Gratuitous Epilogue

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.