This isn’t, like… , right?!

It took me a little bit to recollect myself. Once I did, I realized I had been quite the selfish lover.

“Hey, uh… do you want me to… like….” I started asking, unsure of how to word what I was trying to say.

Vanessa put a finger to her chin to think before shaking her head. “Naw, I’m not really horny.”

I blinked. “Oh. Then why did you…”

“You seemed like you could use it. You’re so stressed all the time, and I wanted to help you.”

That was… nice. Weird, but nice. I didn’t want her to feel like she had to do anything when she didn’t want to.

Vanessa yawned. I found that odd.

“Are you tired?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s late. Are you not?”

“That’s not what I mean. I just… didn’t think you’d need sleep.”

Venessa laughed softly. “You’d be surprised how similar **** is to life. Well, my ****. I have special circumstances, so I can’t say what your experience will be.”

Dark. “Can I ask about your special circumstances at all? I… I’d like to get to know you some.”

Vanessa was silent. The lack of noise was deafening.

It seemed I should backtrack. “Never mind, I understand if you don’t want to talk about-“

“No, I want to talk about it. I just… it’s hard.”

Silence again. We sat there for a while, her finger tracing circles on my bare chest as I tried to figure out where to go next. Vanessa spoke again before I could do anything.

“I’m sure it’s obvious at this point, but I’m not… normal.”

I waited for her to say something else, but it seemed like she was waiting for me to respond. “Oh, I mean… yaknow, who is?”

She laughed softly again. “I guess you’re right; but you know what I’m saying. I didn’t grow up like how people like you did.”

I wanted to say her not having my childhood was a good thing, but I didn’t want this to be a sad-backstory dick-measuring contest.

Vanessa continued. “I was raised by a church. Not, like, your Christian one or whatever you went to as a kid, but a local church from my hometown. Well, the church was my hometown. I can’t tell you much, and you can’t find anything online. I was… no, am… important.”

Her tracing finger became a nervous fist against my chest as she went on. “I was sent here, to Lovus. It was considered a special place to us long ago, and… there’s something I need to find. Something we lost. The issue is, it’s contained within the next world, so I needed to pass on to it in order to complete my task. The task I was made for. I spent my life knowing that I would be sent here to die. I was trained for this.”

Her voice became shakier. I think she may have started crying, but I couldn’t see her face. “I was sent to Lovus when I was ready, but they hadn’t prepared me for the city. I had some arrangements to make before I could sacrifice myself, and this giant city was terrifying. It’d always been described as a sacred place; they said that it had changed since the days of Old, but nothing could prepare me for what this city had become. I was sent here with nothing. No money, no place to stay….

“I met Kate when I stumbled into her library, and she was super nice to me. She offered me a place to stay when I explained a little bit of my situation. I was… awkward when I met the girls. I didn’t know any better. I tried to tell them about my church, but they didn’t get it. I understand now, but at that point I’d never known a world without my religion.

“You know, I actually did live here for a little while. Like, I lived. I spent a lot of time at Kate’s library learning about the rest of the world on the computers. I…”

She went silent suddenly. I stroked her back softly, waiting for her to go on. I felt like I was trying to lure a stray cat, and I didn’t want to startle it.

“I learned about the life I’d missed. You wouldn’t believe how quickly you can get an understanding of the world through those things. I just read about normality. I saw videos of high school graduations, people having parties, families getting together for holidays. I learned about other countries, cultures, and people. I was… it’s hard to describe, but it’s learning about something you’d missed your entire life and not known about it. Like if you’d been seeing one color up until the day someone turned the lights on. To you, this is normal; but to me? It showed me how not normal I was.”

She began sobbing. “I almost gave up, you know? I almost let everyone down. I almost abandoned my entire life and everyone I’d ever cared about just to fucking live a life, like what I have to do is some kind of fucking inconvenience! I was almost so fucking selfish!”

I sat up, pressing my back to the headboard of the bed and pulled her close. Maybe I imagined them, but I could feel tears running down my chest.

“I know you can’t understand, and I’m sorry I can’t say more….”

“No, it’s okay. I’m here for you.” I promised her.

“Thank you….” She sniffled. “One thing I learned about was love. It may sound strange, but my home didn’t have love like how you people do.”

“Really?” That was baffling to me. Was love not an inherent trait? How can you keep that away from someone?

“Yes. But… I’d like to think that I would have loved you, under better circumstances.”

How do you respond to that? I couldn’t. I just held her tight as she cried softly. I wondered if she cried for the life she missed, or for the mistake she’d almost made. Well, ‘mistake’… I obviously had no concept of her religion, but I can’t imagine I’d subscribe to any ideology that asked her to end her own life. To a concept that stripped her of the entire life she was owed.

“I killed myself the night I did because I knew if I waited any longer I’d fall into the temptation of living a real life…. Sometimes, when I watch the girls, I think I may have made the wrong choice….”

She pushed herself up, wiping her face. “But I didn’t. I did the right thing. This is larger than myself.” A shaky breath. “It’s late. Maybe I… maybe I should go.”

Before she could disappear, I reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t go. Sleep here, with me.”

“You want me to?” She looked at me with her grey eyes, puffy from crying; I knew I wanted nothing more than to fix all of her problems.

“Yes. Please stay with me.”

Vanessa smiled and crawled back into my embrace.

It felt good to fall asleep with a woman in my arms.

I also wanted to find a way to help Vanessa.