A short story about the first child of Empress Faustina. Demi-human, she considers herself a scientist and engineer, most recently working for the Thinking Machine, Ninon, of tribe Tohsaka, on a radar search array on the other side of the moon. While there, a human man, a few years older, catches her eyes, her bright yellow eyes. They have much work to do, so she says nothing. Until it is time to go back to Earth.

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Having just recently lifted off of the so-called dark side of the moon, Josh Harvest was surprised to suddenly be in freefall.  Next to him, at his right, in the tiny forward observation deck of the S-2, a very small scout ship which looked all the world like a flying saucer from stories well over a hundred years ago, his boss and friend, Liz, drifted up out of her chair.

“We were on our way back to Earth,” he noted, holding onto the sides of his chair to stay in place.  “Change of plans?”

For most of the last six months of his assignment to the radar listening array just completed, Liz’s long, white hair was usually in a tight braid, to not interfere with her work.  Only now and again, such as now, was it loose and wild, like a great white mane.

“Yes, just for a bit,” she replied.  He saw her demi-human eyes, yellow, flare just a little.  Josh had learned that was when she was thinking about a complex issue.  Twenty-three to his twenty-six, and the eldest child of Empress Faustina, she was the most intelligent person he had ever met.  But, also completely attuned to her work as a scientist and engineer.

Unlike most humans who preferred to talk with their faces aligned, she had already rotated upside down to him.  It made one of her rare smiles a little jarring.

“Ask to marry me,” she said.

“What?”

“Traditionally, that would be to my father, Robert, but as my mother is an empress, it really should be her.” She continued to slowly drift and rotate.  “We’ll be home in a few hours, and I wanted you to know.”

He was at a complete loss.  Had they been in close quarters for this project for months?  Certainly.  Shared meals, long hours.  She’s attractive as hell, but never once did she give the slightest hint she liked me.

“I do, Joshua,” she said.  He’d also learned that demis could nearly read human minds just by looking at their facial and body movements.  “Since I met you, in fact.  But the work we were doing for both ourselves and Ninon, of tribe Tohsaka, was far too important to introduce elements of romance.  So I waited until now.  Will you ask to marry me?”

“I…” In putting his hands to either side of his head, he drifted out of his chair.  “You know that I like you, Liz, but this is rather sudden…”

“A watchword of my great grandfather, the killer,” she smiled with a blink of her wonderful eyes.  “You are older that our kind think very fast.  I have thought much about you.  Even pulled your medical records, just in case.  Ask to marry me, Joshua”

A handle he could use to buy time.

“Everyone on our team calls me Josh,” he tried.  “But I have always been Joshua to you.  I thought you were being formal because you didn’t like me.”

“I was being formal to keep a distance between us,” that with another tiny smile as the bumped into one another in the cabin.  She grabbed the front of his skinsuit.  “I don’t ever want there to be a distance between us, again.  Joshua.”

“So why not call…”

“Because I want you to myself.  At least until we have all of our children.”

I haven’t even agreed…!

“Will you not ask to marry me?”

Growing up around Huntsville, he swam, played baseball, briefly been in the militia before training as an electrical engineer to suddenly be shipped off to the moon.  He was used to winning and losing.  She’s literally a princess, he thought, so let’s call this a win?

Once again upside down to one another, he reached out to her shoulders.

“Elizabeth Hartmann, will you marry me?” he asked.

“Yes.  Now, let’s go home and see what my mother says.”