Dreamhearth

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “Xenotherapists,” he repeated firmly. “With a specialization in dream therapy.”

  “A what?”

  He found her incredulity amusing, partially because she did—her eyes were alight with that merriment he’d found so attractive when she’d first stopped at the table. “We are espers, alet. We’ve found that when we affect the dreaming minds of our clients, we can help them with their subconscious conflicts.”

  “That sounds potentially dangerous,” she murmured. “Does no one trouble you with questions of ethics?”

  “We trouble ourselves with the questions all the time,” Jahir said, and paused as a waiter stopped to see if the woman would have anything. She ordered tea and scones, enough, he noticed, for two. Once the man had departed with her request, he continued, “We received some guidance during our studies, but our professors told us that in the main we would have to write our own manual, if you will. There is apparently no one doing what we’re doing in all the Alliance.”

  “I’d be surprised if there were,” she said, considering him with an expression he was hard pressed to define. “So. Do people actually use this dream therapy of yours, or does it scare them out of your office?”

  “Vasiht’h had the clinical trial of it, originally,” he said. “And those who undertook the regimen returned, and brought referrals. The clients we saw during our practicals also seemed pleased with our results.”

  “So it had measurable results?”

  Jahir inclined his head, just a touch. “It sounds absurd when described. But... it does, yes. And we have nothing but the health of our clients in mind when we work. Is that not how all healers should conduct themselves?”

  “It’s how they should, yes.” She pursed her lips. “Well. You are a novel thing in the world, alet, and a novel thing in mine, which is even more astonishing. I would love to see what the xenotherapists already on Veta think of your new-fangled ways!”

  He paused in the act of reaching for his coffee, just an infinitesimal hesitation. Of course Veta already had therapists. It was a city, and a busy one; even if no one had a private practice, the hospital would have several attached to its staff. But he had not gone so far as to wonder what they would think of the arrival of two new members of their profession. Did he ask Vasiht’h, the Glaseah would no doubt tell him that their colleagues would welcome them, because that was how the Pelted did things. Jahir thought of the closed ecosystem and could not help predicting a less positive outcome.

  “Hadn’t thought of that, had you.”

  “We have a license to practice in the Alliance,” Jahir said. “I hope there is no other requirement? No... guild, or extra fee, or test?”

  “Nothing like that, no. If you have the license, you can set up shop.” She chuckled softly. “Just... expect to be outsiders, for a while.”

  “Alas,” Jahir said. “We may never be anything but, if we cannot convince the housing authority of our utility.”

  “Well, go find yourself somewhere to live,” she said. “And I will send you a client!”

  He looked up at her, startled. “You would?”

  “Oh yes.” She grinned. “I have a friend with a very stubborn resistance to any form of therapy, though she says she needs help. I happen to agree. She just doesn’t like any of the therapists available.” The woman leaned forward, sunlight shining on her eyes and the enamel of her teeth, so slightly pointed. “Maybe God sent you, alet. I’ve been praying for many months now for something to help Ametia. And here you are.”

  “I cannot promise that we’ll succeed,” Jahir replied, because even knowing the devotion of Hinichi he couldn’t allow her to believe them her miracle. “But I will promise we will do everything in our power to help her.”

  “Excellent!” The old woman laughed, leaned back. “This is going to be tremendous! I can just feel it. And here are the scones.” A plate was deposited between them, and the things on the plate had as much relation to scones as Jahir thought his guest had to a real wolf. They shared bones, maybe. But these blonde confections, crisped to golden crowns and draped with a lemon-scented glaze, accompanied by great mounds of pale clotted cream, looked more like pastries than any scone he’d ever seen.

  “This café makes the best scones on Veta.” Helga used a knife to transfer one onto a small plate and set it in front of him, dolloping half the cream over for encore. “Every day a different flavor, and every single one of them delicious. You must have one.”

  Since she’d already put the plate before him, he could hardly protest without seeming impolite. “You are too kind—“

  “You are too thin.” She eyed him, amused. “Or is this a species feature? You are all elongated?”

  Would agreeing be a breach of the Veil? Jahir said, “I have always been this way. I assure you, it is not a sign of ill health.”

  “Maybe not, but I won’t take wagers on the shadows under your cheekbones.” She waved a spoon vaguely in that direction. “I will bet, though, that you forget to eat when you’re worried.”

  He couldn’t help staring at her now, and was grateful she was occupied serving herself. Or he thought she had been, because she was chuckling when she lifted her head and met his eyes, and the look in them was so mischievous and so knowing that he couldn’t help a laugh himself.

  “You get to be my age and you notice a great deal that younger people overlook. One day maybe you’ll be the same.”

  “I will hope,” he said, because saying he was already older than her and had yet to develop her facility would be either embarrassing or rude, and he had no desire to be either. She had recommended their first client! And where on the starbase would they hold that session, when they had no place to live!

  “There, see?” Helga tapped the top of his cup with her spoon. “You’re off doing it again. Worrying instead of eating. Don’t waste these while they’re warm!”

  So he didn’t. And while they were far more confectionary than any scone he’d ever had, they were delicious, so he ate his serving in its entirety and even recovered enough of his aplomb to ask after his guest’s family and her life on Veta. Nor did she press him about his family or life, which was a diplomacy he hadn’t expected; she did want to know about Vasiht’h and he told her willingly how they’d met on Seersana, and a little of their schooling—he kept the details of his residency to himself—and this seemed to intrigue her.

  Tapping her mouth with her napkin, Helga said, “Yes. A most excellent beginning to what I hope to be a profitable enterprise for us both. You have your data tablet with you, so let me give you my comm-tag and you can tell me when you’re ready for Ametia.” She lifted a finger. “I warn you. She will be a challenge!”

  “We will do our best by her,” Jahir promised.

  She grinned. “I know you will. And now I’ll be off and leave you to your hunting. Look...” She turned in place and then waved a hand vaguely. “In that direction, I’d say.”

  “Yes, alet.”

  Helga laughed. “And you will, I’m sure. Good afternoon to you, young man. Don’t forget to eat until your friend shows up to remind you.”

  He started, but she was gone before she could note his reaction... probably, he thought ruefully, because she hadn’t needed it to confirm her suspicions. He’d said nothing about his relationship with Vasiht’h that should have allowed Helga to guess how frequently the Glaseah was his reminder to take care of himself, but he was somehow not surprised that she’d derived it anyway.

  A most formidable woman, the Hinichi. Jahir found himself smiling as he paid the tab, picked up his tablet, and headed in the vague direction of “that way” to see what might be on offer.

  Chapter 2

  Halfway to the starbase, Vasiht’h started annotating HEALED BY HER IMMORTAL HEART with the intention of sending his sisters a dissertation on just how wrong everything about it was—well, that was unfair. There were things about it that weren’t wrong, mostly about the Tam-illee hero. Vasiht’h suspected the author was Tam-ille
e herself, but a woman, maybe even a young woman, because her descriptions of the todfox’s emotions were on the right track but felt more like projections or extrapolations than authentic experiences. When he flicked to the author’s biography, he found a cartoon portrait, so stylized it was hard to pin it to any one species, and a ridiculous description: Rexina Regina was the author of over thirty novels of “stirring romance,” and lived at home with her “loving family and two pets,” having returned there after a life of “adventure” that had prepared her for her new role as a domestic goddess with a data tablet ready at hand for dictation of her heart-warming stories. Obviously a pen name, and when Vasiht’h flipped through Regina’s catalog it was almost entirely stories about fainting Eldritch in the arms of Pelted swains, or swooning Pelted in the arms of Eldritch knights. Eldritch knights! Were there even such things? And yet here they were, painted with actual steel armor! Vasiht’h tried to imagine Jahir carrying sixty pounds of chain mail and metal plate on his body and stifled a guffaw. No, not likely.

  He wrote Sehvi a quick comment: You picked this author for extra ridiculousness, didn’t you. Then he returned to the narrative. Thaddeus, the reproductive engineer, had finally seen the woman come into his clinic because, apparently, she wanted a baby and couldn’t conceive—though how this was going to turn into a romance given the impossibility of Thaddeus helping her directly with this problem, Vasiht’h couldn’t fathom—and they had spent several sessions staring at one another longingly. As the shuttle chimed the two-hour-to-dock warning, he began to read another one of these scenes of unrequited desire when it culminated, abruptly.

  And then she offered a trembling palm to him.

  Was this what he thought it was? Was she asking him to touch her? Without words, the only way she could, because of course she couldn’t tell him she wanted him—him, an alien, a Pelted, a doctor! He stared at her skin, softer than a peach and so light he could see the delicate sapphire traceries of veins in them, like precious stone in marble. And then he reached for her, and rested his fingertips on hers, and shuddered!

  Vasiht’h set the tablet down, and not even the absurdity of the author describing the woman’s skin as both a fruit and a rock could distract him from his own memories of how it had felt to touch Jahir for the first time. How would Vasiht’h have described the texture of an Eldritch palm, if pressed, and would he have been any more lucid than Rexina Regina? Hadn’t he shuddered? Goddess, poor Thaddeus. At least Vasiht’h and Jahir had had some hope of a future. There was nothing like that awaiting a todfox who was sexually drawn to an Eldritch woman, both of them barren and both of them wanting children. That he could feel pity for this doomed couple despite the prose was more a function of his own personal experience, he thought... but it was real anyway.

  And then Regina ruined it by waxing poetic on the cherry color of the Eldritch’s lips and the teeth like pearls behind them. Pearls! And cherries! To his data tablet, Vasiht’h said, “It’s either precious stones or food! Pick!”

  “On behalf of the crew of Flight UR-Veta-12, we’d like to welcome you to Starbase Veta. Please wait until our pilot snugs us into our berth before rising and collecting any carry-on baggage you have stowed in overhead or underseat compartments—“

  Muttering about Sehvi’s taste in books—and jokes—Vasiht’h tucked the data tablet into his shoulder bag and waited for the shudder that preceded the stillness of the engines winding down. He’d packed lightly, and everything he needed was either in his messenger bag or the saddle bags he retrieved from under his seat and buckled onto his barrel.

  Barring catastrophe, he was home. And Jahir would be waiting. Vasiht’h’s heart swelled with the anticipation of both.

  The familiar sight of the Eldritch was nothing to the re-raveling of the mindline; as Vasiht’h jogged toward Jahir across the terminal, the bond between them woke, bringing with it the Eldritch’s delight: soft and cool and bright, like the sun off a stream. Definitely not his memory: when had he ever seen a stream? Grinning at the gift, Vasiht’h came to a halt in front of Jahir and looked up at his friend.

  “Welcome back,” Jahir said, with that brook-burble pleasure.

  “It’s good to see you.” Vasiht’h knew better than to hold out his hand, and Jahir didn’t offer his, but that was all right. The evidence of his friend’s happiness at the sight of him was good enough for him. “So how’ve you spent the past week?”

  “I hesitate to say productively….”

  The jumble that clotted the mindline then made Vasiht’h’s brows lift. Shadows and amusement and the taste of lemon and tea and the smell of flowers and a faint itch like irritation. “I can’t tell what that is, but it feels complicated.”

  “Perhaps I should say ‘there is good news and bad news,’” Jahir answered, rueful. “Maybe we can repair to a café to discuss it.”

  “I could eat.”

  “Then I know a good place.”

  The good place was outside beneath a perfect sky, with the smell of flaky fresh bread emitting from the door that opened for the waiters seeing to the people at the patio tables. How Vasiht’h could tell the bread was flaky and not dense just from the smell he had no idea, but his mouth watered anyway. Jahir found them a table beneath a delicate flowering tree, and Vasiht’h gladly unloaded his bags onto the chair he couldn’t use and sat beside it, curling his tail over his feet.

  “You’ve at least found a few good places to go, I see.” Vasiht’h glanced over his shoulder at the sunlit thoroughfare. It was late afternoon, and he found himself suddenly wondering if the starbase simulated sunset or if there was some other transition from day to night.

  “A few,” Jahir allowed. “Was your trip back uneventful?”

  Vasiht’h thought about expounding on the many flaws of his sister’s gift, but looking at Jahir he found… he just couldn’t. Rexina Regina had never had her own Eldritch, but who could blame her for wishing? And wouldn’t it sound ridiculous to discuss some Pelted writer’s tired clichés about Eldritch with Jahir, who would probably find them more painful than funny? “I spent it reading,” he said. “So tell me the good news and bad news. Any order.”

  Jahir folded his hands on the table. “Then I will say the good news is that we might have our first client.”

  “We do?” Vasiht’h straightened, eyes widening.

  “And the bad news,” Jahir finished, “is that we might not be able to stay.”

  No wonder the mindline had been such a confusion of impressions. Before Vasiht’h could speak, Jahir said, “But I have engaged us a temporary housing situation.” And then, significantly, he paused, and the mindline felt like a held breath. Vasiht’h waited for the exhalation, and when it didn’t come, he peered at Jahir.

  “You’re… waiting?”

  “I thought you might be… distressed.”

  Vasiht’h sorted through the mindline’s hesitances, found the memory of his reaction to their off-campus apartment, among other, less defined things. “Because… we might not be able to stay, and because you did something about it in the meantime? But I’m not surprised, arii.”

  “You’re not?”

  Before he could answer, the waitress interrupted them. The list of specials was long enough that Vasiht’h lost track of them before she was done, but she finished with, “And our evening scones are the cardamom spice, with rosewater-infused cream—“

  “Those sound deadly,” Vasiht’h said.

  “We’ll have an order,” Jahir said. “And coffee. And—?” He glanced at Vasiht’h.

  “Better make that two cups of coffee,” Vasiht’h said. “I’m not sure about rosewater cream with kerinne.”

  The waitress, a ginger-coated Asanii, wrinkled her nose. “No. I wouldn’t be either.”

  After she’d left, Jahir said, “The scones here are well regarded.”

  “They sound it. Anyway, as I was saying… I didn’t expect them to handwave us in. Citizenship is complicated. I don’t know much about it, but a lot of i
t is political. I did a little reading on it when I went to Seersana.” Vasiht’h shook his head. “No, I’m not surprised. I hope we’ll be able to stay, though. I’m guessing they need to approve us for permanent status?”

  That delicate hesitation was more sensed through the mindline than observed. Jahir touched his water glass and said, “Something like that, yes.”

  Vasiht’h watched him not fidget and chuckled. “Let me guess. They can’t wait to let you in, but they aren’t as excited about yet another Pelted.” That earned him a look that was almost—almost—mournful. Grinning, Vasiht’h said, “Goddess, arii, who could blame them?”

  Surprising him, Jahir said, “I could.”

  Vasiht’h blushed, flattered. “Well. Tell me about this client. How did we end up with a client before we even managed residency? And where are we living? Transient housing, I’m guessing?”

  “Not… quite, no. I toured the transient housing,” Jahir said. “I didn’t think it would suit us.”

  “By which you mean….”

  “It was….” Jahir hesitated. “Colorless. And not very comfortable.”

  “Not very comfortable.”

  Jahir did smile then, one of those whimsical smiles Vasiht’h loved so much. “I am rather taller than the average Pelted, and you are rather longer. An apartment engineered to suit the common averages, and meant for short occupancy, is not ideal for such disparate roommates.”

  Vasiht’h squinted at him.

  “They also had no full kitchens,” Jahir said.

  “Oh.” Vasiht’h grimaced. “Then, no. You’re right. What did you find instead?”

  “There is an area to the northeast here known as the Garden District, and I found a woman there letting her cottage to tenants. I engaged that cottage. It was not overmuch money and I was concerned someone might take it while we were discussing it.”

  “Not overmuch money,” Vasiht’h repeated, torn between skepticism and resignation.

  “It is not a permanent solution. We have only half a year to prove ourselves to the housing authority or we’ll have to find someplace else.” Jahir hesitated. “I know it doesn’t seem long—”