But he was smiling, so Jahir answered. “I could. But then you would know things too easily, and that would take some of the joy out of the discovery.”
“I guess it would, at that.” Vasiht’h scuffed his paws on the sand, and the texture seeped through the mindline: silky and warm, tickling where it worked up between the toes. “I think that’s one of the things I love best about relationships. The person on the other end is always unknowable… no matter how well you know them, there will still always be an element of mystery, because they’re not you. And yet, despite that, we trust them, and that trust, if it’s a good relationship, isn’t broken. It’s like our relationship with life, just… writ small enough that we can get our arms around it. We’ll never understand why we’re here, what we’re supposed to do, if things will work out all right, if we’re doing the right things at the right time… but we throw ourselves into it anyway. Because that’s the only way to get anything back out of it.” Vasiht’h paused, wrinkled his nose. “I feel like I’ve talked all the way around this and not gotten to the heart of it.”
“No,” Jahir said, soft. “No, I think you have done a very good job of it.”
“Do you think we’re doing all right?” Vasiht’h asked after they’d walked some distance. “Throwing ourselves into things. I don’t want us to stagnate.”
“Nothing about our lives permits stagnation,” Jahir said. “Every client we receive requires our entire heart and all our powers. If we never do more than what we are doing now, we will have spent our lives well.”
Vasiht’h accepted that, though Jahir could sense him gnawing at it. Not anxiety, or at least it didn’t have the savor of anxiety, acrid and jittery. More like the busyness of a mind at work on a puzzle, not liking how the pieces were fitting. “I wonder at times,” he added, judging now to be the right moment, “whether your fear over my dissatisfaction with our life is… transference.”
The Glaseah stopped short. Then laughed. “Are you psychoanalyzing me?”
Jahir stopped and faced him, smiling, brows lifted. “Do I seem like the sort who would do such a thing without a license?”
“But you do have a license, and you’re teasing me.” Vasiht’h grinned, sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Probably you are. Writing all these notes to my family today made me think of the fact that one day I want one, and if not quite as big as mine, at least half as big. Where are children going to fit into our lives? What will that entail? When will I be ready?” He sagged, chuckled. “Dami’s not the only one who says no parent’s ever ready. That it’s the process of having kits that trains you for having them. Which makes sense to me because… some things you only learn, in your gut, by doing them and finding out you can.”
Thinking of his flight to the Alliance, and his subsequent successes—and failures—on its multiple worlds, Jahir said, “Yes.”
“This is the point where we stop and you go through the surf and find an imperfect shell and give it to me as a symbol.” Vasiht’h put a hand on his hip and gestured toward the sky, which had turned a purple nigh unto black, and was pricked with so many stars, and so luminous, that Jahir could discern the colors of the brightest without effort. “And then you tell me, ‘You can only be all right with things once you accept that you can’t know the outcomes, and be at peace with your own imperfections.’”
Jahir considered him, then headed for the surf. Behind him, Vasiht’h started laughing. “No, wait, I didn’t mean that seriously!”
“You have been reading too many of your sister’s romance novels.” The water rushed toward but did not touch his boots. The sands had turned a silvery gray with nightfall, but the moon reflected off them differently than they did the bits of shell studded here and there. He paced the damp patches, searching, until he found a fluted edge, and pried from it a broken scallop, mostly intact but with a chip.
“And… trying to find parallels in my life inappropriately?” Vasiht’h said as Jahir started back toward him.
“And taking the wrong messages from them.” Jahir reached for and took his partner’s wrist, turning it so Vasiht’h’s hand was palm up, and there he set the broken shell. “Which is that they are unbelievable, and life is never grand nor full of intimacy and drama. But for every year of cookies baked in a kitchen and shared chores and quiet work done well and without fuss, there is an hour of breathless glory and wonder, and you no less than any other being under the stars is deserving of such hours.” Jahir smiled. “Whether you feel worthy of them or not.”
Vasiht’h’s blush was so intense the mindline was making Jahir’s skin uncomfortably hot under his layers.
“Also,” Jahir finished, folding the Glaseah’s furred fingers over the gift, “all the shells on this beach are broken. I believe the more difficult task would have been to fetch forth a whole one.”
“Isn’t that a symbol,” Vasiht’h said, mouth quirking upward into a crooked smile.
“None of us go unchanged from this life, or we are doing it wrong.”
Vasiht’h barked a laugh. “Doing it wrong! Yes. I guess we are.”
Jahir nodded once. “And you can only be right with yourself when you accept your imperfections, and that you cannot know all outcomes, so you cannot choose the best one.”
Vasiht’h grinned. “All right. So noted.” He looked up, the starlight glowing off the white stripes leading to the bridge of his nose. “It is beautiful, isn’t it.”
“An uncanny sky,” Jahir agreed. “To be so clear.”
“You can see forever….” Vasiht’h sighed. Smiled. “All the Goddess’s thoughts, made manifest. Anything seems possible. Including,” he turned back toward their room, “you acing that test and becoming a healer-assist who thinks chemical formulas at me in his sleep.”
“Do I do such?” Jahir asked, startled.
“Sometimes,” Vasiht’h said. “And it’s all good. You’re better when you’re stretching yourself, so let’s get you to sleep so you can do it again tomorrow.”
They returned to their room by way of the balcony, where Jahir tarried to stare outward, for just a moment.
Chapter 11
Jahir woke to a great sense of well-being. That he could breathe easily, and the air smelled of the sea’s briny complexity, and blooming flowers, and of distant water. That he was warm enough, for once, and without needing an excessive number of blankets. That the light on his closed eyelids was kind, and the sounds: the cry of shore birds, the reassuring regularity of the surf’s hiss and boom. The mindline brought him the hum of Vasiht’h’s contentment… arranging breakfast for them both.
When he returned to the homeworld, would he want to live thus? By the sea? But the coast abutting the Galare holdings was a cold one, with rocky crags and water he would not be glad to swim in.
This one, though… he’d touched the waters with his fingertips, felt the silkiness of the water, the grit of the salt. It would be warm. And today he would have his celebratory swim, after he passed the test, because he knew he would not fail.
Rising, he went to his ablutions, and from there to join Vasiht’h for breakfast in the main room, with the field set permeable to allow the breeze ingress.
“Look how pretty it is,” Vasiht’h said. “The waves are all frothy. It’s like lace!”
“Silvery lace,” Jahir agreed, sitting to the meal. It was lighter than the Glaseah usually set out: slices of orange melon, tangy white cheese and large triangular crackers, small cups of espresso with honey. “You are coddling me.”
“You like to travel light,” Vasiht’h said. “I figure today, you can go into it how you like, as long as you eat a real meal at lunch.”
Jahir laughed. “If you would have seen the places I’ve been eating! When we are ready to depart, I will show them to you and you shall choose which to try. The views have been spectacular.” He leaked some of it through the mindline: the enormous and vertiginous vista beneath his feet, world turning, pristine as a jeweled bead.
&nb
sp; “Phew. As long as I don’t have to look down while we’re eating!” Vasiht’h grinned. “I’ll arrange a party for when you get here this afternoon. And no, don’t argue with me on this one. This deserves celebration, doesn’t it?”
“I will not have a license until I finish the required hours at the hospital….”
“A second party then.” Vasiht’h smeared his cracker with cheese. “On that, I’m in total agreement with the Harat-Shar: any excuse for a party.”
Jahir chuckled softly. “Very well. And I shall meet these friends you’ve made.”
“They’ll be thrilled.” Vasiht’h grinned at him, tapped the Eldritch’s plate with his cheese knife. “Now, eat what little you’ve got there and let’s see the end of this day together.”
Jahir set to, and finished the meal listening to the Glaseah discuss all the assorted personalities he’d met, smiling at the whimsy of it. Afterward, they walked together to the Pad, where Vasiht’h halted and said, hesitant, “Hug for luck?”
His partner, who was always so careful of his need for space. Jahir went to a knee to properly receive, because even though the event didn’t seem worthy of such a display, perhaps he was wrong to believe so. Perhaps this test would see their lives move in completely fresh directions and he would recollect forever with fondness the turning point they’d reached on Tsera Nova. The Glaseah’s shoulder was warm under his cheek, and his body reassuringly solid. And the mindline sang his friend’s joy at the intimacy.
“There,” Vasiht’h said. “Now go crush that thing!”
/Such violence,/ Jahir teased in the mindline, where he could soften it with his affection, /from the passionless Glaseah!/
/Oh, you. Just get! Before I start sniffling at you./
/You’re not…?/
“Teasing,” Vasih’th said aloud, grinning. “See you soon.”
Upstairs on the station, Jahir walked to the conference center, keeping the planet on his left and glancing at it now and then. His partner would be busy with his visit to the cetaceans; it was comforting to think of him busy under those clouds. And at the end of this day, the Eldritch would be done, and he would swim, and there would be the entire rest of the week to enjoy the splendors of Tsera Nova at the Glaseah’s side… and to sample only the best of the colored fruity drinks.
Smiling, Jahir presented himself to the Hinichi, and passed into the test.
“ARE WE READY!” Kristyl bellowed from the shore beside the pier.
“WE ARE!” her Harat-Shar posse shouted back.
Vasiht’h stood alongside Gladiolus and stared at the group, which had grown by two tigraines and an elderly Seersa couple. “Who are they? No, let me guess. You met them dancing last night?”
“Actually it was a limbo contest,” Gladiolus said. At Vasiht’h’s blank look, she said, “There’s a stick, and you have to squeeze under it by arching backwards. And wiggling.”
“That sounds…” Vasiht’h stopped. “Impossible.”
“For you it would be!” Gladiolus grinned, ears flicking forward. “It was fun.”
“And you’re admitting it?” Vasiht’h said.
“I… ah. Yes.” The Asanii’s ears sagged and then she chuckled. “Yes, I admit it. It’s hard not to have fun with Kristyl. That’s one of the reasons I love her so much.”
“We find the things we need in other people,” Vasiht’h said. “And Kristyl has fun in job lots, doesn’t she.”
Gladiolus laughed. “She really does.”
Watching the group line up behind Kristyl, Vasiht’h asked suddenly, “How did the Seersa manage that contest?”
“They didn’t,” Gladiolus said. “They sat on the sidelines and heckled.”
Watching the Harat-Shar process past, Vasiht’h said, “And… they’re all coming with us? I thought the tour was full?”
“You thought the tour was full,” the Asanii said dryly. “But apparently the boats have the capacity for twenty more people. They just don’t book twenty more because they like people to have room to move around. Therefore—”
“When Kristyl showed up and used the force of her personality on them, they said, ‘absolutely, you can take an extra ten or twenty people?’” Vasiht’h guessed.
“See, you know everything you need to know about traveling with her already!”
Vasiht’h laughed. “Well, let’s go see the whales. And hope there’s room to move around.”
“The Harat-Shar claim they prefer to sightsee in clumps anyway.”
Vasiht’h jogged after Gladiolus, who was last in line, and glanced out over the ocean. The waves still bore that choppy froth he’d found so pretty earlier that morning, and the sky overhead was blazing bright, except for some distant clouds. Beautiful, as usual, and with a stiffer breeze than the previous two days. Just the thing for sitting in the middle of the ocean—that would be stifling, wouldn’t it, without a brisk breeze?
“And… eleven! That’s all of us,” Kristyl declared.
“Were you counting?” Vasiht’h asked, amused.
“Someone’s got to keep track of everyone,” the human answered serenely. She retied the brightly colored scarf that kept her hat on her head and squinted. “Kind of a rough sea.”
“Is it?” Vasiht’h looked at it, bemused.
“Compared to the past few days.” Kristyl frowned, rolled her shoulders. “Variation is a thing, I guess. You ready, alet? I hear there are seals, too, I can’t wait to see alien seals.”
“Seals?”
“Pinnipeds,” the human replied, grinning, all bright white teeth. “Seals. And whales. Alien whales! Maybe they’ll fluoresce? Or have two heads? Four flippers!”
“Or talk?” Vasiht’h offered.
She tutted, patting her straw hat into place. “Now, now, alet. Jokes about talking animals are in poor taste.”
“Talking whales would be wonderful, though,” Vasiht’h said. “I wonder why you humans never made any.”
Kristyl’s eyes sparkled. “We thought we’d leave you something to do.”
“Ah, ouch,” Vasiht’h said, laughing.
She patted his arm. “They might not have made whales, but they made you, and firebirds, and centaur grasscats, so… I’d say it was time well-spent. Though not giving fire to the firebirds was a strange omission. Why name them phoenixes and not give them the power to immolate? It’s like you all didn’t read our mythology at all!”
Vasiht’h started down the pier alongside the human. “You really are irrepressible, aren’t you.”
“I’ll tell you a secret, alet, and I learned it really young.” Kristyl tipped the brim of her hat down until it was shading her face. For once, she looked serious. “There’s no making everyone happy, and no making everyone like you. If you stand out in any way, even to be exceptional, a lot of people will smile, but just as many people will frown, and those people are far more motivated to cut you down than the nice people are to bear you up. For every compliment you get, you’ll get fifty complaints. You know? The world is just waiting to repress you. If you let it, that’s it. You’re done for.” She glanced at Vasiht’h. “Do you get what I mean or am I explaining it badly again? What I mean to say is… if I can’t make everyone like me, there’s no use wasting time on being sad about it.”
Vasiht’h glanced at her.
“I like people,” Kristyl said. “A lot. To some people, that means I need to be disappointed when some of them don’t like me back. To me it just means that if they don’t like me, then they get to not like me. That’s their choice. Just like my choice is not to cry about it.”
“Well, I like you,” Vasiht’h said.
She beamed and patted his shoulder. “Great, because you’re about to be stuck on this all-day tour with me.”
Vasiht’h laughed and followed her up the gangplank to the boat, which to his inexperienced eyes looked impressive: its flanks a gleaming white, the railings polished to a bright silver shine, and all its crew and staff in impeccable uniforms. The boat’s name wa
s the Friendly Mermaid, and at its prow was a cheerful-looking chrome figure: the mermaid in question, whose bottom half was an extravagance of long, trailing fins and whose top half was… an Aera, complete with long ears, pointed muzzle, and seashells over her breasts.
“Welcome aboard,” a Tam-illee chirped as he stepped onto the deck. “I’m Marea SeesToShore, the first mate of the Friendly Mermaid. We’re glad to have you with us this morning!”
“Thank you,” Vasiht’h said. “I’m looking forward to seeing the seals and whales.”
The Tam-illee laughed. “You’ll love them. And you’ll also love the complimentary spread we have in the cabin, with our panoramic view of Tsera Nova’s South Beach Sea.”
“Ah,” Kristyl said from the other side, “But are there colored drinks? Because that’s all he seems to order.”
The Tam-illee grinned. “We have every color imaginable.”
“Sometimes I drink kerinne,” Vasiht’h complained to Kristyl, who patted him on the shoulder.
“Of course you do. Because it’s also heavy and sweet. Let’s go see this spread.”
The cabin was already mostly windows, and the parts of it that weren’t had been filmed with a smart coating so that they continued the uninterrupted vista with exterior camera input. Vasiht’h assembled a small plate of fruits with a cinnamon yogurt dip, because he couldn’t not try that, and a crusty flatbread with melted cheese and big slices of tomatoes and some fresh herbs. There were fruity drinks, and he almost ordered the one that was yellow on the outside, but had a red middle. How did that even work? But decided at the last moment on the mint lemonade, made with crushed ice and real torn mint leaves so the whole thing turned a beautiful herbaceous yellow-green with emerald flecks. Breakfast had been light, by his standards, so the second meal was welcome.
Was the boat packed? It might have been, he thought, if the Harat-Shar weren’t content to sit in each other’s laps, or snuggle together in corners. He chose a seat next to the Seersa couple and introduced himself, discovering they were retirees doing a self-designed “notable sites of the Alliance” tour.
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