I was trying to get across exactly how skewed the power dynamic is in this relationship. Sort of another way to get across how Lux views the world, which I haven't explored much in previous work in this story, which is entirely from Mariko's POV.
Lux is...well, somewhere between an extraterrestrial and an extradimensional being. Lux's species is and always has been fascinated by humans for reasons that are revealed in Part 2 of the story as a whole.
Mariko doesn't realize any of this until Lux sets her on fire while fleeing the CSP station, and it's not at all clear until another of Lux's species contacts her ten years later, which is the starting point of Part 2. This member of the species will present as male, the way Lux presents as female, but they technically lack any true sex.
Mariko does, at this point, know one detail that might point her to Lux's species/full identity--Lux has six wounds in her back, organized in roughly parallel lines of three--but she doesn't make the connection until Part 2 when she's contacted again.
I think it's important for me to lay out this aspect of Lux's fascination for Mariko--the Looking Down On The Lesser Creature part--to contrast how things play out later. Mariko, and humans by extension, have a special connection with Lux's species, and Lux does develop a sort of emotional attachment, or at least what Mariko anthropomorphizes into one later. I try not to write from Lux's POV too much, because inhuman minds are really hard for me to get into, for obvious reasons, and I don't want to make Lux too human. At the same time, it was an interesting exploration into an alien mind. I don't know how well that part came across, and I'll probably stick to human character POVs in future writings, but it was still a good experience to do.
no subject
Lux is...well, somewhere between an extraterrestrial and an extradimensional being. Lux's species is and always has been fascinated by humans for reasons that are revealed in Part 2 of the story as a whole.
Mariko doesn't realize any of this until Lux sets her on fire while fleeing the CSP station, and it's not at all clear until another of Lux's species contacts her ten years later, which is the starting point of Part 2. This member of the species will present as male, the way Lux presents as female, but they technically lack any true sex.
Mariko does, at this point, know one detail that might point her to Lux's species/full identity--Lux has six wounds in her back, organized in roughly parallel lines of three--but she doesn't make the connection until Part 2 when she's contacted again.
I think it's important for me to lay out this aspect of Lux's fascination for Mariko--the Looking Down On The Lesser Creature part--to contrast how things play out later. Mariko, and humans by extension, have a special connection with Lux's species, and Lux does develop a sort of emotional attachment, or at least what Mariko anthropomorphizes into one later. I try not to write from Lux's POV too much, because inhuman minds are really hard for me to get into, for obvious reasons, and I don't want to make Lux too human. At the same time, it was an interesting exploration into an alien mind. I don't know how well that part came across, and I'll probably stick to human character POVs in future writings, but it was still a good experience to do.