When Ian made his way around the corner from Kyle’s usual workstation, he came upon Lili heading in his direction. His eyes moved over her while a sly grin curled his mouth as the two took a few more steps toward one another.

“Hey, Lil,” he greeted her with that continued grin, making no attempt to hide the way those pools of blue traveled over the snug fitting black suit that she, like most of the ship’s passengers, wore outside of their own quarters.

“Hi, Ian,” she greeted him with a quiet, nervous breath, despite how accustomed she had grown to the way those ocean colored eyes moved over her each time they had crossed paths in their twenty years aboard E-728. Of course, those occasions only grew more frequent as the years passed, considering who her mother was, and what Ian’s role now was.

“So, heading off for another round of playing hot little preacher-girl again?” he teased as his eyes finally found their way to her face at last.

Lili scoffed with an awkward smile, never quite sure how to deal with Ian. It was true that she found him just as physically attractive as he seemed to find her, but she wasn’t sure how to take the things he said, not to mention the way he carried himself, especially in her presence. He was intimidating, to say the least, and the problem was, she couldn’t tell if she was more intimidated than she was attracted most times. And of course, Ian did nothing to help anyone to read how he really felt behind all those walls he seemed to live inside of.

“I teach Agnosticism, Atheism, Wicca, and a general overview of Polytheism and Paganism. Not exactly a ‘preacher-girl,’” she attempted to blow off his comment as she turned her own pools of blue in any direction but his.

Ian then paused a moment to move his eyes to her chest and back again before responding, “I’m sorry, what were you saying? I got distracted by, something or other,” he stated, after making another obvious glance toward the exposed portion of her pale skin just above the zipper of her jumpsuit.

Lili just sighed with another slight shake of her head, still avoiding eye contact, “Why bother asking me what I said, when you obviously don’t care?” she retorted, though in a small voice.

“Aww, I’m hurt. Of course I care. I even heard part of it. Something about Wicca and Pagans? Aren’t they the chicks that danced around fires naked or something? That sounds very interesting. I’d love to learn more,” he told her wryly.

Lili let out another long sigh, and added, in a near mumble, “I think you’ve been on this ship for too long.”

Ian allowed another smirk before continuing, “Haven’t we all? Not like I can just pop out for a look at the scenery or anything, is it?” he added smartly.

“Was there something you wanted?” Lili attempted to move the conversation along, then, upon seeing the even more devious glint her question caused in his eyes, she quickly added, “Never mind. Have you seen Jared?”

“Jared?” Ian repeated with a raise of his brow, “That tall, skinny lab rat?” he asked for further clarification.

“Yes, that would be the one,” she responded with another shake of her head.

“Somehow I don’t see science boy and religion girl having a lot to talk about,” Ian added skeptically rather than answering her inquiry right away.

“So, does that mean you have or haven’t seen him?” she returned some of his own attitude at last.

Ian then shook his own head before giving in, “Last I saw, he was annoying the big brain,” he answered, gesturing back over his shoulder toward the passageway he had just come from.

“Thank you,” was her own brief response as she moved past Ian and headed for the turn in the corridor behind him.

“Yeah, I’ll think of some way you can return the favor. Maybe later tonight even,” he teased after her as she continued moving purposefully away with another shake of her long flame-colored locks.

It took a few moments for Lili to remember to breathe again after her latest sexually tense encounter with Ian. Of course it was only a few moments’ steps later when she spotted Jared leaving the computer hub and starting down the hall.

“Jared,” she called to him as she moved to catch up with him as he turned back toward the sound of her voice with his own nervous smile.

“Hey, Lili,” he greeted her softly as she moved past the doorway to the computer hub and reached his side, where he stood nearly a foot taller than her own tiny frame, his hands nervously tucked into the pockets of the lab coat over his own dark jumpsuit.

“Were we still supposed to meet for lunch today?” she asked as she looked up at him, only to find that he seemed even more nervous than her at the prospect that he had somehow managed to force himself to suggest when they had crossed paths the previous day.

“Um, yeah if you want to. I mean, if you’re not, like, busy, or anything,” he managed to stumble through the words, seeming to avoid eye contact with her as much as she had been avoiding it with Ian only moments earlier.

“Well, I said I’d go, didn’t I?” she managed a smile as she continued to try and catch his gaze.

“Well, yeah, but you know, that was yesterday, and, well things change sometimes,” he attempted.

Lili let out a small laugh before responding, “They don’t change all that much, here.”

Jared took his own breath, seeming to hold back a more immediate response to her statement before continuing, “So, lunch then?”

“Sure,” she smiled and nodded before the two of them then moved uneasily in the direction of the community dining area at the center of the huge ship.

After several silent moments of getting their food and finding a seat in a quiet corner, Lili began to realize that this boy seemed even shyer than she herself always seemed to be any time she found herself outside of her own personal comfort zone of the ship’s classrooms.

“So, uh, you seem worried about…something?” she asked quietly as she noted his continued quiet demeanor.

“Yeah, sorry, I just, I haven’t really discussed it with anyone else yet, really,” he told her with an apologetic half-smile.

“Discussed…what?” she gently prodded with her own nervous smile.

Jared took a deep breath as he poked at his meal, “Um, ok, how to begin…” he started as he looked around with another hard swallow to assure himself that no one else was seated close enough to eavesdrop, “So, you teach like New Agey stuff, right?”

Lili let out another nervous chuckle at his statement before seeing that his expression seemed to be quite serious despite the humor of his statement itself, “Well, when you think about it, it’s actually old agey,” she allowed another smile.

“How do you mean?” he asked her with the utmost seriousness to his tone.

She allowed another nervous laugh at his question, not quite sure why someone who was considered to be a follower of pure science rather than any kind of spiritual path seemed to be interested in her answers at all. Though another look across the table at him proved that he seemed quite intent on hearing her answer.

“Ok, well, uh, look at my name. It’s short for Lilith.”

“Who’s Lilith?” he asked in the same quiet tone.

“Well, in some belief systems, she was the first human. Some say she became the first demon, some say she became the first vampire, and most say that she became the first witch, when the fallen angels taught her their magic. This would make her the mother of all humanity. Meaning that if you follow those beliefs, you have to be willing to accept the part of the bible that was in the original version and then banned from it. That’s the part that told of how the first of our species became a witch, a pagan, a woman who wouldn’t submit to a man, and was cast out of Eden for refusing to consider herself to be subservient and inferior, and a slave to her life-mate. That’s why she was written out of the Christian bible: So followers of that religion would continue to believe that man was first and woman was subservient and inferior and that she was the one who pulled the world into sin, and that women should continue to be punished for it, and simply accept that continued punishment as their fate in life.”

“You believe that then?” Jared finally asked after another moment, though no inkling of his own opinion on the matter seeped into his tone.

Lili let out another small chuckle, taking a sip of her drink before continuing, “I know the story simply because it’s a more realistic take on the story the old world insisted they lived by. And it’s a nice explanation for why magic exists in the world at all. But in order to believe the story of Lilith, you have to believe that some all-powerful Christian god just up and decided to create mankind one day and the rest of the whole world in a week’s time?” she allowed a small smirk, “And that’s not a kind of magic I believe in at all. My theories on the beginning of mankind fall a lot more in line with your people’s.”

“My people?”

“The scientists,” Lili offered, “I’m a lot more apt to believe that the world slowly evolved and led us to where we are now. There’s a lot more proof of that than there ever was for anything you could find in the bible.”

“But you said that magic exists. You do believe that then?” he continued still seeming more serious than argumentative.

“I believe all people are capable of what might fall under the category of magic, when really it’s just that some people may allow their brains to evolve beyond the limits of what their peers tell them is possible. And, when they do that, many things become possible, if not at first believable. After all, it was a known fact that most of the world rarely used all of their brain’s capabilities. Imagine if some actually found a way to start to use all of that untapped potential: Those would be the people who would find a way to really make ‘magic’ into a reality.”

After another long, thoughtful pause, Jared responded, “So, you use science to explain magic? And religion doesn’t play a part in it at all?”

Lili allowed another small smile before continuing, “If I was a true believer in any kind of ‘religion,’ how could I stand behind teaching all of them, equally, including Atheism? If you truly believe in one over all the others, you’ll never be open to all of the possibilities that there truly are.”

“But you believe that so-called magic is possible, simply based on the science of the human brain?” he repeated again, seeming drawn to that theory more than any other, himself.

“I guess I’m a scientist in a spiritualist’s clothing, eh?” she smiled again before bringing her eyes back up to his, “And I have a feeling that you believe it too, or else you wouldn’t even be asking me at all, would you?”

“I guess,” Jared began with another deep breath, “I guess I’ve listened in on a few of your classes. I figured you might be the only one who wouldn’t want to turn me from a lab assistant to a lab rat if I told you…things,” he finished with, his voice dropping slightly on the final word.

“What things?” she whispered back, curbing the urge to reach across the table and take his hand in her own to comfort his obvious unease, despite how limited their acquaintance with each other really was, considering all of the facts of their own short lives.

Jared took another ragged breath as he looked at the still empty tables around them once more, before leaning in to speak even more quietly, “I see things I shouldn’t see. Sometimes I even see them when I’m still awake,” he took another breath as she held her own, and waited for him to continue, “I can do things other people can’t. I don’t understand how, or why, or what it means at all, Lili. I just know that it scares me,” he finally added in a desperate whisper, his eyes pleading with her to help him find those answers that he had been seeking for over a quarter of his entire strange life.