Elcenia Shorts

Mindlink

(Read during or after Summons.)

"What is it going to be like?" Kanaat asked Keo softly, as they sat together on the edge of their bed.

"I don't have a lot to go on," Keo admitted. "The details of how it felt when my predecessor and his husband tried it were too private for him to tell me, and he thought it probably would vary a lot from person to person anyway. I mostly know practical things - like that we'll know each other's thoughts faster than our own - and how to do it."

"But you know some other things, right? You said he tried it once and had it fail," said Kanaat. "What caused that? I don't - I can't stand the thought of that happening with us, Keo."

"He tried it too quickly, or with the wrong person - he wasn't sure which, and the experience was awful enough that they eventually separated. There were still secrets, unresolved conflicts. The link isn't a cure-all to meld two people into a unified whole when they aren't already as close to that as can be. It's more like mental shortcuts, to speed up everything that would have resulted in cooperation even if the conversation had to be carried out aloud. So," she said lightly, "if you shoplifted a candy bar when you were fourteen and have kept it a deep dark secret out of shame, you really should tell me now, before I try to link us."

"I can't think of anything like that, but Keo, what if I've forgotten something or - I'm almost eighty-two, I couldn't have told you everything, even everything potentially embarrassing, in the years I've known you. And you've lived even longer."

"It only matters if you would tell me, if you thought of it, and if I'd react well, if you told me. Like I said, the link speeds things up - we just have to be disposed to accept the results," she said reassuringly.

Kanaat nodded. "Is it going to be different on your end?" he asked, after a moment.

"Yes and no," said Keo hesitantly. "It isn't as though there will be any limitation on what you'll be able to see in my mind. You'll be able to see anything you want, just the same as I will. But just because of what I am, my mind is going to be - bigger, I suppose. It may be overwhelming, at least for a while. I'll be able to pay complete attention to both of us, and you might be a little lost just trying to pay attention to me. It could take a very long time for you to adjust completely and be able to come back to yourself much. But I'll be able to help you do everything you want to do, even if you're too distracted to do it alone - you won't have to take time off to deal with it, or anything."

Kanaat nodded, reassured. "I think I'm ready," he said quietly.

"You should probably lie down," murmured Keo, and he complied wordlessly. "Close your eyes..." She scooted to sit on the bed beside him.

His eyelids dropped, leaving him in darkness, and then, all at once, he was plunged into a sea of jade sunlight.

|...!| A silent, wordless, exclamation of joy lit up his mind and arced over to hers more than instantly, and he felt her hearing his thought before he was aware he'd had it.

|hello| Her mirthful reply, colored with so much depth and affection that he wanted to weep. |i love you|

|love you | love|

|yes | i'm here love|

|love you| It was all he could think, the only thing that could cohere in his green-saturated consciousness to form a sendable statement. But his thoughts did not need to be sendable anymore to be open to her. This wasn't mindspeak or memory retrieval; no words or images needed to coalesce and present themselves for reading. He simply felt unrestrained awe and worshipful adoration, and she saw it all, felt it in her own mind, and reflected it back at him immediately.

How could he have harbored doubts? How could this possibly have failed? It was perfect. The sincere totality of the link obliterated every inkling of doubt, every fear that something in him would reject her when she came too close. Who could possibly have rejected this beauty, this love, this spectacular intimacy -?

|anyone else| came her reply. |only you | only you | only you could be here with me now | only you|

His own place in the link was assured. She was greater, stronger, more herself, and he was lost to her eternally - but no one else could have been in his place, he and he alone was still essential to this profound connection, and he would never have traded it away, could not bear the idea of being apart from her in mind ever again, did not know how he had tolerated the devastating solitude before -

In the physical world, the elf was limp and breathing shallowly in perfect time with her own breaths, eyes still shut. His wife knelt on the bed beside him, watching him carefully, in case he retreated any farther from his body. He needed to breathe and swallow and keep his heart beating; she couldn't hold him completely inside herself, much as he felt he was already held that completely.

|love | try to lift your arm|

|?| How odd - why would he need to lift his arm? Why would he need to do anything? He was with her, and therefore safe. Wasn't his arm fine wherever it was?

|love | you need to be able to move | at least a little | on your own|

The idea of being on his own made him want to scream -

He tried to open his mouth to do that.

He could not find it.

How peculiar.

|love | love | for me | move something | say something | anything | if you can't | then I have to leave-|

NO! No, she couldn't leave, she had to stay with him, forever and ever and -

|-to keep you safe | you don't want to die | you can be almost all here with me | but you have to live in your body enough | or your mind will|die!|

But he couldn't die, because that would end all of this, and that would be intolerable, unacceptable, impossible -

|yes | yes | so you must move | lift your arm | love|

Newly motivated, he tried to find his arm. One of them. He was fairly sure he had two, but only one was necessary at the moment.

His right thumb twitched. The dragon, watching him like a hawk, spotted it. |good! | good | keep trying | the whole arm | love|

He cheated a little, using her vision to watch his progress in place of his distorted proprioception, but he heaved his arm into the air. Focusing on the action felt wrong. It was like he was extending the arm out from under a heap of warm blankets into a frigid room. But he held up the limb, hand dangling from his wrist a foot off the bed, for a tick, two, until he felt her relief and approval flash through his mind.

He let his arm drop back onto the bed. That was over with. He could curl up in the green shining ocean of love again and leave that annoying body behind, that irksome thing that had the nerve not to be a part of her -

She touched the back of his abandoned hand, gently, with one fingertip.

|!| He dropped back into his body with shocking force and snapped his eyes open. The mirroring effect of the contact was like endlessly cycling lightning. He could feel her finger on his hand and his skin against her fingertip and so could she and he could feel what she felt and she could feel what he felt in feeling what she felt -

|why didn't you just | if you wanted me in my body|

|i can't hold your hand all the time|

|why?|

|silly| Aloud, she laughed. |you need to be able to move | without my help | except to remind you | that you need to | but now we know you can | so you don't have to do it much | if you don't want|

|don't| he confirmed emphatically. |want you|

|i'm here|

|good!| He sat up - not dislodging the delicious, anchoring touch on his hand - and then, very deliberately, kissed her mouth.

The kiss would have looked unremarkable to anyone spectating.

In their minds, it set off pyrotechnics.

|love | love | love | love | love | love | love | forever|

Voices

(Read after Summons, before or during Blood)

I was reading a storybook when it happened. It was a Lunen evening, I remember, and I was reading "Iaalhee". It wasn't a very complicated book, but I was only four. I was pretending that the book was reading itself to me in Aaihhhi's voice. He used to read to me, before he got promoted.

I was glad he got promoted. Really I was. It made him so happy. He had been hoping for it for years and years. I was happy for him. He just didn't read to me anymore. It was okay. I knew how to read books by myself. I didn't need to bother my important aaihhhi about it.

I had a good imagination even then so I wasn't really surprised when I could almost actually hear the book. I closed my eyes. I'd read it many times before and it wasn't a long story, so I just imagined it reading itself the whole way through. Then it got to the end, and said, "I am a book and I was written thirty years and two months ago over four days and this copy was published by the Kithen Publishing Company in Paraasilan and I have a green cover made of cardstock and green ink that says "Iaalhee" and I'm on a floor and..."

I don't remember what else it said because as soon as it started talking about that I shut the book and backed up until it was too quiet to hear. I bumped into the wall and I heard a voice saying "I'm a tunic and I'm made of dark blue double-purled sunel and I was sewn one year and four months and sixteen days ago over two angles and I'm on you and I've been on you for eight angles..."

They were talking to me.

I turned into a bat and the tunic stopped talking since it was tucked into my other form, and I flew up to the nearest perch, but as soon as I landed on it it started talking too. So I sat on the floor being a bat, but all of the sofas and chairs in the room started talking too, all at once - so I went outside, to fly away from all the things that were talking to me, but uncle Eiiahhh caught me. I was only four, I wasn't allowed to go far by myself.

"Where are you going, little Leekath?" he asked me.

"I want to get away from the things," I said. I squirmed. His clothes were talking to me and I couldn't get away from him without turning humanoid and having to listen to my clothes.

"What things?" he asked.

"All the things. They're talking. It's scary," I said. "Let me go. I don't want to know about how your sun cloak was made - it's so loud - they're all talking at once, let me go!"

He didn't. He just looked worried and took me inside and found my fheeil. "Kheeeahh," he said, "Leekath says things are talking to her."

I still remember the look on Fheeil's face. It was like Eiiahhh told him that I'd died. He closed up his book - I couldn't see the title but it told me it was a math book, more advanced than anything Khi or Iilha or I were doing. He must have been reading it to keep ahead of cousin Hahhin. "Leekath, is this true?" he asked me.

"They won't be quiet," I said. "I want them to. They scare me. Fheeil, can you make them be quiet?"

He closed his eyes. "No, Aaeeihhyleekatheeei, I can't. There is no treatment for this."

"They're everywhere!" I yelled. "Let me go! It's only things, I can go somewhere without any things and be a bat and they won't talk to me..." But Fheeil just shook his head.

"No," he said.

Eiiahhh hung me up on a perch - it got very loud when I touched it, but at least he'd let me go, so I didn't fly off it - and told me to take a nap.

The voices were still there when I woke up.

Zinc

(Read after Blood.)

"Hello, Fena."

I don't like that, but I don't have a better idea. Fena is the lake, Fena's where I live, Fena's not me - but I don't have a better idea.

"Hi, Milali-aniferi."

"How are you this month?" Milali asks. She's older than my last social worker, more conversational, invites me to dinner every couple of weeks to eat greasy rice-and greens, help her daughter with her Kida homework, play netball with her sons. I like her.

"About the same as last month, pretty much," I say.

"No luck making friends at the new school?"

"It's better than the parochial one. Not by that much. They're still nearly all Aleist, and the Salvationist kids just hang out with each other," I say. "If you'd let me dye my hair and pass for Ertydon I could at least sit with the ertyfi -"

Milali shakes her head. "No, no, you're hardly an immigrant, that wouldn't make any sense. I'm sure you can make friends as yourself, Fena. My children all like you, after all."

I shift in my seat. I feel dry, itchy. I want to fly home and dive into my lake. I didn't have to leave it for the first nine years of my life. I wonder what would have happened if no one had ever found me. I could have swum and eaten fish and flown at night, under starlight, and I think that could have been fine.

"Okay."

"There's one more thing before I let you go," Milali says.

"What?"

"Want a job?"

I'm a ward of the state, which isn't really the same thing as being an employee of the state, but there aren't a lot of dragons around so they'll settle and quietly ignore restrictions on child labor as long as I don't make a fuss. There are spells that handle sign languages - but not well. Some wizard spent weeks or months working on one that would make sure people's mouths would appear to move in ways that matched their translated words - or so I'm given to understand; I can't see it - but the state of the art isn't nearly so good on hand signs. I guess no one knows wizardry and wants to talk to sprites.

These aren't sprites.

These are sky-colored aliens, mottled with dark patches, not divided into sexes, deaf and mute and only loosely humanoid. They're small - even the adults are only about my height - and they speak with their hands.

I'm one of three dragons who the government - I think it's the military, actually, though everyone I've seen was in plainclothes - managed to scrape together to help with their language. The other two are grown, a white-haired woman and a black-eyed man. I don't ask for their stories.

"I'd rather talk to somebody my own equivalency," I say. "If I'm going to be having lots of conversations for the linguists to record."

"We'll see what we can do," says the probably-a-soldier who's running the operation.

[So what's your name?] I ask it.

It makes a sign. It's just a name-sign, it doesn't mean anything; I copy it.

"Fena, you need to tell me what you're -"

"Right," I interrupt the linguist. "I just asked it what its name was. Its name is -" sign.

"And does that mean something?"

"No. It's just a name. I think I'll call it Splay if I have to call it something out loud."

[What are you saying?] Splay asks.

[I'm explaining that your name doesn't mean anything. If I have to talk about you in their language, I'll just talk about the shape of your name.]

[But how do you know?] Splay asked, all fascinated posture and energetic hands. [That it doesn't mean anything. And the rest of my language, how do you know it?]

[Dragons just can,] I say. Draconic has a sign language; I just use a loanword. [Dragon is the kind of creature I am.]

[Yes, I heard that your world has several -]

"Fena!" I look her way and lose anything else Splay signs.

"I'm talking about how dragons do languages," I say.

"I need the literal translation, not just the topic."

It's hard to get used to, but I try, repeating a few sentences back and forth until I have the rhythm right, and eventually I'm signing and speaking in sync, and translating Splay as well as I can in real time. Once I have this down the linguist leaves me alone and I can just talk.

[How did you get picked to come here?] I ask.

[It was generally announced to my age group that you wanted a companion of my age,] Splay says. [I am interested in your world, and so I submitted myself for consideration. The organization that is mediating contact with your world selected me. I do not know what procedure they used; it may have been random or based on my academic concentration in xenology.]

Even in an unfamiliar language I can tell when someone's talking fancy. I don't know if Splay's trying to impress me or if it's just like that. [Huh. I'm only here because I'm a dragon so I can talk to you and get everyone enough information to learn the language normally.]

[Your name is made with vibrations, yes?] Splay asks. That's the closest term it has for sound.

Uh. How do I explain that I don't have a name, that I can't have a name, that I'm just down in the records as the name of the lake they found me in because they have to call me something but the magic won't hold to any syllables?

[What would you like me to call you?] it asks.

Fena Lake has no name in Splay's language, so I can't go with that. [Zinc,] I suggest. [That's the kind of dragon that I am.]

[Zinc,] it signs back. [I am sorry that I cannot call you by your real name. Does it have no meaning either?]

[I don't have a name,] I admit.

Splay's confused. [This is a custom of your culture? Must you earn it, or wait for a certain age?]

[No... most people have names. But dragons have to be named early. And I sort of lived wild, for a few years. My parent -] I can't say mother, but my father doesn't really enter into the story anyway; he died before my egg was even laid - [died when, um, budding me. It] (can't say she) [drowned, because it had to bud in water for my... bud case?... to be safe and there wasn't anyone there to help it. And it didn't have...] "Friends" plural is weakly ungrammatical for some reason. Huh. [A friend, to help it. So I came out of my bud case in the lake alone and no one found me for years. My parent was a loner and no one who had reason to find out that it died even knew it was going to bud.]

Splay's a very good... listener. It's attentive, anyway. [You lived without help?]

[I ate swimming animals and I can breathe underwater, in my natural form, which isn't this one - I assume this one by magic,] I say. [Names are magic for my species.]

[I know very little about how magic works,] Splay says sheepishly.

[Don't worry about it. But in order for me to have a proper magic name, I would have had to be named before I was five years old. And I wasn't. There's a name people call me - the same name as my lake - but it doesn't feel like it's mine. I don't pay attention when people say it. Zinc is just as good.]

[That is very sad,] says Splay gravely.

I shrug. [It's not that bad. How were you named?]

[By one of the operators of my creche, before I was decanted,] Splay says.

Wacky. [You didn't get budded? The language seems to think that's usual.]

[It once was, but not recently. Languages can think?]

[No, no, not literally - I mean, the words around budding are more basic signs, and feel more common, than "decanting".]

[You can feel how common words are?] Splay asks, fascinated. [But yes, the technology in use is only some sixty years old, and has only been the norm for the last forty-three...]

I grin. This isn't going to be a boring rugmaker-wage job after all.

[Nothing will explode if I get on one of these,] I say, watching the chain-scoot-thing (subway) scream by. The light's starting to wonder where I'm coming by all the hearing damage; I might have to ask to start seeing a military one.

[But - but - perhaps I should just reverse the transaction -]

They're so honest, so incapable of theft, that Splay could reverse the transaction and then still get onto the subway with me. No one will check us for passes, no one will wonder if we're thieves. [You wanted to see, didn't you?]

[But - but - how can you -]

[Splay, are you a folktale monster who will give me a ride on the subway and then insist on an exchange of my next budding?] I ask.

[No.]

[Good, 'cause I can't bud. I wanna ride the subway and I don't have any money from here. I'll go if you pay for me.] I pause. [And if you change your mind maybe I'll just go on without paying at all.] I fold my arms; that's all I have to say.

Splay is trembling with scandalized astonishment. [How are you real?]

[Don't some of the other species in this world, on the other planets, not do the same exchange thing? Aren't you studying xenology?]

[I never met one in person.] Splay makes up its mind very suddenly; I can see it do it. [Okay. We'll take this one and go to Shining Riverfront.]

Shining Riverfront is beautiful.

[I would like to be your friend one day,] Splay says.

I don't know how to think of the word except friend; that is pretty insistently what it means - yet it won't pluralize nicely in most grammatical contexts and this isn't the first time Splay's talked about it weird.

[Aren't you already my friend?]

[No. I am your companion,] Splay says. [Friends are adults old enough to make good choices, who usually live together, and who can have longstanding conventions about what things are valued equally to what other things without needing to discuss each exchange, and they can also share things.]

And sharing things is pretty weird on Isatei: there are no couches, only chairs. No big bowls of the local equivalent of rice for six people to serve themselves from, only individual meals. No discounts for bringing a friend to the museum or the observatory or the open studio, only a flat ticket price.

This, I decide, is why I'd want to translate the sign as friend, not spouse (even apart from the fact that Splay and its fellows are sexless). I would never call somebody my friend if I couldn't so much as split a bag of popcorn with them, except Splay - who can't eat what I eat and can't share things. I've been making an exception for Splay, and Splay hasn't been.

[You only get one?]

[Most often,] Splay says. [Sometimes, there will be a group of three.]

[Would you want me to not have other friends - the way people on Elcenia have friends? What if I want to get married?]

[I want to be your friend,] Splay says. [If I did not think that would be fine then I would want to be someone else's friend.]

I smile. [I would like to be your friend, then.]

When

(Read during Silver and/or during Empaths.)

When was it? Don't ask me, I don't know. It's sort of like one of those scars that you didn't always have but you certainly can't remember getting. (Yes, scars; you might run to the light for every scratch but try convincing a fifty-year-old shren to do the same thing.) Or like trying to remember exactly when you first ate a piece of toast. It's toast, it's so ordinary, it's part of the world, it's not an event.

I can tell you for sure it wasn't when he hatched. He was a whiner from very early on, and I was seventy-one and thought I was very grown-up. Besides, none of the babies then had ever seen me crying, so I could pretend I never had. He was a very tiny baby. He looked fragile and thin, like some abandoned waif on the street, instead of the well-cared-for abandoned waif that he actually was. He didn't eat much. Didn't talk much either. I picked up one of his scales, once, and kept it in my pocket until I lost it two years later.

It wasn't when his parents didn't come to pick him up when he could shift, either. Lots of us never got picked up. I hadn't been or I'd never even have met him. Why should that make me feel sorry for him particularly, over any of the others who were left behind? He didn't even seem that broken up about it at the time; he hadn't been getting letters, didn't know his parents' names, wasn't really expecting them like some of the little ones did. He moped about it and never signed up to go on the outings with the rest of us, but that isn't so unusual. It didn't really start to seem unusual until he turned fifty and still had never gone out, but no one was going to press him about it. He didn't have to go out if he really wanted to stay indoors.

It certainly couldn't have been when he had his first attack. He was anything but lovable then, crying his lungs out and shaking in a corner in the hallway and projecting panic at anyone that got near. The projector then wasn't very strong - he tried, but the jadeling eventually got the better of him and then everyone was a mess, with him screaming terror into their brains and Uthrae not even able to help them. There were a couple of other green-groups, but they were so used to relying on the projector that it never even occurred to them to try.

So of course it fell to me, and oh, it was hard - hard to sort out what I was really feeling from what he was making me feel, hard to remember how to concentrate on calm enough to be able to share it when he and everyone else around me were screeching fear, hard not to just run out the door and leave it to all burn itself out. But I did it, I was only a hundred and forty and I did what the professional projector couldn't. Ludei told me I was strong, and asked me to help Ilen if it ever happened again, and asked me to take the job on entirely when the projector packed up and left. Of course it did happen again. We learned what set Ilen off but we couldn't board up every window.

It wasn't when I became the projector when the last one left - stresses of the job, he said, and he wanted to live somewhere where not everyone was always sad or angry or afraid, where sometimes if he listened he could pick up a happy signal. How could it have been then? I was so busy all of a sudden, having to constantly listen to a chorus of emotional pain to make sure none of it got out of hand, and some of it was so alien to me, to how I dealt with it - and there was no projector for me, not anymore, I had to quell my own anger and my own hate to be able to get through the day.

It was hard, but I learned. When anger gets this strong you send this much calm, when fear gets this strong you send this much safety, when sadness gets this strong you send this much contentment - contentment, never joy, you can't overcompensate or their minds will rebel and know that it isn't really what they're feeling and it won't work at all. Never joy, there's no joy in that house. From when I woke to when I slept, whatever was the matter, I had to be there at all times to fix it - but not really, not in any way that would stick, because we can't repair ourselves, we're broken forever. That's why we're here.

And it couldn't have been when Ilen got a job of his own and really started being an adult. Sure, he wasn't really the most stable of people and we did get some very disapproving looks, when parents came to get their babies and he just so happened to have an attack while they were there. (Well, if they didn't want to trust us with their babies they shouldn't have left them here.) But he loved the children so much, he was so patient with them, content to stay inside all day to watch them and not run out just to get away from the house like some of the others were prone to doing. And even though he was never as strong a projector as me - even during an attack, though that made it closer - he could do enough to keep the babies from fighting with each other, which was an asset. And he read to them, even the ones big enough to know how to read themselves, and he talked to them about anything they wanted in that quiet, patient voice of his, and so what if two or three times a month I had to haul him screaming out of the room and let someone else take a day off from whatever else they normally did to cover his job. It couldn't have been then, because then I saw him even less, just a quick check-in each evening instead of him loitering in my office with his schoolbooks just to be safe.

But I know it had already happened when those bastards came to take him from me -

So you tell me, when did I fall in love?

Conceive

(Read after Silver. Outtake from a would-have-been third section of Silver.)

"So if today is Fenen, Nemaar, what's tomorrow?" Ehail asked.

"Luuuuuunen," groaned Nemaar. "I know my days, Mommy, I wanna do something else."

"Okay, do you know what year it is?" she suggested.

"Eleven-twenty-five-eight," Nemaar said.

"Mo-o-om," Rithka complained. "He was looking at my poem. I put a date on it."

"Did not, I knew it," Nemaar snapped back at his sister.

"Be that as it may," Ehail said, "it's 11258, yes, but usually we can just say 'fifty-eight', since most often we aren't talking about things from a hundred years ago."

"Okay. I know my years. I wanna do something else," Nemaar said. "I wanna go dig in my hole or go play with Min or something else."

"Say it in Munine," Ehail coaxed, switching to her clutchmates' family's language herself.

Nemaar scowled, but repeated his demand for an end to his lessons in the other language, and then threw in the Martisen and the Gingha for good measure. "I know words too," he said, crossing his arms. "I wanna go."

"Okay, go ahead," sighed Ehail, and Nemaar scrambled up, almost tripping over Cenem on his way out.

"He didn't do Barashi days and years," Cenem pointed out when the door had clacked shut behind Nemaar.

"He'll do those tomorrow," Ehail said.

Rithka made a show of doing her sums in exactingly tidy handwriting and showing all of her work for the next two degrees, but by then was back to fidgeting. "Can I work outside, on the swing-bench?" she asked, looking up at Ehail with huge eyes.

"Yes, if you actually work there," Ehail agreed.

Ehail and Cenem sat together quietly in the living room, Cenem with her book of Espaalan plants and Ehail with the tax forms she was trying to pick through. Gyre had done most of the work on the taxes, but Ehail had to certify that she understood and agreed with the financial decisions aforementioned, and her packet would be flagged if she just wrote her name without reading it.

Cenem's egg parents came to pick her up for a trip to a sledding place up in the hills, just before Mallyn teleported home from school. He walked in with squirrely Rithka around his neck; her big brother was ever more fascinating than sums.

Ehail got up to hug Mallyn, who towered over her; according to the trained-light who checked in on him occasionally to look for long-term effects of his childhood, he'd gotten onto decent nutrition just early enough not to stunt his growth. Much. Ehail could only imagine how tall he'd be if he'd had enough to eat from day one; Rhysel had come in to nudge their doorways a little higher two years prior.

"Hi, Mom," Mallyn said, squeezing her; when he let go he patted Cenem on the head. "How's everything going?"

"Everything's fine, sweetheart," Ehail said. "How's school?"

Mallyn listed minor exploits he and and his friends had experienced in their various classes, grabbed a zucchini muffin, and excused himself to meet his girlfriend, shooing Rithka off his neck to do so. She complained, turned human, and demanded a hug, which her brother gave her before teleporting away.

Rithka was halfway up the stairs when Ehail said, "Rithka?"

"What, Mom?"

"Your assignments?"

"Oh." Rithka sighed, opened a window, and turned into a sparrow to go back out to where she'd left her work.

"Do you think it's about time to have another baby?" Ehail asked Gyre, that evening.

"I was thinking of asking you the same thing," Gyre laughed. "What do you think - another moon-baby?"

"Why not?" Ehail smiled. "Mallyn can watch Nemaar and the girls if we give him a little warning. We can take a little trip up to the moon."

"Boy or a girl?" Gyre asked.

"I think a girl this time," Ehail said, searching Gyre's face for agreement or disagreement.

He nodded. "A girl it is. Names?"

They batted syllables back and forth, long ridiculous strings of them, until they were more trying to make each other laugh than name a daughter-to-be. They tabled the question until later.

"You're going to the moon?" Rithka asked. "But Mom, you're a grownup lady, going to the moon will make you pregnant. Don't you know that?"

Ehail restrained a laugh and made a mental note to amend Rithka's curriculum. "Are you saying you don't want a new little sister?" she asked.

"Oh, a sister. Okay, that's fine," Rithka said, shrugging. "What language are you gonna name her in?"

"It could be any language, as long as it reduces to a nickname Leraal speakers can pronounce," Ehail said.

"But what about Uncle Izaln, and Aunt Tialinh, and all our Barashi family?" Rithka asked.

"Family will make an effort to pronounce her name no matter what sounds we put in. Neighbors won't. You might have noticed," Ehail said mildly.

Rithka frowned and nodded. "I keep trying, but nobody knows how to end a word with an ah. Molindaar can kinda do it but I think that's cause she's known me since she was three."

"But Uncle Tekaal can manage it just fine, and Leraal's his first language," Ehail said, "right?"

"Okay," Rithka said. "And it's supposed to be long so she has lots of syllables?"

"Right," Ehail said.

"Arelythara?" Rithka said after a moment.

"An Eashiri name?" Ehail asked.

"It's pretty. Aunt Rhysel'll know what it means. And the baby's going to be silver, even if she's a thudia like Nemaar," Rithka said. "And we can call her Arel. It sounds like a girl name, even."

"Arel," tried Ehail. "All right, then, if your father likes it too, that'll be it. You'll be good for Mallyn while we're gone, won't you?"

"I will," Rithka said darkly, with a look in the direction of Nemaar's room.

"I'm sure Nemaar will behave himself too," Ehail said. "Make sure -"

"I woooon't get him in trouble by provoking him till he hits me," Rithka said, rolling her eyes.

"Make sure you help keep an eye on him," Ehail said. "Cenem's not hard to look after, but Nemaar can be, and Mallyn's most likely going to be distracted with schoolwork or something."

"I bet he invites his giiiirlfriend over," Rithka said.

"Well, she's welcome here, as long as she doesn't distract him to the point of him being unable to babysit," Ehail said. The door opened. "That'll be your father. Be good, sweetheart."

"Okay," sighed Rithka.

Ehail spent much less time informing Cenem and Nemaar about the moon trip, and then charged Mallyn with his tasks for the evening.

"If Nemaar acts up, am I allowed to do anything about it besides tell him I'll tell you and Dad when you get home?" Mallyn asked, drawing his eyebrows together.

"You don't want to know about what happens if Rithka acts up, or Cenem?" Ehail asked, as Gyre came up behind her to wrap his arms around her waist.

Mallyn just looked at her.

"All right, I'll grant you Cenem," Ehail sighed. "But Rithka's not always -"

"I can just threaten not to talk to her," Mallyn said. "She'll be good if she thinks I'll ignore her if she's bad, even for two degrees. Nemaar would love it if I didn't pay attention to him, though."

"All right, you're entitled to revoke his dessert privileges for tomorrow," Ehail said. "If you need to. Don't overreact to something little. He's only six - less in Barashin years."

"He set the curtains on fire last week," Mallyn pointed out.

Gyre peered down at Ehail. "He what? I didn't hear about that."

"It was nothing - I fixed it in a tick, basic household spell, they were barely singed - controlling firebreathing takes practice," Ehail said, fluttering her hands. "I don't think he meant to - it wasn't worth bothering you about, Gyre -"

"I see," Gyre frowned.

"Cenem never sets things on fire," Mallyn pointed out. "She doesn't have much practice."

"Cenem's had two and a half decades with an accessible dragon form to learn to play with fire," Ehail defended. "Nemaar hasn't even been alive that long."

"Anyway," Gyre said. "I think we have an appointment up that way, dear heart." He pointed to the ceiling.

Mallyn made a face. "I'll keep an eye on everybody. Just go and don't tell me about it at all, okay?"

Ehail laughed weakly, took Gyre's hand, and went downstairs to pick up the picnic basket before she teleported up to their spot on the moon.

Sparkly

(Read during part two or later of Siaddaki.)

I was Papa's sparkly baby. The others could shift into dragon forms too, just the same color, of course, and they had their own nicknames. "Glittery" was Vernn. "Shimmery" was Elernin. "Twinkly" was Linnde. Papa never mixed us up, and even after Vernn got tired of being called by a silly nickname and Elernin followed suit, even after Linnde decided that she was really too old and wasn't her real name good enough for Papa? - I was still my papa's sparkly baby. Even after I wasn't really a baby anymore.

Papa used to sparkle in his own way. His eyes would light up when he was happy. They looked almost like Dad's when they did that - not quite so colorful, but blue and shining. When I was only a hatchling it would happen all the time. By the time I learned to shift Papa was getting older. He slowed down a little. He was still strong and he could still scoop me up and whisper silly things in my ear.

Papa got old so quickly. By the time I was forty he couldn't carry me in dragon form any more, and winced if he tried to carry me when I was being a human. Part of that was because I grew. Part of it wasn't. I turned into a marmot and he could carry me anywhere I liked, scratching me behind the ears and complimenting me on my sparkly fur. When I was fifty I started turning into a fairy instead, even lighter and able to fly up to meet him instead of making him bend to pick me up. I could stand on his hand, balancing on one foot on one of his fingers and twirling like a butterfly-winged doll in a music box. Or I could sit on his shoulder, light as a feather, not hurting him any more than his old bones already did.

I was sixty-eight when Papa died. It wasn't sudden. A light came in and pressed her sparkly white light to his chest and he was still old and sick and dying. The light left muttering apologies. And everybody gathered around Papa and waited.

Vernn and Elernin and Linnde were old by then too. Even my nieces and nephews were starting to get on. My grand-nieces and nephews were all grown, or at least mostly. Some of them had their own kids. Dad, of course, looked as young as he had the day he married Papa. He was sitting next to Grandpa looking just exactly like him, sparkling blue eyes and all. It was easy to remember Dad looking just exactly like that, laughing with Papa when he was young and healthy and happy too. It was hard to look at Papa lying there dying and rasping.

Papa held my hand. Everybody alive in the world who'd ever loved him was there and he picked my hand to hold - and Dad's with his other hand, but he was looking at me.

"Sparkle," he says. "You're my sparkly girl. You keep on sparkling."

"I will," I said to the emptiness he left behind him.

My sparkles will do that whether I want them to or not. They can't tell what's happening.

Table of Contents

Mindlink

Voices

Zinc

When

Conceive

Sparkly