I Don't Seem So Bright in a Well-Lit Room

Chapter Seventeen

Gradi Ohsa Vallasoupia-Gallor (this was a stage name; her real name was Bip-Bip Vakleenacuddy) and her theatre troupe The Ilt-un-por-Ilt Players had only meant to stop off at Euphoria to refuel, not to recruit. She didn't stop anywhere to recruit, because they had never recruited.

All the thespians, musicians and stage hands in her dusty old troupe had been born into the dusty old troupe, generation after generation. They were all from the planet Veroseral, and didn't much care for outsiders in their midst or on their dusty old troupe ship the Deck Dallop.

The Veroseraliens were long thought extinct, their planet destroyed before it even had a chance to go missing, making the "Lost Seventy" the "Lost Seventy-one". In fact, it had disappeared so very long ago that most others in the universe had forgotten that the planet had ever existed, and most of their audiences had no idea what they were. Just a bunch of humanoids with transparent hair and lilac-coloured skin, always appearing simply dusty, and simply old.

They were a travelling troupe, writing and performing their own original musicals and travelling from planet-to-planet for thousands of years. None of them had even seen Veroseral before. They were the grandchildren of grandchildren of grandchildren of grandchildren of the grandchildren of those that once inhabited the long dead planet's grandchildren's grandchildren (give or take a grandchild). 

No, Gradi Ohsa Vallasoupia-Gallor did not come to the floating sex circus to recruit per se, but she had not seen an act like the one Orchestra Balloo and Gecko had performed ever before. And her own lineage was becoming too incestuous and dwindling off into a deformed shadow of itself. 

Many scripts had needed to be rewritten or retired for lack of thespians and musicians. Gekko was a bit too reptilian for Gradi Ohsa. If Gekko was compatible, her genes would most assuredly be dominant. The Flettocean acrobat however...

~~~

Vrume T'cha T'cha recognized a Quarol when he saw one. He recognized albinism in a Quarol as well.

He remembered overhearing The Node speak of a Quarol and a Topher in exile. He remembered the prophecy of the light one and the dark one. His brain started piecing it it all together after Potto had passed him in a hallway on his way back from seeing off his latest ship of saved prisoner/assistants. 

He had offered a happy hello, but the Quarol seemed to be in a bit of a trance. It was unlike a Quarol to pass up a chance to say hello to a stranger. The odd creatures seemed to need smiles and greetings from friendly strangers like they needed snacks. He followed. 

"Perhaps," he thought, "he just saw the show and it weighed heavily on him. Perhaps it brought up early childhood traumas or it moved him to the point of extreme daydreamy brain-malaise-mayonnaise. Perhaps it's sex circus induced petit mal." Art has always been funny that way.

Potto had no idea he was wandering around Euphoria. In his mind he was still in the forest. In his mind he was following the sound of a bustling woodland village. Perhaps he would find other Quarols there! Perhaps some Sentaphylls!

This village-in-his-head wasn't filled with either. It was filled with wild and ferocious northern neglies. Large blue curly-haired wolf-like creatures with long pointed snouts from his home planet. They may have been snarly, but they were generally very shy and would go nowhere near a village. However, this village seemed to be made up of them alone. He wondered if one was the mayor.

One spotted him and sniffed about. It smelled of ninety-two-proof grain alcohol and moth pheromones.

"Hello there!" he said cheerily. It said nothing but looked at him as though he were insane. "Would you like a scratch under the chin? Or behind the ears?" he asked as he started scratching under its chin and behind its ears.