Gratuitous Epilogue
Touchstone: Extras
Andrea K Höst
Gratuitous Epilogue
Touchstone: Extras
© 2011 Andrea K Höst. All rights reserved.
Cover Design by: Andrea K Hösth
ISBN: 978-0-9871514-6-9
Published by Andrea K Hösth at Smashwords
All characters in this publication
are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
DESCRIPTION
What happens when the plot ends? A relentless barrage of weddings, babies, and planetary colonisation! Meandering through the two years following the conclusion of the Touchstone Trilogy, this self-indulgent collection of family reminiscence is more saccharine than dramatic, with the most action to be found in snowball fights.
For those who truly just want to know what happens next, no matter how mundane, read on for the everyday, ordinary lives of psychic space ninjas playing house.
Chapter 1
December
Wednesday, December 3
Home-making
Wow – feels like forever since I've written. December already. Kaoren asked me to start a new diary, for all I'm nowhere near finished reading him even the first one. But he's right that I place less of a filter on myself in these diaries than I do in any conversation, and we both look forward to our reading sessions. I'm finding myself with a lot less time to sit about writing though, so he'll have to make do with a monthly catch-up.
The past few weeks have been all about planning our Arcadian house, tweaking and finalising the rough design we'd blocked out with the program I gave Ys. Kaoren, with his usual efficiency, had carted out a drone and obtained a proper topographic scan of the site for the house – above the waterfall and curving down one side of the little hill. It was great to see how into the project he was: the kids aren't the only ones who have been thinking long and hard about just what they'd like our home to be.
Beyond a shelf built into the bed, I left our bedroom's design to Kaoren, since he has the best idea of what his Sights can cope with. I amused myself with a 'retreat' room – an idea Kaoren liked and promptly copied for himself. We ended up with a stack of three octagons which weren't quite sitting directly on top of each other. The bedroom is in the middle, on what would be the main floor of the building, with windows above the waterfall. There's a side door to a stairwell up and down, as well as out to the patio. Kaoren's retreat will be one floor down, and positioned toward the back, away from the central body of the house. It will be windowless with lots of shelving, and a rear exit to what will be a tiny sunken garden room where he can meditate. All those things in his quarters back on Tare will end up on the new shelves, presuming we ever open the way to Tare.
My retreat will be an eyrie, a kind of rooftop pagoda with windows in every direction, an excess of window seats to loll about in, and a door to a walkway across the top of the centre section of the house.
The centre of the building has the kitchen and the lounge and a workout room, and a couple of guest bedrooms and laundry and storage area and all that kind of practical stuff. The very large lounge opens on to a sprawling, multi-level patio overlooking the waterfall.
The far tier of the patio connects to the kids' domain, which will be the largest part of the house. Two stacks of octagons linked by bathrooms. I was logically thinking of one room for each of them, but this turned into quite a debate thanks to Sen's insistence that Kaoren and I fill her life with babies. That isn't going to happen any time soon, and definitely not in the numbers she would like. But because it was easy to do, we added another two spare rooms in the kids' area to appease her and cope with overflow guests.
Rye very definitely wanted the rear, lower room, opening onto the proposed back yard. This wasn't simply copying Kaoren – he wants a garden of his own, to grow vegetables and keep pets. Sen decided she wanted the room beside his – I suspect that this is all about being closest to the action in the main lounge room, or perhaps whatever pets Rye produces. On top of these two rooms is a play room for the kids, which opens out on the rooftop walkway leading to my retreat, and also onto the kids' part of the patio, and the two spare bedrooms, which will overlook the back garden. Sen has decided to lay claim on these in the interim, 'so they won't be lonely'.
Ys and Lira opted for the top two rooms, which will be the highest point. The whole house will be sheltered by the mass of trees on the island, and partially shielded by the hill on the Pandora side, but with amazing views across the lake toward the water bird nesting grounds. Ys sectioned off her room into little roomlets, so that the bed isn't visible, and there's a sheltered study area – each section with its own set of windows. Lira, by contrast, didn't want anything interrupting her ability to see out, and wanted stairs down the outside of the building to the upper garden.
Sen treats it all as a joyful game, with her playing princess, but Ys and Rye go through overwhelmed patches. They're beginning to accept that we mean it about becoming a family, that we're not going to change our minds, and that they're important to us and warrant a room of their own, just the way they want it. Lira's a more confusing case – she obviously grew up privileged and protected, but also terribly isolated. And she's been having a bad spate of dreams about fading out of existence. Sometimes the planning sessions leave her angry and upset, because she's not sure she'll be here to see the house.
KOTIS Command has at least not objected to the idea of us moving. And, despite the enormous demand for construction professionals, we'll have our design back from our chosen architect soon and have been able to tentatively line up construction dates. That's a side-benefit of being 'Caszandra': something I vacillate between finding convenient and embarrassing. It's not going to go away, so either I work with it or I practice my pouting.
At least the extra-special treatment seems to extend to all of the Setari – is a way of thanking them for putting their lives on the line. And there's a lot of prestige for the architect and builders, too. I'm pleased with the architect, Tel Sevra, because our house plans haven't appeared on the news. Yet.
I want to make the house happen sooner rather than later, particularly to give us all more 'outside' life which doesn't get reported within minutes. One decision I've yet to make is whether to employ someone to help with the cleaning – we're going to try on our own at first, but it'll be a big house and it might be a bit much for the two of us. While I don't mind the kids having some minor chores to do, I don't want them scrubbing bathrooms, or any of the other things I've been fortunate to have KOTIS staff doing for me. Still, we'll have our own cleaning snot, which is, uh, a good thing, I guess.
Also on the staff front, Maze tells me I might want to consider some kind of assistant. On Tare the interface made it impossible for people to actually post things addressed to me. There's a postal rule set up about unsolicited gifts to the Setari which has covered me as well – you need a verification code to send anything through the Taren postal system. The same set-up is in place here, but is a lot harder to manage, and the KOTIS support staff have had to deal with people just walking up as close to the building as they can get before greensuits intercept them, and leaving packages and presents for all of us. I'd never actually thought that through in detail, but of course Raiten's fan club alone could probably fill a room each month. The island and Setari guards will make it harder for people to do that, but non-KOTIS staff are becoming more mobile and will eventually have their own boats and flyers. The presents are just people trying to be nice, but I guess if we started accepting them we'd need a house twice as big to put it all in. And KOTIS is still blocking random mail and invitations and things, which is convenient, if impolite. But hiring someone to deal with that means less privacy.
Among the pile of things I'd like to keep private is the treatment Ys and Rye have been going through to remove the scarring from their backs. We celebrated its conclusion by going to the island for a swim (Maze and Alay as our escorts this time), and even though Ys and Rye still wore the same shorts and shirt ensemble, I noticed a certain air of freedom which I think may be because now there's no risk of anyone seeing the scars through their wet clothes.
As we grow to understand Nuran culture better, we're beginning to see why they wanted so much to hide it – a whipping which scarred was an extreme punishment, suited for some deep and heinous crime. The scarring marked them not as victims, but as monsters. For eavesdropping on a lesson. The expression on Rye's face when the blue bandages were taken off for the last time and they showed him an image of his back was enough to have me hiding tears, and Kaoren went incredibly quiet. He and Maze had a discussion about it afterwards, and neither of them could properly speak they were so angry. Not many people know about the scars, fortunately, and I mean to keep it that way.
My bones have knit obediently, nanotech speeding the process enough that yesterday I was finally allowed to ditch the sling. Kaoren and I took immediate advantage of that, which we're not strictly supposed to do yet, but I've been not-ravishing him for way too long.
And today, at long last, we went into the Ena (four squads and Tsur Selkie) and I did visualisations of Tare and Kolar. Tsur Selkie had me project his office first, where I discovered a large whiteboard-type panel of actual physical writing. Tsur Selkie's a forward-thinking type of guy, and set up quite a few contingencies, including this collection of details of what had happened on Tare since we blew the marbles. The same set-up had been made at the KOTIS headquarters on Kolar, except with a bunch of distinctive items in the room to make it easier for me to visualise.
News was not completely good. Fourteenth had been in the Ena when the marbles were blown, and were listed as out of commission recovering from injuries. Third is back on duty as a seven-person squad.
It was stupid of me to hope that Eeli would somehow have recovered.
With Fourteenth down, there's only five active squads on Tare, but thankfully Ionoth numbers are significantly down on all planets, and they've observed the same sort of relaxing in the tension on the tears into real-space, so the Taren and Kolaren squads are coping. Having vastly more non-Setari manpower, they've made some progress in charting a path through deep-space, but estimates for completion are still in the months range.
Kolar's news was unequivocally good. Their major Ionoth problem has long been middle-sized roamers, the number of which have practically dropped to nil since the disruption. They're also making moderate progress on the complicated process of charting safe passage through the tides of deep-space. There was a Kolaren in the room with that whiteboard, and Tsur Selkie had a brief formal conversation with him which was very funny because the Kolaren realised he had to be a projection, and was so distracted by that he kept not listening to Tsur Selkie.
Then I fell asleep, of course, and woke in bed to find Kaoren curled around me, deeply asleep. I'm so glad not to be all broken and wincey any more, because there's few things nicer than waking wrapped in Kaoren.
I've been reading the news while debating waking him up. All the Tarens and Kolarens on Muina have been very anxious for me to recover enough to check the situation on their home worlds, and KOTIS sent out a press release with the good news straight away. I've been managing otherwise to keep out of the news the last couple of weeks, for the most part by staying in and keeping my head down. I've been following a lot of the debates about the laws being drafted, but have gotten a bit tired of it.
Most of the other news is about who has been granted various bits of land, and the progress at Mesiath. The first 'New Muinan' baby was born a few days ago. They called her 'Caszandra', and when I grimaced at that Kaoren informed me that she was hardly the first baby lumbered with my name, and certainly wouldn't be the last. 'Kaoren' has become a lot more popular for boys, too, apparently.
He's looking particularly gorgeous, lying there asleep. Can't resist...
Chapter 2
January
Thursday, January 8
ET
The gate to Earth opened!
The monitoring drone gave us two days' warning of a probable alignment, sufficient for me to get completely worked up about the whole thing. I must have re-read my letter to Mum about a million times, and I swear Maze brought Nils and Zee back from the Oriath excavation just so I'd be distracted by the way they look at each other. [They behave almost as if they're not together, except just occasionally their eyes meet and – well, The Nils Effect triples.]
They did distract me a fair deal, and I was only a little beside myself when the drones suggested the critical time was approaching. KOTIS Command (rather warily) allowed Kaoren and I and the kids to go, with First Squad and a bunch of technicians as escort, to spend a day there waiting for something to happen. I couldn't see any difference when it did align, and Alay was the one who tossed my (carefully wrapped and stamped and protected by a plastic wrap) parcel through. A fist-sized skitter-drone followed, just for a quick view and safely back again.
Kaoren kept his arm firmly around my waist the entire time the greysuits were taking readings, and looked a great deal more relaxed after the gate had closed. I know he didn't think I was going to try running through it, but he may have been worried the gate would somehow reach out and snatch me away.
The thing was, it took FIVE MINUTES to close.
"I could have just turned around and gone back," I kept repeating.
"Well, I'm glad you didn't," Mara said, amused at me.
"So am I. But still feel like an idiot." Then I went and hugged my kids, and even Ys let me.
Five minutes! It's not just the amount of time it stays open, either. The skitter-drone had brought back some perfectly ordinary images of a Sydney footpath – no more than a few metres further along the same street I'd been walking down on my way home. And the gate realigned exactly one Muinan year (and ten minutes) after I stepped through from Earth. The implications of that, of a predictable alignment to almost the same place, just floored me.
Of course, we aren't certain it really is predictable, and there was damn little I could do about it right away except give Kaoren a few sleepless nights with my worked-up tossing and turning. I was glad, at least, that I'd recovered enough to do some carefully rationed projection work, which meant a week later I got to go into the Ena and try and visualise Mum to see if the parcel had reached her.
I knew the answer to that straight away because she'd put the photos I'd sent in frames and set them on the bookshelf next to the TV. Pictures of me and Kaoren and our new family, right there on Earth.
Jules was playing games with one of his friends, and leaped up shouting: "I told you so! I told you so!" and then to me: "You get to do all the good stuff, Cass!"
Mum had been in the kitchen, but came out at the fuss and looked around at all the black-clad figures, then walked straight to me and hugged me hard.
"I only just finished reading them," she said. "Your handwriting is so tiny – my eyes may never recover." Then she pulled back, blinking away tears, and examined me. "No more injuries?"
"Not even a headache."
I introduced her to Kaoren again. He'd had me teach him how to say a few things in English in preparation – his accent is so cute – and Mum smiled at him and said: "I gather this is our second introduction, and so I'll say the same thing I apparently did before: I'll be glad to welcome you to the family when one of us isn't a projection. But – thank you, for so much."
"Would you come here, Mum?" I asked anxiously. "If it were possible?"
"Who wouldn't, dummo?" Jules put in. "Are you nuts?"
Mum had given me a sharp look. "You've found a way?"
I explained quickly about the realignment of the gate, and how we wouldn't even know for another year whether it really was a predictable pattern, and that I'd be trying to send her another letter then, and I started to talk overly fast and nearly lost the projection.
Mum distracted me by catching me up on the news from home. Aunt Bet is having another baby, and Nan has sold her house and moved into an assisted care place. And Nick and Alyssa have hooked up! Mum said they bonded over being able to talk about me possibly being on another planet (which is not a story Mum has encouraged be spread far and wide). I think I must have been a bad friend to Alyssa to not realise that she liked Nick.
I couldn't maintain the projection for much longer – looking at Earth takes way too much out of me – but before I dropped it Mum hugged me again and said: "Who wouldn't? Are you nuts?" and laughed in a wide-eyed way and then was gone.
It will be more than a year before we can send another letter, and then it will be another year's wait and KOTIS Command has to consider the idea of telling people on Earth the location of an occasional gate to Muina, and might not give me permission, and I'm going to go do a lot of swimming in the hopes that it will stop me ping-ponging off the walls.
Wednesday, January 21
We've been in our house three days now. It's a big adjustment not having so many people around me, not having the constant background awareness of support staff, and the greensuits and technicians on the floors below, and of squads in the surrounding rooms. Plenty of small animals on Arcadia to catch my attention, but I'm really liking the relative quiet.
After approval, the seeding of the house was quick and easy – the only concern being whether we could avoid disturbing the spring which feeds the waterfall – but it took a fair chunk of time before all the support systems and fittings were installed in the excessively large chambers we'd grown underground.
The house is on the west side of the hill, and Pandora is to the east, so our view is full of uninterrupted lake and will have magnificent sunsets. In Winter when the leaves have fallen we'll probably be able to see First Squad Island to the south and slightly west.
Maze helped a lot with the landscaping – scooping away the part of the hill on the south-east side where we want a big, enclosed grassy backyard, and shaping the face of the hill which forms a rear wall to the roof garden. Both areas are mostly still raw dirt at the moment, though we have marked out garden beds and planted a lot of seeds which the botanists tell me might produce the kind of lawn I described. Maze and Rye spent hours together in earnest discussion about which trees to remove and which to transplant so that we have a lot of sunlight, and selecting just the right trees for the backyard, and finding the perfect rocks to split and turn into stepping stones for a path. Maze thoroughly enjoyed all that, and says he's going to study botany and design so he can build gardens. I think he's serious.
Since most everything we had at the Setari building belongs to KOTIS, we had a lot of shopping to do. Linens and kitchen equipment and chairs and tables and curtains (which at least the Kolarens understand) and dozens of things which we kept realising we'd need. With the industrial sector expanding by the day, and the variations which nanotech allows, even the few production companies which have formed offer a surprising amount of variety. The interface made it easy to compare options, and we held family voting sessions to pick the designs.
We also went on an actual shopping trip to the mall/subway station which you can enter through Moon Piazza, which is where most of the handcrafted items are displayed. Amazing stuff – many of the early approved settlers were arts and crafts type – and I bought some really nice glassware and plates, and this incredible woollen tapestry which is deep green with mostly white flowers arranged in intricate Art Nouveau-ish lines inspired by the Kalasa decorations. I had the greatest difficulty getting the man at the shop to accept payment for any of it. We had lunch at one of the new restaurants, and I wish I could figure a way to take the kids out without having people showing up where we're eating, to cheer when they catch glimpses of us. Even Sen went all shy at that one (or possibly was just overtired from all the excitements and the challenge of sampling everyone's desserts).
Images of our house didn't show up on the news until after it was nearly complete, which makes me like our architect even more. It was inevitable that pictures would leak once it reached the construction phase. And then the technicians were gone, and it was suddenly our house, very white and sprawling and new, and all we had to do was put our clothes away, make the beds, and figure out a way to keep the mud off the floors because we forgot to get mats.
Alone at last! Except for Ketzaren and Jeh, who were my minders for the day. KOTIS Command was willing to let us not live in the Setari building, but Lira and I are just too valuable, too potentially dangerous, for us not to have minders, particularly since Kaoren has more assignments away from Pandora than I do. When Lira goes to the talent school each day, a second pair will be on call for her. Babysitting is a permanent condition of our existence.
Not that I mind when it's Ketzaren and Jeh, and now that months have passed with no sign of Cruzatch, babysitting duty is more a matter of being on the same island, rather than in my lap. And Setari are certainly useful to have around when you're trying to arrange a party.
It was a housewarming and thank you rolled into one. Most of the food was pre-made by one of the restaurants, but I did a little cooking myself, even though many of the ingredients are still fairly unfamiliar to me. Lohn and Mara helped a lot, even when they weren't assigned babysitters. Their house is going to be seeded soon, the first on their island, and I'm going to enjoy returning the many favours I owe them.
The party's guest list was a bit of a struggle, because I really owe all the squads, even Fifth, but though Fifth have been behaving well, I'm not suddenly going to start liking them. And much as he tries to hide it, I think Kaoren would prefer that I never spoke to Els again. There were also the huge number of medics who've spent a lot of time keeping me alive, and a few of the kitchen staff that I've been chatting with about food, and – well, eventually Kaoren told me I couldn't invite half of KOTIS, and no-one would expect me to. I ended up just inviting First, Second and Fourth and Squad One and Isten Notra and Shon, since these are the people I'm closest to. [And Shon's two sisters, partially because I wanted to see if the youngest would scream and point at everyone. She and Sen got along extra-well, despite the age difference.]
The party was last night, and I think everyone enjoyed it. It was a fairly warm night, but there was a balmy breeze, and the terraced patios worked really well as I introduced everyone to the Aussie tradition of the barbie. [It was easier than I expected to have a barbeque made. Kolar has a lot more things like this than Tare, and so it wasn't like I was asking for something extraordinary.]
By now it's not too hard to get meat and vegetables (instead of algae-blocks), and I managed a nice lamb steak with (somewhat purplish) fried onions with a salad of non-poisonous green leaves. All the squads pretended to be astonished to discover that I'm capable of cooking. I'm teaching Kaoren to cook as well, since it's something he's never had any need to do.
The surprise of the night came from Kaoren, who produced two tiny black scraps after dinner. Kittens! He said he remembered me saying that kittens are supposed to come in pairs. I was just as excited by them as the kids, though I've had time since to realise that they'll represent a drastic change to the island's ecosystem once they're big enough to hunt. I'm trying to think of a solution to that which doesn't involve giving up the kittens.
The cat colony of Pandora is still mostly feral, but some of the adults have been semi-tamed, and there's been a great deal of kitten-napping going on. Our pair (which we haven't named yet) weren't the least bit afraid, but did get stressed by there being so many people, and went and hid behind Nils, which everyone thought was hugely funny.
Zee leaned down and said something to him which actually made him go pink, and Ketzaren and I exchanged amused glances. I'm not the only person pleased and fascinated by Nils and Zee. First and Second are full of plans for the future, of adjusting to being 'planetary' Setari instead of constantly working in the Ena. And of the details of Lohn and Mara's upcoming wedding, and First Squad Island, and the question of how they felt about some of the children at the talent school.
I must admit I invited Squad One not only because they're fun to talk to, but because I suspect Sonn (I still haven't reached the point of calling her Fiar) of being more than a little interested in Arad Nalaz, and trying not to let herself be. Fourth, like most of the younger squads, haven't thrown themselves into a welter of romance and plans for houses, but they seemed to enjoy the party well enough. Mori's been down lately because she misses both her family and Ro Kanato from Eighth, but otherwise Fourth has been rather focused on not 'losing their edge'. They've been pathfinding through the Ena, charting courses from Pandora to places without working platforms, like Oriath and Arenrhon. This leaves Kaoren rather tired in the evenings, but I was fairly successful in keeping the bulk of my party-planning from landing on his head as soon as he dropped down onto the patio.
I haven't just been playing house and planning parties, but my day job has been relatively stress-free. KOTIS Command has kept me to light training, irregular visualisations, and enhancing the Setari assisting the Mesiath construction. The only thing which I'm currently annoyed about is my hair, which is growing out super-slow. At the moment I have all these feathery wanna-be curls and look like a fuzzy duckling.
I'm up in my eyrie right now, with the wind blowing the super-sheer gauzy curtains about. Jeh and Grif are guarding me by sitting down on the patio chatting. Kaoren is at Kalasa, and the kids at school, so there's no-one else in range of my senses. The kittens are chasing the curtains, which I should probably teach them not to, but I think it's too cute to stop. The next important task on our schedule is voting on names for them.
Guess I'll go make Jeh and Grif some lunch.
Chapter 3
February
Friday, February 6
Stood Over
The kittens are getting leggier and more mobile, and I'll probably have to find some kind of bells to put on a collar, because they've definitely got strong hunting genes. They're called Mip and Tick-tock. Mip was Sen's suggestion. I suggested Tick and Tock for names for both of them, but Sen liked it better as a single name. For the moment family votes are mostly still boiling down to Sen's preferences, but I'm glad to see that Ys and Rye are being positively influenced by Lira. Lira likes Sen, but she doesn't put her whims above things she really wants, and just occasionally Ys and Rye at least consider doing the same.
Lohn and Mara's house will soon be at the fit-out stage, and Jeh, Grif and Ketzaren's won't be too far behind them. The rest of the Setari aren't moving so quickly, though most of them have taken their land grants to ensure the islands stay Setari. But for the moment barracks are just easier, and houses are something that the senior squads want more for family than for privacy. Lohn's fretting about the question of adoption, and Mara says it's because he likes so many of the children he's been tutoring at the talent school. They've included a lot of extra rooms in their house design, but that's mainly because they have tons of relatives back on Tare, and want them to visit or stay. And they're going to try to have a baby fairly soon after their wedding.
I had a fair bit of stress a week ago. I've been on-and-off discussing being a touchstone with Lira (who still won't admit to being able to do anything any more), and told her about how I'd once made Nils dream about things which had happened to him in the past, and hadn't been able to break out of the dream. She told me that people with Illusion talents are the ones best able to guide projections, and they were deeply involved in the construction of the 'machines' for the grand projects like the Ddura. Unfortunately, I was stupid enough to mention this, and of course the technicians were fascinated by the link and wanted to set up some experiments to see whether Nils could make me project stuff. It's one of the few things I've really, absolutely refused to do. Not with Nils, not with anyone – but especially not with Nils. I was pretty calm about it when they suggested it initially, but when they sent Maze back to have a deep and meaningful about it, I got all stressed and barely stopped myself from asking him if he'd appreciate being forced to relive Helese's death, and could only say: "I really mean it. I can't hurt people that way." And of course had nightmares, and I guess Kaoren and Maze between them told the technicians to back the hell off firmly enough that they decided to leave it be (for now – being able to create things like the Ddura is something they're very interested in).
Fortunately Nils wasn't around for any of this. He and Zee are in charge of the Setari out at Oriath, assisting with the slow excavation of the massive pile of rubble and keeping the site clear of Ionoth, so I haven't had a chance to see much of them.
It's my birthday tomorrow. I'll be nineteen, which feels really old and really young to me at the same time. I'm feeling very lucky that Kaoren changed his mind after only six months.
Chapter 4
March
March 9
Stepping Forward
KOTIS Command still haven't managed to map a path through to Tare or Kolar, though according to Tsur Selkie's whiteboard Tare and Kolar have managed to reach each other. The route isn't really very different – it's just that it's now like working your way through an invisible maze which wiggles about, and if you touch the walls you might get swished through a rift into real-space. The trip will be very Indiana Jones in future – all a matter of timing, of pausing and dashing forward to roll under the swinging blades, and then stopping again at the next roiling obstacle, but not waiting too long in case a huge rock comes rumbling up behind you.
It does wiggle in a predictable pattern, rather like a very complex tide, but I can see why the old Lantarens thought the Pillars worthwhile. I'm more than astonished that they ever managed to put them in place. It's not like they had scanners and computers which would remember the patterns of the changing landscape.
The exploration group is nearly there, though, and expect to meet up with the Tare group in the next couple of weeks. It'll be weird when we start getting new settlers again. After months of being cut off, people really are beginning to consider themselves 'Muinan'. Even Pandoran and Mesian, now that both settlements are up and running. It's so extraordinarily strange watching the continual expansion – new buildings going up, old ones painstakingly restored, animals and plants discovered and half-remembered names given to them, or new ones made up.
Rye's named several species. Kaoren and I are continually impressed by him, by his methodical cataloguing of the flora and fauna of the island. Shon helped him with understanding the initial requirements, and he's been producing reports on Arcadia ever since. He asks Kaoren to review them for word selection before he submits them, but while there are plenty of errors, his reading and writing skills have improved immensely and it's hard to believe they've been written by an eleven year-old who couldn't read at all six months ago. It does help that after basic lessons the interface allows you to do whole-word selection rather than spelling individual words.
Shon tells me that, though they might review the islands properly at some future date, the work Rye's doing is genuinely valuable. There's these tiny, hand-sized brown and black possum-like things which haven't yet been located anywhere but Arcadia and Siriath (First Squad Island), and Rye named them Restels (for Sentarestel) and he's borrowed several scanners and is creating his own mini-documentary about them. Rye fills every moment of each day with the thousands of things he wants to do – taking care of his garden, cataloguing the island's animals (and finding an interesting 'sonic collar' solution which makes it hard for Mip and Tick-Tock to successfully hunt), school studies, and combat training. He's also very interested in the team sports which the schools have started organising, and has improved as a swimmer in leaps and bounds, and is just embracing his new life so wholeheartedly. Time spent with Kaoren is still his greatest joy, but last week I got this sudden violent hug in return for a whiteberry muffin, which I'm happy to take as proof that Rye is glad of me as well.
Ys' twelfth birthday is coming up and I've been struggling to decide on the perfect present for her. Ys already has the two things she wants most: Sen and Rye safe and happy, and access to more information than even she can gulp down. Lira fills any need for social contact beyond Sen and Rye, and the only thing Ys would probably admit to wanting is to not have to go to school because it interrupts her reading. I have an idea about something she'd probably enjoy, and I'm going to ask Isten Notra about it, but I have to work myself up to that because it's a big favour. I'm also going to get Ys a microscope, which I think she'll find interesting – I've had that ordered for weeks.
Ys and Lira grump at each other occasionally – Lira doesn't think studying every free moment you have is at all amusing – but fortunately their friendship is proving pretty solid, and Ys always makes time for family events. They're both still fairly reserved with me and Kaoren, but are growing more confident and less defensive. It helps, I think, that Kaoren and I are very careful to treat their rooms as theirs and never go into them without asking permission. That and the certainty of routine and consistency of rules seems to go a long way. Everyone has chores now, and an allowance if they do their chores, and I'm completely fascinated by the things they choose to buy. Lira seems to want to have her own statue collection, which is kind of awesome.
There's also very good news about Lira – she's a tiny bit taller than she was when we recovered her, and the medics say she appears to be growing normally. So, whatever else she might be, she's not frozen in time. She's developed an interest in music now, puzzling her way through the massive amounts available through the interface, and I'm wondering whether to start her with learning an instrument, or encourage her into art – she still likes playing with Ys' modelling toy, but I'm not sure how passionate she is about any of it. She's more inclined to be social than Ys, but still hasn't adjusted to not being isolated and kept separate and so has a habit of reacting with suspicion to anyone trying to talk to her, and is very imperious with all but the close circle of people she trusts (she's imperious with us too, but not as consistently).
Sen's not been having too good a time. She's transitioning into one of the tough periods for Sight Sight talents, where most of the certainty vanishes, and there's rarely a night when she's not punished with cruel and confusing dreams. And her Place Sight has begun to strengthen, which means touching certain objects or being in certain places can be very painful. We've been making up a bed for her in a little side-room off our bedroom (which I intended as the "baby's room", if and when we have any). It works very well for Sen, letting us get through most nights without having her in bed with us, but close enough to help her through the worst dreams. She finds having us within earshot very comforting. The change is sad, though, because she's no longer inclined to hug everyone and anyone, and will even flinch away from people at times. Kaoren's wealth of experience with controlling his Sights is exactly what she needs, but there's nothing anyone can do to stop this from being an awful patch for her.
My own month has been fairly busy. Now that I'm properly recovered from my injuries, I have a regular work schedule. Mostly visualising whole forms of decrepit and ruined books recovered from Kalasa, and sometimes the insides of rooms. They're being very careful about not overtaxing me, and every second day is still an exercise day. I'll probably 'retire' for a couple of years after Kaoren and I get married, but even though I'm theoretically rich enough never to work again, I'm happy enough to contribute in these non-dramatic ways. Still rather wary of them plugging me into Ddura-making machines, but they're keeping quiet about those possibilities at the moment.
My fitness is probably the highest it's ever been, and I'm even progressing a little in combat training. I do a lot of canoeing – Kaoren's birthday present to me was canoes for the whole family (we had to build a boat house and a dock – and work out how to paddle). Even better, he arranged limited permission for me to go off on my own. I have to tell people where I'm going, and not go out of the immediate area of the islands – and my guards of the moment get to stay on alert and track me via the interface, ready to fly off and rescue me – but it's still a taste of independence which I really appreciate. Mostly I go with people anyway. Kaoren and I like getting up just before dawn and going out just the two of us, and I think the group trips are one of the things that all the kids really look forward to, even Ys and Lira. Each weekend we paddle to a different island to explore. I've even paddled the kids to school a few times, though mostly we use one of the floating sleds to take them because it's a fairly long trip.
I visited Siriath frequently while Lohn and Mara's and Jeh, Ketzaren and Grif's houses were being constructed. They'd designed an entire little neighbourhood – seven broadly expansive multi-family houses – in anticipation of contact with Tare being re-established, since they knew that not only their parents but most of their siblings were going to apply to settle. Housing is so cheap and easy with whitestone, and they built quite close to each other so that they can share the power, water and recycling installations which are the costly part. Each house has land about the size of four suburban blocks (I think that would make an acre of yard for each house) and in the centre of them all, leading down to the lake's edge and a dock is a big semi-cleared space which will be a grassy parkland once it's recovered from being 'weeded' of trees. Lohn and Mara plan to get married in their park, and Maze and Rye had a great deal of fun consulting on the design. A few more Setari house 'clusters' have been seeded about Siriath, and also on the furthest-out island, Nula, but none have been finished yet.
Lohn got amazingly stressed about adopting. He wasn't the only one keyed up, but Lohn especially just hated that there would be all these kids that they didn't choose. And that those kids would know it, and feel rejected. During their dual housewarming Mara, Jeh and Ketzaren asked me whether I felt like I was Sen, Ys, Rye and Lira's mother. Which is yes and no, really. I don't think any of them – even Sen – think of me as their mother. Sen might one day. To Ys, Rye and Lira, I think we might be too close to their ages for them to consider us Mum and Dad, even after we formally adopt them. But Guardians, elder siblings, whatever. We're family now, and I love them all.
Mara, Ketzaren and Jeh had a very interesting discussion – more with each other than with me – about the children they liked most among those they'd been working with at the talent school. And once again I was just so utterly glad I didn't have to do any picking. They were talking about whether it was better to adopt children who you simply liked the most, or if it was kinder to take those who needed you more. One of the medics working with the Setari and the talent school had already adopted, and she'd chosen a very traumatised and isolated girl around Sen's age who had lost everyone she knew, and who wasn't coping at all well with the 'boarding school' living arrangements. She wasn't a very appealing kid, inclined to snivel, but it really helped her to 'belong' to someone. And yet, as Jeh pointed out, holding stoic resilience against children who were coping better didn't seem fair.
Moving to their new houses had been the decision point they'd set, and three days after the housewarming party five children came home for the first time.
Which kids were chosen mattered a lot to me – Mara and Lohn are so important to me that I stress about things coming between us. I made sure not to offer opinions on any of the residents of the talent school, though Lira hasn't been shy about sharing her thoughts on them with me, so I've more of an idea of the major personalities. I would have found it awkward if any of those chosen were ones who didn't seem able to see Ys and Rye as anything but servants. I didn't even talk about this to Kaoren, but he could tell as usual when I'm stressing, effortlessly worked out why, and pointed out that Lohn and Mara care about Ys and Rye too, and were likely to have taken them into account.
Lohn didn't succeed in talking Mara into taking four, so they stuck with their original plan of two. Both of them boys. Feinaren's eleven, and a real imp – spends all his time swarming up trees. Sharalentelasker (Shar) is thirteen and it's a bit hard to tell what he's like since he likes to watch more than talk, at least when I'm about. A strong Sight talent, with everything except Combat and Gate Sight, and inclined to behave with the typical slight distance that a Place Sight talent cultivates. Sen – who is my early-warning system for suspect people – doesn't object to him, so I know he can't be too bad, but I had to ask Mara what had drawn her to him. Fein I can understand – he and Lohn are a lot alike – but Shar seems very self-contained and able to handle himself and not someone I would have expected them to feel parental about.
"We wanted to get him away from Nuran politics," Mara told me, looking wry. "He's one of two who could arguably be Nuri's heir if they were going by their rules of succession." She laughed at my expression. "Not that that's any reason for me to want to play parent. He's far from incapable, and has been involved in quashing a few disputes within the school. If he was Kalrani he'd be on the captain track. Which is a good thing, but we also noticed that he was terribly tired every morning. That's the impact of the politics – he has a lively night life thanks to being drawn into the Nuran power struggles. They bring disputes to him to settle, just as they do with Inisar."
"And you got all protective." I understood it then. "A bit like me and Ys – Ys is so much better at looking after Sen than I am, and I keep having to find ways to ensure she no longer automatically puts Sen above herself. Because I want Ys to have time to be Ys."
Mara nodded. "It's a very odd feeling. We had been planning on taking two younger children, because someone as old as Shar will never truly regard us as parents. And he doesn't need us. But I wanted him to have a quiet night."
Ketzaren, Jeh and Grif ended up doing something similar. One of the children they chose, Zaranar, is sixteen. She has a five year-old brother, Dealanar, who is very traumatized and withdrawn – they lost their parents and several other siblings, including Deal's twin – and Ketzaren says they wanted to both give Deal the care he needed, and also make sure Zar had a chance to look to her own future as well as Deal's. Zar's really interesting – she's not some angelic, self-sacrificing type, but full of curiosity and with an excellent sardonic sense of humour which matches Ketzaren's. I'd like to get to know her better, but Deal pretty much stays attached to her leg, and doesn't like her talking to anyone else – getting him to separate into age groups at the school has been pretty difficult, and over the months he's actually been getting more clingy, not less. Ketzaren says it will be a slow process teaching Deal to feel safe with anyone else, but she seems determined to succeed.
Their third adoptee is Ennanal, a ten year-old girl. Enna likes to dance about – she reminds me of Sen when Sen's happy – and she also shares Sen's tendency for terrible nightmares, though these are because she lost her family, and because she found the journey through deep-space particularly terrifying, not because of any Sights.
After they'd had a few days to settle in, we invited them and the rest of First and Second over for a barbeque, having had a discussion with our four beforehand to make sure they weren't too uncomfortable with the idea of these children coming onto 'their territory'. They knew them all already, of course, since they go to the same school, though Zar and Shar are in the elder 'grade' and they don't have much to do with them. Fortunately Fein is someone Rye already seemed to think was okay, and he was quite keen to show off his garden and parts of the island to him. Lira and Ys made it clear that so long as no-one was allowed to go into their rooms, they didn't care who we chose to have over, but they ended up politely taking Enna around and keeping her entertained. They're not going to leap into friendship with her, but they didn't freeze her out, and I made sure they knew I was pleased with them for being nice.
Sen was having one of her bad days, and ended up in my lap most of the time – which at least made her match Deal and gave me a chance to chat with Zar. Shar started out more like a visiting dignitary than a child – all formal and polite and detached – but then we went down to the docks so they could try out the canoes and he enjoyed that, and was positively approving of the idea of canoes for Siriath after everyone's passed basic swimming. It was fun noticing how pleased Mara was by that. We're going to get a larger boat/flyer so we can 'carpool' the kids to school. Canoes and flying and the simple six-person sleds are all dandy in sunny Summer weather, but won't be much fun in the middle of Winter.
Except for Zar, who has a medium strength level, all the kids are extremely strong talents, which of course is why they were in the talent school in the first place. They're not on par with the Setari (Nuran or Taren/Kolaren) because they haven't been pushed in the same way, and don't have the expanded interface or ability to focus their connection to the Ena. There's been endless discussions recently about teaching new Setari the methods the Nurans use to become aware of the Ena link versus cheating using me. More and more of the Taren and Kolaren Setari are becoming able to enhance themselves, but many of them still can't.
Inisar described how the Nuran Setari gain their strength, which sounds to me much like a cross between Native American Spirit journeys and sensory deprivation. When they were vetting apprentice Setari, the Nurans started them off at around five years old, gave them mental exercises about thinking about the world around them for nearly eight months, and then put them through five more months of 'ordeals' where they try and focus their own connection, and if they don't succeed by then they're finished as an apprentice and go back to their former lives. It's a terribly young age to be doing things like that. The Nurans believed that if you didn't learn very young you would be incapable of learning, and they're not sure if my enhancement means they're wrong, or if learning when older is only possible when a touchstone is involved.
There won't be any more Setari adoptions for a while. Plenty of the Setari are in relationships (mostly with other Setari) but not ready for kids. Nils and Zee are very much in a relationship now, but they've no immediate plans to move out of barracks, and keep going off together on their weekends. They're both really really private people and they want time alone together.
Sometimes I envy them all that time alone, but only sometimes.
Chapter 5
April
April 10
Islands
Contact with Tare and Kolar was made only two days after the last time I wrote. It took them another few days to scan the last short section and calculate an end to end run of both routes, but after that the floodgates opened.
It takes between three and five hours to get through now, instead of just one, and there are long patches where nothing's aligned enough to get through, but we're actually a lot less cut off than everyone feared we'd be. They're now trying to work their way to the Pillar where Second Squad was stranded to see what condition it's in. And also to Channa, since there's been people stuck at the mining installation there.
Tare and Kolar (and the Channan staff) didn't have any convenient touchstones to let them check the condition of other planets, and so for four months could only guess what had happened. Kolar had had no warning whatsoever, and from Tare's point of view I'd vanished and a bunch of people had gone haring off into deep-space to look for me and then all of the Ena had melted down and they could only hope it wasn't the beginning of the end. They didn't know if I was alive, whether the colony had survived, or whether all of Muina had been destroyed. At least the decrease in Ionoth numbers and the slacking of the tears into real-space gave them hope. Of course, once Muina's collected four months of news had been transmitted, there was a media frenzy over the whole drama of my kidnapping by the Cruzatch, and the risky destruction of the malachite marbles, and then the short eternity of picking collapsed building off the top of me and hoping they got to me before I died.
And Lira.
I've been trying to imagine what it would be like to be in Lira's position at her age. Used as a tool to destroy her world, trapped in a half-life, doing what she could to sabotage her captors, and then after connecting with me finding that everyone she knew was dead and she was part ways responsible, and that she might possibly not really be alive. And now a new life, a soap-bubble existence which nobody can definitively say is real.
There have been articles talking about how dangerous Lira and I are – the things we could be used for – but mostly it's open adulation. The 'MBC', wanting to keep on KOTIS' good side, are careful never to be too full-on, but even they maintain a 'Caszandra-Watch' page which is constantly updated with the latest images and stories about me and my family. And a lot of that is now about Lira, who is after all a gorgeous Lantaren who helped save them all. There's now a couple of billion people fascinated by the idea of her.
Naturally some pretty unvarnished opinions of her have leaked out of the talent school, but these are very inconsistent. Some people claim she's traumatised and describe her as clinging to Ys for support (Ys is still getting positive press for being so brave during my dragon day). Others say Lira's cold and arrogant – the classic evil Lantaren. But mostly she's seen as a true Lantaren princess and it's almost expected and accepted that she be a bit imperious and pampered. I make sure to check the news and keep alert to what stories are going around about them. Lira finds anything about her, positive or negative, to be annoying, but doesn't seem too caught up by it at the moment – the people immediately around her are more interesting. Rye gets embarrassed and Ys occasionally infuriated. Sen's still a little too young to comprehend more than the fact that everyone knows who she is and they wave at her when we go into town. And then new pictures of us show up on the interface. Living on an island was a damn good idea.
For me the first news of reconnection to Tare came along with a handful of emails from Zan. They were typical of Zan's calm formality, with just a thread of uncertainty beneath. I think in a way she must have been trying to help me by writing them, creating an expectation for me to be alive to read them. Or maybe she wanted some kind of sounding board, the same way I used to use my diaries. She needed someone to talk to.
Twelfth had been off-shift, asleep, when I fell down the Cruzatch-hole, and when KOTIS went to full alert upon Kaoren's return they'd been stuck biting their nails for rather too long, then sent after Thirteenth and Fourteenth, who had been assigned to Maze Rotation. They were deep within the tangle of whitestone walls, working in two different locations to lower the chance of attracting roamers, and when Twelfth reached the maze space, Zan immediately ordered everyone back to Tare.
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