"Yes," Araxis said."That was – hm, seven years ago."
"So how oldareyou?"I asked, trying desperately to do some math.I wasn't good at it, but math was a little easier than sitting with how my whole body was aching in the most tender way.Besides, I wanted to know.How had I never asked?
One corner of his mouth twitched, amused, as we hurried through this cold dome."I am an adult," he said mildly."Our ages do not translate."
"Okay,but," I prompted.
"I hatched twenty-two years ago," he said."You have seen the children grow: we mature at a different rate than humans.In terms of maturation rates, I may even be older than you.You are twenty-five –"
I shook my head, rubbing my arms."Twenty-six now.It was my birthday last week."
Araxis blinked rapidly."You did not tell me."
"Birthdays don't matter in most cultures," I said.
"They matter to many humans."
I squinted at him as we ducked into the next airlock."How would you know that?"
And there, in the dim light, I saw him silver, just barely."As I told you, I have been conducting research of my own," he said, perfectly mild."I have even been trying to work on a language course but I certainly don't have the facility with languages that you do, Sashen."
It was my turn to blush, or maybe it was the change in temperature as we headed into the next ecosystem, a formal, ornamental garden."Well, it doesn't matter anyway," I added, shoving a hand through my hair."I haven't celebrated a birthday since I was – fuck, I don't know.Ten, maybe?I started getting in trouble around then.I didn't get to celebrate much of anything.Celebrations are for people who deserve them."
"Hm."He still had a strange, thoughtful look on his face.
"But you weresaying," I prompted, "that abaya mature differently?Why don't you tell me?"
And so he did, our conversation drifting away from the weight of what we'd shared earlier so that we both, each of us, had a little more space to breathe.We meandered our way through the other regions, occasionally coming across a segment of the private path that split into various routes.Each time, Araxis would consult the map that the manager had sent to him and lead us in one of the directions.For an optimal experience, he'd said, but there was a little self-satisfied flush that tipped his hand: he had something set up, and the thought made my chest fizz.We chatted idly and as we wandered, it struck me how easy things could be if we just let them.Could I do that?Could we, while there were so many other pressures hemming us in, squeezing us tighter and tighter until we were gasping for air?
But not today.Today, on my day off, it was just the two of us – and all the air that we wanted.We wandered along the private walkway meandering its way through the botanical gardens and I had time to reallywatchAraxis, as he paused to admire a particularly fine flower, some spray of impressive colour, or pointed out a tree species to me and explain its significance.I watched as his eyes would go bright and glossy when he told me about some youthful misadventure (to clarify, his idea of a misadventure was of a radically different class than mine; after all, I'd hacked into Seraphim's communications systems, filled the servers with alien porn, and then smuggled myself on to a ship and run away; Araxis had stolen a bottle of the abayan equivalent of cheap alcohol and brought it back to the ship to share with Vivith, chickening out and dumping it instead into a corner of the cargo hold so that Avelthe had complained for a week about a weird smell).I listened to not just what he said while we laughed our way through a boggy area with little flickering lights, but also to thetoneof his voice – low and warm as he spoke to me, earnest in answering my questions, faltering sometimes but then boldly forging ahead.Circling back to correct himself, to correct histhinking.As all of that unfolded, well.
How could I do anything but love him?I watched him and thought, a little dazed, that loving him was inevitable.I couldn't help myself.More importantly, I didn't want to.
Yes, he'd fucked up.He'd hurt me.He'd made a fucking mess of my life and hadn't thought twice about it, because before he met me, I hadn't been a real person, not really.
I was certainly real to him now.
Who could we have been, if none of this had happened?If we’d just found each other somewhere the cosmos?And I guess the more important question was, who could we be now?
But we couldn'trushthings, not this time.I thought, then, that we probably deserved a real chance, and if we were going to take a real chance, then we needed to do it right.And it felt like we were laying the foundation.That we were choosing this labour a little more every day.
We drifted into the last airlock before the moon gardens, meant to replicate the dark forests and formal gardens on Honnos in the central abayan system of Xitera.The seat of its empire."How quickly do your eyes adjust to varying light levels?"Araxis asked, his hand on the final door.
"I don't know."It wasn't like I had a database of average eye adjustment times that I could reference.I knew humans weren't great at seeing in the dark, but a lot of other species weren't either."But I did work in a den for a decade, so I'm used to dark spaces."
Araxis nodded, pushed open the door, and we walked into darkness.This dome was cool and crisp, the air sweet.The path before us was barely illuminated by tiny lights, which cast a cool white glow on the stones.But I hardly noticed, instead struck by the rest of the landscape around us: the dome overhead was painted in deep purple, streaks of light oscillating gently across the polymer panes overhead to mimic the natural phenomenon on Honnos.Dark shapes loomed out of the gloaming: evergreen trees, their spartan branches allowing slivers of the rest of the forest and the sky beyond to peek through; clusters of bushes softening the edges of the pathway; low-growing plants with gently arching limbs lined with pinpricks of colour – tiny flowers, each one like a fairy's lantern.Everywhere I looked, there were pulses of dim light glowing throughout the forest, so that it was as if we had slipped from Sozamia Station and into some otherworldly realm.
"Oh," I breathed.The longer I looked, the more I could see that those little lights – the bobbing blossoms along the ground, the striations of luminescence in the bark of the evergreen trees, the shape of what looked like a cluster of mushrooms on a fallen log that pulsed slowly with a barely-there glow – were in an array of subtle colours.I bet they could look wildly different to aliens with more nuanced eyesight.What would this place look like in ultraviolet?
I forcibly wrenched my stare away from the layers and layers of shadow and diffuse light to look at Araxis who, instead of taking in the gardens beyond, was watching me, his features soft, his expression gentle – his bright eyes reflecting the thousands of points of light in the forest beyond, but lit most brightly by what felt like yearning.As though I were the most beautiful and perfect thing he could look on here in these gardens.
My heart stuttered in my chest.A shiver caught me, racing up my spine in an unexpected surge."Araxis," I started, my voice low and hoarse –
I wanted to wait.To go slow.To see what could happen if we took our time in building the foundation.But when he looked at me like that –
Araxis smiled gently and tipped his head toward the path."There is tea waiting for us, Sashen."And then he turned and left, and I followed the shape of his back along the barely-lit path, the gardens like a dream realm around us.The path twisted onward, the jagged forest tapering off to reveal more formal gardens which were designed in such a way that the broad array of plants painted shapes and colours across the landscape.The air in here was hushed, like a held breath, and I could barely make out the little bench and table sitting on a pebbled area just off the pathway.Araxis gestured, and I sat down while he poured me a cup of tea from the tray set to the side.The familiar smell – floral, herbaceous – took me to a sense memory of that first night we'd sat in the kitchen together on the creche ship, when he'd apologized to me in a way I'd never heard before.
My chest throbbed as I took the cup from him, and Araxis settled in next to me, leaving a hand's span between us.All at once, I wanted to close that distance, to press my thigh against his, to lean against his shoulder, to have him slide his hand across the expanse of my back.
