“It did not work.” I agree, darkly. “My medic had the idea of adapting the tech commonly used for translators, which makes automatic adjustments to suit its host’s body. Good in theory, I suppose, but not in practice. That was back before Roa got sick.” I want to explain, concerned Lydia will think poorly of my parents. “Everyone was taught to trust medics, and my parents believed they were doing what was best for me by following professional advice. They were surprised when it did not work. The medic had neglected to mention that the procedure was highly experimental.”
I might not remember the surgery, but I do remember the pain of the resulting infection, and I remember how upset I had been when my arm had to be amputated above my elbow.
“Then,” I continue, “when Roa got sick with an Eoli deficiency and there was not an alternative source of the vitamin, we learned again that not all medics have the best interests of their patients at heart.”
I do not realize I am holding Lydia painfully tight until she wiggles to loosen my grasp. Quickly, I release her, leaning back against the cave wall. She does not climb off my lap, but she does sit back a fraction, all the better to see my face.
“Specialists suggested many cures—artificial light therapy, intravenous supplements, and even cybernetic implants. Nothing worked, and she died. She was just another one of their failed experiments.”
“I can’t imagine how horrible that would’ve been for your family. I’m so sorry, Killan.”
“It was horrible,” I admit. “Every day, we were promised they had finally thought of the solution, when we all knew that what she needed was an alternative source of Eoli.”
“So that’s why your family moved here, to start the farm?”
“We left because Ril’os focus all their attention on developing new tech to solve every small problem, but they could not build one scudding farm because manual labor is considered beneath their dignity.” I clear my throat. “I have strayed from your original question.”
She shrugs, her shoulder lightly bumping my chest. “I like hearing about your life, even the sad parts.”
“Careful,” I warn her, attempting a Human smile. “If anyone were to overhear us talking, they might think that you care about me.”
She fake-gasps and makes a show of looking around the flooded cave, searching for a possible audience. “I would deny all allegations. You would never be able to prove such a claim in a court of law. Besides,” she grins, “they would be much too shocked at seeing you smile to remember anything I may have said.”
“Mayhaps,” I agree. Smiling is…strange. It feels as if I am faking a show of aggression, and I do not think I will ever become used to displaying my teeth to my Mate.
Mate?All it takes is an earnest conversation with Lydia sitting on my lap, and I am suddenly eager to call her my Mate.
“Do you mind?” I ask, filling the space in which I might have been tempted to confess something else entirely. I am not so delusional as to think now would be a good time to express my feelings, mere minutes after Lydia nearly agreed to stay.
“Mind what?” She blinks.
“My missing hand.”
“No, of course not. Why would I?”
I shrug. “One of my memories of being a youngling on Ril I is being stared at a lot.”
“You know,” she says, “the more you talk about your birth planet, the more I think it doesn’t sound like anything special.”
I chuckle. She has repeated my words back to me. “There is too much tech,” I agree. “Everything that can be automated is. And every time there is an advancement, thousands more workers lose their jobs and need to reskill. There were as many technological colleges as grocery stores.”
“Sounds…busy,” Lydia decides.
“Very.”
“I was thinking, on the first day of the harvest, how a lot of your process is manual. You have the robot arms and the drying tables, but you guys do almost everything else yourselves.”
“Farming tech can be expensive, as is the cost of freight. Besides, neither Sorin nor I are all that tech minded. That is Roan’s area of interest.”
“That’s how I feel about baking,” she says. “We can have these big fancy kitchens, but the act of making bread is basically the same as it’s been for hundreds of years. It’s all about working with the dough with your hands. I used to say that I could make bread with my eyes closed because I was so good at knowing what the dough should feel like.”
“I tried to find the ingredients for your bread,” I confess, “when I was ordering our latest delivery. But I could not find any recipe on InGal. I think bread must be exclusively a Human food. Or else it has another name that I do not know.”
“You tried to buy me ingredients?”
“You did not make a list of things you wished for me to buy you, so I tried to think of a list myself. I was not successful.”
“Wow, Killan. Thank you.”
