Submitted for the December 2023 prompt: Treasures, Brightly Wrapped

Evelyn uncurled herself from her cramped sleeping cocoon. Today is planetfall! A break from the Worldship’s crowded corridors and recycled air. In her excitement, forgetting to keep slightly hunched, she banged her head on the ceiling. And the low bulkheads.

 

After quickly dressing, she stepped through the hatch into the family’s common room, this time careful to keep her head bowed. Her father, ladling savory stew from a tureen in the table’s center, was trying to convince her mother to put work away and eat.

 

“In a moment,” she said, hands waving, manipulating virtual files only she could see.

 

As Evelyn approached, her father flinched in her looming shadow. An autonomic vestigial reaction to airborne predators, her mother had explained once. Evelyn still cringed inside every time she made it happen. He quickly recovered, eyes beaming with pleasure.

 

“Evie, come eat. Busy day today.”

 

Her mother, finished, took a bowl. Evelyn sat, accepting another.

 

“What are you looking forward to most this planetfall?” he asked.

 

“The pairing ceremony,” Evelyn replied without hesitation.

 

An anxious look flicked between her parents.

 

“Too young, you said last time, even though many Nivar pair before eighteen revolutions. I am twenty-six now.”

 

“But you are not—”

 

A sharp look from her mother terminated his words.

 

“Not what?” Evelyn demanded. “Not the right color?” She gestured at her drab brown skin, so muted compared to the ebony-swirled auburn that graced both her parents. “Too tall? No one will pair with a freak?”

 

“Of course not, dear, but some Nivar never pair,” her mother said calmly.

 

Was that a wistful, pained look in her father’s eyes?

 

“Maybe there’s something wrong with you two. Only one child — a mutant at that.”

 

As soon as the words sprang forth, Evelyn regretted them. Her father’s face turned stony, his reply forestalled by a priority ping on his earbud. He listened, gulped a spoonful of stew, muttered, “lab crisis brewing,” and rushed from the family’s quarters. Her mother just tapped the emitter attached to her temple and returned to her landing manifests. Evelyn finished her stew in conflicted silence.

 

* * *

 

After three days of exhausting labor surface side, a vast hive of temporary domes dotted the shore next to a rippling lake gleaming in sunlight. In the distance, tall trees sprung for the clouds.

 

An idyllic world, Evelyn thought, but the gravity was too slight compared to Worldship’s norm. After the resource gathering and reproduction planetfall afforded was finished, the Nivar would move on. The search for a world to replace the one lost so many generations ago would resume.

 

But in this moment, as Evelyn waited amongst a circle of hundreds of young Nivar, she felt like she could fly, her muscles unbound, her spine lifting straight without banging her head. The first hint of pheromones permeated the air. Across the ring, Atchik, above average for a Nivar, but still barely reaching Evelyn’s chin, smiled at her. Unlike the indifference of most Nivar, he had always been kind. She smiled in return.

 

With no preamble, an izza drum began a low penetrating beat. As if drawn forth by the sound, a tide of scents swelled, swirling into an intoxicating mix. Already, some Nivar had fixated on a single pheromone beacon, drawing them in. Evelyn saw Atchik and a young woman she did not know wrap their arms around each other as if trying to form a single organism, their biochemistries synching in a lifelong pairbond.

 

When the drumbeat abruptly ended, only a handful remained unpaired. Evelyn, arms empty, turned from the newly bonded, away from the crowds of beaming elders, and ran.

 

* * *

 

Her mother found her sitting beneath a lonely tree overlooking the lake. Crouching down, she gently clasped Evelyn’s listless hands.

 

“Evelyn, dear, I must reveal an important truth.”

 

Evelyn remained silent.

 

“Twenty-six revolutions ago we made planetfall on a dying world. There were sapients, much like us, but they overheated their home before reaching the stars. When we arrived, barely a handful remained, beyond our help. On that world, your father and I stood in a pairing circle, the last one before we’d be too old.”

 

“And you bonded and had me,” Evelyn whispered.

 

“No. We never paired. That’s why your father and I have no other children.”

 

“Then how do I exist?” Evelyn asked, shock making her voice quaver.

 

“We had loved each other long before that last pairing attempt. But sometimes biology cares not one whit for love. I ran from our failure. Your father followed, trying to comfort me. We found a native sapient, malnourished, newly deceased. Nestled in her arms was a tiny caterwauling infant. We rescued the baby, and she rescued us. We loved you deeply. We b—oth still do.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

Tears filled her mother’s eyes. “Typical Nivarian avoidance. But there’s something we hope will make up for it.”

 

* * *

 

Evelyn walked down the row of bio-pods, inspecting the occupants, replaying her father’s explanation.

 

“You were the last of your kind. The Council agreed that studying your genome, so close to ours, might help us understand why Nivar pairing only gets triggered planetside. We’ve made progress. I suspect your kind’s pairing was not so rigid as ours.”

 

Her father paused and clasped her mother’s hand.

 

“But we also wanted you to have a chance for the offspring denied to us. We’d found extensive genetic information amongst the databases salvaged from your world. I took samples: hair, skin, blood, and even some marrow from the rib you broke when you were ten. Between the two, I created sufficient variation for a viable population. The first batch is nearly grown — neuro-conditioning almost finished. They will be able to talk and walk, but there is still much you will have to teach them. Your species called themselves, Human.”

 

She stopped before one pod. The man inside, a barely paler brown, made her breath catch.

 

Evelyn whispered, “I am the last and the first. Together, you and I shall make a new world.”