

Dust

A Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology

Copyright 2015 Kate Donovan, Fairy Niamh, Enola freeman, downjune,

Anne-Marie Byrne, Monica Barraclough & Chance Arnold

Cover art by Christine Griffin

Edited by Monica Barraclough

## Tables of Contents

Ashes to Ashes by Kate Donovan

After the deaths of her mother and grandmother, Carissa is trapped in her family's isolated home with her psychotic sister. As the years pass and her sister's health mysteriously declines will Carissa be able to make her escape?

The Angels of Kothos by Monica Barraclough

Neun had seen many worlds, and her people had brought peace to them all. But there was something about Kothos that made her question the Homeship.

Gotta Watch Out For by Enola Freeman

The dust was everywhere on the moon. It got into the massive fans that kept the air circulating on the base, requiring teams of cleaners called "rats" to take care of them. But, though mankind has made it to the moon, they brought their human nature with them. And there is something about humans that resists change. One team of rats comes face to face with this truth in a horrifying way.

Nobody's Darlings by downjune

After three years of desert solitude, Aevy finds a human—injured—from the penal colony. Even worse—her nanocels seem to like him.

One in a Million Motes of Dust by Anne-Marie Byrne

Whatever the world, wherever in the Universe, whatever the species, some truths are the same. Set on the ocean world of Pelagos, this is the story of Jerzediameric the Diver, and land dwellers Seth and Sally Knight. It tells of love and a ring, about finding one and losing the other, and maybe finding oneself in the process.

Dust in Your Eyes by Fairy Niamh

No one knows just what the Dust is, or what caused it to suddenly, and violently, appear. When looking through a telescope, Moralyn discovers more than she ever wanted to know.

The Shape of Things by Chance Arnold

Ophera of the Faerie courts seeks to understand the complex maths of geometry, and the parsing exactness of Faerie gifts, but the Oxford classroom she sneaks into holds more than she expects.

#  Ashes to Ashes

# by Kate Donovan

Merete was coughing again. The sound carried along the hallway from the kitchen and up the stairs to where Carissa lurked in her room, grinning in satisfaction at the loud bark of her sister's misery. She sprawled across the threadbare cushion of an armchair that had once dazzled her eyes with green velvet and bright brass buttons, not even the faded splendor of her surroundings able to dent her glee.

"Carissa?"

Carissa froze, instinctively scanning the room for somewhere to hide before remembering that Merete hadn't been upstairs in weeks. Maybe it had even been months. Time had a habit of slinking by when Carissa wasn't looking.

"Come down and keep me company." Merete sounded winded, though the walk from the kitchen to the bottom of the staircase was the matter of a dozen feet.

Carissa wouldn't go down stairs, didn't ever when Merete was waiting right there for her. She was quick; Merete didn't even see her as she moved around the house, but her sister wasn't one to take chances with. She watched Merete sleep sometimes but that wasn't keeping her company. Not if Merete didn't know. She could keep her own damned company and if she didn't like it she could choke on it.

*

Merete cleared her throat, a loud rattling sound and Carissa laughed silently, obscured from her sister's view by the brittle remains of a potted palm. The latest in a long line of used tissues joined the heap on the kitchen table, damp with Merete's sputum and stained black like crumpled charcoal briquettes. Draughts that Merete brewed with her own hand lined the yellowed kitchen counter in a collection of mismatched glasses and she swallowed miniscule sips from one after another, grimacing with a small grunt of disgust after each. Carissa stifled another laugh. If there was one thing Merete hated more than being sick it was taking medicine to get well. Most people would take what the doctor prescribed, hoping their cough would regress but one thing that hadn't changed over the years was the paranoia lurking in the trenches of Merete's mind.

"I think it's getting better." Merete's gaze skittered around the kitchen searching for her sister. "Doesn't it sound better to you?"

The harsh, labored breathing sounded like the stone frog in Grandma Ronnie's fountain when the summer heat dried up the water and only mud was forced through the pipes but Carissa wouldn't have bothered to say it even if she'd been inclined to speak. If Merete thought it was getting better no dissenting opinion would be heard.

"Fine, don't answer. I'm going out. It's never as bad when I'm not cooped up here with you." Merete's blue tinged lips thinned as she slung her arms into her windbreaker and slammed out the front door.

Carissa stayed hidden until the storm of coughing from the other side of the door subsided and she was sure Merete had actually gone before slipping from her hiding place. She perched on the peeling vinyl counter near the sink, angry enough to sweep Merete's half empty tumblers to the floor. Her eyes narrowed to furious slits at her sister's words. "You're cooped up with me?" she whispered to the empty room.

The rattling of Merete's car had faded into the distance before Carissa risked heading down the narrow hallway to what Grandma Ronnie used to call the foyer. It was only a glorified mudroom when Grandma owned the house, but it had always been kept neat. Merete had turned it, like everything else, into a disaster. Sometimes Carissa closed her eyes and remembered fresh yellow paint and bright red cushions on the chairs, the carpets faded, but clean. Mostly she didn't, though. Memories were fragile things and hers always splintered into a kaleidoscope of images she couldn't be sure were true.

It was spring, she was fairly certain. March, or maybe even April, though the calendar on the wall was stuck in a long ago December, a heavy red X marking off every day up through the twenty fourth and then never appearing again. She stared at the outside world until her eye sockets ached but it remained dull and grey; even the gentle swaying of freshly budded blossoms shrouded in shadow. Sighing, she wished, not for the first time, that her sister would wash the damned windows. Her sleeve, white cotton once upon a time, rubbed against a small square of glass, unable to even smear the grime from one spot to another. She clenched her jaw, resisting the oft felt urge to smash her fist right through the filthy pane. A broken window would let the sun in and the house would be even more horrifying. Dust coated every surface and in bright light Carissa was sure uncountable bits of debris would swirl through the air like smoke.

She could leave the building, of course. The windows weren't barred and the door wasn't locked, but over time the need to get out into the sundrenched garden faded like the tattered curtains falling past her shoulders. Wandering gravel paths lined with flowers of every hue no longer made her feel vibrant and wind kissed, but worn and out of place, skin stretched pale and thin over knobby bones. It was overgrown now anyway, wild and gone to seed without Gram to tend it. Easier to get lost in than when they were kids. Merete liked it better that way.

Shortly before noon she drifted outside in spite of herself, away from the gloom and the stifling odor of rot. A tiny rag of spider web in the corner of the storm door, its desiccated occupant still clinging stubbornly by one curled leg, swirled away on the breeze as Carissa paused on the top step, entranced. Her gaze followed it as it floated airily upward and onward, over the garden until it disappeared from sight. Carissa hoped it made it as far as the fence, then past it to freedom. Even in death nothing should have to spend eternity in this awful place.

With that thought in mind a visit to Mom and Grandma Ronnie seemed like a good idea. It'd been ages since she'd made the trip to their resting place at the bottom of the garden. Merete wouldn't like it if she knew and that thought kept Carissa indoors most days. But with her sister on one of her infrequent forays to the outside world, she was determined to enjoy her alone time.

The flat stone path had gaps and ruts where something had pulled the pavers out of the ground and tendrils of grayish green vine wound across the way in more than one spot. Carissa didn't worry much about either. Animals dug for grubs and plants grew when no one tended them. She'd been treading these grounds since she was a toddler and that familiarity would keep her feet from straying. Giddy with the unfamiliar rush of freedom she danced along, the tangled undergrowth opening before her like magic.

The bench by the lilac bushes halfway down had always been her favorite pondering spot. A good book and a pitcher of lemonade helped her while away hours that would have been unbearable inside, even when the house was Grandma's and not Merete's. She paused for a moment, eyes closed, trying to recapture the magic of the gloriously scented trees, the peace she'd always found here and nowhere else, but it eluded her. A weight settled on her heart as she continued down the path. There was no going back. Not now, not ever.

Grandma's potting table was nothing more than rotted planks now, shards of burnt umber scattered around it from the clay planters she'd been seeding. Gram was a little further over, pieces of her here and there, just like her beloved flower pots. Mom lay on the other side, almost at the edge of the blackened patch of ground where Merete had burned them after carefully making sure Carissa was well out of the way. She'd salted the ground and purified it again and again with fire and it had worked. There wasn't a lot left, rain and wind and scavengers had taken care of that. Mom and Grandma Ronnie were gone, gone, gone and Carissa envied them their escape.

The fence marking the property's boundary was twenty feet away, higher and stronger than it had been in Gram's day, occult sigils bright with freshly touched up paint. Carissa shivered as the power it contained thrummed through her even here. Merete would put machine gun turrets at every corner if she thought she could get away with it, although they never got visitors out here in the middle of nowhere. As it was, the heavily fortified concrete and barbed wire monstrosity was more than sufficient to keep Carissa inside and the rest of the world out.

A few steps back didn't really make a difference, but Carissa took them anyway, settling down on the soft spring grass, leaving a few feet of verdant green between her and the result of Merete's killing rage. "I loved your garden, Gram," she said, for the tenth time, or maybe the thousandth. "I wanted the green peas and the carrots and the corn to grow." Even now, it was important that Gram know she hadn't been part of what happened. "Bet you're sorry you ever asked Mom to bring us here, aren't you?" Her gaze shifted to her mother's remains. "Bet you're sorry you brought us. Brought Merete, anyway."

Retreating to the past, Carissa closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sky, drifting back to the time before everything went to hell. The kitchen had been bright then, cheerful, with sunbeams pouring through windows not spic and span but not spackled over with dirt, either.

Gram always had tea in the mornings, Pekoe or Earl Grey with a spoonful of sugar. Carissa had loved the delicate aromas that rose with the steam from the china cup. Mom drank coffee, black, in a heavy ceramic mug, brewed strong in the sterling silver percolator Gram received for a wedding present. It spent its life on a back shelf in the basement until her daughter came to visit, taken out and dusted off only when caffeine withdrawal was imminent. Merete would drink coffee too, whenever Mom had let her, which wasn't often. Caffeine and Merete almost always produced a disaster.

Around the kitchen table had been the comfort zone, the happy family gathering place for Gram's delicious meals and games of Monopoly or Clue after the supper dishes were done. Merete had never been happy though, huddled in her chair like the specter at the feast, glaring suspiciously at her food and muttering unintelligibly under her breath. Carissa knew Mom hoped that coming to Gram's house, far away from the frenetic pace of the city, would calm Merete down, but Carissa also had known Merete far better than their mother seemed to. Her sister, at twenty, was four years Carissa's senior and had been blowing off tiny geysers of steam since childhood. The bloody evidence of this had often littered the garden; presents for her little sister, Merete always said, but all evidence would vanish before an adult could come on the scene. Merete was going to go off like Old Faithful one day soon and Carissa had wanted to be on another planet when it happened, not stuck in the middle of nowhere in New Hampshire. As usual though, her mother hadn't listened. Merete had always been better when Carissa was around, had wanted Carissa around, so Carissa had stayed.

The blow up that morning had terrified Carissa, with Merete screaming that Gram and Mom were poisoning her food. They hadn't been, of course, but they were slipping her medication into it, ground to powder and lost in the heavy seasoning Gram always used. Merete refused to take her pills anymore and if ever someone had needed to be medicated it was Carissa's big sister, with her paranoia and her habit of eviscerating small animals and eyes that were about as sane as two holes drilled into the walls of hell.

Gram had hustled Carissa out into the garden and down the path until Merete's shrill voice was just an insect buzzing in the distance. The planters had been lined up on the bench, soil and bright summer flowers in every shade of red standing by to fill them up and make them beautiful. The garden bed was sprinkled with weeds, but shovels and rakes had rested against the bench, needing only sweat and aching shoulders to make it ready for seed. Everything had been normal, peaceful, but even in the warm sunshine Carissa shivered uncontrollably. Gram had laid a comforting hand on her back and wordlessly plopped down a bag of potting soil, a mixed tray of geraniums and impatiens and a trowel, gently patting Carissa's face before moving on to her own work.

"Gram...." Carissa's voice had caught and she dug the trowel into the earth like she was measuring for a casket. "Merete..."

"Your mother's taking care of her, sweetheart." Gram had calmly filled her pot and made a hole, settling the roots of a geranium in it before carefully tamping down the soil. "You just plant your flowers and enjoy the beautiful day."

Carissa had worked in silence after that, a weight settling in her gut that threatened to topple her to the ground. Gram hummed and Carissa had wanted to shake her to awareness, to hurry them both to the house to grab her mother so they could run as fast as they could away from this place. Merete's idea of beauty was twisted and dark. A good day to her would involve a very bad one for someone else. Maybe today wasn't going to be that bad day, but terror had slithered insidiously down Carissa's throat and wound itself around her ribcage. Time was spiraling down to zero and Carissa had known it.

Gram had finished her planting, geraniums and impatiens placed in gorgeous, multi-hued arrangements, before Carissa was even halfway done. Carissa's own pots had been haphazardly strewn with flowers, stems twisted and broken while her attention constantly strayed to the opening through the forsythia bushes that marked the end of the path from the house. Finally her gaze caught the movement she'd been expecting and she raised her trowel like a weapon. It was fairly sharp and sort of pointed but she hadn't fooled herself that it would really offer much of a defense.

Her mother had come off the path, rolling up the sleeves of her oversized sweatshirt. Carissa craned her neck to look behind her but Merete was nowhere to be seen.

"She'll be down soon, sweetie," Mom had said, completely misinterpreting Carissa's look just like she always did.

"She's coming to help?" Carissa had just managed to choke the words out. Merete never came down to the potting area, never helped with the planting. She'd looked pleadingly at her mother, barely managing enough breath to force out a whisper. "Why?"

"Just be happy she is, honey." Mom had smiled as Carissa shook her head despairingly. "It means she's feeling better. And that's what we all want, right?"

Carissa had nodded, numb as she aimlessly dragged her trowel through the dirt. She was vaguely aware of her mother taking a rake to the weeds of the garden but her eyes had been locked on the opening of the path and the few feet visible beyond it. Fifteen minutes passed, then half an hour and the band around Carissa's chest had loosened. Maybe Merete would stay in her room after all.

"Hey."

The voice came from behind her and Carissa had whirled, upsetting the one half decent pot she'd managed to get planted. Merete had been there, of course she had, a little half smile on her otherwise blank face and Carissa let out a tiny, despairing whine.

"Hi, honey." If Grandma Ronnie had been disconcerted by Merete's ability to move through the brushy garden so quietly she could appear out of nowhere, she hadn't let it show. "Why don't you grab a shovel and turn over the soil after your mother rakes it?"

Merete's smile had vanished. "Sure," she'd said, reaching for the heavy wooden handle....

Carissa sat up screaming, hands flying to cover her mouth so Merete wouldn't hear. Night had fallen while she was out and stars blazed overhead in the dark of the moon. A hard crust of snow crackled under Carissa's palms and the wind sent bits of ice hurtling through the frigid air to batter noisily against the fence. She'd stayed longer than she intended. It happened sometimes, but she needed to get back now. Who knew what Merete had gotten up to while she was gone?

From the garden to the house the way was always up so up Carissa went, on the path, off the path, made no difference. Up was all that mattered. Speed was an asset with a sister like Merete and Carissa flew through the front door before she even realized she'd reached it. The house was dark and cold and silent. Merete was there, though. Carissa would know if she'd gone. Skulking through the shadows, Carissa circled the ground floor, peering into each vacant room before stopping at the foot of the stairs. Her sister wasn't in the kitchen or the parlor or huddled under the rat's nest of moth eaten blankets she'd set up in the living room back when her lungs began to rot and the climb up the stairs became synonymous with a death sentence. The faint rasp of congested breathing from above hollowed out Carissa's stomach. Merete, for whatever reason, had traversed to the second floor and any sense of sanctuary or separation evaporated into the musty air.

It was silly to feel like climbing the stairs was akin to ascending a gallows, but Carissa had always felt Merete was a noose tightening around her neck. Step by step she rose until the ripped carpet of the landing was beneath her feet. Merete's room was closest to the stairwell, but Carissa didn't pause on her way by. If her sister made the trek upstairs it was to see her and for nothing else.

The door to Carissa's room was ajar, light and shadows flickering from a semi-circle of melting candles set into saucers on the floor. Most of the candles were squat, burning from the center down, but a few were tapers, leaning precariously in their soft anchors of wax. Maybe Merete wasn't paying attention, Carissa thought savagely. Maybe one would topple over, igniting the dried, stringy carpet and ending this nightmare for good.

Ashes to ashes, Gram always said. Carissa wished with a rage she'd thought long banked that she'd been sent on her way in a fiery inferno, quick and thorough. Dust to dust was the longer path, infuriatingly drawn out, bits of dried hair and flaked skin mixing with barely seen motes from countless other sources swirling through the dimly lit house, finally mingling in a soft, thick layer erasing any long forgotten signs of life. Now was her chance, though, and she wasn't letting it pass her by. Merete could notice the candles at any moment. Straighten them, or worse, blow them out. She had to go in.

Her sister was there, just as Carissa had known she would be, leaning heavily on the back of the winged armchair where she'd decreed Carissa would spend eternity. Shock at the sight stopped Carissa in her tracks, wondering exactly how much time she'd spent in the garden. Flicking her eyes from the body in the chair to the form hunched over it, Carissa would have wondered which one of them was dead if she wasn't already positive it was her.

Merete's emaciated hand gripped Carissa's collarbone through the few remaining strands of her sweater, her arm knobby with sinew threaded over bone. A face all planes and angles accentuated the deep blue of her lips, stark against clown white skin. Carissa cocked her head at the faltering rattle of breath and took another step forward. Her sister let out a wet sigh and raised her head, breath escaping in a choking gasp when her gaze landed on the figure hovering near the door.

"'Riss?" Merete rasped, sunken eyes staring blindly at a place beyond reality. Lips curved into a rictus of a smile as she raised her hand in a beckoning gesture. "C'mere and let me see you. It's been so long."

Carissa didn't move and her sister's smile became, impossibly, more horrifying. Carissa wanted to run, downstairs, to the garden, to wherever Merete couldn't follow, but she was terrifyingly certain that very, very soon, Merete would be able to track her no matter where she might try to flee. "No," she managed to whisper, holding her ground.

Merete's smile vanished, twisting into the ugly sneer that always split her face when she didn't get her way. "I said, come here."

"No." Carissa was proud of how steady her voice was. The amount of times she'd had the upper hand on Merete numbered in the zeroes and she wasn't about to give in on the first one that had any chance of working out her way. "Why don't you come here?"

Merete gripped the back of the chair like it was the only thing keeping her upright and Carissa was pretty sure that was exactly the case. Her sister's skin was wrinkled and leather dry, stretched tight over fleshless bones, the death rattles of her breath coming further and further apart. Still, Merete had been challenged and she'd never once in her life backed down from a challenge. Unhooking the claws of her overgrown fingernails from the chair's thinning fabric, she edged her way around the arm until she was standing in the clear, stiff and swaying as sheer will tried to shift bones that long atrophied muscles once moved with ease. Merete took one tottering step, then another before her breath stuttered and one hand curled to her chest. Her eyes met Carissa's and her faint whisper was terrifying in its promise. "Soon"

Carissa's gaze dropped to the floor behind her sister and a grim smile formed on her lips. A red taper with a half melted Santa at the base was succumbing to the pull of gravity. She started to laugh as the lighted wick touched down on the cotton batting remains of an old pillow and flames began to rise.

"No." Merete tried to turn, though Carissa had no idea what she thought she'd accomplish. With all the old fabric and dried wood littering the room, it was going to go up like it'd been soaked in kerosene. "No, don't. We're not...we're staying here."

"I'm leaving," Carissa said, as the blaze spread to the curtains. Merete took another half step before crashing to the floor, the snap of shattering bones audible over the crackling of the fire. "And so are you."

Merete wasn't going to die in flames, though; Carissa wouldn't allow it. She, Mom and Grandma were going to finish what they had started. Merete had killed them all, had spent hours, days, years, immolating the bones in the garden. She'd inhaled the ashes of her victims, and slowly, inexorably, breathed in the decayed remnants of Carissa's rotting corpse. Every breath had merged their molecules with Merete's. And the byproducts of Merete's crime had festered. No doctor was ever going to cure her, she'd been right about that at least. Carissa's cupped hands stopped the flow of air through Merete's mouth and nose, trapping the ashes of the mother and grandmother she'd burned and the dust of the sister she hadn't in Merete's airway.

Just before the light died from Merete's eyes Carissa spread her arms to welcome the cleansing fire and whispered the final words her sister would ever hear.

"Choke on it, Merete. Choke on us."

# The Angels of Kothos

# by Monica Barraclough

Neun brought her wings in close as she broke through the atmosphere, her flight-suit down-shifting rapidly as it slowed her descent. The atmosphere of Kothos was yellow and thick and she could feel the heat despite the powerful cooling layer underneath the exterior armor. Her nav-panel came into focus as she got within a few thousand feet of the surface and auto-adjusted her course accordingly. She spread her wings wide as she evened out, skimming just a few hundred feet over the surface, speeding towards her coordinates.

She was here on Kothos along with the rest of her fleet to stop the war between the peoples of this particular part of the northern landmass. She didn't know or care what they were fighting about. That wasn't her place. She would take out the targets she'd been assigned--weapons strongholds and the main bases of both sides.

Her nav-panel lit up with green and red dots, showing the location of her allies and her targets. She aimed towards a cluster of red, but slowed her pace when her nav-panel began flickering unevenly.

Damn wave-noise, she thought, searching for an empty landing spot nearby. She switched to thermal sight, which relied on heat rather the radio signals, and found a nice nearby rooftop with just one life-sign.

Her boots sounded heavy on the stone roof and when she took a step forward, she felt the weight of the flight-suit settle down on her, dragging her shoulders back as her wings collapsed, folding away for easier maneuvering. The gravity on Kothos was little more than one hundred and ten percent as strong as on the Homeship, but it was enough to cause minor discomfort. Luckily, the atmosphere was nice and clean.

She lifted up her visor to get a better view of her surroundings. Stone roof, silhouettes of other squat buildings nearby, many of them mostly rubble. Remembering the life sign she'd seen, she turned towards the stairwell hatch of the building she'd landed on and saw a pair of big purple eyes staring back at her. There was a Kothosian hiding under the hatch--a child, judging by the round shape of his face.

She raised her hands, palms out. Not a threat.

It was enough to convince the child. He pushed up on the hatch, revealing dusty blue hair and skin, and climbed out onto the roof. Within a few seconds, he'd crossed the short distance and stood, staring up at her.

"I saw them," he said. The translator in Neun's helmet decoded his words for her with barely a half-second delay.

"Saw who?" she asked, in her tongue and then again in his, courtesy of the helmet vox-box.

"Your wings," he said, grinning. "I know what you are."

"You do?" she asked, curious. From what she'd been told of the Kothosians, they hadn't achieved interstellar travel, hadn't even broken through their own atmosphere yet, so for him to know who she was seemed highly unlikely.

"You're an angel," he said.

Neun smiled wryly. Her people had all but conquered death and had no need of gods or their emissaries. "Is that what you think?"

He nodded, a strand of his hair falling in front of his eyes. He pushed it absently back behind his pointed ears and said, "Took you long enough."

She straightened, even more intrigued. "You were waiting for me?"

"Mother said you'd come."

"Did she?" It was likely the Kothosians had some kind of primitive tracking technology. Enough to know when intruders were close, certainly. "Where is your mother?"

"Father says you don't exist. He says the great Maker and his angels died the day we broke open the atom." The boy turned his back on Neun and walked over to a spot right next to the rooftop-hatch where there was a blanket, a half–eaten red fruit and a pile of sticks. He plopped down on the blanket, making a little cloud of ash, and grabbed one of the sticks from the pile.

'Hold your position. Await new coordinates,' said her commander's voice, echoing in her helmet.

"Understood," she responded, and then for lack of anything better to do, she went to sit across from the Kothosian boy. He'd picked up one of the sticks and was drawing on the dust-covered roof with it, a series of thin grey lines. He drew three vertical and then three horizontal lines, a small grid.

"Cross and sun?" he asked, holding the stick out to her.

Neun stared at him for a moment, not sure what he was asking.

He rolled his eyes at her and pulled the stick back drawing a neat circle in the middle of the grid.

"Oh, zero and plus," Neun said smiling. "You sure? I haven't lost in years."

"Neither have I."

"I've been alive longer than you."

"You're stalling," he said, grinning as he held the stick out at her again.

"Pff."

Neun drew her plus above his circle and they continued on until they tied, and tied again. Neun was trained in games and strategies--it had been one of her strongest skills as a girl. It was much easier to judge an opponent's strengths after seeing how they played even the most basic of games. The boy's face was scrunched up in the kind of absolute concentration only children have. Purple eyes narrowed and shoulders tensed, he was determined to win. Neun was evaluating him, though based on his height, weight and slight build, he wouldn't pose much danger if he became aggressive. His grasp of the game was solid, but he didn't display a particularly high sense of cunning either. That realization made her hesitate and the next time she brought the stick down to the dirt-strewn grid, she made her mark one box to the left of where she should have.

"Ha!" the boy cried out two moves later when he drew his winning circle. "Told you I was good."

"You are indeed a force to be reckoned with," Neun said. She looked up at the horizon, looking for signs of battle, signal flares from her troop, wondering what was taking them so long. It had to be something about the static in the atmosphere interfering with their equipment. But without explicit instructions, she had nowhere to go.

"What's your name, angel?" asked the boy as he redrew the grid.

"Neun, what's yours?"

"You don't know?" he scoffed. "Thought you were supposed to know everything."

"Just what they tell us." Knowledge was only given to those who earned it. As a soldier and a flyer, she'd been taught she needed to fulfill her role. There were other things she'd wanted to learn, things that had no place in her life--like what music was, or why her people had no planet of their own. But those things weren't meant for her to know. 'The mind can only hold so much,' her proctors had told her when she was young. And they were right. But even so, she wondered.

It was a fundamental flaw of hers. She'd been born, not made, and the fact that she'd been accepted as a flyer despite that was remarkable. Her memories of her family had been mostly overwritten but for a few bits and pieces--jarring in their incompleteness. She remembered her father dying, and her mother crying, though she couldn't remember why.

"I'm Llunreivsnie."

"Nice name."

"Call me Llun." He held out the stick to her and waited quietly as she made her move before asking, "When are you going to take mother and father?" He drew a circle in the far right corner.

"I'm not here for them," she said, drawing another plus.

"Oh." He sounded disappointed.

"You should go back to them, I'm sure they're worried about you."

Llun shrugged and smoothed out the dust and sand over the surface of the roof, making himself a clean canvas. This time he didn't draw a grid, but first one star and then another, with two curved lines connecting them. "What's it like?" he asked. "Up there, I mean. In the sky kingdom?"

Neun thought about his question for a moment, considering how the helmet would translate her words into his. "We travel across the skies in a great ship, and sometimes they send me down here or to other worlds."

"Other worlds?" Llun's eyes widened. "Are they like Kothos?"

"Some of them."

"Where else have you been?"

She smiled. "Lots of places. The twin moons of Grivonaq, Herii-saf, Jynar and the ringworld, Ka."

"Never heard of those," said the boy. "Which one was your favorite?"

"Well--" Neun began, but her commander's voice interrupted, barking numbers from her helmet-speakers. "Time to go," she said.

"Okay," the boy said, his eyes widening. He stood up and brushed the dirt from his pants. "Can I say goodbye to mother and father?"

Neun looked at him, confused. "You're staying here. Go to them."

"You're coming back for me, right?"

"Of course," Neun said, though she had no intention of returning. She was here to fulfill her mission, nothing more.

*

The parched ground of Kothos was a brown-red patchwork beneath Neun as she sped to her new coordinates. The order had been given in haste, a rare tone of uncertainty in the commander's voice. When she was two miles away, she could begin to see the bright green clouds of Zophyr bombs in the distance.

She put a query into her nav-panel, asking for identification of the target location. This close, perhaps she'd get a better response than 'unknown, Kothos.' After a few seconds' delay the nav-panel displayed the text 'Kothosian weapons plant. Target to be eliminated.'

Neun increased her speed, angling her wings slightly to give her better alignment with the wind stream.

The target came into view shortly thereafter, a large building burning in three places, thick streams of smoke and light rising up where her fleet had damaged them. It was an oddly-designed building for a weapons plant. She'd seen many in her time, and this one didn't have any of the telltale signs of heavy manufacturing. Her scanners couldn't even pick up any metal or power stores. Just dozens of life-signs, all of them red.

"Target misidentification?" she suggested. "My scanner detects no weapons."

"Enemy stronghold correctly identified. Eliminate all targets."

Her fleet appeared around her, dozens more dropping down from higher up in the sky, wings spread wide. They formed a standard attack crescent and flew down towards the building, the pulse weapons on their shoulders and arms activating as Command gave the order to fire.

She flew as one with the rest of her squadron, watching the building crumble rapidly under the power of their attack. Their efficiency gave her none of the sense of triumph it usually did, and she realized suddenly that something about this particular raid felt off. It had since the beginning. Kothos wasn't a threat to the other worlds in their system. The Kothosians hadn't even discovered how to leave the surface of their own planet yet. She hadn't seen any of the infighting they were supposed to quell, and she hadn't been targeted once by enemy fire.

"What is our objective?" she asked her fleet-mate, Jax, who always seemed to know more of what was going on.

"Eliminate the enemy stronghold," he responded without any further explanation.

"Yes, but to what end?"

"Kothos is what we've been looking for."

Neun wanted to ask what Jax meant by that, but her squadron moved, readying their final strike. They aligned their weapons, focusing the charges together until the center of what remained of the building filled with more energy than it could hold, and collapsed.

"Next target?" Jax asked Command.

"Await new individual coordinates. Deliver clean burn. All quadrants."

"All quadrants?" Neun repeated. Surely that had been an error. Kothos wasn't a large world, but even so it held millions of lives.

"Clean burn. Assigned coordinates 12.26.657 to 896. Confirm."

It took her throat a few tries to swallow before she could respond. "Confirm."

*

Neun covered the distance she'd been assigned to faster than anticipated. She ignored the reddish-brown terrain as she flew, only focusing on it again when she was within a few kilometers of her destination.

Once again there were no signs of weapons, no signs of life. Just a structure, a place of worship if her files were correct. The building was a perfect circle, a shape considered sacred by the Kothosians. It had no roof, just one tall round wall, decorated ornately with murals.

Neun dropped down lower so she could get a better look at what she'd been ordered to destroy. The walls were covered with pictures from Kothosian holy texts. Neun's data scanners provided answers: the sky chariot, whose wheels were the twin moons; the great Maker, who watched all the world below; and the angels who carried the souls of the dead from Kothos to the sky kingdom.

There were four large angels drawn on the walls--one at each compass point. They were faceless and shining--painted in gold and silver with wings wide enough that their tips touched each other. In a move that was unnecessary, hovering as she was purely by the power of her thrusters and mag-lev drive, Neun spread her own wings wide, their shadow fitting neatly inside of the mural's drawing.

"Why would you believe such a thing?" she wondered out loud as she aimed her pulse-canon at the bottom of the wall and fired.

The building fell easily, the gold figures crumbling into dust as the energy beam shattered the bonds between the ancient stones. Neun reported her success to Command and pulled back to await her next target.

When it came, she programmed the new coordinates in and flew. Deep in thought about angels and gods, she didn't notice where she was headed until she recognized the familiar jagged edge of the ruined building right across from Llun's.

Disbelieving, she rechecked her orders to be sure. The building itself was housing only, and there were no life-signs other than Llun's.

"Clean burn," she said to herself, repeating the command as her boots settled heavily on the roof of the building. "Clean burn."

With the aid of her comm-link, she altered her helmet's read-out to show not just life-signs, but all organic matter and thermal measurements. She scanned the apartments below thoroughly. No other signs of life, but plenty of bodies, all of them cold.

She entered the building through the roof hatch and began to look into the apartments, forcing open the locked doors with her armored gloves. The bodies inside had all died from neatly targeted shots to the head. Standard protocol for phase one of a ground-level sweep. Neun walked back out to the stairwell and slowly down, her boots bowing the wooden steps beneath her. The Homeship always sent a ground-sweep before dispatching the flyers, but she'd never before seen them eliminate a civilian habitat. It didn't make any sense, and no matter how she sorted and shuffled the few facts she had about their mission there was no conclusion to reach but one: this was genocide. Sanctioned, at that.

"Kothos is what we're looking for," Jax had said. And if the inhabitants weren't what he'd meant, then it had to be the planet itself. She stopped by a broken window and peered outside, her scanners displaying the contents of the ground below. A rich earth, ripe with nutrients and subterranean rivers and far underneath that, mineral deposits. They stretched as far as she could see. Nyrzite in high enough concentrations that they'd have enough fuel to power the Homeship for a decade. Maybe two.

What we're looking for, Neun thought to herself. There was nothing more important to their survival than the Homeship. Kothos had the fuel they needed, breathable air and a people that, from what Neun had seen, weren't remotely prepared to defend themselves.

She turned to the right and, following the single life-sign to Llun's door, pushed it open. He'd listened to her and gone back to his parents. Their bodies were riddled with larval flesh-cleaning insects that sounded like wetness and decay. The burn marks on their foreheads were distorted, no longer neat little circles, but jagged stars.

Nobody had moved them. Llun couldn't, not by himself, and anybody he could've asked for help was dead. Ground sweeps that resulted in casualties always required the bodies be left untouched. This was so the survivors could dispose of them in accordance with their traditions.

It was the right thing to do. Her people were ruthless when they had to be, but they weren't monsters.

And yet, these bodies were still here. All the ground sweeps she'd followed before had left survivors--on Grivonag, on Herii-saf, on Jynar--but this time, the boy was the only one left. One small life-sign in a sea of the dead, Neun thought bleakly.

The body is just a cage for the soul. It's what her mother had told her once. The memory came rising up, unbidden, and Neun remembered her mother's tears, remembered her grandfather's empty eyes. She remembered chanting, and fire, and the glint of the small capsule of ash as it was shot out into open space.

The buzz of a small insect by her helmet brought her attention back to the present. She shooed it away and went to the boy's side, her pulse-gun charged and ready.

"Are we going to the sky now?" Llun asked, blinking up at her.

"Yes," she said. The pulse-gun cast off a strong green glow by her feet and on a whim, she flicked it off. Then she reached inside her helmet and unplugged her comm-link. She wouldn't hear any signals from Command or her fleet, and she'd be off the grid. At least, she hoped she would. The Homeship could see a grain of sand at the bottom of a sea, if it was looking for it.

Kneeling, she slipped her arms under Llun's and lifted him up, marveling at how light the boy felt.

"Do you have a suit?" she asked.

"A rain suit?"

She shook her head and tried to think of where they could go. Kothos itself would undergo the final phase of the clean burn in a matter of hours, so she had to get him off-world. Assisting anyone but her own people was illegal unless ordered, but at that moment Neun found she just didn't care.

There were emergency shuttles hovering just inside the atmosphere in case one of their suits failed, and that, she decided, was her best bet. She carried Llun back up to the rooftop and looked at the emergency guidance meter on her arm. It measured her distance and location relative to the Homeship so she could always find her way back, even in the case of signal failure. She'd memorized all the nearby shuttle locations relative to the Homeship, as standard survival protocol dictated. Three of them were waiting just inside the Kothosian atmosphere.

"Keep your face down, she said, covering Llun's head with her arm as best as she could. She set her auto-nav course for the closest shuttle, and engaged her thrusters.

They'd travelled maybe a mile when she heard the familiar hum of a pursuing flyer--the rest of her fleet, maybe. She resisted the urge to turn around and see. A pulse-blast whizzed by her helmet and she changed direction, diving steeply enough that it would be a challenge to follow her, even for experienced flyers.

A shot flew past her helmet and another cut through her leg armor, throwing her off course by a few feet.

Words came to her then, the memory reshaping itself as she hurtled through the thinning air. "Flesh to ash and ash to dust..." she recited. It was a death-prayer. She'd heard it only once as a girl, at her grandfather's end-ceremony. Insisting on the old customs, her mother had him incinerated, burned to ash before his body was set adrift in open space. The spirit, she said, could only be truly free once the body was undone. "...in the stars we put our trust."

Another shot hit her armor, the same spot where the last shot had struck. This time, it broke through the coolant layer. Her skin on fire, she looked down at Llun. His hair was coated in ice.

"Flesh to ash. Ash to dust."

A sudden blast shattered her helmet. Her vision started to fail and she couldn't lift her head, but she knew the difference between flying and falling.

Gray and yellow flecks sparked in and out and she saw for one long moment, not the red-brown of Kothos below, but the sterile white of the Homeship lab. She remembered a light above her head, a dull ache of pain in her middle and a face of a son so small and new that meant everything to her. And she remembered hands taking him away.

Tightening her arm around the boy, she groped for her pulse-gun and with three flicks set it to overload.

"In the stars."

A light as bright as the suns of Ka surrounded them and became fire.

We put our trust.

#

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# Gotta Watch Out For

# Enola Freeman

"They always used to say not to drink the water," Eddie's grandmother had often told her, "but it's really the dust you gotta watch out for."

Eddie used to lie awake at night and turn that over in her mind, wondering what under the stars her grandmother had meant. Water was nothing to not drink – without it, you'd get sick and die. And it was the purest thing out there, thanks to the scrubbers.

When she was about eleven, Eddie had thought she'd figured it out. Maw-Maw had been born on Homeworld and had moved to the Colony when she was a young woman. Perhaps the mysterious "they" had been in charge on Homeworld, and the water had had something wrong with it that the scrubbers couldn't remove – something that was only on Homeworld, not the Colony.

Now that she was older, Eddie understood about pollution and how it was still uncontrolled in places on Homeworld. Things were much different there than on the Colony, and sometimes Eddie was glad for that. Most of the time, she was thankful to be living somewhere where Homeworld was just a blue marble that rose and fell from sight every few days.

But there were times --- usually when she had grown restless and left the safety of the Underbelly to see the Visitors – that Eddie wondered what it would be like to live in a place so vast that billions of people could fit.

Now, the dust – that was another matter altogether. It would be so very easy to call the dust alive, though it wasn't. The simple fact that it got into anything and everything was more of a threat to the Colony than anything else, inside or outside.

That was Eddie's primary function – keeping the dust out of the Colony. It was no simple matter, as the mighty fans that made life inside the massive domes possible also generated wind outside the domes, throwing up the dust and drawing it inside.

However, Eddie couldn't do her job if she stayed in bed! She rolled over, blinking her eyes sluggishly as the hissing beep that had invaded her dreams revealed itself to be the intercom. She slammed her palm against the connector and barked, "What?"

"And a hearty good morning to you, too," her shift leader's voice barked back. He sounded more amused than annoyed, so she found herself relaxing. "You're running a bit late, Worley."

"I'm...." Eddie rolled over and groaned, throwing an arm over her eyes as if to block the light that wasn't yet on. "Please tell me it's not eight."

"It's not eight. Any more. That hour sailed a good twenty minutes ago."

"Joy," she sighed. "Okay, I'll be there soon as I grab a bite and get dressed."

"Maybe in reverse order?" her shift leader teased. "Although I'm sure Carson wouldn't mind the view...."

"Shut up, Herald. I'll be right there." She broke connection and sighed deeply before turning up the lights and simultaneously getting out of bed and grabbing the uniform she'd laid on the chair as she'd turned in.

Showering to shake off the night took a fraction of the time that it took to knock off the dust, so it didn't take more than ten or fifteen minutes to dress and twist her hair up into regulation. A quick dash to Commissary and she had a pair of hen-egg sandwiches that she swallowed in six bites each as she headed to morning brief.

Eddie wadded up the paper her sandwiches had been wrapped in, intending to put them in the micro-incinerator. But Carson's hoot of "It lives!" resulted in her throwing the wad at his head, instead. He laughed as it bounced off his red curls and into his hand, and tossed it into the micro-incinerator like a zero-grav hoop-ball star. "Double!" he laughed a second time.

"All right, crew, settle in." Herald walked to the briefing table and sat down at its head, patiently waiting while the rest of the crew sat down. Besides Eddie and Carson, the crew consisted of Chella, Miranda, and newcomer Lily. Herald looked over them all and said, "Today's assignment is the Number Four fan. Because it's one of the biggest, we can't afford to have it shut down more than an hour – hour and a half at the absolute outside. So everyone has to know their job inside out and do it without unnecessary chit-chat." His cobalt eyes fixed on Lily. "Shadow Worley – she'll show you what you need to know."

Carson spoke up, "Herald? Since we have a rookie today, will the cams be running?"

"Always," Herald said, and Eddie frowned at the strange look that flitted across Lily's face.

Eddie could have sworn she looked almost... gleeful.

The brief ended and Eddie tapped Lily's arm. "C'mon, I'll show you where to suit up. Each of us have our own area, but you'll be sharing mine till you're off rookie status. Standard procedure, you know."

"I know," Lily said. She looked over her shoulder as they walked. "Why did all of you call Supervisor Angelman 'Herald'? It sounds like a nickname...."

"That's because it is. His first name is Gabriel," Eddie informed her, and waited for the reaction.

She wasn't disappointed. Lily's jaw dropped and her eyes went huge and round. "Gabriel.... Angelman?"

Eddie laughed. "Born on Christmas Day, to boot. We've never figured out if his father was drunk or just had a very twisted sense of humor. Given the givens...."

"Herald fits," they chuckled together, and Lily shook her head all the way to the lockers.

"Now," Eddie said as she helped Lily into the pressurized suit, "Each part of this suit serves a purpose. This is your air hose – it connects to the tank on your back and here to your helmet." She connected it as she spoke. "I know you don't have a tank yet – we pick it up on our way out, when our helmets are sealed closed. Without that, you don't breathe. Inside the helmet is a voice-activated radio. It receives all the time once the helmet's sealed."

Lily nodded. "And this other hose?"

"That's your blowhose. It's attached to this toggle here, see?" She flicked the switch on Lily's shoulder, and the newcomer's eyes went wide as the hose vibrated in her hands. Eddie smiled. "The blowhose isn't attached to anything else, because it sucks up the dust and muck and sends it back to the surface where it belongs."

"And about that?" Lily asked as Eddie got into her own suit. "I've not been here long – if there's no air outside, how does moondust get into the colony into the first place?"

Eddie grinned. "First up, it's not 'moondust'. It's just 'dust'. For some of us, Terra is our moon and this is our homeworld." The second odd look – this time a pinched, pained one – crossed Lily's face for a split-second.

"Second of all," Eddie plowed on, "the fans that circulate the air in the domes so nobody chokes on still, stale air? They cause backwash out onto the surface. That tends to suck in the dust and slow the fans."

"That's why we have you 'vacuum rats'," Carson said as he stuck his head into the lockers. "To maintain the blows. Now, if you ladies are through powdering your noses – we've got work to do!"

Eddie wiggled her fingers at him as she pulled her gloves on. "You just wish you were small enough to do our job!"

He snorted. "Right. Me, do women's work. Be out in two." He withdrew, letting the door click shut behind him.

Eddie shook her head and sighed. "Don't let Carson get to you. He's ten kinds of jerk and three kinds of fool. But he's one of the best support techs alive, so Herald keeps him around."

Lily hesitantly asked, "Are you sure he's.... safe? I've heard stories of techs – forcing rats and impregnating them, so they can't do their jobs...."

"Some of those stories are true," Eddie admitted. "The things you don't learn till you're actually here is that it's called 'women's work' because we're better at it. We tend to run physically smaller and lighter, so we are faster and more efficient. And there have been cases of techs...." She groped for the word. "....overstepping their bounds. But Carson? He teases to high heaven, but he's all business when we're out there. I trust him with my life."

As they left the lockers, Lily caught her arm. "Wait – your suit has a button mine doesn't."

"That's because you're still a rookie. That button messages Central that we're done early and we're clear, so the fans can restart ahead of schedule." She tilted her head down the corridor. "Let's go get our tanks – and get you out into the vacuum. There's no place like it anywhere."

"Can't wait!" Lily's smile was genuine and excited. But for some reason, it sent a ribbon of ice sliding down Eddie's spine.

*

"Is that it?" Lily breathed.

Eddie smiled, loving the wide-eyed expression of awe on the newcomer's face. "That's it," she replied.

Miranda and Chella stepped up beside them, and Chella nodded at Eddie, who toggled her radio. "Control, we're in position."

"Acknowledged, Worley," Herald's calm voice said. "First rat, get ready. Worley and Harper, you're last in line."

"Copy, Control," Eddie said. "So, Lily, watch Miranda and Chella – and then we'll go together."

Lily nodded, and Eddie turned her attention back to the Number Four fan that they were to clean that shift.

Each of the massive fan's twenty-four blades was twenty feet long, and the central rotor was three times as large. The entire assembly rested in a circular metal casing that was halfway inside the city's protective dome and halfway out in the vacuum. As the team watched, the blades slowed their rotation and ground to a shuddering stop.

"Countdown has started, rats," Carson said. "You've got one hour."

Miranda activated her suit's thrusters and glided forward, through the blades and out into the vacuum. She attached magnetic clamps onto her feet and settled onto one of the blades. She walked along each side of twelve blades, sucking dirt and muck out into the vacuum. When she released the clamps, Chella headed out and did the same thing on the other twelve blades.

"Get ready, we're next," Eddie said. "We're doing the motors and casings."

Chella released her clamps, and Eddie said, "Here we go. Green toggle on your right shoulder activates the thrusters. You've had anti-grav training, right?"

"Right," Lily said, activating the thrusters and following Eddie through the blades. "Had to, to take this assignment."

"'Assignment'?" Eddie asked, frowning as they glided toward the motor housing in the center of the massive blades. "Being a vacuum rat, you mean?" That turn of phrase was very strange – Eddie had never heard their job called an "assignment" before. A "task", yeah. A "job", a "duty" – but an "assignment"?

Instead of answering Eddie directly, Lily slid the magnetic clamps into her hand and asked, "Worley, do you know what dust on Earth is made from?"

"Same as here," Eddie replied. "Bits of soil and crushed rock lifted from the ground and blown about. Here, it's lifted by the wash of the fans, since the dome is in vacuum. But on Earth, it's blown by the atmospheric winds."

"Not outside dust – inside dust. Inside a sealed home – no dirt can get in, but there's still dust everywhere. Why? Where does it come from? Do you know?"

"Well," Eddie said slowly as she got her own magnetic clamps ready to go. "You seem like you want to tell me – so, tell me."

Lily's laughter rang for a second before she replied. "It's us! Human beings – we're the dust!"

Eddie frowned. "Yeah," she said slowly. "Our dead skin cells, as well as the creatures that we carry about. That's Physical Science 103. Why---"

Herald's voice cut in. "Are you ladies going to get to work? We can only hold the fan another half hour!"

Eddie chuckled. "Understood, Herald. Come on, Rookie. Time to get started."

Lily took an audible deep breath and replied, "Yes, it is. Now or never."

"Okay, then. First of all, we---" Eddie broke off as she registered the sound level of Lily's thrusters. "Back off, Lily, you're too close to me. We'll collide or tangle up!"

"I know," was all the warning Eddie got before a solid weight hit her suit and propelled her forward before she was wrenched to the side and pitched onto the external housing for the Number Four fan. "What the blazes—"

"Harper!" Herald bellowed into their ears. "What in the seven hells are you doing?"

"What I must," Lily replied, and Eddie grunted as her magnetic clamps were wrested from her grip. Lily used her shock to grasp both of her wrists and slam the clamps down, one behind the other, pinning her arms to the metal housing. Eddie kicked out, but Lily was too fast and her ankles joined her wrists.

"Control!" Eddie yelped as she felt Lily reaching around to the front of her suit, sliding her hand between fabric and metal, groping for something. "Control, I'm pinned to the housing! Harper is---"

Eddie's sentence ended in a cry as Lily's fingers made contact and depressed a button on her suit – one she had and Lily didn't. "Control!" she wailed in horror as she felt the massive fan shudder to life.

"I'm sorry, Eddie," she heard Lily say as she felt the other woman's presence retreat from her back. "This way you won't be hurt. I owed you that much, at least. This is for the best, and you'll see it someday."

"Power down!" Herald and Carson were yelling the same idea at the same time. "Get that damn fan shut off! Power it down NOW!"

Miranda and Chella, trapped inside, were screaming for Lily to stop, not to do this, to think about what she was doing, stop, please stop....

Over it all, Eddie heard a woman screaming wordlessly. She only became aware when her throat started aching that it was her own voice. She saw Lily drift toward the fan's wash and hesitate. She saw the rookie's hand reach for the green thruster toggle. She heard Lily's voice yell, "Sola Terra!"

Eddie turned her head to face the dome and squeezed her eyes shut so hard she felt tears leak from them. She heard the screams – male and female – intensify and a sound she would never be able to adequately describe. She felt the fan shudder its resistance.... and then settle into the normal vibration of operation.

"Control," she rasped brokenly, beginning to sob. ".....C-Control...."

"We know, Eddie," Herald said, his own voice shaking. "Hang on. We're coming."

It seemed like five minutes short of forever before the fan shut down a second time. Two vacuum rats that Eddie didn't recognize arrived and unclamped her from the housing, guiding her back through the gore-splattered blades that two entire teams were now cleaning.

She was numb and shaking – though trying to move on her own – until she was led into Medical and saw Miranda and Chella being helped out of their suits.

Their red-splattered suits.

It was the final straw, and Eddie felt her body sink as her overwhelmed mind let go to the chorus of her name being yelled. By who, she no longer cared.

*

Eddie came out of her bedroom, drying her hair, to hear the television console blaring.

"....a member of the Sola Terra Society. Also known as the STS, this fringe group believes that since humanity evolved on Earth, it should remain entirely contained on Earth. It is as yet unknown why the group targeted Luna Colony Five, but the Council is determined to prevent further---"

"You know what the doctor said," Eddie chided gently.

Chella sighed and switched it off. "Not my fault they keep covering it," she retorted. "Apparently we're news. You'd think after three weeks they'd move onto other stories."

"Yeah, well, we just happened to be the biggest thing to happen in the Colony since Ambassador Godwin gave birth in Commissary!"

Chella barked a surprised laugh. "Wasn't she supposed to be a man?"

"Apparently even she thought she was!" The incident had been nearly five decades ago, and it was still merry teasing fodder on the colonies. Eddie shared a grin with her new roommate, then asked softly, "How are you today?"

"It's a good day," Chella said. "I'm up and dressed. Watching the news was not my brightest move, though. Killed my appetite."

Eddie rubbed her friend's shoulder. She had brought Chella into her quarters, so they could heal together. Carson and Herald had done the same. Miranda had her husband, and all of them were working together with a team of specialists and law enforcement to heal and help make it so that no other team of vacuum rats went through this, ever again.

"It's a good day for me, too," Eddie said. "Maybe we're moving forward."

"I know we are," Chella nodded. "I'm looking forward to the day I can stomach the thought of actually going back to work. Today's your day, huh?"

"A few hours, yeah," Eddie said. "We'll see how I do."

Chella turned to face her, looking right into her eyes. "Even if you have a bad day there – you've beat this by just going back." She took a deep breath. "I'm going back, too. Soon."

"Good," Eddie couldn't help smirking. "Cause I heard tell Carson's picked up a hose. You know it's gotta be driving him insane, doing what he called 'woman's work'."

The teammates and roommates shared a laugh, then Eddie squeezed Chella's shoulder and walked out of their quarters, heading for her first shift since that terrible day.

As she walked through the hallways, she couldn't help but think of her Terran-born grandmother and wonder what she would have made of all this. She had often said it was the dust that you had to watch out for.

Well, the dust had nothing on her fellow humans. Dust was predictable in its effects.

Humans were, at times, simply insane.

#

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#  Nobody's Darlings

# by downjune

The scent of another warm-blooded animal drifted by intermittently on the hot desert breeze until she could no longer ignore it, no matter that it was the peak heat of the day and she shouldn't be out.

Not that she was vain—but another molt was an unnecessary use of nanocels.

Her nose told her that whatever it was bleeding, so she couldn't just leave it. If it died, it would draw predators she'd like to avoid. If the animal wasn't sick, she should be that predator and go after it first.

To try to prevent the adaptation, she shrugged into a shirt and pants—loose and light against her skin—and wound a scarf around her head. She laced up her boots to keep the bottoms of her feet from thickening again, and stepped out into the sun in search of the tantalizing scent.

When she'd followed her nose maybe a quarter mile from her camp, she recognized the smell of human sweat—male human. Her heart kickstarted in her chest and she had to force herself to keep an even pace. Even for her, jogging in this weather was a bad idea.

The sun beat down on her headscarf without mercy. It soaked into her back and heated her skin—life-giving and stealing all at once. But where she needed the sun to power her nanocels, this human would not benefit, even from limited exposure.

A leathery old carrion bird had already begun to circle overhead when she spotted feet and legs tucked most of the way beneath a shallow rock overhang.

"Hello? I'm here to help—do you need help?" When he didn't answer, she came a few steps closer and tried again in Mandarin, Spanish, and French.

He didn't so much as twitch his shoe—impractical shoes with thin soles and canvas uppers. His pants at least were sturdier, but they were open at the ankle, allowing any number of creatures access to his skin. Finally crouching down at the mouth of his makeshift shelter, she found him curled on his side, unconscious.

He'd taken off his outer shirt—the same sturdy material as his trousers—and tied it around his head for protection from the sun, leaving his arms bare. As she leaned in to get a closer look, she saw that his shoulders were badly burned. His palms were bloody and caked with sand where they lay curled against his legs. She'd have to clean them or the sand could cause permanent scarring.

Huffing out a breath, she grabbed him by his ankles and pulled him out into the sun. She shuffled around to his head, leaned over him to shade his face and get a better look at him. He was young like her, probably younger. His hair was black as a silhouette and his mouth was red as blood. His white skin had burned unevenly and she could see it had the pallor of a man who didn't ever see the sun, not even from the protection of the city. He'd been in the penal colony, then. That explained the clothes—it was a uniform.

"I'm going to pick you up," she said. She spoke in English again, then tried Portuguese, Urdu, and Swahili, just because it'd been a long time since she'd spoken to anyone besides snakes and scorpions, and she'd spent all that time studying in her Program. She'd always liked the stretch of different languages in her mouth—it still burned that she'd been sent somewhere she wouldn't need them.

He didn't stir, not until she bent down and lifted him partway onto her shoulder. When he was half-draped down her back, he twitched and then gasped, shoving away from her and falling backward onto the sand with a grunt of pain.

His hair, damp and curling with sweat, stuck to his forehead and his eyes flew open wide. They were all pupil until he blinked and they shrank to pinpricks, revealing pale gray irises.

"I'm taking you to shelter," she told him. "You'll die out here."

His eyes finally focused on her face as he blinked and then shook his head. "The fuck—what the fuck are you?" He stared openly until she realized it was her appearance that had him so wide-eyed.

And she supposed it would. She hadn't seen a human in several adaptive cycles—she didn't even know how many steps removed she'd grown from standard human features. More like stupid human features. This boy's skin didn't protect him—it made him vulnerable. And all that water he was losing through his pores would dehydrate him completely in less than twenty-four hours.

"I'm Aevy," she said.

"No, what are you?"

She blinked at him with both sets of eyelids and smirked as he swallowed thickly. "I'm a human-nanotech amalgam. My human systems are enhanced by nanocels which aid and expedite my adaptation to the surrounding climate. I can survive this heat—you won't unless I find shelter for you. So unless you can walk, I'm going to carry you back to mine."

"I can walk," he said in a rush, but when she hauled him to his feet by his wrists, his knees barely held him up. Gripping him across his ribs and with one of his arms around her neck, she unhooked a water carrier from her belt and brought it to his mouth. He drank a few sips greedily, licked carefully at his cracked lips, and made a small sound of anguish when she took it away.

"You can have more later. Let's go."

Her trek out to find him had been quick and painless—her sharp nose and quick eyes had guided her to him by the shortest route. The walk back was considerably less pleasant and took more than twice as long. She had to give each threat they passed—nests of all kinds, poisonous plant-life, uneven ground—an inefficiently wide berth because if she didn't, he would have stumbled right into them. His head lolled against her shoulder and his feet dragged and stumbled across the rocky ground, but his breath was a warm puff of air against her throat and that, more than anything, reminded her of the importance of her burden.

The first human she'd seen in three years and only the fifth in nearly five years of exile.

When his head rolled forward and his body went limp against her side, she paused long enough to jostle him back awake. "Hey. Hey, do you want me to carry you? This would definitely be faster if I carried you."

The arm around her neck tightened as he came awake and she was pleased to note that at least he had some muscle. "No, I told you I can walk," he mumbled.

"You have to stay awake then. I'll talk to you—how does that sound? I haven't talked to a human in three years, so I'm—well, I'm a little curious." The boy grunted in answer. "We can start with your name. Will you tell me your name?"

He licked his lips. "I'll tell you if I can have more water."

She weighed the delay against her curiosity and the latter won, as it often did. Every opportunity not seized meant less data to record. Because his hands were still a bloody mess, she held the container for him and allowed him to drink a bit longer than last time.

"Everyone calls me Kiddr," he said when she'd taken the bottle from his lips.

"Everyone at the colony?"

He hesitated. "Yeah."

"Is that what you wanted them to call you?"

"Better than Kit." He shuddered.

They started to walk again and Kiddr did a better job of keeping himself upright. "Is Aevy your name or your designation?" he eventually asked. "The nano-kids all come from Programs, right? Did you get names?"

She walked him around the pile of rock she often used as high ground for observation. She'd been able to see Kiddr's shelter from there. "My designation was AEv-F16. Adapt-Evo Female 16. All the girls were called Aevy."

"What about the boys?"

"Aevn. So I haven't really thought of it as my name. I could now though, I guess. No one else out here with it."

"You've been on your own all this time? No one else from your Program? I thought you were designed to cooperate and form social bonds and all that."

"It's an exploratory mission," she answered quickly. "The teams check in more with the cities. How did you get out here, anyway? The colony is—very far underground." She didn't say, and very heavily guarded.

A harsh, scratchy sound like a bark escaped his throat and she turned to find him smiling. His face, even splotchy with sunburn, was pleasing when he smiled—angular but still boyish. "The colony spat me out. I was a lousy laborer anyway."

She figured trading in half-truths was good enough for now so she didn't press him on it.

Maybe that short, ugly laugh had used the last of his already depleted energy because he didn't talk after that. He sagged against her side and mechanically put one foot in front of the other until they reached her camp, set on the north side of another rocky outcropping.

As they came under the shade of the rocks and approached her shelter, Kiddr let out a huffed exhalation. "This is it? This is a tent."

Instantly defensive, her shoulders came up as she took in the cobbled-together structure of her home. "I built all this for myself from what I was able to salvage. I didn't have anything when I started my assignment. All you managed was to cut up your hands and crawl under a rock."

He had the decency to look at least a little embarrassed as he pushed away from her and lowered himself gracelessly to the ground.

The desert wasn't entirely empty. Old settlements, abandoned when the climate grew too harsh, dotted the landscape—full of useful things that a girl with a near-infinite ability to adapt could put to use if she knew how. Aevy had learned quickly—what she could travel with and what weighed her down, indispensable items and frivolities.

Thick nylon and a slim plastic frame formed the outside structure of her shelter. Inside was her sleeping mat, a camp stove, her digital recorder, a backpack full of items too large for her belt, and a supply of food and water that would not support the both of them.

As if he'd read her mind, Kiddr snorted. "I'm still going to die here. You obviously need less water than I do—but I'll use it all if I stay. Hell, I'll need it all just to clean my hands."

Now on the cooler sand inside the tent, she unlaced her boots and kicked them off, wriggled her toes in the rough gravel just to feel the grit on the bottoms of her toughened feet. "I'll get more. I know where to find it, don't worry. I'm good at finding things—useful things." Tugging the pack over, she rooted around for the med supply kit she'd picked up in her last expedition to one of the nearby towns. "And I have something that'll get the sand out of those abrasions, though it's going to hurt."

She opened the med kit and grabbed both the foaming disinfectant and a roll of gauze. "You should get the worst of it off first if you can."

Nodding, he untied the shirt from around his head and gingerly held it out to her between two fingers. She gave it a good shake first before using it to wipe away the sand caked onto his bloody hands.

At her first touch, he flinched and sucked in a hissed breath. "Sorry," she said. "Hold still and I'll be done quicker."

"Just do it," he said between his teeth.

Getting a good grip on his wrist, she rubbed at the raw flesh of his palms until she could finally see the shapes of the cuts. He'd caught himself in a fall by the looks of it—scraped the meat of his hands against sharp rock. His fingers were in decent shape so it seemed he hadn't had to claw his way up from the colony.

When it was done to her satisfaction, she didn't give him time to recover. Keeping a steady grip, she sprayed the disinfectant across first one palm, then the other. Instantly it bubbled and foamed up and she had to physically hold him still as he flinched away from the burn. She couldn't imagine displays of vulnerability went unpunished in the colony and Kiddr seemed to have learned that lesson well because only a few tears leaked from his eyes when he closed them and he kept the choked sound of pain firmly behind his lips.

There was nothing for it except to use a little water to flush out the rest of the sand once the bubbles had worked it loose, and when that was done, he flopped back on the ground in relief.

"Shit," he gasped to the ceiling of the tent.

"Keep your hands off the ground," she warned him. "Let me wrap them first." In answer, he lifted both hands into the air and held them there while she carefully wound the roll of gauze from his wrist and up around his thumb to just below his fingers.

As she worked, she couldn't quite get past how different her skin was from his. Had she ever been that pale? Or that smooth? When she'd finished one hand and moved to the other, he touched her forearms with the very tips of his fingers. Not wanting to bunch the gauze while she wrapped it, she didn't draw away from him, but looked him right in the eye in open challenge.

"Sorry," he murmured. "I've just never seen anyone like you before. Everyone's very pale in the colony. In the city, they're not much better."

"Your skin is very impractical," she said. "First it will burn, then flake off, and eventually turn to poison when the cancer starts."

"I know that," he snapped. "You think I don't know that? You think the colony doesn't know that?"

Contrite, she kept her eyes on the task at hand. "Will no one be looking for you?" she eventually asked.

He shook his head, mouth pressed in a hard line.

As she finished, the sun sank low in the sky, already well-behind her rock and on its way to the horizon. Kiddr dozed on the ground, flushed and sweaty, but clearly so exhausted that the need for rest over-rode any discomfort. Or, she supposed, maybe he was used to the heat of the colony.

She watched him from the entrance of her shelter where a breeze lifted her clothes against her body. She felt a little warm herself, which was unusual. Her nanocels regulated her body temperature so that she didn't overheat in the sun or freeze in the cold desert night. They absorbed solar energy and kept her warm when she hunted after dark, yet now they seemed to hum beneath her skin with excess life.

Perhaps her discovery was the cause—a human man, vulnerable as a newborn—someone to care for and protect.

Her eyes narrowed at that thought—insidious and difficult to eradicate as a virus. Aevy hadn't had cause to doubt her own mind in five years. She searched out the truth of her feelings as Kiddr shifted onto his side and pulled his bandaged hands closer to his chest. The line between her human will and her Program had always been easy to establish. The one between her mind and her instincts less so—particularly in recent years when she hadn't needed to separate them.

Before she could reflect further upon the possible necessity of reestablishing that separation, she picked up the scent of a pack of sand dogs converging on her camp like it had a blinking neon sign over the tent—or inside it, more accurately.

He'd wrapped himself in his bloody shirt and the whole tent smelled like iron. Saving Kiddr was surely one of the stupidest things she'd ever done. Where was her pressing impulse to survive and evolve now?

"Wake up. Kiddr, wake up." The name in her mouth made him more real—something she'd acknowledged and classified, though she had no intention of recording any of this.

Kiddr roused himself quickly enough. She doubted he'd ever slept heavily as a prisoner. He winced as he pushed himself upright on his hands. "What? What's wrong?"

"Sand dogs. Met any of those yet?"

He shoved himself up to his feet so quickly that she took a step back. "You got fire? Something to throw? A gun?"

"I know how to handle sand dogs."

"Great. So, you got any of that stuff?"

She'd dug a pit for her cooking fire just outside her tent but hadn't tended it that day because she hadn't needed it. Most of her food was dried. Still, when she went out to poke at it, she was relieved to find a thin trail of smoke rising from a few lit coals.

"No, I don't have a gun," she grumbled as she fed bits of brush to the reviving fire.

Kiddr paced behind her, fiddling with the homemade sling she'd handed him. He held it clumsily enough it was obvious he'd never used one. "I'll take the sling," she said. "You stay close to the fire. It's you they smell, not me."

"What, so you've just evolved to not smell like prey?"

"That, and I also taste like robot. Find me some rocks—no shortage of those around."

He did as he was told without comment, and she wondered how long he'd been in the colony—whether he'd gotten better or worse at taking orders because of his time there.

Drawing her bone knife from its sheath at her waist, she tested its edge. Her hope was to just scare the dogs off rather than kill them—prove that she and the human should be feared, not hunted. Sand dogs weren't very good eating, anyway—too tough. Much like her.

"Aevy!"

She grabbed the biggest piece of brush that had just caught fire and rounded the side of her shelter in time to see Kiddr throw a rock at a flicker of movement in the fading light. Sand dogs blended in perfectly to the landscape—hence the name—and with his torn up hands, Kiddr didn't come close to hitting it.

"Don't tear your bandages," she scolded quietly, handing him the branch. "Hold this." Bending down, she picked up the best of the rocks he'd gathered and slid them into the pouch at her hip. "Come on, let's stay close to the fire."

As they came back around the outcropping, the dogs converged, smelling easy prey. Pushing Kiddr behind her, she loaded the sling, swung it in a controlled arc, and let the rock fly. It clipped one of the dogs in the rear and it yelped before darting off behind some brush. It didn't leave, though, probably waiting for its chance to take advantage while another of the pack moved in.

The dogs must have had a rough year because when they materialized out of the gloom again, they moved with deadlier purpose than she'd ever seen. As desert predators went, they usually preferred an easy meal to a difficult one.

Aevy had time to suck in a quick breath before she and Kiddr were surrounded. One of her rocks hit a dog in the snout. The next missed as the dog leapt straight up in the air. Then it was on her and the sling became a chew toy. She managed to get the rope between its jaws by holding both ends and shoving away from herself, but not before the dog's sharp nails gouged at her forearms. She hissed her fury and bared her teeth, looking the dog right in the eye.

The roar of the flaming branch rushed behind her as Kiddr shouted in alarm and another of the dogs yelped. She smelled burning fur and was distracted just enough that the sling came free from her hand when the dog shook it like a rat. She let go and was about to draw her knife when she heard the pounding of feet and Kiddr tackled the dog, landing on top of it in the dust.

It screamed and whined and managed to wriggle free, just as its pack-mates joined it. They all retreated, limping away with their tails down, the smell of fresh blood and singed flesh trailing after them.

Kiddr grabbed the sling from where it'd fallen, scrambled to find a rock, and hurled it after them. And even though it only struck the dirt several feet behind them, the dogs picked up the pace of their retreat.

When they'd faded into the dark, he dropped the sling and kicked through the dust until he found a bloody shiv, murmuring something under his breath that sounded like

There you are.

"Where'd you get that?" she asked, rolling upright and brushing sand from her clothes.

He slid her a sidelong look before wiping the blade on his shirt then tucking it away again. "It's mine, fair and square."

"I don't want it—but if you come at me with it, mine's bigger."

He gave her some kind of grin, then walked right up and hunkered down next to her. "You hurt?" he asked, nodding down at her arms. She shook her head, but he still stuck close. He didn't touch her until she held her hands up to the glow of the fire. Then, he flipped her hands back and forth so the light showed both the outside and inside of her arm. The Sand dogs' nails weren't as sharp as claws, and her skin was pretty tough these days, so they hadn't done much damage. She could already feel her body busily consuming any damaged skin and replacing it.

Kiddr's pale eyes glinted in the firelight as he watched her. "What do they feel like—the nanocels?"

"Like I'm eating myself. And making myself."

"Gross. And isn't that, like, cheating? You're supposed to adapt and evolve, right—show humans how to do it? But we aren't gonna have those."

Aevy rubbed her hand over her tingling skin. "I adapt quickly, but I can still die. I was expensive to make so my Program wanted to be sure I'd lived long enough to keep evolving."

"Wow, so will you age? Or will your nanocels eat the old parts of you to keep you young?"

She shook her head and tried to stand, then started in surprise when he hooked his arm through hers and pulled her up.

He was only a little taller than her, she realized when he'd straightened to his full height—small for a human male. "I—don't know. I left my Program a long time ago."

The tingling was all through her now, like her body repairing one of her first sunburns. But that wasn't right—she'd barely been hurt. She was thrumming with it, and her insides fluttered and ached like they wanted something, like she was looking for something—seeking it, gravitating toward it.

"No." Aevy shoved him away from her with all of her strength and sent him sprawling. He avoided landing on his hands, instead skidding to a stop on his side.

"What—"

"No, stay away from me. I'm not doing this—you can't make me do this!"

"Do what?" He moved to get up but froze when she took a threatening step toward him. "Aevy—"

"Don't call me that. Don't talk to—don't even look at me. In fact—"

She snatched the sling up from the ground. When she came at him, he tried to scramble away, but she pushed him down and pinned him with her knees while she bound his hands together with the length of rope. Then she reached into his shirt and stole the shiv from its hidden pocket.

"Hey, that's mine! Aevy, what the hell are you doing?"

"Don't."

It was worse being this close to him. Even his stale sweat smelled good—the flush of his skin, the whites of his eyes, the wiry strength of his body. Before she could stop herself, she leaned down and breathed him in, tucking her face between his jaw and shoulder. He was tense and still underneath her.

"You stay away from me," she hissed.

Even though it about killed her to do it, she pushed away and got to her feet, staggered into her tent and closed the flap. She dropped down onto her sleeping mat, curled onto her side away from him, and closed her eyes, hand across her belly as though she could press the ache away. She turned the shiv over in her other hand, thumbed the blade, and wished she could surgically remove this part of herself.

The desert was nearly silent and she could hear as he shifted around in the dirt—could practically picture him awkwardly trying to sit up. He scooted in the direction of the fire, making small noises of exertion and Aevy wanted to bleach herself with sun and sand until she could disappear into the desert like those dogs had.

"I wish you'd tell me what's going on," Kiddr finally said, his voice a young, plaintive whine.

She covered her ears with her hands but his voice came through anyway.

"I wasn't going to—I'd be an idiot to want to hurt you, Aevy. You're the only reason I'm still alive. Do you—do you want to know how I got to that rock you found me under? How I got out of the colony and how my hands got chewed up? I didn't escape—I wasn't out there for more than a day."

Aevy didn't answer but he took her silence for the invitation it was. Hesitantly, she pulled her hands from her ears and rolled over on the mat so she could see his silhouette through the tent wall.

"Every year the colony needs to free up beds to make room for new inmates. I don't know if you know this, but the cities are getting too crowded—and there's nowhere to go except the colony if you can't buy your way out, up north. So they get rid of the oldest and most expensive inmates. They bring them up and dump them in the desert. For the old men—it's the quickest way to die. Better than working until you drop from exhaustion or disease. You should see them—they're so relieved when they get on the shuttle."

"Then why were you on it? You can't be older than twenty-two." The words were out of her mouth before she could seal her lips, her curiosity always, always getting the better of her.

"They put the worst troublemakers on the shuttle, too—the ones always in solitary, the ones starting fights. And they take volunteers. Guess which I am."

"A volunteer," she said quietly because there was no question.

"The old men give up everything to the biggest guys—their clothes, their shoes. It's quicker for them that way. They lie down in whatever shade they can find and wait. It doesn't take long. We're let go with no food or water."

"No supplies. No help," Aevy murmured. Kiddr paused, waiting for her. "My nanocels kept me alive because they're powered by the sun. I burned and burned and they gave me new skin—thicker skin. They turned my dead cells into food and moisture until I learned how to find it for myself. They healed me until all my human weakness was gone."

Kiddr picked up the story again as if they told the same one. "We landed and I ran because I knew—there's only so much you can do with extra clothes. There's no water except for what's—what's—"

"In you."

"So I ran. Two guys chased me, but I'm a good runner. I could always outrun my sisters even though they were older and taller." He shifted again and cleared his throat. His voice was the kind of rough that said he was thirsty. Aevy felt a pang of guilt about that but didn't move. The ache in her gut had eased a little, though her body still hummed with an energy she didn't know how to be rid of.

"I ran, but I tripped and fell down a—I guess it was an old riverbed." Aevy nodded, though he couldn't see her do it. "The land is so flat, I didn't even see it until I was in it. Cut my hands all to hell coming down the bank. And the one guy who'd stayed behind me, who hadn't given up, he came down after me. I had my knife—I always have it. Maybe he knew somehow and that's what he wanted."

"Did you kill him?"

He hung his head. "I couldn't. I cut him—bad enough. But I left him there and kept running until I dropped. So I'm not gonna hurt you, Aevy. If you had any sense, you'd have left me there. I'll only slow you down."

She sucked in a slow breath and finally sat up. She thought she understood the problem now, and hiding in her tent wouldn't make it go away. On her way outside, she grabbed a canteen and didn't get too worked up about the happy satisfaction she felt at Kiddr's obvious relief. He hummed his appreciation when she tipped a few swallows into his mouth.

His hands stayed tied, though, as she settled across the fire from him.

"It's not about strength and ruthlessness," she said. "It's smarts and speed and resourcefulness. And you have those, which is why I'm—why my—" Her throat closed. "It's why I'm like this."

Aevy took a few deep breaths as her pulse kicked up again. It'd been a long time since she'd had to explain this to someone, and she reminded herself that Kiddr was not her Coordinator. She wasn't accountable to him. "I was supposed to be part of a team—a two-person team."

Even though she had new skin—even though there was nothing of her that he'd touched, she could still remember the feel of Aevn's hands on her, his voice in her ear, pushing her hair back from her neck.

"How much do you—do you know about AEv teams? What we're for?"

Kiddr shrugged uneasily. "Just what we already talked about—you go to the harsh climates humans can't survive and you evolve faster than we do so we can learn from you before we die out."

Aevy nodded. "That's most of it. But the part you're missing is—we make the next generation, too. I may be full of robots, but I'm not a robot. The tissue the nanocels regenerate when I adapt is human—or humanoid. My—my children won't have nanocels; they'll be the organic version of me and my—my partner. And my job is—was to make as many offspring as I could. As many different versions as I could. One every two years so that they'd all be different, each one better than the last as I got—as we got better at surviving and adapting."

Kiddr's mouth had fallen open and his eyebrows had nearly lifted to the curls of dark hair stuck to his forehead. If she hadn't felt like she might throw up, Aevy would have laughed. When their eyes met over the fire, he closed his mouth with a click of teeth.

"I mean—I guess I get why that'd be a good way to measure your progress but—"

"But do you have any idea what it would be like running around the desert pregnant all the time? With small children? With—with a partner who thinks of you as his personal—" Her throat closed again and even though her tear ducts had long-ago shifted into mucus membranes that required less moisture, she started to cry—a dry, useless hitching of breath.

"Your partner—your teammate, he—"

"My Aevn—AEv-m16—was a monster. He should never have been in the Program. His parents should never have been cleared as donors."

"You don't have to talk about him if you don't want to," Kiddr said with a panicky look, like she was about to tell him something he couldn't stomach.

Aevy bared her teeth in an ugly grin. This was the only part she ever wanted to tell.

"When he tried to start our assignment early because he wanted a child as a 'baseline for comparison,' I made sure he'd never have any DNA to contribute to anybody."

"You killed him?" Kiddr's eyes were huge.

"No."

Somehow they got even bigger as he pulled his knees together and hooked his bound hands over them.

"What I'm saying is," she said after a deep breath, "I understand why you always have a knife on you. And I understand why you ran. And I—I think my 'cels understand, too. Even though I was reassigned to a solo mission, the drive is still there. The nanocels know what they're supposed to do, even if it's the last thing I want."

Kiddr blinked at her without comprehension for several seconds before a flush filled in the patches of skin on his face that weren't already sunburned.

"It's not something I can control," she said quickly. "AEv-m16 was supposed to be my mate. But just because we turned out to be—incompatible doesn't mean my body's not still looking. And you—" She felt a rush of heat in her cheeks as her 'cels began to thrum a little louder. "You are suitable."

Just as quickly as it had come, all the color drained from his face.

"Which is not good news for either of us," she continued, determined to see this miserable conversation through to the end. "But seeing as you'll die without me, and I was going a little crazy talking to snakes and scorpions instead of people, we need to figure out some way to work around this. I'm not leaving you behind, but I am not having your children, either."

Kiddr held up his bound hands. "You didn't actually need to clarify that last part. I assumed."

His mouth twitched in what might have been a smile and Aevy felt a rush of near-hysterical relief sweep through her with such force that she laughed aloud. It turned giddy when Kiddr joined her and she went back over her last words to him. They did sound a little ridiculous the second time around and, before long, she could barely breath through the stitch in her ribs and the ache in her cheeks she was laughing so hard.

When her hiccupping breaths finally slowed, she rolled back onto the hard ground and looked up at the stars. The air was so parched that not a scrap of moisture obscured them and no ambient light aside from their fire dimmed them. They were as stunning and eternal as ever.

"I still don't know what to do about my instinct to mate with you," she blurted. "It might go away if you were less competent. But that would be self-defeating."

Kiddr huffed another tired laugh. "Did you feel this way about your Aevn?"

"No."

"Even though he was your match—like, basically made for you."

"He was very symmetrical. And he passed all the assessment tests with high marks. Definitely stronger and faster than you."

"So you should have wanted to—to mate with him. But you didn't."

"No. Even with his good symmetry, his face was repugnant to me. All the girls thought he was handsome, but I knew him, so—"

"So you had a sense of self-preservation and you hated his guts. Aevy, have you considered that maybe you just—maybe you just like me? A little?"

She snorted.

"Maybe...maybe it's not your 'cels getting you excited, but you getting your 'cels excited."

"Why would it be that? What evidence do you have?" She rolled her head on the ground to look at him through the dwindling fire.

"Well. When you stand close to me, my heart beats faster and I feel flushed all over. And so far as I know, I don't have any robots telling me I need to mate."

"Hm." She returned her gaze to the stars. "I'll consider the possibility, though it will be difficult to test. I can't easily isolate the nanocels' programming from my own instincts."

Kiddr nodded and then yawned hugely. "You can try in the morning. Don't you ever sleep?"

"Not very much, no. You can. I'll keep watch in case the dogs come back."

Kiddr hesitated, then slipped free of the sling as though she'd only wound it around his wrists without tying it. He gave her a lopsided grin before curling onto his side, face toward the fire, and closing his eyes. Within a minute or so his features went soft with sleep and his breath evened out.

After watching for a bit longer, Aevy added some more brush to the fire and fetched a blanket from the tent. She spread it over him gently so he wouldn't wake up and settled in for the night to think.

*

Kiddr awoke with the sun in his eyes. He awoke tangled in a blanket that smelled like warm sand. And he awoke by himself.

Flailing upright, he accidentally kicked dirt and debris into the fire pit, but the flame was already burned down. He winced as the gauze over his abused palms caught on the ground and pulled the blanket around his shoulders more carefully. His heart beat a wild rhythm in his chest as he struggled to slot the last few days' events into the right order—his impulsive decision to volunteer for the desert run, his desperate sprint from the drop site, landing in the river bed crushed beneath the man who would kill him for the water he had in his flesh, punching the shiv between his ribs.

Aevy.

"Aevy?" He twisted around where he sat, squinted into the sun looking for her. The air was already heating for the day. It would drive him into the tent soon, where all he could do was lie on her mat and sweat.

Better than the stifling tunnels of the colony, the crush of bodies, and the stench of disease and hopelessness. Better than another day in the mine or the cafeteria or laundry.

Kiddr sucked in great lungfuls of clean dry air and very carefully did not panic.

Still, when he got to his feet and made for the entrance to Aevy's tent, he nearly collapsed in relief when he saw her approaching from the south, morning sun lighting her up.

For someone so interesting and remarkable to him, she was actually very monochromatic. Her hair and eyes and skin were all the color of the desert—shades of brown and gold—and her clothes were old and faded enough to match. She wore a red sleeveless shirt and belted denim, cropped just below her knees. Her feet were bare and her hair whipped about in its tail at the back of her head. Her eyes were set wider than his, her nose flatter, her teeth sharper. Her fingers and toes ended in tough, short claws—probably for climbing and killing things.

He didn't want to imagine how any of it had felt as her 'cels consumed and remade her into something new—something monstrous. Something better.

She caught him staring and tilted her head, did some staring of her own. Even though Kiddr had always considered himself decent looking for a city kid, out here he was the alien. Aevy just made more sense. His pulse kicked up again for no good reason and they both looked away from one another.

"I got you some breakfast," she said, holding out a snake with its head cut off.

He'd definitely eaten worse in the colony. Still. "You should probably show me how to cook it."

Aevy nodded and stepped around him toward the fire. "I think we should stay here for the heat of the day so you can rest and rehydrate. I need to sleep a little, too. Then we should move when the sun gets low." Kiddr followed her to the fire, watched as she hunkered down and sliced the snake wide open.

"Where are we going?"

"Someplace that's not going to kill you inside of a day. There are some old settlements not too far from here with wells that aren't quite dry."

"What about your mission?"

"I'll record everything relevant to the mission."

He wondered where he fit into that and decided to build up the fire again to roast the snake instead of asking.

When it was cooked, she presented it to him like a gift or some kind of peace offering. "Thanks, Aevy," he said, "but you're going to share this with me, right?"

She blinked at him, first the translucent inner eyelid, then the thick outer one. "Yeah. Okay, yeah."

#

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#  One in a Million Motes of Dust

# Anne-Marie Byrne

Today we know space dust can be created in several ways, but in most of it came from supernovae. It's the way of the universe. Cosmic creation, death and rebirth from the heart of a star, and life shows us daily how love can work in exactly the same way.

*

Pelagos was an ocean world. The name came from an ancient language, so old nobody on Pelagos remembered its origin. But the tales said Pelagos meant sea, and sure enough, Seth's planet was more than eighty per cent salt water, and it was beautiful. Seth loved the ever-changing colors of the sea, and he loved all the vagaries of the weather, just as he loved the wildness of the Sea Folk that inhabited its oceans. Seth's folk seemed dull in comparison, tied to the solidity of the land. Seth was especially fond of Sea Folk music, and one Diver musician in particular, a young man called Jed.

Jed's real name was Jerzediameric, but nobody, not even the Sea Folk who visited, called him that. Jed would laugh and say his full name sounded like a medicine, while Seth secretly reckoned it sounded like a precious gem. It suited Jed's eyes, Seth thought, which were sometimes green, sometimes blue, but always dark with promises never spoken, let alone kept.

"That Diver's too pretty. All that long girly hair and those pink lips," Dermot told Seth, his mouth downturned in constant disapproval when it came to Jed. "You can't trust a man who can't grow a beard." Dermot stroked his own ginger whiskers to prove the point. Seth shook his head. His friend was inordinately proud of the ridiculous chin fuzz he'd cultivated since Sally once casually mentioned she quite liked men with facial hair.

"Jed's not pretty, he's beautiful," Seth nearly retorted, but he restrained himself. Instead he jumped to defending Jed's people. Safer ground. More neutral.

"You'd trust none of the men-folk of the Sea, then, as you know they don't have much by way of facial hair," Seth countered, but with a tolerant smile, because he knew Dermot was speaking out of misplaced jealousy, not racial prejudice. His oldest comrade was simply afraid this newcomer would spoil their friendship. Neighbors from birth, Seth and Dermot had grown up together in Thalassa Town, playing on the beaches, sailing out onto the wide coastal waters to catch fish, getting into trouble climbing the fences round the space port to get closer to the exotic craft that landed there. They'd even built this bar and restaurant together when they graduated from school and Seth's Da died, leaving him a considerable lump sum to invest how he saw fit. Sure, they rubbed each other up the wrong way sometimes, but they were close as brothers, and that wasn't going to change. Not if Seth had anything to do with it anyways.

Sally now, Sally was different. Sally shone gold where Seth was brown as the earth out back where he grew his vegetables. Everyone said it was hard to believe Seth and Sally sprung from the same seed, and Seth agreed. Sally burned hot and gave off too many sparks, always angry, always restless, always wanting more than life could give. Not that Seth didn't yearn too, but his wanting was quiet, a deep-sea current, while Sally's was loud and bright and forceful like the great waterfall that tumbled down the mountainsides of Le Guin Island. Sally's wants were like to crush a man if he wasn't careful, Seth would warn his friends, because he could see it coming. He loved his sister dearly, but she was trouble with a capital T. Seth kept an eye on Dermot especially, as his best friend had lit a candle at Sally's altar when he was but eleven and Sally only seven, but if a man was determined to have his heart broken, there was nothing Seth could do about it.

Because there was the other thing, the one that made Seth keep his own longings secret, and that caused Dermot to nurse an even stronger resentment of the Sea Folk. The young Diver Jed was head over nethers in love with Seth's little sister.

*

Seth looked up and smiled at him as Jed ducked through the door to Knight's, all ready for his shift. Sure, Seth had a smile that lit up a room. Jed reckoned this was at least half the reason the little bar-cum-eatery was so popular, because its proprietor created such a friendly atmosphere just by being there. Then Jed got an eyeful of old sour-face himself, Dermot Reilly, glaring at him from behind the counter, and winced inwardly. Jed berated himself for hunching and once safely through the low doorway he straightened up to his full height, which was considerable. Centuries of living buoyed up in water had allowed the Sea Folk to grow some extra inches on those who stayed on land. It might have been petty, but in the face of Dermot's seeming never-ending dislike Jed wasn't above making use of any genetic advantages he had.

Jed was tall all right, but kind of willowy, all lean lines and long muscles. Unsurprisingly, his was a swimmers build, with broad shoulders and slim hips. Being on land was bearable, but Jed was always aware of the weight of the air pressing down on every inch of his pale skin, just like he was all too aware of the power of the sunlight to cause damage to that vulnerable skin without the protective filtering of the sea water. Seth once compared Jed to one of those white marble statues outside the City Hall and Sally had laughed until Seth blushed and busied himself with the washing up. Jed didn't know if that laugh was a good thing or not. Sally was hard to read, she shone so bright. Full of stardust, that one, Toothless Norton would say, from where he propped up the bar night and day, every moon-cycle since Jed had been working there.

Jed had fallen hard from when he'd first caught sight of Sally. Jed had been lazing in the warm shallows not far off Le Guin's shores, while Sally had been out on a fishing trip with her brother and his best friend, though Jed hadn't known that dynamic at the time, of course.

All he'd known was that a girl whose hair shone like the sun, and whose smile sparkled like the shoals of silverfish that swam in the shallows, had netted his heart surer than the competent strong hands of her brother had netted the many grumps and occasional mossback Jed had watched the three Earthers catch that day.

Jed had no choice but to follow after this girl, even though he didn't know her name, no choice at all. He'd turned his back on the sea, paying no heed to the arguments of his parents, or the anger of his big brother, or the sadness of his own little sister.

"You're leaving everything you know to chase some dust-grubbing female who doesn't even know you exist! How can you turn your back on your home, your heritage, on us \- and all for a stranger?" His brother Halazedekiel had shouted at Jed's back as Jed tossed his watertight bag up onto the Sea Folk landing stage in Thalassa Town harbor, then hauled himself after.

"We are all made of the same dirt and dust, you know, Hal," Jed had replied, with an awkward shrug. He'd already been feeling the additional burden of gravity settling on his shoulders. "You should remember that when you are swimming through our halls."

"Maybe, Jed, maybe. But just remember we are also made of water, and that is where you belong." Halazedekiel had said, before sinking back under the waves.

In silence Jed had changed into his land clothes inside the Sea Folk way station set at the edge of the waters. He'd been disinclined to exchange chitchat with the eager young guppy who was manning the station that day, still disturbed by his brother's parting words. This felt completely different from the first time he'd left the sea to live on land as so many young Sea Folk did, while they completed their studies. Then he'd had the blessing and good wishes of all his family, and friends had accompanied him to Le Guin College. Now he was older, if not wiser, at the lofty age of twenty-three, and all alone. As he'd walked along the boardwalk towards the yellow lights of Thalassa Town, intensely aware of the drying touch of air and the chafe of unfamiliar cloth on his skin, he'd wondered bitterly how his brother could think he could ever forget his origins.

And yet some of Halazedekiel's forebodings had proved well founded. When Jed stepped over the threshold of Knights' Diner Bar, clutching the Help Wanted card he'd found on the notice board just outside the Star Port arrivals area, at least one strand of the net that bound him to the sea did get forgotten.

Jed hadn't noticed the fraying of the net, distracted as he had been by his good fortune.

Hal was so wrong, Jed had thought, delight filling his heart. Because already Fate had intervened, leading him straight to the very place he wanted to be. There, behind the bar, caught in the act of serving a large bald guy, was the very person Jed had left his old life behind to find. Everything Jed wanted, the promise that held all his hopes and dreams, was dancing there in the sky-blue of Sally Knight's eyes. Clearly it was serendipity.

Nothing had happened since that day to make Jed change his mind.

*

"Do you believe in love at first sight?"

Seth rolled his eyes at Jed's question, but that didn't stop him listening in to the discussion that followed. Big Mike shook his shiny bald pate and declared that love at first sight was a myth that only happened in fairy stories. Jed grinned and mock-punched Mike's granite bicep

"Hah! Maybe for an ugly fly-rink head like you, Mike, but for some folk less cynical, things are different."

"Of course there's such a thing as love at first sight." Surprisingly, this supporting statement came from Toothless Norton, who promptly launched into a long rambling tale about a young fisherman and his beloved. It was only when Toothless got near halfway through the story that his incredulous audience realized his narration was autobiographical. It was much too hard for anyone to imagine a time when Norton had teeth, let alone that he was ever as youthful as the hero of his tale. Surely Toothless Norton had been born old.

Seth wiped the counter down and smiled as the debate raged round Knights'. This kind of buzz had been happening a lot since Jed first walked through their doors only one moon ago. It had turned out the young man had a talent for talking as well as singing, and both were good for business.

Seth glanced out of the window where Selene, the smaller of Pelagos' two moons, was tossed up like a shiny silver coin against the dark navy sky. Luna, Selene's larger companion, was now a mere sliver low on the horizon, where she'd been full when Jed had arrived. Seth couldn't believe how easily the young Diver had settled into the routine of the bar, fitting into place like the missing note in a tune Seth hadn't even realized was incomplete.

Speaking of tunes, as he passed by, Seth stroked the smooth belly of his guitar where it hung on the wall, ready for what had become Seth's favorite part of every evening. Soon it would be time to get her down and make some music. Jed's new song was going to be a hit with this crowd tonight, Seth was sure, though he wasn't sure it would win the one heart he knew Jed had set his sights on. His smile faded when his gaze landed on his little sister. Sally waltzed out of the kitchen; plates piled high with chef's specials - steaming fillets of mossback. Inevitably, his eye was drawn back to Jed, as it always was, and he watched Jed watch Sally with a look of such naked longing on his face it kind of broke Seth's heart. Seth hoped the expression on his own face didn't mirror that of the lovesick young Diver, though he rather feared it might.

The debate was still waxing loud and strong, and Seth was passing the time polishing empty glasses while he listened in his usual silence. Seth was startled out of his reverie when Angel chipped in, her gravelly voice pitched low just for him to hear.

"Your Da fell in love first sight, you know," Angel said. The old woman sat at the same table near the back of the room every day, though she rarely joined in any of the social life of the bar. Sometimes Dermot would complain, saying the weatherworn woman's silent supervision made him uncomfortable, but Seth kind of liked having her there. Angel had fished with his Da a long time ago, before she'd been forced to retire after a hawser snapped and took half her hand with it. A one-handed fisherman was a liability, Angel would always say, without a hint of the bitterness Seth knew he'd feel were he in her boots. He it felt like part of his Da was still there, watching over them.

It was rare for Angel to move once she was safely ensconced in her corner, let alone speak, yet here she was, leaning across the bar talking to him about his parents. She gave a low chuckle at Seth's surprised expression.

"No need to look so horrified, boy. It was with your mother, of course, but you knew that much, didn't you?"

Sally put her tray down on the counter and slid in next to Seth. Without thinking about it, he pulled her closer. It was good she was hearing this too. They had both been young when they lost their mother, but Seth had the advantage of three years over his sister. Those three years made all the difference in the memories of their childhood, and Seth was lucky enough have some tiny moments to cherish, like the scent of his mother's skin and the way her hair had caught the sunlight just like Sally's. But both of them were pathetically eager to hear anything at all. Danil Knight had never talked about his wife, shutting down every time her name was mentioned, and after a while Seth had stopped asking, having seen how their father's face would become pinched with pain.

"No, Da would never tell us anything about how they met," Sally said, and Seth winced inwardly at the bitterness in her voice. It made him want to hug the hurt away, but he knew that Sally would say she was too old for that sort of comfort any more. "What do you know, Angel?"

"Aye, he was close-mouthed as a flatfish, your father. Well, I was there when Danil first saw Theia. She was on shore leave from the Space Station, with a party of drunken Airheads, much like that shoal of guppies over there." Angel gestured towards the group of Sky Folk who'd taken over a couple of tables by the door, but neither of the Knights were looking, too taken aback by Angel's inadvertent revelation that their mother had been a Spacer. Seth barely heard the rest of Angel's brief story, the sea foam of details merely washing over him. He didn't register how Sally had ducked out from under his arm with a look that Seth later (too late) recognized as vindication, or how the careless, beaming smile she threw at Jed made the Diver's face light up like the sun had just come out. That look on Jed's face made Seth's heart swoop to join his head in a fish boiler of commotion. How could their Da never have told them that important piece of information about their heritage? Why couldn't Seth put his feelings for Jed aside when he knew full well they would never come to anything?

So though blindness wasn't usually one of Seth's failings, a kind of darkness overtook him now.

Seth turned away quickly, grateful for the distraction from his thoughts when a guy from the small but rowdy party of Sky Folk loudly demanded a fresh round of drinks to go with their food. No doubt they'd be mafficking out on the streets of Thalassa Town when they finally spilled out of Knight's at closing time. Fortunately, that wasn't Seth's problem.

"Coming right up, sir," Seth said, professional smile firmly back in place. Pouring ale helped steady his heart. The last thing he wanted was to be seen as the interfering, overprotective older brother. Stepping in between the person he loved the most in this world and the person he thought could be the love of his life was only going to tear him apart. Besides, practical common sense told him that he couldn't be in love with Jed. He'd only known the lad for matter of days, after all. He was being overdramatic, ridiculous, behaving like a star struck teenager. As for the news that Theia Knight had been Sky Folk not Land Folk, in the wider scheme of things, did it really matter? It didn't change the fact she was long gone.

Seth breathed deep and let it all go.

"What about you, Seth?" Jed was leaning on the bar, ready for their musical interlude but keen to squeeze out an answer to the knotty question of the evening. "Do you believe in love at first sight?"

"Nah," Seth said, as he picked up his guitar. "It's just a myth. It's about as real as the stories about Old Earth, or the Leviathan that lives at the center of Pelagos."

Seth's grin was real when Jed and Toothless Norton howled in outrage and pelted him with bar-nuts.

*

For all his resolve about keeping his distance, Seth couldn't say no to Jed when he begged Seth to help him find a house.

"Are you sure you really want a land-place?" Seth said, as they trawled through the info-screens full of properties here on Le Guin. They'd narrowed their search to the main island of the archipelago, Jed having decided early on that Sally would never be persuaded to live anywhere smaller than Thalassa Town, and there being no larger settlements on any of Pelagos' smaller islands. "Isn't it a bit...permanent?"

Jed gave Seth a dark look that made Seth's stomach churn uncomfortably, like it was full of live dinks.

"I'm not going back, if that's what you mean." Jed said. "When I came ashore I made this my life. I don't intend breaking my word."

"You promised someone you'd stay here?" Seth knew it was none of his business, but it just slipped out. Jed didn't seem to mind; just brushed back long black hair from his face so Seth could marvel anew at the way those long thick lashes shadowed his eyes. Jed nodded.

"Yeah. I promised myself," he said.

*

The place Jed bought in the end was more of a beach hut than a house, in truth. It was right on the edge of Thalassa Town, where the sand dunes heaped up in tall mounds and the only sounds were the waves, and the wind rustling through the marragrass. The amber glow-lights of the town didn't reach this far out, and at night the place was lit only by moonlight and starlight.

Seth loved it. He half wished he'd bought it himself. The peace, the isolation, the shabbiness of the weatherworn wood, he loved it all. Seth even loved Jed's enthusiasm for the whole enterprise; despite knowing the ultimate aim was for someone else to live there at Jed's side, not him. Seth could only hope Sally would feel the same when Jed finally made his proposal. He wanted both of them to be happy, though the thought of them together made his heart hurt.

When Jed asked him to help with the renovations, he couldn't refuse. The moons waxed and waned, months passed.

The two men spent most of their spare time sawing and hammering, sanding and painting. Seth was a single step closer to drowning every minute he dallied with Jed, even as their friendship grew stronger. In between the working on Jed's beach house and working at Knights', Seth took the greatest pleasure in two facts – that Jed seemed to enjoy his company and even seek him out, and that the music that the two of them made together was getting better and better. The customers in the bar seemed to agree, as Knights' was getting busier and busier on music nights as word spread.

Even the Sky Folk were attending on a more regular basis as the word got out, whereas previously they'd tended to hang out in the Space Port bars.

Later, Seth blamed himself for what happened. He really should have seen the storm coming.

*

Jed was almost as excited about showing Seth the ring as he was about finally asking Sally to marry him. If Seth's smile was a little strained when he opened the small red velvet box and saw what nestled inside, Jed didn't notice.

"I'm cooking a meal for you both. Then we are going to show her the house, Seth, and afterwards, I'm going to ask her."

"Are you sure you want me there? I'll feel like a fish out of water..."

Jed wouldn't listen to Seth's weak protests, only grinned when his friend caved, as Seth always did when Jed asked for favors. Jed didn't examine too closely why he wanted Seth to be there. After all, Seth was Sally's family as well as Jed's best friend, so it was only right he should be present for this important moment.

In addition to house renovation skills Jed had been teaching himself to cook with the help of old Chazzer, who ran the Knight's kitchens. So he was fairly confident the meal he served up would be edible. Even so, his hands were shaking when he brought out the serving dish with the longfin steaks. Chaz had showed him how to decorate the fish with slivers of almonds so they looked like scales, and the dish was garnished with green and purple fennel. Jed couldn't have been more relieved when Sally greeted the food with delight, and he couldn't help exchanging a proud grin with Seth.

The meal went swimmingly after that. Conversation flowed easy as sea currents, and the room was warm with candlelight (Seth's suggestion). So Jed was in no way prepared for what came after.

"Sally, let me show you around the house," Jed offered after the three had sat for a few moments in replete and contented silence, empty plates pushed away and wine glasses half full.

"I'll clear up and wash the dishes," Seth said, his chair scraping as he stood.

"I'll help," Sally said, then laughed when Seth and Jed both said no in perfect time. "You two," she said, smiling tolerantly. "I swear you were separated at birth."

"Let Jed show you his home, Sal. He's put a lot of work into this place, the least you can do is look around it."

So Sally allowed Jed to take her hand and show her the home he planned to share with her. It didn't take long. It was a small house, single storied. Cosy, Jed had liked to think while he was shoulder to shoulder with Seth, painting. But now, as Jed moved away from the dappled amber and shadows of the candlelit living room he felt his skin grow colder and colder. Sally's hand pulled out of his and she looked around in silence at the smooth sanded wooden floors, the walls hung with sculptures of driftwood in shapes that had reminded Jed of home, the sea-sheep wool rugs. Her quiet was scaring him, and the fear only seemed to deepen when he opened the final door to the room that was to be their bedroom.

He fingered the red velvet box deep in his pocket.

"What do you think?"

Sally didn't turn around and her tone was hard to read.

"It's very nice," she said. Jed stared at the double bed he'd piled high with white pillows and a deep red comforter and tried to guess what was in Sally's mind. He couldn't. Unlike her brother, Sally was closed as a clamshell to Jed.

"Come and see the outside," Jed said in an attempt to break the tension, and was relieved when she nodded. He followed her out onto the porch that ran along the front of the building, then down the steps onto the sand. He followed as she continued walking down to the water's edge, and stopped when she did, looking out over the gentle sea. Luna was nearly full, while Selene was on the wane, but both moons were bright, gilding twin silver paths over the waves. The night was fragrant with the scent of salt and Jed had to fight down a momentary pang of homesickness. Jed pulled the box out of his pocket, flipped it open with trembling fingers and fell to his knees by Sally's feet.

"Sally Knight, will you marry me?"

For a brief moment, Jed was full of hope. Sally reached out and took the ring out, though she had locked her gaze with his and never glanced at the golden band.

"You built this house for me?" Sally said, her voice almost a whisper to begin with, barely audible above the breeze and the susurrus of the waves lapping at the sand. Jed opened his mouth but Sally didn't give him a chance to reply, gaining volume as she ignited with indignation.

"You thought I'd want to live in a shack by the sea, miles from civilization? You never even asked me what I wanted, or whether I loved you." Jed stared in a growing numbness at the look of horror that was burgeoning on Sally's lovely features; distorting them into something raw and ugly he'd never seen before.

"Well, I can tell you now, I have plans. And they don't include marriage, or even staying here on Pelagos. I am going to fly, Jerzediameric." The use of his full name hit Jed like a blow.

"I have my qualifications and I am going to join the Sky Corps. I was going to give Seth the news tomorrow, because I leave at the next full moon. But you, you do this? I can't believe the arrogance, the thoughtlessness, the lies, the very podsnappery..." Words seemed to fail her, though Jed was already rocked back on his heels by her delivery. Finally, she seemed to remember what she held in her hand. She looked down at Jed's ring, the token of his esteem, of his love, with an expression that appeared to Jed to be full of scorn and anger and, strangely, betrayal.

She whirled around and threw the ring as far and as hard as she could, into the ocean's darkness. As Jed cried out in denial, she said something that at the time seemed incomprehensible, a non sequitur.

"And just what were you going to tell Seth, if I'd said yes?"

*

At work the next day Jed was like a wounded sea dog, all sad dark eyes and wanting to do nothing but hide. Seth was actually surprised that Jed hadn't just dived straight back into the sea never to return, but for some reason, the young man was still here, nursing his distress in silence. Seth supposed it was a good thing Jed had turned up at the bar, he'd half expected the Diver to stay locked up in his beach hut by the shore. Seth could almost taste Jed's pain, but several things prevented him from stepping in to offer comfort to his friend. First was his never-to-be-spoken, barely suppressed desire for Jed, which filled him with guilt, because that part of him was glad Sally didn't want Jed after all. But combined with that was the constant feeling of responsibility, that at least part of Jed's pain was Seth's fault. Sally's brightness was her own, but those sharp, brittle edges? Those were because Seth couldn't fill the gaps; smooth the way enough for his little sister when their Da had followed their mother and left them orphans. He was the older brother, and how she turned out? Well, that was down to him.

Then there was the added layer of guilt, together with pain of his own, that he hadn't noticed earlier how Sally had been drifting away from them.

So Seth took the slightly easier path and went to take care of Sally.

Sally was packing her bags when Seth knocked and entered her bedroom. She glanced up and grinned at him, and some of his own heart-pain eased. It was hard to hold onto his malaise in the face of her happiness. But that didn't mean he didn't have a few questions.

"Why didn't you tell me what you were planning, Sal?" Seth couldn't quite keep the hurt out of his voice and winced when Sally's face fell. She sighed.

"Because I thought you wouldn't understand. I thought Da's wishes for me meant more to you than my own." Seth opened his mouth to protest, but Sally smiled sadly, shutting him up with one raised finger pressed to his lips. She slipped her arms around him and he allowed some of the tension in his body to ease. There was forgiveness and apology all wrapped up in that embrace, Seth knew.

"Hey, big brother, I was wrong, I know. I should have told you, but you seemed so happy, all wrapped up with your music, and in your renovations project with Jed."

Seth pulled away at the thought of Jed. Distraction was the way out of that downward spiral, so he started helping fold stuff, passing each item to Sally to pack.

"And I'd thought that it wouldn't matter too much, when I left, because you had Jed to keep you happy. Then that stupid skinny-dipper goes and pulls this crazy stunt, and messes everything up."

Seth's breath caught and he paused, arm outstretched in the act of handing over a shirt or something, he didn't know what.

"What do you mean?" Seth tried to say, but Sally stared him down. She was always too clever for him.

"Come on, Seth. You know you are in love with him, and he with you."

Seth didn't deny the former, couldn't lie about that, even if he thought he could get away with a lie in the face of Sally's piercing blue gaze. He was on firmer ground with refuting the latter, though.

"But he loves you, Sal. He's been pining for you since the first moment he set eyes on you. Everything he's done here has been for you. He didn't ask me to marry him, he asked you."

Sally laughed. "He's deluded, more like. He doesn't love me, just the idea of me. The boy is an incurable romantic, in love with love. Once I'm gone, he'll see it, I'm certain sure. The person he is in love with is you, Seth."

Seth wanted so much to believe this was true; it hurt almost as much as the thought of Sally leaving.

*

In the days that followed, Jed stopped going to the bar. Sally was still there but as distant as if she'd already put a few stars between them, and Jed couldn't bear it. Jed returned to his empty beach house and didn't emerge again. For the first time since he'd moved in, the location felt lonely rather than comforting in its remoteness. He sat and listened to the sea through the walls. It was simultaneously a comfort and a source of ennui. Sometimes when the wind rose, and the tide was high, he could almost believe he was back home. He'd open his eyes and be pierced anew when he was greeted by the sight of bleached wood walls instead of carved stone, and a framed picture instead of his baby sister's flesh and blood smile.

He opened his mouth, tasted emptiness on his tongue. Everything was too dry here. The air parched his skin, his lungs were filled with sand, but he couldn't muster up the energy to move from where he was sat, legs outstretched, back propped against the closed door. He should go outside, go down to the water and swim away, but something unknown and unseen was holding him here. He was tied with invisible strands to this house he and Seth had built.

He remembered eating and drinking a few times since Sally had left, he thought. But that was a day or two ago now, and he wasn't sure when the last time was that anything had passed his lips. Sally had exploded his dreams in a supernova, and all that was left of Jed was a slow dispersing cloud of cosmic dust. Perhaps one day his core would coalesce and be whole again, but he couldn't envisage it.

Hal wouldn't have allowed Jed to slump in this self-indulgent heap of self-pity, but Hal was far away with his sea dogs, tending their shoals of grumps and silverfish, keeping the Sea Folk's food sources safe from marauding firecrackers and the occasional barrie. There was an ancient word for the depths of homesickness and heartsickness Jed was feeling. Hiraeth. Jed knew that was where he was, but had sunk so far into it; he didn't know how to climb out.

When the banging on the door came, Jed was almost glad to be physically shaken by the vibrating wood, because he hadn't been able to find the least spark inside himself to get moving again.

Seth - of course it was Seth - pushed the door open against Jed's dead weight, and forced his way inside.

"Great Luna, man, look at the state of you. Angel told me five days was enough time to mourn a love that never was, and she was right. What are you trying to do to yourself? You've changed from a proud young Diver to a measly pinhead in less than a week!"

Jed thought privately that Seth wasn't looking so bright and shiny himself, but said nothing. He meekly submitted when his friend pulled him to his feet, and stood there swaying like a ship's mast in a rough sea while Seth bustled around. Seth disappeared for a moment then was back in a blink, grasping Jed's shoulders and turning him around.

"Come on, you need a shower first, then some food. You smell like whale breath."

Jed felt compelled to agree with that assessment. In fact, he probably stank worse than that, more like the rotting entrails of gutted grumps that had been left out in the sun too long. He stripped quickly and let Seth help him into the shower. He wasn't embarrassed being nude in front of his friend; Sea Folk spent most of their time naked unless they were on land. No, his blushes were for the dirt that caked his skin and the way his hair was all matted and lank. He hadn't wanted Seth to see him brought so low.

"I must be a sight fit to make a stuffed fish laugh," Jed mumbled, surprising a snort of amusement from Seth, who didn't comment further, just handed Jed the soap and left him to it.

When Jed finally emerged from the refreshing waters, he was feeling almost himself again. Not only being clean but rehydrated made the world of difference. He was still a little unsteady on his feet, and the growling of his stomach told him there was good reason for that. When he walked through to the living room, Seth was seated at the table where they'd eaten that fateful meal before his proposal. Jed half expected to feel a fresh pang of anguish at the memory, but all he could think was how desperate he was to eat that big hunk of warm bread and strong cheese Seth had laid out for him.

He was halfway through eating the food when Seth started talking. "So. Sally's gone chasing her stars," he said, looking warily at Jed from beneath lowered lashes as if he was afraid Jed was going to burst into tears or something. Instead Jed was thinking it was strange he'd never noticed how thick and dark Seth's eyelashes were before now. Or how warm the brown of his eyes was. Then immediately following that thought was a kind of wonderment that Sally being out of reach didn't hurt more than it did. But that was a good thing, wasn't it?

"We're missing you at Knights'," Seth continued, sounding hesitant. "Are you coming back to work or...we didn't know if perhaps you'd be going home?"

Jed swallowed a mouthful of cheese and shook his head. His own decisiveness surprised him, but he was filled with certainty.

"This is my home now," he said.

*

Seth wouldn't have said he was happy, but he'd found a kind of equilibrium in his new routine. Jed was back at the bar, and the two of them still made sweet music together most nights which drew in plenty of punters, old and new, Star-chasers and land-grubbers and even the occasional Skinny-dipper from Jed's old home. But they weren't writing new songs, not since Sally left, and Jed was still subdued compared to his previous outgoing self. Still, the twin moons waxed and waned and the tiny fishing boat of life chugged on.

Jed expanded his repertoire from serving tables and bar tending to help Chazzer in the kitchen, and he did every task with the same bland cheerful dedication. Seth couldn't understand why he still felt his own heart had broken. He couldn't fathom why Jed was still here. Though Seth was obviously missing Sally like crazy, she was in touch almost daily via the sky-net, so it wasn't like she was totally gone from his life. No, this was something deeper, and Seth was too much of a coward to delve down to see if he could solve it. Everything got easier with time, right? He would just wait this out. His heart would mend, Jed's heart would mend, and everything would be fine.

Some days were worse than others, and on the bad days, Seth would find himself somehow always in the kitchen when Jed was behind the bar, or vice versa. Those days they'd barely exchange two words all day, then play an hour or two of the most heart-wrenching music. On night like that, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

"When are you two fools going to pull your nets in together instead of fishing alone?" Angel asked him after one such session, pale blue eyes flashing with irritation through her tears, but Seth pretended he didn't know what she was talking about, while Jed slipped away into the kitchens to escape.

Then fate took a hand.

Seth walked into the kitchen when Jed was gutting fish, only to find his friend standing with one hand still stuck inside the mossback's entrails, staring at something held between the finger and thumb of his other hand. There was such a strange look on Jed's face; Seth was drawn to look closer at what his friend was holding. He couldn't quite make it out, just that the small object was bloody and glittered.

"What is it, Jed? What's wrong?" Seth touched Jed's arm, and the Diver started. Jed wrenched his gaze away from the mystery object to stare down at Seth, reminding him how much taller the Diver was when he bothered to stand tall. Seth was mesmerized afresh by Jed's eyes, all the moods of the sea held in a single glance. Although by now Seth had thought he could read Jed's face easier than an info-screen, he was baffled now.

"Wait right here, don't move." Jed said.

Seth stood, somewhat fishlike with his mouth hung open, as Jed rushed over to the sink and frantically started scrubbing at his hands and presumably at the mystery find. Always business-like, Chazzer gave Seth a shrug and carried on chopping vegetables.

It was probably less than a minute though it felt like an age before Jed was back in front of Seth, and was grabbing both Seth's hands in his, words spilling out like emptying a net of silverfish.

"Sally was right. I've been a fool, a pinhead full of podsnappery, too blind to see what was right in front of me." Jed let go of Seth's left hand to wave something shiny and yellow in front of his face. "Well now the sea's given me a second chance, and I want to do it right this time."

Seth finally focused on the object and realized what it was. The ring. Surely it couldn't be the ring Jed had bought for Sally, that was just ridiculous. The odds against it being found must have been a million to one...Seth tuned back in and realized Jed was still talking.

"What?" Seth said, bemused. "Say that again."

Jed was smiling though his eyes shimmered with unshed tears as he pressed the cold wet ring into Seth's palm and closed his fingers round it.

"I said, I love you. Seth Knight, I want you to keep this ring and if you ever feel you can love me back, you can return it to me and I can get it made larger..."

Seth remembered Sally putting her finger on his lips to shut up his foolishness. He considered it a kindness to do the same for Jed. Silencing him with a finger-tip-touch, Seth took hold of Jed's right hand and slid the ring onto his little finger.

"I guess we are fools together, then, because I've loved you since the moment I first saw you, you idiot." Seth said.

*

From her dimly lit corner in the bar, Angel watched her boys dance around each other's orbits, occasionally sliding in close to bump shoulders or hips together, sometimes pausing to linger in long passionate kisses that elicited much whistling and laughter from the regulars. Even Dermot was happy now; in part from seeing his old friend so full of light and joy, but most from nursing close to his chest the last sky-call from Sally, where she'd confessed she missed him.

Angel's craggy face widened into a satisfied smile. Sometimes, all space dust needed was a little encouragement in the right direction to bind its core together to form the heart of a new star.

#

#  Dust in Your Eyes

# FairyNiamh

If Moralyn thought hard enough, she could remember blue skies, green trees, lush meadows, and crystal clear bodies of water. She could remember a fertile land with clear air that filled your lungs with each breath. It wasn't perfect, but it was the closest thing to paradise.

That was before The Dust arrived. No one thought anything of it at first. Especially those living in dry areas. Small dust devils would pick up and the people would hole up in their car or buildings for a few seconds until it passed.

The small storms then grew in intensity and duration. They started to hit in places that were ill equipped to handle the situation. Who had ever heard of a dust storm in the middle of the North Pole? Scientists struggled to figure out why it was happening. What was causing the events? They studied the geothermal readings, the ley lines and weather patterns... everything that could think of and discovered nothing.

The brightest of minds met in secret, trying to get a handle on the situation. They sent several military crafts into The Dust, only to find the crafts thousands of miles off course. The pilots and drivers well, no one ever got word from them again.

*

Moralyn often went to her school's observatory to escape the bullies. She was tired of them picking on her name, her lack of funds, and her love of weather. She didn't know why more people didn't look to the skies for a place to escape to. The Dust had been causing her issues though. It seemed that every time she decided to look through the telescope, The Dust would pick up and block everything.

That was until a Wednesday afternoon. She was usually a good and studious child, but on this day, she decided to skip gym class and go to her favorite location. That was when she saw The Dust for what it really was.

There, in the sky, settled at the center of The Dust devil was a monster. There was no other word to describe what she saw. There was nothing to identify gender, but it was humanoid. It stood a good fifteen or twenty feet, had skeletal features, sharp knife blades for fingers and teeth... and there were no eyes. Just sockets where eyes should be.

Without thinking, Moralyn shot picture after picture of the monster. She knows that she got at least ten clear shots before it looked in her direction and the sand blocked everything.

With her hands shaking and her heart beating faster than ever, she ran down to the computer labs, linked to the telescope, and pulled up the images she had captured.

"Yama," Mrs. Janken murmured, as she made a sign to ward off the evil on her screen.

"What do I do?"

"Pray, little one. I will go get Mr. Peters; perhaps he will have an idea," she replied solemnly.

Moralyn paid no heed to her teacher's departure; instead, she looked back at the pictures; in one shot, you could clearly see the monster looking directly at the camera. It made her want to curl up in the corner and cry. Yet, she was too horrified to look away. What if it reached out of the picture and grabbed her?

She jumped a good foot when her principal came running in behind her computer sciences teacher.

He looked from the screen to her and took a deep breath. "Did you photoshop these images?"

Moralyn shook her head vigorously. "No, I swear, I just took the pictures. What are they?"

Mr. Peters shook his head as he pulled her away from the screen. "I'm not sure, but I need to call the base and see if they can send someone down here to take a look at these. I want you to go upstairs to the office and call your folks; tell them you are busy and need to stay after school. I'll take you home, but I think that the base will want to ask you some questions."

"Am— am I in trouble?" she asked meekly. At that moment, she was more afraid of the adults in the room than the monster on the screen.

"No," Mrs. Janken assured her. "But this is very important and you found out what was causing the storms. You did good, sweetheart, but the military is going to want to ask you some questions. Okay?"

Moralyn nodded once before turning on her heel and going to do as ordered. The odd thing was when she got upstairs; everything and everyone was still, as if frozen in place. You couldn't see outside through the thick Dust storm and when she tried the phone line... it was dead. Nothing, no dial tone, no static, just dead silence.

She hung up and tried again, still nothing. Biting her lip, she dug through the secretary's purse and pulled out her cell phone. Still, nothing. She grabbed a cell out of a frozen student's hand and saw it blink and then die. All she could hear was nothing. She glanced at The Dust storm outside and screamed when she saw the monster's face just outside her school, staring at her as if it was assessing her threat level.

With another loud scream, she took off down the stairs. She needed to tell Mr. Peters and Mrs. Janken what was happening. She called out to them and heard nothing in return. Just as she reached the bottom of the stairs, the lights flickered and then died, thrusting her into utter darkness.

"Mr. Peters, Mrs. Janken, can you hear me?" Moralyn called out as she felt her way back to the computer room.

Once inside she broke down in tears. Her principal and teacher were standing frozen in front of the computer that held the image of the monster.

This was not how her day was supposed to go. She was just a girl, and where she disliked being the target of bullies, she would never wish what had happened here, on anyone.

She got up and looked at the image. The monster was... smiling. It was not a kind smile. No, this smile sent shivers down her spine.

What had Mrs. Janken called it? A— a Yama. Moralyn stumbled as she made her way back up the stairs. She glared at the face in the window before rushing upstairs to the library. Only, she had never bothered with the library, preferring to use the internet for her fact gathering. The room might hold the answer to her question, but she didn't even know where to start looking. Even the 'card' catalog was on the computer. None, sans the one with the monster, worked.

She didn't know if she should look at language dictionaries or books on mythology. Her hand paused over a book and she looked back. The Dust was settling a little. Yama was becoming smaller, yet it still looked at her.

In a trance-like state, she moved her hand away from the book and snagged a seemingly random different book from the shelf before sitting at one of the many tables to read.

She looked at the glossary and had to gasp when she saw the name Yama, as plain as day.

Her hands shook as she read all she could. This... this couldn't be right. This was all an elaborate hoax from a sick and depraved mind. With a deep breath, she stood and made her way to the locked front doors. She didn't know who locked them, but she was grateful.

She could make out specks of the blue sky as she approached. Yama now a mere eight feet in height. He was still frightening, but not as frightening as before.

"Are you Yama?" she asked.

Yama grinned wide as he shook his head. He wasn't Yama, he wasn't the God of Death, but he had to be something... someone.

"Who are you?" she questioned the being.

Yama pointed to the sky.

"An alien?" Her disbelief was clear in her voice.

Yama nodded before he tapped on the glass keeping them separate. "Did you freeze everyone?" Again, Yama nodded and tapped on the glass, this time harder.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she yelled, "What do you want with me?"

He held out his hand and then pointed to the sky.

She shook her head and backed away from the glass. "I don't want to go with you. I'm happy here. You should leave before the military gets here, they'll shoot you and maybe run tests on you."

Upon hearing her words, Yama grew in size, yelled, and shattered the glass. He stepped into the school and Moralyn ran back down the stairs and into the room with the computer.

"I don't know what you want from me. Please, just go away and let me live my life," she muttered to the image on the screen.

She huddled in the corner, terrified, shaking, and wishing that there was someone there to offer her a shred of comfort and support.

A hand landed softly on her shoulder. She looked over and cried harder. Yama was there, touching her, urging her to stand.

"I can't leave my mom. She needs me," Moralyn insisted. Her tears flowing freely.

Yama held up a ball of sand, she did not know where the sand came from, though there was less glass now. Could Yama break down the structure of things? Her thoughts had her so preoccupied; that she did not realize what was going on until a flash of bright light changed everything.

She watched images flash through the ball. Each flashed erased a part of her life. She no longer had a mother, who would recognize her. There were no friends or tormentors to call her names. No teachers who would ask her for homework, simply because, there was no more Moralyn. Well, not in the minds of people.

"I can't breathe up there. I need to stay here. I don't want to die," she pleaded as she struggled to escape Yama's gentle grasp.

Yama pressed his forehead to hers and everything was different. The being lifted her high and let go as she floated well above the floor. More images flashed, rapidly, through her mind. She saw a great war and a world destroyed. Tears ran down her face as The Dust, got in her eyes. Yama caught her as she fell back to Earth. It held her carefully, trying to comfort her.

Images of the dead thrown into a hole and burned. A black ooze seeping up from the ground, ripping people in two; their remains thrown and scattered as if they were nothing. People attempted to flee the massacre that was playing out before her eyes. Children set adrift in the hopes of landing somewhere safe. Primordial Ooze Warriors slaughtered or enslaved everyone. Her chest tightened at what was she was seeing. So much tragedy and horror. She knew Yama thought that she was one of them, but she wasn't.

"I'm a human. I'm sorry about your people, I really am, but there is nothing I can do about it," she explained as plainly as she could.

The Yama stared at her more, grinned as he grabbed her wrists, and started to tug her toward him.

"No, let me go. I'll scream. I swear I will," Moralyn insisted, her voice steadily rising in volume as she struggled with the being.

She yanked, pulled, pushed with her feet and finally she screamed, "NO!" at the top of her lungs. Never giving the Yama an inch, but not gaining an inch either. Still, her mother had always told her that if someone tried to take her that she should never give up. She should make it as difficult as she could for her attacker.

Her mother's words of wisdom proved fruitless in this instance. The Yama spun her around and held her to his chest. Every point of contact with the Yama touched felt as if it was on fire. Mentally, she knew that she wasn't on fire. Her clothes were intact and she couldn't smell anything burning. Not that it mattered, because when she felt a slender hand run over her neck, she stopped screaming, she stopped struggling, but the tears didn't stop.

The pain was too much for her to endure. She wanted to die, anything so long as her body stopped burning. Her breath hitched as she felt her dress slip from her frame and Yama pressed his body to hers with a longing sigh.

Moralyn looked down at her hands and let loose a silent scream at the sight before her. The Yama was not burning her. No, it was doing worse than that. It was melting into her. She wondered if she would be able to retain and memories of her old life and then she remembered, the Yama had erased her from existence.

She couldn't decide if The Yama or The Dust was worse. One an unknown, the other known, but making her an unknown. "I don't want to die," she sobbed. She truly did not want to die. She wanted to live her life and find out what she would grow up to be, to see if she would ever find her special someone to fill the void that had always been in her heart. Now, well now her dreams were turning into dust.

She sobbed harder and harder until she fell to the ground and embraced the blackness that had been threatening to overtake her since this whole ordeal began.

When she awoke, she didn't know how long she'd been out. She blinked and felt her head for a lump. When she looked at her hand for blood, she discovered her skin was blue. Rushing to the bathroom, she noticed her eyes were no longer brown, but a beautiful burnt orange.

She took a deep breath and made her way back to the classroom. She needed to delete the pictures of Yama. She laughed at the feeling of... rightness inside of her. How could she have been so wrong about Yama and The Dust?

There was nothing to fear. They were here to find the other half of their soul and would return home once everyone could be accounted for.

After deleting the photos, she turned and saw Mr. Peters grin at her and wink. She smiled as her hand brushed his hand and her blue skin turned purple at the brush of his red skin. They were a walking paint palette.

This area was secure. He would help track down any half-souls like her and reunite them with their Yama. She would go to another area and do the same. This is what she was here to do. To help others like herself. She was at the start of this phenomenon, of this gathering of souls.

There was no way she would let it stop with her and Mr. Peters. She wanted to gather and meet other souls like herself. For the first time in her life, she was excited about something. She wondered if all the men were red.

She had been wrong earlier. This was not a story about The Dust. This was a story of self-discovery, of the joining of two souls, and a story about not judging a book by its cover. It was time to spread the story a little further to see where it would lead her.

# The Shape of Things

# by Chance Arnold

Ophera stepped through the shadow with the ripple in her bones accompanying the transition from one world to the other. The step today had an additional frisson, because she did not come to play in the mortal world, but to learn, and she had never heard of a faerie attending college lectures. She paused a moment and thought through her glamour, glancing into the room, the rest of which was illuminated by large windows, and then adjusting her clothes and hair to match the assembling students. First to change were the violet eyes and chains of pearl in her hair. She wore now eyes of unremarkable brown, hair to match in a plain coil at the nape of her neck, and her neck she shortened from swan to duck. From top to bottom, she changed, bright silks replaced by sturdy linen and a wool dress, jeweled slippers into sensible shoes. She took a breath. Few of the fae ever did more than dance in and out of the mortal world, and to try to pass as a student? Unheard of. With a feeling like an echo of the ripple in her bones, she stepped sideways out of shadow into the back of Dr. Jonathan Fell's chambers, notebook in hand.

Most of the students sat already, facing the desk and chalkboard where Dr. Fell, so very young for his position, his black gown new and unstained by faculty dinners, looked nervously about as the last stragglers took their seats. Ophera took a middle seat in the back, making herself the twenty-third student in a class meant to be twenty-two—large enough that one more head might not be noticed.

Dr. Fell cleared his throat, and made as if to smile, and then thought better of it, the result being a brief flash of white between the mustache and beard of his dark goatee. "Good morning, and welcome to Geometry. I trust you have all been grounded in Euclid's theorums?" Dr. Fell paused and scanned the room, and Ophera nodded with the rest of them, although she knew that Euclid's postulates had limitations, and certainly did not hold in her own world. She was looking for a geometry that described the faerie lands. "No doubt you assumed that you had learned geometry when you mastered Euclid. That is not the case. Through this term we will discuss forms of geometry that take quite different approaches, and yet are internally consistent within themselves and with their ability to predict and describe shapes in the real world. Geometry is the surest and most pure way to derive knowledge solely from logical deduction. We will discuss Lobachevskian geometry, projective geometry, and end with Reimann. Are these names familiar to any of you?"

A few students raised a hand, but Ophera did not. She was here to learn, yes, but she wanted as much to know for herself as to observe Dr. Fell. There were rumors in faerie, old and rarely repeated. He picked up the chalk, and drew a line, labeled it P, and then another at a right angle. "Now," he said, as he drew in the square indicating a right angle at the intersection, "let us take a triangle, or not a triangle, but the triangle that can be formed from lines that intersect on a plane..."

Through the lecture Opera listened and watched, asking no questions. She had added an element of overlook to her glamour, and Dr. Fell never called on her. She listened intently, not sure she understood it all.

She was not alone in that, but only one student was brave enough to interrupt. "Pardon me, Dr. Fell, but I am confused about line m, and the plane in which it sits."

Dr. Fell turned around, all trace of his former nerves gone, a hint of controlled irritation in his voice. "How many steps back do I need to go?"

When class ended she rose with the rest, but stepped away into the shadows, waiting until the last few people gathering around Dr. Fell's desk received answers to their questions and departed. Only then did Dr. Fell sit, and lean his head into his hands, blowing out a great sigh. She smiled, and shifted through the shadow, hearing his voice in prisms behind her. "Is someone there?"

From shadow to shadow, a ripple in the bones, and she glanced down to make sure of her footing, eye landing on the plain brown leather of her sensible boot, contrast to the rich colors of the carpet in her chambers. She looked into the gilt-framed mirror opposite, and dropped her glamour as she stepped toward it, looking into her own gray-green eyes in a gray-green face, framed by hair the color of pine ash. She hadn't seen this face in years, and she let her glamours go, all of them. The mirror became a piece of polished brass nailed to a plain wood wall, and the rug beneath her feet turned to rushes that covered a dirt floor.

Ophera turned away, and walked to the door of her shack, looking out toward the wide lane at the end of the path to her door, the meadow to her right. When she looked closely, the meadow's expanse was made of patterns that repeated, of many large patches where the grass and low shrubs, and the wind in each, were identical. The lane was silent, and there was no one to see her transgression. She glanced back at the shack, a ramshackle thing held together with the barest of haphazard daub and peg, but for one of the fae, that was enough on which to build.

She turned back inside and sat on her rough bench, a piece of furniture that was usually a brocade chaise. She felt the rough wood under her thighs, facing the stone circle of her hearth, where the ashes lay cold among charcoaled lumps of half-burned wood. She considered how she would remake her surroundings. Instead of the lush boudoir, she would build a more studious room, and she began with a stone mantle around a quiet fire, a floor made of large tiles covered with more sober rugs than those she had come home to. Her bench became a leather settee, the mirror a large mahogany-framed rectangle with beveled glass and a thin gilt trim. A desk appeared, and a free-standing slate, as in Dr. Fell's chambers. She made shelves, the backs of books, and added comfortable chairs in brocade, made upon the bare wood of simple footstools.

Ophera breathed out, and rose to regard the mirror, now with her more customary violet eyes. Her neck was longer and more graceful than its unglamoured form, her hair silvery and swept up in a complicated style. The sober clothes were not right, so she kept the high-necked dress, but changed the dull gray to a bright red with white undershirt and crinolines, with embroidery in silver to match her hair.

The large slate's reflection in the mirror caught her eye, and she turned to it, picking up a lump of chalk, drawing a line, and labeling it P.

Dr. Fell began class leading them through a logical series in Lobachevskian forms, reviewing the work of the first week, and concluding with, "Thus, as you can see, if the first three angles of a quadrilateral are right angles, the fourth angle must necessarily be acute."

Ophera heard the intake of breath, the murmuring. Finally the tall scion of some human house ventured, "But what about rectangles?"

"There are no rectangles in Lobachevskian geometry," Dr. Fell answered, without turning around.

"But...' several voices broke out.

Ophera stifled a smile as Dr. Fell waved a hand without even turning around. "Let us walk through the logic again. Perhaps it will help you to remember that in this school of thought, the area of triangles has a finite maximum. Remember that Lobachevsky, and others, who, it turns out, were afraid to publish for fear of scandal, set out to disprove Euclid's fifth postulate."

"Fifth?" the same man asked.

"Your name?"

"Arbuthnot, sir."

"Have you not been paying attention, Arbuthnot?" Dr. Fell turned around, one eyebrow raised.

Ophera watched the back of Arbuthnot's head as he dipped it slightly, and kept her face a careful blend of blank and vaguely puzzled. It must have matched the faces of the others, because she watched Dr. Fell carefully not sigh. He took the felt pad off his desk, took a breath, and then erased the slate, chalk dust flying. "Let us review." He drew a point near the top left of the slate, then a line straight down, bounded by another point, which he labeled Q. He then wrote a letter by the top point saying, "Here is a line segment, PQ."

Ophera listened as he explained, walking through Euclid's fifth postulate, which required that there be a potentially infinite space, and then Lobachevsky's refutation. Dr. Fell drew and erased as he spoke, added and subtracted, until at the end there was an elegant figure, describing exactly how, in this system, there could be no perfect rectangles because of the defect in the triangle.

He dismissed them after, and Opera spent two hours at her slate, trying to re-create the logic.

"...so I took his hat, you see, and changed that sturdy bowler to a golden crown. He snatched it and made a leg, I'm sure to sell it, but all it would be was coal dust on felted wool by the time he found a jeweler." Feneris looked at Ophera across the rug that covered the flags of her hearth. "You're not laughing. You love my stories of playing with mortals!"

"Normally I would, but your repertoire of tricks is getting stale, and your target?" Ophera raised an eyebrow at her brother, a new gesture learned from Dr. Fell. "You were sent to give him a message from the King of Shadows. What will he do with that message now that you have tricked him?"

Feneris gestured dismissively. "It's a faerie's right and duty."

"And it is time for you to go again," Ophera said, tired of his prattling, his inability to see consequence, and longing for the lecture that awaited her.

"Go again? Oh? And why, pray tell, do I need to leave?"

"It is I who need to leave. I have an appointment of my own in the human lands."

Feneris slitted his eyes, but his lips held a smirk. "A lover?"

"A scholar," she said, before she even thought of prudence, but she let it stand, rising to regard herself in the mirror and change her appearance to her college drab. "I attend his lectures." She was not yet ready to tell her brother about Dr. Fell.

Feneris appeared over her shoulder, disapproving. "You are a fae lady. What need have you for a scholar's mumblings?"

She looked at him and chose her answer. "Even a fae lady should have depth to conversation, and the ability to surprise her suitors with a breadth of knowledge."

Feneris considered her for a moment, and she knew he saw the lie, but for now, he did not pursue. All he said was, "You look boring and human. I will take my leave."

When he was gone, she turned and stepped through, pausing in the shadow at the corner of the room to be sure no one was looking her way. Ophera took her usual seat, next to Fatima Karagozer, a student from the Ottoman lands at Oxford for a years' exchange. They weren't far into the second lecture on projective geometry. Dr. Fell had set up a physical demonstration. "It is like this light through the window." He pulled the blinds of all the windows, taking the room to a dusky gloom, but one shade had a small circle cut out, letting in light that showed like a beam through the dust of chalk that always hung in the air. Dr. Fell held up a piece of stiff paper with the Greek letter Omega cut out of it.

"The light goes through the cutout, and see how it now hits my desk?" The shape of the Omega elongated, distorted, and stretched across the papers and books on the desk. Dr. Fell stretched his arms, trying to hold the cutout flat, and pointed back toward the hole in his window shade. "If this light originates from a single point, drawn from this point to the plane of my desk..." He drew a line through the air along the line of the beam of sunlight, setting the dust motes dancing in the wake of his finger. "Call the desk plane Alpha, then you can see that the lines intersect this perpendicular plane—" His finger retracing the sunbeam again, and then he shook the cutout letter for emphasis. "Call this plane Omega." He passed the cutout from one hand to the other so he could continue to follow the line of the sunbeam to his desk with the other hand, and he traced the distortion of the Greek letter. "From any point," and here he pointed across his body back to the hole in the shade. "From any point you draw these lines, the shape on the plane demonstrates the projective properties of the object, in this case a cut out on a perpendicular plane. And all lines from that point will intersect with plane Alpha," he said, patting the desk.

Arbuthnot blurted out, "But clearly projections from that point could also be parallel to the plane, or even go to the ceiling.

A few weeks of watching Dr. Fell's very thin veneer of civility had taught them all that the single raised eyebrow meant he considered a question very stupid indeed. "Are we discussing Euclidean Geometry, Arbuthnot?"

"Sir?"

Ophera heard the scratch of Fatima's pencil, and glanced down to see Lord Oblivious written on the margins in her notebook. The young scion would not let his schoolmates call him Lord, but he wore his title in every behavior, and Fatima liked to style him based on his questions. Lord Oblivoius, or His Grace the Duke of Obtuse were Ophera's favorites.

Dr. Fell shook the paper, gathering their attention, and slapped it to his desk. Then he opened the shades, his jaw tense, but when he turned, his voice was calm. "This was just a demonstration to help you grasp the initial concept in a physical projection, but you forget that the sheer truth of Geometry does not require human experience. Let me bring you to the next idea of how this plays out in logic."

He spent the next half hour at the chalkboard, drawing and re-drawing, trying to illustrate multiple directions and motion in the two dimensions of the slate. Ophera followed, and her thoughts kept returning to what Dr. Fell had said, about human experience. She was not human. "And thus, in projective geometry, the points of a straight line are considered cyclically, like those of a circle."

Ophera stared at the chalk board, the implications for her world almost coming clear. "Oh!" she said, loud enough that those near her turned, and she bowed her head.

"Are you unwell?" whispered Fatima.

Ophera shook her head, and looked up. Dr. Fell was quiet, looking at her. "Is there a problem, Miss..." He looked at her, puzzlement on his face. He knew everyone else's name.

Ophera breathed in. Even an overlook could not compensate for all the faces turned toward her. She let herself appear nervous. It was not entirely an act. "Ophelia Peri, sir."

"And do you understand this?" Dr. Fell asked, gesturing to the slate. She nodded without thinking, and then shook her head, because she did not want to be called to explain herself. "Well," Dr. Fell said, barely curbing impatience. "Which is it?"

She lied, although the words were true, "You have not presented a simple concept, Professor. I feel that I grasp it, but not how to use it. That it will take some time and application to master."

Both of his eyebrows flashed up, and he gave a brief, sideways nod. "We will stop there, I think, so that you may absorb and attempt to apply."

The students began to rise, and Ophera could not take her customary route into the shadows of Dr. Fell's chamber. Too many had noticed her, and Fatima leaned over and said, "That was close."

Ophera gave her a wan smile, not exactly sure what she meant.

"Shall we walk together?" Fatima said, rising.

"Of course," Ophera said, because she had no other choice. She rose, and waited for Fatima to lead, because she had never been outside this chamber door, never walked the pathways of the university. She hesitated slightly at the door to Dr. Fell's chambers, but then stepped through, determined to make the best of it. Fatima led her down the hall, to the heavy oaken doors, held open as students passed out into the sun, the light glinting off the floor worn by centuries of student's shoes. She hesitated, and Fatima glanced back at her from the foot of the stairs. Ophera put on a smile, and she followed her dark-browed classmate into the sun of the human world.

"Where would you like to go?" Fatima said. "The river? The town? The gardens?"

Ophera had no idea where these things might be, and she did not want to go near running water. "The garden, perhaps?"

"The garden, then," Fatima said, but she did not move. Ophera turned her head, trying to smell which way a garden might be, but there was too much competition in the air —cooking smells, and humans, and a distant taste of soot and sour metal, and plants all of a kind in farmed fields. She heard a soft laugh, and looked back at Fatima. "You don't know which way to go, do you?" Ophera started to protest, but Fatima said, "Because you've never been outside Dr. Fell's chambers, have you?"

"I have!" Ophera said, not adding, just not here.

"Then which way is the garden, the river, the town?"

Ophera pressed her lips together, not to contain an answer, because she had none, but to contain the worry that wanted to come out as anger, and the anger at herself for so stupid a blunder as to always come and go through Dr. Fell's own chambers, so stupid as to be friendly.

Fatima laughed. "Oh, please," she dismissed. "This way." And she turned to the right to take one of the pathways. "Let us go where there are fewer eyes."

Ophera followed, steps driven by a tension and a new curiosity mixed with her fear. What did Fatima know? She caught up, and Fatima took her arm in a companionable way, leading her to a gravel path, lined with shrubs, turning onto a grass lane overhung with trees. As they proceeded down it, Ophera smelled the water first, and then heard it, and tried to stop, but Fatima's arm linked in hers went rigid, nearly dragging her along. "Oh, I think the river will do nicely. Your kind do not care for running water, do they?"

"My kind?" Ophera said automatically, carefully keeping her eyes from the river, and trying to ignore the glints of the sun off the ripples at the edge of her sight. Against the revulsion that rose in her throat she said, "How do you mean?"

Fatima snorted, all scorn and no delicacy. "I've waited for you after almost every class the last two weeks. You never come out. Either you live in Dr. Fell's chambers, which I highly doubt, or you leave some other way. Shadow, I assume."

Ophera glanced at Fatima's face, trying to look beyond the pleasant smile and arched brows. In fact her brows seemed more rounded and less human. Ophera took a step back, and if it was away from the river bank, so much the better. Fatima let her move, inclining her head as if to give leave or welcome, and for an instant, Ophera saw wings behind her. "You took the name of my kind," Fatima said, and her voice had a resonance it had not shown before.

A peri. Ophera took another step back. She knew of peris only from stories, and rumor had it they were demons once, evil before, and now good. But good by what rules? "How could I not have seen?"

"Because I do better than you at pretending to be human, I suppose," Fatima said, her voice returning to human tones, but full of amused superiority.

Ophera recovered herself. "I couldn't very well call myself Ophelia Fae."

"Of course you could have. He would have heard it spelled F A Y, and been none the wiser. And you could have chosen a shadow in town to walk through, and I'd have been none the wiser. What brings one of the Shadow King's people to Geometry class?"

"It is an interesting subject," Ophelia said carefully.

"Did the King of Shadows send you? Or would he be vexed to know you are here?"

Ophera did not know what the king would think, but she said, "I am not important enough that my king would notice my comings and goings." Fatima merely raised her eyebrows at that. "I'm not! I'm here for my own curiosity."

"Why would a faerie want to know Geometry, when she can make any shape she chooses?"

Ophera looked away, away from the glinting water and away from the twist of Fatima's smile. The water unnerved her, almost to the point of answering, but she took a breath and looked back. "Why should I answer your question without an equal answer given of your own."

"Ah yes, the vaunted faerie need for congruency. An answer for an answer, but I have given you two answers, and you have given me only one."

Ophera thought back on the conversation, and her back straightened as she said, "No. I asked how I could have failed to recognize you, which you answered. You asked why I was in Dr. Fell's class, which I answered. And you asked if the King of Shadows knew or cared that I was here, which was two questions, which I did not, exactly, answer."

Fatima tilted her head, slightly, and said, "I did not ask you why you were in Dr. Fell's class, only why you were in Geometry class."

Ophera did not let her expression change, but her heart skipped. She had given information without meaning to, and Fatima had seized on it. "Oh," she said, as casually as she could. "I suppose I thought it meant the same thing."

Fatima did not answer, but glanced out to the river. Ophera heard the voices at the same time. Someone was punting down the river, and talking loudly. The voice resolved itself to Arbuthnot. Fatima was looking away, so Ophera turned to look for a shadow in the trees she could use to go home. Before she could step, Fatima's strong hand took her arm, pulled her, swept her up, and threw her into the water.

It froze and burned, and Ophera had no idea of how to swim. She could feel the weight of her glamoured wool, pulling her down, and her mind froze with the water and the fear, knowing that if she dropped the glamour to only her flaxen shift, she would still be unable to swim, and she would give herself away. Her legs began to kick of their own accord, arms flailing in a way that would be wild, but instead was dragged to slow panic by the resistance of the water that still both froze and burned until a hand grabbed her arm and pulled her upward. Suddenly her head was free from the horrible feeling, and she gasped, then choked on the droplets of water that were now in her lungs, kicking at the burnfreeze that still covered her legs.

"Oh, thank you!" she heard Fatima calling, and a deeper voice in her ear, "I've got you now," as she was hauled over a sharp ridge of something to rest on hard wood. "You're all right." It was Arbuthnot's voice, and she pushed her self to sitting, coughing and choking, shivering, and holding on to her glamour with every thought she could spare. She wanted to shake like a cat, to do something to get this awful wet from her, but the river still ran underneath, sapping her abilities, and her grasp of herself was slipping.

"Shore. Please," she gasped out.

"Of course," Arbuthnot said. "I'll take you down to the landing and we can leave the boat and your friend can get you back to your rooms."

"No!" she said, not wanting to wait until the landing, but glancing up to see Fatima smirking beneath her solicitous look of concern, "No," Ophera said again, now meaning that she did not want to be left near Fatima.

"Strict landlady, then?" he asked.

Ophera nodded, grasping at the excuse, whatever it meant, and glanced up at him. She mostly saw the back of his head in Dr. Fell's class, and was surprised to find he wore a mustache. She looked away. It was a foolish thing to be surprised at. She shivered again, feeling like her glamour might slip, and hugged herself.

"Well, I think I can warm you by my fire and get your clothes dry. It isn't every day I get to rescue a damsel in distress."

"I, I would be much obliged by such kindness, my lord." Arbuthnot made a small noise at the title, but did not speak further. Ophera wondered what she could possibly offer in exchange for his hospitality. And then she remembered that he was human, and while she would owe him by the niceties of fairie courtesy, she had a faerie's repertoire of choice. She clung to that notion, and let herself fold in on the awful feeling of the water, both that which clung through her wet wool, and that which flowed under and around Arbuthnot's boat.

By the time they made it to the landing, she could barely stand, and Arbuthnot wrapped his jacket around her and helped her to her feet. She knew they were quite the spectacle, and that by the rules of the human world there should be some other female with them, but she let herself be led down a lane, through a stairway, past a porter with his token protest, and at last to a room with a banked fire.

Arbuthnot threw on some logs and stirred the coals into a blaze, then fetched a robe for her from an armoire. He left it over the back of the chair, pulling the drapes with a murmured admonition to get out of her wet things, and that he would be back shortly with hot food and drink. She was too tired to bother with the buttons of human clothes, so when the door clicked she dropped the glamour, pulled off the soaking shift, and then glamoured it back into her sober student's dress. She shook off the water like a cat, and then pulled on the robe, which settled nicely on her shoulders. It was a rich velvet with some complicated embroidery on the left breast, no doubt his family's coat of arms. She left the robe open as she stood in front of the fire, close, letting her skin warm. A real fire.

She was fully dry when she heard the door. She pulled the robe about her and tied the sash, taking a moment to glamour her face into beauty, her eyes the brown of her student guise, but larger and more luminous, the hair longer and flowing about her shoulders, her neck more graceful. She turned, and smiled. "Your lordship is very kind," she said, combining demure and welcome as best she knew how.

His reaction, surprise and pleasure quickly hid behind a pleasant mien, amused her. "Please, sit," he said, placing the tray on a table, and then moving the table to where two chairs sat facing the hearth. "Let me pour you a restorative brandy."

"Thank you, my lord."

"Just, Jack, if you please. But I do not know your name."

He did not recognize her from class, and she was tempted to make a new name, but she instead said, "Ophelia." She did not wish to say the name Peri, not after having met one.

She let him give her brandy, and stew with meat and good bread, real food and not glamoured oats. She asked him questions to keep him talking, and when she had her fill, when he had ventured a hand to her knee, she rose, and smiled at him. It was time to repay him, after all. She glamoured his robe into a bedgown of sheer silks and lace, and laughed her most melodious laugh when his jaw dropped open.

With a finger she closed his mouth, then delicately smoothed his mustaches. "Would you like to warm me through and through?" she asked, placing her finger on the tip of his nose, feeling it move as he nodded yes. "Come then," she said, turning from the fire to walk through the door into his bedroom, pausing only briefly to twine vines and roses up one of the posts of his bed as she stepped into the shadows, and took herself home. She had given him her shift in exchange for the robe, and to balance the food and drink, he had a story that none would believe.

It was time for geometry class, time for her to step through, if she were going to attend Dr. Fell's lecture, but she did not dare to face Fatima, or potentially Arbuthnot. She wished she hadn't given in to her instincts to play with the mortal. Even if she had not, the peri had effectively barred her from the classroom, because she could never go unnoticed again.

Ophera looked about her chambers. Most of the seeming books on her shelf were blank, solid, even, without pages that could be turned. A few were real, truly real, stolen from Dr. Fell. She took down the volume by Gauss, hoping to understand it better this time, now that she had sat through several weeks of Dr. Fell's tutelage.

But no. It came close, the ideas, so that she almost grasped them, but she knew that listening to Dr. Fell, hearing him explain, was better. If she simply tried to stay in the shadows, invisible, she was sure that Fatima would somehow manage to ruin it.

She waited a long two hours, and then stood. She changed the glamoured red dress to the sober gray that would hide better in the shadow, and stepped through. The ripple in her bones felt more ominous than exciting, but the room was empty, as she had hoped. The students were gone, and Dr. Fell was not to be seen, so she stepped forward into the room, skirting the back wall to look at the chalkboard.

The diagram did not make sense, but the entire board looked gray, all of the black slate covered in the dust of chalk erased and written over, and erased again. Ophera walked to the board, looking at it as if it could repeat the lecture for her. She ran a finger down the side of the slate, picking up the chalk dust, when a thought struck. She took the hem of her dress and began to wipe the board clean, and when the hem was full, she used her sleeves. She was almost finished, when she heard a voice at the door, the turn of the latch, and she ran to the shadow, and leaped, rippling, through.

In her own chambers she dropped the glamour on the dress, and it became, again, Arbuthnot's velvet robe. She loosened the belt and slipped it off her shoulders, moving to stand in front of the slate in her room. It was bare of writing. She shook the robe out in front of the slate, saying words of magic as the chalk dust flew into the air, then she stepped back and let the robe hang, on its own, in mid air. "Begin," she said, and the dust in the air coalesced, and through the memory of what it had once been, the dust animated, the robe gestured, and Ophera sat naked on the floor and watched the lecture, the voice of Dr. Fell like a breath on the wind.

And so it went for weeks, with Ophera stealing the chalk dust left from each lecture to replay on the board in her own chambers, the whisper of the words and the animation of the diagrams and proofs on the board. Something about projective geometry rang within her, but the insight of that one moment in class was gone, washed away by the running water of the river and the unearned malice of the peri.

On a day like any other, she stepped back from Dr. Fell's chambers with her clothing full of chalk dust, excited to hear the lecture of the day. As always, she dropped the glamour on herself and slipped Arbuthnot's robe from her shoulders. She raised her hands to shake it out, and froze. In front of the fire, barely fitting into the settee, was an enormous person, stag's antlers from his head catching her eye as he turned to look at her. There was only one person it could be, and he had never indicated at the Court that he even knew she was sister to one of his emissaries.

"Ophera," he said, his voice both bass and silken.

She dropped to one knee, pulling the robe to her, covering her nakedness, shamed more to be nude of glamour, and bent her head. To be before the King of Shadows in her base form was a shocking rudeness, and fueled by the pounding of her heart and the rush of blood in her ears, she changed her hair to silver, rained with pearls, Arbuthnot's dusty robe to a fur-trimmed velvet cape. "Your majesty," she managed to say.

"Ophera," he said again as he rose. "Why do you walk so often, on such a scheduled path from world to world?" His antlers brushed the ceiling, and she concentrated on rearranging the room enough to fit his height. He stood before her, close enough that she could see the tips of his boots, tooled in patterns and inlaid with silver, a slight heel to lift him even higher.

"Your majesty," she began, and then stopped, entirely unsure of what to say.

"Where do you go? And what—" The deep voice paused and reached to finger the cloak she clutched around her. His hand was the color of red wood, with bright rings on every finger, and nails polished to a glassy sheen. "What do you bring back?" he asked, as those large fingers gripped the fabric of her robe, and tore it from her grip. It returned to the base velvet of Arbuthnot's robe, now showing a bit of wear and gray with dust. The King of Shadows shook the cloth, and the remnants of the lecture that she had so carefully gathered fell from it. Without her magic to provide animation it was just dust, and it filled the air around her, causing her to cough as it fell to the ground, and on the king's rich boots, leaving all with a gray sheen.

The king crouched down in front of her, his antlers branching over her bowed head. She watched him reach with a pointed finger and draw a trail in the dust. "Why is this so precious to you? Show me."

Ophera trembled. "I'm not sure I can, your majesty."

"Try." The word rang through her body, and she reached for the robe. The king released it to her grip, and she began first with his boots, wiping away, gathering up, as much as she could from the boots, the floor, and even her skin. She was conscious of her nakedness, and if she had no rag to glamour into a dress, she could at least glamour her body. She made herself blue and deep green, with golden hair cascading down her back.

The odd colors gave her enough confidence to stand. One wore one's most inventive glamours at court, out of courtesy to the king, and this choice would have stood out even among the lords and ladies of the fae as daring and inventive. She looked to the king, who nodded his grave head slightly to give her leave.

"I do not know if this will work, your majesty. It may be jumbled."

"Try," he said again, and fueled on the resonance of his voice, she shook the robe and spoke the words. For the next hour they watched the lecture unfold, with fits and starts and pieces out of sequence. Sometimes two voices spoke at once. The robe, which usually gestured as if it had been draped on Dr. Fell, simply shivered, suspended, to the side, a sleeve occasionally reaching, but nothing more.

Ophera could not follow. She tried to see how the unfolding chalk lines and words related to the last lecture, but there was not enough. Because the king stood motionless, attentive, she had to also, and when the animation finished in a mess of quick erasures, the robe dropped. She reached for it, and drew it on, glamouring the dusty velvet to a black dress that set off her blue and green skin.

"What was that?" the king asked.

She ventured a glance to the broad planes of his face, marred slightly by furrowed brows beneath his antlers. "Mostly nonsense, your majesty. When I can transfer the dust directly, it replays the lecture in sequence."

"Where is this lecture in the mortal world?"

"Oxford University, your majesty."

"They teach such magics in the human world?" he said, with streaks of wonder and anger both in his voice.

Ophera trembled, for the king's anger was a thing to fear, but she thought, Magic? "Your majesty," she said carefully, "it is a branch of mathematics. Perhaps the jumbling of the lecture made it seem like magic?"

His gaze turned from the chalkboard to her face. "Mathematics? What kind?"

"Geometry, your majesty. This was projective geometry, which I am struggling to understand."

His voice was sharp. "To what end?"

She looked down, took a breath, and spoke to the toes of his boots. "To understand this world in which we live, how the rules and wherefores of the human lands differ, and how..." she trailed off, and glanced up. The king's face was blank. "I am curious, your majesty." It was not all the truth, and it was not a lie, and that was fairie custom.

"What human teaches these things?"

She could not lie, and she guessed what this truth would provoke, but she kept her face in careful innocence. "His name is Dr. Fell, your majesty."

The king's eyebrows moved, ever so slightly. "What do you know of him?"

"Only that he is young, your majesty, and accorded brilliance by other humans." This was close to a lie. She suspected more, and the king's reaction had only confirmed. Dr. Fell was more than he seemed.

The king looked at her for a long time, but she dropped her eyes in the way of a nervous subject under the scrutiny of her king, innocent of any purposeful wrongdoing. "I did not know that this would displease you, your majesty."

He made a noise, deep in his chest, and walked to her door, which she quickly glamoured to be taller and wider, so that he could walk out without tilting his antlers. But he did not exit. He opened her door, set one foot beyond, and called, "Feneris!" in a voice that echoed and wove through every bit of glamour.

Why did he want her brother? It was only a moment before the king turned back and walked through her room to the fire, Feneris behind him all in red and gold. The king turned to face them both, and Feneris went to one knee, glancing at Ophera as if to have her do the same. She merely clasped her hands and bowed her head.

"Feneris. You have abused my trust, and made your missions for me in the mortal world a time of sport and mischief."

"I am a faerie, your majesty," Feneris said, and another day such cheek might have amused the king, but this was not that day.

The king rumbled, "Your sister shall serve as hostage to your behavior."

"Your majesty?" Feneris said. Ophera ventured a look at the king, and could not read his expression.

The king said, "Faerie tricks you may indulge on time that is your own, in spheres that are your own. I send you with a message or a task, you do only that. Such sport as you enjoy? Elsewhere. Elsewhen."

Ophera tried to understand what this might mean. How would she be hostage? Taken to court to simper and gavotte? Bound as handmaiden to the queen?

The king reached out his hand, cupping her head. She felt his fingers tangling in her hair, his thumb under her eye. "You shall stay here," he said, and with the word here her bones rippled and froze. She gasped, turning her face instinctively into his palm, seeking comfort for the sense of loss. The king said, "You may not walk through shadows and you may not take the faerie paths. You remain here." With the word she felt herself tied to her shack, her home. She doubted she could even step out the door. The king turned to Feneris, but left his hand in place, changing his grip so that he now covered her mouth.

"You are responsible for her, Feneris. Your actions determine if she stays here, with all she needs, or if I take her."

"Your majesty," Feneris said, and Ophera could hear the creak of his boots as he bowed. "You have hit my weak spot indeed."

The king pulled his hand away, and Ophera glanced up. His face was full of warning, and he touched a finger to her lips, tapping once before he moved toward the door. She did not turn to watch him go.

"Ophera, you should not be punished," Feneris began, but she could not tolerate his solicitation.

"Leave me." He started to protest. "Come again tomorrow," she said. "Bring me stories and songs and gossip. But for now, let me be."

She heard his footsteps to the door, and the closing of the latch, and she turned to her chalkboard, dropped her glamour, shook the robe, and spoke the words. As the disjoint lecture began, chalk dust moving and shaping, she sunk to the floor in her own gray-green skin and pine-ash hair.

The king was wise. The king was cruel. Ophera looked up, not able to grasp the math as it played out of order, or to understand why the King of Shadows did not want her to learn. The king had balanced his equations with an elegant solution, but she did not know why. Ophera ripped the gesturing robe from the air, swept it through the dancing motes of chalk dust, and wept.

