Chapter 29

Sophie

Ringing from Lucky was what woke Sophie. It was loud and obnoxious, and she opened her eyes with a glare at the evil little thing. It bobbed up and down in the air, flashing at them.

Reaching up, she smacked blindly at Serval's face. He groaned.

"Lucky is yelling. I think he needs his diaper changed."

"Wha…?"

"Wake up and deal with your son," Sophie grumbled. "I fed him last time."

Serval groaned as he sat up. Which forced her to sit up since she was still sprawled across his chest. She made a sound of protest, sinking down as Serval kept her against him with one hand on her back.

"Oh, the alarm," he said, as if just noticing that his combot was being annoying.

"I think he's old enough to sleep in his own room now."

"Command: disable alarm," Serval ordered, finally shutting it up.

"Why are we up?" She grumbled, burying her face in his chest. "It's still dark."

"That wasn't the alarm to wake up. That was the alarm that Prince Qui'tal finally docked his combot and the bug downloaded all the information."

"Oh, seriously?" She turned her head, still sleepy but grinning. "Sweetness. Now what?"

"I have to go through all the files. Probably decrypt or unlock them. See what information I can get out of them. Figure out my next steps based on that."

"That sounds like it will take a while," she mumbled, already falling back to sleep.

"Doubtlessly."

"Do we have to do that on the ship, or can we do it here?"

He chuckled, stroking her back as he laid back down. "We can do it here. How do you feel about shopping with Valorei tomorrow instead?"

"Hell, yeah. Ladies shopping day. I'm spending your money."

He chuckled again. "That's fine. Have a great time."

She mumbled something in agreement, already sinking back into sleep.

When she woke up again, he was gone, and she was alone.

Yawning, she sat up, rubbing her bleary eyes as she looked around. The room was empty, but when she summoned her combot to check her messages, she saw that Serval had left her one stating that he was going to find a place to work so he didn't disturb her, but if she needed him to just send a message, he hadn't left the island.

She also had a message from Valorei telling her that she was going to be working the farm this morning, but that they could go shopping when she was done.

Sophie did her business for the morning and put on a sarong again before sitting down to get some editing done. She had a lot of footage for her channel thanks to the last few days. Enough to last her for weeks, easily. But she still had to take all that raw footage and compile and edit everything. The software that did it now was much easier to work with, and much faster, than the one she used from Earth, but it still took time to watch all the footage, figure out what she wanted the video to be about, and get everything in a rough form before she could go in for finer editing.

The first video was going to be Earth's intro to Wav'aii video. It would cover her landing and meeting everyone, get some good scenery shots in there, learn about the planet and the people, introduce her new family. Then, she could do a video on the welcoming feast, the beading ceremony, the beading ceremony party. She wanted to do one on the farm, but she wanted to actually work on the farm for that video, not just get reaction shots.

Later, she told herself as she worked. There was a whole treasure trove of videos she could make just on this place. And she still had footage from Holivair to use. Her content was set for years to come.

After working for a few hours, she decided to take a break to start trolling around on the subnet – the Coalition's version of the internet. It functioned through some weird space mumbo jumbo that meant it worked faster than light to connect all two hundred plus species in the Coalition together. Which meant it was the vastness of the entire internet times two hundred and more. And since most everything was auto translated into Standard, she wasn't even locked out by language.

She had access to all of it.

It was overwhelming, to say the least. But Sophie took it slow, getting a feel for things, as she looked up Serval's broadcast on his news network. She was already subscribed, but she wanted to check for any new updates. There weren't any since he was on vacation, but she saw then that his page included a community section. Which included fan pages.

That was a rabbit hole she excitedly fell down as she read and watched a bunch of people talking about how awesome her mate was. Some loved him for his journalism skills, some thought he was just sexy, others thought he was doing important work – exposing bad guys and covering conflicts on the ground where it was most dangerous.

He had a fan club.

Which she immediately joined.

It cost her some credits, but since Earth was part of the Coalition, even just as a protectorate, their legal tender crossed over. All the money she was making off her videos was still good. So, she wasn't spending Serval's credz to join his own fan club.

It was also her first alien purchase, and she giggled excitedly as she made herself a fan profile – recording the entire thing for a future video, of course.

Once she was in, she started reading a few of the discussion boards. Some of the conversations were from people who were in love with him and were both devastated he'd found his mate, but also happy that he had one. They seemed to be pretty welcoming to her. Considering her beautiful, "as a human should be", and professional during her interview, "he deserves no less!"

She got a message from the fan club site, welcoming her and giving her a membership card. Which made her laugh as she eagerly saved it to her combot as a display background.

After the fan club, she started looking up vloggers. Seeing if she could find the equivalent of an influencer out here in space.

Of course, she found a lot. There were all sorts of people making videos on everything, from skits to recipes to alien sports she didn't recognize. In the vastness of the cosmos, Earth certainly wasn't the only one to have an internet culture.

Sophie started doing research into making her own vlog.

That way, she could have two! One for Earth, one for the rest of the universe. That way she could not only bring the universe to Earth, but she could also introduce Earth to the Coalition. And not through stuffy politicians or ambassadors or random girls who found themselves in space. She was going to showcase Earth her way.

The sweet way.

She was going to influence them into being excited and welcoming to her people!

That sounded like a pretty damn good way to spend her life in space.

She was excited, eager to start making videos now. But it was a big project, and she wanted to do it right. She needed to make sure she uploaded to the right space, presented herself the right way, and got all the technical and logistical ducks in order.

Serval could definitely help her with that.

Later, of course. She didn't want to interrupt him when he was doing something important.

But the passionate fire of this new venture had her giddy as she returned to editing. Thinking of all the ways she could represent her little blue planet, her culture specifically – since there weren't any other Latina ladies up here except her yet – and human females in general. She already knew they were considered the sexy species, but she wanted to expand that. The adverts she would be doing for True Match certainly would prompt aliens to try to get their own human mate, but she wanted them to remember that human ladies were good for more than the puss.

It was a great project. Something for her to sink her teeth into as she was exploring the universe. But it had to be done right. So, she put a mental pin in it and, for the moment, returned to editing her Wav'aii homecoming video.

Her channel had exploded in popularity, and this was only going to make it better. Maybe she could do personal interviews with her new family to introduce them to Earth. She definitely had to get some cooking videos for some traditional dishes. She was going to ask Valorei to take her to a sweets shop when they went to the city. Oh, she could do a shopping vlog video too!

Exciting ideas rushed through her head as she worked.

This moment, she realized with excitement, was the start of the peak of her career. She was moving in a whole new chapter of her life that was going to be one of her most meaningful memories when she looked back on her life as an old lady. And she knew that was precious. Not everyone knew they were reaching their best days until they had already passed. She got to see it coming, she got to savor it for all it was worth.

Best of all, she got to continue shaping it for years to come to keep making it better.