65

 

HOME.

Home is not the empty cottages we walk past, nor the room where we take off our wet clothes and stand shivering before the fireplace. It is not the Mission still flush with food and drink and clothes.

Home is not the metropolis. Because we could make it our home. If we wanted to. If we wanted to turn, it’d be easy enough. Gather up the sun-caked crusts of their melted flesh, boil it down into a liquid, which we’d pour into an open wound, at night, once we got close enough to the metropolis. If we wanted to.

But Sissy doesn’t want to.

“I am what I am,” Sissy says. She pulls away slightly to look me in the eyes. Firelight dances in her irises. “I could never become them. Don’t ask me to, Gene. I was born this way. I will die this way. I’m at home in my body.”

I nod, pull the duvet tighter over our shoulders. The fireplace is full with flickering fronds. Shadows dance on the walls.

“And you?” she asks. “What about you?”

I pause. Not because of hesitation or indecisiveness. But only because I want to take in this moment, because it feels like something new is about to begin, that nothing will ever be the same.

“They lied to us,” I say. “To the Mission elders, the villagers. For generations. Kept us from the truth because had we known, we’d all have chosen to turn to duskers. And if that happened, we’d have stopped propagating the heper species. And the only way to replenish the supply of hepers would have vanished. Forever.” My voice hardens. “They fed us lies to feed themselves.”

I lean forward, stare into the fire. “They killed everyone we care about. David. Epap. And Jacob. They killed my father, the man I knew him to be, anyway, the man I adored; that man they killed. How can I, how could I, possibly become one of them?”

Her hand reaches for mine under the duvet.

“They think of us as cattle,” I say. “They think of us as far beneath them, worthless. But when I think about everyone we care about, I don’t see that. I think about Epap, how he so selflessly gave himself trying to save us. Or Jacob, throwing himself out of the train before he turned. Or you, Sissy, running headlong into their midst of millions for David’s sake.”

A pained nostalgia flares in her glimmering eyes: She is remembering her boys, the years in the dome, the sunshine, the passing seasons, their shared life together. Their nights around the fire, the singing, the laughter. The tears.

“This is what we are,” I say, and now my hand is clasping hers so tightly I think she might flinch. But she only squeezes back all the stronger. “We are human. We live life to the hilt. We laugh, we smile, we love, we get our hearts broken. We hold back nothing. We live glorious lives, Sissy. For each other. If these qualities are aberrations, mutations, well, so be it. I choose them over ‘normal.’ I choose them over the stale, colorless, selfish existence they live.”

I turn to face her; the duvet slips off our shoulders, falls to the floor. Cold air slides around our bodies. But it doesn’t matter. We have enough heat, just the two of us, together. I take her face in my hands, her beautiful, strong face that is a marvel to me. My vision goes hazy, and I blink away the tears, wanting nothing to blur my vision of her.

And the words, when I say them, are the purest, sweetest, truest, strongest words I have ever spoken.

“I choose you, Sissy. You’re my home.”