Thunderous, Chapter Three

Faithfully Flashthunder followed Cherry’s dark-matter glint, into the unknown, for by now they were speeding through stars he did not recognise. Was this uncharted cosmos, maybe even beyond the borders of the galaxy itself? Time and space and the essence of the universe were streaming past in illusory forms which Flashthunder could comprehend only as kaleidoscopic chaos. Cherry didn’t shout about her own psychic powers, but it was clear enough they were considerable. She could probably cope with this. Flashthunder was glad Cherry had so much faith in his ability to do the same.

With that thought in mind, it was perhaps no wonder he took the next thing he saw to be the first telltale symptom of his descent into some kind of undiagnosed Mini-Flash hysterics. Because it was that blue round object Flashshadow had shown him earlier in the day. Here, however, it was huge. He and Cherry were drawing in upon it as if it were the top half of a moon, that golden intricate edging around the base resembling an equator beneath which the antipodes had been shorn away. It could not be real, but no sooner had Flashthunder considered this possibility than he rejected it. For he understood with a kind of certainty he had not previously acknowledged that not only was this pearlescent demi-planet very much there in front of him just as it seemed, but also that it was the destination Cherry had sought all along.

Flawless fields of smooth sapphire rolled below the arriving twain, for an instant stretching as far as the eye could see and then they were through, and all was blue and light. Flashthunder gazed about him mesmerized as the softly-twinkling folds within the giant dome parted to let him and Cherry glide by. The shimmery sheets of some transcendent aurora borealis waving in the vaults of an azure heaven would have come in a close second to such a sight, only for Flashthunder it was more suggestive still of lacy bedroom curtains billowing in a breeze made up of morning rays and all the scents of springtime. The flutters of that whispering gauze as it rose and bloomed and melted into sunbeams emulated the action of Flashthunder’s heart, when behind these last lifting silken slips he beheld what form and what face and what pair of brown eyes awaited him at the crystal’s core.

And there she was.

Neetra.

Flashthunder would not have been able to say whether he was detectable to her. The little he knew about this kind of thing suggested it was typically for psychics only. That was one reason to hang shyly back and try to be innocuous, not that “shyly” was quite a strong enough word. For looking at Neetra now amid this gentle blue aura brought unto Flashthunder everything she still meant, from treasured snippets of conversation all the way to that which their bodies had shared. It was dizzying for him. Even if this reunion had taken place in the physical sphere, Flashthunder would doubtless have known something of the same. Telepathy however made it more so.

But besides, he told himself, let’s not forget he wasn’t the one who’d elected to pay this strange social call. It was only right to let Cherry talk to her first. Now she Neetra quite evidently could detect, for the girls were looking at each other. Flashthunder underwent a moment’s anxiety, knowing all too well what Cherry could be like in such situations and dreading being caught in the middle of standoffishness between girlfriends past and present. He should have remembered they had already left any need for linguistic communication a fair distance behind them. Cherry was still no talker, but talking wasn’t what you did here.

“I sensed your need, Neetra Neetkins of The Four Heroes,” she expressed. “For this reason I have traced your signal through the stars, to join you in your mind-state.”

In the spectral scene before Flashthunder’s eyes Neetra ran to Cherry and hugged her so warmly she might have been her dearest friend, rather than someone with whom she had never exchanged words until now.

“It was lovely,” she then told Cherry, her face aglow. “It would have been lovely anyway, but you really helped. Thank you. And you don’t even need to ask your next question. Of course it’s what I used. What else could be so secret, or so special? Perfect password. Though I am going to need you to tell him,” Neetra added seriously. “Head full of air. Which he’ll be bashing against my mini-Daylight Jewel until the coming conflict’s been and gone otherwise.”

The errand didn’t seem to be a problem for Cherry, but at the rest of it she assumed such a haughty manner that Flashthunder fairly cringed. It was galling work being connected with these showbusiness sorts when you were terrified of interpersonal awkwardness.

“You need not think, Neetra Neetkins of The Four Heroes, that it was without selfish motives on my part,” Cherry declared. “Speeding you to consummation with your Earth-male worked no disadvantage on my own romantic interests.”

At this, Neetra’s laughter tinkled and chimed throughout the shining interior.

“In that case I want you and the whole band under the window of the honeymoon suite on the big day,” she pronounced delightedly. “After I’ve thrown you my bouquet, which I will do. And by the way, Cherry, you’re being ridiculous. You make it sound like I need you to provide some kind of incentive scheme. Flashthunder’s one in a million star-systems, but you know how things are for me. Here of all places, you know. And besides, you saw him first.”

Her psychic self stroked Cherry’s on the cheek, sympathetically.

“Let that be my way of helping you in return,” Neetra said. “Put those fears behind you, and find your way to something lovely of your own.”

Cherry made no reply, and looked every bit as brattish as before. Flashthunder knew her well enough to see this as an encouraging sign she had actually listened. Then, Neetra laughed again.

“Listen to us,” she went on. “Talking about him as if he wasn’t even there…!”

And suddenly Flashthunder felt it all beginning, because with a toss of her sparking tresses Neetra was turning in his direction.

When she smiled at him, everything he had known at the height of his previous telepathic escapade was upon him. A memory could bring it, and he had privately hoped this trip with Cherry might bring it too. Now it was here. Even the parts that might have seemed unromantic to an outside observer, because after all the confines of a single starship berth in the danger and discomfort of a Toothfire heat-field didn’t sound like much of a comparison to the wonders Flashthunder had lived on this late voyage. But it was what that look on his lost love’s face had spelled for him while they were alone inside that pressure-oven, yearnings never previously tasted which had all been part of the nearness of that face and every touch and twinge and inhalation amid the peril and the swelter. There was something else too, which likewise was only imparted to him on receipt on Neetra’s confidential smile, and it was that all this had only happened because of him. He was no psychic, but he was nevertheless the reason Cherry had been able to make contact. Somehow he had served as a channel in the dark for this pair of telepathic girls, along which the light of each one’s presence had travelled to intermingle. That was why Cherry had needed him here. He was the bridge for herself and Neetra. Which made perfect sense, when Flashthunder thought about it, because he was just about the only thing they had in common.

Neetra spoke to him, tenderly.

“Go this way and it’ll only break your heart again, Flashthunder. You know which way’s your way now.”

Flashthunder did know. Now he was that little bit older than he had been then, he knew. Some love just had to stay in the past. And sometimes it ended up there anyway, whether you wanted it to or not, so there was nothing you could do. What was more, most cases were like his, and included someone wonderful who waited faithfully for you the whole of that time. To show Neetra he understood, and hopefully show Cherry the same, he took the latter by the hand.

Thus it was that with their goal achieved, Flashthunder and Cherry whirled out of that world within the giant Daylight Jewel leaving Neetra and her blue blissful deeps to wherever it was they could truly be said to have been. Hand-in-hand the duo backtracked their cross-universe trek at such a phantasmagoric rate it might have made even Cherry’s head spin, for all seemed to fly by within the measure of a heartbeat and then they were where they had begun, corporeal and at rest on Cherry’s couch in Cherry’s cabin surrounded by the familiar welcoming scent of chocolate-coated ginger. And if truth be told, Flashthunder had never felt more in the mood for a nice chocolate biscuit than he did now.

“Don’t think I’m complaining,” he commenced. “But just tell me, Cherry, is it always going to be like this?”

From the look of contentment she returned, nothing could have been more certain.

“Fine, only myself to blame, all these romances with powerful psychics which for some reason seem to be the only kind I ever have,” Flashthunder declared reasonably. “And now on top of that, I suppose I’ve got to go and be brave again tomorrow night? No good deed goes unpunished around here. It’s all very well you and your rebellious pop-star lifestyle, Cherry, but I hardly need remind you what we Mini-Flashes have been advised about. Not much pop-star potential in me, I daresay, terrified as I am of ever ignoring official advice…!”

The terror he referred to was of course quite genuine, but the reproof with which he spoke was not. Indeed, there were Mini-Flashes who would scarcely have known Flashthunder had they been able to see him there, smiling with a twinkle in his eye as he made jokes about his own timidity and treated the subject of breaking the rules with such unaccustomed lightness. The path Neetra had recommended was perhaps doing more good than Flashthunder himself could yet see, though already he had reason enough to conclude that walking tonight’s stretch had been well worth his while.

It had come as such a pleasant surprise to find out somewhere along the way that Cherry was in love with him.

END OF CHAPTER THREE