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

by Becky Chambers

One of the first things Aeluon children learned after they mastered the complicated matters of walking and eating and using their colours with intention was that the world around them did not use the same language people did. People, of course, communicated via the swirling chromatophore patches covering both cheeks. Their plant-and-animal neighbours, however, did not. The purplish fur of lumae did not mean they were angry. Nectarwings, with their orange spots, were not sad. Shiver fish were not friends, no matter how kind their blue scales might look. Pei had a hazy memory of struggling with this concept, of feeling like the natural world was untrustworthy, that it was lying to her in some way. Colour was colour, and colour meant things, and if it was obvious to her that laughter was green and annoyance was yellow, surely other creatures must know this, too. 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...