Draanth it. He opened the door.
The room looked exactly as he remembered. His mother’s furniture, his father’s organized belongings, everything precisely where it had been the day his father died. Goraath had closed the door and never come back.
Dust covered every surface, thick and grey, and the bed was still made. His father had been meticulous about things like that. Even after his mother died, even as grief ate him alive from the inside, he’d still made the bed every morning.
Right up until the morning he didn’t wake up.
Goraath’s throat went tight.
“You kept it the same.”
He hadn’t heard his uncle follow him down the hall. Didn’t turn around now.
“Never had a reason to change it.”
“Or a reason to let it go.”
The words hit too close. Goraath moved to the window and opened it. Cold air rushed in, cutting through the stale smell of disuse.
“Come on, pup. Many hands make light work.”
They worked without talking. Gaauth stripped the bed while Goraath cleared surfaces. The dust made his eyes sting. Or maybe that was something else. He didn’t examine it too closely.
His father’s boots went into the closet. The small personal items, the things that were too painful to look at, got packed into a crate that Goraath carried to the storage building without comment.
By the time they finished, the room looked empty. Clean but impersonal. Like a room waiting for someone to make it theirs.
“She’s going to hate it here,” Goraath said.
Gaauth looked up from tucking the corner of a blanket. “You don’t know that.”
“We’re forty-seven kilometers from town. The winters are brutal. The work is hard. I don’t talk much. I don’t socialize. I don’t—” He stopped. “She’s human. Soft. From Earth. What part of this life is going to appeal to her?”
“Maybe none of it. Or maybe all of it.” His uncle straightened. “You won’t know until she gets here.”
“I know enough.”
“You know what you’ve decided. That’s not the same as knowing the truth.”
Goraath wanted to argue. Wanted to list all the reasons this wouldn’t work, that she’d leave as soon as the six weeks were up, that he was wasting time preparing for something that would never happen.
But his uncle was looking at him with too much understanding, and Goraath didn’t have the energy to fight.
“The room’s ready,” he said instead.
“Good.” The older lathar moved toward the door, then paused. “You going to be okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Not what I asked, pup.”
Goraath didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because he wasn’t sure if he was going to be okay or not. All he knew was that a female was coming, and she was going to invade his space and disrupt his routine and force him to interact with another person on a daily basis.
And he’d agreed to it. Signed the contract. Put his name in the lottery.
So this was his own draanthing fault.
Gaauth left without pushing further. The sound of his transport starting up carried through the house, then faded as he drove away.
