

I was intrigued. Especially by the ‘roughly at the same level’ part.

“If we’re roughly at the same level of technological advancement and you’re years ahead of us in travel, we must have something we’ve developed that you haven’t.”

“Several. Entertainment. Food. Economies.”

“Oh… ” The food thing had got to me, but I didn’t know how to continue this train of conversation so I asked, “But why me?”

She laughed. It was the first laugh I’d heard for a while. “You were chosen completely at random. Which makes it even stranger that I find I like you. You see I am a princess.”

I wondered why she told me that. Then I remembered her collapsing in my arms

“Then how come he dared sedate…”

“He’s my father.”

She was quickly developing a knack for shutting me up whenever I didn’t completely think my statements through before uttering them. I decided to just let her talk. After I asked her one question.

“What do you really want from me?”

I was surprised when she burst out laughing.

“We’re here to take over your planet,” she said, in a voice right out of the most corny science fiction movie ever made. She laughed some more, then she kissed me.