Andromeda

XVI.

I was confused. I think everyone was. That was understandable. "What?" I asked.

Andromeda raised one of her hands and looked at it, weirdly long fingers and all. She seemed to find it amusing because she laughed.

"Oh, what a funny species this will be."

"You're saying that you're currently a species of human that doesn't exist yet?"

Without a care in the world, she poked at one of her freakishly long legs. "Obviously. There's currently only one species of the Homo genus alive right now, Homo Sapiens."

"Sorry, I slept through most of my anthropology class in college," I said. "I don't get it."

She sighed. "You Homo Sapiens won't live forever. You'll go extinct, like all the other species in the Homo genus. But there'll be others. Four others after you, as a matter of fact, before the Faenaligenesis species. But they'll be the last."

"Why are you telling us this?" Jeongguk asked.

"Because I want you to understand why I have to leave," she said sharply. "If your species survives, then there will be five more species of intelligent, social hominins that will change the world unlike any set of creatures before them. They'll go places no other complex life form has gone before. They will have settlements on Mars. They will bring life to Pluto."

She began walking over the water again, returning to her normal state with every step. "Your genus will begin to rebuild and return the world to the health it had been before the ruin that the first Homo Sapiens did to it. You will start to remember what it meant to be a part of nature. Eventually, all complex life will end in a global volcanic event. Naturally. But after so much progress, and that will only happen if you continue to survive. That's why I can't risk hurting any of you. You show too much potential."

Jeongguk jumped to his feet, his fists clenched. "But that doesn't explain why I can't come with you!"

Namjoon sighed. "Kookie, we told you-"

"No, you lied to me." He spat the words out angrily, and the other boys and I were all physically taken aback. "You lied to me, because she lied to all of us." He pointed a finger at Andromeda.

She returned fully to her normal state and crossed her arms defensively. "And how did I do that?"

"You told us that if I went with you, I'd die. That isn't true. You'd keep me safe."

Her jaw went tight. "You misunderstand," she said.

"Do I?"

"You're supposed to have a life here," she said. "If you come with me, then you are giving up the rest of her life here on Earth. To everyone but yourself and the eternity of space, you are dying."

"But I want to be with you," he said.

She laughed with exasperation, shaking her head. "Why do you humans always think you know better than the people that are talking to you? I've never spoken with a single human that accepted that maybe I knew better than they."

"You do appear to be a teenage woman," I pointed out.

She raised a single eyebrow, then in the blink of an eye, she became a wizened old woman with skin the color of ash and long, knobby hair that went to her knees.

"Oh," I said.

Andromeda turned back to the appearance of being a teenage woman, point made. "Humans," she grumbled. "Bunch of self-absorbed vertebrates."

"You seem to like us enough," Namjoon pointed out.

"Even for a star, it's hard to avoid feeling responsible for creatures that are helpless."

"Ouch," Taehyung said.

Andromeda snapped her fingers, and we were all back in the old abandoned mall, our voices echoing for all eternity. She looked up through the skylight, at the moon that I now understood shone brightly on us, not because of any sort of solar pattern or rotation of the planet, but because our host willed it so.

She laughed then, in a quiet, self-deprecating way.

"A hundred million years," she murmured. She locked eyes with Jeongguk and walked to him, her feet and long flowing dress silent. She raised a silver hand and touched his face. "A hundred million years I've been here," she said just as quietly as before, "and here I am begging for one more night."

The moonlight shining through the skylight suddenly became so much brighter, almost blindingly white.

"What is that?" I asked.

Andromeda lowered her hand and looked up at the light, sighing softly. She didn't seem worried. If anything, she seemed like this was something she hadn't chosen, but was looking forward to it in some way.

"That," she said, "is the signal that it's time to meet my mother."