Chapter 6
Alessia looked herself over in her bathroom mirror. Eighteen years old, and apparently the apple of every boy's eye? It had never occurred to her that she could be a twice, but, now that she was taking the time to assess herself, she could see how that could be so.
That she was gifted with a talent with machinery was always obvious to her, and for that she'd always known that she stood out against the other girls and boys. She was an expert in things they might someday need to apply to the college to learn. The innate aptitudes of Earth's finest engineers were her inheritance.
But, with all that and the distractions her technical pursuits had brought, she'd lost track of the rest of her self. Of the way she was growing up, of how her body was developing. While her classmates were out kissing boys she'd been poring over schematics and playing with prototypes. The years had passed her by and she was now a young adult, though still as innocent as when she was a middle school child.
Standing in her panties, she saw a woman in her reflection. The slim little girl with the voluminous and long light brown curls had changed in more ways than just the vertical. She'd until then barely noticed how the narrowness of her waist smoothly swept outward into mature hips. She shifted her position, and her womanly gait caused a lively shudder upon her chest.
Ah, her breasts. An annoyance. Always bouncing around, getting in her way while she worked. As soon as they'd began to grow in she'd gotten in the habit of hiding them away in concealing clothes. With each passing year of her teenage life it had gotten harder to ignore them. Now looking at them dead on, she saw their round and high forms contrasting starkly against her otherwise willowy frame. Surely they'd gotten too big for her. She wondered if they were done growing. She cupped them and lifted them slightly, then turned to her side to watch herself in profile view as she released them to fall jigglingly back against herself. They probably played a major role in the attraction of boys like that persistent Benji.
Then her face. She'd never felt there was anything too interesting about it - it looked just like the ones of princesses and heroines in books and movies. Her eyes narrowed as she leaned against the bathroom sink to bring herself closer to the mirror. Was she seeing a lack of interesting features, or rather a lack of imperfections? The proportions of her eyes, her lips and her nose, were actually quite aesthetically ideal, and growing up surrounded by such fictional imagery, she'd never realized how much rarer such a beauteous face was in real life. Hers, she realized, was a face of beauty.
"Oh..."
Pursing her lips, she twisted herself at a couple more angles, seeing how her lean muscles were just barely visible beneath her soft skin as she moved, her long brown hair richly swaying as she went. She felt a swell of pride, which she, in the name of humility, wasn't ready to acknowledge.
She eventually stopped, feeling ashamed by her vanity. She left her bathroom and went to her bed, where she plucked up an oversized t-shirt and draped it over herself. Then properly decent, she left the privacy of her room to go downstairs and grab an apple from the kitchen.
"Oh, you're home sweetie."
It was her father, Don Greco, the local power engineer and a well liked person in the rural town. "Yes daddy." She grabbed the shiniest looking apple out of a bowl on their kitchen table.
"I didn't hear you come in. That boy Benji came by looking for you earlier, and I told him you weren't home."
Alessia nodded.
"So, I guess, give him a call? Or maybe not. Actually, don't."
She giggled slightly. "Why not?"
"Don't play the fool with me. You know what boys like him are looking for. And, uh... well, I suppose you're an adult now, so I shouldn't be telling you what to do? Oh, I don't know."
Alessia chuckled softly. "I can handle them."
"Right. Of course you can, you're a smart girl." He scratched his head, beginning to grow uncomfortable with their conversation. If only Alessia still had a mother to handle such talks! "Well, I'm off to bed. See you in the morning."
"I am as well." They tromped up the stairway of their little home to their respective rooms, said their goodnights and shut their doors behind themselves.
She hopped onto her bed and picked up a tablet. Holding it before her, she mentally commanded her Network Chip to put a call through to Benji.
Alessia? A video call, huh?
The sound of people laughing and chatting rang in along with his voice. He was somewhere busy, like a bar or the rec center.
Let me just get somewhere out of the way before I switch my visuals over.
There was some shuffling, and when he next spoke the decreased background noise and cold reverberation on his voice hinted he'd moved to a washroom.
Ooh... Hello, what's up?
"Well, my father said you came by earlier tonight." She felt a little self conscious, having given him a video call, and made sure her tablet was tilted so he wouldn't realize she wasn't wearing anything more than her t-shirt and panties.
Yeah. I was on my way out for a couple drinks with my friends. You're old enough for that now, aren't you? So I thought I'd see if you'd join up.
"Oh." What a grown up thing to ask of her. "Um... thanks."
So do you feel like coming out?
"Ah no... It's late now. I'm about to go to sleep."
Alright Alessia. Now there's a round of shots waiting for me so I'm gonna cut this short. Can I see you tomorrow? Let's have that lemonade.
She'd expected him to ask. What she didn't expect was the impulse to finally grant him the date he'd so persistently seeked. "Um... okay."
There was the briefest pause.
Really? Wow, great! I'll meet you at the rec center at about five, okay?
Alessia was trying to keep herself stonefaced, to seem nonchalant at what she'd just agreed to do. "Sure."
Awesome! See you then. Bye.
She put down her tablet and flopped back against her pillow. Why did she just do that? She clenched her eyes shut in regret, then produced an excited burst of a giggle. Did she really care for a date with Benji? She shook her head. No, not really, but going out on dates was the kind of thing young women did. It was the kind of thing the young woman she'd been staring at in the mirror ought to have started doing. Even if it was just a lemonade. It was time to grow up.
***
The wild islands offshore from Eva Australis had quickly become a boring place to the combined spirits of Eva and the planet. The planet was curious about the other humanoid species that could be found on one of those islands, working the marshes to grow moonberry, but the Eva component of its mind was wary to be near any of them. It wished to avoid an encounter with the original Eva.
The mainlands of Eva Australis and, to the north of that, Lemuria, were inaccessible to her. She could not thrive as she did in the wilds on those two small continents, for they'd been completely terraformed with Earthly biology. She had no power there, and furthermore no sustenance.
There was however a third place, built along the coast of one of the larger continents. It's people, humans exclusively, lived in an expanding area that was bordered by the wilds. That place was the colony of Mu. If ever she hoped to study her visitors, that was the place to go.
She would need a name if she were to interact with those humans. As she sunk into the soil she considered what might be a suitable thing to call herself. It would have to be simple, and pretty. Something benevolent sounding.
She disappeared into the ground. When again the sun would touch her skin, she would be far away on the northern hemisphere of her planet, in the wilds beyond Mu.
Chapter 7
Alessia crouched down at the base of the solar panel and spread the tall purple grass away from its access box. After unscrewing the dusty lid she pried it loose. "Hmm." With her flashlight she lit the inside of the darkened cavity, to get an idea of what would have to be done to get the array running again. "Hmm," she repeated, "wrong fuse. Too small." She took out her multimeter and attached its probes to each end of the fuse. It was blown.
As she got to work at replacing the blown fuse her mind began to wander back to the date she had with Benji later that afternoon. It'd been bothering her since she'd woke up that morning, in disbelief at what she'd agreed to do, and since then it had been constantly nagging at her, giving her feelings of unease. Her first date with a boy. Several times she'd almost called him to cancel.
It was totally unnecessary to use a video call to reach him that previous night. Having come to understand that the mere sight of her had a very real effect on boys like Benji, she'd done it to tease him. The power she had over him exhilarated her. Would she dress that evening to dazzle him, or keep to her usual girl next door look?
With the fuse replaced she took out her tablet and opened up a program to monitor the solar power field. The downed array was beginning to feed power back into the grid; her job was done. She screwed the lid back onto the panel and rose to her feet, while mentally querying her Network Chip for the time.
She had about an hour to get home and get herself cleaned up for the date. In a hurry she dropped her tools into her sack and turned towards home.
She heard the snapping of branches coming from deeper into the wild.
She stopped in place. That didn't usually happen. No one had any business being so far from the town, other than her. Moreover people didn't
want
to be so far out, where the purple life grew. All of it was toxic and no one was sure what kind of dangers were there.
Some said there were beasts, more bizarre and more terrifying than anything that could have evolved on Earth. Alessia shivered, despite the early summer heat. She shook her head, perishing the thought - they were just campfire tales. No evidence had ever been observed, neither on foot nor from the air, that there was anything more than strange purple plants and brown fungi growing on the planet Eva.
So who could it be? She squinted into the wild, where tall grass sharply gave way to shrubs, then to trees that were all branches and no trunk. It was hard to see anything through the thick growth. She heard it again. There was definitely something moving out there, and to her relief, it sounded like it was doing so on two human sized legs.
She got closer, enough that she could crouch in the tall grass and spread the branches of a tree to peer through it. She made out the milky white skin of bare legs moving away from her. Whoever it was, was heading deeper into the wild. When they seemed distant enough that they wouldn't hear her follow she got to her feet and crept through the brush in stealthy pursuit.
Occasional glimpses of the stranger were all she could get, but each brief flash seemed to stoke the building flames of Alessia's fascination. Where were they going? Were her eyes deceiving her, or was the person naked? It was beginning to dawn on her that she'd gotten deep into the wild, that perhaps she might be lost, when finally her quarry came to a stop.
The chaotic growth of the woods seemed to organize itself into a tiny clearing, where the trees opened up and were rimmed by bushels of exotic glistening flowers, or some alien analogue thereof. A thin stream of clear water snaked around a patch of fungi, the centerpiece of which was the largest native mushroom she had ever seen. It was low and as broad as her father's car, and looked quite squishy.
It was an amazing scene, the stuff of fairytales to be sure. Even more astounding however was the person she had followed to arrive there. Now in plain sight, and indeed, as naked as she had suspected her to be, it was apparent that Alessia had followed a goddess through the woods.
A goddess. There wasn't supposed to be any of their kind in Mu! It had been agreed that the northern colony was a place for humans and humans alone to live. Mu was a refuge for those who didn't wish to live under the rule of the immortals; a society of their own. Yet there it was, unmistakable and so illegal that Alessia felt like a co conspirator just by watching it.
Alessia seemed entranced, so intensely fascinated was she as she watched the goddess climb atop that massive mushroom to lay down and rest. Its skin was pale, and its hair, shoulder length, was dark. Everything she'd heard about them was true: it was perfectly beautiful, flawless, elegantly lithe and long of limb, though its body had developed far beyond the normal parameters of human sexuality. Its breasts, firm, perfect and constantly abounce, were nearing the size where 'huge' would have been a fitting description. There was no doubt in her mind, despite what she had been taught, that it was not at all simply an 'it', but rather a
