Librarian's note: While this is a standalone prequel to the previous instalments of HOS, and can easily be read out of order, it does provide far more background information than the previous two (which is why it's so much longer). I personally think it's best to read the others first, to get the gradual surprises, but if you prefer them in chronological order, this is actually the first one, while the second is the second and the first is the third. Because I like writing backwards, apparently.
"Mayday, mayday! This is Jupiter Zero One Three requesting immediate aid! My ship has been damaged, and I'm making emergency landfall on unexplored planet 713V in the Leda quadrant. Please send help, this is Jupiter Zero One Three..."
~*~
June looked around herself dismally, heaved a sigh, and sat down on a rock. There were plenty of rocks to choose from. In fact, 713V seemed to be mostly rocks. She should probably just return to her shipwreck. The suns were getting low, anyway, and she'd rather not explore unknown territory in the dark. She took a swig of water, got up, turned around - and sprang backwards, hand going to her hip.
There was a glowing jellyfish hovering in the air in front of her.
"Whoa," June said out loud.
"Whoa!" echoed an excitable, childish voice in her head.
"What the hell?!" shouted June, looking around herself frantically before settling back on the jellyfish, which really was the only thing there.
"What?" said the curious voice in her head.
"Are you... talking to me?" she said, feeling increasingly silly. Maybe she was hallucinating.
"You are talking to me!" said the voice, while the jellyfish lit up brighter and spun around in the air.
"Are you just repeating everything I say?"
"Not everything," said the jellyfish, bobbing up and down and making a sound that might have been a giggle. It was possibly not entirely right to call it a jellyfish, anyway. It was like a tiny, upturned fishbowl, full of long, glowing threads that swam around each other very quickly, without ever making any knots. They constantly dropped out of the opening at the bottom, too, like the threads of a jellyfish.
"How do you speak my language?" asked June.
"Me repeats-peats-picks language from you, speak by speak! And-and-also not-everything, speak-weak weak-things, from..."
The not-jellyfish drifted higher, and suddenly all the little threads darting out of the upturned fishbowl were pointing in June's direction, more specifically at the top part of her.
"Wait, wait, waitjustaminute, you're saying you're picking words from my
head
?!"
"Me are picking weak-things," said the glowing thing helpfully, "things to speak, picking language, from your head, picking wait-wait jellyfish minute from minute."
"I haven't said jellyfish!" shouted June, jumping backwards once again. "Did you just - just
take
that word from my head? Are you reading my mind?!"
"I are reading your language, speaks from your language," said the voice, still excitable and child-like and decidedly non-threatening. "Jellyfish is repeat-repeat-repeat-speak in your mind; not-small, glowing."
"So you're just... picking my brain for words? Not reading my mind? No invasion into my thoughts and feelings?"
"Just words, no thoughts and feelings," confirmed the... the thing. The alien.
"What do I call you?" asked June, feeling a little guilty about her glowing repetition of 'jellyfish'.
"I are not have word for me that you would read as language," said the definitely-not-a-jellyfish. "I are," it said, and then blinked rapidly before letting all its glowing threads sink down and go dim. It was right; she didn't know what to do with that in her own language.
"What do I call you?" it asked.
"My name's June," said June.
"June," repeated the alien. "Is language word? Is feeling-feel-mean-meaning? Is word with meaning?"
"Yes, it's a word for a specific time, during spring, when everything blooms."
"Juuune," said blinking-rapidly-before-dimming, and then it did something weird with its glowing threads again, making them all rise up before expanding outwards like fireworks. Was it translating her name into its own language?
"I still need something to call you, though," she said, wondering how to translate in the other direction. "Any suggestions?"
"Blinking?" it said, and she had a feeling it was scanning her mind for prominent words again. "Blinking-blink-blinked-blinky? Dimming-dimmed-dim-dim-dim? Blinky Dim?"
June laughed. "Blinky Dim is perfect."
Blinky Dim made a happy loop de loop, but then suddenly hung very still and came slowly closer.
"Where did June come from?" it asked in a far more serious tone. "I are big-good feeling for meaning-meeting you, picking June-words. I bloom with language! But meeting is... invasion? Is hell?"
"What?" said June, perplexed over this sudden turn. "No, absolutely not. I had to make an emergency landing; I didn't think anyone lived here. And I don't want anything bad to happen to you now that I've met you, either!"
"June is good-good," said Blinky Dim affectionately. "I believe June is not mean bad. But then June did not know about..." it said something in its own light-language again, where a single thread glowed brightly at the centre of its bowl, while all the others swirled around it, far out at first, but tighter and tighter, until they completely surrounded the glowing light and blocked it out. It seemed pretty ominous.
"Um, no, I don't really know anything about your planet," said June.
"June should go," said Blinky Dim. "You should go before hell happens. Before invasion of June."
"What do you mean? There's something dangerous here? Like a... predator or something?"
"Yes, yes!" said Blinky Dim, flitting about anxiously and speaking even faster than usual, the voice in her head frantic. "Most bad predator is big bloom of hell planet! Blinky Dim and other jellyfish mostly safe because only eat words and light. But June is big, is eating, yes? Eating is bad!"
"Um, right," said June, trying to stay calm. "Well, I guess I could just go back to my ship and stay there? It's broken, but it's still got its protective casing, and I've sent out a distress signal, so hopefully someone will come looking for me soon..."
"Yes, yes, June must go back, must not stay and be invaded. Blinky Dim will be protective also!"
Frazzled by her new friend's warnings, June set a brisk pace back towards the ship. The suns had sunk ever lower during their conversation, and she remembered her earlier worries about what might come out at night. Jogging along and scanning her surroundings for nightmarish hell-monsters, she didn't see where she was going... and just as Blinky Dim shouted "careful!" in her head, the ground gave in beneath her feet, and she tumbled down into the dark.
She must've been knocked unconscious, because when she opened her eyes, she was in a spacious cavern-like room, glowing softly with the light of a full steam of jellyfish. She was lying on a comfortable bed-like structure, raised up from the ground - or floor, perhaps, as both that as well as walls and ceiling was covered in a strange mosaic that made it nigh impossible to keep her eyes fixed on a single point. It was clearly constructed, but everything was somewhat rounded, giving the room its cavernous, organic feel. As she groaned and attempted to sit up, however, her mind was assaulted with a thousand high-pitched voices all shouting "she's awake!" more or less at the same time, and then the whole jellyfish steam bolted away in a flurry of blinking lights, leaving her in the darkness.
"Um, h-hello?" she tried experimentally. "Blinky Dim? Anyone?"
"Hello," said a voice in her head that was so utterly different from all the others that she knew at once it couldn't come from a jellyfish. Where Blinky Dim had been childish, energetic and somewhat feminine (in the way that all children sounded more like women than men), this one was calm, mature and decidedly masculine.
"Hi?" she said in a high-pitched squeak that belied her terror. "Who's there?"
"The exalted guest is conversing with her obedient servant," said the calm voice.
"You're my what, now?" said June, utterly perplexed.
"Her obedient servant," repeated the voice, then, with a hint of distress, "is that not correct? Are those not the words for someone who does everything you desire?"
"Well, yes, but, I mean... why do I have a servant? What's your name? And, er, can you turn the light on?"
"The exalted guest has as many obedient servants as she desires because she is the obedient servants' exalted guest," said the voice, which didn't really explain much at all. "The obedient servants do not use names the way it's been discovered that the exalted guest does, but if it is more desirable to the exalted guest, she may name her obedient servant Xtephes of the shen tian. Shen tian means obedient servant in the language of the shen tian, while the exalted guest is ela esha, meaning exalted guest," it added, helpfully. "And of course, her obedient servant is overjoyed to fulfil the exalted guest's first desire. Thesheek!"
June surmised the last word to be a shout, and not long after, a few of the glowing jellyfish returned, faintly illuminating the mosaic cavern - and the other person in there with her.
Calling it a "person" seemed like a bit of a stretch, actually, and if not for the giant eye occupying most of what she'd have to say was its head, she might not even have guessed it was a living creature. It was much taller than her, dark blue, and below its bulbous head-shape there was no body, just a mass of long, smooth limbs, like vines or tentacles. If she hadn't spoken with it first, it would've been easy to confuse it for Blinky Dim's hell-predator, despite it having a lot less teeth than she'd imagined.
"Her obedient servant hopes the illumination is to the exalted guest's satisfaction, and apologises for not having foreseen this desire," said the shen tian as the silence stretched on, and June realised she'd been staring. "Her obedient servant looks forward to learning more about
all
the exalted guest's desires."
