Author’s Note: I don’t have much to say here except… Poor Tynan.

Tynan had never been good at following time in any sort of linear fashion. He was a distortion of time and space, always had been, so he had no way of knowing how long he had been imprisoned. They kept him incapacitated most of the time, and even if he wasn’t coping with massive amounts of pain threatening to tear him apart, he would not have known how much time had passed.

He missed Luna. If he could have said goodbye, if he could have told her…

If he had only known what he needed to know before he left, if he’d been able to say that he was not ruining her life or keeping her from things she wanted, if he’d had the answers that her father had demanded of him, then perhaps none of this would have happened.

He thought it was because of the cylinder he’d eaten. He’d gotten too much attention then, and he’d felt different, like he’d made a mistake, like he’d eaten too much. He should have known that it was enough to lead them to him.

He had made so many mistakes, and now he would pay for them. He did not know how much longer he could take this, though. He did not know how to cope with this much pain. He could not live like this. He thought he must be close to the death they wanted for him.

“Please. If you must do this, I will accept whatever fate you plan for me, but you must stop this. I will not make any attempts to escape. I will do nothing to harm anyone. I just want a few moments of peace before you kill me.”

“Your kind knows no peace.”

He would not try and convince them that he was different. They were not going to listen. He should stop talking.

He could not. Talking was all he had left. “Will you give me a trial? I remember seeing a broadcast where another child of the vortex was given one, and if that is going to happen, I want to start. I want a chance to get a message to Luna.”

“You want to speak to a satellite?”

“Luna’s name may be synonymous with the moon, but she is not as simple as an orbiting space body trapped in an endless loop. She’d never let that happen to her.”

“Quit talking to me. You’ll pay for it. Stop talking, or you will suffer more.”

Tynan frowned. “If you do not care about me, if I am nothing but a monster, then why would it matter if I suffered more? You would want me to suffer. You would want me to be in agony. You would want nothing but a painful death for me.”

The guard stared at him and then backed away. “They didn’t tell us how deceptive you were.”

“I don’t lie,” Tynan said, trying to get the guard to listen, but all he got was more pain, and he closed his eyes. He would not be able to make them see reason. He could not help thinking that there was no way to continue. He’d be quiet, let the pain fade, and if they spoke to him, then he’d answer. If he could get them to see that he would cooperate—all he wanted was to tell Luna he was sorry. He wanted to tell her that he’d enjoyed every minute he spent with her, how much he’d learned from her, and that she was the best friend he’d ever had.

He wanted to tell her so many things, but he didn’t know how he could do that. They wouldn’t let him free. He should be dead by now, and he did not know why he wasn’t. None of it made sense. Why were they keeping him alive only to torture him? Was it worth that risk? What if he was different? What if he did destroy everything?

He almost wished he could. He’d hurt them, make them all feel the same pain that he did, but he wasn’t like that. He wasn’t like them. Not at all.

“I miss you, Luna.”

Author’s Note: When a fellow writer asked for 365 days worth of prompts, I decided to use some of the stuff that I’ve been influenced by or thought about writing something for. This song was one of those influences. I figured that I should use my own prompts as well. It’ll be interesting to see how one set of lyrics influences two different people.

I gave only one section of lyrics as a prompt, but me, of course, I ended up using in a lot more than that by looking at the lyrics again and listening to the song on repeat.

I recommend hopping over to the Kabobbles Sing Along section and using the embed or looking up the song and playing it while reading, but that’s me.

She knew she wouldn’t see the sun today—the clouds were in the way, blocking it and showering rain on the ground. Perhaps somewhere else it was snowing, burying the world under a blanket of cold, keeping the weary winter months upon them. Her hand went to window, knowing it was another day where she would remain indoors, a day wasted, nothing accomplished, not with those clouds in the way.

If there was a moment when it all went wrong, she couldn’t find it, not in her memories or her notes. She has been over them—in dreams and nightmares and repeated readings, searching through old journals and conversations for that missing piece that would explain it all.

She walked away before, she was the one to say it was over and done, so why was it so hard for her to understand his doing so? Why could her decisions make perfect sense when his made none?

Not that she hadn’t changed. Everyone said she was different, and she supposed that they were right. They saw what she didn’t, knew what she didn’t. Even after all this time had passed, years spent growing older that were supposed to make her grow wiser, she didn’t feel like she knew anything at all.

Love, of course, remained the most elusive concept of any in the world, coming in to tease her with illusions of happiness and forever—not forgetting that she had once done the same dance for others, that carrot on a stick that she hadn’t realized was a trick, not until she was gone and on the other end of it.

When was love ever real? When it lasted or when it crashed and burned?

Her head joined her hand against the window pane. He was far away, long since gone, and he would never hear her, even if the clouds and the rain weren’t in the way. Still, her lips moved of their own volition, whispering the words she didn’t want to say. “I love you.”

Author’s Note: So… I have a bit of a confession to make. After I wrote “Clouds Got in the Way” and “Be Prepared to Bleed,” I started to think about how that character ended up in the state she was in, and even before “Acceptance,” I knew where the alien’s story was headed. In fact, I wrote this to segue right into “Clouds Got in the Way.”

“Friend Luna?”

She wanted to shove Alvin away, not sure how to take his presence or anything else at the moment. She knew he was trying to help, but nothing helped, not now. What she felt wanted to break her, and she didn’t know how to go forward. She’d thought she’d never recover from her mother’s death, from all the confusion and the mixed emotions and the way her father was, but now she understood—this would be what broke her, not the instability of her hormones or her grief or anything her father did.

Being in love with Tynan was that last straw, wasn’t it? The one meant to break the camel’s back, the one that would destroy her. She couldn’t help a bit of bitter laughter at the irony of it. Dennis would have loved it, knowing that she had been on the other end of it. She’d gotten her heart stomped on, and she’d been the one to suffer.

The greatest irony of it all—she’d fallen for someone she could never have, someone who couldn’t touch her, someone she could never have a real relationship with. She didn’t know what Tynan looked like in his “real” form, didn’t know where he came from or what he was. She’d built it all up in her mind. She had the perfect relationship. He couldn’t push her where she refused to go, no, because he couldn’t touch her and didn’t even feel.

He was a black hole, after all. She had fallen in love with a black hole, and she’d actually thought she could hold onto him. How stupid was that?

“Friend Luna, are you crying again?”

She was. She didn’t know how to stop herself most of the time. She was angry, she was miserable, and she hated herself for all of this. She should have known better, and yet she hadn’t. Maybe this was it, a fit punishment for all she’d done in the past. Maybe this was just as it should be.

“Alvin, please, I don’t want to talk now.”

“We miss Tynan, too.”

She grabbed hold of the alien, wrapping her arms around him until she couldn’t take the way his wings beat against her and had to let go. She didn’t understand. Had she been such a fool, was that it? Was she confusing all that she had experienced with Tynan into something it wasn’t? She’d set up that whole “date” just to confront what she thought was between them—she could have sworn he was in love with her, too, so how could he just go and ever come back?

Alvin flew over to the window, and she followed him, looking out. She wasn’t going to watch for Tynan today, not again, but she couldn’t look away from the window, either. She might end up staying here forever.

Author’s Note: Poor Tynan.

He was in pain, but he didn’t understand that. He was only ever in pain when he ate something and then tried to stop himself from consuming everything. This was the pain that came from turning his hunger on himself, but he didn’t—he hadn’t done that. He hadn’t touched anything since the metal piece, and he knew that. He’d been so careful not to do anything like that, as much as Luna and Alvin had come close to touching him.

He lifted his head and looked at the walls, staring with dismay. No, not this. He didn’t—He’d just meant to go clarify things before he returned to Luna to see what she wanted, and he hadn’t gone far. He hadn’t told her he was going to be gone—what must she think?

That was worse than the beams directed at him, keeping him down on the floor. He’d broken his promise; he’d become a liar. He’d hurt Luna, and he’d sworn he’d never do that.

“This is one of them? He doesn’t look that dangerous.”

“Do not be fooled by their appearance. They are capable of mimicking any of us.”

“Technically, that is not true. I cannot copy any lifeform that is already existing. I merely approximate a facsimile that comes close in terms of species and general behavior. I have been humanoid for so long that I think of myself as having hands and feet, fingers and toes, and all the things that go with being human.”

“It’s talking. Increase the levels. It cannot be allowed to escape.”

He would have told them that it was unnecessary, he would have begged them to stop, but the pain became overwhelming, and all he could do was lie there. He did not remember being taken, but he must have been, since they had him here, rendered immobile and mute by their devices. Sometimes his memories disappeared into the hunger. That must have happened this time.

He looked at them, unable to hear over the humming and buzzing of the beams that were directed at him, but he did not care. They were discussing his death, and he knew that much already. He swallowed the pain, reminding himself that he could use pain just as well as he’d used curiosity. He did not enjoy it, and curiosity was a better way of counterbalancing his hunger, but he could endure pain as well. Let the hunger consume it and—there. He could move again.

“I am aware that you intend to kill me. While there is a possibility that you might arrange a farce of a trial to make it appear as though you were just and lenient, I know what the outcome of it will be. Before I die, I should like to get a message to someone. If you permit me to do that, you have my word that I will not make any attempt to leave this cell. You can turn down the level of your… torture device.”

“A message? What do you take us for? Fools? You have no one. You may well be the last of your kind, and that is something to rejoice over.”

He glared at them. They did no understand how cruel they were. They didn’t care if he had done anything. They judged him only on what they thought he was. Luna had not cared about his appearance or what he’d done. She’d befriended him anyway. She’d always encouraged him to be better than he was, to do more and learn more.

These people were ignorant and hateful.

He forced himself up off the floor. Let them increase the beams. He wanted them to know that nothing they did could stop him from saying what he had to say. He would find some way to get a message to Luna. He had to. He would apologize, and he would say goodbye.

He faced his captors, tempted to smile when they stepped back in fear. “My name is Tynan. I have always been the last of my kind because I am not the same as the others. I am not like what you have known. I am unique in every way.”

Luna would have been proud of him, he thought, but the others were so afraid that they increased the level of their devices until he could no longer counter them, and he was driven back to the floor.

Author’s Note: I got most of the way through this part and thought that I should delay it for something else, and then I changed my mind again.

Luna conceded defeat five weeks later.

Tynan wasn’t coming back.

He’d disappeared for long periods before, but something about this time made her sure it was different. Even Alvin seemed to know it. He moped around the store, and she didn’t think that the tapes were helping him sleep anymore. She didn’t know how to help him.

She didn’t know how to help herself.

She didn’t understand. Was it too much? Too close to the impossible for Tynan? He’d had to run because… because he thought that was what aliens did, that because he was a “monster” and a black hole he couldn’t stay? Was that it?

She shook her head. That wasn’t like him, was it? Did she even know, or had she managed to fool herself again? She would have said she’d made the whole thing up if not for Alvin, and she didn’t know that she was all that comforted by his presence.

She almost wished she was crazy. She’d rather spend the rest of her life in a drug-induced fog than keep going like this. She’d been okay when she believed he was coming back—well, when she’d told herself she believed it—but now she didn’t. She couldn’t pretend any longer. She couldn’t fool herself into thinking that she thought he would return.

“Luna?”

“Is there something you need, Dad?”

He held out a box of tissues. “You need to stop waiting at the door. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I… Honestly, I thought he was going to do the right thing. He… I thought I’d given him the right kind of nudge. Never thought I’d scare him away.”

“Stop apologizing. You couldn’t have made him go anywhere that he didn’t want to go.” That was the part that bothered her the most. He could have stayed. She wanted him to stay. She’d told him to stay. He’d ignored all that and left.

Her father cupped her cheek and kissed her forehead, and she willed herself not to pull away from him. She didn’t want to be here with him. She couldn’t stay where she was. She had to find a different way to deal with this.

She snorted. Like she was dealing it now. “If I crawl into my bed for the next week, are you going to drag me back to the doctor? Put me back on medication?”

“No medication can cure a broken heart. You know I know that.”

Author’s Note: Poor Luna.

Luna walked out into the store, closing the door behind her. She smoothed down her skirt, feeling more nervous than she had in a long time. She didn’t know if this was the right thing to do, tricking Tynan into going out with her, thinking he was going to the museum. She knew it was bad—he never lied to her—but she didn’t know how else to talk him into this.

She didn’t know how to talk to him about it, period.

She let out a breath, and then she couldn’t help noticing how quiet the store was. “Tynan?”

“Friend Luna, Friend Tynan said he had to find something. He left.”

“Left?” Her stomach flipped, and she put a hand over her mouth, trying not to let her gag reflex win. She didn’t know why she was panicking already. All she knew was that he was gone, but that didn’t mean he was gone for good. Not gone forever. Just… out. Running an errand. Learning something new. That was it. That was all.

Alvin nodded. “He should be back soon, yes? Hive here. Home here. Friend Luna here. He comes back. He will come back. He has to come back.”

She bit her lip, wondering if Alvin was trying to convince her or himself or if it even mattered right now. Tynan had sworn he wouldn’t go, and he was gone. Nothing was going to make that okay, not until he was right back where he should be.

She looked down at her dress, cursing herself for being so stupid. She should have known better, shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up. It was still as impossible as when it first came into her head. “I… I’m going to go change, Alvin.”

“Why change? Friend Luna looks very pretty.”

“Thank you, Alvin, but… you’re not the one I wanted to see all this.”

“Friend Tynan would agree.”

“I hope so.”

“He’s coming back, yes, yes. Has to come back.”

She forced a smile for Alvin, wishing she felt as confident as he did, but her stomach refused to settle, and she swore if she didn’t get out of the damn dress this instant, she’d vomit right here. She turned and went back into the apartment, closing the door behind her.

She leaned against it, refusing to cry. She would not let panic win.

She had to believe that she was overreacting. Tynan was coming back.

She yanked the dress off and headed for the shower. She’d rinse all the makeup off, the stupidity with it, and when she was done, she’d feel better. She could wait for him in something plain and stop hoping for the impossible.

Author’s Note: Well, someone was going to have to point it out to him eventually…

They were to go to the museum again. Strangely, Tynan didn’t think he minded that. He didn’t know that they would see anything different from the last time they were there, but he was still excited to go. Luna would make it interesting. She always did. She just needed to finish whatever it was she was doing back in the part of the shop that was her home.

He would not be impatient. Humans needed longer to get ready than he did, or than Alvin did, and while Alvin was nosy enough to go find her, Tynan was not.

He frowned. Since when had he started using that name? He did not know that he’d ever felt comfortable with it, but perhaps now that Luna had suggested that he claim it as a species instead of the vortex. That was not possible, but her opinion was an interesting one.

“What are your intentions toward my daughter?”

He looked up, surprised to hear Luna’s father talking to him. He studied the other man, not sure what to think of the question. Luna’s father seemed less angry than usual, but what that meant was debatable. He did not know the other man well enough to tell. “I am not sure what you mean.”

“What are you planning to do with my daughter? Do you intend to do the honorable thing, or will you abandon her now that you’ve gone through what little money she had? It’s not enough that you convinced her to give up her medication. How far do you plan on ruining her?”

That almost angered him. “Luna is not ruined. She is radiant. Have you seen her smile lately? That is beautiful. She is happy.”

“How happy is she going to be when you leave?”

“I have no intention of leaving.”

“Then you think you get to live here, do you? Do you think you can have all this and do nothing for it?”

“Sir, I have not harmed your daughter. She seems to enjoy being with me and with Alvin. In fact, she has many times expressed extreme displeasure with the idea of me going anywhere. I would not wish to leave her, either. I do not require food or shelter, so you need not concern yourself with my effect on her finances.”

“But you don’t plan on marrying her.”

He frowned. “Marrying?”

Her father shook his head. “You young people today. You think that it’s good to be liberated and progressive, that all that matters is that you’re adults. If it’s love, it’s enough. That’s all you want and all you care about. You don’t think about the effect on children or even on yourselves.”

“I suppose you would not know this, but children are… not possible, and I am not sure that you understand what is between me and Luna at all.”

“You are ruining her life. You have seen her with children, haven’t you? She’d be a good mother. You’re robbing her of that chance.” Her father walked away, muttering under his breath as he did.

His eyes fell to the floor. Love. Marriage. Children. Those were all things that humans—some, not all—desired, things they wanted to have. He did not know what they all were, what they meant, but he did not want to keep Luna from those things if she wanted them.

He needed to know what they all signified, needed to know what he was keeping her from. She was supposed to be out in a minute, but he did not want to face her before he knew what any of this was. He had to find that first. He would find it now.

“Friend Tynan, Friend Luna said to tell you she’s coming but that she lost something in her room.”

“I… I have to go find something of my own. I’ll be back soon.”

Author’s Note: Time for another Wizard of Oz reference. 🙂

Time for an alien to learn a bit more about what makes a home…

“How was your vacation? Did you have a lot of fun? Are you two married now? Will you be reading to us again?”

Luna smiled, trying to answer all of the questions that the children and the rest of the crowd were asking her. She’d been missed—not that it should surprise her. She was the sort of person who drew others to her, and she always had been. He had been unable to resist her, and he knew better than anyone why he should have stayed away.

He should never have come back, but how could he do that? How could he have not stayed close to Luna, to everything she was and everything she taught him? He had learned so much from her, would have wanted so much more than what he had, and he could not deny that.

Sometimes he thought his hunger had shifted from the need to consume everything to a need to experience everything he could involving her. That was dangerous, and yet… he knew he could still destroy—he had done so with that metal piece—so that was not all of it. He would never hurt her or consume her, but he was still worried.

“Friend Tynan?”

“What?”

“Why do you not smile like Friend Luna? You are not happy to be home?”

He looked at Alvin. “This is Luna’s home. Your home, I suppose, but a vortex does not have a home. We do not have… anything.”

“You have friends.”

He did, though he kept wondering why that was. Luna and Alvin had decided to be his friends, but he did not understand why they had. He did not know that he ever would. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

“If you have a friend, if Luna is friend, and friend is home, if friend is hive, then hive is home, and home is here. Our home. Your home. This is home.” Alvin turned to hug the bookstore, his wings flapping with the increased speed that indicated his happiness. “Home. Hive. Good.”

He smiled at Alvin’s antics, wanting to laugh. Sometimes he thought he should not be so amused by the little one’s actions. He acted in such a patronizing manner, and it was not fair to Alvin. Just because he was a part of a hive did not mean that he was an idiot or deserved to be treated as less than he was. If he could think that a monster was a friend… Well, a part of Tynan thought that meant that Alvin did not know better. On the other hand, it might be a sign of a greater intelligence than anyone would have expected.

“Tynan, come over here, please,” Luna called, and he frowned as he went to her side. What was wrong? Did she need to get away from the crowd?

“Is something the matter?”

“No, silly. I just happened to remember you offering to read to me, and I figured out out how you could do it. You read what’s on the page, and I’ll turn them for you.”

He frowned. “You are much better at this than I am.”

“That’s only because you’ve never tried. Don’t worry about it. I’ve picked something simple, and the genius of Seuss will do the hard part. The crowd will love the story because it’s already good, and you can do this. Sit here.” She patted the spot next to him, shifting a book in her lap.

“What is Seuss?” He had never heard of such a thing. She lifted up a book, and he frowned. “You humans eat strange things, but green eggs and ham?”

“I will not eat them, Sam I Am,” she said, laughing. The crowd joined her, and all he could do was frown. She opened the book and pointed to the first line. “Try it. Please? For me?”

He sighed. “You know there is nothing that I would not do for you.”

“Exactly. So, now you will read for me—and everyone else—and we’ll all enjoy this together.”

Author’s Note: I almost went right back to the bookshop, but they decided they wanted to talk first. It was kind of important, since Tynan needed to hear what the others were saying, so… 🙂

“I am starting to get very, very worried about you.”

He looked across the car at Luna, shaking his head. “I am recovered from the incident. I am. It hurt more than I was prepared for, and I was weaker than I remember being in the past, but I do not know that anything is wrong—those factors are most likely proportional to what I did consume. I do not know that I have any clear memories of my worst disasters—I don’t know that I stopped myself then. I think I can say that this was the largest thing I have consumed with conscious awareness—I cannot say deliberately because I did not always do these things intentionally—but of all the things I remember, that metal cylinder was the largest. I cannot figure out what that was for.”

“I’m guessing it was a part of one of those windmills that we see everywhere out here. Like that,” Luna said, pointing to the fields on his side of the car. “They don’t look that big from back here, but those suckers are huge. I’ve seen the propellers. They look like they’re blades for giants, not part of a cleaner sort of energy.”

He smiled at that image. “You should paint that.”

“Maybe I will. You never know. Right now, I’d rather just get you home. Well, to my home but your home since you don’t have one and are there all the time. I want to be sure that you’re safe and okay, that we’ve put enough distance between there and us. I’m also hoping no one was filming that on their phones and uploading it online or anything. This could be really bad.”

“Not necessarily. Remember, my appearance is a facsimile. I can change it to suit my needs—though admittedly, that is mostly done without any conscious effort on my part—and so I can simply change if we find there is a problem.”

“Right.”

“Something is wrong?”

She shrugged. “I know it’s not real, not really, but I’m kind of used to the way you look. You’ve always been the same around me. I like the way you look. You’re not… For someone who can look like anyone or anything he pleases, you didn’t grab the first model you came across—you look rather ordinary and yet… You’re still appealing and compelling and—Wow, I sound like an idiot.”

“Never. Not to me.”

She smiled. “I hope you don’t have to change how you look—You better not be lying to me about being better and over all this, though. If you’re lying to me—”

“I’m not, Luna. I do not know that I have ever lied in my life. I have chosen not to speak, and I have found that most people do not believe me, but I have not lied. I have never lied to you.”

“You don’t know how special that is.”

He would have asked about it, but Alvin flew up to the back of the seat, bumping into both chairs at once. “Tynan is special. Tynan is not vortex.”

“Alvin, I am the vortex. I was born of it, and I am just as any of the others who are a part of it—”

“No. No. Vortex only destroy. Tynan saves. Not vortex.”

“He’s got a point,” Luna said, and he frowned at her. “You should think of yourself by your name, take it and make yourself something different from all those others. I don’t know why you haven’t already. Break free from all those stereotypes, all the things people have told you of your species—you are not like the rest of them. You’re your own person, you have your own rules, and you make your own choices. Maybe they destroy. You don’t.”

“I did.”

“To save lives. Sometimes the police have to shoot people who take other people hostage. You saved a whole bus full of people. You might not have realized it, but you did. That’s noble. You were a hero, and I think you already got punished enough for what you ate. You didn’t do it without pain, and that makes what you did even more noble.”

“I do not feel noble. I am still a monster.”

“No! Friend Tynan is no monster.”

He frowned, not sure how to react to Alvin’s words. Friend. Alvin had called him a friend. Luna had first, but Luna was different. She’d never feared him or what he could do. Alvin had. This was bewildering.

“Just rest,” Luna told him. “We’ll prove it to you eventually.”