a pretty dressing gown. Her clothes are baggy and gray in color.
In fact, everything about her is gray.
Maybe it’s just the shadow?
“What do you like?” I ask.
“What?”
“To drink? I’ll pour you one.” I hold up the bottle I confiscated off the shelf and peer at the label. “I’m having…” Yeah. I don’t even recognize the brand. I’m definitely not where I wanted to be. “Something called… Purge.” I chuckle. “That’s gross. Hold on. Let me find something better.” I turn my back on the girl and start looking at the other bottles on the shelf. “Let’s see.” I scan the labels. Looking for one I recognize. But they are all are foreign. So I just choose an expensive looking slender bottle with a red liquid inside. “Scarlet Stardust,” I say. “That sounds promising.” When I turn, the girl is still pressed up against the door in the shadows. “You can come over here, ya know. I won’t bite you.”
She doesn’t move. And she doesn’t say anything either.
“Seriously, you’re gonna have a hard time drinking it from over there.”
“I…” She hesitates.
“What?” I squint my eyes at her again. Trying to see past the shadows. She’s very thin. Not sure about her age, but she’s definitely younger than me.
When she finally speaks again, her voice is very small. “I was hoping…” But again, she stops.
“Hoping for what?”
“For… juice.” And then she takes a step out of the shadows and I see her in the dim light.
She is not pale, she looks like death. Her skin is like ash. Her blonde hair is limp and oily. Her clothes look many sizes too big. She is practically swimming in them.
“Sun-fucked gods,” I say. “What the hell happened to you?”
She looks behind her. Then back at me. “I need juice.” Then she starts making her way towards me, but not straight towards me. She moves around the tables and chairs, keeping them between us. Like she needs this barrier. And she’s not taking the most direct route, either. She’s circling around me.
“What the hell are you doing? Just come over here and I’ll find you some…” But I stop mid-sentence. Because I suddenly understand. She’s a princess. A starved princess. Her glow has been utterly depleted. She has been used up and no one has given her a recharge drink in a very long time. “Oh, shit. Juice. Of course. Come here. Sit down. I’ll get you some juice.”
I go over to the autocook and search for a recharge drink.
“The kind of juice I need isn’t in there,” she says. “I’ve checked. But I was going to look in the kitchen tonight for some passion limes. They use them as garnish for drinks. And I have to have them. I’m not going to make it through tomorrow if I don’t get a drink tonight. I swear, I wouldn’t have come in here if I didn’t—”
“Princess,” I say. Putting up a hand to stop her. “You don’t need to explain it to me. I have eyeballs, sweetheart. You needed a recharge like… last month.”
“Yeah.” Her single word comes out very tired. Very done. . “They’re punishing us. All of us.”
“Who?” I ask. Searching the small fridge behind the bar where most passion limes can be found behind a bar. But she’s right. There aren’t any.
She doesn’t answer my question. She just says, “They don’t keep them there anymore. They knew I was stealing them for us, so they hide them now.”
I straighten up and look at her. “What are you? Some kind of prisoner?”
“Yes. And no. My father left me here with them after… well. You know.”
“No, I don’t know. I’m not actually from here. I’m Just passing through.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widen a little. “So you have a ship?”
I get a sick feeling in my heart. Because I can hear the hope in her voice. She wants me to have a ship. She wants to concoct a crazy princess escape plan and that starts with meeting a strange man stealing drinks in the middle of the night and ends with her and I sailing through the spin-node in my cool sentient ship that whisks her away from whatever horrible life she has here, and drops her into a brand new one. A shiny, hope-filled, second-chance brand-new life.
I go back to the autocook without answering her and press in a code that works with every other autocook I’ve ever been around.
The autocook comes to life with lights and chirps.
“What are you making?” she asks.
“Tushberry juice.”
“It doesn’t have