Andrea Höst: The Touchstone Trilogy

Even Ys approved, and showed it by leaning briefly against me as I watched Rye showing Kaoren each and every plant, and going over the information the botanists had provided. For Ys, that’s extremely demonstrative, and I squeezed her shoulder in return, but didn’t annoy her by actually saying anything.

Nor was this the only birthday treat we had in store. Since Maze was in charge of the duty roster, he had no trouble arranging for a couple of hours in the middle of the day so we could have a picnic lunch at Arcadia. Well, actually, given how complex the duty roster is, I think it was a lot of trouble, and it was extremely nice of him. But he looked so relaxed and happy that I think he was glad to do it. First, Second and Fourth were invited, and we brought huge picnic baskets of food (including a cake with candles, which is an Earth tradition I insisted on, although I had to get the candles specially made). They’d brought breathers this time, and Kaoren compounded Rye’s ecstasy by giving him a personal underwater lesson. I wasn’t in the condition to do more than sit in shallow water, but that suited Sen just fine, and I don’t think Ys is quite ready to go swimming underwater either, although she’d probably have nerved herself up to do it if pushed. Lira has never even been allowed to go near something as dangerous as a large body of water, and was very stiff and doubtful as Mara and Zee took her through her first swimming lesson, but Ys was quick to take her in hand, and I think helping Lira increased her own confidence.

After lots of swimming, we ate ourselves sick, and I taught everyone a translated version of "Happy birthday to you" and we all sang it to Rye, who went crimson and blew out his candles very enthusiastically. Then we went for exploratory walks, and checked out where the house would go according to our tentative plans, and looked at the forest behind it (discovering enough little animals to make Rye even more enthusiastic about living here). More than a few of the Setari went and had a look at the neighbouring islands, and the one south of Arcadia could pretty much be renamed "First Squad Island", judging from some of the discussions I overheard.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as unremittingly joyful as Rye was today. He radiated full-wattage joy until finally running out of steam around bath-time, and then he went all tired and sweetly shy again. It was a marvellously happy day for everyone, and I was particularly pleased with how much Maze enjoyed it. Houses and plants and children and animals he doesn’t have to kill.

Best of all, no pictures of us showed up on the news. The islands are far enough away from shore that if the Setari go ahead with their plans to snap up all the available land there, it will be an enjoyably private place. And with the generosity of the lands grants, they have enough to split the grant to a house there, and also land somewhere else. It’ll be quite a neighbourhood.

Monday, November 10

No Secrets

Kaoren and I have succeeded in arguing against Lira being on second level monitoring on the grounds that it will distress her. I have vague hopes of arguing my way off it as well. But she needed to know that everything I see and hear is recorded, and that if she tells me something important enough I’d have to tell at least Kaoren, who would then have to decide whether we can choose not to pass it on. That the things which were reported to KOTIS were theoretically private, but that stuff like my file being stolen could very well happen.

As you can imagine, Lira wasn’t terribly pleased, but was nicely sympathetic about me being stuck on second level monitoring. And, even more fortunately, Ys and Rye already knew about the monitoring from watching The Hidden War , since I belatedly realised that I’d never discussed this with them. I’m not altogether sure Ys would have forgiven me for telling Lira things she doesn’t know, and of course it hadn’t been necessary because KOTIS doesn’t feel the need to have reports on what any of the kids but Lira might say.

Tuesday, November 11

Settlers

Having my arm in a sling is driving me crazy. It’s awkward and clumsy and makes getting dressed and undressed a complete pain, and I’m very tired of doing everything one-handed. Today I’ve been wearing my uniform just because Kaoren was gone early and I couldn’t stand trying to put on anything more than my harness. I’ve got it in Summer mode, and it made me realise that I’ve been making an unconscious decision not to wear my uniform generally. Although it was very useful when I was kidnapped, overall I’ve just been happier to dress in my own clothes.

I’ve been doing schoolwork with Lira. She can read and write, but in Old Muinan, and she was very frustrated with the sudden leap backward. She doesn’t have Ys' absolute love of knowing things, and was finding Ys' explanations frustrating. Ys is relatively patient, but she’s so smart that remembering new words is incredibly easy for her, and in some ways it’s simpler for her, Rye and Sen because they haven’t learned slightly different characters, and slightly different spellings, and slightly different rules.

Lira’s no more of a fan of getting things wrong than Ys is, and more likely to get frustrated and give up, so I spent the morning doing basic kindergarten lessons with her, and laughing over the things I got wrong, and talking about what it was like when I first got here, having to repeat infant-grade school a couple of months after doing my high school final exams. And I managed to settle a convenient arrangement where Lira would do her lessons with Sen, to try and encourage Sen to pay a little attention in school. And Sen, of course, wants to be helpful to Lira.

We’re all getting quite good at understanding each other speaking, in Taren, old Muinan or Nuran, though often the subtleties of what we’re trying to say is lost. And I was disconcerted to discover that I seem to have introduced a few English words into the general language here – okay , and cool particularly – and I’ve been trying to work out how since The Hidden War didn’t have details of my actual speech, and there’s very little publicly available of me speaking. I think it’s gone out from the Setari and the support staff who work in the Setari building – maybe describing how I speak to people?

Wednesday, November 12

Future

Today was the weekend, and when we asked the kids what they wanted to do, I wasn’t altogether surprised to find that Arcadia was top of their list. Ever since our picnic on the roof was live-streamed, they’ve become extremely reluctant to go outside in exposed places (except possibly Sen, who thinks people being fascinated by her is a right state of affairs, and would probably most like to go visit the café again).

Nils and Jeh were my guards for the day, and Lohn and Mara came along too, but they all stayed off out on the shore while we had another swimming lesson. Lira was more confident this time around, and even Sen started paddling about as they played a game of water chasies. I sat paddling my legs in the water and leaning against Kaoren and feeling a weird sense of achievement every time one of them laughed.

After a group lunch, we all went on a walk to the island’s centre (Nils carrying Sen) and found a grassy meadow not quite in the middle which had things like partridges which shot off into the air and gave me a near heart attack. But it also had butterflies, and Sen revived and ran about trying to catch them. Nils was in a very laid-back mood and teased me mildly, but mostly just watched the kids with a smile while Mara told me about some of the work the senior Setari have been doing with the kids at the talent school. Assisting with talent training is something they’re used to, but the focus is rather different with the Nuran kids – not so intense and purposeful and disciplined.