Vasiht’h woke amid the warmth and comfortable sprawl of his sister’s family… the mostly comfortable sprawl, anyway. Someone was sleeping on his right hindleg and the paw had gone numb. Easing it out from under the limb—whose, he couldn’t tell, because everyone was too intertwined—he sat up and took a headcount. Didn’t even think of what he was doing until he’d assured himself that everyone was present, and once he did realize it… didn’t blame himself for it. Maybe it would take a while for the vigilance to wear off, or maybe it would never wear off and would become a part of him as subconscious as breathing and… he was all right with either of those possibilities. Someone had to take care of his Glaseah and wouldn’t it be better if a Glaseah represented them among those protectors?
That could be him, because it already had been. What a thought.
The person he most worried about, in this case, was in the room: Kovihs, propped up on a bolster with Sehvi tucked against his second back. Vasiht’h had half-expected him not to join the cuddlepile, given the trauma he was struggling to handle… that he had was a good sign. He wasn’t so far gone as to turn his back on normal things, things that made him feel healthy and part of a loving group. So that was good.
Old Vasiht’h might have gone back to sleep. This Vasiht’h, after years of living with a morning person, felt he might as well be up and about the day. Particularly given the work he had to tackle. Had anyone started on the logistics of moving an entire clan of Glaseah to a different world? His mother had mentioned sending him some files, so maybe they’d started on it. He could hope. And in the meantime, there was always breakfast.
The house was quieter than he expected, given the number of people crowded into it, but then the party had kept going long into the night and there had been alcohol. Not enough to get anyone drunk, but definitely enough to encourage sleeping in to a people who were, when all was said and done, pretty fond of doing so. Vasiht’h padded into the kitchen, expecting to find it empty, and was surprised to discover his brother kneading bread. “Dondi? Really?”
“Good morning, ariihir.” Dondi grinned at him. “I’d hug you but gloved hugs are nasty.”
“They are when they’re full of dough.” Vasiht’h walked to the counter and leaned on it, looking over at his brother’s workstation… because he had converted the kitchen into one, segmented as neatly as if he’d been at his job. It had been years since Vasiht’h had given Dondi the prod that had sent him into culinary school, and his brother had used them well: he was one of the prides of their family, earning honors wherever he worked, and turning down no less than four offers to head his own restaurant. “I didn’t even know Dami had sanitary gloves.”
“She doesn’t,” Dondi said, “and how she didn’t get fur in all our food is a mystery to me. I brought these with me. I like to cook while I’m working through things. You know.”
Did he. “So am I going to find your name on my list of emigrants?”
“Will you be disappointed if I say no?”
“I might be relieved,” Vasiht’h admitted. “Depending on just how many people I’m going to be wrangling. Do you want me to ask you why you didn’t volunteer, or can I just say ‘it’s natural to want to do your own thing’?”
His brother grimaced and punched the dough. “I’m glad you don’t need the explanation. It’s one thing when annoying siblings want to stay home… another when you’re one of the ones everyone wants along.”
“Don’t blame them,” Vasiht’h said, chuckling. “They love your cooking.”
“And I’ll happily visit to cook for them now and then. But I’ve got my own life in the Core and friends there, and…” He was staring at the bread. “And it’s not the time to abandon them. Not now.”
“I get it,” Vasiht’h said. “And to prove it, I’m going to move this conversation on by asking if your comment about annoying siblings means I won’t find Bret on my list either.”
“Heh.” Dondi flashed him a grin. “He wants to inherit this house.”
“Good for him,” Vasiht’h said. “It should stay in the family, and he’s got the start of a nice big family to fill it with.”
“You… mean that? I mean, not just because you’re glad he’s not going to be pestering you?”
Vasiht’h laughed. “Goddess, Dondi. The days when Bret’s pestering could upset me are so so far behind me I couldn’t spot them with a radio telescope. In fact… I’m going to miss his nagging.”
“You’re jesting now,” Dondi said, skeptically.
“Not in the slightest,” Vasiht’h leaned over and pinched a bit of the dough off, popping it in his mouth. Yeasty, with that nice elastic pull and the bubble-poppy champagne quality of busy, living bread. “It’s normal and harmless. Something I can safely ignore because it’s just people being people and doing normal people things.”
“I guess… when you’ve… seen things. Like you’ve seen. It resets your perspective.”
“You don’t have to talk around it,” Vasiht’h said. “It’s all right, Dondi. I’m fine.”
“Are you really?” His brother glanced at him, wary. “I… I don’t even know if I’m fine.”
“Want to talk about it?” Vasiht’h asked gently.
Dondi set a cloth over the dough and pulled a bowl down from the set hanging on the wall. “Can you get me the spices?”
Vasiht’h was already moving to the cabinet. “What are you making?”
“Cinnamon rolls. Maybe throw some nuts in there too.”
Vasiht’h hunted through the pantry. “We have pecans?”
Dondi wrinkled his nose. “Does it say what type?”
“Sugar Moreland?”
“Eh. That’s a hybrid that runs pretty rich. Maybe… do we have orange juice?”
“No, but I can get it out of the genie.”
Dondi nodded. “Then get me orange juice and orange zest. I’ll brighten them up.”
“Got it.” Vasiht’h started swiping through the genie, looking for their mother’s preferred orange pattern. “So…?”
“I work in the Core,” Dondi said. Now that Vasiht’h was in the kitchen, he could see Dondi’s back, and how tightly his brother had his wings folded against it. “People are starting to say it like that, too. ‘The Core.’ It’s not an individual planet, it’s a… a group identity, and it’s about how we were victimized. I don’t like it… it makes us act in ways I’m not sure are healthy.”
“Sometimes an identification like that can help you pull together,” Vasiht’h said.
“Sometimes. I don’t think it’s going to work that way, though. Everyone’s…” Dondi shook his head. “Everyone’s angry. And horrified. Everyone in the Core, I mean. Or, I guess, that’s a generalization but that’s the problem. We’re beginning to generalize. I’ve even heard some anger from people on the borders: ‘This is the kind of thing we always have to worry about, but you never took it seriously until now.’”
Vasiht’h winced. “All right, yes, that’s bad.”
“Right. And while a lot of what we’re hearing is ‘our hearts go out to the afflicted of the Core worlds,’ there’s still some ‘you people are soft, and you need to stop being soft and toughen up quick’ undercurrents and… I’m afraid.” Dondi’s shoulders tightened, and it wasn’t the effort of mixing the sugar with the cinnamon. “I’m afraid what it’s going to do to us. As a civilization.”
“I can see that,” Vasiht’h said. “But Dondi, you can’t worry about ‘us as a civilization’. One person can’t.”
Dondi eyed him. “Are you going to tell me that you and a handful of other people didn’t One-Person-Save-the-Galaxy? Because that’s how it’s playing in the media.”
Goddess, he hadn’t even thought of what the media would be making of the war, and their part in it in particular. “One person didn’t save the galaxy,” Vasiht’h replied firmly. “A handful of people didn’t even, because millions of people helped. Dondi—millions of people died to save the galaxy. Alliance and Chatcaava both. Talking up the major players makes for a good story, and certainly the war would have happened differently without them. But we don’t know how that war would have fallen out, and trying to guess at it… well. We can’t. We’re not Aksivaht’h, to be able to read every thread of possibility. In the real worlds—the one we live in—we can only deal with our neighbors. Trying to take on responsibility for more than that will kill you.”
Dondi’s mouth was hard. Watching him spread the pecans on a pan to toast with thoughtless competence, Vasiht’h saw him as a stranger might have; not as a brother, but as a young and talented man, with a life of his own, and concerns only obliquely related to any Vasiht’h might have. “Is there someone?” he asked.
“You mean like Tapa has Dami?” Dondi shook his head. “No. But I came up through school with a couple of friends and we’re close. We still work together, in fact. I worry about them, too. One of them’s human and… that’s complicated.”
“Because?” Vasiht’h asked, because he could see dozens of reasons why it might be but wasn’t sure which applied, or if any.
“Because Earth had a lot of horrible wars, and I think… I think it’s different, when you come out of that background into a place you thought was beyond that. He’s not shocked by it, but it makes him sad, and alienated because he can’t really express that without people being angry at him for not being more shocked. Like he doesn’t have the right to feel sorry for us.” Dondi sighed. “Curse it all, ariihir. Just… why? Why did it have to happen?”
Vasiht’h let that question have the air it needed, because it deserved it. He brought out the cream cheese and powdered sugar, pulled down a second bowl. Then, finally, “I don’t know, Dondi. But it’s up to us to make something out of it.”
His brother sighed, and they worked together in silence. An interesting one, Vasiht’h thought, because once in a while Dondi would glance at what he was doing and tap his wrist with a spatula to tell him to stop, or scrape some amount of something toward Vasiht’h or away to control the mix. Vasiht’h let him because they were making something to Dondi’s specifications. It was satisfying, anyway, to let his younger brother be in charge; he could tell it soothed Dondi, too, to be doing something familiar and without fuss.
It was while chopping the cooled pecans that Dondi said, “I’ve decided I’m finally going to start my own restaurant.”
“It’s time, then.”
Dondi nodded, the knife making quick staccato thacks against the cutting board. “I always thought… I needed more experience. Or that there wasn’t any rush. And I do need more experience, and there still isn’t any rush, but I need a place of my own. One where I can decide what the culture’s going to be. So I can make it a place people can go to be normal again. To be fed something good, and to not be afraid for a little while. Not just for my clientele, but for my staff.”
“That’s a good plan,” Vasiht’h said. “And really, there’s nothing for steadiness like a Glaseah. You’re right that we need that. And your human friend too—they have experience in these things. If it’s made them more capable of handling it, they’ll have something to add to the mix that you’ll need.”
Dondi swept the last of the chopped nuts into the bowl with the cinnamon paste. “Yes! Yes, you get it. That’s exactly what I was thinking too. That between the two of us it can be more than just ‘oh, that Glaseah is wishful-thinking.’ Because Chetan will be there. We’ll make our place a… a safe haven. But not because of denial. But because we’re raising a lamp against the dark.” He smiled a little. “That’s how Chetan put it, when he was talking about what humanity was being called to do now.”
“He sounds like a good man.”
“He is.” Dondi laughed. “Would you believe it if I said that Hispera and I befriended him thinking he needed help? He was the only human in our class. But he was fine, and we were the ones having nervous breakdowns.”
Vasiht’h chuckled. “It happens that way sometimes. The Goddess sends you the people you need and makes you think it’s your idea.”
“Doesn’t She!” Dondi shook his head. “All right I think we’re good. The dough should be ready soon.” He glanced at Vasiht’h. “I… you’ve been very understanding.”
“You didn’t expect it?”
“No,” Dondi said. “But that was more about my experience with everyone lately than about you. I should have known better about you.”
“Maybe,” Vasiht’h allowed. “I enjoyed baking with you, though.”
Dondi grinned. “Wait until you’re eating with me. These are good. I improved on Dami’s recipe.”
“I won’t tell her you said so,” Vasiht’h said with a laugh. “I’ll make the coffee, at least I can do that.”
“Can you? Coffee’s complicated…”
Half an hour later, Vasiht’h was planted on the patio with a cup of coffee made to Dondi’s exacting standards, thumbing through his mother’s attachments. There was a roster full of people, often unexpected; why, for example, was his aunt Sattri coming, but not her son, his wild and adventurous cousin Dihtreht? Colonizing a new planet seemed exactly the kind of thing he’d have been interested in. Others were pleasant surprises, like his woodworking grandfather, who would no doubt be delighted by the forthcoming demand for the services he’d always thought of as a hobby. His eldest brother was indeed staying to mind the family house on Anseahla, and Goddess be praised for that; the intersection of his brother’s brand of conservatism with the Eldritch’s would have been explosive.
Every relation who’d volunteered had appended a brief description of activities or fields they felt themselves competent in, whether it was something elemental like gardening or something abstruse, like biomedical research. Many of them would be waiting a while before they could practice their primary profession; Vasiht’h would have to ask if that would be a problem, because the infrastructure to support them wasn’t going to be in place anytime soon. His mother had scrawled a question in one of the margins about whether they were clear to invite family friends, not related… Vasiht’h thought that reasonable because all these Glaseah were going to have to marry someone. Either that or…
Kovihs found him smacking his data tablet against his head. “Should I ask?”
“Oh, thank Her Name,” Vasiht’h said. “Just the man I wanted to see.”
“I shouldn’t have asked, then.” His brother-in-law settled down across from him with a mug and plate. “Your brother sent these while we’re waiting for the divine smelling things to come out of the oven.”
Vasiht’h picked one of them up—also hot? He bit into it, and found it a crisp cinnamon cookie. “Oh, Happy-happies. A standard in the family. What you bake when you’re just throwing something together.”
“They’re good with coffee,” Kovihs said. “So why are you beating yourself?”
“I just realized… if I move a sizable number of Glaseah to a different planet, I’m going to need a temple.”
“Ohhhhh.” Kovihs frowned. His expression had that abstracted look that had been pinging Vasiht’h since their return from Starbase Veta. “And this involves me… why? Because the last time you went to a siv’t you dragged me along? And you’re planning to do it again?”
“Yes?”
Kovihs laughed. “All right, fair. I should light Her some incense anyway. We have a lot to be thankful for.”
“Yes,” Vasiht’h said, watching his brother-in-law from the corner of his eye. It wasn’t the right time to push, he thought. So he continued, “You free this afternoon? We might as well get it over with.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because your family’s in town? I don’t want to take you away….”
“They’re happy playing with the grandkits. It’ll be fine.” Something about that… but Kovihs was already moving on, glancing at the list glowing on Vasiht’h’s tablet. “Are you sure you want to go out? Shouldn’t you be calling your partner about that?”
“I should, yes,” Vasiht’h said. “But the timezone’s wrong right now, according to the converter. If I call in our evening today, I should hit just about when he’s eating breakfast. Or should be eating breakfast, which means in addition to discussing this with him I can make sure he eats.”
His brother-in-law blinked, then chuckled. “Does he really need that many reminders?”
“He does now, after years of getting used to other people nagging him about it.” Vasiht’h grinned. “I’m sure if we left him to his own devices for a few years he’d go back to taking care of it on his own.”
“Nagging,” Kovihs said sagely, “is how family says ‘I love you.’”
“Isn’t it though. Did you eat, speaking of?”
“Just these cookies. We could see if those cinnamon rolls are ready?” Kovihs stood. “Fair warning, though… the moment those come out of the oven people are going to start waking up and then it will be yesterday all over again.”
Vasiht’h winced. “Hopefully a little less crowded.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
Kovihs had been prescient; Vasiht’h was glad he hadn’t planned anything before the afternoon because by the time he’d started on his cinnamon roll, the trickle had begun. Dondi was topping off his third cup of coffee and plying him with poached eggs when the trickle became a flood, one that included the relatives staying at nearby residences or hotels… and of course, there was no leaving after that, not for a long while.
“I’m glad we got to the baked goods before the deluge,” Vasiht’h said later as the two of them trotted down the thoroughfare. “Or we might have had to share.”
Kovihs chuckled. “I got the impression your brother made those for the immediate family, anyway.”
“Or else he would have made more of them? Yes. Though eating his savories wasn’t a hardship.” Vasiht’h shifted his bag so it would stop bumping his hip and looked up into the sultry blue sky, framed by the thick vegetation encroaching on the buildings—or up it, in the case of the climbing vines with their bright orange and yellow flowers. Glaseahn communities tended toward clusters of buildings connected by paths to other clusters, with the natural world sculpted around the paths, and his parents lived at the edge of their particular circle. The communal buildings were found in the center of the circle, and since Vasiht’h didn’t need anything exotic they didn’t have to travel by Pad to some much larger cluster, like the one near the port. Every circle had its own siv’t, a temple large enough to pray and request services. That they’d be able to do some shopping at the local market would be a welcome bonus errand, something they’d both enjoy.
They walked together in silence, and both of them glanced at the non-Glaseah who joined them on the path, Kovihs more sharply than Vasiht’h. Refugees, maybe? Anseahla’s population was only diverse at its major cities, not in smaller communities like this… but they might have wanted to place those refugees somewhere less active.
“You haven’t asked me,” Kovihs said abruptly. “If I’m all right.”
“I haven’t, no.” Vasiht’h glanced at him. “You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“All right.”
Kovihs squinted at him, but didn’t push it, and so Vasiht’h didn’t either. There would be time, Goddess willing.
The siv’t was built of local stone, a rough, reddish brown that felt warm and welcoming before the light hit it; with the sun on it, the heat it radiated was like the hug of a loved one. Vasiht’h had always thought, anyway. Like most local temples, it was of modest size: a central room for praying, a room to one side for consultations, and a couple of rooms off the other side for people who wanted to spend the night in contemplation. The clergy didn’t live there, being involved with their own families. But like a medical center, someone was always on duty, day and night, and that felt reasonable to Vasiht’h: this was a kind of hospital, for injuries done to people’s spirits, along with a place for giving thanks and seeking counsel.
Kovihs, who’d been walking alongside him, stopped at the door, and a very odd stop it was, too: as if he’d been planning to go inside and balked at the last moment, and was now trying to make it look like he’d meant to. “You’ll want to talk to the priest alone, I’m guessing? I’ll wait for you.”
Tempting to ask, but something in his brother-in-law’s face… Vasiht’h let it go. “All right. Hopefully I won’t be long.”
No one ambushed him when he entered, which was normal. Vasiht’h padded into the quiet dark. That was tradition, that the central room felt close, and warm. To evoke the mysteries of the Goddess’s mind, while also making plain Her nearness, and Her love. The carved panel behind the offering altar depicted Her blowing into Her cupped palms, which is how She had made reality, with breath and thought. Vasiht’h dropped a fin in the box and picked out a likely looking bead of incense, setting it on the altar. After he lit it, he sat and rested his palms on his forelegs, head bowed and shoulders rounded. He exhaled, breathed in the rich musk of generations of incense. Thank you, he said. For everything.
That was all he could think of to say, because there was so much that if he started itemizing it, he would be here for days. And he’d forget things. But She knew his heart, so he trusted She understood.
Once he was content, he stood and sought the priest. Priestess, this time, he saw, a female he didn’t recognize, brown-coated with a spotted spine. Since she wasn’t serving in her capacity as stand-in for the Goddess, he addressed her as he would have any stranger. “Alet? May I have a moment of your time?”
She grinned at him and gestured to the room with a flourish. “Of course. I’m here to help.”
Vasiht’h followed her inside. He was used to dealing with rooms furnished for bipeds, so used to it that it was strange to return to the Glaseahn norm of carpeted floor with mounds of pillows. There was one bookshelf on the wall, with a handful of books and a few crystals. The opposite wall was painted with fanciful swirls in brown and metallic gold and cream with hints of mulberry purple. Vasiht’h fluffed up some of the pillows and settled on them.
“So, alet. What can I do for you?”
How to even begin… Vasiht’h said, “All right. There’s no way for me to go at this that’s not going to sound crazy, so I’ll just jump in with all four feet. There’s a high probability that I’m going to be settling a large chunk of my family on an alien world, enough of us that we need a local siv’t. How do I handle that? Who do I talk to about getting one built and having a priest and priestess assigned?”
She stared at him, wide-eyed, then laughed. “All right, I admit that’s the first time I’ve ever heard that one.”
Vasiht’h snorted. “You don’t look old enough to have heard a lot of requests.”
“Thank you?” She grinned at him. “I was ordained seven years ago, though, so I’m older than I look.” Sobering, she tapped her fingers on her foreleg. “You can request a new temple, that’s never a problem. The only issue is finding people to staff it. This is an entirely new world? Are you going on a colony draft?”
“Sort of,” Vasiht’h said. “But it’s not a new world, it’s an old one. We’re settling on the Eldritch homeworld.”
He was expecting shock, or placidity, so her peal of laughter startled him. “No, really, where are you going?”
“I was serious,” he said, mouth twisting into a wry smile. “If I can get approval, I’m moving about forty of my family over with me, and bringing my own kits too—which reminds me, I don’t know where in the queue I am anymore. I applied before the war.”
That drained the mirth out of her. “We can check, absolutely. And I guess I should apologize for laughing, it’s just… it sounded so absurd. Like something out of a romance novel.”
“Let me guess,” Vasiht’h said, resigned. “Rexina Regina?”
The priestess perked. “Isn’t she stellar? She’s so earnest you know she has to be faking it. It’s so wonderfully over-the-top.”
Vasiht’h was entirely sure Rexina Regina wasn’t faking it, and he didn’t think he wanted to discuss the fact that he kept buying her novels with an enthusiastic fan—maybe particularly an enthusiastic fan who thought the author was being tongue-in-cheek. He cleared his throat and said, “Well, I am serious, and we are going to need someone to help us out. What do I do next?”
“Let me get a tablet and we’ll talk.”
Half an hour later, Vasiht’h stepped out of the dim warmth of the siv’t into the brassy brilliance of a post-rainshower afternoon. Shaking a paw free of the mud he’d accidentally stepped in, he looked for, and found, his brother-in-law seated near the door. “I didn’t even hear it start and it’s already over.”
“It was just a squall,” Kovihs said, standing. “Maybe ten minutes long, if that, and no thunder.”
“You didn’t get too wet?”
“Nah, the overhang here is more than enough to keep dry.” He paused. “You’re about to ask why I didn’t step inside so this is the point where I admit I was trapped under a lot of detritus during the attack and now small dark spaces bother me.”
“Sensible,” Vasiht’h said, wiggling his toes. “Want help on that?”
“Not right now. I know it’s something I should look into though.”
So… this was not the permutation of the trauma that was bothering Kovihs. He wouldn’t have been so quick to admit it, nor so forthright, if it had been, which meant the real issue was still under there, somewhere, festering. Vasiht’h wondered what it would look like when it finally erupted. “All right. Let me know if you need me.”
“I will,” Kovihs said. “So… a snack before we go grocery shopping? I like hot drinks after rain.”
The ground was still steaming as the afternoon heat interacted with the puddles. Vasiht’h shook his head, rueful. “I think you’re crazy but sure. We’ll get you that hot drink, and me a cool one, and then we’ll find something for Dondi to cook tonight.” Falling in alongside his brother-in-law, he added, “Thanks for waiting, I didn’t know it would take that long.”
“You were out faster than I anticipated, to be honest. Get everything taken care of?”
“They’re going to process the request and get back to me about it,” Vasiht’h said. “I think I surprised them. Most new siv’ts are erected in places that already have a Glaseahn presence, after all… they shuttle the clergy around. Entirely new worlds with no population to start with are rare.”
“True.”
“And I’m back in line for the kits,” Vasiht’h said. “Turns out they put a lot of the requests on hold during the attacks; I guess people are still unsettled. And… I’m back at the back at the line again.”
Kovihs glanced at him. “So not taking them with you this week.”
“Not even close. More like a year and a half.”
Kovihs winced. “That’s a lot longer than usual.”
“I can wait,” Vasiht’h said. “Though if they put me off again, I might have to arrange something on my own.” He sighed. “Well, worries for another day. That’s a likely looking café, let’s fuel up.” He paused to stare in the window at the freshly baked breads. “And bring something home. I’ll want fortification before I make my call.”
“You think it’ll go that badly?”
“No,” Vasiht’h said. “But it’ll give my mouth something to do while he thinks about what I’ve said. So I can give him time to decide what to answer.” He shook his head. “I’m not going to need to convince him—I don’t think, or at least, out of all the Eldritch I talk to he’ll be the one who needs the least convincing—but the urge to start on the justifications anyway is going to be… powerful. Besides… look at that roll!”
“Filled with spinach and chopped nuts and cheese?” Kovihs mmmed. “Yes, please. After you, ariihir.” As Vasiht’h stepped past him, and through the door, Kovihs finished, “It’ll go fine. You’ll see.”
Again, something about that… about how calm Kovihs was, almost as if he was unattached to the results…? Vasiht’h glanced at him sharply, then said, “I hope so.”