Sent To Love

        She was cold. Everything around her was dark and she could only remember that final image she had seen in the glowing orb before the light had spread around her. 

My darling Cale, how I have missed you! For so long the pain has been with me...each time I looked into his eyes it was as though you were there to wrench my heart from its socket as you did so long ago. All this time alone without you...

    Rita Carter's blond hair was still pulled back, but with no peace of cloth or hair tie, by the normal flow of her hair over her head. She had the impression of many eyes watching her and people looking down at her from above. She tried to open her eyes, but was urged not to by a familiar voice.

Who is that? Why do I recognize that voice? Who in the universe has me now that I am not on earth?

        You are safe.

Safe?

        Yes, safe.

Rita, of course, had no idea who the voice belonged to, but she was comforted. She slipped into a deep slumber...

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

        "She is very weak, Oosha." 

        "No, she is not." His dark blue hair streamed over his shoulders and he seemed to be looking out the spaceport into the stars at nothing, his single eye focused on something that the Ooshati could not understand. "My Rita is strong, and she is not a quitter. She will come around soon, and you will see what sort of Ooshala I have wed our people to."

    The Ooshati that had said this bowed her head and stepped back towards the monitoring station in which Rita slept. But Rita had woken up. "Where am I?" was her first question.

        In less than an instant Cale was at her side, taking her hand in his and looking into her eyes with his. "Rita, kia, you have come back to me."

        "Cale? Is it possible?" There were tears in her eyes as she said the words and looked at his face, touched it with her hands, and twirled the silky hair around her fingers. "Your eye..."

        "The price of our struggle." Cale said, dismissing it. "David is well, I hope?"

        "When I left him he was fine..."

        In reality Rita Carter had been sent back to the spot that Cale had been when he programmed the orb he had given her. Right into the hands of the Draggit...and the Draggit had wonderful plans for her because of him.

        She would not suffer...no he had decided she would live through this. Something about her made him pause...he could think that she had just lulled his nephew into one of his weaknesses, but as long as he had known young Cale beauty had meant little to him when it had come to women. So there must be something about this one to make him pause.

        "Why you...Erdlufa?"

        "Cale..."

        He looked up from the schematic he was examining. The tired purple eye sought the speaker's. Shalli's heart caught in her throat as she looked into his eye. "Yes, Shalli?"

        "My Oosha...I hate to be the one to tell you this..." She sucked in her breath to get it out. "The Draggit has Rita." She braced herself, with closed eyes, against the rush of emotions she expected from the man.

        But Cale Oosha, the rightful leader of Tyrus and all its many colonies, now that the Draggit had forced his rule upon worlds once allied to Tyrus under Cale's line, made no move from the schematic, towards Shalli or away for anything.

        In fact he turned back to look at the schematic.

        Shalli was more afraid now than she had been when they had gotten the news. She turned and left the room in a hurry. Of all the time she had known Cale in any sort of a more personal way - after Jaran's death, which still made her heart catch in her throat to think about now and again - there had been nothing that Cale lived for more than Rita Carter. Except perhaps his son, David.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

        Cale stared at the plan projected before him, and his eye unfocused...leaving the yellow diagram but a blob before him. Tears streaked down his cheeks and he closed his eyes to the blurriness...but could not stop the pain in his heart. 'Rita...dear Rita, what will become of you now?' He asked the figure before him that seemed to take the shape of her hair, her cheek. He collapsed on the console and let the sorrow seep out of him.

        She had not seen her husband in seventeen years, and the abruptness in which he had left had allowed a few things to go undone between them. For a while they attended to these things. She found herself very sleepy, and this he said was normal...or at least he thought it was because no Erdlufi had ever used it before.

        "Cale," she said aloud when she woke to find him absent from her side. He returned a moment later, sitting down beside her.

        "Yes, Kia?" He said, patting her hand on the covers.

        "What about the revolution?" A small something pricked her heart. "About David?" She asked him, heart in her eyes.

        He smiled and she began to relax. "I would no sooner give them up than I would you, Kia." He said, and she crushed him against her.