---

To Catch a Flieff

by Julia Rios

Alessia frowned at the central circuit board of the Astral Dancer. Paw prints. Again.

She heaved an exasperated sigh. “Mr Tumnus, I have told you a thousand times, you can’t go into the engine. I don’t care how bright and sparkly it is, it’s not for cats!”

The cat did not reply. In fact, he was nowhere to be found, not even after she pried up the 3D printed plastic shield and wedged her upper half as far into the engine core as it could go without accessing the underside.

That was weird.

Usually if Mr Tumnus got in, he sat in a smug loaf on top of the accelerator panel, fluffy orange tail swishing as he batted at the flashing lights.

Then she heard the chittering.

Oh no. No no no.

Only one thing made this sound: Arctic Flieffs from Vorpalix. They were the most adorable puffballs, always a winner for page a day calendars and cheer up memes—and they wrought havoc on any habitat that wasn’t their own.

The chittering was a sign that this one was about to nest. In the engine core of the Astral Dancer.

“No, no, noooo,” Alessia moaned.

“Mrrp,” a small voice agreed. Great, now Mr Tumnus entered the chat.

Alessia carefully extracted her head and torso from the engine core and snapped the shield back into place before acknowledging the wayward ship cat.

“Where were you when this intruder got in, huh buddy?” she asked.

Mr Tumnus rippled languorously and thrust his orange head into Alessia’s outstretched hand for scritches.

“Oh yes, so helpful,” Alessia murmured.

Mr Tumnus began to purr.

“Traitor.” Alessia snorted. “We’ll see who’s purring when the White Witch in there tears up our engine to make an ice cave…”

The Astral Dancer was a coldfire model. Old fashioned, but still sturdy enough if maintained carefully. One of the signatures of the coldfire engine was a core crystal reactor that produced energy via cooling power rather than heat. In the higher end models, that meant one or two very large crystals. In a lower end model like Alessia’s baby, it achieved the same effect by spinning a bunch of crystal pebbles.

Pebbles, which, if Alessia was right, the Arctic Flieff was about to scatter around and use as a nesting material. Which would, of course, completely ruin the ship’s main drive function.

Under normal circumstances, this would be bad, but now? At the very start of a series of small jump jobs tailor-made to get the captain home to Vorpa and their family just in time for Mizzentide? This could ruin everything.

Alessia had three choices. 1) She could tell the captain and face the consequences for letting this happen on her watch head on. 2) She could pretend it wasn’t happening and hope she was wrong about it being an Artic Flieff. 3) She could go in through the underside and fix it herself, hopefully before it destroyed everything / anyone noticed.

So really, Alessia only had the one choice. She was going to the subdeck.

---

Darmanda hadn’t meant to stow away. Really, she hadn’t.

She had only meant to look at the docks, catalogue the departing ships, and see if maybe one might bring her on as crew…while not asking too many questions about what was in her luggage.

It was hardly her fault that a furry giant had knocked into her.

“Hey, watch where you’re going, you big oaf!” she had shouted.

The giant had turned as if to start something, but then shrugged and grunted when they saw Darmanda, like she wasn’t really worth getting into a fight with, or taking the time to apologize to. Darmanda might have taken more offense at that if Fiona’s carrier hadn’t come unlatched when it tumbled to the floor, releasing one panicked Arctic Flieff into the dockside fray.

Of course she had to run after Fiona. What kind of monster would leave a defenseless puffball to fend for itself?
And naturally Fiona had run straight for the nearest small opening…which happened to be a ship hatch.

So Darmanda had run after her, fully intending to scoop her up and exit the ship immediately. That’s how it was supposed to go. But the more Darmanda gave chase, the harder Fiona ran away. Flieffs were not really known for their brightness, and it didn’t seem to matter how much Darmanda shouted, “Stop, Fiona! Wait! I’m just trying to help you! I’m a friend!”

Somehow, she’d found herself in a really dark part of the bottom of a really old ship, trying to coax the Flieff back into her carrier right at the moment when the ship’s engine engaged.

Darmanda had never actually been on a ship when its engine had engaged before, but there was no mistaking the feeling. A deep thrumming at first, and then gravelly vibrations that gave Darmanda new appreciation for the idea that things could be teeth rattling. Then came the cold. Huge waves of cold wafting down the corridor from some part of the ship that was even deeper and darker than where she already stood.

Fiona chittered excitedly and dashed towards the cold.

It was probably already too late to turn back and get off the ship, Darmanda thought. And anyway, she couldn’t leave Fiona after all this. So she ventured deeper into the cold, her watch projecting its tiny beam of flashlight into the darkness.

---

Alessia flipped on the lights one by one as she made her way through the subdeck. The system down here was all on separate breakers so that if one blew when an engineer was working, they wouldn’t be plunged into total darkness. This was the kind of thoughtful touch that Alessia appreciated about the older ships. They were made with practical use in mind.

Also, every time she flipped a lever, it made a really satisfying ka-chunk sound.

Another thing that distinguished the Astral Dancer from the newer models was the color scheme. No sterile, white corridors here. Instead, the Astral Dancer’s walls were painted in a dazzling ice blue. The steel flooring was covered in rubber, which did double duty as a method of sound dampening (no echoing boot clicks) and impact absorption (since the gravity was usually turned up in this area). Over the rubber, the previous crew had laid a bunch of carpet remnants in a truly eye searing array of patterns. Bright yellow with purple rings, lime and orange plaid, black with “laser light show” lines… It was hideous, but also comforting. Kind of like an old sweater someone’s eccentric grandma might wear.

Alessia visually scanned each remnant as she went, just in case the Flieff was still in the outer area. She didn’t see any sign of it, but then her eyes caught something else…

Shoes.

Not just any shoes, completely impractical, high-heeled, planetside shoes in bright red. They even had extraneous bows on them. Alessia gasped as her gaze traveled upward from shoes to legs (wearing rainbow paisley leggings that could have been made from one of the carpet remnants, honestly) to a green drapey tunic thing to a soft brown face that was alarmingly beautiful.

“Who are you?” Alessia demanded at the same time that the other person said, “I can explain!”

---

Darmanda’s heart hammered as the woman’s gaze swept up from the floor to meet her own with eyes as icy blue as the walls. Everything about the woman projected practicality, from her grey coverall to her sleek brown ponytail.
“You can talk while we walk, because I need to get to the engine core immediately,” the woman said.

Her voice was clipped with efficiency and frustration, and for a wild millisecond Darmanda thought it was exactly the sort of voice she’d love to boss her around in bed. But the reflexive reaction quickly gave way to the less wild one.

On no.

“Please don’t shoot me!” Darmanda squeaked.

The woman snorted. “I’m an engineer, not a gunner.” She didn’t break stride or look at Darmanda as she spoke, instead continuing that brisk march towards the cold.

“Right, of course,” Darmanda said. “I just mean. I didn’t— I’m not here to cause any harm, I swear.”

The woman—the engineer—did stop for a second at that. She turned her head to face Darmanda and cocked it to one side. “Did you or did you not let an Arctic Flieff loose in my ship?”

Darmanda’s stomach clenched at the direct assault, but she didn’t have time to dwell on that. The engineer had started walking again, and Darmanda had to rush to keep up.

“I didn’t mean to! Fiona can’t help it. She’s scared. She’s a protected species, you know. Extremely vulnerable…”

Suddenly the whole story came pouring out. How Darmanda had failed her practical exams. How her parents had said she had to pull her weight and couldn’t re-sit them. How she’d ended up working for an unethical pet shop because people who didn’t follow regulations were the only ones who would hire her. How she’d thought she could deal, really she had, until Fiona had arrived, obviously wild-captured and mistreated, and how Darmanda just couldn’t anymore.

“I didn’t expect Fiona to escape,” she said finally. “I was going to try to book passage as a grunt or something.”

The engineer sighed, which was something Darmanda was extremely used to people doing when she explained herself.

“What I really don’t understand is what grunt work you were thinking you could get dressed like that.”

Darmanda looked down at her outfit, confused. “I don’t know. Anything?”

“You do know what grunts do?”

“Well, no,” Darmanda admitted. “Just that it’s supposed to be work anyone could do.”

“Yeah,” the engineer said, laughing in a way that didn’t sound at all amused. “Anyone who has proper work boots and a coverall, and the ability to lift heavy loads, or withstand extreme temperatures, or get down and dirty with the cleaning protocols, or—”

“Okay,” Darmanda said. “I understand. I’m apparently not good enough to be a grunt, just like literally everything else.”

The engineer paused. When she spoke again, her voice was softer than before. “I think that’s a little harsh, don’t you?”

Now it was Darmanda’s turn to laugh without any mirth. “You’ve just heard my life story. You know it’s the truth.”
“You’ve got a good heart,” the engineer said, and despite the frigid temperature in the ship’s core, Darmanda felt warm inside.

Still, she couldn’t help tearing down the compliment.

“Having a good heart isn’t worth much if you’re terrible at doing anything,” she said.

“Hey now, you’re apparently very good at stealing illegally imported animals and smuggling them onto interplanetary transports.”

This time the engineer’s laugh sounded real.

---

It took twenty minutes of luring and coaxing to get the Flieff back into its carrier, even with both of them working together. There were several near misses, resulting in chaotic crystal pebble scattering, but in the end, they managed a complicated zig-zag maneuver that confused the Flieff enough that its freeze instinct finally kicked in, allowing them to surround it and leave only one escape hole: the carrier.

When the latch clicked into place, Alessia pumped her fist in the air. “Yes! We did it!”

“Go team!” The stowaway put up her hand for a high five, and Alessia obliged.

From inside the carrier, there came a nervous whuff.

“So, uh, how likely is this thing to escape again?” Alessia asked.

“She should be secure as long as no one drops the carrier violently and activates the emergency release,” said the stowaway. “I think that’s what happened before. Some rando bumped into me in port, and I lost my grip on Fiona’s box.”

“Okay, good to know.” Alessia ran a quick system check. It wasn’t as bad as it could be. The drive was still functioning, if not at full power. This meant the ship was stuck in slow mode—no jumps or warps possible—but hopefully no one would notice.

“We’re currently seventeen minutes away from our first scheduled jump. If you’re sure that chaos demon is contained, I’m going to need your help getting the drive back together.”

Fifteen minutes of scrambling around the subdeck floor together was not how Alessia would have chosen to spend time with an attractive woman, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. They did make a good team. The stowaway was willing and able to get down on her hands and knees to find tiny bits of crystal, which was a blessing. The way she was dressed, she could easily have been a prissy princess type, but no.

They had almost gotten all of the pebbles back into the reactor when the jump announcement came.

“Oh snap, we gotta go,” Alessia said.

“We’re almost done, though.”

“No time. Grab the Flieff.”

The stowaway opened her mouth to argue, but closed it again when she saw Alessia’s determined frown. Alessia made a mental note to explain later. After they were safe.

If she were alone, she might be able to make it out of the subdeck in the two minutes before the jump, but she couldn’t imagine the stowaway sprinting in those shoes, even without the extra burden of the Flieff’s carrier.

Alessia grabbed the stowaway’s hand, which was surprisingly warm, and pulled her to the relative safety of the corridor. There was one emergency jumpseat just outside the reactor room, and they’d have to use that.

The Flieff, at least, could be secured under the seat. That took almost a full minute, which left only 30 seconds to get the two humans sorted. This seat was definitely only made for one person, but they we going to have to share.

“I’m sorry about this, but it’s impossible to choose another option,” said Alessia. She thrust her arms around the stowaway’s waist.

“What are you doing?” The question came out as a yelp. Alessia didn’t waste time on an answer, just plopped into the seat with the stowaway held firmly her lap—where Alessia tried to ignore that she fit perfectly—and activated the restraint net.

---

If Darmanda hadn’t been so surprised, she might feel outraged to find herself forcibly perched upon someone’s lap and squished down under a mesh net. Instead, where her feelings would normally be, there was a big blank space, and her brain was spinning like a processing loop message on an overloaded datapad. What in the infinite multiverse?

“Ever been through a jump before?”

Darmanda could feel the engineer’s breath warm against her temple. The sensation was horribly…nice?

“No,” she said.

“Try not to tense up. It’ll be over soon.” The engineer’s voice was brisk and urgent, but also soothing.

Darmanda fought the blank space in her head, trying to come up with something to say, something that would make sense of things. She didn’t manage anything before reality shifted.

The corridor seemed to both stretch and shrink in around Darmanda at the same time. Her body was impossibly heavy, smashed against the engineer so that the buttons on her coverall pressed into Darmanda’s back. The engineer’s arms stayed locked around Darmanda’s waist, strong and secure. It was the most intimate contact she had had with anyone in years. It felt strangely right, even while everything else that was happening felt very, very wrong.

Then, as suddenly as it started, the whole dizzying ordeal stopped. The mesh net released, and gravity returned to normal. Darmanda sprang up out of the seat, as alarmed to realize that she could as she was embarrassed that she’d been pressed so close to the engineer. Ashamed that she’d liked it.

“Whoa, take it easy,” the engineer said, and that’s when Darmanda collapsed.

The engineer caught her, because of course she did. She was strong and capable. Clearly more so than Darmanda, who had begun shivering violently.

Those strong hands were rubbing her arms now, warming her up with firm, soothing strokes.

“Shh, you’re gonna be fine,” the engineer said. “I’m going to sit you back in the chair and you’re just going to catch your breath for a minute while I finish up with the reactor, okay?”

Darmanda had a wild impulse to beg the engineer not to leave, but instead she made herself croak out an agreement.
She really only was gone for a moment. Or maybe it was that Darmanda had fallen asleep? It was so hard to keep her eyes open. Either way, before she had a chance to notice the absence, the engineer was back and nudging her shoulder under Darmanda’s arm so she could prop her up.

“I’d carry you, but I’ve got to get that Flieff with my other hand,” the engineer said apologetically.

Somehow they made it back down the long corridor, the engineer delicately juggling Darmanda and Fiona—it did not escape Darmanda’s notice that she was gentle with Fiona’s case—so she could throw switches to shut off the lights as they went. The air grew gradually warmer as they sloped upwards, and when they emerged into the engine control center, everything was bright with simulated daylight, and warm enough that she really shouldn’t need to keep shivering. But she did anyway.

A bright orange cat jumped down from the console when they walked in and immediately came over to investigate Fiona.

“Oh no you don’t,” the engineer said, nudging the cat away with one booted foot. Then, to Darmanda, she said, “Look, I’m sorry, but we can’t stay here. You need to rest properly and the Flieff needs to be as far away from the engine as possible. Do you think you can keep walking a little longer?”

---

Alessia was just thinking how miraculous it was that they had managed to get all the way to the sleeping deck without being seen when her luck broke.

They turned the last corner to her corridor only to come face to face with the worst gossip on board. Ken-Val was blue-skinned, brawny, and prone to giggling. They worked in the galley, where they took great delight in learning and spreading juicy tidbits about everyone on board. This was a disaster.

“Well, well, who have we here?” Ken-Val asked. They spread their stance as wide as possible, blocking the path to Alessia’s door.

Don’t say stowaway, Alessia thought, desperately searching for ways to make this situation less dire.

“Oh, this is… my … uh …

“Girlfriend,” said the stowaway.

“Girlfriend,” Alessia echoed

Ken-Val’s eye stalks raised dramatically, and their feelers unfurled from their neck, undulating and shifting color from restful blue to excitable green. “Girrrrlfriend?” They drew the word out way longer than necessary, rolling the R with their forked tongue. “Tell Ken-Val everything!”

Alessia hoped the mortification she felt inside wasn’t showing on her face. Ken-Val was probably reading her vitals, though. Darned Cryvlainians and their sensitive feelers. She needed an explanation for her rapid heart rate.

Think, Alessia!

“I’d love to tell you the whole story, but as you can probably sense, I’m a bit worried about her and need to get her to a resting place right now. She didn’t handle the jump very well. First time and all.”

The words came out in a rush, and Alessia knew she probably sounded suspicious, but maybe Ken-Val would assume it was all part of her being worried.

“I’m really fine,” the stowaway said, and Alessia bit back a groan. “I’m Darmanda. So nice to meet you…”

“Ken-Val, and may I say you are just charming?”

Alessia did groan then. She could not risk the stowaway—Darmanda, apparently—saying anything else.

“Ken-Val, let me get her to my quarters so she can rest, please. We’ll have to catch up later.”

“Touchy, touchy,” said Ken-Val. They sighed and flicked their tongue dramatically. “All right, you may pass, but you must come see me in the galley as soon as you’re rested.”

Alessia grunted in as non-committal a fashion as possible and started forward, but Ken-Val didn’t move out of the way.

“Ah, ah. Not quite yet. What’s in the box? Not more cheese, I hope?”

“That was one time!” Alessia snarled. “When are you going to let it go?”

“When it stops being funny, which will be never,” said Ken-Val. They broke into a peal of high-pitched giggle-trills then. They did step aside though.

Alessia nudged her way past them and headed as quickly as she could toward her quarters.

She was torn between being annoyed about the cheese comment, and relieved that at least for now no one else knew about the Flieff.

---

“Darmanda, is it?” the engineer asked after the door had sealed behind them. “Welcome to your home for the next week, baby.”

Darmanda looked around the tiny quarters in dismay. There was just barely space for one person, yet somehow, they were going to have to fit two plus Fiona. One chair, one small (and already full) shelf for belongings, one wash basin with space for one set of personal toiletries…and one bed.

The engineer stepped in as far as she could without actually getting into the bed, leaving a good three or four feet between her and Darmanda. This would seem to be the definition of close quarters.

Of course, this made sense for crew quarters on a cargo ship, but she hadn’t been thinking about it when she’d volunteered herself to be the engineer’s girlfriend… Fake girlfriend. Obviously.

“I’m so sorry,” Darmanda said. “I was just trying to help.”

“Not really how I imagined meeting my next girlfriend, but I guess you can’t fight fate, right? Looks like we’re stuck with each other until Mizzentide.”

Mizzentide, the holiday shared by all the planets in this system to make up for calendar differences so trade routes could run efficiently. The time when all shipping stopped, and single spacers traditionally brought their date friends home to meet the family. There were hundreds of vids and songs about it, and yet, as a planetside lifer, she hadn’t put two and two together before announcing that she was the engineer’s girlfriend. Darmanda wanted to smack herself.

“Oh no. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to imply…”

“That I’m bringing you home to mama? But that is exactly what’s happening.”

Darmanda set Fiona’s case down on the floor next to the chair and grabbed the chair back for support. “You’re joking, right? You can’t be serious.”

The engineer frowned. “Oh, I’m dead serious. Weren’t you when you told the ship’s biggest gossip that we’re a couple?”

“I…” Darmanda trailed off when she realized she had no idea how she could possibly answer. Her stomach fluttered with nerves, and a little excitement, which was mortifying. Could the engineer tell she was attracted? This was worse than that time when she’d asked Janiel to be her senior soiree date and been rejected via DM on the classroom message app.

The silence stretched out for a long moment before the engineer finally laughed. It sounded bitter and forced, but it was still better than that terrifying seriousness. “Calm down. Obviously, I’m being facetious. I’m not going to deflower you or anything.”

“Deflower?” Darmanda asked incredulously. “Who talks like that?”

The engineer crossed her arms. “I don’t know. People in romance vids?”

“Sure, right, that sounds…plausible.” Darmanda nodded in faux seriousness.

“Okay, well I’m not the one who made up this story,” the engineer said, “but now it’s out there and we’d better sell it unless you want to explain how you’re a stowaway who smuggled an illegal pet onto a ship, thus endangering the safety of everyone on board and also our legal status as a trader.”

Darmanda gulped. “Right so, uh, what do I have to do?”

“Well, obviously everyone has to believe we’re dating, so we need to have a backstory.” The engineer looked Darmanda up and down, assessing. “Maybe we met at a club last night? You like to dance?”

“I’m terrible at dancing,” Darmanda admitted.

The engineer snorted. “With shoes like that? I bet. Fine, you got dragged there by your friends and I spotted you hugging the wall. I bought you a drink, you said you’d always wanted to travel, and here we are. Done.”

“So I came straight from a nightclub to the ship, with Fiona and no suitcase?” Darmanda asked.

The engineer bit her lip as she considered this, which was way more enticing than it should have been. “I guess we’ll hope no one asks too many questions. Unless you have a better story?”

“No,” Darmanda said, working to keep her voice even. “I don’t.”

“That’s what I figured,” said the engineer. “I’m Alessia, by the way. And if we’re going to pull this off, which I think we can both agree would be best for everyone involved, including your fluffy nightmare beast—”

“Fiona is not a nightmare beast!” Darmanda bristled at the very thought of it. Good. Bristling was good. Much better than feeling inappropriate attraction…

The engineer—Alessia—gave her a withering stare. “She just tore apart my engine core. I think I can safely say she is a nightmare beast, thanks very much.”

“She can’t help her instincts. And I am trying to take her away from abusive environments, not into new and differently abusive ones. She deserves respect! Arctic Flieffs are a protected species!”

“A protected species of fluffy nightmare beast, yes. We’ve been over this.”

Darmanda laughed despite herself. “Okay, you win.”

“I always do.” Alessia smoothed her already perfectly smooth ponytail and pretended to buff her nails.

“Why did that Ken-Val guy ask if Fiona was cheese?”

Alessia glowered. “First, Ken-Val isn’t a guy. They’re a person.”

“Oh, sorry. My bad,” said Darmanda. “But why—”

“Second, cheese has no bearing on this situation. Forget it happened.”

There was definitely some kind of story about cheese, Darmanda thought, but out loud all she said was, “Okay.”

Alessia let the silence stretch for a few seconds before she spoke. “Anyway, as I was saying, if this is going to work, we have to make sure we actually seem like a couple. At least in common spaces. This crew knows me. They’ll think it’s weird if we’re never together, or if we’re not affectionate.”

Darmanda gulped again. “Affectionate, how?”

“Well, we should talk about what you’re comfortable with,” Alessia said.

---

Host Commentary

Once again, that was part one of “To Catch a Flieff”, by Julia Rios.

I love a good romcom, and this one is just delightful. From the adorably awkward meet-cute in which tragedy is averted, to the fake dating trope combined with there’s only one bed, this story is an example of just how fun and sweet a romance can be. The characters immediately have a rapport, a vibe that makes you want to smoosh their faces together like you did with your Barbies when you weren’t having them fight like super heroes. Or was that just me? Next week, we’ll find out precisely how our love interests face new challenges that could jeopardize their fragile alliance. Will they have a happily ever after, or is their relationship about to get spaced?

Escape Pod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Don’t change it. Don’t sell it. Please do share it.

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Our opening and closing music is by daikaiju at daikaiju.org.

And our closing quotation this week is from Nora Roberts, who said: “Life is like a moustache. It can be wonderful or terrible. But it always tickles.”

Thanks for joining us, and may your escape pod be fully stocked with stories.