Gratuitous Epilogue

16 - March

March 10

Katen

Maze and Alay’s baby arrived yesterday, and they called her Katen just as Sen wanted, and she is very tiny and perfect and shows absolutely no signs of ill effects from umbilical cords. We went on a visit this morning and I’m maybe looking forward a little more to adding to our child collection, though I expect I’ll be sick of all the crying and pooping soon enough. Sen was very much in danger of absconding to spend the day with the baby, and I suspect that inviting Alay over for a long visit will be the only way to keep Sen’s baby longings in check.

After much discussion Kaoren and I decided that it would work out best for us to do all our child-raising relatively close together, and so I’ve had my contraception cancelled. I can just imagine some of the awkward and no doubt embarrassingly public conversations I’ll be having in the future if I don’t get pregnant in the first couple of months of trying – Sen is adamant that I have to provide "all" her little baby brothers and sisters without further delay.

Can’t say I’m looking forward to periods.

It’s been a month of mixed ups and downs, with Katen being the biggest up. The biggest down was Eeli’s funeral (or remembrance ceremony). Her parents had accepted the judgment of the medics, and asked for the life support to be switched off. Taarel brought her ashes out and scattered them on Lenecki (the island where she’s taken her land grant). Taarel is for the moment remaining as Senior Captain on Tare, but her family is going to move to Lenecki, and eventually Taarel will probably be an islander too.

The Muinans believed – and Tarens and Kolarens sort of believe – that your spirit returns to the world’s heart when you die, and so dead people are not floating about as individuals, but are transfigured so that it’s like the planet itself briefly remembers being Eeli. During the remembrance ceremony, one of the things we did was find a quiet place and talk to Muina which would in its way mean talking to Eeli.

Whether or not that’s at all true – and on Muina who knows? – I liked the idea of talking to Eeli, and sat myself under a shady tree and told the wind about the way Inisar looked at Taarel, and how I couldn’t tell what she thinks about him in return, and how she’s very inconveniently spending most of her time on Tare. And I told her all about what my wedding will be like, and then I cried rather a lot. I couldn’t tell if the wind cared.

I have invited countless wedding guests. Of the squads, mainly those who are primarily assigned to me (First, Second, Third, Fourth, Eighth, Twelfth, and Squad One). All of them with and guests so they can bring along any family or friends that they want, which more than doubled the numbers. And Kaoren’s family, and Isten Notra and her family, and Inisar, and a few of the medics and other technicians who I’ve grown a little closer to. And I invited Tsa Lents and his wife and Nenna and her sister, and was glad when they accepted. Tsur Selkie is actually going to officiate at the ceremony, which I find hugely amusing, but Kaoren’s rather close to him – all that Sight Sight training I guess. Tsur Selkie has two kids who are Kalrani, which I didn’t know at all. I’m curious to see if they’re his own little Mini-Me’s.

He’s been mostly on Tare since the gates re-opened, and I gather that – just as he was the main architect of KOTIS' method of training Setari – he’s the one behind the announcements just made about the future of the program.

They’re not cancelling the Setari program, but they are changing it, easing back on it in some ways, so that it’s more like it was when the senior squads first started: a day school, or weekly boarding. They’re going to expand it in other ways, though, bringing it into line with Pandora’s talent school to train strong psychics more generally.

The idea’s been very well received, for the most part. It’s still going to be a disciplined edging on harsh childhood for those in the Setari channel, especially because KOTIS wants to explore Nuran methods of focusing the bond with the Ena, but they won’t be so cut off from home.

Ys' thirteenth birthday coming up (I’m giving her a diary bound in gorgeous tooled leather).