BEFORE
Though he tries to delay it, the man knows it’s time to leave.
He did what he came to the Cloistered Planet to do.
He brought the plant to a safe place where no one from outside the Quarantine Zone will find it, and none of the native population will disturb it.
He took his time building a launch platform for his ship, with the help of the strange doctor who still hasn’t given him a name.
And he got to know the soldier. The woman.
Kesia, she said to him, when she’d finally given up on the idea of him being a spy for her emperor or for her enemies.
And it was hard to persuade her of what he really was: an outsider, like the ones who once invited this planet out of their containment field to join the greater society outside of it.
She said her name with a z, like the buzz of an insect, but he can’t help but soften it to the whisper of a bedsheet against a bare leg, or the distant drum of rain on leaves.
Kess--ee--ah. A name of relief, and that’s what she was to him, a relief. A hard woman, as hard on herself as she is on him, at times.
He isn’t expecting anything to develop between them, though the air seems to crackle every time they’re together, and though he can’t stop watching her face move as she talks.
But she tells him that her people require every able--bodied person to bear at least one child, to further the goals of their empire—-and she tells him the man she’s been assigned is repulsive to her, but the only way out of it is to find another.
He almost sighs at the pieces coming together, as he always does.
The exarch didn’t tell him what else he would be doing here, on this Cloistered Planet, only that his mission was twofold and its second part would present itself in due time.
And it’s no hardship, to put an arm around Kesia’s waist and draw her close and kiss her. To let it all unfold from there.
But now he has to leave.
He spends the night with her in her favorite place: in the desert, under the stars.
She points out constellations to him that he won’t remember, and he points to dark spaces that look indistinguishable from the rest, to tell her where he’s going.
It’s too cold for them to strip down, so they bare only what they need to, to come together one last time.
And in the morning, as the sun rises, he kisses her sleepily and walks a few yards away, to a patch of bare land.
With a twig, he scratches a long line of numbers into the sandy soil, one by one.
He memorized them a long time ago, before his child ever existed, before he knew there might be a need for one.
When he finishes, he presses his palm to the ground, and tries, insofar as it’s possible, to imbue this moment with significance, so it will be easier for the seer of the deep past to find.
When he returns to Kesia’s side, she’s awake, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She looks up at him.
“You should name it,” she says. “Since it’s the most you can give the child of yourself.”
“Apart from whatever genes I pass on,” he points out, as he kneels in front of her.
“Let’s hope they get your face.” She smiles, but he knows she means it, too; she describes herself as plain, and perhaps she is, but he still can’t stop looking at her.
“My sister passed a long time ago. Her name was Akara,” he says. “So if it’s a girl, Akara. And for a boy . . . you can give him an old family name. Traditional for my people.”
“You’re hesitating, which means it must be silly,” Kesia says. “I reserve the right to refuse a silly name for my son.”
“No, no.” He looks down at their hands, tangled together between them. “It’s not silly. It’s just that I have a feeling it will be a son, so it feels . . . significant.”
“Spit it out, Sevik.”
“Theren,” he says. “Name him Theren.”