C.Y. 5104:130 – Aboard the Deep Space Ship (D.S.S.) Hind of the Dawn

On the last morning of her Best Year, Autumn Harvest Selene, the Girl Named after the Moon, awoke in her comfortable variable-gravity bed, stretched and looked around.

“Raphael,” she said with a yawn, “where’s Alan?”

“He is presently on the bridge.” Raphael Goldwing, Chris Alan’s Sentry (as he’s formally named), has a masculine, baritone voice that’s lively, mellifluous, yet unusually precise. “Shall I alert him to your status?”

“No, he’ll see me soon enough, and Amber knows anyway. Let me sit up, then bring the bed’s gravity back to normal.”

“Acknowledged.”

Autumn smiled to herself as the weight on her body slowly increased. For my part, I’d be delighted to describe to the uninformed how the bed worked: not by generating anti-gravitons, but by using a species of n-crystal called tesseractite to generate a space-time matrix and to accelerate objects within it. Beyond that level of description, my technical interest generally wanes. I know a lot about a lot of things, as most Ne’fis like me do, but I’m no expert in applied high-tech and hyper-tech. With a Sentry as formidable as Raphael, I don’t need to be.

Autumn is stunning, clothed or unclothed – but then, I never met a woman from Mahe’alani who wasn’t stunning. She has naturally streaked, wheat-blonde hair that covers her pertly pointed ears and extends to the small of her back, vivid blue eyes, a lovely smile, a concave nose, an oval face with a pointed chin, long legs and wonderful curves here, there and everywhere – including a certain, shall we say, top-heaviness that’s delightful without being extreme. She’s just tall enough to put her chin my shoulder if she stands on her toes.

I’d always thought I’d marry a fellow Ne’fi, but it didn’t turn out that way. Autumn’s a Fe’ni, the type within our Water temperament that naturally likes to take charge of things. My leadership style differs; I like to start projects and then delegate the follow-through to others. Autumn was proving herself an outstanding CEO for our household, and also a first-rate First Officer on our ship.

And what is Best Year, you may ask? I was coming to that. Best Year is the twelve-month honeymoon dictated by Covenant Law, and we’d begun ours on the beach of Harper’s Abode, an island owned by the Circle of Starbards on Sealand Alpha, a world ten thousand light-years from my homeworld Ge. Our torrid pace as lovers continued once the D.S.S. Hind of the Dawn arrived in the star system six months later, ready for an unofficial shakedown cruise that allowed us to play tourist in scores of star systems all over known space.