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Michael had been working on her assigned math problems for twenty minutes. Her father had promised to play a game with her as soon as she finished, and for the first fifteen minutes after that, she’d worked diligently. But then she’d reached a particularly tricky problem, and her attention had begun to wander.
She’d be leaving with her parents soon as they worked on a research trip. She wondered what it would be like there and what new people she’d meet. She was deep in a daydream about what their temporary home would look like when an object materialized on top of her computer as if someone had sent it to her with a transporter.
She leaned back in her chair, squinting at the object for possible signs that it was dangerous. When she couldn’t find any, she reached for it, an action she knew would have earned a scolding from her parents if they knew about it.
The object looked like some sort of toy, but Michael couldn’t be sure. Whatever it was, she didn’t think it had come from Earth. She began describing the object to her computer, hoping it could give her the answer, but there were no results that matched what was in front of her.
“What are you?” Michael asked the object quietly, turning it over in her hands.
The black figurine just appeared one day. Tareckx turned it over in his hand. The top of the figurine was the head of some animal he’d never seen before, but it came to an end before the body. At least he thought so. Perhaps the unidentifiable animal was supposed to be nothing but a head. He held the figurine close to his chest, knowing that this must have come from his soulmate. Though it felt sturdy, he handled it carefully.
Children usually got their first lost item from their soulmate at a younger age. Tareckx had begun to worry that he’d never receive one of his own.
He’d hoped to keep the object a secret from his father, but he hadn’t had it long when his father realized that he was carrying something around with him everywhere he went. Tareckx let him inspect it, watching closely to make sure that nothing happened to it.
“This is from Earth,” his father said, spitting out the planet’s name with distaste.
He handed the figurine back with reluctance and eyed Tareckx as if he’d been fundamentally changed in the last minute.
“I think it’s some game they play,” he said, not bothering to offer any more of an explanation.
“Does that mean my soulmate is from Earth too?” Tareckx asked, eager to learn more about the distant planet.
But his father only shrugged. “It could mean anything, but I highly doubt they’re from Kwejian if they had that.”
Tareckx slipped the figurine carefully into his pocket.
Michael turned the strange object over in her hand. It wasn’t actually that strange anymore. She’d kept it close since it had first appeared to her as a child.
Other objects her soulmate had lost had appeared over the years, but she hadn’t been able to keep all of them. It just hadn’t been practical, and if she was being honest, some of them weren’t particularly noteworthy. But this one, the first she’d ever found, stayed close by her side.
For years, back before she had come to the future, she’d tried to trace it back to its culture and figure out what it was. Doing so had even driven her to become a xenoantropologist, yet none of the research she did led anywhere. She’d become convinced that it was a toy, which would make sense if her soulmate was her age, but as a xenoanthropologist, she knew that making such assumptions without real evidence was a terrible idea.
Now she was in the thirty-second century and had been working with Book for months. She was starting to think that a new deep dive into research would yield better results in this century, but something held her back. She hadn’t even been brave enough to show Book the item.
With a sigh, she slid it back into her pocket. One day, it would claim her attention. For now, finding Discovery had to be her priority.
She caught him by surprise. It hadn’t been on purpose, but he was so enthralled with whatever he was holding that he didn’t hear her approach him from behind. Once she got close enough, she realized that it was a chess piece. And not just any chess piece. It would have looked perfectly at home with the set she’d played with as a child.
She could still remember the day when she’d wanted to play the game and had realized that one of the knights was missing. When she’d asked her parents to help her find it, they’d smiled at her and said that it was probably long gone. Her soulmate would have it, they’d said.
They’d been right.
“Where did you get that?”
Book didn’t jump, and she realized that maybe he had known she was there the whole time. He looked at her calmly, without making any attempt to conceal the knight.
“I’ve had it since I was a child,” he said. “At first, I didn’t know what to make of it. We didn’t learn much about Earth on Kwejian. I was an adult before I understood what chess was.”
Michael walked over to him, reaching into her pocket and finding her own object. The one that she still hadn’t discovered the name of.
Of course her search in the past had never been successful. Kwejian hadn’t been a warp-capable society in the twenty-third century. She held the object out for him to see. He regarded it with a smile but not a single ounce of surprise.
“This appeared to me the same way,” Michael said, sitting down in the chair beside him with her own smile.
Book took the object in his hands and turned it over, his eyes shining. “This was my favorite toy when I was a child. I was devastated when I lost it.”
“I’m sorry then,” Michael said, reaching out to touch Book’s knee.
He shook his head, sitting the toy down next to the chess piece. “Now that I know you had it the whole time, I’m happy to have lost it.”
His hand covered hers, and Michael sighed. She’d been running from this since she arrived in the future, too focused on Discovery for anything else. But she couldn’t run anymore.
Without giving herself time to second think it, she leaned forward and captured Book’s lips with her own.
Michael stared out the front window of Discovery as they traveled to their next assignment. It felt right being in the captain’s chair, especially with the sounds of her loved ones doing their work.
It reminded her of home.
Or one of her home’s at least. The other was currently gone, taking care of other business.
No sooner had she thought of Book than an object appeared at her feet. She bent down to pick it up and found what appeared to be a small part of his ship that must have been lost while doing repairs.
Despite herself, Michael smiled as she slipped the part into her pocket to return later.