by Audrey Faye
Tonight, she became the newest member of Poseidon’s ruling council. Taking Aya’s place.
“Come.” Aunt Rumia, resplendent in blue synth-silk and enough sparkles to fund a small planet, reached out her hand. “You’ve obligations tonight, and if you’d take that stick out of your backside long enough, you might even enjoy them.”
For reasons Ari couldn’t name, she felt a need for her last moments as a free woman to be rebellious ones. “And if I don’t want to?”
Her aunt’s lips twitched. “There’s always your long overdue appointment with the behavior modification specialist.”
Ari laughed, and a good deal of the tension she’d been pouring into the trowel floated up into the pale violet skydome. Her seminal moment of girlhood rebellion. A hundred small bits of gray fluff set free, and one very aggravated agro-manager, her teacher, and most of the adults of Poseidon Station had immediately formed into a united wall, determined to teach a space tweener the necessary manners of survival.
It had been awful. Even Aya’s eyes had grown new lines.
And then, two rotations into a never-ending barrage of disappointed faces and hard words and determination to reform her spirit into something less dangerous to their existence, the agro-manager had charged in Aya’s front door at the crack of dawn, his feet moving in the universal dance of scientific awe. “What did you do? Exactly—tell us every single thing you did.”
Uncle Murphy, hard on his heels, had been more precise. “Come.”
She’d followed them, stupefied and dull-headed before her morning rations—until they’d stepped into the agropod and she’d seen the carefully marked seedlings. Tiny green sprouts pushing up through the strictly managed soil in entirely haphazard chaos.
Baby dandelions, fanning out from the spot where she’d stood and blown.
She might have been a rebel, but Ari was fourth-generation Poseidon born, eleventh-generation Bagani master gardener, and she knew a miracle when she saw one.
Voluntary propagation. Something Monsanto had bred out of every strain of useful food crop everywhere on Earth—and then rapid climate change had finished what mad science had started. By the time the El Nino cycle of 2081 was finished, there hadn’t been a seed left on Earth capable of creating offspring without intervention.
Four generations of Poseidon settlers, and half of them did nothing but nurture the seeds that grew their food.
Until Ari Bagani had blown on a dandelion head.
The gardeners had turned her singular act of rebellion into the greatest scientific advancement of the century. Led by Uncle Murphy’s questing genius, they’d searched for refinements, increments, co-factors. And she’d joined them, delicately splicing genes until they’d found the ones that passed the dandelion’s miracle to other plants. Monsanto’s knowledge, used to reverse Monsanto’s curse.
She’d be leading that team soon, the revered unit that taught seeds how to spread and grow themselves. Not all of them—but enough.
The seed exports had made Poseidon rich beyond all imagining. Ari made sure dandelions were sent in every carefully packaged shipment, along with instructions on how to blow on them. And every so often she tucked in a tiny paper crane, too. One with the name of every child of Poseidon written on the inside.
Grown-ups could still make wishes.
She stood up and brushed the dirt off her hands and back onto the ground where it could do some good. And smiled at her aunt. “The ruling council will never be the same after this.”
Rumia chuckled and touched Ari’s cheek fondly. “We know that, my dear. We fully expect you to be a disruptive breath of fresh air. Just like always.”
Year 2311, First Orbit, Sixth Rotation (30 years old)
“Hello, stranger.” Ari smiled up at her husband as he walked in the door of their tiny housepod. “What have you got there?”
Manji still had the grin he’d had in boyhood. “A gift for the baby.”
She looked around the cozy room and laughed. The shelves were littered with presents for the child who seemed very content to reside in her belly forever. “You assume she’s coming out.”
He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I know her mother.”
He had a point. She nudged the carry sac in his hand. “If it’s more cookies, I might need a grav-hoist to get me out of this chair later.” Or at least several of their closest friends.
He set the bag down on the small table at her elbow. “Take a look.”
She slid the silky fabric over the green rope that doubled as the sac’s handles. Manji’s original design, and judging by the number of them she’d seen around the station lately, he was setting fashion trends again. “It’s a beautiful bag.”
His lips twitched. “Thank you. You have now unlocked your dutiful wife achievement.”
She rolled her eyes—which were about the only part of her body that moved at all gracefully anymore. “I’m being serious.” And she was. “It’s not very often I take a walk around without seeing one of your bags or pots or chairs or wall hangings.” She dug for words, knowing that they mattered, and that she didn’t try to find them often enough. “It makes my eyes happy.”
Which sounded ridiculous until she saw the way his eyes lit up as her words landed. Yeah, she didn’t say stuff like that nearly often enough. “We live on the side of a cold gray rock. Making beauty matters.” She thought of Aya’s little paper birds. “I make sure we all have enough to eat. You remind us why we should bother in the first place.”
“Well.” He sat down, cheeks flushed with pleasure. “And you haven’t even opened my present yet.”
Curious, she opened the bag a little farther and slid the fabric down the sides of a cube made of metal wire, about as wide as the span of her hand. And then smiled as she saw the cheerful yellow heads inside. “This is totally illegal.” And adorable. Three dandelions, two in full bloom and a shorter one just beginning to spread its petals.
A family.
“It’s not.” Manji looked like he was about to lay a space egg—a gold-plated one. “I worked with Jonesy on how to keep them rooted and happy in a small place. He’s still muttering about soil nutrients, but I’m pretty sure these things will grow anywhere.”
She frowned. “The council still isn’t going to let us keep one for a pet.”
“They are.” Her husband looked ridiculously pleased with himself. “We got a special dispensation. Kateena said to pass along the well-wishes of the council for the birth of our daughter.”
Ari felt the old discomfort twinging. Privileges, ones that wouldn’t be extended to anyone else on the station. Special status—but only for the girl who had blown on the dandelion.
“It’s for everyone, love.” Manji’s eyes were deep brown pools of adoration. “That’s why it took so long—the council makes decisions about as fast as Neptune thaws. The dispensation is for the whole station. I’m making a line of furniture blocks so that everyone can have one in their home.” He grinned and pulled out his tablet. “See? Here’s a large one to go under a table, and here’s one for the corner of a child’s bed.”
She barely caught his designs, speeding by on the wave of his excitement. Her entire body had locked on one single word. “Everyone?”
He broke off, eyes glistening with something far bigger than pride. “A green, growing thing in every home. For every child. And when their dandelions are ready, they can bring them to the growing field to propagate. I’ve designed a bubble hood for the cubes so the fluff doesn’t come off until they blow.”
Ari’s throat tightened, unshed tears threatening to water the dandelions in her hands with entirely inappropriate levels of salt. Manji had done this for her. Breathed life into her most secret wish, the one she’d held tight since she was a tiny girl.
Their child would have a flower by her bed.
Year 2337, Third Orbit, Fifth Rotation (56 years old)
Ari stood in the growing crowd, craning her head to get the view she wanted.
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br /> She’d declined a seat of honor on the dais with all the other Poseidon dignitaries.
She wasn’t here today as head scientist or as a member of the council. She was a proud grandma. One who was about to watch her eldest granddaughter’s fledging.
Rhia stood on the edge of the fledging garden, her feet doing a quick dance of excitement.
Manji laughed quietly at Ari’s side. “She takes after someone I know.”
The child took after a lot of people—she had picked her genes very wisely. “That shine in her eyes comes from you.” And her choice of outfit. Rhia had made her fashion demands for the day very clear.
She wanted to match the dandelions.
Aya had sewn the dress from bits and pieces of every yellow garment that could be scared up anywhere on the station. Which, when the person asking was two years old, persistent, and adorable, had been a very impressive pile.
Manji had repurposed some furniture gel into bright green boots the child hadn’t taken off for a week.
Rhia turned and beamed them a sunny wave—and then took the hands of the children on each side of her. The three of them stood, feet reasonably still and faces bright.
It was the kind of moment that could make even a stodgy old scientist’s eyes fill. Ari’s gaze swept over the group of excited youngsters waiting behind the youngest three. The rest of the recently fledged, waiting to join in the general celebration.
There were so very many of them.
They no longer watched a child for 784 days before they dared to welcome her into the ranks of Poseidon’s citizens. Dandelions had changed everything. The medicals muttered about bone density and mineral matrices and liver function, but after a glass or two of dandelion wine, most of them would admit that they really didn’t know why.
The cheerful yellow plant had accomplished many wonderful things—but keeping their children alive was by far the most priceless.
The Head of Station was talking now, welcoming Rhia to this very important day. Ari paid little attention. She knew the Head well from council meetings. He was one of the wise ones who knew nobody would be paying very much attention to his babble—not when there were sunshiny faces in attendance and flowers awaiting.
Rhia wasn’t listening either. She was smiling and waving at people she knew in the crowd.
Manji chuckled again. “The tiny diva plays to her audience.”
It wasn’t the first time. Rhia had been a member of the station’s drama troupe since the first day she’d toddled in the door holding her grandpa’s finger.
The crowd around them began to shift. Ari knew that was her cue. For this part, she’d pulled every bit of rank she’d needed to—this day would come only once. She made her way to the front of the crowd, leading them through the carefully manicured pathways of the main gardens and nodding respectfully to the rare and beautiful blooms that her uncles still lovingly hand propagated.
She paused at the containment doors. The first of three sets of them. She grinned—they fought a losing battle. Dandelion fluff still made its way out of the growing field on a regular basis, much to the dismay of the master gardeners. Uncle Murphy called the cheerful yellow flowers demon weeds when he thought no one was listening.
Ari made her way patiently through the tube and its carefully engineered reverse pressure flows and smiled as she finally reached the growing field and its happy, exuberant chaos.
In the early days they’d tried planting the dandelions, painstakingly seeding the hairy gray fluff in tidy rows. Three rotations later, laughing yellow heads had popped up wherever the heck they pleased.
Even Uncle Murphy had eventually given up.
Ari led the line of people exiting the containment doors in a large circle, forming a ring around the primary growing field.
Rhia waited on a small raised platform placed for today’s fledging. A diva who knew her dramatic timing. When she judged the waiting audience big enough, the child took several graceful, elegant steps into the meadow, knelt down, and kissed a bright yellow dandelion.
Ari’s eyes were filling again. She shook the tears away—she wanted to see this moment clearly.
Carefully, matching the child’s sense of drama, she moved forward until she was kneeling in front of her effervescent granddaughter. Smiling, she reached out and plucked a dandelion that had gone to seed, its gray fluff so very ready to fly and start new life. She held it out. An offering, one rebel to another.
Rhia grinned, puffed out her cheeks, and twirled as she blew, her face full of bright joy.
Ari watched the gray filaments rising into the air and laughed as several landed back in Rhia’s curls. Real life—you didn’t always land where you aimed.
The child whose day it was clapped her hands, well pleased. And then she led the waiting group of children out into the growing fields and into a wild, energetic dance, entirely heedless of the greenery under their feet.
Ari’s heart moved with them. She’d fought long and hard for the first dance, so many years ago. Ran weeks of experiments that showed the dandelions were hardy enough to handle a trampling herd of elephants and grow back. Consulted with parents, teachers, and master gardeners terrified that the children, once let loose, might try to dance on all the flowers. The first fledgling led out onto the field had barely dared to tiptoe.
Now it was a beloved rite of passage, and a riotous one.
The children of Poseidon, dancing free in the growing fields. Ari took a deep breath, and then claimed the one and only privilege she had ever let the station bestow on her.
She joined them.
Year 2362, First Orbit, Tenth Rotation (81 years old)
It had been a very long day.
The many people of Poseidon who had come to offer her comfort, every minute of every hour of this very long day, had gone to bed. Even Rhia, her cheeks still stained with tears, had crawled into bed with her babies and drifted off to sleep.
Ari stood at the edge of the growing field and let her head bow down. Perhaps the tears would come now.
She would not cry for Manji’s death. He wouldn’t wish tears in his memory. Only beauty. Color. Joy.
And so she had come here, to the place where she had always found all three. Carefully, she reached into her pocket for the small beaker of white ashes. Another special dispensation, the third of her lifetime. She had watched, eyes dry, as the tiny, controlled fire had burned the small paper crane she had folded with Manji’s name written on the inside as many times as her cramping fingers had been able to do the task.
Ever so slowly, mindful of old bones and fragile memories, Ari knelt down in the dirt and took the stopper out of the beaker. The ashes lifted as if called—rising to dance in the breeze that always blew here.
She watched, and she remembered. Manji’s gentle eyes and kindness. His voice, speaking for softness in a world that yearned, but often did not know what it needed. The steady strength of a man who knew how to bend and how to rise back up again.
He had been the soil beneath her feet and the whimsical bloom in her hand.
She would miss him so.
Her fingers reached down, wanting the feel of the warm, damp soil. She imagined she felt the ashes, newly landed. Every yellow dandelion grown on Poseidon for the rest of eternity would carry a bit of Manji in its soul.
And one day she would join him.
Ari sniffled. Those were the silly fantasies of an old woman—one who needed to be getting to bed. She let the handful of dirt slide through her fingers, and then she reached for a bendy green stem and its precious cargo of gray fluff, and blew.
In two rotations, she would come dance in Manji’s flowers.
Thank You
I appreciate you reading!
If you enjoyed this story and haven’t discovered the rest of my writing yet, you might enjoy Destiny’s Song. More strong-willed girls in space. :)
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May there always be boots on your feet and a story in your hands,
Audrey