"Day thirty-six. Day one of training.

"I've built stilt-house foundations using Tellurian bamboo. Not the bamboo itself. I mean, growing it out of the ground with my...powers.

"Mass-energy is still conserved, but there's a lot of mass in the dirt, and I can extend additional organs and move the plants from one place to another. I'm doing it deep in the jungle right now. I don't want to tell the families. They think I'm close to breaking as it is.

"I probably am."

"It has to be related to the right-handed chiral molecules in the native species of bamboo. I need to find out if I can get other powers--man, that sounds so stupid--other powers from other food.

"I know nobody is out there listening to this, but wish me luck anyway."

--Recording recovered from Site Resh, reconstructed 1887 CE (restricted access)

----

16 - 17 Rising Withering, 1886 CE

Orbit

As the rocket ship's door dilated open, Tvorh wondered if he was making a terrible mistake.

Senrii stepped without hesitation from the catwalk into the ship. Piotr followed. Thiyyatt, of course, entered as though she owned the ship. For all Tvorh knew, her family might have paid for it. Even Eztli, lacking a Symbiont, didn't seem to have any doubts.

"Tvorh. Are you coming?" Aoife looked back at him.

"I wish I could see the stars," he admitted. It was cool this deep in the silo, and he could feel the movement of air flowing down from the open silo doors on his face. Though night had fallen in Strathlic, there wasn't much animal noise filtering down. Maybe the Chimeras had eaten all of the creatures.

"We'll see them together," Aoife said quietly. She held out a hand. Her spacesuit was bulky, but it was the closest thing the archeologists had had to a self-healing, self-contained skinsuit. It was a good thing underground Last Era environments were sometimes as dangerous as outer space, otherwise the excavators might not have had the equipment on hand. "Come on. If everyone else checks out the acceleration endurance stations before we get there, we'll miss out."

"On what?"

"On being a part."

"Part of what?"

"All of it." He heard Aoife smile. "A team."

"A family?"

"Yeah, Tvorh. A family." She wriggled her outstretched fingers.

Tvorh took them, binding his nervous system to hers, and stepped into the strange ship.

It seemed smaller on the inside, but that was probably just because it was an upright cylinder. A single ladder through the floor descended and ascended two stories each way. Strange readouts glowed on the walls. They all glowed with familiar bioluminescence, but a lot of them were covered by metal or glass. Lumins glowed on vines hanging overhead and crawling down the walls at four equidistant points.

Voices came from above. Tvorh and Aoife followed the ladder up to the top floor.

A glass cockpit covered with a shield hung above their heads. Lockers lined the walls. There were four chairs bolted to the floor and another four climbing the walls.

It took Tvorh a moment to realize that when they were in orbit, they'd be able to float into the higher-up chairs and swivel toward the direction of acceleration.

Senrii gestured at the lockers. "Guess this is where we're keeping the food. Hey!" she shouted down. "Bring the supplies in here."

Several of Morrison's hated undergraduates scurried up the ladder, packages of microgravity-ready food and calorie packs slung over their shoulders, and locked away the parcels.

Thiyyatt poked at a gene-sensor, leaving a blue droplet of blood on the needle. "You are awake, Tool, yes?" she asked in High Exarchian.

"Mis-Mis-Mistress Dea Reginae Ittuae--"

"I am Thiyyatt."

"Thiyy-Thiyy-att. Welcome. I wel-wel-welcome you."

"Are you prepared to carry me into the heavens?"

"Pre-pre-prepared."

"The internal Tool is communicating," Thiyyatt announced. "Strathlic's diagnostics seem to have been accurate. It will bear me to my destination."

"Our," Senrii said. "I'd as soon leave you behind, but there's no telling whether we'll need your help getting onto... whatever is waiting for us out there."

Thiyyatt smiled hungrily.

"And you'd probably just mind-control everybody in our absence anyway. Come on. Let's go down and take a look at the acceleration-endurance stations."

Those were on the bottom level, just above the engines. Eight doors radiated out from the landing. Two of them were closed, but the other six led into small chambers with a gelatinous substance lining the walls and a set of vinelike straps hanging down from the center of the room.

"Bet I know what we do," Senrii said.

"As if it were not obvious," Thiyyatt said. "Stand upright. Strap in. Do not panic as the acceleration gel encroaches."

Piotr raised an eyebrow. "Encroaches?"

Thiyyatt poked her head into one of the rooms and ran a finger along the gel-lined wall. "You will be able to breathe. You will also be cushioned against sudden movements."

"Would-would-would you prefer sedation?" the Tool asked, its quivering voice echoing through the ship.

"Some of us might." Thiyyatt looked Aoife up and down, then smirked at Tvorh. "Some of the weak and unfit."

"Can I shoot her? In the head?" Aoife asked.

"Not now, dear." Senrii clapped her hands. "Liftoff is planned for... forty-four minutes from now. Let's finish up the pre-flight checks and get strapped in.

"My guess is that it's gonna be a bumpy ride."

***

"Lift-off."

Tvorh heard the jellylike substance encasing him wriggle in a way that reminded him of Thiyyatt when she wasn't wearing clothes and--

--Um. It reminded him a little of Thiyyatt.

The noise grew louder and louder, though, and the wriggling became manic and aimless. Force such as Tvorh had never felt built across his whole body and stayed there.

It was suffocating. He could barely breathe. Was that because of the acceleration-moderating gel, or was it because there was a Chimera sitting on his chest?

Tvorh's body wanted to flail. He raised his hands involuntarily, but they didn't move. Stuck in the gel, he was utterly immobilized.

And the noise. So loud! He couldn't hear anything except the blob that would be his tomb, the blob that pressed against him, up his nostrils, beneath his bandanna.

He had to get out. He had to--

--Darkness took Tvorh so quickly that he didn't even realize it until after he woke up.

Senses returned slowly. The gel bubbled down into the small holes of a grate in the floor, and the door dilated open as his feet brushed the ground.

Tvorh grabbed for the harness's spongy straps and undid them, then stumbled forward. Or tried to. He ended up swiping his big toe along the ground, which gave him a little spin, making him rotate slowly head-over-heels. As he drifted.

In midair.

Tvorh caught the edge of the door as his body went horizontal. His heart pounded. He knew he should have expected this, but his body insisted he'd been climbing a wall that was way too high, and he'd lost his grip and now he was falling. No quick impact with the ground for him; the fall didn't stop.

Of course, really, he did have a long distance to fall, but if he did Tellus's atmosphere would burn him up before he hit the ground.

So there was that.

"Blood, bones, and bile!" Senrii cursed and grunted. A moment later, she came drifting past Tvorh's door. She caught the ladder in the middle of the landing and arrested her momentum. "Could you have warned us, at least?"

The Tool's voice resonated oddly against the metal-and-flesh walls. "Five of you were pan-pan-panicking. I calculated that immediate sedation was pref-preferable."

"Could have at least told us you were waking us up in zero G," Senrii grumbled. "Hey. Kid." She jerked her chin; the motion imparted momentum to her weightless body as she clutched the ladder. "Get out here."

"Coming." Tvorh thought of Piotr in the tree. Could he resynthesize some of his STIGMOS to help him move more easily? It turned out he could. Spindles of thick hair, more like vines than human locks, reached through his skinsuit from his waist toward the floor. They grabbed for purchase and tugged him down, giving him, if not the illusion of gravity, at least the ability to parody walking on the floor.

"How are you doing that?" Senrii asked, looking at him warily.

"I took the STIGMOS to grow hair, then incorporated stuff from other STIGMOS. The cilia of a spider, tiny squids' suckers, some custom-built bumblebee hooks--"

"What? Custom-built? You incorporated other STIGMOS? Bile, Tvorh, you're wasted as a weapon. We should use you as a gengineer. With any luck and a little work, you'll catch up to--"

--Thiyyatt.

She already had the grasping-hair thing going, and she kept it on her head. She looked much more graceful than Tvorh felt as she drifted from her acceleration chamber, wrapped in hair that formed a skintight suit around her even as its ends pushed and pulled against the floor, the walls, and the ceiling.

"Speak of Blue Bitch, and she will appear," Senrii said. "Bile, are you naked?"

Thiyyatt raised her chin and gave an acidic smile. "Of course not. I have my hair."

"That doesn't count."

Thiyyatt glided to the ladder and tilted her head, studying Senrii as if she were a specimen. "After many days of sweat and effort, I prefer to wear something more comfortable. I shall check on our supplies and commune with our vessel." Her hair gave her a little push upward, and she drifted in a perfectly-planned vector toward the hole and the next deck.

"It would figure that she's the one of us who didn't require sedation." Senrii sounded as though she was muttering to herself, so Tvorh didn't reply.

As Tvorh listened to Thiyyatt drift away, her hair flicked in an almost-imperceptible wave, then pulled back from her waist, revealing her--

Jiggle. From behind.

It was momentary. Anyone else might have thought it was an accident, but Tvorh's ears didn't lie.

Thiyyatt didn't need to use pheromones to make him feel as though his skinsuit was too tight.

A retching sound came from one of the nearby rooms and snapped Tvorh from his hormone-driven thoughts. He turned, a balky maneuver in zero-G despite his grasping hairs, and pulled himself into Aoife's room.

She was still in her harness. Her face was contorted, her hair sounded damp with sweat, and both with ear and nose Tvorh sensed a blob of something vile drifting toward the wall.

The blob of vomit impacted, spread out, and bounced back in little droplets.

"Hey, can we get this cleaned up?" Tvorh said.

"Unngh?" Aoife asked.

"Biological waste must be manually gathered before I am able to dispose of it," the Tool said. "I am not equipped for internal cleaning."

So it was up to Tvorh. He generated a fleshy receptacle hanging from his arm and activated a vacuum STIGMOS for it. He ran his palm over the vomit and managed to get most of it up, though he'd need to wash his hands afterward.

Washing... That would require water.

Brutal awareness of his vulnerability struck him. Only a few small bulkheads of metal and flesh stood between him and murdering void. No food, no water, no air, even: just empty killing blackness.

Bathing was a luxury. Better to recycle.

Tvorh activated a few quick STIGMOS for simple filtering, pulled the fluid from the vomit in the bag of flesh into his body, and then detached the bag from his arm, placing it in the disposal receptacle the Tool indicated.

Moisture secured safely in his body, he turned back to Aoife, still hanging in her harness. "Hey. You all right?"

"Peachy," she murmured. A watery wail grumbled from her stomach. "Oh, no. Not again..."

Again.

Tvorh cleaned the second mess up. His Symbiont chittered inside him, wide awake at the rapid invocations of its power. He ignored it. "You think you're good?"

"Stomach's emp--" Aoife's cheeks bulged, and a bit of noxious gas escaped despite her attempt to hold in the vile belch. "Empty."

She sounded truly miserable. Tvorh undid the straps holding her head upright, and it lolled down. Hair and cheek brushed his skinsuit, and through the connected nerves of the suit he felt her dampness, her sickness, her physical despair.

And the comfort she took in his touch as she rubbed her cheek against his knuckles. Deliberately or instinctively?

Either way, it sparked entirely new thoughts in Tvorh.

The space of Aoife was just gray sound to him, but his hands told him everything that he would never be able to hear. Thoughts of Thiyyatt's jiggles fled as a realization struck with the sudden smooth impact of a panther in ambush.

A realization, followed by a flood of hormones that made the gray world seem to burst into light, making his heart pound as he stared at the girl he loved--

--he loved--

He loved her.

Tvorh loved Aoife.

Her pitiful groans didn't turn him off. If anything, they made him want to protect her.

Tvorh finished unstrapping Aoife, trying to ignore the war between her agony and her weightless grace as she helplessly draped herself against him. His body fought him, insisted he pay attention to the way her bare hands clutched at his skinsuit as he lifted her gently in his arms, but he wouldn't give his body the final word. His will was supreme over his flesh.

If he loved Aoife--and he was pretty sure he did--he loved her enough to want more than just the physical. He wanted everything that she had to offer. He wanted every Vidality date they'd missed, every glance through her eyes she offered so that he could see the stars...

"Unh. You don't have to do this, Tvorh." Aoife buried her head in his neck.

"Quiet." Tvorh took wobbling not-strides toward the door. "Just catch your breath."

"You firf." Aoife's lips vibrated against Tvorh's neck. Her words were slurred and gooey, just like Tvorh's feelings. "I can feew your heart."

It was pounding. Really fast.

Eztli and Piotr had joined Senrii on the landing. Eztli was breathing hard and keeping her eyes closed. Killing her Symbiont had been hard on her. The launch probably made things worse. Piotr, as usual, was stoic and unreadable.

"She all right?" Senrii asked.

Tvorh nodded. "She will be."

"Whuh he saif," Aoife mumbled into his neck.

Tvorh pushed up, drifting toward the ladder's hole in the deck.

"Hey, where you going, kid?" Senrii asked. "We need to chat. About Blue Bitch." She glanced toward the ceiling as Tvorh drifted towards it. "Without her around. You understand?"

"Later." Tvorh's extended waist-hairs clasped the ladder near the deck's roof.

"Kid, we may be friends, but we've got work to do," Senrii said. Piotr put a hand on her shoulder. It looked easy and casual, which was impressive since he had to hang onto the ladder with the other. "What?" Senrii asked.

He shook his head slightly, then glanced up. "Consider giving them a few minutes, Ductrix." He paused. "The acolyte should have a chance to rest."

Senrii looked unconvinced but said nothing. Tvorh nodded his thanks to Piotr, then pushed off, drifting through the decks. He heard a glimpse of Thiyyatt on deck four. She was seated in an alcove in the wall, eyes closed. Nerves from the shuttle twisted into her hair.

They probably ought to be careful talking about her while she was linked in.

Tvorh rose toward the glass nose of the ship.

Aoife shifted, her face coming away from his neck. "Oh, wow," she breathed, awe chasing away her misery. "I can see 'em, Tvorh. I can see 'em all."

All Tvorh heard was the interior of the ship. He smiled, though. "I'm glad."

"Here." Aoife ran her hand along the back of Tvorh's skinsuit.

Then up the back of his neck.

Then up into his hair.

Tvorh shuddered, caught his breath, and barely dared inhale.

Her hand paused there on his skull, then drifted back down to his neck, tickling all the way, where it rested, cool and damp and wonderful. "Link up," she whispered.

Tvorh bound his nervous system to hers. Not just her sight, but all of her. He wrapped creepers of his consciousness around hers, integrating everything that he was with everything she was.

He felt all of her.

Her nausea. He lent her his will and felt the urge to vomit recede.

Her body. He thought of Oralie, how he'd been inside her memories, but this was more immediate; now, for a short time, he sensed exactly what it meant to be a woman.

Even her thoughts. Foreign, oddly colored by feelings and hormones that Tvorh didn't understand, yet somehow familiar.

And he knew beyond a doubt that Aoife was feeling what it meant to be a man and finding it just as foreign and just as comforting.

I love Aoife. The message flared in his mind like a malfunctioning lumin in the dark. Aoife--he--gasped.

But Aoife didn't pull away. She--he--smiled and turned her eyes toward the canopy.

The blast shield had retracted. There was transparent glass, and beyond it a darkness lit by an impossible river of stars.

"The Way of Milk and Honey," Tvorh breathed. The phrase had come from Thiyyatt. Aoife tensed, squeezing her eyes shut. Tvorh felt her fear for him and jealousy of her rival deep within their entwined thoughts.

But I love Aoife.

She relaxed against him and opened her eyes again.

Holding Aoife, being held by her, knowing her in a way that was not to be profaned with speech, Tvorh floated before the canopy, looking at the black canvas on which all of the bright light of creation was splashed.

Praise to Adon. Tvorh didn't know and didn't care whether the thought was hers or his. Either way, it felt right to drift in heaven and let Aoife show him the stars.