Awakening
December 25, 2025
There was a loud bang, accompanied by a yowl. Opening my eyes, I groaned and looked over at the clock.
It was 4 AM.
Apparently, the idiot cat had decided this was the perfect time to wake up.
“What’s going on?” Rogue asked from beneath the mass of sheets. She was curled up on my chest, stealing as much of my body heat as possible.
“Nakja has apparently decided that it’s time to get up. I think she pulled the tree down. She’s probably trapped under it.”
Rogue groaned, and slowly the covers below my chin moved, the barest fraction of Rogue’s face popping out. “Nakja!” she called.
I heard a small thump and the pattering of padded feet. The bed moved slightly as the cat jumped up onto it and quickly made her way up to my head. In the darkness of the morning, the cat blinked down at me expectantly.
“You are not supposed to be on the bed.”
The covers moved again and Rogue’s arm shot out, grabbing the cat. She dragged the ungrateful creature underneath the covers with her and I felt it settle against my chest next to the creature I actually enjoyed having there.
I leaned back into my pillow and smiled. Rogue was asleep again. I, unfortunately, couldn’t fall in and out of sleep at the drop of a hat like she could, and in any case I knew it was not a good idea to leave the cat unattended so close to my person.
The reflective eyes of the small creature were looking up at me from underneath the covers. I stared back.
Moving in her sleep, Rogue dragged the jet black cat closer to her and up onto my chest. Unlike any other cat I knew, Nakja accepted all of this rough housing, but only from Rogue. If I so much as tried to pet her, I would end up with a nice collection of small scratches all over my forearms.
“You behave, she needs to sleep,” I whispered at the small thing.
Nakja didn’t respond, and seemingly content closed her eyes and curled up closer to the alien sleeping on my chest.
Shaking my head, I leaned back into my pillows and looked out through the blinds of the bedroom. The moonlight was illuminating the steady snowfall outside. It was incredible, but it actually looked like we were going to have a white Christmas. For the past few years, it has typically been too hot to even put on a heavy jacket, much less see snow. Global warming was a cruel reality.
Still, it had been cold this season – cold enough that Rogue had taken to curling up with me as often as possible to steal my body heat. Something I wasn’t about to complain about.
Content, I watched the snow continue to fall, and waited for the sun to rise.
Merry Christmas
The cat had definitely pulled the tree down, and in doing so smashed another dozen of the ornaments Rogue and I had collected. Thankfully, she hadn’t managed to fray the light strips interwoven through the real tree. I had grown up with a fake one, but since Rogue had moved in with me I had always gotten a real one, despite the difficulty of dealing with it.
She liked the smell. Her own world had been cold and almost devoid of life because of the nuclear winter. She wasn’t a big fan of winter because of that, and having the smell of something living like the pine tree permeating the house helped remind her that it was only the tilt of the Earth causing the cold, not nuclear fallout.
“Wow,” Rogue, with the comforter from the bed wrapped around her and trailing down the hall behind her, looked down at the cat walking beside her. “You managed to tear it down again.”
I looked up at the ceiling where I had screwed in a bolt to hold the tree up and sighed; the cat had managed to pull the bolt from the ceiling. I had apparently not hit the stud when I put it in.
Nakja let out a purr of satisfaction. The two had either a predator bond, a female bond, an alien to cat bond, or some combination of everything. Point was, Rogue and the cat were buddy-buddy, while the cat and I saw each other as the enemy.
Yawning, Rogue went over to the couch and laid down on it, the comforter still pulled tightly around her.
“She missed the presents.”
“She was just having fun with the mean old Christmas tree. Weren’t you?” asked Rogue as she wiggled her fingers in the direction of the small cat, who had decided to jump up onto the couch and snuggle into the warmth of the comforter with her.
Going into the kitchen, I cracked the fridge and pulled out breakfast. Taking the plate of bacon and sugared ham that were leftovers from the yesterday, I walked back out into the living room set it down on the coffee table. Rogue quickly leaned over and snatched a piece of bacon off the plate to munch on.
Going over to the Christmas tree, I carefully extracted the small gift out from under it that I had gotten her.
“Want to do the small ones first?” I asked, holding out the neatly wrapped package to her.
Slurping the cold bit of bacon she was eating into her mouth, Rogue nodded. “Sure, yours is over by the plug.”
I handed her the small package and went to retrieve my own.
Reaching under the tree, I also extracted a small packet of catnip – a treat for Nakja to keep her distracted while we unwrapped our gifts.
Tossing it past the cat, she darted away from Rogue with a yowl of excitement and pounced on the packet. Sitting down next to Rogue I grabbed a corner of the comforter she had dragged off of the bed and snuggled into it with her.
“Good?” I asked.
“Good!” said Rogue, who had wasted no time in curling up closer to me.
For a moment the two of us looked at one another. “Well, go on!” I said, gesturing at the gift.
Rogue tore into the small package and stared for a moment in confusion at the two slips of paper inside.
“You have no idea how hard it was to get actual tickets. Everything is digital these days.”
“Tickets?” asked Rogue as she turned the slips of paper over.
“I looked over the data on your planet from before the nuclear war. You never saw what your planet might have looked like before the devastation… I thought you might like to see the next best thing.”
Rogue looked down at the tickets again. “Brazil? That’s in South America, right?”
“Yep, and the rains forests there match just about everything in the specs for what most of your planet was like.”
“I’ve never really considered what my planet was like before I was born. To me, it was always the ruins of the cities. I had read about what things were like, but only the oldest Vakurians remembered what it was like before the ash fell and the winters lengthened to consume the entire year. They didn’t like to talk about what we had lost.”
Rogue held the two tickets up thoughtfully. “To see what my planet was like, before we destroyed it… That is something I haven’t even thought to dream about. It’s something that was always impossible.”
“So… a good gift, then?” I asked.
Rogue’s ears perked up and she smiled. “A perfect one. I’m afraid mine won’t live up to this.”
I smiled, leaned forward, and put a kiss on her forehead. “Just promise to protect me from any nasty predators in the rainforest, and that I might get to see what that camouflage ability can do in its natural environment.”
“So you want to see me naked,” said Rogue, giggling.
“Still a valid request, from a biological point of view!” I said, defending myself.
Rogue laughed again, her ears going flat as she rolled her eyes at me. She picked up the present she had wrapped and shoved it into my hands.
“Your turn.”
I quickly removed the wrapping paper from the box and opened it.
“It’s a … what is it?” I asked, looking at the mass of wires and other electronics resting inside the box.
“It’s a tricorder, or at least the closest I can come up with.”
“A tricorder? We’ve been watching way too many reruns on Netflix.”
Leaning over, Rogue slapped me on the shoulder. “Be appreciative, I only had the schematics from the alien shuttle to work with. It took me forever to figure out what the heck they even mean!”
Looking back down at the mass of electronics, I frowned. “This is alien technology?”
“The invaders’ technology, and it’s an approximation. There’s no actual alien technology in there; the alien tech was only an inch big.”
Reaching into the box, Rogue carefully extracted the mass of electronics and held it towards me, pushing a button nestled inside of the wires. The device hummed and I felt a slight tingling in my face as she pointed it towards me.
Turning the screen around, she showed me the display. I had a background more specifically in biochemistry than human anatomy and medicine, but it was plain enough that I was looking at something equivalent to an MRI of my own face.
“How much radiation did I just get?” I asked as I looked at the data beside the scan, listing chemical compounds and proteins that were inside the scan radius.
“You’re fine. This should help you with your work, make all that biochemical research move a bit faster.” Carefully, Rogue set the device back down in the box.
“Except that now I have to explain how I invented what has to be one of the biggest advancements in medical scanning in the past twenty years.”
Rogue shrugged. “You bring work home all the time, now you won’t have to work so long when you do.”
“Hmm. Why do I get the feeling you’re hinting at something here, and that your motives aren’t exactly pure?”
Rogue smiled. “You work hard enough as it is. Why not give you a little more free time?”
“Thank you,” I said, giving her a peck on the cheek.
Rogue smiled and set the box down on the coffee table, taking it from my hands. I rubbed at her ears as she leaned over and she melted back into my arms. Nakja, apparently feeling like she was left out, jumped up onto the couch and let out a meow.
Rogue opened the comforter and the small cat jumped into it, snuggling up against her and emitting a rumbling purr.
I grabbed a few more pieces of ham and held them up to Rogue. She giggled, nipping at my fingers slightly as she ate it. For several long minutes my little family relaxed.
“Should we open the rest?” I asked.
“Later.”
“Later,” I agreed.
Prejudice
Putting Picking up the last of the wrapping paper and putting it in the recycling bin, I sat back down on the couch. Nakja was having fun hiding in, prowling between, and pouncing on the various gift boxes that were still scattered around, totally ignoring the plethora of toys and treats that she had received.
Rogue was up and looking out the window at the snow. The sun was already setting, not that we had seen it at any point during the day with the snow storm continuing unabated.
I casually turned the television on, hoping to find some old Christmas comedy to watch.
“Several dozen have been confirmed dead in this latest terrorist attack from the growing-“ I cut the television off and sighed, my mood ruined.
Maybe it was selfish of me, but at the moment I didn’t want to think about what was wrong with the world.
“Peace on Earth, goodwill to all men,” quoted Rogue, turning around from the window even as the wind rattled the panes.
I shrugged. “Not everyone feels the same way, it would seem.”
Sweeping forwards, Rogue sat back down on the table and toyed with small box holding the tickets. Her ears were moving back and forth, indecisively.
“Your planet is so strange,” she said as she moved over to the couch and closed her eyes.
“What makes you say that?” I asked as she leaned on my shoulder, the two of us absently watching Nakja as she crawled through the boxes.
“You’re more violent than my own people were for the most part, but you still want to be peaceful.”
I smiled and slowly nodded. “We want to be, but we never are.”
“You haven’t blown yourselves up yet”
“We haven’t blown ourselves up yet because we all have weapons pointing at one another. Someone uses a single warhead and the entire Earth is going to go up in flames,” I countered. Chuckling, I added, “Plus, we still we have madmen running around killing people because of some ridiculous ideology. And not enough is done to stop them, because as a whole we’re content to let others die, so long as they’re on the other side of the world.”
Rogue was silent, and I realized perhaps a little too late that I might have touched on a sensitive topic by mentioning nuclear annihilation.
Rogue looked away, staring hard at nothing in particular. “For my people’s entire history, we were divided. Each nation was something that had always been around; we had feuds going back for thousands of years – as long as we had been keeping our histories on paper. We were taught that our enemies, those people from the other nation, were nothing better than animals, creatures unworthy to call themselves Vakurian. Humans aren’t like that.”
Rogue paused for a moment, taking a breath. “Humans are always fluid. Even in your greatest wars, you still saw your enemy as human.”
“We haven’t,” I said cutting her off.
Rogue shook her head, dismissing my statement. “I’ve read the history books. You had individual men who were brutal, and you dehumanized different groups of people at different times. But you improved, without destroying your entire world.”
Leaning forward, Rogue picked up another cookie from the plate and held it up to me. I took a bite out of it before she finished it off.
“We haven’t improved; not that much.”
Rogue sighed. “I suppose it might be difficult for you to see, your perspective is Human after all. Your species might kill each other in small numbers, and it is horrible. I think it might even be necessary for Humans, so that every generation knows the price of war. My people, however, showed no mercy towards our enemies, but we only ever fought every few generations. Besides our wars, we never interacted with one another. We had no Romeo and Juliets; to interact with the enemy was tantamount to committing suicide!”
Rogue turned around in my lap and wrapped her arms around me.
“Humans like to think they are monsters, and some of you are. But my people, before the nuclear fallout, had no idea what we might bring on ourselves; we had no measure of the pain it might cause. It took a nuclear winter and an invasion from aliens for us to even realize that we are all the same. That our hair color and cultural differences weren’t something that should divide us.”
Rogue leaned forward and put her lips to my throat, playfully she bit at my skin. I began to rub her back and she sighed.
“Even this. Two generations ago, if we had the ability to travel the stars, we wouldn’t have been explorers or peacekeepers like Humanity dreams of being; we would have been conquerors. If you weren’t like us, you were something to be wiped out. In a way, maybe we should be thankful we almost destroyed ourselves… surviving the aftermath taught us all that we were not so different. Perhaps the aliens invading what was left of our world was our recompense.”
“Rogue, you don’t mean that. No one deserves to have their own world taken from them. If Humanity were ever attacked like that, we would band together for the first time in history, I can guarantee it. We might attack and kill one another, but underneath it all we are still Humans and the Earth is ours.”
Rogue buried her face in my chest. “That’s what I mean. If the aliens had invaded before the war, we still wouldn’t have worked together. You state it as if it is a fact! You’re so Human that you can’t even think of not banding together with those you might call an enemy to face an even greater foe!”
I considered what Rogue had told me, and I tried to imagine her as something other than my wife. She had pheromones to influence males from a distance, the ability to blend into her surroundings, and a sense of hearing keener than most predators on Earth. She was quick and lethal when she wanted to be. An army of her kind invading would be something to fear.
Instead, they were gone. Removed from their own world and cast out amongst the stars. She was, possibly, the last of her species, taking solace in the arms of an alien.
“The worst thing is that I’m lonely!” said Rogue.
“Lonely?”
“I miss my parents, my brothers and sisters! I miss being around someone who can hear what I can, smell what I can. I want someone to talk to about being Vakurian! I want all of that and I feel horrible about it.”
Rogue was crying now I could feel the tears seeping into my shirt.
“Why do you feel bad about that?” I asked, keeping my voice soft.
Rogue shook her head slightly and buried herself closer to my chest. For several minutes she didn’t move; even Nakja was keeping a respectful distance, laying inside a box from one of the presents, calmly watching us.
“I have you; I’m not supposed to be lonely. I don’t want to be like what my people were, to hate someone because they’re different.”
Reaching down, I slowly tilted Rogue’s face up and looked her in the eyes. “Rogue, you might be the last of your species. Feeling lonely, missing your own people and your culture, does not mean you hate me. You’ve had to change so much in your life; you grew up in the crumbling ruins of your civilization, fought alien invaders, and landed on an alien world where you had to adapt to a completely different culture. Feeling a little out of place would, I think, be natural.”
Rogue nodded, calming slightly. “I guess so.”
“Humans strive to treat everyone the same, and we’re still working on that. A big thing a lot of people don’t understand yet, though, is that we can still recognize the differences – and we should.”
Reaching up I tickled Rogue’s ears, and she giggled.
“You and I are a little more different than most couples, but that’s what makes it special.”
Rogue sighed and leaned into my hand as I continued to scratch at her ear.
“You think I’ll ever see another Vakurian again?” asked Rogue.
I considered it for a moment. “I hope so. The universe is a big place, and your people survived a nuclear winter and an alien invasion. Vakurians seem to be a hardy bunch.”
Rogue’s ears twitched. “We are fairly pig headed, if our history is anything to go by.”
I chuckled. “Well, I don’t think I’ve ever won an argument with you.”
Rogue laughed as well and snuggled in closer to me. For several minutes we both just looked at one another.
“I love you,” she whispered, pulling my head down to plant a quick kiss.
“I love you too.”