Phoebe North - Starbreak

“I’ll miss you. Oh, I’ll miss you so much.”

I felt my chest squeeze. It was almost too much for me; I had to swallow down the lump in my throat. “I’ll miss you, too, Raych. Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

She glanced over her shoulder to Silvan. He stood tall, proud. When their gazes locked, he gave a firm nod.

“Of course,” he said, answering for her. “This is what we want.”

But Rachel stayed frozen for a moment longer, squeezing my ice-cold fingers. “Silvan told me all about the planet,” she said. “I can’t wait to tell our children about it. About the green-gold skies and purple trees, and how they stole away the heart of my sister.”

“Didn’t I always tell you you’d be a great mother someday?” I said, my voice creaking coarsely out. She smiled through her tears, let out a bell of laughter.

“Yes,” she said. “You did.”

The line moved forward. I bent over to pick up Pepper’s carrier and shuffle it ahead. Rachel’s dark eyes were locked on me. There were words on her lips, but I could see that she didn’t know how to speak them.

“What is it, Rachel?”

“Well,” she began, picking up the pleat of her dress and worrying the fabric. “I wanted to ask. If your people want to worship, you’ll let them, right?”

I stopped, standing straight, and looked at her. The crease between my friend’s eyebrows was deep. I was still no believer, though I remembered too well what Jachin had said. In the distant past, before we’d lost our planet, religion had helped humanity thrive. The biologist had already boarded one of the shuttles with his family—probably speaking prayers to the darkness beyond, thanking God for changing his wife’s mind, asking God for a safe trip home. He was one of us, but faith was important to him. As it had been to Vadix, once.

“Of course, Rachel,” I said, watching as relief flooded her features. “That’s what ‘liberty’ means.”

Her smile was wide and bright. I watched as Silvan threw an arm over her shoulder and drew her in close. Though the line moved up again ahead of me, I hesitated beside the pair.

“Be good to your people,” I said at last. Silvan frowned, but not Rachel. She only angled up her chin, listening. “No matter who they love or how they wish to live. Please. Be good to them.”

Rachel’s hand darted out and grabbed on to mine. She leaned up and pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth. She smelled like perfume. Springtime. Freshly laundered clothes.

“I will, Terra,” she whispered, just before Silvan pulled her away. “I will.”

The others all jabbered the hours away on the shuttle ride over, fogging their flight helmets with their breath. Not me, though. I sat with the cat’s carrier on my knees, my eyes closed as I tried to reckon everything I’d lost.

Momma. Mar Jacobi. Abba. Captain Wolff. Mar Schneider. Deklan Levitt. Laurel Selberlicht. Aleksandra. A whole ship, and the people inside it. Silvan. And Rachel, my first, best friend.

I could recover from these losses, from the gap they left inside me, bright and raw. I’d done it before, and I’d do it again, just like I’d told Laurel. Day after day I’d put one foot in front of the other and pull myself slowly forward. I’d live so that our colony could live, so that our new city could burst forth with life and laughter. One day it wouldn’t hurt so much. I knew this because I’d done it before.

But I didn’t know how to reckon missing him . I couldn’t even wrap my mind around his absence. When I tried to imagine the days ahead, they were gray with loss. I’d saved my people, achieved tikkun olam . And yet my heart was heavy.

We’d shared only two nights together, a scattered handful of conversations, a few caresses in the dark. Yet he’d become a part of me. Maybe I would love again. Maybe I would lead my people well. But I would only ever feel like half myself. A shadow. A shade, defined by his absence.

A lousk .

The rest of them cried out joyfully upon impact, throwing their arms into the air and laughing to one another. I just silently clutched the armrests. We pulled up to the dock. The door lifted, revealing a white space beyond. The others all shielded their faces from the light, but I unbuckled my harness and stood, removing my helmet, unzipping my suit. While they were still blinking back the brilliant light of day, I had already stepped past the threshold, cat carrier in hand.

The pier was crowded with Asherati. They squinted into the sunlight, pointing toward the white-licked sea and the expanse of sky high above. The weather had grown even more frigid in the weeks since my last visit. I hitched my wool coat tighter around me, my eyes scanning the pier for someone or something familiar.

And that’s when I felt it. That steady pull that began somewhere deep in my solar plexus and drew me out and out, past my body and into the world beyond. Here. He was here. I could feel it— see it, the whole pier laid out through his eyes.

I hefted the cat carrier high and pushed through the crowd. Families gathered, laughing and jostling, moving in slow waves toward the ekku who waited by the city’s walls. I shoved through the bodies, trying to let myself see what he saw. But it was all a jumble. People, hundreds of them, with their musty, animalistic smells, making their odd, beastlike noises. If he hadn’t known me, he would have thought them savages.

I heard Pepper’s cries. I heard someone calling for me. Mordecai. Waving me over. He stood beside his children and wife, all dressed in their flight suits. Their grins were broad, elated at the new world they’d found. They turned their eyes expectantly toward me.

“Come, Terra, give us a speech!”

But I shook my head and pressed forward. This was no time for speeches. He was here. He was here ! Vadix was here!

That’s when I spotted him. That bald blue head, those eyes, as black as onyx. He stood, posture slumped, against the city’s outer wall. He was dressed in a robe of fine, pale gold. He smiled when he saw me, those soft lips full of teeth. Once, that mouth scared me a little. But now I found myself wake to life at the sight of it. His mouth. His grin. Him.

“You’re here!” I said. I wanted to thrust myself into his arms. But I didn’t, not at first. Dead. I’d thought he was dead. And yet here he was, eyes wide at the sight of me in the white light of day, resting his hands on his legs to better see the creature mewling in my carrier.

“What is this?” he asked. I set the carrier on the ground. Pepper sniffed at the chilly air.

“My cat,” I said. I felt the corners of my mouth lift, but forced them down. It shouldn’t have been this easy—for him, for me. He’d disappeared, left me to wander the evening alone. “You were gone ! What are you doing here?”

Vadix stood straight. He tucked his hands into his robe, regarding me gravely. “I am here for you,” he said, and then he tilted his head to the side. “But for me as well. This city. I have dreamed all my life of it. Now I dream of sharing it with you.”

“With me,” I echoed. My cheeks warmed. I gazed down toward the toes of my boots. “But what about Velsa?”

“For days I deliberated. At last, yesterday evening, I went to the funerary fields. I bid her farewell. It is a sacred space, Terra. Ours. I could not speak to you there.” I thought of the dank cave I’d seen the night before. The new bodies, sprouting from the old. I remembered the sensation I’d felt, that he’d disappeared far beneath the planet’s edge. He’d been gone, surely. But apparently I hadn’t lost him. Not really. Not for good. He went on. “Always I shall miss her. But that does not mean I am not excited about Zeddak Alaz. That does not mean I am not excited about what lies ahead. We have a city. A place. And years and years and years.”