Noel's Story Part 2

My rest lasted longer than expected. In fact, I was asleep for an entire week before I finally opened my eyes. By then my injuries were fully healed, and I was able to walk again. It was then that I finally got to meet the captain of the ship.

Amilliano walked in front of me, leading me to the room where the captain subsided. I was very nervous. Would he be nice? Would he let me repay him for his kindness? I was thinking of this so much that I didn’t notice that Amilliano had stopped walking and bumped into him.

He turned and let out a small laugh. “We’re here,” He said. He knocked on the door. I heard a lot of clattering. Amilliano turned to me once more. “Don’t be shy, go on in.” He gestured me into the room and closed the door.

There he was. The captain was in his chair, holding a mug of coffee in his hand. “So, this is the great Noel that Amilliano’s been talking about so much? For some reason I thought that you’d be a little bigger.” It was true; I was small for my age. I blushed, and it made him laugh. “Don’t worry, that won’t change a thing. Now, about your repayment…you used up a lot of my resources. Resources cost money, girl. How do you intend to repay me?” He asked as he set his coffee down on the table in front f him and got up.

I bowed my head down, my eyes shut tight. “I, would like to, um, repay my debt to you by working on your ship for you, if that would be okay.” I paused for a second. I was so nervous and shy; I must have looked like an idiot.

Instead I heard a small chuckle. Looking up I saw that the captain was smiling at me. “That would do just fine, Noel. That would do fine. Now, we have to give you a tour of the ship.” He walked past me, grabbing my shoulder, signaling for me to follow him. He opened the door again. I was surprised to see Amilliano waiting outside for me. “Here, Amilliano, give her the tour.” He closed the door again, secluding himself yet again.

Amilliano smiled. “You did great! He really likes you, I can tell. Well, let’s get this over with, shall we?” He said to me, smiling and grabbing my hand again.

I got up the nerve to ask the question. “Amilliano, how old are you?”

Amilliano paused for a second. “I’m thirteen.” He started walking again, tugging at my arm. The first room we went to was the cafeteria. I recognized the two other people there. Michael and Maurice. I smiled and waved at them. They smiled and waved back.

We proceeded in going to every room on the ship, the last room being mine. Amilliano sat me down on the bed and sat down in the chair. “Well, that’s about it. Oh! And there are some extra clothes in my room. You can change out of those rags.” He left for a minute, returning with a pile of clothing for me to wear. “Here, there’s a dresser over there that you can use. I’ll leave for a few minutes so that you can change.” He did so, and I changed into his clothes. They fit very loosely, and were quite comfortable. Looking at the rags that I had changed out of, I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before. My mother would always sew my clothes, and on special occasions she would stitch a message in the back of the shirts. To think that after three years I still had a piece of memory from my parents made me happier than I had been in that time away from them. The message on the shirt read, “My dearest darling girl” on it.

I started crying as Amilliano walked back into the room. “What’s wrong?” He asked me, crouching a little bit to get a look at my face. I pointed at the shirt that I had been previously wearing. He picked it up and looked at it closely then noticed the stitching on the back. “Oh, was this from your mother?” My sobbing subsided after he hugged me for a few minutes. I sat down on my bed again, and he sat down in the chair. I then told him my story of how I ended up here.

He paused for a few minutes, creating an awkward silence. He then spoke. “You know what? That’s the most I’ve heard out of you since you got here.” He said, smiling. I smiled back.

I still own that shirt. At the age of eighteen, I still own a shirt that is more than half of my age.

Well, that’s how I was recruited onto the voyager. In a later chapter I will reveal the stories of my friends, my enemies, and the captain.

But let’s get back to the original story, shall we?

It’s very hard to operate the control panels on the ship, but I managed to get the hang of it two years ago. I’m also in charge of the audio, the camera systems, and the food supply.

Amilliano and I are both in charge of the food supply and cooking, so we’re really good friends now. We would even sleep in the same room together for the first few weeks after I started work on the ship. The work is hard, but if I didn’t do it, I would get in trouble with the captain.

One day, I was at the control panel for the video system when Amilliano placing his hand on my shoulder startled me.

“Hey, what’s happening? Any sign of him yet?” Amilliano was talking about the criminal we were looking for. The VOYAGER1000 is a bounty hunter ship, and we had caught over three hundred criminals since I started work.

“Yah, he’s just over there, on that monitor. See?” I pointed over to the screen, where there was a man standing around behind a large tree.

“You gonna deploy the nets?” Amilliano asked. He once told me he loved watching me do that. It’s “The thrill of the catch”, or so he called it that.

I decided to play around a little before doing it, just to tease him. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t…” I pushed the button, and a huge net swooped down on the criminal and cought him without a struggle. The net lifted itself back into the ship, where it would cart itself to the receiving sector. “C’mon, let’s go.” I got up from my seat and started walking, but not before pulling Amilliano by the shirt collar, indicating for him to follow me.

We got to the sector, and I quickly noticed something different---The criminal we had caught wasn’t in the net. I started to look around, Amilliano doing the same. If there were a criminal loose on the ship, it wouldn’t do any good at all. The last time it happened we had lost most of our equipment.

I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder. At first I thought it was Amilliano’s, but then I noticed that it wasn’t green. It was pink, like the criminal we were supposed to have sedated by that time.

I screamed. Amilliano jumped at the criminal, careful not to upset him. Instead, the man just stepped to the side and held a knife to my neck. A small amount of blood started trickling down my neck.

“Come any closer and this knife goes deeper…” I heard a voice saying behind me. I could barely breathe, let alone try to free myself. This had happened before, but it had usually ended in a few minutes. This moment seemed to drag on for hours.

I heard a huge grunt from behind, the knife went a little deeper into my neck, and the man fell forward, dragging me down with him. I put my arms out in front of myself before I hit the ground.

A small amount of blood started pooling around the man’s head. I turned around and saw Maurice standing behind me with a frying pan. He looked down at the man and spat.

Amilliano grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me around to get a closer look at my neck. “Are you okay??? The knife cut a little deep.” He used his shirt sleeve to wipe away the blood.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. I just need a bandage.” I put my hand to my neck to stop the bleeding.

A few minutes later we were standing in front of the Captain’s desk, the captain sitting in his chair. Me neck was still bleeding, but it didn’t matter to get a bandage until the situation had been reported.

“You three did a fine job, especially you, Maurice. What you did was brave.” The captain said with a great amount of confidence. Maurice blushed a little. “And you, young lady, were VERY brave, with a knife held up to your neck, and still keeping confidence. Now go get that cut treated.”

Amilliano walked in the room, a first aid kit in hand. “Here.” He said as he started to wrap a bandage around me neck. I blushed, a little embarrassed to have him this close.

“I-I can do it myself, thank you.” I said as we walked out of the room and started toward my room.

“I know, sorry,” Amilliano said with a sheepish grin. I laughed at the look on his face.

We entered my room, and we both sat down on the bed. Amilliano looked away for a minute, creating an awkward silence.

“You know,” He started. “You’ve been here for nine years. More than half of your life. You’ve been part of this ‘family’ for so long.” He looked up at me. His light green skin and his gray hair intrigued me all the time, but I never thought I would be this interested in watching his head as it went through different expressions. I craned my neck to see his face, and it was embarrassment.

He turned back and looked at me, which startled me a lot because our faces were now only inches apart. I could feel the color coming to my cheeks, and backed away a little to give each of us some more room.

It was then that it happened.

Amilliano scooted more toward me, myself unable to move out of shock. He moved with such precision that it was almost scary, and then kissed me without warning.

He put his hand on my cheek, not allowing me to back away. The kiss was deep and passionate, but I slapped him about ten seconds into it and ran out of the room to the bathroom.

I slammed the door and locked it, then proceeded to slump over. I fell asleep an hour later, still thinking about the kiss.

I woke up in a daze, my neck now sore from the position that I was in. Someone was pounding at the door. I got up and answered. It was Amilliano himself. I rushed past him, bumping him with my shoulder and making me fall forward. I hit the ground hard, but still rushed back into my room and locked the door in there, too. I couldn’t bear to see him now. It would only happen again, and my heart would be plunged deeper into confusion.