I let go and started backing away, eyes anxiously darting across the night. Maybe I should close, lock, and barricade the balcony doors. After all, by day I would have many options. I could even drop messages to the street below. Attract attention to my high-elevation prison. Whatever faults the authorities might have, at least they were Standard humanoids…

I stopped, frozen in my tracks by…

…by a slight variation in the blackness out there. In the same direction as that narrow strand. Staring hard only made it go away, so I averted my gaze slightly, favoring the more light-sensitive retinal rods – an old astronomer’s trick.

It returned. An inky fluttering, like a raven flapping against a sable curtain or the dark wall of an unlit cave. The tenebrous shape grew larger, closer with a suddenness that left me stunned, unable to react…

…until – quite suddenly – it arrived, impending over the balcony’s stone railing with a final leap.

Landing in a graceful crouch, the manlike figure, dressed all in black, stood up slowly now, lowering both arms to gather-in the winglike folds of a large cape, before rising, straightening.

I managed to retreat a step, another. Put my hand upon the edge of the door. Preparing to slam it shut…

…when something transfixed me, preventing further motion as the dark figure finally turned to face me. The emotion of surprise.

“L-lieutenant? Lieutenant Morell?”

The face was certainly that of our security officer, the intellectually curious one who had pestered me all the way from Nebula Base Twelve – then accompanied the captain and me, along with the rest of the landing party, when we slurried to the planet’s surface. Now dressed in local costume – nicely cut for her generous figure – she appeared to recognize me and started to smile with those charmingly dainty-pointy demmie teeth…

…only no longer quite so charming. Two of them, canines at the corners of her mouth, now seemed larger and more intimidating. In what little light reached them from the candelabra inside, from the city, and from the stars, they gleamed.

Also gleaming, almost with a light of its own, the twin-lobed décolletage of her black, low-cut attire, enhanced by a tight, push-up effect. Apparently, becoming a Nomort did not alter one aspect of demmie nature. If you got it, flaunt it.

“Hello Dr. Montessori.” Her voice was familiar, even friendly, though now with a mellifluous tone, far more confident. In fact, one that I could only interpret as somehow smugly superior. Like a student who had become teacher. A long-respectful apprentice, now become a master.

“Are you surprised to see me?”

We humans who work close to demmies like to encourage some of their myths about the Ancient Ones, especially the widespread notion that Earthlings do not lie. Of course it isn’t true. Some of our less honest ancestors used to do it monthly, even weekly, I hear.