Grazing The Sky

Lance slid a little further down in his chair, looking out to the room before him. The moonlight from the windows made everything bright enough to see the beds—two columns, one on each side of the room, the empty space between the foot of the beds creating a walkway. Somewhere deep inside Lance's mind, he realized that aside from Kyrene's death, this was the first memory that occurred at night. Pain snapped into his gut. He turned to back to Zidane, trying to forget what he just realized.

The crossbreed looked to him, eyes still seeming just as colorful even in the dark. Almost like—

"Are your eyes glowing?" Lance asked,

"I guess you could say they are," Zidane answered with a grin. "Spiro iris' work in a way that's a little similar to pupils, except they capture and reflect light instead of just capturing and adapting. Our irises are hooked up to our emotions, too, so when we're experiencing something like happiness, the light that's gathered and reflected prolongs that feeling for a little while. In some ways, you could say the irises take in the energy properties of light." He shifted, sitting a little more upright against the bed frame.

"That's... Fascinating."

Zidane nodded a little bit, nonchalant. "I guess to someone who's never been around the race before, yeah..." The light in his eyes came back a little then, a faint realization coming to him. "That trait developed from need for a camouflage, actually. Darker eyes helped them blend into darker environments, lighter eyes helped with lighter environments."

"So with darker eyes... There's no light being taken in?"

"Yeah." Zidane nodded again. "But with darker eyes, there's not a lot of influence on mood, since light is being blocked and there's little to no energy to gather."

"The whole using light energy kinda reminds me of—" Lance paused, closing his eyes and retrieving the name again. "Razaleks. It's like how they use food, right?"

"Yeah, that's an interesting connection." Zidane flipped a hand over and opened his fist, revealing a bright structure made up of thin white threads. It rotated slightly, nearly seeming like a holographic piece of abstract art. "The energy won't go into being able to do anything like this because they don't have the right organs and connections through their body, but it's definitely a similarity..."

Lance thought for a long moment, looking away from the structure brightening up their small section of the room.

"Are there more differences than similarities?" he asked finally, turning back. "Between the two of them?"

Zidane closed his hand, the structure disappearing underneath his fist. He didn't answer right away, and for once Lance realized this was the first question he didn't have an immediate response to.

"Depends how you look at it," he said quietly. "Evolution and DNA traces us back to the human species—or traces the human species back to us, however you wanna see it—so in a way we're all identical. But then years and centuries and millenniums eventually split us apart, leading to everything as it is now. If you look at it from a straightforward-historical standpoint, then no, there's really not much difference. But from a biological standpoint, listing out what's different and what's similar, really getting down to all the details"—He shrugged, his shoulders heavy—"Yeah, there'd be more contrast than similarities."

His eyes were no longer glowing, and despite the moonlight still making it bright enough to give the room an outline, their small section seemed too dark. The shadows had no direct source, and for some reason Lance could feel them reaching, curling towards him, constricting and making it a little harder to breathe...

Lance cleared his throat, looking to Zidane again. The crossbreed looked up from the sheets, eyes darkening as Lance spoke.

"So why were Razaleks even here? Was it the spy thing?"

Zidane nodded. "Part of Ezyta's training; check up on the human territory to see how terrible it is."

"Oh..."

So what happens now? This question came as a distant thought, but it took Lance a moment to realize he had actually spoken it aloud; the distant volume of his own voice traveling out into the silence between them.

When he looked up, Zidane was lying down, eyes closed, sheets pulled up to his stomach. His hands were on top, fingers not interlocked but with one hand laying on the other. It nearly looked like he was lying in a coffin.

Everything was still, silent. And then shadows rose from the spot beside Zidane's bed, two of them reaching up until one was drastically tall and then other drastically smaller. These forms took on shapes—female curves accompanying the taller figure while Lance could only see a head and shoulders form for the shorter one. The shadows retracted, trailing back down towards the floor and ending the teleportation.