Amy Thomson - The Color of Distance

The last night of the trip, Juna sat up late with Anitonen and Ukatonen.

“I’ve learned so much, living among the Tendu. There are times when I’ve wanted to stay here with you forever, but—” Juna stared off into the thick, humid darkness of the jungle. “I miss being human,” she said. “I’m tired of being different, tired of feeling like an alien among my own people. I want to touch and be touched, without the other person flinching away.”

“Do you want me to change you back?” Anitonen asked. “It wouldn’t be hard.”

Juna’s heart leapt within her at the thought of looking human again. “Oh, Anitonen, that would be wonderful! But I can’t change back—the Tendu need me, Moki needs me.”

“And you are out of harmony with yourself,” Anitonen told her. “You have given us five years of your life. It is enough. Patricia knows enough to serve as a translator now, especially if you help her. It is time to return fully to your people.”

“But Moki—” Juna began.

Ukatonen laid her arm on Juna’s. “Moki has known that this time would come since you chose him as your bami.”

“But what about you?” Juna asked. “If Moki doesn’t accept you as his sitik…” She trailed off, unable to finish.

“I am responsible for my own judgments,” Ukatonen told her. “I will live with the consequences. Even Moki knows that you need your people. Waiting only delays change; it doesn’t stop it.”

They were right, Juna knew. It was time. Delaying this transformation any further would only prolong her own misery without really making things better for anyone else.

“Will it take long?”

Anitonen shook her head. “I could start the change now. By the time you return to the ship, it will be almost complete. Your hands and feet will take several weeks to return to normal. They will ache while the transition is going on. I Gan also make it possible for you to go outside without an e-suit. You will be a little out of harmony, your eyes will burn, your nose will run. Once you go back inside, you will feel better. If you like, you can retain your improved eyesight, hearing, and balance.”

“That would be good.” Juna looked down at Moki, sleeping curled beneath a blanket of leaves. “Should I wake him?”

“It will only hurt him to watch, and he might try to disrupt the link,” Anitonen said.

Juna touched Moki lightly; he stirred and rolled over in his sleep. At least this painful waiting would be over for them both. Perhaps Moki would finally bond with Ukatonen. She held her arms out to Anitonen. “Please, en, make me human again.”

Moki lay snug in his nest of leaves, listening to the sounds of the forest, not wanting to face the morning. They were going back to the coast today. His sitik would be returning to her people. A cloud of regret passed over his skin. He wanted to stay here and pretend that Eerin’s people had not returned and taken her away from him.

He sat up. Eerin’s nest was empty. He found her swimming in the cool, clear river. The sun slanted down through the early morning mist in thick golden bars. Moki wanted to memorize this moment, to take it with him when he followed Eerin off-planet. He would miss the jungle. Eerin stood and walked through the shallows toward the beach, shedding brilliant drops of water. Moki clambered down a curtain of vines to greet her.

He ran to embrace his sitik, but stopped a few paces away. Something was wrong. Her skin was cloudy and off color.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You look sick.”

Eerin shook her head. “I’m changing back, Moki. I asked Anitonen to make me human again.” Her words were fuzzy around the edges, and it took her longer to say them.

Moki backed away. “No!” he said. “No, no, no, no!”

He turned to flee, but Eerin caught him by the shoulder and turned him back around.

“Moki, please stay,” she said. He relaxed, and she released him. “I’m still the same person I was before. Only the outside is changing.”

Moki held out his arms, asking for a link. Eerin shook her head. “I can’t, Moki. Not by myself. We need someone to monitor me. Let’s go ask Ukatonen if he will help.”

Ukatonen was sitting on a rock upstream, gutting two big lorra fish for breakfast. Eerin asked for him to help them link.

“Let’s eat first. Your sitik is probably very hungry.”

Eerin nodded. Moki turned brown in shame. He had been selfish, forgetting his sitik’s needs.

“Let me help,” he said. “What else do we need?”

Ukatonen flickered approval. “You can skin and slice this fish while I go gather some greens.”

“What should I do?” Eerin asked.

“Rest and wait for breakfast. Changing is enough work for you today.”

“I’ll sit with Moki, then.”

They sat in wordless companionship while Moki sliced the fish and laid it neatly out on a fresh leaf. Eerin touched his shoulder as he finished. He looked up, ears spread wide.

“Are you angry with me for changing?” Eerin asked.

Moki shook his head as he pitched the fish guts into the undergrowth. He wasn’t angry. He just felt empty and hollow inside, like the husk of a deserted na tree. He had dreaded this moment for a long time. Now it was here and he felt only an aching emptiness.

“You need your people,” he told her with a shrug. There was nothing else left to say.

“I’m sorry, Moki,” she said.

“I know,” he replied. “It has to be this way. It’s all right.”

At least they would be together. He had managed to steal the suit that kept him warm when they went to the island. All he had to do was get on the shuttle, and it would take him to her people’s ship. He could hide there until it was too late for them to take him back to the planet. Then they would be together and everything would be all right.

At last breakfast was over, and Ukatonen held his arms out, ready to link.

“It will be a very short link, Moki. Eerin needs to save her energy for her change.”

Moki rippled acknowledgment. He held out his arms, a cloud of sadness passing over his skin. Eerin clasped his arm and Ukatonen’s. Eerin’s spur was soft and mushy-feeling. He tried to link through her spurs, but all he contacted was a mass of dying cells.

“Link through her skin, Moki. Her spurs don’t work anymore,” Uka-tonen said.

Moki shifted his grip. He sank his spurs into her skin, and succeeded in linking. Ukatonen was there, monitoring them both. He felt Eerin’s mix of grief and relief at her transformation. Moki let his love for his sitik rise above his grief. If this was to be their last link, he wanted to leave her with good feelings. They reached an equilibrium full of bittersweet longing and love.

The trip downstream passed quietly. Eerin lost the ability to speak around mid-morning. No ene said much after that. She spent most of the day in the water, clinging to the side of the raft, soothing and softening her dying skin. By the time they reached the beach where the humans would pick her up, Eerin’s skin was coming off in great patches. She radioed to the humans’ ship, letting them know that she had arrived, then waded into the ocean, where Anitonen helped her strip away her remaining Tendu skin. She emerged from the ocean as someone else, clean and brown and human. Her hands had flat nails on them instead of claws, and her palms were smooth and unridged.

Unable to face his sitik’s alien appearance, Moki looked away, out over the slate-colored ocean at the grey clouds, heavy with rain that blocked the setting sun. He felt like one of those clouds, grey with grief. Off in the distance, he saw a black speck rounding the point. It was a boat, coming to take Eerin away. Even though he knew he would see his sitik again, there was a finality to the boat’s approach. Nothing would be the same after she left.