Galaxy Pirates

Chapter 33: The Yearning of the Maiden's Heart

After Dohta recovered, he took his position within the crew as the captain's second-mate and his private mentor in the Black Matter manipulation. They trained in the hall on the fourth floor for days. It turned out that Dohta had gotten his hands on the lost manuscript of Yuuh Arruroe – The Black Core – and had guarded it neatly, using it as the main manual during his own studies. Now, he referred to The Black Core book in order to teach Arubah how to manipulate the Black Matter and negate it with the Crimson Ardour whenever he needed. Maluma too, actively attended these lessons, in order to aid Arubah with the Crimson Ardour manipulation.

Roderigo and Gunther had begun to train Violet in handling different weapons. The two men often sparred to hone their skills, while with Violet, they were more delicate. As for Arubah, he had quite harsh lessons with his strict father – Roderigo forbade him to use any mental abilities of both the Daluma and the Herminoids, in order to hone his physical prowess more.

Baxus, Zehu, and Zona too, often accessed the training hall, together with many other alien crewmates. Soon, even Ellie began to follow their example, of her own free will unlike Violet, who was rather urged to take up different weapons, reassured by her father Gunther that it was only for defensive reasons so that she would never fall in grave danger. Ellie, on the other hand, enjoyed taking up laser-gun and laser-sword crafts from Dohta, Baxus, Zehu, and Zona, who gladly aided her in her pursuits.

The Shark Tooth slowly sailed towards the borders of the Raden and the Balal universes in order to access this latter one and arrive at its final destination – Planet Cyberia. Violet would often spend the time sitting in her room, far from bloody battles which Ellie instead enjoyed to contemplate and learn from. She reminisced upon the sweet old times when she used to live back on Earth, in the flowering fields of her beloved city Aida. She missed her home more and more as time passed. Now, having reunited with her family and having received the rejoicing news from the captain that their mother had been found and would join them on Cyberia, she had just one wish left to fulfill – regain her lost homeland and free it from the evil aliens' clutches. She fantasized about the Young Captain helping her in these endeavours, and her heart would fill with unusual, overwhelming sensations every time she thought of him.

One day, after yet another bloody battle against some alien merchants where they gained quite some loot, the pirates landed on a deserted planet full of black sand, anchored the ship at its shores, ran down on the beach and set up a bonfire to have a big party. Violet secluded herself from them and walked upon the black sand, contemplating the surroundings with her heart sunken into deep thoughts.

The night was serene. Several moons, big and small, shone in the sky, accompanied by twinkling stars far across the distance. To think that one of them, perhaps too tiny and insignificant, not at all important to some casual by-passer, was, in fact, the sun, that one and only sun – the star whose system her own home, Planet Earth, belonged to.

Here I am, millions and billions of light-years away, in such a giant world which my ancestors would never imagine being this big, and yet, all I can see is my home, sparkling there somewhere... I have no proof that it is one of these millions of stars in the dark sky, yet I feel I can see it among them. I can feel the connection, the bond that is so tight that calls me beyond the light-years of a distance. How phenomenal we, humans, are – the farther we are from our beloved home, the stronger our connection becomes...

Water touched her toes. Tiny waves of the giant ocean splashed across the shores and the tide wetted her bare feet, waking her from thoughts, making her feel the cool breeze of the black sand beach. She grabbed a handful of this sand and eyed it thoughtfully. It felt cold, stiff, somehow unfamiliar... foreign. There was no denying it was beautiful, but it was otherworldly, in both good and bad sense.