Chapter 50
FIFTY
ELAINA
The fallen twig lay dissected on a flat stone before her, its layers carefully peeled back and arranged in order. Elaina examined it with delicate precision, reading the story of growth written in the wood. She’d never seen anything quite like it—the complexity of its structure, the way each layer served a purpose she was still learning to understand.
On the surface, she could count its cycles in buds spaced along the length. The outer bark was a hard protector, like the casing of a flux cell. Beneath it, softer layers transported nutrients—nature's own circuit board. At its center the pith ran like a soft, spongy conduit, a channel she imagined might have carried life-sustaining resources through the branch.
“Mama says that’s medicinal,” Daniel said beside her, pointing at the moss she was examining. His Gaian was slow and careful for her benefit. “For fevers.”
Elaina smiled at the boy. Of all Cyan’s relatives, Daniel had attached himself to her most readily, appointing himself her guide to Gaian life. Their shared enthusiasm made up for the barrier between them .
“How do you use it?” she asked, her own Gaian still clumsy on her tongue.
Daniel launched into an explanation she only partially understood, something about grinding and brewing. Elaina caught maybe one word in three, but his animated gestures helped fill in the gaps.
In the spans since they’d arrived, Elaina had started cataloging the differences between Gaia and everything she’d known before. The air was thicker here, laden with moisture and organic compounds that made every breath feel substantial. The gravity pressed down just a bit harder than she was used to, making her muscles ache in new ways. Even the light was different—filtered through layers of leaves and reflecting off of carpets of vegetation, casting everything in shades of green she'd never known existed. Her fingers itched to explore some of the gadgets she’d seen around Cyan’s family home, or pick apart Nila’s old vehicle and figure out why it made that weird noise when she drove to the trading post.
But she knew better than to try.
A sharp pain lanced through her chest, making her gasp. Her hand flew to her sternum, pressing against the spot that had been bothering her more and more lately.
“Are you okay?” Daniel’s small face scrunched up with concern.
Elaina forced a smile. “Yes. Just tired.”
The boy helped her to her feet, and they continued their daily exploration of the woodland’s edge around the house. Daniel had been showing her all the local plants and their uses, teaching her the names of things she’d only read about in historical records. It helped fill the hours when Cyan was… elsewhere.
Physically, he was always close, and when he wasn’t it was Priad, following her and Daniel like a watchful phantom.
Cyan stood at the stoop of the house in the distance, as he often did these sols. Close enough to watch over her through the trees, but never quite joining in. Even when they walked the grounds together or shared meals with his family, he was there but not there —a guardian more than a partner. When she followed him to Gaia, this wasn’t what Elaina had in mind… It was a kind of distance and suffocation all at once. Loneliness had a way of feeling worse when the person you couldn’t seem to reach was always around.
“Look!” Daniel’s excited voice drew Elaina's attention. He pointed to the edge of the trees ahead where several huge beasts with hard paws grazed. Two of them had massive, misshapen bones on their heads. She’d never seen wildlife so large before, or so alien…
Then it happened—the form of one of the deer split into three. For a heartbeat, Elaina saw multiple versions: one alive, one skeletal, one that looked… all wrong, mutated. The versions flickered like static before snapping back on themselves, and Elaina couldn’t figure out which was real.
“Did they just…” she started, but Daniel was still watching the deer with innocent wonder. He hadn’t seen anything at all.
A fresh pang bloomed beneath her sternum and she pressed a palm to her chest. Elaina glanced back toward the house, to Cyan, staring at him intently in the distance to make sure he was still solid, still real, still there .
She turned back around as the animals retreated into the forest. Elaina had been tempted to follow them and see what other beasts dwelled within those woods. Cyan had told her so much about exploring this very forest as a child—she wanted to see it for herself.
“It’s too dangerous,” Cyan had told her when she suggested going on a hike a few sols after their arrival. “Just stay close.”
It was getting harder to heed his warning, and Elaina didn’t like feeling like she was on a leash. She squinted into the woods where the animals had gone. She wouldn’t have to go far … Just far enough to see something new, past the well-trodden paths around the house.
“Time to go back,” she told Daniel, wanting distance between herself and the urge to go deeper and learn what was out there.
As they walked back toward the house, Elaina's mind wandered to the off-axis dreams she’d been having. Visions of something vast and patient waiting in the shadows of this primordial world. The dreams felt like memories she knew couldn’t be real.
They emerged from the tree line to find Cyan standing at the door, his sword strapped across his back as always. Even at this distance, she could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his hand rested on the hilt as if expecting danger at any moment. He had said that sword wasn’t the instrument of fate he’d always thought it was, yet he carried it still. Supposedly, he said, to protect her from the Architect’s inevitable attack.
But Elaina knew Gaia had more effective weapons than ancient blades, and she had seen the blaster he’d started to carry tucked in a hidden holster.
Cyan raised a hand in greeting. Despite the distance between them, her heart still skipped at the sight of him. Daniel ran ahead while Elaina followed more slowly, though what she really wanted was to run toward him at full speed and know that he would catch her.
Elaina stared at the bowl of unknown nuts on the farmhouse kitchen counter, paralyzed by the simple task of shelling them. On Earendel, preparing food usually meant punching menu codes into a processor.
Unless you’re roasting a river snake over a fire. She smiled to herself.
Here, everything was maddeningly manual.
But she’d wanted to feel useful, so she offered to help, and Nila had given her an “easy” task.
Elaina picked up one of the thick-shelled things, turning it in her hands. Surely there was a technique to this.
“Like this.” Cyan’s voice came from behind her. He reached around, plucking the nut from her hand. With practiced motions, he cracked it against the counter edge and peeled away the shell. “We used to do this every harvest when I was young.”
His chest was warm against her back. She leaned into it slightly, memorizing the feeling.
“Show me again?”
He demonstrated with another nut, his movements slow and deliberate. Elaina tried to mirror him, but her strike was too hesitant. The shell remained stubbornly intact.
“Harder,” he instructed. “You won’t break it.”
She tried again, this time with more force. The shell split satisfyingly beneath her hands.
“There.” His breath stirred her hair.
“Thanks.”
“I should check on Priad,” he said, stepping back. “The forest sounds still make him nervous.”
Elaina nodded, not turning around. She listened to his footsteps fade, then picked up another nut. This time when she struck it, the shell shattered completely, fragments scattering across the counter .
Too hard, she thought. Everything here required a delicate balance she hadn’t quite mastered.
Later, Elaina sat with Nila in the kitchen, helping prepare dinner by grinding her painstakingly shelled nuts with a stone pestle into a matching bowl. Her cheeks were still hot after the incident a few minutes past, when Elaina had tried to help Nila with the grinding unit. The moment her fingers had brushed the control panel, the entire thing had sparked and died. Nila had been remarkably understanding, simply saying that sometimes the old ways were better anyway. Gaia had plenty of manual tools Elaina could make use of.
There was something soothing about working with her hands this way, even if she missed the precision of her technical work. But the reality of having blown out Nila’s prized equipment filled Elaina with shame, and perhaps she was pounding the mortar and pestle a little more aggressively than strictly required.
“You’re adapting well,” Nila commented in careful Universal. “Better than we expected.”
Elaina glanced up, surprised. “Than who expected?”
Nila’s hands stilled for a moment. “Cyan. He worried this would be too different for you. Too primitive.”
“It is different,” Elaina admitted. “But different isn’t always bad.” She thought of the twig she’d dissected, the deer in the clearing, the way the air tasted of life instead of recycled minerals. “Sometimes different is exactly what you need.”
Nila smiled softly. “In her diaries, my great-great-grandmother wrote about how restless he was. How something drove him, even as a boy.” She glanced toward the window where Cyan could be seen crossing the yard, coming home from the shadows of the forest. “I think I see that same restlessness in him now.”
Elaina bit her lip. “He’s carrying a lot.”
“She thought that he was always searching for something. A purpose.” Nila picked up another root, her movements deliberate. “Perhaps now that he’s back, he can finally stop looking.”
“And if he can’t?”
Nila met her eyes. “Then perhaps you’ll help him find peace here, in a way he couldn’t seem to before.”
Elaina couldn’t meet her gaze, knowing there would be no peace for them here or anywhere else. He brought her to Gaia to protect her from her fate… and fate didn’t seem like the giving up kind.
In bed that night Elaina lay awake, listening to Cyan’s steady breathing beside her. He’d fallen asleep with one arm draped over her waist, anchoring her in his sleep. These quiet moments were when she felt closest to him, when his guard was down and she could pretend things were just what she’d imagined. Only then his breaths shifted, and Elaina sensed he wasn’t asleep anymore. Neither of them moved.
The pain in her chest had settled into a constant hum, like background radiation of a dying star. She pressed her palm against it, feeling the steady thrum of whatever piece of the universe had lodged itself inside her.
“Cyan?” she whispered.
“Mmm?”
“Why haven’t you told them? About what’s coming? ”
His arm tightened around her. For a long moment he was silent.
“What would be the point?” he finally said, his voice rough with sleep. “They can’t stop it. No one can.”
“They’re your family. Don’t they deserve to know?”
He shifted, pulling back enough to look at her in the darkness. “And tell them what? That fate itself is coming to unmake everything they know? That their whole world will end, and there's nothing they can do about it? I can’t even give them a timeline.”
“Maybe there is something we can do,” she said softly.
Cyan's hand found her face, thumb brushing her cheek. “I couldn’t even understand what it was until it was too late, Elaina. How am I supposed to stop it?”
“This time you have me,” she insisted. “You’re here. We’re here.”
He didn’t respond, just pulled her closer again, burying his face in her hair. She felt the weight of his silence, heavy with things they couldn't bring themselves to say.
Soon, something whispered in the back of her mind. Soon.
She turned her face into his chest, inhaling that familiar scent of leather and forest air.
In her dreams that night, Elaina walked under a sky that bled crimson. Each step brought her closer to something that had been waiting for her since before she was born. When she woke, gasping and covered in sweat, she could still feel it calling.