Beyond Yonder

(Conlang glossary included at the end)

Guavato was drifting.

The expanse around them was black. Their fingers, enclosed as they were in the airtight gloves, brushed against something jagged. Not sharp enough to pierce their suit, thankfully. But rough enough to feel a vague texture.

They couldn’t see anything.

After a moment, they realized it was because their eyes were closed. But lifting their eyelids was too difficult, so they left them closed.

Everything hurt. Their head pounded, arms ached, legs burned, tail…well, they couldn’t feel half of their tail. That was concerning.

As they drifted, color faded into view. That was odd. They didn’t remember opening their eyes. The golden hues of home flooded their sight; the yellow of the sky and the sea, the honey color of the sands, the red sun winking down. The warm coloring was at odds with how cold they felt. Why was it so cold? Tsaurre never got cold.

They felt a weight in their lap, and looked down. Curious green eyes looked up at them from an orange-masked white face. Feulin. His whiskers twitched, ear flicked, a wide grin split his face. He fell to purring, and Guavato realized sluggishly that they couldn’t feel the rumble of the kit’s purr against them.

A dream, then.

Images came back to them, crowding their mind in a rush. The enemy ship, taunting them in its retreat. They’d almost reached it. The hull had loomed over them, bigger than the Argent, its panes of metal smooth and sleek in the blackness of the void. They’d located an entry point and propelled the audhe forward.

Then a tell-tale flash of violet signalled its jump to FTL. They were too close. They steered sharply away, but it was too late. The ship jumped. The residual field of momentum blew the audhe backward, into the cluster of asteroids they’d woven around to get here. They heard the splintering sound, now a sharp memory, and…well, they couldn’t say everything had gone black. Everything was already black. They were outside of any galaxy, too far from the stars to see anything beyond the glow of their visor and its readings. But could they say, with any confidence, that they were conscious now?

They took a deep breath, canned oxygen flooding their lungs with a stale scent. They curled on themself, painfully, trying to swallow around the lump in their throat. They tried blinking back the tears, knowing they were just going to fly around the helmet and bounce right back into their eyes anyway.

They’d failed.

Their brother was gone.

The objects they could feel floating into them were the pieces of their audhe, reduced to broken shards in the wake of the enemy ship’s jump to impulse flux. They’d been so close… Daybreak’s face, eyes fearful even as his expression remained resolute, floated back to them, then faded to black. 

I’m sorry…

“Ferr?”

The colors faded back in. Feulin–his dream self, really–looked up at them, concern wrinklng his too-young face. This was another memory. The kit in their lap was half the age of the Feulin they’d come out here to rescue.

“You’ve already saved me,” he reminded them.

Another image faded in, this one green. Guavato cringed back. They were staring into the eyes of the crazed, possessed Sciftan, its fangs bared at them as it loomed over them. Guavato tried to shake their head free of the image, but their body wasn’t responding. Not to them, anyway. Their limbs moved to dodge, lips curled into a grimace, mirroring the movements they made so many cycles ago. Sixteen cycles. When they were a younger soul, Feulin only an infant, when Guavato’s biggest problem was trying to fight an alien species invading their home.

Which, honestly, was nothing to sneeze at. But Guavato thought they might have filled some kind of fucked-up quota for “worst thing to happen in my life” with that one.

“Please,” they said softly. They couldn’t relive this one. How many times would this dream return to haunt them?

The Sciftan lunged, swiping at them. The memory of their body twisted, shielding the bundle in their arm–Feulin. Their other hand clenched the conduit, their weapon, so tightly that they might have broken the steel rod. Violet lightning sparked, dancing around them, arching toward their attacker. Guavato closed their eyes.

Feulin’s voice spoke again. “You’ve saved me, more times than anyone else would want to.”

The image faded again–much to Guavato’s relief. They didn’t want to see that again. They tried again, unsuccessfully, to open their leaden eyes.

“I’m not saving you now,” they whispered. “I went after Daybreak.”

“You sent everyone after me while you went after Unki,” the voice reminded them.

They felt as though someone was wrapping arms around them. Someone big, definitely not their son. Normally they’d recoil and sock whoever would dare try touching them. They still might, if only their limbs would obey them. After expending their energy curling into a fetal position, however, that wasn’t happening.

“I failed,” they said.

They were pulled back, bumping into more pieces of what used to be their audhe along the way. Sounds reached their ears. A language? English? Wauchiæn?

“You didn’t fail.” Feulin’s voice spoke again, within their head, distracting them from the movement of their body. “Unki’s still out there.”

“What about you?”

The movement stopped. They were resting on something solid now. The whirr of engines was enough to rumble away the memory. They panicked as the color of Feulin’s eyes began to fade.

“No–Come back!”

“I’ll be okay,” Feulin said.

“Feu…”

They were finally able to open their eyes, but only just. They registered a couple of forms leaning over them. Vaguely bipedal, but big. They tried to open their eyes a little further. The beings seemed to be either thickly muscled, or padded in layers of clothing. 

The sound of something heavy clunking solidly into place jerked them further into reality. They tried to shift anything–a leg, an arm, a chautsan finger. A growl, pained and gravelly, shredded their vocal cords as it came out. Hands–or, at least, they thought it was hands–held them down. Someone spoke in a melodic hum, and the translation scrolled past their eyes via the faceplate of their helmet.

“Peace, traveller,” it said. “We seek to help.”

Their teeth gritted, and they looked up at the strangers, though they could feel their consciousness waning once more, clouding their vision into shades of black and green. “Friends fighting nearby,” they said, the words sounding distant, even to them. “Help them. Please.”

Before their eyes closed again, they thought they saw two of the figures exchange a look. Then they were drifting again, back in that black void tinged with smudges of gold.

I’ll be okay.

Tsaurre (ts-OW-rr-eh [roll the “RR” as in Spanish]): The capitol city of Waumærr, a continent on Ortuxia, where Guavato is from.

FTL (general sci-fi term): Faster than light (also noted as "impulse flux" here)

Audhe (OW-theh): A hover car. This one Guavato modified for use in space as a sort of corvette-class personal ship.

Ferr (FEH-rr [roll the “RR”]): Parent, neither mother nor father (Ortuxia’s species has three genders; tom [male], queen [female], and soul [nonbinary/intersex])

Sciftan (SKIFF-tuhn): An alien species that resembles canines.

Unki (OOH-nn-kee): Uncle

Wauchiæn (WOW-chee-ahn): The native language of Ortuxia.

Chautsan (CHOW-ts-ahn): The “-ing” version of “chauts”, a general Wauchiæn curse word.