Starfish

17.2

"Turn around, let's have a look."

Nina turned in Athe and Boda's apartment, showing them her choice for the evening. She spread the wide skirt with her hands, pleased with how it swung and how the white fabric printed with leaves in different shapes and shades of green complimented her skin. "It looks wonderful," Boda nodded, "it's definitely eye-catching."

"Good, I want people to see me coming so I don't get knocked over."

"I'm sure that's the only reason," Athe smirked at Boda. Nina shot him a look and let her skirt drop. "We'll just see what happens," she said. "I'm ready to go when you are."

Walking down to the city, Nina kept her eyes open for a particular dark shape. She saw many other Dreen who shared a similar coloring, but they were lit with their tiny spots of light and she didn't see any who weren't. Their progress was slowed by the many Dreen walking along the paths down the shore, some splitting off towards the beach and others joining up from the outskirts. The sun hung low over the archipelago beyond the lagoon, not quite casting island-shaped shadows over the water but sending long bands of yellow light over the distant treetops and rocky cliffs. Ferries and private watercraft carried Dreen from up and down the coast, from the archipelago and from islands farther out to sea.

Nina had never seen so many Dreen in one place, adults and children and adolescents with their baby colors beginning to darken while their pores began to glow brighter. She felt like she was walking through a bloom of noctiluca or a swarm of crystal jellyfish, rainbows of flickering color all around her as the Dreen moved towards the city on the shore. This is absolutely beautiful, I've never seen anything so amazing. I'm really here! I'm really on another planet! Every so often it struck her how she was hundreds of millions of miles from Earth, and every time she was nearly overwhelmed with the incredible difference and distance between the planet she'd been born on and the one on which she currently stood.

Down in the city hundreds of lanterns in hundreds more colors hung under eaves and along the streets, their tops shaded with caps so that above the second story of any building the sky glittered brighter than the streets below, even where the Dreen crowded with their pores flashing and shimmering. Nina realized it would be all but impossible to find the one Dreen she was looking for. She stuck close to Athe and Boda, though, rather than venture out on her own and try to find him. Briefly she wondered if it would be wise, a silly and reckless desire to get knocked over as though doing so would summon him like the superstitious belief that whistling at night would bring out the huakai po, the night marchers. That's not how it works, Nina chided herself, he'll show up when I least expect it, if he shows up at all. He never said he was coming.

All up and down the main streets, restaurants opened their street-side patios and carts stood in the open spaces between buildings. "Nina, look! There's the clicker cart!" Athe shepherded her towards a three-wheeled cart with a steaming pile of freshly fried crustaceans resting on huge sheets of paper. The vendor, a yellow-skinned Dreen with a nearly white face and belly, scooped clickers into paper bowls by the handful, offering several sauces and spice powders to drizzle and sprinkle on the clickers. Nina tried a red sauce that tasted like sweet bananas with a hint of sourness, a spicy green sauce flecked with bits of sweet sailorfruit and sprinkled with salt crystals, and a powder that was so hot Nina just barely smelled it before her eyes began to water. Next Athe introduced her to a special kind of seaweed ball, this one sweet and filled with a paste that reminded her of papaya or mango, but was chilled and had the texture of ice cream. 

Between carts of food, vendors sold flowers and gifts and goods of all kinds. Nina saw a flower stand that instantly drew her in, particularly the large pink-orange flowers whose petals had crinkled edges and deep, almost fuchsia throats bursting with feathery stamens. She bought a blossom bigger than her hand, tucking it behind her right ear. Trotting back to Athe and Boda where they waited on a curb sharing a paper cup of the orange fruit Nina saw many Dreen squeezing over their food, she thought she saw a shadow in the shape of a Dreen move behind a cart. But when she turned, she saw nothing. She followed Boda and Athe around the city, listening while they told her all they knew about the traditions taking place that night.