Chapter 3

That the girls had grown should have come as no surprise, and yet the sight of them surprised Jahir… for he and Vasiht’h had left them as children, and returned to find poised young ladies, sitting at one of the high tables in the coffee shop attached to the hospital’s garden. Or at least, mostly poised, because their approach caused all four to jump from their chairs, eyes alight. Kuriel and Meekie descended on Vasiht’h with glad squeals, and Jahir hung back to watch his partner disappear beneath their enthusiastic embraces before he turned to the human teenagers waiting behind them. Amaranth was gowned in the hospital patient’s uniform, soft top and bottoms, and slippers, but she had her chin lifted and her cropped auburn hair stubbornly styled with pins that cast a veil of moving sparkles. Persy was standing beside her in street clothes, her arm hooked through her friend’s. They now had adult faces, and if Amaranth’s bones were more prominent than one expected in a girl of her age, she still looked healthier than she had as a child.

Which she wasn’t any longer, so he gathered Amaranth’s hands and bowed over them, as he might have a family member’s, and then did the same with Persy’s. Through their fingers he felt their effervescent delight at the gesture, savoring it. Only when they’d made their best attempts at maintaining what they felt was a properly adult dignity, did they give up and hug him, together. With that touch he gathered their changes in: the grief, the strength, Amaranth’s continuing fight… Persy’s dedication to her. Their love of the other girls. Their sense of purpose. The latter was overwhelming, enough that when he parted from them they could see his comprehension in his face, somehow. Here again were people who knew him well enough to read him.

“You feel it,” Amaranth said. She had a young woman’s voice now, the melody line a touch lower than before. “Don’t you? You can tell.”

“I can tell,” he answered. “And I hope you will explain everything to us. We can’t wait to listen.”

Kuriel and Meekie by then had come for their hugs, leaving the humans to Vasiht’h’s embrace. The flush of health on the latter made it clear the treatment she’d received on Selnor had allowed her to make a full recovery, and she looked every inch the cheerful Tam-illee teenager, complete with painted swirls on the insides of her ears to match her colorful glass jewelry. The former was no longer in the hospital’s gown, but her fingers, tail-tip, and ear-tips were still dyed bright purple, as they had been when she’d been seeking a way to manage her symptoms, and her gaze... at some point, Kuriel had lost the tinge of pessimism that had darkened her hazel eyes.

“Let’s sit!” Kuriel said, tail swishing. “We can have coffee!”

“But at a different table,” Meekie said, frowning. “This one’s too tall for Manylegs.”

Vasiht’h laughed. “Yes, absolutely. Let’s find a table I don’t have to climb onto.”

They repaired to a cozier corner that suited them all, and Persy excused herself to get drinks. She insisted on buying some for Jahir and Vasiht’h, too.

/Let them,/ Jahir murmured before Vasiht’h could protest. /They are claiming their autonomy./

/I know. I just wanted to be the one to buy the snacks!/

Jahir hid his smile at the amusement in the Glaseah’s voice. /Next time, perhaps./

“So we find you outside the hospital,” Jahir said, when they were all together again.

“Except for me,” Amaranth said. “But… that’s all right. I’m getting better.”

“She is,” Persy agreed. “She’s doing great on the same treatment they tried on me.”

“And the rest of you?”

“We’re done with the hospital!” Kuriel exclaimed. “Even me! Though I have to go back every week for treatments.” She flexed her purple fingers. “They think this is something I’m going to have to manage all my life. But that’s okay? Because it means I have a rest of my life, you know?”

“You weren’t the last one out after all,” Amaranth teased.

Kuriel’s ears sagged, but she smiled sheepishly. “No.” More steadily, “But you’ll get out too.”

“We’re helping Amaranth with school,” Meekie told them. “So when she’s done, she can jump right into classes with us.”

“We’re all going to school for the same thing,” Persy agreed. “And we’re planning to do college together.”

“Here!” Meekie exclaimed.

“Stop, stop!” Amaranth said, laughing. “You’re overwhelming them! Start from the beginning.”

“Okay, the beginning,” Meekie said, ears flipping outward. Then she rallied. “It started with you leaving, Vasiht’h-alet.”

“What?” Vasiht’h asked, bemused.

“When you left to get Pri—” Kuriel stopped herself, the insides of her ears pinking. “Um, to go get Jahir-alet. You remember we decided then that we were going to stay and help other people like us. Kids like us.”

The faint embarrassment easing through the mindline felt like an itch. Jahir glanced at Vasiht’h with interest.

/I’ll explain later?/ Aloud, Vasiht’h said, “Right. So… you meant it!”

Persy snorted. “Of course we meant it! Anyway, Jill-alet told us there are lots of jobs that we could do relating to kids who have to stay in the hospital. Most of us are going with some form of therapy, but—”

“I want to be a doctor,” Meekie said.

“Yeah. So. We’ve set up a volunteer group.”

“A what?” Vasiht’h asked, ears sagging.

“I know,” Kuriel said, rueful. “We wanted to do nothing but leave, and once some of us do, we turn right around and go back in!”

Meekie took the conversational floor back. “We go see other kids and we tell them our stories—”

“Not just in the hospital,” Persy added. “Outside it too. We talk at other schools and stuff.”

“And we tell them not to give up,” Meekie finished.

“Or why we need money,” Kuriel said. “So we can use it to buy things to give to kids. Or to travel.”

“Travel!” Vasiht’h exclaimed.

“Kayla’s still on Selnor,” Meekie said. “Her dami found a good job there and didn’t want to move. But her tapa’s really good at fundraising? So he’s been helping us set up. Kayla’s got two other girls on Selnor with her, that’s our Selnor branch. We have branches!”

“We call ourselves Nieve’s Girls,” Amaranth said. “Because we are.”

That struck so hard Jahir flinched, and immediately all of their attention fastened on him and all of them reacted, wide-eyed, staring, reaching across the table or the mindline. Vasiht’h most intimately: /Arii?/ But the girls too, in various expressions of dismay.

“No,” he said. “No, it’s well. It’s a perfect name.”

“Until you get some boys in there. Then what?” Vasiht’h wanted to know, which made all the girls erupt into giggles. ‘Nieve’s Kids’ was rejected immediately, but all the other alternatives inspired a great deal of humor, from Nieve’s Posse to Nieve’s Honor Guard.

“We’ll figure it out when we need to,” Persy said finally.

“Yes,” Vasiht’h said. “Yes, you will. So tell us all about school.”

“Oh yes,” Jill said to them when they walked upstairs to see her. “They are on fire with this plan of theirs—oh, for me?” She accepted the bag, peeked in it and laughed. “Coffee, of course. You remembered.”

“Of course we did,” Vasiht’h said. /You more than me…./

/You remembered too, arii./

/Thank the Goddess she didn’t give up caffeine while we were gone!/

“Anyway, they’re doing great in school,” the human said, sitting back down at her station. “I have no doubts at all they’re going to accomplish what they say they will. They don’t just talk to kids… they go to General, too, and sing songs to the elderly, and comfort the non-natives, and bring donuts to the staff.”

“They’ve found a calling,” Vasiht’h guessed.

The human smiled at him, eyes bright. “They certainly have.”

Quietly, Jahir asked, “Alet? What is Amaranth’s prognosis?”

Jill glanced at him with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. How remarkable smiles were, that they could contain such nuance. One need not be an esper to understand the emotions that had prompted the complexity of her expression. “You picked up on that, did you.”

“Persy said something about the treatment that worked on her working for Amaranth?” Vasiht’h said, his unease thickening the mindline with a cold fog.

“Persy wants the treatment that worked on her to work on Amaranth, but it doesn’t seem to be,” Jill said. “But to be honest, aletsen, Amaranth’s still alive after years of this thing chewing on her. Cancers as virulent as hers—and Persy’s—usually kill people within a handful of years, and both of them made it from childhood to a point where Amaranth is worried about make-up and dating. I’m not happy that Persy made it into remission and Amaranth didn’t despite their having the same diagnosis, but… I’m cautiously hopeful that if Amaranth made it this far, she’ll make it to remission.”

Which was all they could ask of medicine. Jahir said, “Thank you. For telling us.”

“You two are on her list of people allowed to know. Which should make you both feel pretty good, because you know human privacy restrictions are more stringent than Pelted ones.” She smiled at them both. “So… what about the two of you? What have you been up to?”

/We’re going to be telling this story a lot,/ Vasiht’h murmured.

/You will be. I will simply smile and add a word here and there./

Vasiht’h snorted aloud and said, “I hope you have some time free…”

“Depends. Do I get a free dream therapy session?” At Vasiht’h’s expression, she started laughing. “Joking! Mostly. Go ahead, I’m on break.”

They spent an enjoyable half hour there, speaking with Jill. All the girls had left her care save Amaranth, who’d been joined by a new set of residents, and she mentioned their tribulations in passing before continuing on to general news about the hospital, the staff, even her life.

“Engaged!” Vasiht’h said as they head back toward the center of campus, where a Pad station was the only obstacle between them and gelato on the art side of the university. “She wasn’t even dating when we left!”

“It doesn’t take long, sometimes,” Jahir murmured, thinking of his own life. When Vasiht’h glanced at him sharply, he added, “You and I needed only an afternoon.”

That softened the edges in the mindline. Vasiht’h smiled, jogging alongside him. “More like a moment. When you met my eyes… you remember?”

His first sight of Vasiht’h, tangled up in children’s jump ropes, so mysterious and so non-threatening, and that twinkle in the Glaseah’s brown eye when the Eldritch had noticed his complicity in that entanglement… “How could I forget?”

Vasiht’h beamed up at him.

“Seersana will always be special,” Jahir said, feeling the shape of it in his heart, and his life. “No matter how far we go. Because of that.”

“Yes,” Vasiht’h said, the softness of that in the mindline gentle as a new spring. “I feel the same way.”

Jahir glanced at him with another small smile, and they walked together beneath the new leaves, down old paths that were as familiar as a childhood blanket.

It wasn’t until they were most of the way to the gelateria that Vasiht’h sorted through the implications of that statement. That places could be special even after they were left behind. Before he could let that fester, he blurted, “I worry too much about things, don’t I?”

His partner said, “It is part of your strength.”

That made Vasiht’h stumble to a stop. Jahir paused a few strides away, waiting, so Vasiht’h hurried to rejoin him, and once again they resumed walking side-by-side. How many beats of his paws went by for every one of his taller friend’s strides? He wasn’t the musician, to know instinctively. But there was a rhythm, one natural to them now, and resuming it calmed the Glaseah. Mostly. Enough to keep talking. “Part of my strength!”

The feel through the mindline… it was like trying to balance on a beam. His friend’s eyes were narrowed, slightly. Thinking. “The shadow side of your strength. There is no strength without casting one. You care, arii. So you worry.”

That was such a kindness, and so embarrassing, that Vasiht’h didn’t answer. It wasn’t the words—well, it was the words. The words made it clear that Jahir had put thought into what made Vasiht’h special, enough to have a ready answer when asked. But the sensation in the mindline overwhelmed all possible speech: effusive as an embrace, welcome as sunrise, endless as the days in the mind of a goddess.

His worries mattered to him. Vasiht’h knew that in a day, an hour, maybe a minute they’d come back to gnaw at him some more. But for one glorious heartbeat, he understood those worries as clouds in a clear sky, subject to wind and temperature changes, but ephemeral. There would always be weather, but the weather wasn’t the sky. That one glorious heartbeat lasted forever because time was just as arbitrary, and Vasiht’h believed from the pads of his paws to the tip of his nose that one day the Goddess would show him what it was like to live without counting seconds like beads on a string, one after another.

It also ended when he took his next breath. And as expected, his anxieties were still there, tagging along at his heels like homeless puppies. That mental image was so strong that Jahir glanced at him and said, “Arii? You are not hoping to adopt a dog?”

Vasiht’h laughed. “No. Dogs I’ll leave to Allen. We have enough on our plate without adding more.”

“Like gelato,” Jahir said. “And here we have arrived at the station.”

“Just in time.” Vasiht’h glanced up at his friend as he walked past him, through the door. The room was empty, so they choose one of the Pads and set it to their destination. “Do you know what flavor you want?”

“Not yet,” Jahir said, preceding him over the Pad. “I shall see what there is to see first.”

Vasiht’h followed him into the university’s art district, out of the building used as the receiving station and into the clear gold light. Impulsively, he said, “That’s one of your strengths, you know.”

Jahir laughed. “That I love novelty?”

“That you’re willing to adapt to things. I mean, the core things about you, those you hold to hard. But everything else… you just… move with. Like water. That’s one of the ways I know when you’re stuck, actually. Because you stop that. Like water dammed up behind branches.” Startlement felt like static electricity discharging on the fingers, this time. Vasiht’h laughed and pushed down his fur. “Okay, that’s strange when you don’t have a pelt.”

“I… imagine so. I had never considered it thus.”

Thinking of Palland, Vasiht’h said, “We don’t always know ourselves very well, without someone to tell us.”

“Context,” Jahir said after one of those infinitesimal pauses anyone else might have missed, but Vasiht’h was proud not to. “Context allows you to place yourself within an environment, and understand how you fit there.”

“You’re really good at fitting yourself into new ones,” Vasiht’h said.

“And you,” Jahir said, “Are good at making your existing ones feel like home.” He opened the door to the gelateria. “After you, arii.”

Vasiht’h trotted inside, pleased. Blushing too, but that was all right. He’d take it. “Those girls… I can’t believe how together they are, and so young.”

A pulse of sorrow, gray like rain and cold. “Their situation did not lend itself to remaining children long.”

“I guess I was lucky,” Vasiht’h mused. “I got to ease into adulthood. No tragedies, no crises. Nothing to age me too quickly.”

“Is that luck?” Jahir asked. When the Glaseah frowned, his friend said, “There are advantages to growing up quickly that you will never have.” He smiled a little. “Perhaps you would worry less if your perspective had been broadened by hardship.”

“Maybe,” Vasiht’h said slowly. “But… I’m selfishly glad it hasn’t been.” He stopped in front of the refrigerated case, felt the shadow of his friend over his back as Jahir came to a halt behind him.

“That they’ve found a path so quickly doesn’t make your journey any less valid,” Jahir said. “Because you took a gentler route.”

“I know,” Vasiht’h said, and was even sure—fairly sure—that he meant it. But he ordered the mandarin orange anyway, in the hopes that it would chase away the taste of what he feared might be envy.

The university had several on-site hotels, but Vasiht’h had booked them into lodging in Kavakell, the world capital. Jahir had asked him about it at the time, and the Glaseah had said it would be ‘fun to see the city’ and ‘besides, it’s only a Pad away.’ On seeing their destination, Jahir had felt a pulse of astonishment, and through the mindline sensed his partner’s smug satisfaction. /You like doing this to me,/ he observed, smiling at the Glaseah.

/You make it worthwhile,/ Vasiht’h replied, beaming.

Their hotel took up a whole floor of a building that curved like an amphitheater around a plaza with a park sculpted around shops and nooks for outdoor performances. Offices, residences, and shops shared their building, and its roof was another garden space, complete with a pool that poured a waterfall down a series of guided curves, accumulating on various balconies before finally gushing down a slide to the plaza at ground level, where it filled a lake stocked with freshwater fish and lilies. The plaza led out into the city’s shopping district, and it was busy: full of people shopping, talking, lounging and watching singers or dancers or poets. When the two of them arrived at sundown, the evening illumination was just beginning to glow, and not only was the building strung with lights, they danced in subtle patterns.

“It’s strange to think that Veta’s city is more pastoral than most Core cities,” Vasiht’h said as they took a glass lift to the hotel floor. “But it was built to feel like a small pedestrian city with Pad access. Not too tall, not too obvious with the high technology.”

Because his friend took for granted that things like smartglass windows—windows at all, of sufficient quality—were not obvious high technology. Jahir felt a flush of affection for Vasiht’h, and through him, the Alliance with its careless acceptance of the impossible and wondrous.

“So this is… kind of different from what we’re used to.”

“The starbase at the Wall is more like this,” Jahir said. “But you’re correct. This is…”

“Flagrant?” Vasiht’h asked, amused.

“Extravagant,” Jahir said. “As only the Alliance might be.”

Their room featured a wall of windows looking down on the plaza where it intersected the shopping corridor, and by the time they reached it, the lights had begun to smolder in the lowering cobalt blue of the evening sky.

“This place has a spa that fits even me!” Vasiht’h said. “I think I might try that. Do you want to come? There are plenty of privacy options, and it looks like their pool is beautiful.”

“Perhaps later,” Jahir said. “I would like to walk.”

“We can meet for dinner later?”

Jahir smiled. “I will let you see to my feeding, yes.”

Vasiht’h laughed. “Good. This place also has a great restaurant. They specialize in tiny portions, but you order a lot of them.”

That made him laugh too. “How well you know me, arii.”

“Well, it’s been seven years or so.”

“So it has.”

They parted, and Jahir went down into the city, and there… he walked. Past the sculpted park and into the shopping district, crowded with walkers searching for novelty, for entertainment, for amusement, for the chance to spend time with friends and family. He walked in a sphere of his own space, for everyone knew his requirements as one of the Alliance’s most recognizable alien species, but it was no hardship for them to cede that space to him. The district’s thoroughfares had been designed for pleasure and throughput—how many engineers had that required, and where was that specialty taught in the university, he wondered?

Jahir took an espresso at a café, at one of its high outdoor tables, leaning on its surface and watching the Pelted and their allies go past: speaking here not just in Universal, but in the vast and exotic native tongue the Seersa were constantly evolving in their quest to understand language. Afterward, he walked until he found himself again in the park, seeking shadows and finding none, for even the emptiest spaces were lit as if for a holiday. Looking up into the boughs of a tree, he found it hung with tiny white lights, soft as fireflies, restless in the breeze.

Nieve’s Girls.

Oh, Nieve.

Jahir leaned against the tree, folding his arms and letting his eyes close. This near to the bark he could smell the sap of it, the spiced living scent of something growing… as she would never grow, save now, through the quietly heroic acts of her friends. What would she have been like, had she not died in his arms? He cracked his eyes, imagined her drifting through the park, the wind sifting her gown and the dove gray hair she’d missed so much. He couldn’t picture what she would be like healthy. Could only barely imagine her as a teenager, with an adult’s face but a child’s soft padding. Was it a failure in him that he could not see her as a grown woman? That he couldn’t imagine her grappling with the mundane responsibilities of that life? She’d seemed so ethereal. Angels did not pay taxes.

Smiling a little at himself, Jahir straightened and resumed his wanders. KindlesFlame’s advice echoed in his mind, mixing with the resolve of the maidens, and all the knowledge he’d acquired by what appeared to be accident to the naïve observer. Had it been too painful for him to admit that unresolved traumas were motivating his actions? How much of his fascination with medicine remained a commitment to Nieve’s memory?

Was that necessarily a bad thing?

What he was doing with Vasiht’h brought him contentment, and he believed in its importance. He felt no great impetus to drop everything and dedicate himself to becoming a healer. As KindlesFlame would have been the first to point out, barring accident he had time. Nor did he feel he was done learning what he needed to learn from being a therapist.

But if it would cost him very little in time and focus to acquire a second license… would it not be prudent? Or was that yet another justification, and, if so, what was he lying to himself about this time?

He had approved of Vasiht’h’s visits to Allen for therapy. He wondered if he could ever make so brave a choice for himself, and knew it impossible. Even had the Veil not mandated his silence about so much of what shaped him, he simply could not be comfortable revealing himself to anyone here. Anyone, save one, and even that required delicacy, as all relationships did. And this issue in particular was perfectly positioned to aggravate all his partner’s insecurities.

Of course, if he had time, he could retake the classes for a license at some later date. That might be the kindest path. And it would cost him nothing—he could afford both the wait and the expense.

Nieve’s Girls. How she would laugh, and delight at the acts of her friends. Smiling, Jahir headed back toward the hotel, and the promise of a restaurant with tiny courses.