“That child is frighteningly self-sufficient.”
“She learned from her mother.”
The word lands soft and heavy.Mother.Not a title I asked for. Not one I expected. But Tavia started using it three months ago — casually, like it was obvious, like it had always been true — and every time it hits me in the chest like a fist wrapped in velvet.
The kitchen smells like cinnamon and coffee and the particular brand of chaos that happens when an eight-year-old is simultaneously eating breakfast, texting three friends, and lobbying for a pet.
“The Hendersons have a terraquine,” Tavia announces, her markings pulsing with strategic brightness. “And Mira has two data-cats. I’m the ONLY person on the station without a companion animal. It’s statistically unusual.”
“Statistically unusual is not a valid argument for pet ownership,” Cetus says from behind his atmospheric readouts. One hand rests on my hip as I pass with the coffee pot — absent, possessive, as natural as breathing. He doesn’t even look up.
“Pickles agrees with me.”
“I provided the statistical analysis,” Pickles confirms from the overhead speakers. “I neither endorsed nor discouraged the conclusion. However, I will note that companion animals have been shown to improve childhood development outcomes by fourteen percent.”
“Traitor,” Cetus says.
“I am loyal to data, Specialist Storm. The data happens to support the small person.”
I set a plate of cinnamon rolls on the table — the batch I made for the colonist welcome event this afternoon, minus the four Tavia has already liberated — and watch my family argue about pets with the quiet, fierce certainty of someone who once thought she’d never have this.
Cetus’s atmospheric work earned expanded funding last month. A real research team arrives next quarter. His data on Kepler-7b’s atmospheric conversion has been cited in three terraforming journals, and last week he received a commendation from the Planetary Development Committee that he pretended not to care about and then read four times.
My OOPS runs work perfectly. I even have long breaks when the station needs me - like today. The sector routes loop through Kepler — I’m never more than eighteen hours from home. Mother Morrison restructured the entire logistics chain to make it happen, and when I tried to thank her she said “Don’t flatter yourself, Foxton, it was a scheduling efficiency” in a tone that meantI moved heaven and bureaucracy for you, don’t make me say it.
“The new courier’s arriving today,” Tavia adds, scrolling her datapad with one hand and eating with the other. “Pickles says she’s on approach in—”
“Four hours, seventeen minutes. Vessel identification: The Golden Retriever. I have... questions about this naming convention.”
“Save them,” I say. “I need to check the greenhouse allocations before she gets here.”
I lean down and kiss Cetus’s temple as I pass. His markings flare — a quick pulse of gold, there and gone. Six months, and his biology still lights up when I touch him. I hope it never stops.
The greenhouse is my favourite place on the station.
Not because I built it — Cetus designed it, the colonists constructed it, and Tavia claimed an entire quadrant for her xenobotany experiments. But I filled it. Every seed, every soil sample, every nutrient packet arrived in the Rolling Pin’s cargo hold, hauled across seventeen star systems by a courier who finally understood that delivering things is only half the job. The other half is staying to watch them grow.
Cetus finds me among the rows of engineered seedlings, standing at the viewport where Kepler-7b’s sky stretches to the horizon. It’s different than six months ago. The toxic orange has faded. At the edges — if you know where to look — the atmosphere shows traces of pale green. His work. Three years of atmospheric chemistry, slowly turning poison into air.
“The conversion rate accelerated again this quarter,” he says, coming to stand beside me. “At current projections, breathable atmosphere in thirty-seven months.”
“Three years.”
“Approximately.” His arm wraps around my waist. I lean into the heat of him. “Dove.”
Something in his voice. The harmonics shift — deeper, steadier. The pattern I’ve learned meansabsolute certainty.
“Lividian bonding ceremonies are traditionally performed under open sky.”
My heart does something complicated.
“When this atmosphere clears,” he continues, “when this planet can sustain unfiltered respiration — I want to stand on the ground I’ve been building for six years. Under the sky I made breathable.” His hand tightens on my hip. “With you. With our daughter.”
“Cetus Storm.” My voice comes out rough. “Are you proposing marriage on walkable-planet day?”
“I’m proposing permanence under a sky I built for us.” He turns me to face him. Those yellow eyes — God, those eyes.Molten and serious and full of a man who spent three years alone on a dead planet and chose to stay because someone had to make it live. “Say yes.”
“You absolute—” I press my face into his chest. Breathe him in. Ozone and mineral earth and the warm pulse of his claiming mark resonating against my skin. “Yes. Obviously yes, you impossible man.”
