6. The Chair
SIX
THE CHAIR
Years passed and the Emberkind continued running well.
Reyna heard it clear as day in the engines, that steady pulse of the environmental systems cycling, the hum of the ship when every corridor was full of crew members helping it run, that every person aboard was present and accounted for, and every system was functioning.
She learned to listen specifically for that sound the same year she learned all the different sounds the ship made, recognizing a problem strictly by the way the ship spoke to her.
It had been four years on the Emberkind since she and Elena had come aboard.
It had been eight years since they all met on that fateful day at Novahall.
Their trio had become the operational center of a rescue vessel that the Coalition had once written off as scrap.
They had already rescued fourteen species in just the last cycle alone.
And now, after all they’ve been through, the Habitat Wing was alive.
It still gave Reyna a full sense of pride when she walked through, even after all these years.
Their whole vision had been realized. There were now enclosures where canopy species nested thirty feet above the deck and wetland biomes with regulated tidal patterns.
There was even the temperature-controlled cold wing for alpine fauna that Jere insisted on calling "the Frozen Milieu," despite the fact that no one knew what it meant.
Jere argued that was what made it special, and Reyna eventually stopped correcting him as she knew it was a losing battle.
And this far in to their mission, she had learned how and when to pick her true battles.
And that was what Reyna was doing right now, avoiding a battle as she walked through the Habitat Wing after a day's hard work.
"The readings on Enclosure Seven are off," Vessi said, coming up to walk beside Reyna through the Habitat Wing as she made her way around. "Humidity is two percent above optimal for the reef crawlers."
Reyna stopped and turned to Vessi. "Two percent," she said dryly, one eyebrow quirking up.
Vessi mirrored her raised eyebrow. "Two percent probably matters a lot more to a species that breathes through its skin. How would you feel if every time you breathed it felt like you could drown?"
"I'm fully aware of that, Specialist," Reyna countered, using Vessi's recently promoted title.
"I'm just noting that you walked... what...
forty meters? All to tell me about a two percent humidity difference rather than just adjust it yourself?
" Reyna felt the smile she was trying to hide quirk at the corners of her mouth.
Vessi Orath's face morphed in real-time to look both completely professional and entirely transparent, a combination that only another Kaelari could read.
And in this situation, only this particular Kaelari seemed to direct it at Reyna.
Vessi's geometric amber markings caught the light from the habitat plants, holding it in clean, angular lines across her cheekbones.
"Maybe I wanted the company," Vessi said, her voice softer than before.
"To complain about humidity?"
"Those aren't mutually exclusive, Officer."
Reyna's smile tugged at her lips. "Mmm," she remarked as she continued walking, changing direction in order to visit the reef crawlers and check on said humidity and its two percent catastrophe. Vessi stayed in step beside her as they approached.
It was currently evening cycle, and this had become their clockwork cat and mouse game for a stretch of months.
At first, Reyna allowed herself to exist in the specific comfort of another who understood Kaelari suppression from the inside.
Aside from Elena, she had never had another Kaelari to commiserate with, even if no commiseration was actually happening.
The thing about Elena was she knew Reyna inside and out where nothing could get past her, even when Reyna was suppressing well enough for the general public around them not to notice.
But in the time Reyna had spent with Vessi recently, Vessi gave her something new from a relationship with another Kaelari.
She never once asked Reyna to explain why her gold stayed gold.
Since Vessi's wrist had healed cleanly after the fall during the refit those few years ago, she had transferred from conduit installation to habitat maintenance under Jere's supervision.
Jere recognized in her immediately that she was good with systems but even better with creatures.
Jere approached Elena once the refit was complete.
"I want Orath. Give me Orath," Jere had asked, approaching Elena when she was at Reyna's console going over maintenance logs. Elena turned to Jere.
"The girl who lost her footing on scaffolding," Elena said flatly. Jere nodded enthusiastically.
"She's incredible with systems and animals. She's perfect for the habitats crew, help take care of the habitats themselves alongside the animals," Jere explained.
"She is pretty good with the systems we're using now in parts of the habitats, seeing as she helped build them," Reyna added. "Even if scaffolding did get the better of her once."
Elena looked over at Reyna and raised an eyebrow. "You've never been quite so vocal about a crew member before."
"I'm vocal about Jere all the time," Reyna retorted.
"Hey," Jere said.
Elena just nodded her head slowly, the shadow of a smirk on her lips as she eyed Reyna. Reyna turned away from her gaze, not wanting to get into... whatever this was... with her captain.
"Okay, Jere. Orath's yours."
"Perfection!" Jere shouted as he started back down the corridor. "I'll tell her now!"
"Let me at least do the paperwork first!" Elena yelled back, but Jere was long gone. Elena sighed, turning back to Reyna again. "Can this wait? I better go file that before Jere sanctions us all with an act of treason or something by appointing someone without the Captain's seal."
Reyna nodded with a soft laugh. "It can wait."
Elena turned to go, but then stopped, looking back at Reyna over her shoulder. "She's nice," she said softly. "Vessi."
Reyna raised an eyebrow at Elena. "Yeah. I mean, I guess?"
Elena nodded. "Really nice." Then she walked off the bridge.
Reyna would be lying if she said she hadn't ever noticed Vessi.
She did, especially since the woman literally fell off a wall and Reyna feared for her life the first moment she met her.
But, through the slow accumulation of these late evening shifts that usually seemed to end in the corridor outside their respective quarters.
It was the gradual realization that they always found reasons to keep talking, neither of them walking away, that made Reyna think more about Elena's comment back then about how Vessi was 'nice. '
And it was after that thought crossed Reyna's mind that she realized, around Vessi, her markings did run warmer than baseline, almost closer to amber than a strict, harsh gold. And it was months after that when she realized it was one of the expressions she also allowed around Elena and Jere.
Vessi noticed Reyna's color shift, but she never commented. Reyna imagined that was because she, herself, noticed a shift in Vessi's color markings as well as they spent more time together.
Right now, they stood together in Enclosure Seven, watching a pair of reef crawlers navigate the artificial tidal pool Jere had designed and perfected over the years.
The plants cast light that shifted across the walls, highlighting Vessi's amber geometric markings, holding each pattern like stained glass in a window.
Reyna looked over at her in the dancing light, surrounded by the mission and vision that was brought to life and made possible by her, Elena, and Jere.
And the thought that ran through her mind then and there was one she'd never allowed herself until this very moment.
This is what it feels like when nothing is missing.
She let herself have it. The feeling of nothing missing, the way it fit her life like a glove, and the presence alongside the woman beside her who changed the color of her markings.
For a while, she let herself have all of it.
Elena called Reyna to her office on a completely normal day.
Not unusual, as Elena called Reyna to her office often, because Elena Voss preferred to run the Emberkind through conversation, and Reyna just happened to be the person she conversed with most, and for good reason.
They could argue about supply routes or crew rotations, or even whether Jere's latest habitat expansion proposal was ambitious or insane, which, most of the time, it was both.
These arguments had become just a routine part of Reyna's professional life, steady and reliable and, occasionally, loud.
But today, Elena was standing behind her desk instead of sitting in her chair.
That was different.
"Close the door behind you please, Officer Solas," Elena said.
Okay, now she was getting a little freaked out. Officer Solas? What had she done wrong? Was she getting fired?!
Instead of voicing any of these concerns, Reyna held gold and closed Elena's door behind her.
Elena reached into the top drawer of her desk and pulled out a small object, holding it in the palm of her hand. She looked at it, as if studying it while her violet markings pulsed slower than her usual steady beat.
Reyna angled herself to see that it was a pen. But it wasn’t standard issue. It was slender, dark-cased, and bore a faint iridescent sheen that caught the office's lighting, throwing tiny prismatic fragments across Elena's fingers.
Reyna immediately recognized it. She'd seen Elena use it dozens of times, probably more than that actually.
She had watched Elena trace routes across star charts with it and sketch the original habitat layouts during the refit with its tip pressed against datapads and napkins and once, memorably, the back of Jere's hand.