Epilogue
I stood, one hand pressed hard against the craggy bark as I craned my neck to stare up at the massive branches and thick foliage of the tree overhead.
I sucked in a hard, deep breath, a grin wide on my face.
The rush of oxygen-rich air almost made me dizzy; I’d never drawn breaths this full before or, I don’t know, nourishing.
"I don't understand," I said, staring upwards at the complex network of branches and leaves above me. "How does the air smell so good?"
Next to me, Araxis trilled, delighted. He stood, immaculately dressed in his flight suit, following as I wandered off in the direction of a different tree with a smooth trunk and low hanging branches that seemed to drip down toward the ground.
"You will be quite impressed when we go to a planet," Araxis said as I ran my fingers down the trailing boughs, the leaves slipping through my hands almost like water.
"I don't know," I said, again twisting my neck to stare upwards. All the branches overhead were like blood vessels or mycelium, a living, breathing network; a glorious tangle of riotous life. "I'm not sure how anything could improve on this." I inhaled again, the air sweet and moist.
Araxis's hand settled on the back of my shoulder, his touch familiar and warm – but tentative.
Part of me wanted to move away, but the rest of me – the parts I thought of as probably unreliable – melted into him, just a little.
"Hm, you may be biased because of the quality of the air on the concourse. "
"That is awful," I admitted, turning to look at him.
The dome on the Thenat-2 waystation had called to me back when I'd been looking for a ride.
I should have guessed that Araxis would bring us here when we'd been cleared to leave the justiciar's station: I'd told him about the trees, and he'd apparently filed that knowledge away for later use.
Araxis's wristband chimed, his hand dropping away while he called up the message. "They're on their way."
I nodded, not sure how I felt about seeing Vivith.
I was still chewing my way through my feelings about everything Araxis and Vivith had planned and how easily they'd used me.
Araxis, at least, was as contrite as a person could be and seemed resolved to change in order to begin to right some of his wrongs, to soothe some of the injuries he'd left me with.
Vivith, though – I doubted that they felt bad in the slightest. They didn't even like me. To their mind, I was probably an unfortunate side effect of getting what they wanted.
That was something Araxis and I were going to need to reconcile at some point.
But Vivith was Araxis's hatch-mate, and while their relationship was complicated – Araxis hadn't given them permission to steal the eggs, despite what he'd said in the interview; and I was pretty sure it was Vivith who'd been a shit about Araxis being sinnenthi and entinn, who'd entrenched his shame instead of helping free him from that burden – it wasn't one that was just going to go away because Vivith and I butted heads.
Vivith was part of Creche Thiel. They were my creche-mate now, so I had to make peace with Vivith as best I could. I could probably work around to something amicable, if I tried hard enough and practiced biting my tongue.
Araxis reached for my hand – we'd agreed this was okay; since the Tournament was still big news and so we'd been recognized practically every four steps when we arrived at the waystation, it made sense for our performance to start now – and led me back through the biosphere toward the shimmering purple door that kept the atmosphere of the park separated from the concourse.
We stepped around a series of bushes, thankfully without anything resembling thorns, and that was when I saw them: a tall, lanky abaya with three excited children in tow.
The shield flashed as the four figures entered, and then I heard an excited, fluting cry as Talvi laid eyes on me.
They jerked their hand out of Sadin's grip, running toward me at full speed along the stone pathway as I crouched to greet them.
They tumbled into me at full-speed, slamming me backwards so forcefully that I found myself sprawled back on the path with a squirming child giggling in my lap.
"Sashen!" Talvi squealed, arms wrapping hard around my neck as I shoved myself up to sitting, their face nuzzling into me while a purr of delight rumbled in their little chest. "Our Vivith showed us parts of the Tournament! You were on broadcast, did you know!"
"Yeah, I know," I said, grinning and patting their back. "Araxis and I were both there."
"Your face did this," they said solemnly, and then with great seriousness, they mimed a sneeze.
I laughed, bright and loud. Of course that was what Vivith would have shown the kids. Of course that had been broadcast after all.
"And now you're coming back to our ship!" Talvi continued, blinking up at me with their black eyes.
"I am." My chest was warm and fizzed with light.
A moment later, Adrathi was also hurtling up the path; she scrambled into my lap as well, the two of them jockeying for position. "Sashen," she cried, "Did you know about spiders on Earth? They make silk and weave webs, and the silk comes from their butts."
And then Talvi and Adrathi were trilling, slipping from my lap and ducking off to go look for spiders among the branches of a nearby bush.
I looked up at Araxis, dazed, and his expression – soft and utterly enamoured – was so beautiful I had to look away.
I had to put myself back in order. He couldn't look at me like that if I was going to stay strong.
We were taking a break, I reminded myself as he offered a hand and helped me up, and I forcibly held myself back from sliding in closer to his body or pressing my mouth to the side of his or the soft skin near his temple.
Sadin came next to offer Araxis his congratulations, quite solemn, before dashing off after his siblings to pursue the spider they were certain they had seen.
Given that spiders hadn't yet developed the ability to traverse the depths of space and they hadn't been on Seraphim's limited list of species for terraforming, I doubted the accuracy of that claim, but who was I to crush dreams?
Maybe spiders would be the next big export for the people from home.
Vivith offered a curt greeting to Araxis, pointedly ignoring me, before launching into a litany of the appointments they had already arranged for us as soon as we left the waystation.
We would need to travel to the retrofitting dock orbiting Basilla, a planet in a nearby cluster where work would be started on the creche ship.
Basilla also had the advantage of being near a major trading hub frequented by abayan traders, so Vivith had also started scheduling initial meetings.
We'd take up residence on Sozamia Station, the whole creche, to begin the process of courting favour in the Assembly.
Now that the petition had been recognized in its first stage, Creche Thiel was considered valid on a preliminary basis, and the children were – for now – safe in this intermediary status; while the Concord hadn't yet considered Araxis's argument that it was not their purview to determine which houses received eggs and when, Creche Thiel's return to some status had at least provided protection for the time being.
I slipped my hand into Araxis's again as we wound our way along the paths one last time, even Vivith admitting that the children could burn off a little energy by making one more lap.
We watched as they ran off through the branches, darting across the grass and trilling in delight, all three of them.
My wristband buzzed gently and I extricated my hand from Araxis's, ducking behind a curtain of tree branches to go lean against a trunk as Araxis and Vivith slipped into rapid-fire abayan.
I couldn't follow, but I was going to look up a tutor the minute we got to Sozamia Station.
I was good with languages. I'd know more soon.
As I stood there among the boughs – which still made my body thrum with pleasure, something deep in my body recognizing even these alien trees as good – I pulled up the incoming message. I had to provide my biosignature in order for it to decrypt, and even then it was in English.
I skimmed the contents until I got to the final line, a personal addition to the otherwise dry political document introducing me to Perseus. There was a lot of reading there; it was going to take me some time to review.
The little message at the end, though, was easy enough.
Hey! Are you in? And more importantly, where are you headed next? I've got a bunch of shoes ordered in YOUR SIZE (for HUMAN FEET, even!). Where should I send them? Wishing you all the best of luck with your genderqueer space prince, Val XO
PS – Maybe we can be pen pals after all??
I huffed, sparing a glance for my boots. They'd really taken a beating on the sands. It would be nice to have something that fit, instead of having to squeeze myself into the next best thing. And it would be nice to finally have options, for everything.
How had I gone from being out of options in Alet Trident's den to now having my pick?
I could take whatever path I wanted. The course was mine to chart.
I'd been doing a lot of thinking lately, and the only thing I knew for certain was that the more choices I had, the brighter my future would be.
I wanted that for myself. I wanted possibility.
I'm in, I wrote. We're off to Sozamia Station while the ship is being retrofitted, then right to Xitera for the start of the political season (I think? I'll get more details soon). Any chance you you could send more tea? Oh – and anything you have about spiders. The kids are currently obsessed.
I hesitated over the sign off before coming to a rapid, impulsive decision. Your pen pal (I guess?), Sashen.
The branches cascading down around me parted as Araxis ducked inside. I encrypted my message and sent it off, smiling up at him. "Are you ready to leave?" he asked, stepping in close. "Or would you like some more time among the trees?"
I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry as he hovered there, near enough that I could smell the particular spice of his skin. A tree wasn't a wall, but he had me against it all the same.
I'd said that I would be fine taking a break, and I would be, but that didn't mean I was happy about it. "Uh," I started, hands twitching at my sides as I considered reaching forward and hooking my fingers in his waistband, tugging him closer.
His smile sharpened in response, his head tilting so that he could look up at me through his eyelashes, to his usual devastating effect. "You know that I respect your wishes, Sashen," Araxis said slowly. "I will also respect whenever those wishes change."
I opened my mouth to respond, but then the branches swished open again and Sadin came tumbling in, Adrathi and Talvi following a moment later.
"Araxis," he said, voice brimming with excitement, "Our Vivith says that if we leave now, we are allowed to buy food on the way back to the ship. Can we leave?"
Araxis shot me a look out of the side of his eye. "What do you think, Sashen?"
I pushed myself off the trunk of the tree, slipping past Araxis and toward the curtain of branches.
As I brushed past him, I let our shoulders touch, the contact like an electric charge humming along my skin.
I had to remind myself that I couldn't trust him – not fully, not yet.
Even though I wanted to lean on him, to rely on him, to throw caution to the wind and forget all that had passed between us, I knew, deep in my core, that I had to be careful this time around.
But that didn't mean I couldn't enjoy what was waiting for us.
"I think," I started as Talvi and Adrathi reached up to take my hands, Araxis and Sadin following a step behind, "that our Araxis is going to buy everyone in Creche Thiel juice and a snack. Isn't that right, Araxis?"
"That means you too, right, Sashen?" Talvi chirped, squeezing my hand hard.
"Of course it does," Sadin said, unimpressed. "Sashen has declared for our Araxis. He is ours now."
"Yeah," I said, grinning despite myself and tugging both Adrathi and Talvi closer to my sides as we spilled out into the concourse and headed toward a food vendor. "I am."
As the children laughed and chattered, wide-eyed at the activity around us, I shot Araxis a look over my shoulder, his features soft as he met my gaze, and I couldn't help but feel that maybe we would get this figured out.
And no matter what, it was our course to chart – together.