Chapter 15

My mate came rushing backinto the large section of green space where I had parked my ship and cloaked it. Her shoulders were tight and hunched, and there were furrows cut into her brow as her skin wrinkled from her two little arches of hair on her face reaching towards each other.

I recalled what I had read in the literature already available on human interactions.

"You are upset," I stated.

"No shit, Sherlock," she sighed. "Where is the ship? I'm ready to go, let's just get out of here."

I lowered the ramp so that the doorway into my vessel became visible.

"You don't have any luggage, nor were you gone for enough time to retrieve your personal belongings," I observed. "You were very insistent on going home to get your things, but now you are leaving without having done so. What has caused this?"

She rushed up the ramp into my ship and I followed her, shutting the door behind us so that we were now fully hidden from any humans that might stumble upon us. Of course, someone could always just walk straight into my ship while it was cloaked, but that was a problem that I didn't have to deal with at this moment as there were no people in the public green space. I disabled my hologram disguise.

My mate sighed, her shoulders hunching for a moment before she turned to look at me.

"I can't get to my home because there are people blocking the entrance waiting for me," she said. "A lot of other humans are upset that I am with you. They don't understand it and they are making up a bunch of different stories about me that has affected my life in a negative way. If I try to push through them, they will take unflattering pictures of me and use them to mock me in the news. Can we just go?"

"We can," I replied. "Or we can come up with a solution for the immediate problem so that you can get what you want."

"I don't see how." She shook her head. "It is going to take so much work to save my image. I just don't want to deal with it right now. If I do something rash, it will make the problem worse. I need to take my time and plan my campaign to help myself."

"Your image isn't the immediate problem," I pointed out. "Getting into the apartment is your immediate problem."

She blinked, her eyes focusing back on me.

"But I can't do it," she said.

She was stuck in a state of no. Luckily, she had me. Having another person who wasn't emotionally impacted by the issue made it so much easier to arrive at a solution.

"There are two options as I see them," I began. "First, we charge in there together. I will push the puny humans out of your way and I will inform them that they may not film you. If they do, I will destroy their equipment."

"You can't do that," she said. "You can't just destroy someone's property."

"I can and I will," I pointed out. "I have studied the current Norratar laws and I will not get into legal trouble other than having to replace the equipment."

"I think that will make things worse for me." Even as she said that, a smile crept across her face, her shoulders easing down away from her ears. "It would be terrible."

I studied her for a moment.

The expressions she was making and the tone of her words didn't match the words themselves, but I wasn't enough of a human expert to trust my assessment of that, so I continued on.

"The second option is I outfit you with a holographic disguise and you walk past them looking like a different human," I pointed out.

"Oh," her mouth formed a little O that was quite satisfying to see. "That's a good idea."

"I am full of good ideas." I grinned. "I am here to help you."

She bit her lip and looked down at the floor for a moment before looking up.

"Do you think you can help me with something else as well?" she asked.

"I will help you achieve anything you desire," I replied. "I am the tail that will lift your dreams up into the sky."

The smile that spread across her face was slow and powerful, the corner of her eyes crinkling as her eyes shimmered in response to my words.

"I'm going to send you some medical details for a treatment my doctor recommended," she said. "If you can look them over while I'm going to get my stuff, maybe we can talk about them and you can help me come up with a plan to put them in action?"

"Yes," I replied. "I will."