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The purple bodysuit fit her faithfully, and Deniir’s wings were up and out as they walked to the R and D department.

“Is the suit too much?”

She was getting more than what she would consider normal attention.

Deniir cleared his throat. “No. You look amazing. It is just very . . . fitted.”

“Well, I normally wear leather, but I get the feeling that it would mark me as a bit of a barbarian up here.”

She chortled.

After breakfast with Darthuun, they had begun their commute while the master engineer did the dishes.

“I like your tool belt.”

Deniir grinned.

Her belt was wrought with woven strips of various leathers and metals. She considered it her emergency designing supply. Her basic tools rode on her hips and rocked as she took every step.

“Thanks. It was a gift from my friends before I moved.”

She tapped it with her fingers.

“Why do you live so far from your people?”

She rubbed the back of her neck. “I had a disagreement with the administration about the direction of my creations, so I simply removed myself from their influence.”

“I sense there is a story behind that.”

She shuddered. “Not one you want to hear.”

He nodded. “Accepted. I reserve the right to ask again.”

“Fair enough.”

She smiled and entered the R and D section of the mother ship with a sense of anticipation.

Today, she was going to play with big toys, and she couldn’t wait.

Four hours later, Deniir appeared at her side.

“Ula, what have you figured out for that portable healer?”

“It’s done. On the edge of the table there. It now generates a beam that works on the clotting principal. It identifies the proteins in the tissue by doing a calibration analysis of stable tissue and then the beam can be used to encourage the generation of healed tissue.”

She flapped her hand at the unit.

“Already? Trull has been working on that for two years.”

Deniir picked it up an examined it.

“Well, that is why you asked me here, right?”

She felt a touch on her shoulder, and she turned, blinking up at him. His features were calm and sober. “I brought you here to see how your mind worked, to see if you could inspire the engineers working here. I didn’t bring you here to drain your brain.”

“You are touching me.”

He nodded. “You need to be touched. I am getting the feeling that contact is a thing you left behind when you moved to your aerie.”

His wings shielded their conversation from the other engineers, and his hand moved from her shoulder to cup her neck.

She could feel the warmth of his fingers, and her heart stuttered in her chest. “It was my choice. My people or my self-respect. I chose me, I always choose me.”

“There doesn’t have to be a choice between doing what you love and being with someone. You can have socialization and job satisfaction.”

His thumb skated along her jawline.

Ula stared up at him, and she was completely hypnotized by the warm, seductive scent of Deniir with the blend of a wild storm. It made her want to cuddle close for safety, and she guessed that it was a genetic ploy to have a female do just that.

“How did the planet do that?”

She asked him softly.

“Do what?”

He was leaning toward her.

“Key my species to respond to yours.”

“No one knows, but I am not complaining.”

His lips made contact with hers, and she felt an electric jolt of energy and a sparking of ideas that she had never even thought of involving technology that she hadn’t heard of. Thoughts that were not her own.

Her eyes widened in surprise, but Deniir’s hand tightened on her neck, keeping her lips pressed to his. Her mind organized the new information as it streamed into her thoughts, and she could only imagine that the same was happening to him.

She heard a throat clearing, and Deniir continued their kiss for another minute before leisurely lifting his head, a dazed look in his eyes. He smiled softly and caressed her cheek. “Hello.”

Ula blinked. “Hello. Learning to fly looked like fun.”

He grinned and grimaced a moment later. “And I understand your reasoning for your life of solitude. We will deal with that another day.”

The sound of Darthuun clearing his throat was repeated. “My son, as much as I enjoy the thought of you finding a partner, the pheromone cloud you two are producing is distracting the other engineers.”

Ula blushed. “Sorry, Darthuun.”

“My apologies, Father.”

The master engineer was standing with his arms crossed over his chest, his wings flared out to frame him. He wore the same type of clothing that Deniir wore. A sleeveless shirt slit up the back to allow for the wings’ free movement and tight trousers that tucked into knee-high boots.

His sandy hair was caressed by silvery strands, which hinted at the changes that Deniir would eventually undergo.

“Ula has already made great strides on the portable healing unit.”

Darthuun looked sceptical. “How great?”

Ula smirked, “It is finished.”

It was hard to be smug while she was leaning against Deniir, but the moment she realised it was her own body shifting toward his on its own, she stepped back until she was leaning against her workstation.

Darthuun looked sceptical. “Really?”

Ula smirked and leaned over, grabbing the unit from where Deniir had set it down. Out of the way but within reach.

She grabbed a blade from her belt, and wincing, she placed her hand on the table and plunged the knife through her left hand, between the bones. The searing agony distracted her, and she heard Deniir shout and Darthuun gasp.

Through gritted teeth, she hissed, “Stand back. I have to do this.”

He stood back but it was reluctantly.

Her hand throbbed, but she picked up the new portable healer. She calibrated it against her forearm, and the moment it turned green, she pulled the knife out of her flesh, pressing the healing unit to the back of her hand.

The unit’s indicator light turned blue and the pain stopped. It was telling her nerves to calm down while it used the clotting and repair factors of her body to do their work in the most efficient way possible.

Once the blue light turned white, she rotated her hand to heal the interior of her palm.

When the light turned purple, the healing was done.

She raised her hand to Darthuun and flexed her palm. “I trust you will believe me now?”

He bowed low, his wings fully extended. “My apologies that my doubt caused you pain, Master Designer.”

“Testing a design on my own body is only what anyone should ask of themselves if they expect others to trust their lives to it.”

Deniir looked at her as if she was the most precious thing in the world, and Darthuun bowed lower.

“Please get up, Darthuun.”

She returned to her workstation and smiled at Deniir as she started back on the tracking pod that she was working on.

The master engineer stood up again and folded his wings in. “We thank you for your help. Are the schematics in the system?”

“They are. I took images of the unit as I built it.”

She sealed the casing with a few snaps, and the small rocket was complete. She would need to build more, and one per day would increase her chances of finding any traces of those first few Gaians.

“If you are done with that project, it is time for the mid-day meal.”

Deniir smiled. “Would you care to join me?”

She looked across her workstation at the pieces in progress but acknowledged that her mind would be clearer if she had something to eat. “I would enjoy that.”

Ula extended her hand to him, and he took it, bringing her bloody knuckles to his lips. Meeting his gaze over her hand, she smiled. It was an interesting way to start a relationship, but how much of a future could they have, separated by space and culture?

As if performing a magic trick, he reached into his shirt and removed a small object while their server poured their drinks. She was sticking to fruit juices and plain tea. She didn’t want to take chances on getting intoxicated.

“This is your debit chit. You can use it to buy anything on the mother ship, and you can use any terminal to check your balance.”

He held it between two fingers and extended it to her.

She examined it, and it was a simple piece of recording media. A small chip that could easily be concealed within clothing was sitting in her palm. She lifted it and tucked it into her work belt. That would keep it safe until she could make a wristband that would keep it in place.

She smiled brightly and was startled when a man appeared at her elbow. It was Engineer Trull. He bowed low. “Thank you for your genius. I could never have shifted the design in that direction.”

“Thank Gaia for the inspiration. My poor brain does nothing that the planet didn’t put there. I am merely a tool of her design.”

“As are we all. Well, thank you for coming to the ship to share her wisdom then. That was under your control, and it is appreciated.”

She grinned, “For that, you are welcome.”

He was going to reach for her hand but a wing stopped him, flicking out with the sudden aim of a weapon. Deniir raised an eyebrow at Trull, and the other man excused himself and left.

Ula took her cup and sipped from it. “That was rude. How long are you going to keep doing it?”

He shrugged. “Until I have a mate of my own, it seems.”

He gave her an innocent smile.

She focussed on the menu and made a selection. “Focus on finding a match for your lunch. Leave your mate to the future.”

“I am an engineer, I make my own future.”

He winked and gave his focus to the menu.