Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle, #1)

by Amie Kaufman

Hmm. My current situation could be adequately described as… …suboptimal.

Oblivious in their righteousness. Firmly convinced that any problem can be solved with enough faith or good hard work or, when all else fails, bullets.

“Um, sir?” Finian de Seel says. “We might have a problem.” “You mean aside from you interrupting my speech? Because I’d been practicing it in my head for an hour and it was gonna be great.”

“You know what I don’t understand?” he asks. “Probably,” I reply.

“Your family seals your den, that’s what my clan says.”

I try my best to explain. “You know we live underground on Trask because of the wind, right? It carries microscopic shards of stone. Get enough in your lungs, it’ll kill you.” “So the seals on your den help keep it out?” she supposes. “Right. When you build a new home, your family comes around to make the seals that go around the edges of your door out of peta mud. It’s a whole ceremony, and it’s a gesture of trust. Everybody gets their hands on it.”

“There is a gravity to everything, Aurora,” I finally say. “Not just planets. Not just stars. Every cell in our bodies, every cell in creation exerts a gravity on the objects and people around it. And…that is what I am feeling. For you.”

“Do you ever wonder if the reason you were picked last might not be the suit?” She pins me with her eyes. “I’m not saying people don’t notice it. I’m just saying that maybe…just maybe, you got picked last because you spend all your time convincing the galaxy you’re an insufferable asshole?”

“Do moons choose the planets they orbit? Do planets choose their stars? Who am I to deny gravity, Aurora? When you shine brighter than any constellation in the sky?”

“Almost every particle in the universe was once part of a star,” she says softly. “Every atom in your body. The metal in your chair, the oxygen in your lungs, the carbon in your bones. All those atoms were forged in a cosmic furnace over a million kilometers wide, billions of light-years from here. The confluence of events that led to this moment is so remote as to be almost impossible.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. Her touch is awkward, as if she doesn’t quite know how to do it. But she squeezes gently. “Our very existence is a miracle.”