The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers, #4)

by Becky Chambers

Like many, Speaker had been born with what her people called Irirek syndrome – an environmentally triggered genetic condition that limited the use of her legs. The two short limbs that hung below her as she swung across the room could grasp and passively support, but nothing beyond that. Her arms were what carried her, and these were strong and tireless, even on a morning when she’d been awoken rudely.

It had been Speaker who had noticed the first signs of brittle lung in Tracker, three full years after the improperly filtered air they’d breathed as egglings had kicked off a slow-burn mutative revolt. Speaker hadn’t known what was wrong, only that at night, when she rested her ear near her sister’s nostrils or against her heart, sometimes she could hear those sleeping breaths catch and stumble. If she hadn’t dragged Tracker to a doctor, Speaker would’ve become a sibling alone – the worst thing an Akarak could bear.

The ocean beach was as beautiful as it was every time. The sky above was the pale amethyst of noon. The water below lapped at the shimmering black sand with a tender, rhythmic caress. People of all species milled about, some napping, some swimming, some collecting shells. The beach was lively, but not raucous; peaceful without being dull. A place where a person had ample space to stretch one’s own thoughts while still benefiting from the reassuring company of others at a distance.

From the vantage point of her middle years, she could not pinpoint the moment in which that errant conception had faded, but once she crossed that threshold, she understood that every aspect of life had layers. There was the colour on the surface, and the meaning underneath. Yellow, when not seen swimming through a person’s face, was often nothing more than yellow, full stop. You had to pause in the face of reflex, ask yourself if the narrative you attached to the knee-jerk was accurate. Once she’d grasped this, she could never again see life as a static thing, something with one immutable definition. The universe was not an object. It was a beam of light, and the colours that it split into changed depending on whose eyes were doing the looking. Nothing could be taken at face value. Everything had hidden facets, hidden depths that could be interpreted a thousand ways – or misinterpreted in the same manner. Reflexes kept a person safe, but they could also make you stupid.

Pei had no natural sense of hearing, but the auditory-processing implant embedded in her forehead allowed her to cognitively register sound and understand its associated meaning (the sensation was something like reading, but without a screen present). Vital as this need was in a galaxy where everyone else insisted on carrying out vibratory conversations delivered via air, the implant could not communicate the sound’s direction in the same neural way that it relayed the sound itself. This simply wasn’t something a non-hearing brain could comprehend. To accommodate for this, the implant gave her skin a gentle buzz on the right side of her forehead, letting her know where the noise was coming from.

In moments like these, he could understand the appeal of a thinking, conscious AI (but, of course, therein lay the danger; convenience was morality’s most cunning foe).

Speaker had honed her natural talents of linguistic quickness and what Tracker called ‘social sponging’ in order to enter the multicultural melee, to gain entry to places her peers typically could not. Her skills in this regard were malleable by necessity, as you never knew what sort of sapient you’d need to talk to. She prided herself for her flexibility in that regard. With the exception of a small collection of trusted market stops and reliable contacts, she rarely found herself in the same place twice, and part of what made her and her sister good at their work was her ability to adapt to whatever the scenario called for. But as she stood at the edge of the garden, faced with food and flowers and small talk, a realisation dawned on her. Varied as the places she visited were, they all shared one element: practicality. She frequented fuel depots, tech swaps, hydroponic suppliers, medical clinics, libraries, bustling markets, water stations, government bureaus, shuttledocks, and other such functional locations. She knew how to trade and enquire and haggle and win over, and had done all of these with alien species of every shape and size. Not one of them had ever invited her to hang out with them. Easy as this scenario should have been, Speaker found herself facing a tremendous challenge.

Roveg couldn’t suss out the sliver of tension that had entered the gathering, but he didn’t like it. Moreover, the way this round robin was going, the next question was going to focus on where he was headed, and that, he didn’t want. He swooped in, reaching for lighter fare. ‘You know, on the subject of Humans, there’s something I’ve long wanted to ask someone about.’ He paused in thought. ‘Cheese. Is that a real thing?’ Pei erupted in laughter. ‘Ugh,’ she said. ‘Stars. Yeah, cheese is real, unfortunately.’

Pei winced. ‘No,’ she said to Speaker. ‘It’s not for kids. I mean, kids eat it, too, but . . . so do adults.’ Everyone present – with the exception of Pei – let out a reflexive sound. There were low growls from Ouloo and Tupo, a short trill from Speaker. Roveg, for his part, let out a triple-clicked hiss. A brief cacophony of varied species all communicating the exact same thing: complete and utter disgust. ‘No,’ Ouloo said. Tupo cooed in fascinated horror. ‘Wait, so, how . . .’ Speaker made a hesitant face. ‘I’m going to regret this question. How is it . . . prepared?’ Pei grimaced. ‘They take the milk, they add some ingredients – don’t ask me, I have no idea what – and then pour the mess into a . . . a thing. I don’t know. A container. And then . . .’ She shut her eyes. ‘They leave it out until bacteria colonise it to the point of solidifying.’ The cacophony returned. ‘I knew I’d regret it,’ Speaker said. Roveg laughed and laughed. ‘I’m so glad I asked about this,’ he said.

‘No, it’s not that. Humans need a . . . oh, what is it . . . it’s something with their stomachs. An enzyme, I think. For digesting milk. Only some Humans produce it naturally. But here’s the thing: they’re all so fucking bonkers for cheese that they’ll ingest a dose of the enzymes beforehand so that they can eat it.’

But . . . surely. Surely they knew . . . ? The others looked at her expectantly. No. Of course they didn’t. The core detail that had determined everything – everything – for her species in the past two centuries, and they didn’t even fucking know about it. A tangle of frustration began to surface, one that grew more and more knotted with every standard – every tenday, it sometimes felt. To the others, she was sure this question was nothing, and in the grand scheme of things, that was true, just as a speck of dust was nothing. But a million specks of dust, gathered over time, became something big and ugly and impossible to ignore, something that could jam your ship’s filters and ruin your day. Stars, she was tired of needing to be the Linking file for her entire species wherever she went. She’d learned about them; why hadn’t anyone she met ever done the same for her?

She knew why she was awake. This was her body’s way of communicating that there was a problem left unsolved, and some stupid part of her thought it best to wake at random intervals until the matter was closed. This had happened to her before when there were open questions about flight paths, landing strategies, contracts that became complicated. It didn’t matter that there was no new information to process; her mind simply wanted to review the facts, over and over.

She longed, too, for the creche’s vegetable garden, even though she had no patience for gardening and no interest in cooking. She longed for the days when a bug or a joke or the movement of her own face was enough to keep her attention rapt all afternoon. She did not long for childhood, as such. On the contrary, Pei was extremely happy to have left that clumsy messiness behind forever. What she longed for, rather, was the simple space to think and explore nothing more complicated than can I kick my shoe over the tree? and how do hands work? and if I flash my face at this flower for long enough, can I make it change colour? Sillinesses such as these had been vital once, a key component in learning the basic rules of the universe within and around her. She no longer needed to discover those rules, but it would be nice, she thought, to have the time to become that intimate with them again.

Pei had read that it was always difficult to predict how a sapient species would react to contact, but in the Laru’s case, the overwhelming reaction to learning they were far from alone in the galaxy was one of joyous enthusiasm. The Laru wasted no time in throwing themselves wholeheartedly into a life among aliens, opening their planetary system to metal mining and gas harvesting and whatever else the GC wanted, leaving their homeworld in droves to absorb all the lessons they could from interstellar exchange. Pei had met many Laru in her time, and they were each their own people, but the one thing they had in common was that she’d never met any who’d been born on their homeworld. She wasn’t even sure what their homeworld was called, come to think of it. All the Laru she’d encountered were transplants from elsewhere. She’d met one from Port Coriol, one from Hagarem, one from Kaathet who could speak Reskitkish so perfectly she would’ve thought they were an Aandrisk if she’d closed her eyes and plugged her nose. Ouloo appeared to have come straight out of the same mould as her predecessors – a champion for multispecies life, someone who dove headlong into the melting pot and was loving every minute of it.

Her implant registered the instantaneous hiss of water being pumped through hot metal, and continued to let her know that the sound was present. She sat with that feeling for a few seconds, then did something she almost never did when away from the Mav Bre: she reached up to her forehead, and shut off her implant. Pei had received implant and talkbox both when she was small, and it had been so long since she’d known life without them that turning the processor off was always jarring at first. She felt like when she’d reached for her locked-up gun two days prior – startled by the absence of something that wasn’t actually part of her but always came along for the ride. After a few seconds, the weirdness wore off, and Pei allowed herself to be cradled by silence. Not silence in the way that other species spoke of silence. When hearing species said silence, they meant I can hear nothing but the wind and the leaves, or No one is speaking, but the sounds of the city are still present. That wasn’t true silence. Real silence. Her species’ natural state. The only time Pei realised how tiring it was for her brain to constantly process a type of input it wasn’t built for was when she made the decision to shut it out.

Speaker crinkled her eyes at him. ‘The point of rakree is to be open with others. You tell people what you need, and you give others whatever you can provide. Maybe you’ve got a big crop of food, and there’s surplus to share. Maybe you need a compressor coil, and there’s someone three ships over who’s got a spare. Maybe your ship needs a doctor, or a pilot, and you find someone with those skills who’s been looking for a new home. Or maybe it’s as simple as needing to sleep in a different place for a few nights, or talk with people you don’t live with all day every day. A change of pace. That’s the thing about rakree. Needs can be big or small, but they all matter.’ ‘So it’s not a barter, then. It’s a truly open exchange.’ ‘It can be a barter, but yes, you’ve got it. There’s no expectation of receiving something in return for what you give, and no guilt about taking what you need.’

‘So, do I correctly surmise that under normal circumstances, you and your sister offer something to your people that fits a particular need?’ ‘We do,’ she said. ‘We offer me.’ ‘You?’ He leaned his shelled torso back, and thought. ‘You speak Klip. You understand other customs. You’re . . . you’re their Speaker.’ Speaker warmed with the quiet joy of being understood. ‘Exactly.’ ‘You can get access to things others can’t. Go into shops where they might get turned away, or . . .’ ‘Help them finish the formwork to get an official pilot’s licence. Get a bunch of seedlings from the nursery that didn’t understand what they wanted. Track down a medical specialist for something particular. Set up a standing order with a fuel depot. Buy groceries for someone who’s too nervous to go to a big market stop.’ ‘Are these imaginary examples, or . . . ?’ ‘My last five jobs.’

Speaker had a word for how she felt right then: eerekere. A moment of vulnerable understanding between strangers. It did not translate into Klip, but it was a feeling she knew well from gatherings among her people. There was no need being expressed here, no barter or haggling or problems that required the assistance of a Speaker, but eerekere was what she felt all the same. She’d never felt it with an alien before. She embraced the new experience. Were Roveg an Akarak, were he linking wrist-hooks with her and opening himself in the radical way required if you truly wanted someone’s help, she would hold nothing back, couch nothing in pretence. And so, she said exactly what she wanted to say next: ‘May I ask what it was that led to your exile?’

‘Why did you stop telling stories?’ ‘I enjoy giving people templates in which they can make their own stories. Telling my own requires a mindset I just can’t return to.’ Roveg was quiet for several seconds. ‘Just because I was right doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.’

The sign read: THE GORAN NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM ESTABLISHED GC STANDARD 304 HEAD CURATOR: OOLI OHT TUPO A beaded curtain hung beneath the sign. Roveg passed through it, taking a moment to disentangle a few of the strings from where they’d caught in the ridges of his shell. He took in his surroundings, and his heart melted. ‘Oh, stars,’ he chuckled to himself. The Goran Natural History Museum consisted of a single room crammed with tables, and atop the tables lay . . . well, rocks, mostly. There were big rocks and small rocks, rocks in boxes, rocks in stacks, rocks atop sagging pedestals, shards and pebbles and vials of dirt. The ostensible exhibits were marked with placards made from the same printer as the rest of the Five-Hop’s signage, and proclaimed titles like ‘Planetary Formation’, ‘Early Eras’, and ‘Anthropological Relics’. This last sign was posted above the only table in the Goran Natural History Museum which did not contain rocks, but rather, everyday bits and bobs that appeared to have fallen out of the pockets of dozens of travellers. Every cheap gadget and forgotten trinket was displayed and labelled as though it were precious treasure. Roveg thought that perhaps, to the curator, that’s exactly what they were. Outside, someone came running – four paws, hitting the path hard. The sound grew closer and closer until at last Tupo burst through the curtain with a loud clatter, nearly getting xyr feet tangled in the beaded strings as xe skidded to a halt. ‘Welcome t...

Tupo’s breaths were beginning to steady. ‘It’s just . . . not a lot of people come in here, so I got excited.’ Xe pulled xyr head back to a respectable angle and looked at Roveg with huge, eager eyes. ‘Can I give you the tour?’ Roveg’s initial intent upon entering the building had been to simply take a peek at the place, and his impression once he’d come through the door had not given him any desire to stay long. But the situation had changed. Now, he had but one goal, and that was to give his full, undivided attention to the head curator. He’d have been a monster to do otherwise. ‘Tupo,’ he said, ‘I would love to see your tour.’ The child nearly began to glow.

Think of home when you are far from here Let it be your comfort Think of us when you are alone Remember always our bright days Remember song, remember joy Remember the purple sky Remember dark faces, old and beloved Remember children, their—

Remember children, their shells still white.

The life Roveg had built for himself was a celebration of difference, of variety, an endless exultation of questioning and learning and questioning again. He knew there would never be a point in his life in which he knew everything there was to know, and while part of him despaired at the puzzle that would never be solved, the rest of him embraced this truth fully, for what satisfaction could there be in having nothing else to ask? There was only one absolute in the universe, Roveg was (relatively) sure of, and that was the fact that there were no absolutes. Life was fluid, gradient, ever shifting. People – a group comprised of every sapient species, organic or otherwise – were chaos, but chaos was good. Chaos was the only sensible conclusion. There was no law that was just in every situation, no blanket rule that could apply to everyone, no explanation that accounted for every component. This did not mean that laws and rules were not helpful, or that explanations should not be sought, but rather that there should be no fear in changing them as needed, for nothing in the universe ever held still.

It was worth it, in the end. It was worth seeing the universe as it was. But there was a great irony in that. If the root of all things was chaos and change, and if there were no true answers, if no one was capable of figuring everything out, Roveg could take comfort in that knowledge. Comfort, however, was not the same as peace.

You’re feeling something, right? This makes you feel something?’ ‘Stars, yes,’ Speaker said. She closed her eyes. ‘It gets way down in my bones. It makes me feel . . . triumphant. Powerful. I want to swing back and forth as fast as I can. And it makes me ache, too, in a way I can’t possibly explain. Like . . . like the way you feel when you’re saying goodbye to someone, and you’re so excited for where you’re going, but you don’t want to leave, either.’

Pei thought about her mother, Seri. She’d never met her, but she carried her genes and her name, and knew her story well. Unlike her creche siblings, Pei had no biological relation to any of her fathers at the Tem creche; she’d been raised by them, not made by them. Seri, the story went, had been a soldier on deployment when she’d started to shimmer. Typically, soldiers entering shimmer were shipped out of combat immediately, but Seri was the commander, and the situation was one of those where she just couldn’t. So, she’d engaged in what translated as wild fathering. One of Seri’s comrades, a shon named Tova, had been the obvious pick for the task, given their close friendship, but Tova had been female at the time. Undeterred, Tova took herself to the medic, popped a hormonal cocktail, went through the shift as fast as medically possible, and had a few respectful, practical rounds of sex with his friend. The egg that had been pre-emptively named light blue glass blue misty green – in the Aeluon naming language, Gapei – was then laid in a portable emergency incubator and ferried back to uncontested space, where it was placed in the happy collective hands of the Tem creche fathers.

Following the signing of the Hashkath Accords, the Sapient Sovereignty Act went into effect, in which all homeworlds colonized by Harmagian invaders were returned to their original inhabitants. Akari, of course, had no relevant natural resources nor sustainable ecosystems left at this point, making it impossible for us to survive there. We requested a supply line from the GC, in which the resources necessary to rebuild and continue life on Akari would be delivered to us as needed. This request was refused on the basis that the Colonial Wars had put severe strain on existing resource stockpiles, and there was no surplus to be spared. Your needs were greater than ours, in effect. Instead, we were granted refugee status in what you had designated as your space. Eventually, our repeated demands for citizenship were heard, and we were promised a new system to settle in. We have waited nearly two centuries for this.

How convenient for you, to at last work with a species whose bodies are compatible with your bureaucracy. Our time in this galaxy is, as you have constantly reminded us, limited. We will no longer waste it on waiting for you to do what is right.

Speaker crawled over to the drone, peered inside, and was filled with wonder. The box contained food, none of which she recognised but all of which looked beautiful. There were yellow things and blue things and white things and leafy things – all fruits and vegetables, seemingly – cut into crescents and spirals, some raw, some cooked, some dusted with sugar or spice or salt. Each culinary mystery was packaged in a neat bundle of translucent wrapping and tied with thin, shiny ribbon. She had no idea what any of it was, no idea how to eat it, and no idea why this was being given to her.

Good morning, Speaker! I was hoping you might join me aboard my shuttle for breakfast. As I know you’re unable to leave your suit, I thought perhaps you could pack these into your cockpit and join me in that fashion. I tried to make everything small enough to fit into your compartment (and hope I estimated correctly). I also took the liberty of researching what your species can safely eat, so I’m fairly confident all of these will be suitable for you (though, as I’m sure you know your needs best, the ingredients are printed on the ribbons on each package, just in case). If this idea doesn’t suit, or you simply don’t feel like coming by, please enjoy these tidbits in your own time and your own space. I will not take offence. Your temporary neighbour, Roveg

Did you see people flashing their lights last night?’ ‘Oh,’ Pei said, her inner eyelids blinking. ‘I saw some lights on the horizon, but I thought it was just . . . power trying to come back on. Or something.’ Ouloo stuck out the tip of her tongue in the negative. ‘That was on purpose. I don’t know who started it. I saw someone’s lights flash, and then I saw someone else do the same in reply, so I turned my lights off and on four times, and then we just . . . did that for a while.’ ‘Was it some kind of code? Four for okay, three for help, that kind of thing?’ ‘No, not at all. Though that kind of thing would be smart to have, in hindsight. No, we weren’t saying anything. Or at least I wasn’t. We were just letting each other know we were there, I think. That’s what I got out of it, anyway.’ She bobbed her neck approvingly. ‘Made me feel a little better.’

In traditional Aeluon culture, a mother was not a parent. Parents were men and shon. Parents went to school for it. Parents were the people who actually raised children, not those who had done the easy business of creating them. The gendered expectations of parenting were dissolving, but even though women could be found working in creches now, there was still an enormous difference between the person who produced an egg and the person who took care of the little being that crawled out of it. Parenting was a profession, and it was not Pei’s. She could not imagine living like Ouloo, performing two distinct jobs at once, splitting herself for decades until Tupo reached adulthood. The whole idea was overwhelming.

The Quelin took a long drink of water and shifted his eyes. ‘I have four sons,’ he said quietly. ‘I carried their eggs on my shell for a standard, and they all hatched on the same day. Their mother and I were friends, nothing more. It’s a common arrangement – two friends who both want to have children and haven’t found a romantic partner to do so with. I enjoyed her company. I cared about her, but I did not love her. But my boys . . .’ His mouthparts clicked with a fragile sound. ‘I never knew what love was until I saw them for the first time. I remember them stumbling around, unable to speak. I tried to clean them off – they were all wet, and covered in eggshell, but they didn’t understand to hold still. They couldn’t speak. They didn’t understand what they were, what anything was. But they understood me, somehow. Each one of them, in turn. They stumbled, and they tripped, and by chance, they saw me. And once they saw me, they stumbled right at me, deliberately. They shivered against me, as if they – as if they knew I was the one thing that would keep them safe.’ He took another sip from the bowl. ‘So, yes. I have some idea of how she must be feeling.’

‘But you did the risky thing anyway. So maybe you are selfish. I don’t know. But even if you are, I think you’re brave. You’re braver than me, for sure. Because I’m hurting him. I know I’m hurting him. But I haven’t stopped hurting him, because I’m too afraid. And sometimes fear is good. Fear keeps you alive. But it can also keep you from what you really want. And that’s my problem – I don’t know what I want. I want to keep both halves of myself, and I want them to stay exactly as they are. But—’ ‘But you can’t do that forever,’ Roveg said. ‘You can’t split yourself like that without feeling each side begin to fray. I know.’ His spiracles pulsed. ‘And even if you do choose one over the other, the one you abandoned is never really gone.’

Roveg laughed, but he spoke with sincerity. ‘And that’s what I like about you, Speaker. You don’t have any problem telling anybody exactly who you are.’ Speaker cocked her head at him. ‘Yes, I do. Of course I do. I can’t always speak my mind, not if I want to get the things I need or go places I need to go. Everything I do, every word I say, is calculated to make people comfortable. To make them respect me. None of it is a lie, but it is an act, and it’s one that gets very, very tiring.’ The Quelin took that in. ‘Then I count myself privileged,’ he said, ‘to have seen you outside of that.’

Ouloo cradled the cup in her paws. ‘I’m very excited for xyr to tell me what gender xe is,’ she said. ‘I’ve been planning the party in my head forever. Crushcake with groob jam if xe’s a girl, ten-berry fancy if xe’s a boy, citrus cloudcups if xe’s neither or somewhere in between. I have the recipes saved on my scrib. I know it might not happen for years – there’s no way of predicting when kids land on it, xe could be all the way grown by then – but I love imagining the party. It gets a little more elaborate every time. There will be lights and pixel clouds and I’ll hire a band if I’ve got the money for it.’ ‘Sounds spectacular,’ Roveg said. ‘Do you have any guesses, as to—’ Ouloo waved one of her paws at him. ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ she said. ‘I won’t do that with xyr. Some people – not everybody, but some – think it’s cute to make bets on it, but I think it’s a stupid thing to do. When I was not much older than Tupo, I overheard my – it’s odd for me to say relatives, because we don’t use those terms among ourselves, but that’s the word you would use. Anyway, they were talking about me in that way, and most of them thought I’d tell them I was a boy. Had me confused for standards. No, I absolutely won’t do that with Tupo. Xe’s the only one who knows what xe is.’

Basically, she’d put me in stasis and I’d spend the next four tendays in a genetic manipulation module – a genetweak box, as you say – and when I awoke, I’d have new legs. I’d have to relearn how to use them, but it wouldn’t hurt. I wouldn’t be aware of anything that happened while I was out. She talked me through the whole procedure, and said Tracker could be there with me the whole time. Given the good care she’d provided Tracker, I trusted her. I liked her. I don’t always say that about doctors. But everything she proposed seemed safe and above board.’ ‘But you didn’t do it.’ ‘No, I didn’t.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because I didn’t want to,’ Speaker said simply. ‘But why?’ ‘Because I didn’t want to. And when it comes to a person’s body, that is all the reason there ever needs to be. Doesn’t matter if it’s a decision about a new pair of legs or how you like to trim your claws or—’ she gave Pei a piercing look ‘—what to do about an egg. I didn’t want to. You don’t want to. That’s it.’ ‘But—’ Pei started. Speaker leaned forward. ‘That. Is all. It ever needs to be.’

‘I’ve an idea,’ he said, ‘but only if it’s not a bother. Ouloo, is it possible to turn off the garden lights?’ ‘Oh, that’s no bother at all,’ she said. As though it were the most casual action in the world, she reached into her belly pouch and pulled out her scrib. Roveg’s frills twitched involuntarily. ‘Do you . . . keep . . . belongings in there?’ he asked. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘It’s been a long time since it was occupied, and I don’t plan on it being so again. Might as well use it for something.’ Roveg decided to not pursue that line of questioning any further. He recalled using her scrib in Pei’s shuttle the day before. He decided to not think further about that, either.

Lol she pulled her phone from her cleavage

Improbably, she thought of Speaker. She remembered what the Akarak said to her in those long hours on the shuttle, watching over Tupo. You don’t want to, Speaker had said. That’s it. That is all it ever needs to be. Pei opened her eyes, and she saw two things. She saw the bluest blue, dark as the sea, shifting in currents that carried nothing but love. She saw orange, sharp and sorrowful. This was not incongruous with the other hue. Sorrow was the right thing to feel when there were two doors in front of you and you knew that one of them was going to stay closed. The decision solidified. It should’ve felt frightening. It should’ve felt wrong. But the longer Pei let it sit, the more she realised that all she could feel was relief. This one choice didn’t answer everything for her, not even close. How could it? Life was never a matter of one decision alone. Life was just a bunch of tiny steps, one after another, each a conclusion that lead to a dozen questions more. She still had no idea what she was going to do about her job, or her crew, or anything else. But she knew where she was headed now, and that wasn’t nothing.

The new plants were all vegetable starters, and they’d been sent by Speaker – not by her, exactly, but through her. She’d procured them from one of her countless contacts, after an ongoing message exchange about Akarak recipes had led Ouloo to the question of whether Akaraks still cultivated any plants from their homeworld. They did, Speaker had written, but she didn’t know of any grown for purposes other than food. Ouloo had thought about that, and decided it was a wonderful idea. If Akaraks couldn’t enjoy cake in her garden, then she’d grow food for them to bring home. What each species took away from her wasn’t important. The only thing that mattered was that they felt welcome. And if they didn’t, well, then she’d figure out why not, and give it another go.

Thanks to my wife, Berglaug, who brings me more joy than all the words in the dictionary and stars in the sky. (Is that too sappy? Probably. I don’t care. If only one scrap of my writing outlives me, I want it to be the one that says that I loved her, and so I will write it wherever I can.)