*~Minna~*

Why did I ever come to this planet...

Meeting Arlia had been nice. She was a good friend. I would definitely have to keep in contact with her.

And it had been nice to be around my niece. Lyzel was adorable, and I had taken hundreds of pictures and videos of her for Mom and Dad just like I had promised. I was proud of my older brother. He was doing a good job raising her. I still wasn't sure how I felt about his choice in women, and it was pretty obvious Loreena didn't care much for me... but... they were raising a good kid. It had been nice to be around them for a time.

But other than that... this planet was just a giant ball of misery and false hopes. Nothing worked out the way it should here. Even the plant Terron had given me as a housewarming present had been impossible to keep alive. I would have been better off if I had just stayed home. Waited a few more years for an apprenticeship program to open up there. Put up with my parents a little bit longer. Maybe pretended to be interested in a suitor or two, just to keep them happy.

I should have been more patient. Everyone always said that about me. Too rash. Too easily excited. Too jumpy. Which was actually a useful trait in a pilot - when you were traveling at velocities fast enough to cover the vast distances in space in any sort of time frame short enough to be useful, you didn't always have the time to think things through all the way. You had to react, and react in the right way, or else things would get ugly.

So my flight instructors had always rated me favorably. They had just worked on helping me jump to the right reaction, not on teaching me to slow down. In a pilot, those traits were a good thing.

But they were bad traits in every other part of my life.

Those traits had pushed me to talk my parents into letting me leave home early to get into an advanced program. The traits had pushed me to spend weeks arguing about it with my parents, only getting them to relent on the condition I went to the world my older brother had moved to - a recently settled colony world that barely had enough shipping to even justify a shuttle training program in the first place.

My rash nature had pushed me to annoy all of my instructors and all my fellow students except one - though to be fair that only added up to five people on this backwater world - they had pushed me to get kicked out of two apartments before finding the one crummy apartment on the planet that would tolerate me, and they had pushed me to spend practically all of my free time with my brother and his daughter. Because what would be the point of making friends on a world I would be leaving forever in only a few years.

They had pushed me to use lethal force to defend my niece... against something that wasn't even a threat in the first place. Against a lonely animal in the forest that, in the end, had only wanted to play.

And they had pushed me to take responsibility for the other lonely animal that had possessed no other friend in the world but the poor animal I had killed. Even though everybody said it was a mistake. Even though everybody told me to let somebody else take care of him. Even though the animal himself had left extremely clear, extremely painful messages all over my hand and arm that quite definitively told me that he should be somebody else's problem.

I had ignored all of those warnings and made a rash, stupid decision.

I had grown attached to the little thing. I had told myself not to, again and again and again; I had told myself it would never actually work out. I had told myself it was always going to end like this, with me leaving the planet, and with him there, back in his home and utterly rejecting me. I had told myself over and over that it would be a disaster if we did somehow both grow attached to each other.

But I had gotten attached to him anyway.

I could still picture him perfectly. That silly little flop he did when he was wearing the harness, and that fake wail for help. The way he went crazy whenever a shia fruit was around. How adorable he looked when he was zonked out from those tranquilizers, and was just staring at something like it was the most amazing thing in the whole world right then.

The way his slight weight felt when he was on my shoulder. How his scales rubbed against my hand when I pet him. The way his breathing sounded late at night, once he had begun sleeping on my chest. The soft tickle from the feathery tufts on the backs of his ears when he rubbed his head against me. The sight of his silver body glowing in the early morning light, as he perched at the window and soaked in the first rays of the sunlight. That incredible song and dance each morning.

I had fallen in love with that dance. I already missed it terribly; it had been hard enough to get up early and take him to the forest so he could fly for the dog, and I had managed it only because I could always tell how much happier he was when he got to dance there. But waking up without his singing at all... that was impossible.

I had been awake for three hours now, and I was still barely able to think about what was going on around me. I jumped as the announcement called out a flight, and I rushed to check the details... but it wasn't mine. I still had several hours to wait.

I had thought all those little things had been signs he was improving. That he had started to like me, too. That maybe... that maybe somewhere deep down, he had even found a way to forgive me.

But... I knew from the harness that he was good at tricking us. I knew he was good at hiding things from me that he didn't want me to find, like however he had managed to keep himself clean in between washings. I knew he was good at playing on our expectations and reactions to get treats and comforts he wanted. He was clever like that. That was one thing the notes had made clear again and again - the fire lizards were clever creatures.

And in the end, what Trenil had said must have been right. After I had starved him he must have felt like he was always in danger around me. That if he made me unhappy I would hurt him.

Again.

So he hid everything and pretended to like me, because he thought he needed to in order to be safe. All those times when I had thought he was genuinely happy around me, and that he was genuinely coming to like me... they were just because he was too terrified of what I would do to him if I thought he wasn't. They had all been an act, probably based on things he had learned to do with the humans he had once lived with. Probably to avoid whatever cruel things they had done to him as part of their taming methods. Things he must have thought I was just as capable of.

And all the little times I had noticed where he pulled away - the times he walked away from breakfast and fed himself, or decided to clean himself, or his repeated shunning of the oil he must have known Ivy enjoyed so much... they had to be the points where he just couldn't stand me anymore and had to leave.

The idea that I had really been scaring and hurting him this whole time was beyond upsetting. It made me sad to think that he had been living in that fear. I didn't want that for him. I had already hurt him from the very beginning, and the thought that I had only made it worse for him... it hurt to consider. I cared too much about him; I wanted him to be happy.

But there hadn't really been any attachment on his side. It had all been an act. And the second he didn't have to keep it up anymore... he had spread his wings and flown away.

It had hurt more than I had known anything could hurt when he had flown away from me to join the flock. It had hurt in all the days after that, when I knew that it was going to come again, and that the precious little time we had left was going to end with him vanishing off into the trees. And it had hurt just as much all over again, when he finally did fly away to go back to his forest.

By all rights, no creature should be able to impact anyone so deeply after only a few much-too-short weeks together. No creature should have been able to make such an impression, have formed such a strong attachment, have caused such feelings of hurt and sadness at his disappearance. It didn't make any sense. I couldn't understand how it was possible.

But he had done it anyways.

I had spent the entire day hoping something would happen. That I was wrong, and that he had become attached to me. That he had just needed a little bit more time to realize it. That Trenil would call me back and tell me the tracker had moved. That, by some miracle, the clever animal had flown back to the city, figured out how to use a directory, and was now outside my door and waiting for me to open it.

That he would turn and fly back.

I kept hoping that when the movers came to pack up all my stuff.

I kept hoping that when I unpacked my travel case in the small hotel room attached to the spaceport.

I kept hoping that in the long hours I had spent staring uselessly up at the ceiling.

But it never happened. He had been clear. I had messed up too many times. He didn't forgive me for what I had done. Maybe the Elder had been wrong, and the fire lizards lacked that capability after all. Or maybe he just couldn't do it for me, not for what I had done. He couldn't accept me as a bond handler, not after how badly I had screwed up trying to force things. He had taken one look at his lonely life out in the forest... and he had flown away.

I doubted he even remembered me now. Certainly not as anything more than a horrible person who killed the only companion he had. If his clever animal brain did think of me now, it was probably just at relief of finally being free of me.

He wasn't coming back. He was gone. All I had left of him now were a few recordings, some memories, and the marks his claws and teeth had left in my skin.

I closed my eyes and tried not to cry in the terminal.

Nobody would understand. Arlia had tried, but she didn't really get it. She had grown fond of him, but... it wasn't the same for her. Terron hadn't either; he had just congratulated me on finishing the program and getting the commendation from the Elders, and wished me luck when I got back home. And Lyzel... Lyzel had told me she would miss me, but that she hoped I would come back soon to visit and that we could play with 'Mister Fire Lizard' again when I did.

And my parents certainly wouldn't understand. They had both been furious at the news I had 'taken in some mangy stray'. They both felt they had been accommodating enough by letting me stay the extra weeks after my apprenticeship program would have originally ended. They had managed to reach Senica somehow and get the details of the recovery schedule, and they had booked me on the very first passenger liner departing after his expected release date. It wasn't even the first direct flight; I would have to stop at three other planets and change ships before I made it home.

They would never allow me to push it back further. And certainly not for a silly reason like, 'I hope the fire lizard will change his mind so I can be trapped on this planet forever'. In their minds they had already let me stay a few extra weeks after I was supposed to. And they probably would never have accepted that outcome for me, no matter what Elder Naishi had in mind.

The only person who might have understood was Trenil, but... even the short call to let him know I had released the fire lizard had been too hard. Ivy had been on his shoulder the entire time, had seemed so happy, had... it had all been too much.

Nobody in the terminal would understand. At best, they would think I had dodged a death sentence - now I could go and see other worlds, and not be stuck on one mostly insignificant colony for the next several decades. At worst they would think I actually deserved what I was feeling, for interfering with a Kymallata.

So I kept my eyes closed and waited for the sadness to pass.

It never really did. It would probably be months, maybe even years before I stopped hurting like this. The adorable little lizard already meant that much to me.

And I was never going to see him again.

"Excuse me, miss?"

I sniffled and tried to quickly wipe my eyes with my hand. Had someone seen me crying? I opened my eyes and tried to blink away the tears. "Y-yes?"

A man a few seats down from me was trying to get my attention. He was older than me - everybody was always older than me - and his expression changed to a frown when I looked at him. He must have realized I was crying. Great. Now he'll get worried and want to know if he can help, and this will get awkward...

But by some miracle, he didn't press or ask what was wrong. Maybe I had earned a small miracle through all of this mess. "I'm sorry to disturb you, but is your name 'Minna'?"

Oh. So much for the miracle - he must have recognized me. Now he was going to chew me out, and lecture me on how wrong it was to interfere with another creature's bond companion, and a Kymallata especially. I had heard it all before. Every passenger on my flights the past few weeks had each made sure of it. I sighed. "Yes, that's me. Is there something I can do for you?"

"Oh; no, and again, I'm sorry to bother you. But the attendant at the counter has been trying to page you; I think you might have a call."

I felt incredibly stupid. I just wanted to get on the ship and hide in my cabin - I was just embarrassing myself the more I was in public. "Oh. Thank you."

I gathered my things and walked up to the counter, rehearsing the apology I would need to give for being too self-absorbed to realize somebody was trying to reach me. Though, who would be trying to call for me now...?

The attendant politely told me that my delay was completely understandable and confirmed I did have a call, then showed me to a small booth with a screen in it. I tapped the 'accept' button and a moment later my brother's face filled the screen.

"Oh; hello Terron. Is everything okay?"

My brother was smiling way too much. I recognized that grin from growing up; he had a secret that he couldn't wait to share. Usually one that meant I was in trouble.

"Actually, no. I just got a call from your apartment manager."

I frowned. Terron was listed as my contact if they ever needed to reach me about something... but why would they want to reach me in the first place? Elder Naishi had been nice enough to take care of the bill, and I had gotten all my stuff out. It was all being shuttled up to the spaceship now, if it hadn't already been. What else was there to do? "Is everything okay? Did I leave something behind?"

Terron's knowing grin grew even wider, and I saw a soft delight in his eyes. "Yes. Yes, Bond Handler Minna, you left something very important behind in your apartment. You need to go back and pick him up right away."

It took a second to make sense of his words, and the meaning in his use of the formal title... then I understood. Tears formed in my eyes once more, but this time they were ones of relief, and I didn't even try to hide them. "I'm on the way now."