33. Songbird #3
Orion handled the room itself, as well as the Kaelari side of things.
Birthdays had their own quiet traditions among Reyna's people, and he wove a few of them in where Reyna would notice.
Torvax appointed himself to what he called "operational security," which, as far as Charlie could tell, meant he stood at the door and made sure the surprise stayed a surprise before proceeding to document the entire planning effort in a log nobody had asked him to keep.
Half the ship found some reason to help. People Charlie had never worked with turned up with an hour to give and a skill with the same slightly sheepish look, like they'd been waiting to do something special for the Captain.
Not a single crew member had to be talked into it. That was the part that kept squeezing Charlie in the chest. Reyna spent her whole life being the one who noticed everybody else, and it turned out the entire ship had been noticing her right back the whole time, just waiting for her to let them in.
The one thing Charlie knew was that, on a ship like the Emberkind, no party would be complete without animals. So, Charlie went to the only person on board who could make that happen.
She found Selowen in the habitat wing, moving without any need to be in a hurry. Immediately, Charlie, who was usually in a hurry about everything, felt her own heart rate slow down just by walking in.
"I want to bring some animals to Reyna's party," Charlie stated after she'd greeted Selowen.
"Ones who'd be okay with the noise and celebration.
A real Emberkind party needs to have animals.
It just wouldn't be right without them." She hesitated with her next question, hoping she wasn't asking for something that would be restricted.
"Would it be possible for Pinlo to come? Is that... would that be okay for her?"
Selowen's slow smile appeared. "You are fond of Pinlo."
"Yeah," Charlie said with a soft laugh as she dropped her gaze to the floor.
"She's been on my mind since that first day you let me hold her.
" Her eyes returned to Selowen. "She made me feel like I can do anything.
Her little magic wonder works great on humans, apparently.
" Selowen smiled at Charlie's sentiment.
"Not to mention, she's super cuddly, and who doesn't love cuddly space animals? "
Selowen looked at Charlie a moment as something soft and knowing moved behind her eyes. "I will ensure that Pinlo will be there. I think she will be very glad about it herself. In fact, I think a great many people will be glad to see her."
Charlie smiled broadly. "That's wonderful news."
The music she saved for Tavi. Naturally.
He was in the library annex when she went looking for him. He had the sound system half-apart with wires everywhere, deep in the particular bliss of being trusted with a job he cared about, maybe too much.
Charlie sat down on the floor next to him and handed him her datapad with her song suggestions for Reyna's Earth Night Birthday party.
They sat together for a while, just building a playlist for the event, arguing happily about tempo and the particular order of the songs, such as whether you placed dance songs alongside slow songs or no slow slows at all for a birthday bash, or whether you opened with something big or eased into the bangers of the night.
Basically, all the physics of a good party with good music.
They worked like that for a while, easy, and Charlie was halfway adding the slow songs they'd decided on to the birthday playlist when Tavi took her by surprise, not even looking up from the wires.
"So," he said, pulling Charlie's attention. "How are you doing?"
"Fine?" Charlie said, slightly confused. "Why?"
Tavi looked up then, right into Charlie's eyes. "... Charlie."
Just her name, just the one word delivered by her best friend on this ship, sitting in a nest of cables, and all the emotions she'd spent a week keeping tightly coiled came right back up her throat.
She let out a long breath. "I'm okay, Tav. I just..." She paused. "I don't know what to do."
"What would you like to do?"
Charlie gave him a look.
"Besides the obvious, Spark Plug," Tavi grinned, then let his voice go gentle. "What would you do if you had nothing to be afraid of?"
Charlie was hit the question without knowing how to answer. She thought about it and found the answer was just sitting there. To be honest, it had probably been sitting there for weeks.
"Honestly?" She turned the datapad over in her hands. "I guess, maybe find some way to tell her."
Tavi stared at her quizzically. "Why can't you just do that now?"
Charlie scoffed, letting her head fall back. "Because she's the captain of an interstellar starship and I'm a human. From a non-contact planet." Charlie heard her own voice climbing and couldn't stop it. "I'm not even the same fucking species, Tavi."
Tavi turned to face her fully now. "From what I've been told, oh dumb Earthling," Tavi paused, his teasing tone drifting away.
"Kaelari and human are pretty similar, aren't they?
" Tavi set down the wire. "And besides, who the fuck cares if you're a human?
From a non-contact planet? That little age accident of yours made you one of us now. "
Charlie realized she didn't have anything for that.
"What even makes you think Reyna cares that she's a captain and you're..." He waved a hand. "What. Only a lowly Chief Engineer?" He raised an eyebrow at her. "Come on, Charlie. I know you're smarter than that." He paused. "I know you know Reyna better than that."
Charlie looked over at him, deep set into his gaze for the first time in the whole conversation.
"You... you think I can tell her?" She asked in a whisper.
"I don't see a damn reason why not."
Charlie let the thought swim around in her head.
Tavi had said it with such conviction that she felt the tendrils of hope and excitement appear at the edges of this idea.
It was a strange thing, watching someone else pick up what you thought was an impossibility, look it over, and hand it back to you fully solved with an easy solution.
"I mean, I guess I could request the DJ to play a specific song in dedication to her," she said, bumping Tavi's shoulder with hers.
"Ha ha." Tavi bumped back. "Not like you haven't told everyone on this ship that you use music to say the words you can't say, Spark Plug." He shrugged. "Don't you think it would be better coming directly from you? Not from a song you just play through the sound system?"
Charlie opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came out because he was right, and they both knew it.
Tavi's face lit up as he suddenly laughed. "It's too bad you don't play an instrument or sing or something!"
Charlie stopped dead.
"Sing?"
She waited for her brain to hand her all the reasons it was a stupid idea. She could usually count on it to have a full list ready when it was.
But it didn't have one now.
Suddenly, her heart was hammering in her chest as if she'd run up three decks, considering the plan forming in her head.
"... Charlie?"
"Tavi," she said, her voice rough but excited. "Have I ever told you the one thing Katie would always say to me that I never wanted to listen to?"
Tavi blinked at the turn in topic. "Um, I don't think you have, Charlie, no."
Suddenly, Charlie was surrounded by absolute quiet. She wasn't in the annex anymore, instead transported to a kitchen in Shelbyville, Illinois, the radio on in the background and her little sister at the yellow table, saying what she never once got Charlie to believe.
"What is it that Katie told you?" Tavi pressed.
And that's when Charlie realized, all in the same second, that she was going to do this.
She suddenly found the nerve, and she'd probably had it the whole time. Not like when she was younger, making Katie hold her compliments. Not like how she’d been too shy most of her life to ever let anyone hear her voice except Katie.
The reason she had this sudden flood of courage was because what she wanted to say was true.
It was so pristine and pure, an ultimate truth she'd never known the feeling of before.
And Charlie could feel it ripping through her veins right now, as it became a part of her whole body in one single instance.
And this truth, this bright, perfect, beautiful truth, was something Reyna undoubtedly deserved to hear.
"She told me I can sing pretty damn well," Charlie said, a lopsided smile crossing her face as she looked at Tavi.
Tavi's eyes went wide. And then he grinned, the whole, big, enormous thing he kept for special occasions only, and she watched it spread all the way across his face.
"Well, I'll be damned, Spark Plug." He sat back on his heels. "I do believe you've got yourself a plan."
Charlie laughed. And even though the laugh came out a little shaky, she realized, God help her, that she was excited.
"I just have one question for you," Tavi said.
"And what's that, Tav?"
His eyes shone bright as the words formed on his lips. "What are you going to sing?"
The hardest part about a surprise birthday party on a spaceship turned out to be teaching a room full of aliens how to yell.
"It has to be all at once," Charlie said, for the third time. "That's the whole point. If it's staggered, it's not a surprise, it's a... wave."
"Please clarify all at once," Torvax said.
"Charlie pinched the bridge of her nose. "All at once, Torvax. Like, one cohesive sound. I'm not sure how much more clear I can be."
"But that is not a measurable standard."
"Oh my God," Charlie put her hands over her face and took several deep breaths. Somewhere behind her, she heard Tavi laughing so hard that, when she turned around, he had to sit down. She turned back to Torvax instead of give him a death stare.