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Dian

"D, c'mon, come back to bed, sweetheart."

Only a month? Feels like a lifetime. I am ashamed that I have adjusted so quickly to my new home amongst the stars.

"D?" her sonorous voice grounds me, forcing me to remember where I am. Petri. North Section. Floor 29. Room 321.

I turn to look at my beautiful wolf calling out to me from my bed, but I cannot move. She knows this. The sight of our beautifully tragic planet restrains me from returning to her. How can I sleep when I know our planet is dying, when I know my people need me?

Nim rubs her eyes as she stands, her dark lupine muzzle opening wide with a yawn. I watch her walk over to me, her fluffy rust-colored tail swishing lazily back and forth. "I'm surprised you haven't evolved to be nocturnal yet," she says.

Her fingers slide through the fur on my arm and suddenly it is easy to talk again. "Hard to do that when night has ceased to exist," I say. I want to embrace her but my arms stay folded.

She looks down at her wristband, her eyes squinting at the piercing light it gives off in my blacked-out room. "It's 1:05 AM. If we were back on Loana, we'd be sleeping right now."

I raise my tail in disbelief and unfold an arm, letting my fingers dance around on her shoulder. The smells of chemicals and wet soil flick by my muzzle as she leans closer. "I do not know if I would call what we did at one in the morning 'sleeping.'"

She giggles and pulls on my arm, "The point is that we'd both be in bed, D."

The thought of lying with her in bed is suddenly very attractive, and I try to remember what possessed me to leave our warmth in the first place. A dream? No. Voices, music. It was as if the planet was pulsing, thumping, beating softly to the tempo of its own dying breaths. I wonder how long it has left.

"D?"

I glance at Loana one last time; it looks so beautiful, with its single, pearly ring complimenting the blue-green color of it all. Then I nod, letting Nim pull me away from the window and back into bed. I wrap my arms around her waist, capture her tail between my legs, and hold her there, letting her earthy scent wash over me and appreciating how lucky I am to be here with her. Part of me feels guilty for wanting to be back on Loana, helping my people survive during this time of many unknowns. I finally have Nim here though, with me. Shouldn't that be enough. She is one of them after all. I must protect her and love her just as I would them. Well, maybe a little more.

I wake up the next morning to the sound of water coming from my shower. Nim must already be awake and getting ready for her day. Waking up early is something she has had to adjust to. Her highly-esteemed job as a botanist requires her to spend most of her day in the lab, researching infected plants from Loana. I know her job is important to her, though I cannot understand what she is saying most of the time when she tries to talk to me about it. Occasionally, she will smuggle a pretty flower or two from the garden for me. They would always be healthy and beautiful, just like her. I would put them in a cup by my window and gaze at them, believing that I would be able to understand them better because she was the one who picked them. I never got anywhere with that theory, but it was nice to focus my thoughts into other, less-worrying thi--

A piercing red light interrupts my thoughts. The touch-screen portion of the wall to the left of my bed is glowing. A small, rectangular notification blinks at me. I groggily sit up and try to will it away with my mind, not wanting to deal with problems right now, but that does not work. I crawl across the bed and swing my legs over the edge to sit up. The notification's thick red outline tells me it is urgent. They always are. After I tap it and enter my computer's security password, the email opens.

I hear the water turn off to the left of me. Nim walks out shortly after, covered in a couple towels. Her tail drips with water as it sways gently back and forth. "You're up early," she chimes.

"Yeah..." I trail off, trying to focus on the content of this email.

"Who's that from?" she asks, drying off next to me and staring away from my computer screen.

It takes me a few seconds to respond. This email is not sounding pleasant. "The Pets."

I hear Nim growl in disgust, "Haven't you done enough for them?"

I close the email and start pulling up classified military profiles. Nim knows not to look at them. I am thankful she respects my job enough to resist her own curiosity. There were serious repercussions for civilians who knew more than they should. We both could get into a lot of trouble if she looked at any of the important files I had saved on my computer. "This is different."

Her tail stills. In my peripheral vision, I see her looking at me, sensing the seriousness in my voice. She does not like being kept in the dark about everything I do for the Pets, but this is not something I have the authority to tell.

I recall a pawful of soldiers from the war and bring up their profiles, but my finger hesitates from tapping their "Contact" buttons. The reason we are all here--to get away from the war, and a chance for a new beginning--stops me. They will not accept this job easily, if at all. No, this will take a bit more finesse.

"Dian," Nim says, sitting down next to me, "you know I respect you too much to not ask what...things...you do for the Pets," she does not touch me, but I feel her words pressing their way into my mind, "but please be careful. They spew a lot of bullshit about taking care of us and everything, but most of us don't even know what they look like."

"I have seen them, and I am watching them. They have yet to do anything that I would deem as incriminating." I give her the grin I know she wants. "But the moment I see any signs of unlawful activity--" I say, turning to face her, "--I will quit working for them." I pick up one of her paws, kiss it, then hold it in mine. The concerned look in her violet eyes does not waiver. "I promise."

Her head tilts down and her ears turn back. "I know you love your people, and I know that what you think you're doing for the Pets is helping them." I feel her damp fingers find their familiar places between mine, though the warmth seems to have gone from them. "But we're not there anymore. Any job you take here will help everyone. This--" she motions to the screen, her eyes steady on me, "--doesn't have to be your only option."

I hold her paw tightly, finding worry subtly buried in the fur of her face. Working for the Pets was not something I necessarily wanted to do, but I refused to sit around and do nothing. Nim was right in that I could pick any job, but no other job kept me in the action like this one. Not everything I did for them made sense to me. It did not have to. I trust them to make the right decisions for us. They came up to me personally to ask if I could work for them, and after reading through the list of benefits--a queen-sized bed and a larger room on the upper levels--I could not find a good reason not to.

Seeing how worried Nim is about me causes me to doubt all these decisions though. It is a bit frustrating, but I trust her instincts; she would not have gone on to become one of the best botanists we have on board had it not been for her instincts.

"I promise I will be careful," I say, reassuring her as best as I can. I pull her into my arms as I stand, waving my right paw in front of my computer screen to turn it off.

Nim hugs me tightly. Her fur, still damp, makes me shiver a bit as I rub my paws down her back. It is only after the third or fourth pass down her tail that I feel her trembling, just a little, just enough for me to decide that I will start looking for other jobs. She kisses me weakly on the cheek, releasing me and dressing into her lab uniform. The light that floods the room when she opens the door to leave makes me flinch. When I can see again, Nim is gone. The heavy air settles around me and the surrounding silence sounds incredibly loud. My room feels empty now, the type of emptiness that leaves me questioning where I really want to be in the world. I check my wristband for the time. I still have four hours before I need to get ready for my meeting with the Pets to discuss this new job, so I wrap Nim's blanket around me as I turn my computer back on and continue to look through the classified military profiles. I am sorry, I say to all of them in my head, but I need your help.