“ hey, whoa, you alright there? " malik + arani
Arani hadn’t seen color in years. Everything was black like oil and brown like mud, white like smog and grey like metal. At the present, she couldn’t see much of anything no matter what the hue. She held her eyes tightly shut so to avoid the spinning. Her left hand held her upright, clinging to a protruding sheet of metal from the shanty-like dive-bar in the lower quadrant of the Reva oasis. She swayed left and right and left again, each motion stressing the muscles in her hands a little tighter.
One too many space bombs… Two too many space bombs… Space many bombs too many getting dizzy…
Her chest heaved and onto the stinking ground came what she assumed was the last shot of liquor the bartender had served. That was the last of it, Arani felt. She was only nineteen and already a master at drinking. If the dents in the metal siding could talk, they would tell tales of the many moons which Arani had spent fighting in this dingy corner of the galaxy–whether that was fighting the urge to vomit or the temptation for another drink or the man in the bar who claimed to know more about engines than she. This was an alley for fighting alright.
She just hoped that no one would come and–
“–hey, whoa, you alright there?”
Her eyes shot open to take in the sight of the sickly creation below, and when she turned to stand up straight, she noticed just how tightly she had been clutching the building that was less of a wall and more of a shard of metal protruding from the wall. Arani finally saw color; it was crimson red and dripping down her inner arm from a deep incision through the palm of her left hand.
“I said are you alright?”
She whipped some of the blood from her arm onto the ground. The underbelly of the galaxy was rich with Emos DNA. Arani ripped the sleeve off of her ratty t-shirt (she vaguely remembered stealing it off a sleeping homeless scavenger about a week ago) to tie around her self-inflicted injury. “Peachy,” she mumbled with a shred of the fabric hanging from her mouth as she performed her own repair.
“Do you need some help?” He continued. For acting so concerned about her state, Arani couldn’t help but feel as though he was performing rather than authenticating the concerned citizen. To assess her foe, her eyes rose slowly from her own broken body to see not a citizen, but a soldier. Foe indeed. She adjusted her cut-up shirt, which she now realized was damp with liquor and probably slightly translucent. Arani felt little affection for soldiers (any authority figure really). As a daughter of the lower-end, no badge or big title had ever helped her. The only law she knew was this: if you spill a man’s drink, you buy him another.
“No.” She was sharp.
“You’re bleeding and…” he looked behind her at the mess she had made. When Arani turned her neck to look too, she noticed a freshly broken bottle next to her.
“–and patched up.” She nodded assuredly and held up her hand. Blood was seeping through the makeshift bandage, but it would dry eventually. All wounds closed eventually. Or they got infected and she would die. With that, Arani took a step forward and when he refused to move out of her way, she patted him on the cheek. Bold move with a stranger she had never met before, let alone one who probably had the power to make her life very difficult. But Arani was a bold girl. She was a few steps away from him when he reached up to feel the specks of blood left on his clean-shaved jawline.
“Hey!”
“Hey!” She called back with the assonance of a goodbye.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Anywhere but this alley–” she felt him grab her hand and whisk her around. If Arani weren’t still slightly dizzy, she would have clocked him right then and there. Her eyes stretched wide open to gain balance in her new position. When they readjusted she saw that he held her bloodied wrist with a hand sheathed in the black leather glove of a Quasar soldier. If she hadn’t felt sick before, she did now. In her mind she recalled the images of her homeland burned to ashes, children (like her) screaming in the rubble, guns firing into windows, streets littered with keepsakes of families once kept in tact despite the weight of poverty, starvation, and crime.
She spit sharply into his face.
He shoved her up against the wall.
She kneed him where it counted.
He yanked her down onto the ground.
She wrapped her legs around his holstered waist.
He dropped down onto her.
She kissed him roughly on the mouth.
He slipped her wrist from his clutch.
She rolled on top of him.
He arched his neck upward.
She jumped from the ground and ran off into the underbelly.
An acquaintance was made.
