Chapter 6: Symbiosis

Dee'rah stood beside the healing chamber, still unsteady on her feet. Michael enfolded her in his arms, pulling her closely to him, feeling her warmth, her heart beating strongly against his chest. She was taller. His lips came to the center of her forehead. She smiled as Michael placed many small kisses on her brow.

He lifted her chin with his forefinger, touching her delicately, to gaze into her azure blue eyes with the golden flecks swimming like sparkling highlights. She looked up, sighed, and hugged her love more tightly to herself.

"Welcome back, my love," he murmured in her ear. He stooped slightly, scooped her up in his arms, and carried her from the healing quarters; with long strides he carried her to the guest suite where her parents and close friends awaited their return.

Three days later Dee'rah joined Michael in the exercise chamber with her father and Berl'ahan. Lyn'na-rah joined them. It was time to test and evaluate her changes. She was feeling much stronger and well-rested following her emergence from the healing and transformation chamber. She had eaten, slept, and basked in the loving embrace of her soul mate. Now she was ready to test herself, to reassure her loved ones that she was well and perhaps even better than before her change.

She performed on the exercise and striding machines much as Michael had done. She was stronger, faster, and had greater endurance. But something else was different. She tried to explain:

"I feel ... not the same. My attitude, it is ... more ... no, that is not right. My attitude is less willing to accept what had been sufficient before. Is that correct? I feel compelled to test myself more. I feel uneasy to accept what was previously acceptable. It seems not sufficient to just be what comes easy now. It seems needful to try harder, push harder. I feel dissatisfied, not content unless I struggle against the limits of myself. This is not how I was; I never felt this dissatisfaction with myself before. I do not know if this is correct, if I am to be this way?"

Dee'rah looked to her parents, seeing concern in their faces. She turned to Michael, who understood. He smiled knowingly at Jon'a-ren and Lyn'na-rah, then he moved to Dee'rah and hugged her closely. He scooped her up in his arms, strode to a bench and sat down with her in his lap.

"I believe that what you are feeling is quite normal, my love," he smiled down at her. He looked up to her parents and spoke to them.

"Her feelings are quite normal and are to be expected ... for someone who is experiencing human drives and ambitions. She is feeling the urge to improve, to excel, to challenge and increase her abilities. It is a very normal human motivation. It is what makes us strong. It is what causes some to rise far above their normal selves. It is the drive that produces an Olympic athlete, a champion. It is the drive that leads one to devote a lifetime of study amidst scorn and criticism, to ultimately achieve a great advance in human knowledge, to earn a Nobel Prize. It is the element within us that makes humanity restless and anxious to leap from our planet to soar among the stars. Dee'rah, you are feeling the first stirrings of your own humanity. It is the gift you were given by Marie!"

Michael and Dee'rah raced side by side along the oval track, her hair streaming in long waves behind her head, her face glistening with the sheen of her effort. Her lips were pulled back in a broad grin of pure rapture as she inhaled great gulps of air. Her slender legs moved in long, rhythmic strides. She easily kept pace with Michael beside her as they raced in increasingly faster circles around the track.

Dee'rah had always delighted in her mental abilities, her dream voyages, her ability to seek and discover and understand all secrets great and small. But this! This was physical rapture! For the first time in her life she delighted in the pure joy of moving her body in great racing strides, leaps, somersaults, and bounds—feeling her physical self respond to every wish her mind commanded.

"Oh, Michael-mine, my love, my joy! Never did I imagine, never could I know such pleasure as I am feeling now. Has it always been this way for you? To take such delight in simply being alive, moving this way?"

"Oh, yes," he answered, keeping pace, matching her stride for stride. "But it was never quite this good! We are much improved from before, my love. Something has happened within us. I can feel a harmony developing within myself, my human and my masi'na selves blending and reinforcing each other. I feel them growing, becoming something greater. It is difficult to explain, but I feel it! I am sure that is what you are feeling. But you also feel, for the first time in yourself, the physical realm, the joy of your body. You had never done that. You were focused on energy, on the mental, on your magnificent intellectual powers. Now you have a much stronger connection to your physical self. Yes, my love, it is a powerful feeling, and we share it. We have become two halves of something much greater, Dee'rah. I see it in you; I feel it in myself; and I feel it growing and surrounding ourselves. Together we are much greater than you and I apart. I believe we are a living truth, Dee'rah ... we are living exemplars of symbiosis!

Dee'rah and Michael stood side by side surrounded by the devastation in the ice valley. They faced the shattered and ruined bedrock of the valley wall that Michael had torn asunder with his wild energy thrust. Jon'a-ren and Berl'ahan stood nearby, examining the wreckage of the first shuttle that they had flown on their first outing. A different, undamaged shuttle rested nearby.

"The repair group will come for this one later today," Jon'a-ren explained to his young friend. "I am sure they will be quite surprised. The repair leader seemed somewhat skeptical when I explained the cause of the damage. Perhaps when he sees how this vehicle looks like a shredded lace adornment, he will have a new appreciation for wild energy!" he grinned. It had been embarrassing but necessary that day to call for assistance; a second shuttle had been called to return their group to the city. The air crew had looked at the shuttle wreckage with disbelief, but their astonishment at seeing the torn ramparts and the wide scattering of ice and shattered rock was even greater.

"Michael-mine! By all the stars! You did this? This was your first calling and forming? " Dee'rah exclaimed, putting her hands to her face, gazing at the torn mountainside in disbelief.

"Michael, how is it ... how do you yet live? I cannot imagine... !" She burst into wracking, heaving sobs and raced to her father. With tears streaming down her face, she pounded her small fists on her father's chest, and screamed into his face:

"You LET HIM DO THIS?! HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN CONSUMED! HE SHOULD BE NO MORE! GONE!! PERISHED!!"

Dee'rah collapsed against her father's chest. She stood a good head taller than he, so when he supported her with his arms, her head bent forward at an angle to rest on his shoulder. Her body heaved with wracking sobs. Jon'a-ren stood silently, holding her, while he stared with sad eyes at Michael. He stood, waiting, for Dee'rah to regain her composure. Something new was happening. Never would she have shown such emotion before the transformation. Never would she have shed such tears or been filled with over-powering fear. Her new human component was growing large and strong within her. In a moment of insight, her father realized that the two of them, Michael and Dee'rah, would have a long struggle while learning to control their new selves. Michael was incredibly dangerous with his seemingly wild and unlimited ability to draw energy; Dee'rah was virtually helpless with her new, overpowering human senses and emotions. They would need much love, patience, and guidance from their family and friends before they could resume anything like a normal life together.