As a child, you remember sitting on the back porch, staring up at the night sky and wondering just how many stars up there were staring back. You held your hands together and prayed for them to hear you, to take you away on some adventure.
As a teen, you stared up at that sky with tears in your eyes. Behind you in the house the shouting was rising up again, and you pleaded with those stars to help you escape. Begging them to come take you away to a new life. One where people understood you, where you were loved.
As an adult, you had stopped all that. Stopped dreaming of escaping. Stopped wanting to be something you were not. You held your head high as a man while the voice in the back of your head screamed and begged for something different. Something more. But you refused to give it credence. Fantasies were for children, after all.
Until the day you returned to your childhood home, the house quiet and dark, old and decaying from years of neglect. You sat on the back porch, looking up at the starry night sky and for just one moment. One singular moment, you gave that voice a little freedom. You felt those tears on your cheeks, felt that crack inside your soul shift just a little more and spiderweb out. And you stared up at a starry sky and wished something had come down back then.
Then the brightest star in the sky, a blazing purple sun so so far away from you, leapt.
It bounced and twirled, it slid towards the horizon and then flew back above. And then it grew. It grew and it grew and it blazed on downward as you sat still in shock. It fell from the sky right above you and resolved into a shape of sleek curves and sharp angles. It plummeted down and down as you felt your mind twist around what was happening. Then it exploded the ground in front of you. Your old back yard now home to a small crater. The ship in the middle of it all blue metal and tinted view ports.
Then the ship dissolved. The steel disappearing and replaced with burning ozone. What was left behind floated up and out of the crater to stand in front of you. Tall and thin, with tightly wound muscles that you could see through the skintight suit it wore. Feminine yet strong. Short purple locks of hair, styled so it would fall over one side and shaved on the other. A pair of bright blue eyes, pupils sharp and cat-like narrowing over you. A grin full of sharks teeth and a thin tail that seemed more like fabric wrapped around her waist.
She smiled down at you, almost cruelly, as she floated over to the porch. Alighting down with nary a blade of grass shifting and falling to one knee. She takes your hand, slim and soft compared to your thick and rough. She brings it to her lips and kisses the knuckles, eyes staying on yours and sparkling with delight.
"Apologies for the lateness of my arrival," She says in a voice of musical tones and predatory glee, "A lot has happened since we last heard your pleas, but fear not my Princess. I'm here to save you."
She first felt her during her 8th cycle. The six moons hung heavy and full in the dark green skies above her as she studied them. She wondered how many of the stars she would see as she grew, knowing that her future was well in hand. A strong child she was, clever and fast. Her father applauded her as she grew, her mothers teaching her all they could. She knew that what they wanted would be enough, to grow strong, to learn and compete and succeed in the Academies. To find a husband, to woo him and have plenty of healthy babies for him. That was her purpose as far as she knew it, and had no reason to question it.
Until she felt that joy pulse down from the sky. A new kind joy and wonder at a sky of blue turned black and starry, that was so so far away from the greens and reds of her own home. The yearning in her own heart sparking and growing with this far away Princess as they stared up at the stars together. To escape the humdrum and to adventure.
She kept those feelings inside, fueling her dreams, till her 16th cycle. Anger sparking in her own soul along side the forlorn despair from the Princess. That their futures were not for them to make, that no one would ever understand the way they wanted to be. She would grit her teeth in a smile as she graduated the last Academy, her marks in every subject, from piloting to military tactics the top of her class. The anger in her chest growing as her father paraded her in front of suitor after suitor, promising her hand and body in return for a future for the family name. Disgust bubbled up along side that anger. For going along with all their plans would doom not only her own future, but the Princess as well. In the darkness of her rooms she packed a bag, taking only what she could carry with her and within her and escaping into the night. No tears for her family fell from her face, only a single tear brought on from hope. That the Princess would stay strong, that she would preserver from what ever soul wrenching sadness that tore at the girls soul from her. That one day they would meet.
It was on her 29th cycle that she felt she should give up. Her ship floated aimlessly through the void of stars, herself drifting aimlessly in her command chair, legs hanging over the side and head resting on the arms. She had not heard her voice for ten fold cycles. Had not felt her emotions pulsing out of the black and against her soul for just as long. She had searched, planet after planet, a vagabond of the stars, searching for her Princess. Yet nothing. She had left everything behind, a future, a family. All left behind to become a pirate, an enemy of the government. The only way to survive with out her clan. Not that it wasn't fun, she would snort to herself. But the despair of losing that light within herself made it all seem so... useless.
Then like a whips crack a memory of emotion shattered against her soul. Profound sadness, resignation and responsibility crashed against her. She shot upright, centering on those feelings. She knew them, she loved them and she would comfort them through this hurt. Her mind reached out to the controls and she spun in the void as she aimed her craft. Her grin grew large and her eyes shown bright as she pushed her engines past the red line, and past a blockade of ships and patrolling authority. She burst out of over-space above a blue gem of a planet, The Planet, four measures later. She aimed down, knowing the ships tailing behind her would falter in the atmosphere, would circle around, tread water around an unknown world. Tears filled her eyes as she felt that pulse within her grow stronger as she struggled with the controls.
It was night when she landed hard in front of a dwelling that had seen better measures. Anticipation shivered over her skin as she stood, hearing the feeling the clicks of heat pour off of her ship. Around her the steel of space dissolved, she took a deep breath, willing herself up and out of the crater her landing had made. Before her sat a creature she had never seen before. Upright like her, thickly wrapped in clothing that stood out as bizarre to her sensibilities. Her face was twisted with shock and fear, a face that was so unfamiliar she almost thought she had chosen wrong. But the soul within. That soul shone so brightly of the one she had felt before.
She had picked correctly.
She knelt in the plant life around her, careful not to disturb it anymore than she had and reached out for the Princess's hand. Rough and large, but she could feel it was her. She brought those worn fingers to her lips, laying a kiss upon them as she stared up into her eyes. And what beautiful eyes they were, Browns and greens and blues mixed together in a blur much like the land she had flown over as she traveled over the planet.
"Apologies for the lateness of my arrival," She says in the most eloquent of the pirates tongues, "A lot has happened since we last heard your pleas, but fear not my Princess. I'm here to save you."