A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2)

by Becky Chambers

But now. Her vision was a cone, a narrow cone fixed straight ahead, with nothing – actual nothing – beyond its edges.

She could access no knowledge except that which was stored inside a housing that held nothing but herself. She felt blind, stunted. She was trapped in this thing.

Perhaps in that way, at least, she was not so different from them.

Only bad girls did stuff like that, and 64 wasn’t bad. She was the most good.

Your body does stuff without asking your mind about it, and your mind wants stuff that your body can’t always do. You know what I mean?’

Someone seeing a truth in you without being told.

Would she ever start thinking of herself first? Could she even?

Are we going for an anchor or a compass? A memory to ground you, or a spark to guide you forward?’

She looked at the stars, and she knew all her questions would get answered, all the things would get fixed. All this weird stuff was okay.

Holding hands was good, more good than not being hungry, more good than she knew how to say.

They’re ah’ – she scratched her throat with an amused look – ‘a bit politically vocal. Anti-war, to be precise. They don’t mesh well on the homeworld.’

can’t exist like this.’ ‘You can. The rest of us do. You can, too, if you try.’

You weren’t junk, she thought, fingers tracing bone, carving white lines through the dirt. You were good and brave and you tried.

‘The living people do. Just because someone goes away doesn’t mean you stop loving them.’

She felt something stir in her, something sure and final, the same something that had made her step out of the hole in the wall, that had made her decide she would never, ever leave her bones in the scrapyard. She nodded at Laurian, grabbed his hand tight, and headed down to the commons.

to her at four years old, sucking algae gunk from her nails in the dark. She felt as though she could reach out to that little girl and pull her through the years. Look, she’d say. Look who you’re gonna be. Look where you’re gonna go.