The warm water came up to the crease of my elbow. I started somewhere safe, though my body was humming with something he pulled from it. The cloth glided over his arms as I started at his shoulders, scrubbing his skin gently.
I’d never washed another, but it was surprisingly…intimate.
I swallowed, watching the cloth drag over his body, and I said, “I was a newborn when I came here.”
“So young?” he asked, frowning.
“Jana said my father was a pilot. After the old Earth colonies fell during the war, he would shuttle human refugees across the universe, delivering them wherever they were agreed to be taken in.”
Like on Dakkar. That was why there were human settlements, because theDothikkarhad accepted gold from the Uranian Federation as payment. Allegedly.
“He died on one such transport. His ship was destroyed, leaving my mother alone. She was pregnant at the time and his death left her…Jana said she wasn’t in her right mind. She loved him very much, but I think it was the prospect of caring for a child, alone, after losing the only home she’d ever known, and rebuilding on a new planet was too painful.”
I spoke of these things as if they were stories I’d heard, as if they weren’t the events at the beginning of my life. And they were just that…stories. Stories Jana had told me because she’d been there. I couldn’t remember these things.
I dragged the cloth down his other arm, leaning over the tub, the ends of my hair dipping into the water.
“I was born in the stars,” I told him, my throat tightening.
“You are a starling?” he rumbled, his brow furrowing though I didn’t know why, wrapping his finger around a strand of my hair.
I’d never heard that term before, but I nodded. “I suppose. My mother gave birth to me on our way here, to Dakkar, on a refugee vessel. And then three days later, she decided to join my father willingly, wherever he is.”
He stilled.
“Jana was just a woman she met on the ship. They shared one of the rooms together and Jana had helped deliver me.”
“But you didn’t consider her your mother, though she took you in and raised you?” he questioned.
“She never wanted to be,” I confessed, a familiar feeling of sadness and rejection washing over me. “I loved her and I think in her own way, she loved me too. But she also saw me as a burden, another mouth to feed besides her own in an already hungry village, a child she hadn’t asked for. And so, a large part of her always resented me for it.”
His lips pressed together, but his expression was unreadable. “How did Jana die?”
“Sickness,” I said and that was all I would say. I didn’t like to think about those days I’d tried to help her. I didn’t like to remember.
“Then you were alone,” he murmured, reaching out to stroke my face, his lips turning down into a frown.
“Yes,” I whispered, a shiver racing down my spine. I moved the cloth to his chest and made little circles.
He made a rumbling sound in the back of his throat and went quiet. Water trickled and I felt the heavy weight of his eyes, but I avoided them.
Finally, he said, “The Dakkari believe that starlings are powerful beings.”
My hand paused on his chest and I tilted my head, meeting his gaze.
It was an unspoken invitation, one he answered with, “In the stars, you become everything.”
“What?” I whispered, not sure I understood.
“You feel the loneliness of endless space, but you also hear a million beings’ prayers, their hopes, their tragedies, being lifted up to you, whispered towards the sky from their homes, towards their deities. The Dakkari believe that starlings are born hearing those prayers and that they are closer to Kakkari for it. We believe that you become a thousand different species in that moment, that you would be neither human nor Dakkari, buteverything.”
My breath hitched when he pressed a small, gentle kiss to my lips.
“I am not surprised to learn you are a starling,rei thissie,” he murmured against me. “For I felt your power when I first felt you taking my soul.”
My heart gave one powerful thud and then I looked at him as if I’d never seen him before.
I felt a little dizzy looking at him, my head throbbing, the blood in my ears rushing, and I wondered how we’d gone from him trying to send me away this evening…to me wondering if this was what falling in love was like. This dizzying, maddening, uncomfortable sensation that grew with each passing moment.
