Tauran hugged his little sister close to his chest with two of his four arms, hunched over the handlebars of his speeder as the vehicle tore over the desert, the merciless suns beating down on them. Carefully, he reached up one of the hands holding his sibling to adjust both the cloth covering the girl's mouth and his own. The sand being kicked up by his speeder was rather agonizing as it bit into the tiny strip of exposed skin between his bandanna and goggles.

Only two more miles to go, he consoled himself, staring at the hologram of the route being projected before him. Only two more miles to go.

Still, it felt like forever before he and his sister reached the mine shaft. He stopped his speeder and helped the child to the desert floor before standing himself. The girl, not even four yet, wobbled a little, since they had been riding on the speeder for hours. He glanced around. It was chillingly quiet in the desert, especially since no other sign of civilization was to be seen. The sand dunes stretched into the horizon, where one of the suns was already beginning to set.

Grabbing his sister's left arm with his top right, Tauran used his bottom right arm to grab the scanner from under his billowing shirt. Walking up to the mine shaft, he held up the device, careful not to even come close to touching the glowing chains. He made sure his sister didn't, either - he had a chance of surviving if he touched the highly electrically charged metal, but the little girl would doubtlessly be instantly killed from the voltage.

The scanner swiped quickly over the chains, which resultingly fell to the desert floor with a dull clatter. Tauran picked up his sister, who was as silent as she had been since he had roused her from her sleep the night before, and stepped carefully over the links, climbing down into the dark hole immediately inside the mine shaft.

"Hold onto my neck," he clicked at his little sister. She did so, leaving all four of his hands free to lower them down the hole.

At the bottom, the light had completely disappeared. Raising his top left hand, Tauran adjusted a small knob on the side of his goggles. Instantly, its night vision mode was activated, and he could see as clearly as if both of his planet's suns had been in the tunnel with them. He felt his little sister shift uncomfortably and adjusted her goggles as well, remembering her unusual fear of the dark.

The tunnel stretched before them, its end out of sight, the confined space ominous despite their newfound ability to see within it. Tauran almost wanted to turn back, forget he had ever embarked on this uncertain journey, but instead, he took a deep breath and forged onwards. He hadn't spent the last few weeks skirting around his troubled mother and meeting with shady people in back alleyways only to give up now. The scanner alone had cost him a fortune, not to mention the bits and pieces of information he had had to bribe out of people to confirm that this place even existed. Then there was the cost of charging of his speeder, the many lies told to his family, as well as the risked safety of the child now padding trustingly along beside him...

He pushed all of this from his mind and focused on his breathing.

As the siblings forged further into the underground tunnel, a faint sound began to trickle into their ears, quickly growing in force and volume.

It sounded exactly like the beating in his sister's chest.

Swallowing nervously, Tauran squeezed his little sister's tiny hand reassuringly, unsure if the gesture was for her or himself.

Finally, they saw a faint glowing coming from up ahead. The noise had grown so loud by now that talking would have been difficult. Each thump resonated deep within Tauran's core. He noticed his sibling dragging her feet nervously and gave her hand an impatient tug, unwilling to stop in case he got scared out of it now.

The tunnel abruptly opened into a large cavern, where the source of the thumping was located. The now-bright light blinded the pair, overriding their artificial night vision, and Tauran quickly turned the setting off for both himself and his sister. He didn't remove the actual goggles, however, feeling foolishly afraid of the thing in front of them and as if the thick lenses could somehow protect him.

It was suspended in the middle of the circular room, perhaps twenty feet tall with a ten-foot diameter. Every time an audible thump reached the brother and sister, the thing gave out a visible tremor, expanding before shrinking back into himself. Tauran wondered if a miniature version of the red, pulsing object lay in the center of his sister's ribcage.

He remembered so clearly being the one to discover the mysterious infant on their doorstep. She was so strange...so different...and yet his compassionate, foolhardy parents had adopted her into their family. As she had grown, however, her body had refused to adopt something in return: normality.

He turned to the child and crouched down, his gaze roaming over her familiar form. Although he loved the child dearly, he couldn't help but feel repulsed by her horrific appearance, the looks that kept his mother in her darkened bedroom most of the day, the looks that caused his father to have longer and longer work hours.

The child's skin was a strange, peachy color all over. Her cheeks flushed with red when she was feeling any sort of strong emotion, and her skin turned white wherever it was forcibly pressed. Her hair, long and a delicate shade of blonde, tumbled down her back in untamed curls. She had one pair of arms, and the straightest legs Tauran had ever seen. Her lips and nose were small, and her eyelashes were abnormally long. The worst, however, were her eyes themselves. They were crystal blue.

Tauran bit his lip resolutely and stood, gazing at the thing before him.

"The heart," he clicked in a whisper, tripping over the unfamiliar word. "The Heart of Ajd An'hlj." He grabbed his sister's wrist, prepared to press her palm against the heart just as he had been instructed, when he hesitated. Was this truly the right thing to do?

Then his sister attempted to repeat what he had just said, found herself unable to speak in the language, and made that strange burbling noise she made whenever she was pleased or amused.

He yanked her forward, shoving her hand against the heart. The child's mouth opened in a perfect O and her eyes widened in shock seconds before she began to scream, the sound tearing from her oddly structured throat. Tauran released her, stumbling backward in shock.

The child's body began convulsing, and she continued to shriek, but her hand remained stuck to the heart as if physically fused.

What have I done? Tauran thought desperately, wishing more than anything to tear his sister away from that terrible thing but not trusting that doing so would not injure her.

The child's shirt opened at the sides, the ripping sound lost beneath her screams and the steady beating of the heart looming over her. Tauran quickly realized why the clothing had tore: arms were sprouting at the bottom of his sister's ribcage, a wonderfully normal set of additional arms. His relief was quickly whisked away as his sister's cries increased in intensity along with, Tauran guessed, her pain. Guilt racked his own body and tears gathered in his lips.

The girl's knees snapped forwards as extra bones grew within her legs, existing ones changing shape. Her fingers lengthened and became more slender. Her eyelashes shortened until they were short, hard bristles, and the hair above her eyes disappeared entirely. Her curly, blonde hair morphed into a proper ramrod-straight, blue-black look.

And then her skin began to change. Starting at the fingertips of the hand pressed against the Heart of Ajd An'hlj, velvet black rippled up her skin, dots of purple appearing randomly on her body.

Finally, the girl's transformation was complete. The heart released her, and she collapsed.

Tauran rushed to her side and hastily pressed two of his hands into her stomach, his thumbs probing its smooth center. Once he felt the rhythmic flush of back-and-forth liquid that signaled that his sister was still alive, he gasped in relief, sitting back on his heels.

It had been successful. Oh, how happy his family would be! There was no longer a reason to be disgraced of their daughter, now that she looked just like the rest of them.

Once Tauran had recovered from all that had just occurred, he scooped up the child and carried her down the tunnel, beginning the long journey back home.
*
An eleven-year-old child was seated at her desk, fingers flying through the air as she completed the holographic homework suspended in the air before her. She frowned as she encountered a difficult problem. Tauran will have to help me with that.

A flash of some stain on her skin caught her eye and she paused, examining the small patch on her forearm.

Her inky black skin, dotted with small starbursts of purple, had turned a strange shade of peach.

Brow furrowing, the preteen stood and left her room. "Mother?" she clicked. "Something's wrong."