Excerpt: Gaia

Marius stared at Lucian with a perplexed look on his young face. Her brown hair was tied up in a rough and ragged hair tie with bits and pieces thrown about. They were forgotten about and never to be put up until she was alone in her room and her body pulsed with OCD about the little things she hadn’t done correctly that day. Things she should have said, things she shouldn’t have said, things she might have done, things she needed to have done, and things she never could have done, no matter what the situation was. Lucian was an interesting creature to Marius, someone who he’d grown up with, but who he could probably never understand. Ever. She wasn’t someone who wanted to be figure out, she was too private and too…well, she was too private and the rest of the reasons were part of the aforementioned part of her personality. He felt like he didn’t know her at all.

“Lucian, why are we going to the Venus Galaxy?” Marius continued, “The Coalition of Planets advises that no ship, no matter it’s purpose, should venture there. It’s dangerous.” Lucian laughed for a second before reaching into the pocket of her dark, jean-type trousers. She produced a piece of paper that held the official seal of the System. He sighed. This was really happening, and he couldn’t believe it.

“Don’t worry Marius, we’ve got the perfect amount of clearance. We’re meant to be out here. They want us to figure out what’s going on over here. Their sun is about to supernova and we need to map this quadrant-”

“Save it Lucian, we know.” Romulus’s words bought him a sneer, that he didn’t see because of his current sitting arrangement. Romulus Superbus was staring out into the vast space that surrounded Gaia like a river of glitter. Like Ceres Livia, he didn’t really need to be piloting Gaia, she basically piloted herself, but they were about to come upon a “meteor cloud” which was supposed to have appeared over three hours ago. So far, nothing had shown up and the Coalition of Planets really didn’t have any clue about what was out here in the Venus Galaxy, or really what was even around the area. They weren’t anywhere near the actual galaxy and already Romulus could tell this was going to be a very stressful mapping trip.

Lucian just wanted to leave the captain’s area and return to her quarters to fall into a deep sleep. She’d been up for twenty-six straight hours, give or take a few hours that might have been missed because of the major lack of sleep. Half the crew of her ship were in the same condition and she could, personally, really use a coma right about now. This was not how she imagined this trip to go. Running on empty wasn’t what she wanted. Her hair messy and not all the way up was not how she imagined spending twenty-something odd hours. Plus, Marius was just staring at her, making her feel subconscious about her overall appearance and how disgusting she really did look. Lucian’s hair was greasy from not being washed in three days, her eyeliner had either dissipated or smeared around her eyes and into the tiny little lines around them, making her look significantly older than her eighteen years. Her light colored lipstick had rubbed off less than four hours after she had applied it and her clothing wasn’t the most attractive thing that she had in her closet. She felt gross. She looked gross. Marius was still staring at her.

Everyone’s heads turned to look at Persephone when she walked onto the main deck. She looked good. Her hair was clean and tied up perfectly with no stray hairs loose, save her bangs. Her modern jeans were indigo and showed how skinny she was, her midriff not showing but even the ruffles of the white dress shirt couldn’t make her seem even slightly more than her one hundred and twelve pounds. She height was her only hinderance, but she wore three-inch heels to make up some of the height she would never gain because she was done growing.

Lucian watched Marius’s eyes follow the 18-year-old’s body as she traveled across the large main deck. She sighed. So Persephone looked amazing no matter what, she’d probably just showered and just had a full “nights” worth of sleep, a full twelve hours of blissful sleep. Maybe Lucian would have to wait until all was truly calm before slipping out to her bedroom. Maybe she could just excuse herself now and sleep for her needed twelve hours.