Höst Andrea K.

Gratuitous Epilogue [Touchstone: Extras]

1 - December

Wednesday, December 3

Home-making

Wow – feels like forever since I’ve written. December already. Kaoren asked me to start a new diary, for all I’m nowhere near finished reading him even the first one. But he’s right that I place less of a filter on myself in these diaries than I do in any conversation, and we both look forward to our reading sessions. I’m finding myself with a lot less time to sit about writing though, so he’ll have to make do with a monthly catch-up.

The past few weeks have been all about planning our Arcadian house, tweaking and finalising the rough design we’d blocked out with the program I gave Ys. Kaoren, with his usual efficiency, had carted out a drone and obtained a proper topographic scan of the site for the house – above the waterfall and curving down one side of the little hill. It was great to see how into the project he was: the kids aren’t the only ones who have been thinking long and hard about just what they’d like our home to be.

Beyond a shelf built into the bed, I left our bedroom’s design to Kaoren, since he has the best idea of what his Sights can cope with. I amused myself with a retreat room – an idea Kaoren liked and promptly copied for himself. We ended up with a stack of three octagons which weren’t quite sitting directly on top of each other. The bedroom is in the middle, on what would be the main floor of the building, with windows above the waterfall. There’s a side door to a stairwell up and down, as well as out to the patio. Kaoren’s retreat will be one floor down, and positioned toward the back, away from the central body of the house. It will be windowless with lots of shelving, and a rear exit to what will be a tiny sunken garden room where he can meditate. All those things in his quarters back on Tare will end up on the new shelves, presuming we ever open the way to Tare.

My retreat will be an eyrie, a kind of rooftop pagoda with windows in every direction, an excess of window seats to loll about in, and a door to a walkway across the top of the centre section of the house.

The centre of the building has the kitchen and the lounge and a workout room, and a couple of guest bedrooms and laundry and storage area and all that kind of practical stuff. The very large lounge opens on to a sprawling, multi-level patio overlooking the waterfall.

The far tier of the patio connects to the kids' domain, which will be the largest part of the house. Two stacks of octagons linked by bathrooms. I was logically thinking of one room for each of them, but this turned into quite a debate thanks to Sen’s insistence that Kaoren and I fill her life with babies. That isn’t going to happen any time soon, and definitely not in the numbers she would like. But because it was easy to do, we added another two spare rooms in the kids' area to appease her and cope with overflow guests.

Rye very definitely wanted the rear, lower room, opening onto the proposed back yard. This wasn’t simply copying Kaoren – he wants a garden of his own, to grow vegetables and keep pets. Sen decided she wanted the room beside his – I suspect that this is all about being closest to the action in the main lounge room, or perhaps whatever pets Rye produces. On top of these two rooms is a play room for the kids, which opens out on the rooftop walkway leading to my retreat, and also onto the kids' part of the patio, and the two spare bedrooms, which will overlook the back garden. Sen has decided to lay claim on these in the interim, so they won’t be lonely.

Ys and Lira opted for the top two rooms, which will be the highest point. The whole house will be sheltered by the mass of trees on the island, and partially shielded by the hill on the Pandora side, but with amazing views across the lake toward the water bird nesting grounds. Ys sectioned off her room into little roomlets, so that the bed isn’t visible, and there’s a sheltered study area – each section with its own set of windows. Lira, by contrast, didn’t want anything interrupting her ability to see out, and wanted stairs down the outside of the building to the upper garden.

Sen treats it all as a joyful game, with her playing princess, but Ys and Rye go through overwhelmed patches. They’re beginning to accept that we mean it about becoming a family, that we’re not going to change our minds, and that they’re important to us and warrant a room of their own, just the way they want it. Lira’s a more confusing case – she obviously grew up privileged and protected, but also terribly isolated. And she’s been having a bad spate of dreams about fading out of existence. Sometimes the planning sessions leave her angry and upset, because she’s not sure she’ll be here to see the house.

KOTIS Command has at least not objected to the idea of us moving. And, despite the enormous demand for construction professionals, we’ll have our design back from our chosen architect soon and have been able to tentatively line up construction dates. That’s a side-benefit of being Caszandra: something I vacillate between finding convenient and embarrassing. It’s not going to go away, so either I work with it or I practice my pouting.

At least the extra-special treatment seems to extend to all of the Setari – is a way of thanking them for putting their lives on the line. And there’s a lot of prestige for the architect and builders, too. I’m pleased with the architect, Tel Sevra, because our house plans haven’t appeared on the news. Yet.

I want to make the house happen sooner rather than later, particularly to give us all more outside life which doesn’t get reported within minutes. One decision I’ve yet to make is whether to employ someone to help with the cleaning – we’re going to try on our own at first, but it’ll be a big house and it might be a bit much for the two of us. While I don’t mind the kids having some minor chores to do, I don’t want them scrubbing bathrooms, or any of the other things I’ve been fortunate to have KOTIS staff doing for me. Still, we’ll have our own cleaning snot, which is, uh, a good thing, I guess.

Also on the staff front, Maze tells me I might want to consider some kind of assistant. On Tare the interface made it impossible for people to actually post things addressed to me. There’s a postal rule set up about unsolicited gifts to the Setari which has covered me as well – you need a verification code to send anything through the Taren postal system. The same set-up is in place here, but is a lot harder to manage, and the KOTIS support staff have had to deal with people just walking up as close to the building as they can get before greensuits intercept them, and leaving packages and presents for all of us. I’d never actually thought that through in detail, but of course Raiten’s fan club alone could probably fill a room each month. The island and Setari guards will make it harder for people to do that, but non-KOTIS staff are becoming more mobile and will eventually have their own boats and flyers. The presents are just people trying to be nice, but I guess if we started accepting them we’d need a house twice as big to put it all in. And KOTIS is still blocking random mail and invitations and things, which is convenient, if impolite. But hiring someone to deal with that means less privacy.

Among the pile of things I’d like to keep private is the treatment Ys and Rye have been going through to remove the scarring from their backs. We celebrated its conclusion by going to the island for a swim (Maze and Alay as our escorts this time), and even though Ys and Rye still wore the same shorts and shirt ensemble, I noticed a certain air of freedom which I think may be because now there’s no risk of anyone seeing the scars through their wet clothes.

As we grow to understand Nuran culture better, we’re beginning to see why they wanted so much to hide it – a whipping which scarred was an extreme punishment, suited for some deep and heinous crime. The scarring marked them not as victims, but as monsters. For eavesdropping on a lesson. The expression on Rye’s face when the blue bandages were taken off for the last time and they showed him an image of his back was enough to have me hiding tears, and Kaoren went incredibly quiet. He and Maze had a discussion about it afterwards, and neither of them could properly speak they were so angry. Not many people know about the scars, fortunately, and I mean to keep it that way.

My bones have knit obediently, nanotech speeding the process enough that yesterday I was finally allowed to ditch the sling. Kaoren and I took immediate advantage of that, which we’re not strictly supposed to do yet, but I’ve been not-ravishing him for way too long.

And today, at long last, we went into the Ena (four squads and Tsur Selkie) and I did visualisations of Tare and Kolar. Tsur Selkie had me project his office first, where I discovered a large whiteboard-type panel of actual physical writing. Tsur Selkie’s a forward-thinking type of guy, and set up quite a few contingencies, including this collection of details of what had happened on Tare since we blew the marbles. The same set-up had been made at the KOTIS headquarters on Kolar, except with a bunch of distinctive items in the room to make it easier for me to visualise.

News was not completely good. Fourteenth had been in the Ena when the marbles were blown, and were listed as out of commission recovering from injuries. Third is back on duty as a seven-person squad.

It was stupid of me to hope that Eeli would somehow have recovered.

With Fourteenth down, there’s only five active squads on Tare, but thankfully Ionoth numbers are significantly down on all planets, and they’ve observed the same sort of relaxing in the tension on the tears into real-space, so the Taren and Kolaren squads are coping. Having vastly more non-Setari manpower, they’ve made some progress in charting a path through deep-space, but estimates for completion are still in the months range.

Kolar’s news was unequivocally good. Their major Ionoth problem has long been middle-sized roamers, the number of which have practically dropped to nil since the disruption. They’re also making moderate progress on the complicated process of charting safe passage through the tides of deep-space. There was a Kolaren in the room with that whiteboard, and Tsur Selkie had a brief formal conversation with him which was very funny because the Kolaren realised he had to be a projection, and was so distracted by that he kept not listening to Tsur Selkie.

Then I fell asleep, of course, and woke in bed to find Kaoren curled around me, deeply asleep. I’m so glad not to be all broken and wincey any more, because there’s few things nicer than waking wrapped in Kaoren.

I’ve been reading the news while debating waking him up. All the Tarens and Kolarens on Muina have been very anxious for me to recover enough to check the situation on their home worlds, and KOTIS sent out a press release with the good news straight away. I’ve been managing otherwise to keep out of the news the last couple of weeks, for the most part by staying in and keeping my head down. I’ve been following a lot of the debates about the laws being drafted, but have gotten a bit tired of it.

Most of the other news is about who has been granted various bits of land, and the progress at Mesiath. The first New Muinan baby was born a few days ago. They called her Caszandra, and when I grimaced at that Kaoren informed me that she was hardly the first baby lumbered with my name, and certainly wouldn’t be the last. Kaoren has become a lot more popular for boys, too, apparently.

He’s looking particularly gorgeous, lying there asleep. Can’t resist…

2 - January

Thursday, January 8

ET

The gate to Earth opened!

The monitoring drone gave us two days' warning of a probable alignment, sufficient for me to get completely worked up about the whole thing. I must have re-read my letter to Mum about a million times, and I swear Maze brought Nils and Zee back from the Oriath excavation just so I’d be distracted by the way they look at each other[1].

They did distract me a fair deal, and I was only a little beside myself when the drones suggested the critical time was approaching. KOTIS Command (rather warily) allowed Kaoren and I and the kids to go, with First Squad and a bunch of technicians as escort, to spend a day there waiting for something to happen. I couldn’t see any difference when it did align, and Alay was the one who tossed my (carefully wrapped and stamped and protected by a plastic wrap) parcel through. A fist-sized skitter-drone followed, just for a quick view and safely back again.

Kaoren kept his arm firmly around my waist the entire time the greysuits were taking readings, and looked a great deal more relaxed after the gate had closed. I know he didn’t think I was going to try running through it, but he may have been worried the gate would somehow reach out and snatch me away.

The thing was, it took FIVE MINUTES to close.

"I could have just turned around and gone back," I kept repeating.

"Well, I’m glad you didn’t," Mara said, amused at me.

"So am I. But still feel like an idiot." Then I went and hugged my kids, and even Ys let me.

Five minutes! It’s not just the amount of time it stays open, either. The skitter-drone had brought back some perfectly ordinary images of a Sydney footpath – no more than a few metres further along the same street I’d been walking down on my way home. And the gate realigned exactly one Muinan year (and ten minutes) after I stepped through from Earth. The implications of that, of a predictable alignment to almost the same place, just floored me.

Of course, we aren’t certain it really is predictable, and there was damn little I could do about it right away except give Kaoren a few sleepless nights with my worked-up tossing and turning. I was glad, at least, that I’d recovered enough to do some carefully rationed projection work, which meant a week later I got to go into the Ena and try and visualise Mum to see if the parcel had reached her.

I knew the answer to that straight away because she’d put the photos I’d sent in frames and set them on the bookshelf next to the TV. Pictures of me and Kaoren and our new family, right there on Earth.

Jules was playing games with one of his friends, and leaped up shouting: "I told you so! I told you so!" and then to me: "You get to do all the good stuff, Cass!"

Mum had been in the kitchen, but came out at the fuss and looked around at all the black-clad figures, then walked straight to me and hugged me hard.

"I only just finished reading them," she said. "Your handwriting is so tiny – my eyes may never recover." Then she pulled back, blinking away tears, and examined me. "No more injuries?"

"Not even a headache."

I introduced her to Kaoren again. He’d had me teach him how to say a few things in English in preparation – his accent is so cute – and Mum smiled at him and said: "I gather this is our second introduction, and so I’ll say the same thing I apparently did before: I’ll be glad to welcome you to the family when one of us isn’t a projection. But – thank you, for so much."

"Would you come here, Mum?" I asked anxiously. "If it were possible?"

"Who wouldn’t, dummo?" Jules put in. "Are you nuts?"

Mum had given me a sharp look. "You’ve found a way?"

I explained quickly about the realignment of the gate, and how we wouldn’t even know for another year whether it really was a predictable pattern, and that I’d be trying to send her another letter then, and I started to talk overly fast and nearly lost the projection.

Mum distracted me by catching me up on the news from home. Aunt Bet is having another baby, and Nan has sold her house and moved into an assisted care place. And Nick and Alyssa have hooked up! Mum said they bonded over being able to talk about me possibly being on another planet (which is not a story Mum has encouraged be spread far and wide). I think I must have been a bad friend to Alyssa to not realise that she liked Nick.

I couldn’t maintain the projection for much longer – looking at Earth takes way too much out of me – but before I dropped it Mum hugged me again and said: "Who wouldn’t? Are you nuts?" and laughed in a wide-eyed way and then was gone.

It will be more than a year before we can send another letter, and then it will be another year’s wait and KOTIS Command has to consider the idea of telling people on Earth the location of an occasional gate to Muina, and might not give me permission, and I’m going to go do a lot of swimming in the hopes that it will stop me ping-ponging off the walls.

Wednesday, January 21

We’ve been in our house three days now. It’s a big adjustment not having so many people around me, not having the constant background awareness of support staff, and the greensuits and technicians on the floors below, and of squads in the surrounding rooms. Plenty of small animals on Arcadia to catch my attention, but I’m really liking the relative quiet.

After approval, the seeding of the house was quick and easy – the only concern being whether we could avoid disturbing the spring which feeds the waterfall – but it took a fair chunk of time before all the support systems and fittings were installed in the excessively large chambers we’d grown underground.

The house is on the west side of the hill, and Pandora is to the east, so our view is full of uninterrupted lake and will have magnificent sunsets. In Winter when the leaves have fallen we’ll probably be able to see First Squad Island to the south and slightly west.

Maze helped a lot with the landscaping – scooping away the part of the hill on the south-east side where we want a big, enclosed grassy backyard, and shaping the face of the hill which forms a rear wall to the roof garden. Both areas are mostly still raw dirt at the moment, though we have marked out garden beds and planted a lot of seeds which the botanists tell me might produce the kind of lawn I described. Maze and Rye spent hours together in earnest discussion about which trees to remove and which to transplant so that we have a lot of sunlight, and selecting just the right trees for the backyard, and finding the perfect rocks to split and turn into stepping stones for a path. Maze thoroughly enjoyed all that, and says he’s going to study botany and design so he can build gardens. I think he’s serious.

Since most everything we had at the Setari building belongs to KOTIS, we had a lot of shopping to do. Linens and kitchen equipment and chairs and tables and curtains (which at least the Kolarens understand) and dozens of things which we kept realising we’d need. With the industrial sector expanding by the day, and the variations which nanotech allows, even the few production companies which have formed offer a surprising amount of variety. The interface made it easy to compare options, and we held family voting sessions to pick the designs.

We also went on an actual shopping trip to the mall/subway station which you can enter through Moon Piazza, which is where most of the handcrafted items are displayed. Amazing stuff – many of the early approved settlers were arts and crafts type – and I bought some really nice glassware and plates, and this incredible woollen tapestry which is deep green with mostly white flowers arranged in intricate Art Nouveau-ish lines inspired by the Kalasa decorations. I had the greatest difficulty getting the man at the shop to accept payment for any of it. We had lunch at one of the new restaurants, and I wish I could figure a way to take the kids out without having people showing up where we’re eating, to cheer when they catch glimpses of us. Even Sen went all shy at that one (or possibly was just overtired from all the excitements and the challenge of sampling everyone’s desserts).

Images of our house didn’t show up on the news until after it was nearly complete, which makes me like our architect even more. It was inevitable that pictures would leak once it reached the construction phase. And then the technicians were gone, and it was suddenly our house, very white and sprawling and new, and all we had to do was put our clothes away, make the beds, and figure out a way to keep the mud off the floors because we forgot to get mats.

Alone at last! Except for Ketzaren and Jeh, who were my minders for the day. KOTIS Command was willing to let us not live in the Setari building, but Lira and I are just too valuable, too potentially dangerous, for us not to have minders, particularly since Kaoren has more assignments away from Pandora than I do. When Lira goes to the talent school each day, a second pair will be on call for her. Babysitting is a permanent condition of our existence.

Not that I mind when it’s Ketzaren and Jeh, and now that months have passed with no sign of Cruzatch, babysitting duty is more a matter of being on the same island, rather than in my lap. And Setari are certainly useful to have around when you’re trying to arrange a party.

It was a housewarming and thank you rolled into one. Most of the food was pre-made by one of the restaurants, but I did a little cooking myself, even though many of the ingredients are still fairly unfamiliar to me. Lohn and Mara helped a lot, even when they weren’t assigned babysitters. Their house is going to be seeded soon, the first on their island, and I’m going to enjoy returning the many favours I owe them.

The party’s guest list was a bit of a struggle, because I really owe all the squads, even Fifth, but though Fifth have been behaving well, I’m not suddenly going to start liking them. And much as he tries to hide it, I think Kaoren would prefer that I never spoke to Els again. There were also the huge number of medics who’ve spent a lot of time keeping me alive, and a few of the kitchen staff that I’ve been chatting with about food, and – well, eventually Kaoren told me I couldn’t invite half of KOTIS, and no-one would expect me to. I ended up just inviting First, Second and Fourth and Squad One and Isten Notra and Shon, since these are the people I’m closest to[2].

The party was last night, and I think everyone enjoyed it. It was a fairly warm night, but there was a balmy breeze, and the terraced patios worked really well as I introduced everyone to the Aussie tradition of the barbie[3].

By now it’s not too hard to get meat and vegetables (instead of algae-blocks), and I managed a nice lamb steak with (somewhat purplish) fried onions with a salad of non-poisonous green leaves. All the squads pretended to be astonished to discover that I’m capable of cooking. I’m teaching Kaoren to cook as well, since it’s something he’s never had any need to do.

The surprise of the night came from Kaoren, who produced two tiny black scraps after dinner. Kittens! He said he remembered me saying that kittens are supposed to come in pairs. I was just as excited by them as the kids, though I’ve had time since to realise that they’ll represent a drastic change to the island’s ecosystem once they’re big enough to hunt. I’m trying to think of a solution to that which doesn’t involve giving up the kittens.

The cat colony of Pandora is still mostly feral, but some of the adults have been semi-tamed, and there’s been a great deal of kitten-napping going on. Our pair (which we haven’t named yet) weren’t the least bit afraid, but did get stressed by there being so many people, and went and hid behind Nils, which everyone thought was hugely funny.

Zee leaned down and said something to him which actually made him go pink, and Ketzaren and I exchanged amused glances. I’m not the only person pleased and fascinated by Nils and Zee. First and Second are full of plans for the future, of adjusting to being planetary Setari instead of constantly working in the Ena. And of the details of Lohn and Mara’s upcoming wedding, and First Squad Island, and the question of how they felt about some of the children at the talent school.

I must admit I invited Squad One not only because they’re fun to talk to, but because I suspect Sonn (I still haven’t reached the point of calling her Fiar) of being more than a little interested in Arad Nalaz, and trying not to let herself be. Fourth, like most of the younger squads, haven’t thrown themselves into a welter of romance and plans for houses, but they seemed to enjoy the party well enough. Mori’s been down lately because she misses both her family and Ro Kanato from Eighth, but otherwise Fourth has been rather focused on not losing their edge. They’ve been pathfinding through the Ena, charting courses from Pandora to places without working platforms, like Oriath and Arenrhon. This leaves Kaoren rather tired in the evenings, but I was fairly successful in keeping the bulk of my party-planning from landing on his head as soon as he dropped down onto the patio.

I haven’t just been playing house and planning parties, but my day job has been relatively stress-free. KOTIS Command has kept me to light training, irregular visualisations, and enhancing the Setari assisting the Mesiath construction. The only thing which I’m currently annoyed about is my hair, which is growing out super-slow. At the moment I have all these feathery wanna-be curls and look like a fuzzy duckling.

I’m up in my eyrie right now, with the wind blowing the super-sheer gauzy curtains about. Jeh and Grif are guarding me by sitting down on the patio chatting. Kaoren is at Kalasa, and the kids at school, so there’s no-one else in range of my senses. The kittens are chasing the curtains, which I should probably teach them not to, but I think it’s too cute to stop. The next important task on our schedule is voting on names for them.

Guess I’ll go make Jeh and Grif some lunch.

3 - February

Friday, February 6

Stood Over

The kittens are getting leggier and more mobile, and I’ll probably have to find some kind of bells to put on a collar, because they’ve definitely got strong hunting genes. They’re called Mip and Tick-tock. Mip was Sen’s suggestion. I suggested Tick and Tock for names for both of them, but Sen liked it better as a single name. For the moment family votes are mostly still boiling down to Sen’s preferences, but I’m glad to see that Ys and Rye are being positively influenced by Lira. Lira likes Sen, but she doesn’t put her whims above things she really wants, and just occasionally Ys and Rye at least consider doing the same.

Lohn and Mara’s house will soon be at the fit-out stage, and Jeh, Grif and Ketzaren’s won’t be too far behind them. The rest of the Setari aren’t moving so quickly, though most of them have taken their land grants to ensure the islands stay Setari. But for the moment barracks are just easier, and houses are something that the senior squads want more for family than for privacy. Lohn’s fretting about the question of adoption, and Mara says it’s because he likes so many of the children he’s been tutoring at the talent school. They’ve included a lot of extra rooms in their house design, but that’s mainly because they have tons of relatives back on Tare, and want them to visit or stay. And they’re going to try to have a baby fairly soon after their wedding.

I had a fair bit of stress a week ago. I’ve been on-and-off discussing being a touchstone with Lira (who still won’t admit to being able to do anything any more), and told her about how I’d once made Nils dream about things which had happened to him in the past, and hadn’t been able to break out of the dream. She told me that people with Illusion talents are the ones best able to guide projections, and they were deeply involved in the construction of the machines for the grand projects like the Ddura. Unfortunately, I was stupid enough to mention this, and of course the technicians were fascinated by the link and wanted to set up some experiments to see whether Nils could make me project stuff. It’s one of the few things I’ve really, absolutely refused to do. Not with Nils, not with anyone – but especially not with Nils. I was pretty calm about it when they suggested it initially, but when they sent Maze back to have a deep and meaningful about it, I got all stressed and barely stopped myself from asking him if he’d appreciate being forced to relive Helese’s death, and could only say: "I really mean it. I can’t hurt people that way." And of course had nightmares, and I guess Kaoren and Maze between them told the technicians to back the hell off firmly enough that they decided to leave it be (for now – being able to create things like the Ddura is something they’re very interested in).

Fortunately Nils wasn’t around for any of this. He and Zee are in charge of the Setari out at Oriath, assisting with the slow excavation of the massive pile of rubble and keeping the site clear of Ionoth, so I haven’t had a chance to see much of them.

It’s my birthday tomorrow. I’ll be nineteen, which feels really old and really young to me at the same time. I’m feeling very lucky that Kaoren changed his mind after only six months.

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.

5 - April

April 10

Islands

Contact with Tare and Kolar was made only two days after the last time I wrote. It took them another few days to scan the last short section and calculate an end to end run of both routes, but after that the floodgates opened.

It takes between three and five hours to get through now, instead of just one, and there are long patches where nothing’s aligned enough to get through, but we’re actually a lot less cut off than everyone feared we’d be. They’re now trying to work their way to the Pillar where Second Squad was stranded to see what condition it’s in. And also to Channa, since there’s been people stuck at the mining installation there.

Tare and Kolar (and the Channan staff) didn’t have any convenient touchstones to let them check the condition of other planets, and so for four months could only guess what had happened. Kolar had had no warning whatsoever, and from Tare’s point of view I’d vanished and a bunch of people had gone haring off into deep-space to look for me and then all of the Ena had melted down and they could only hope it wasn’t the beginning of the end. They didn’t know if I was alive, whether the colony had survived, or whether all of Muina had been destroyed. At least the decrease in Ionoth numbers and the slacking of the tears into real-space gave them hope. Of course, once Muina’s collected four months of news had been transmitted, there was a media frenzy over the whole drama of my kidnapping by the Cruzatch, and the risky destruction of the malachite marbles, and then the short eternity of picking collapsed building off the top of me and hoping they got to me before I died.

And Lira.

I’ve been trying to imagine what it would be like to be in Lira’s position at her age. Used as a tool to destroy her world, trapped in a half-life, doing what she could to sabotage her captors, and then after connecting with me finding that everyone she knew was dead and she was part ways responsible, and that she might possibly not really be alive. And now a new life, a soap-bubble existence which nobody can definitively say is real.

There have been articles talking about how dangerous Lira and I are – the things we could be used for – but mostly it’s open adulation. The MBC, wanting to keep on KOTIS' good side, are careful never to be too full-on, but even they maintain a Caszandra-Watch page which is constantly updated with the latest images and stories about me and my family. And a lot of that is now about Lira, who is after all a gorgeous Lantaren who helped save them all. There’s now a couple of billion people fascinated by the idea of her.

Naturally some pretty unvarnished opinions of her have leaked out of the talent school, but these are very inconsistent. Some people claim she’s traumatised and describe her as clinging to Ys for support (Ys is still getting positive press for being so brave during my dragon day). Others say Lira’s cold and arrogant – the classic evil Lantaren. But mostly she’s seen as a true Lantaren princess and it’s almost expected and accepted that she be a bit imperious and pampered. I make sure to check the news and keep alert to what stories are going around about them. Lira finds anything about her, positive or negative, to be annoying, but doesn’t seem too caught up by it at the moment – the people immediately around her are more interesting. Rye gets embarrassed and Ys occasionally infuriated. Sen’s still a little too young to comprehend more than the fact that everyone knows who she is and they wave at her when we go into town. And then new pictures of us show up on the interface. Living on an island was a damn good idea.

For me the first news of reconnection to Tare came along with a handful of emails from Zan. They were typical of Zan’s calm formality, with just a thread of uncertainty beneath. I think in a way she must have been trying to help me by writing them, creating an expectation for me to be alive to read them. Or maybe she wanted some kind of sounding board, the same way I used to use my diaries. She needed someone to talk to.

Twelfth had been off-shift, asleep, when I fell down the Cruzatch-hole, and when KOTIS went to full alert upon Kaoren’s return they’d been stuck biting their nails for rather too long, then sent after Thirteenth and Fourteenth, who had been assigned to Maze Rotation. They were deep within the tangle of whitestone walls, working in two different locations to lower the chance of attracting roamers, and when Twelfth reached the maze space, Zan immediately ordered everyone back to Tare.

Twelfth had waited just within the maze space entrance, and when Thirteenth arrived had sent them back ahead. And then the first wave of distortion had hit. They’d felt it in the Ena of both Tare and Kolar, not to such a paralysing level as Muina, but enough to make clear that something was wrong and only getting worse.

Zan’s email covers all this in a sentence, but I’ve since watched the mission log, and listened to the conversation between her and Kin Lara, the sleepy captain of Fourteenth who I mainly remember as being a friend of Els'.

"Go ahead, Namara," he said, as Fourteenth raced around the twists and bends of the maze[4].

"We’ll wait," Zan replied. "I can move us fastest."

"Not the time to ignore protocols," Lara said, still sounding sleepy and unperturbed, almost amused, even though his squad were running for their lives. "You’re usually more sensible, Zan."

The next wave of distortion hit them then, underlining his point. Lenton’s log shows me Zan’s face, white, expressionless. Then she says: "Hurry," and sends her squad through the small house space which leads to the maze space, and then into near-space, then she picks them up and flies all-out, as fast as the strongest Telekinetic in the Setari can manage, back to the gate-lock.

Fourteenth made it to near-space before the storm which followed the destruction of the malachite marbles hit. If they’d still been in the maze space they would have been completely lost, since it’s now shifted out of alignment with Tare’s near-space (this bothers me a lot because no-one’s seen Ghost since). Twelfth, waiting in real-space at the gate-lock, couldn’t do anything when the gate – usually invisible – suddenly washed bright white and roared power at them.

The effect on Fourteenth was a combination of a severe aether overdose combined with the overenhancement which occurs when they touch me while I’m expanded. The Levitation and Telekinesis talents, who were flying as fast as possible, lost control and they tumbled to near-space’s ground. Blinded by white, bruised and with a couple of broken bones, they used the interface to track each other and find the gate, dragging each other toward it.

They didn’t make it, though, all of them collapsing. Zan, since her squad had been ordered not to go back into near-space, and with no sign of the storm subsiding, had thought to send drones, which easily homed in on Fourteenth and brought them back.

Broken bones were nothing compared to what the storm had done to their talents. Hyper-enhanced, producing brain lesions when any of them tried using anything energy-intensive. Four months later they’ve only just begun to reach normal levels again. Anyone with Sights – the talents which don’t just turn off and on – has had a particularly bad time of it. Given that Fourteenth is a Sights speciality squad, that means all of them, but the two Place Sight talents (Lara and Jax) have spent most of the past few months sedated because they just couldn’t handle it.

Zan, even though she made the only possible decisions and thought to send the drones, obviously feels somehow responsible, just as she had when I melted down in the Pillar. On top of that, with all the spaces realigning after the storm, the five active squads were distributed across Tare for the first couple of weeks, until Third (without their primary pathfinder) had managed to map out new routes. Even with the reduced numbers of Ionoth, it’s still been months of strain.

From the last couple of emails, it sounds as if Taarel has helped Zan through. With Maze and Grif cut off, Taarel stepped up into the senior captain role, and, despite the blow of Eeli’s loss, held everyone together.

The tone of Zan’s emails had improved by the last, written only a few weeks ago when Fourteenth’s talents settled back into more normal parameters, and I wrote her back as soon as I finished reading it, touching on my near-cooking, and then moving on to more cheerful subjects. As soon as the route was open again, and most of Tare’s Setari were back on Tare, Twelfth and the other squads who had been holding Tare together were given extended leave, which they definitely needed. Hopefully they’ll be posted to Muina soon.

Ys' birthday went well, I think. The microscope we’d decided on as a present was thoroughly approved of, fortunately, and I could tell she was relieved that her birthday lunch was a pure family affair. But it was only when we took her off in the afternoon to Pandora that I felt like I’d really succeeded in making her happy. Ys is much smarter than I am. She’s smarter than Rye, than Kaoren, than any of her teachers or the people she meets regularly. I can practically see her brain overheating sometimes, trying to make up for lost time, and I’ve been worried that – friends with Lira or not – she’ll feel lonely or isolated because she doesn’t have anyone who can think like her.

Isten Notra thought my idea for a birthday present was very funny, and was happy to be Ys' surprise for the day. When Ys realised she was going to be given a whole afternoon with Isten Notra, just to talk, she lit up amazingly, and she was in a daze when Kaoren brought her back that evening. A head full of answers. And Isten Notra has invited her back for an afternoon once a month, which is far more than I asked for, but Isten Notra says she enjoyed herself a lot, and that she thinks it important for Ys' development. Once she’d emerged from her daze, Ys went very quiet around me for a while, and I kept catching her watching me in an analytical sort of way. She’s stopped that now, but this past month has been a series of positive steps in our relationship. She doesn’t resist me nearly as much.

Having a flood of new episodes of The Hidden War also produced some odd family moments. Especially since the first new episode was my actual log of being stuck in Kalasa. It made for a really disorienting viewer experience, since underwater swimming isn’t exactly a great visual, and the only thing you can do to make hours and hours of swimming more interesting is to cut most of it out. They were very clever with the segues though – they simply made the clock display quite large to show the amount of time passing during the scenes they were cutting through. It was interesting how my vision hazed out the time I barely made it through the extra-long tunnel.

The new season had started broadcasting on Tare over two months ago, and there were a lot of interviews with the producers and the actors about how difficult it had been to go through with the production when they didn’t know if anyone at the settlement was still alive. And tons of reviews talking about how immensely traumatic it was to watch my log.

The traumatic part posed a bit of a parenting problem for us. Fortunately we had a day’s warning, since they only transmitted news, not entertainment programs, with the first contact. The kids read about it straight away, and Fein (who has become fast friends with Rye) was asking questions about it and that probably wouldn’t have mattered except that Sen got wind and wanted to watch it. That put us in a bit of a bind, since she’d been having so many nightmares lately that we’d been trying to keep her away from any negative stimulus. She couldn’t watch it without us giving her permission – and she didn’t actually argue with us when we first said that it would be too scary for her – but she was very subdued and hurt by our refusal and then had perhaps her worst set of nightmares yet. Kaoren said that this was a Sight Sight reaction: the need to know, particularly about things and people who are important to you, can be overwhelming.

Sometimes it amazes me that Kaoren’s so sane.

We decided the best thing to do was to make The Hidden War strictly full-family viewing, and only in the mornings or early afternoons so that Sen isn’t likely to sleep immediately after. Lots of explanations and support and then a carefully managed story time. We kept the kids out of school that day (and skipped our training) and watched the log-file episode. Sen actually took it pretty well – she kept patting my arm and trying to console me – and then switched to doing that to Kaoren, which told me pretty clearly how much he hates watching this log.

Ys, Rye and Lira held up well at the start, mainly impressed and disbelieving of how long I swam about, and asking pertinent questions about whether the burn hurt and why I’d changed direction. But when I broke down crying after reaching the desert, they all went grimly subdued. Me crying isn’t something Ys and Rye are used to, and Lira didn’t take it a great deal better. Ys is one of the few people who recognised that after I’d set the arrow alight, I almost lost my way walking back, and that seemed to horrify her more than anything else.

The scenes with actors playing out the drama of the search were a relief, and the kids were as usual very critical of the fact that none of the characters resemble the people they know. Though Teral Saith’s Lastier has become subtly more like Kaoren since they met, and the moment when Lastier lets his guard down when they find me more-or-less alive was a really powerful one, which I think impressed them all. Lira immediately asked Kaoren whether that was really how he’d been while I was lost.

He shook his head. "I was angry, the entire time," he said. "None of us read those platforms correctly – they serve so many purposes, but it was mass blindness not to see this one. And to run those tests without a single Setari to observe was one of the poorest decisions made during the entire settlement." He smiled, a faint, wry expression. "And I composed many lectures for Cassandra, for letting herself be stood on that platform, and then for being where I couldn’t find her, and I think I was angrier with her than anyone else. But I thought the arrow was a very good idea, so I forgave her." Then he pulled me over to his lap and squeezed me really tightly and Sen patted us both.

When we were less emotional we had a highly entertaining discussion of how Kaoren and I fell in love, and so now the kids know more about our romance than anyone else, and Sen was happily diverted into the question of our upcoming wedding and different wedding customs and the idea of flower girls.

I’ve been getting more hugs since then. Not from Ys, but she leans against me sometimes, and sits close during story time. Sen was probably the least impacted out of all of us, and slept peacefully that night. Everyone else had nightmares. We’ve watched the rest of the episodes which have been released, and none have been half as distressing, though we made a decision to censor parts of the Velcro massive episode, and just told Sen very generally what we were taking out. The very annoying consequence of the log file episode is that tons of people now want to have all my mission logs released. I’ll resist that one for all I’m worth.

The feel of the settlements has changed a lot, now that we’re three planets again. Everyone had been quietly getting on with it in the last few months, but while they did seed plenty of new buildings, and prepare infrastructure for new settlers, it was more an atmosphere of consolidation and settling in. These past few weeks have really geared things back up again, even beyond the level of those frantic post-signing days. After a few confirmation trips to make sure the route could be travelled safely in larger ships, we’ve seen an enormous influx of settlers. Tare and Kolar spent the cut-off time processing settler applications, preparing the core components for a bunch of nanofactories, and finishing up the large deep-space passenger transports they’d been preparing. When you’ve got ships capable of bringing two thousand people in at once, it doesn’t take long for the population to surge, though processing security passes for two thousand people at once is a bit of a pain. At least the subway is up and running, so they can quickly get from the spaceport to the platform.

Mesiath is already impressively large, and quite lovely. They’ve thinned out the trees in the new city area, but not removed them all, so that the centre of the city is still a bit foresty, and opens out to the south where there’ll be farmland. We went on a day-trip there, and the look on Rye’s face walking beneath those massive trees was great fun. Kaoren and I are thinking about using his land grant to have a few summer houses dotted across Muina, which makes me feel awesomely rich and self-indulgent, but I think would make Rye ecstatic. Maybe in a couple of years. Now that Mesiath is well advanced they’ll be seeding another two major settlements, and the provisional council pushed for the location to be chosen by the settlers rather than just dictated by the bluesuits and so there’s full-on debate about where they’ll be. KOTIS' only requirement was that they be around platform towns, one northern hemisphere and one southern hemisphere, and they created little tourist videos about each site and people get to vote on their favourite for each hemisphere. The desert one is coming total last, unsurprisingly.

Some of the Nuran faction haven’t been very happy with the new developments. While we were cut off, they represented a solid percentage of the population, and since everyone was in Pandora they could remain relatively close-knit. Now that Taren and Kolaren settlers are pouring in, and adoptions are sky-rocketing (KOTIS prioritized people who showed a genuine interest and capacity for adopting children), they’re not only being outnumbered, they’re being fragmented. KOTIS is obligingly ensuring each settlement will have a cultural representative, and is capturing as much information as possible about Nuran customs and language, and even decided suddenly to assist in setting up infrastructure for Nurenor (basically turning it into a Nuran-run farming settlement and sneakily supporting a more reasonable person to be in charge of it) but when it boils down to it, the Nurans are absolutely going to be only a tiny part of Muina’s whole. Of the two billion-plus people living on Tare and Kolar, more than half have indicated they want to relocate to Muina at some point in the next ten Muinan years (an idea which completely boggles my mind). Of the fraction of eventual Muinans who have a Nuran background, most will have been absorbed into Taren and Kolaren families. The adult Nurans I’ve spoken to are either sad about this, or angry. Fortunately the angry ones are a relative minority, but I can’t really blame them for being upset.

When all the squads which had been stationed on Muina before we were cut off went back to Tare or Kolar, even the rest of Fourth Squad went, and Lohn, Mara, Jeh, Grif and Ketzaren, who wanted to take their kids to meet their families (and see if Deal and Enna’s nightmares could be addressed by a less traumatic journey through deep-space). When KOTIS swaps in new squads there’ll be times when I have bodyguards not drawn from First, Second or Fourth, which is something to think about. Of course First and Second, who have all served their minimum time, have opted for Muina transfer rather than retirement, and so will be posted here pretty much permanently. There’s a possibility that Fourth will still occasionally work on Tare, but not for a while, which is good because I don’t particularly want to planet-hop at the moment.

Lohn and Mara (and, indeed, almost all of First and Second Squad) are expecting masses of family soon – families of KOTIS staff get settlement preference, and Lohn and Mara used a bit of Setari leverage to be able to include a few friends as wedding guests as well. Their wedding is only nine days away and is really turning into a bit of an event – word of it inevitably leaked out and the Setari-Watch pages are full of endless speculation and delight. Fortunately there’s no private airships yet, so they don’t have to worry about people flying over taking photos the way they do for outdoor celebrity weddings on Earth. The park on First Squad Island has shaped up nicely – the grass a bit patchy in spots and with lots of shrubs and weeds, but it still looks very attractive, and Maze and Rye have been having great fun with it (Maze really is really serious about becoming a garden designer). The trees everywhere around Pandora have started their shift into Autumn colours, and the islands are all gold-tinged with hints of orange. Should be spectacular.

We’re facing our own relative-influx. Kaoren (who wrote emails to Siame every week during the cut-off so that she got a flood once channels were open) decided to bite the bullet and invite his parents and his brother to come visit. He’s doing it because he wants Siame to come back here because he thinks that’s the best chance for her to work out the issues she has about me saving her, or me taking Kaoren’s attention away from her. And, really, it would be strange to marry Kaoren without meeting any of his family except Siame.

None of us are looking forward to the visit. Kaoren’s not actually on argumentative terms with his parents, but he has as little to do with them as possible, and since they’re both Sight Sight talents they’re perfectly aware of his feelings. He’s heading to Tare tomorrow to pack up all our stuff at the Tare Setari headquarters, and will return with his family in three days[5]. We considered making it another family trip, but we think it best to not take Sen through deep-space at the moment. We could sedate her for the trip, but that won’t stop her Place and Sight Sight from operating, and it might be painful for her. We also – in theory anyway – want to see how we cope with being away from each other for a few days.

We both know we’re going to have nightmares the entire time, and stress out about being cut off from each other, but I guess I’ll feel less of a wimp if I prove to myself that I won’t fall into a heap if Kaoren’s not within reach.

6 - May

May 10

Autumn Bride

The wedding was so much fun. I embarrassed myself by crying during the ceremony, but it was an amazing day.

The week leading up to it was remarkably hectic, starting with Kaoren returning from Tare with his family. Meeting Kaoren’s family went mostly well – Sen set the tone by shrieking "Seemee!" and hurling herself on Siame, and then going all shy (or pretending to) and hiding behind Siame’s leg to peek at Kaoren’s parents and brother. Siame ended up performing introductions, and then was dragged off by Sen who wanted to show her her bedroom. Siame didn’t stand a chance against a full-on Sentarestel charm offensive.

Overall, I didn’t dislike Kaoren’s parents, or his brother, but I’m still glad that they’ve gone back to Tare. Kaoren’s mother, Teor, is very grand and witty, and didn’t act at all hostile or nasty to me, Kaoren or any of the kids. His father, Paran, is quiet and abstract, and obviously adores his wife but is absorbed by his own work. But they’re both very definite people, with very strong views, and the force of Teor’s personality particularly is so strong. The first day she was there, Teor told me she knew I’d be able to influence Kaoren to not be so foolishly self-sacrificial and to stop feeling obliged to be a Setari. She just doesn’t believe Kaoren could possibly like being a Setari, especially not more than drawing, which he’d been devoted to before being drafted for the Setari program. And she so firmly believed this, and was so convincing, I almost found myself composing arguments to get Kaoren to retire. Since she’s a Sight Sight talent, it does tell me just how much Kaoren’s decision to devote himself to the Setari program cost him, because Sight Sight talents are not certain about things without reason. But obviously not always right, either.

They were very positive and admiring about all the kids, particularly Rye, who has such a passion for what he’s doing. Loving what you’re doing and doing it well are the things they consider perhaps the most important. But they also have firm opinions on how you should go about it. Kaoren’s mother’s an arranger. I didn’t mind too much that she organised years of practical botany courses for Rye, since he already wanted to do that and we can always rearrange it, but Ys and Lira are both still discovering things they might possibly want to do. Ys, I think, wants to study literally everything and refuses to accept that she will never have enough time, while Lira is simply enjoying being alive.

Lira came to me very incensed on the day before the wedding and treated me to a barrage about how we were all stupid and blind, and once I unravelled all this I found that Teor had decided that Lira needed to learn music, had chosen which instruments would best suit her, and added music lessons to Tsana Dura’s program schedule. With Ys she’d asked her about her reading habits, and given her a reading list, and worked out the ideal maths/science program. It’s not that Ys doesn’t like maths and science – any more than Lira actually dislikes possibly learning a musical instrument – but Ys also currently wants to devour every book in this rather old Taren schoolgirl series (something like The Baby-Sitters Club) but is pretending that she doesn’t have any interest in that sort of thing at all, so got extremely grumpy at the idea of admitting that she didn’t care if they were frivolous. And they both loathe choices being made for them.

I can see where Kaoren inherited his love of being in charge.

Arden was less forceful, but more disconcerting. He’s very like Kaoren, but with longer hair, and a tendency to mock and to ask uncomfortably insightful questions. Not quite Kaoren’s evil alternate universe twin, but definitely Kaoren if he hadn’t decided outright arrogance wasn’t useful. But he’s as protective of Siame as Kaoren is, and wants her to choose to do whatever she prefers to do, rather than leave the Setari simply because their mother wants it, or stay in the Setari because Kaoren wants it. His strategy for this was to encourage her to paint while she was staying here – she immediately produced this hugely embarrassing portrait of me with my face all bruised, and my boot camp hair cut, talking to Nils lying smexily in the grass – conveniently leaving out everyone else who was sitting around that day. She’s incredibly good, but not at all satisfied with her work, and Arden (and Muina) filled her head with possible painting subjects, until she was so deeply involved in trying to paint our waterfall pool that she wasn’t finished when they were due to leave, so Siame’s ended up staying with us to explore her art rather than be a Kalrani. I don’t think Kaoren’s mother’s fooled by Arden’s machinations in the slightest, but so long as Siame’s painting she’s happy.

They haven’t decided if they’ll actually move to Muina themselves, and I don’t know how I feel about the idea. It’ll be months and months before I can even tell my own Mum that it might be possible for her to come here[6].

The fortnight the Ruuels were here was so filled with things happening that we avoided anything more than the occasional frowning match. Lohn and Mara’s relatives arrived the same day as the Ruuels, and we’d offered our two spare guest rooms (Kaoren’s family were using the "future kids" rooms) to handle some of their overflow. We ended up with Lohn’s sister Elha and her husband and three kids, just until the temporary wedding guests went home. Two twin girls Sen’s age and a boy a year older, which was a most wonderful development in Sen’s view. And Mara’s brother had two sons around Rye’s age, and Ketzaren had a much younger brother of around fifteen, and Jeh’s sister had three girls ranging from nine to fourteen. And then there was Zee’s brother’s kids, and Maze’s extended family (including Helese’s relatives), and Alay’s younger brother, and Kisikar, who had retired from First, and Grif’s nephews and it was just so amazingly many people, all eagerly setting up house and then wanting to be taken on tour and have meet and greets and pre-wedding events.

Everybody (including me and Kaoren) had taken leave so we could play tour guide, and we mostly travelled with Kaoren and Maze’s families, and Kisikar, and every day a different place – Pandora highlights and Kalasa and Mesiath, and then the two newly seeded towns – Zurenath (the place with all the whiteberry bushes in the southern hemisphere, which they think will be very good for farming) and Liriath in the northern hemisphere, which I think would match Spain in terms of proximity to the equator. The trees there are low and dark, and there were black hills looming at the edges of the huge flat valley centred around the platform town.

Lohn and Mara’s wedding was super-traditional, apparently. Kaoren had brought back formal clothes for all of us (girls dress pretty much like the boys when they’re ultra-traditional, in layered robes of neutral shades). There are rituals for the two days beforehand – little formal exchanges of gifts and items. Mara made this huge flat cake and her father delivered it to Lohn’s family’s (brand-spanking new) house where they practically pickled it in alcohol in readiness for the wedding. Then the next day Lohn delivered Mara’s wedding robes to Mara’s family’s house (after spending weeks trying to get some kind of symbolic piece of stitching on the back just right). Then on the wedding day all the bride and groom’s close friends showed up at their respective houses and stole them off to do a preparation ceremony. I’m not sure if the guys did exactly the same to Lohn, but we pretty much gave Mara a bath – dressing her in this thin shift and pouring warm scented water over her and drying her and then painting all these purplish decorations all over her face and throat and arms – curling tendrils. Everyone there does a tiny piece of the decoration, and you’re supposed to luck-wish the marriage while you’re doing it. Then (after blotting her dry) we dressed her in the robes Lohn had brought and took turns combing her hair and putting pieces of jewellery on her and then we blindfolded her and delivered her up to the little whitestone pavilion in their park for the ceremony.

Lohn was there, also covered in decorations and dressed in robes and reeking of the scented water, standing in a row with Maze and Grif and Nils and her brother and a cousin, and Mara had to pick the right one just by squeezing all their hands in turn. Nils told me Mara would have to get married to whoever she picked, but I don’t believe him, and she knew which one was Lohn anyway – the citrusy scent of the ritual water gives the groom away.

We all sat about on cushions and rugs (or rocks and benches for grandparents) and watched Mara offer Lohn her name, and Lohn accept it, and their parents made little speeches and accepted their new son or daughter, and so Lohn is now Lohn Senez. Then we all ate a piece of the very alcoholic cake, and had a huge picnic which lasted till the afternoon got too cold for us to be outside any longer[7].

Lohn and Mara had included their kids and ours in their getting-dressed ceremony, and Sen naturally adored that, and Lira and Ys didn’t nearly manage to pretend they weren’t touched and awed by the whole thing. Rye was all pink and blushing. Fein and Shar have been wholly overwhelmed by Mara and Lohn’s families, who have embraced them in no uncertain terms, and there were plenty of games for the kids as part of the post-wedding picnic. I think having a lot of Taren kids (and even some Kolaren ones thanks to a few of Squad One’s families being invited) introduced into the mix is benefiting Ys and Rye immensely. The idea of being just a servant is wholly against Taren philosophies, simply not on the radar. Ys and Rye are Caszandra and Kaoren’s wards, brave and exotic and not for a moment to be dismissed because of the length of their names.

I think it’s helping Shar, too, to be Shar instead of Sharlotsofsyllables – just some thirteen year-old boy. He’s going to grow up to be a serious and leaderly person, and Place Sight really is something which it can be a struggle to live with, but Lohn and Mara are giving him some quality just-a-kid time as well as helping him with the strange politics which comes with his name[8].

Sen tore about madly, got wholly overexcited, and then came and smothered me in very sticky kisses – I think that was thanks for how happy Rye was, chatting with a half-dozen boys his own age about Muinan animals and the park design and canoeing, and making arrangements to teach them to swim[9]. Ys and Lira didn’t embrace popularity so completely, but they weren’t hostile or rude either, and I was very pleased to see that Ys had decided to be protective of Enna and make sure she wasn’t overwhelmed – that’s Ys all over.

The Setari-relatives' children will be attending the talent school as well – most of them have near-Setari level talents or were even washed out of the Setari program early on. I’m really glad of that, of the changes it should bring to the school, and the opportunities it will give Ys and Rye to be around some peers they haven’t erected huge walls against. Mara’s brother’s sons, Del and Serry, have joined Fein as Rye’s closest compadres, and they fill what few moments he had left spare. Sen, of course, considers everyone around her age as belonging to her. Ys and Lira are polite, but for the moment enjoying their own friendship most.

I eventually got a bit exhausted from all the socialising, and Kaoren and I have been having a quiet week this week. We also wanted Sen to have a break from so many people. She thoroughly enjoyed the wedding, was brimming over with joy, but this is also an effect of her Sights – being surrounded by radiantly happy people is a bit like swilling champagne. Psychic children are complicated.

Mara came over today for a bit of peace and quiet as well. First and Second Squad are really enjoying living with their families near them, but their places can get pretty raucous. We sat out on the balcony (Maze and Alay were my guards) and talked about the transformation Siriath – and all of Muina – has undergone in such a short time. I still feel guilty about it sometimes, particularly when I found out that my otters seem to have moved away from their stream – or died – and that KOTIS Command is talking about settling Border Collie-ville next.

Maze is looking very alive and non-tired these days, and full of plans to turn his bit of Siriath into a test ground for his landscaping ideas. He’s been doing courses in his spare time, and takes very seriously the time he spends with Rye, who had a lot of practical experience on Nuri (at least until the bastard head of his house realised how much he loved gardening and wouldn’t let him tend the vegetables any more). Rye and Maze are actually doing a couple of the same courses, and while Rye struggles a little with reading (he does okay, but it’s not quick and natural for him yet and he has to use the text-to-speech facility a lot), he’s picking up the scientific concepts quite well for a kid of twelve[10].

The kids came home while Mara was still here (we’ve more than a couple of boats between us now – simple covered sleds that are slow but easy to drive about – and we rotate kid-collection). I could tell from the way Sen behaved that Alay was, as I’d suspected, not feeling nearly as happy with the world as everyone else. She’s always been the quiet one of First Squad – she isn’t shy, is actually pretty decisive and definite about things, but she’s the least chatty. Since Nils told me about how she’d loved one of the Setari killed by the massive – Suzlein – I’ve wondered whether part of the reason Alay’s quiet is the same as the reason Maze is (or was) sad.

The way Nils talked about him, I don’t think Alay was very in love with her technician, which is probably a good thing because so far I haven’t seen any sign that he’s coming to Muina to be with her. Perhaps she cared about him more than Nils suggested, and that’s why she’s down, or maybe it’s just because she’s surrounded by romantic things, and the person she loved is dead.

She really likes Sen, though (everyone does!) and let herself get drawn into a silly game with Sen and the kittens and it was nice to see both of them laughing. Sen’s had such a rough time of it the past couple of months, and still her first instinct is to cheer up anyone who isn’t happy.

My kids are the best.

The Muinan new year is at the end of this month. The one-Muinan year anniversary of me telling the platform that Kaoren was Muinan. We’ll be going into Muina Year 2, and there’s plans for all sorts of ceremonies and I have turned down numerous invitations. Still going to celebrate, will maybe start a tradition of a New Year’s Cake or something.

7 - June

June 24

Sudden Developments

Picture me wide-eyed. Scarcely know what to think.

I’d noticed that when Maze schedules people to be my babysitter, he’s usually obliging about sticking couples together – Nils and Zee, for instance. Not Lohn and Mara together any more, since they adopted, but he’ll usually pair Ketz and Jeh, or Ketz and Grif. And Mori with Ro, since Eighth is currently stationed on Muina. Maze obviously knows all about people’s love lives. I thought that scheduling himself and Alay together semi-frequently was just because they were left-overs and didn’t have kids to look after.

They never acted like there was anything to it, but a short time after the wedding I noticed that Maze and Alay were awake long after midnight out on the balcony, and the next day Alay was even quieter than usual, looking like she was doing some hard thinking. And she was weirdly awkward with Maze, which naturally made me curious.

Maze didn’t schedule himself or Alay to be my bodyguard for nearly a month, but when he did, it was both of them together again. Sen was going through a bad patch, so I was distracted during the evening, and the most I thought was that Alay looked a bit stressed and I wondered if I’d upset her because she almost looked like she wished she wasn’t there.

Quite late in the night, though, when I’d gotten up to fetch Sen – who had woken from her latest nightmare and was just lying there all wrecked – I noticed that Alay was in Maze’s room. Terrible timing for me – when Sen’s in such a bad state, I have to concentrate myself on totally supportive thoughts and just try and project safety to her – it’s the only thing that seems to help. So I couldn’t let myself obsess over it nearly as much as I wanted to.

When Kaoren woke me in the morning I instantly checked where Maze and Alay were, but Maze had gone for a walk down by the lakeshore, and Alay was back in her own room, asleep. Maze seemed totally normal – maybe a little thoughtful – when he came back for breakfast, and when Alay came out and didn’t even look at him I was starting to think maybe they’d just been discussing missions or something. In the middle of the night. Really close together.

But then Sen (who was still very tired and subdued) suddenly brightened magnificently, and hopped off her chair so she could fling her arms around Alay (at thigh-level) and pronounce in ecstatic tones: "Baby!"

She’d used the English word, since it’s something I sometimes call her when she’s very upset, and Alay just looked confused. Maze knew the word though, and his eyes went rather wide, then he gave Alay one of his super-special smiles and obligingly translated. I think for a moment Alay was on the verge of just running away, but then she stroked Sen’s head and looked at Kaoren, asking: "Can she really tell?"

Kaoren (who I think thought the whole thing super-funny, but was good about not showing it) nodded. "Pregnancies are very clear almost immediately from conception. Congratulations."

Alay looked hugely conflicted and put on the spot, but then bent down and hugged Sen and said "Thank you," and then she and Maze went down to the pool to talk (we’ve put a couple of benches in nooks down at the pool, and they seem to always attract couples, even though it’s icy-cold outside these days). Sen took the opportunity to point out to me and Kaoren that here was proof that there was no need to wait until after a wedding to have babies and I had no more excuses (so much fun watching Siame’s face whenever Sen starts insisting that Kaoren and I have babies NOW!). Kaoren then gave Sen – and the rest of us by proxy – a careful lecture about letting people make their own announcements, and respecting their privacy as much as possible, and Siame (very nicely) volunteered to take the kids off to school to clear them away.

Kaoren and I then had a brief exchange of "What the hell?" since neither of us saw this coming (which says something given Kaoren’s Sights). We moved on to a fun discussion about him being able to know when I get pregnant before I do, and the invasive aspects of my powers, and of Sight talents, and why I never use my visualisation abilities to find out for sure what’s going on – and whether Lira is likely to. But then he had to head out to meet his squad for an Ena mission.

Alay eventually came back without Maze, and I think was very glad that it was only me there stacking the dishwasher. I smiled at her and said: "Congratulations, too. Do you want me to pretend Sen didn’t say that?"

I think she was kind of tempted, but instead shook her head and said: "That would be pointless."

I figured that Alay probably wanted some thinking time, since she wasn’t exactly looking happy, and asked her to work out with me since I couldn’t go out in the canoe (it’s way too cold – will probably start snowing soon). I don’t like working out much at all, but it’s a useful preoccupation if you just want something to do and not talk. Of course, Alay could have been having plenty of lively discussions with people over the interface, but I kind of doubted it. She almost seemed like she didn’t want to be pregnant, even though she would have had to have had the medics take away her contraception. And have had sex with Maze.

Of course I was boiling over with curiosity, and only managed to do a half-assed routine swapping from machine to machine, having to put all my energy into not gaping at Alay. Wasted effort, since Alay didn’t even notice that I was managing one repetition a minute.

"Do you want a boy or a girl?" I finally asked, unable to keep my mouth shut any longer.

Alay blinked – I think she’d forgotten I was there – then said: "A girl. But…either."

"You’ll make great parents. Sen loves playing with you."

"Sen loves playing with everyone," Alay said, amused, and then shook her head. "You must have no hope of keeping any secrets, with three Sight Sight talents in the house."

"Trying not to have secrets to keep," I said with a shrug. "I’m not sure Kaoren could be with me if I did. He sometimes even picks up when I’m planning birthday presents, and gets stressed about it. Sight Sight might conveniently explain things usefully sometimes, but when all it does is tell him there’s something I haven’t told him, it’s really awful."

"He and Selkie are so good at not reacting to the things they must see that it’s easy to underestimate just how much Sight Sight is telling them. I won’t make that mistake again."

"Don’t forget Lira’s and my people-sense either," I said (getting all hot with embarrassment). "One of the reasons I was so happy to move away from Setari accommodation was because I just didn’t need to know so much about who was sleeping with who. It’s not a sense I can turn off, either." I paused, then added: "Are you going to get married?"

"I don’t know. I didn’t expect this to happen so quickly." She looked frustrated, then gave me a very dubious glance – I’m not a person she usually has personal conversations with. But I think she also didn’t want to talk to Zee or Mara or Ketzaren or any of the people who have known her and Maze for years. "Maze will never stop loving Helese. They completed each other in a way that makes any other person impossible for him. And I – I lost someone too, and though I did try to pretend I could recover from that, I never have. I blame your children for this."

That made me blink, but then I understood. "Maze really loves Rye, doesn’t he? But you like Sen more, I think. So you both decided you wanted children?"

"We could have adopted, of course. We might still. And we’re not on Tare any more, where it would be so difficult to gain permission to raise a child alone. But–" Her expression changed, and she shook her head. "But there’s no we, and what kind of situation is that to bring children into?"

I found a towel and wiped my face unnecessarily, thinking that Maze must be great at talking people into things, to have managed to convince Alay that they could have a marriage of convenience. It was no surprise to me that actually having sex with Maze had given Alay more doubts than the month or so she’d thought it over beforehand. I doubt anyone could get into bed with Maze and think that the situation would stay convenient.

Standing up, I handed her a second towel. "One thing that’s been obvious to me all along is that everyone in First Squad loves Maze. And that Maze loves everyone in First Squad. Maybe not the same way he loved Helese, but maybe not so differently." I smiled. "One other thing I know is that Mara’s going to be annoyed. She expected to be pregnant already, and now you and Maze are going to be first."

With some doubtful reassurances about the kids not telling – Sen was very serious about not gossiping, but if she gets excited she tends to forget – we split to go have showers. When I came out, I gave Maze a big hug and congratulated him, and he was still wide-eyed, but pleased. And very concerned for Alay – after all, she mightn’t be Helese, but I’ve no doubt he cares about her. He kissed her as well as hugging her when they went out to freeze on the patio for another talk (and then I took myself off upstairs so as not to continue treating them like my own private soap opera).

My replacement bodyguards are Enma and Bree of Second, who I’m not so close to I have any trouble not mentioning these developments. But I’m finding myself more than a little upset. For Maze and Alay, but mainly about Zan.

Of all the people who I’ve thought were interested in Maze, Zan was the only one I was really hoping would get somewhere with him. My own little OTP. I was hoping Twelfth would be posted here soon, and that he’d finally see – oh, I don’t know. I wanted both of them to be happy. It seems an awful thing to me that Maze has apparently decided that he won’t ever be able to move on, that he’s settled for some kind of half-happiness which is just going to make Alay miserable.

And I want to warn Zan. I hate the thought of her hearing about this via general gossip. And if Maze and Alay don’t hide that it’s a convenience arrangement, how much worse will that be? I’m writing my diary to stop myself writing emails.

So hard. Really needed to pour all this out so I can manage to not be completely non-gossipy.

8 - July

July 28

Finally

Maze and Alay have made it official and registered their engagement, sent out invites to an engagement party and to a wedding in two months, and mentioned that btw Alay’s pregnant. Thankfully, by the time they did this I was truly glad for them.

It took the whole month for Alay to decide to go ahead with the marriage part. I’m pretty sure if she hadn’t immediately fallen pregnant, she would have run a mile from Maze’s convenient arrangement. As it was, Maze scheduled them to be my bodyguards once a week so they could think about it some more.

The first week they just talked. Alay seemed like her normal self, but I could tell by the way Sen kept bringing her cushions that she was finding it impossibly difficult. Maze was, I think, quietly dismayed that he’d hurt Alay doing something he’d thought would make them both happy.

The second week she looked so tired and drained that not only Maze was worried about her. Thankfully most of my minders that week were from Fourth, so I avoided too many awkward conversations. I don’t know what broke the impasse, but that night Alay stayed the whole night in Maze’s room, and while she wasn’t exactly cheerful the next morning, she seemed, I guess, determined to go through with the decision she’d made when she had herself taken off birth control.

The difference was in Maze. The third week, on the few occasions I saw him, he seemed permanently distracted. Almost fidgety. Alay was off at Zurenath most of the time, assisting with the settlement-seeding, and though I think he was trying to give her space, Maze shuffled the assignments so he was assisting at Zurenath as well. The next time they were playing my minders, they’d gone completely tentative with each other. Just talking, but watching each other’s reactions all the time. Touching each other’s hands.

And the day before yesterday, the fourth occasion of what Kaoren was by that time calling Rendezvous at Arcadia, Maze was wandering around stunned and thoughtful, and so very happy. Alay just glowed, and I didn’t need them to tell me that they’d managed to get past any lingering doubts. In any case they had to go ahead and announce something soon because anyone seeing them together these past couple of days couldn’t miss their feelings.

Kaoren found the idea of Maze using our house as romance central tremendously funny, but both of us are relieved that the secrecy is over with. I had a lot of fun today – they announced it while the kids were at school and I had Mara and Ketzaren as bodyguards (or torturers, since they were forcing me to seriously dodge them or get all bruised from being tackled) with Lohn watching and making impish comments. When the invitation arrived by email, Lohn read it first, while Mara and Ketz were doing their best to push me without swatting me, and Mara ended up accidentally knocking me onto my ass when Lohn suddenly yelped out the Taren equivalent of: "Holy shit!"

Ketz picked me up while Mara gave Lohn a reproachful look, but he just gabbled: "Read your email, read your email!" and so we did and there was a very sweetly worded email from Maze and Alay inviting everyone to a party that night to celebrate their engagement and coming child. I had to pretend to be preoccupied with my bruised ass so that I could turn away and hide my grin at their complete dumbstruck disbelief.

They all opened channels with Maze and Alay and tried not to sound too amazed while they gave them their congratulations. I kept quiet, doing the one thing I’d long planned for when the news came out – sending a carefully prepared email off to Zan which gave her enough detail so she would understand the situation. I had written most of the email over the last month, filling it in with general news along with the stuff about Maze and Alay, so that it wouldn’t be an obvious "I know you like him but he’s taken now" message.

She hasn’t replied yet, and I’m fretting, and feeling guilty for being so pleased for Alay.

Everyone in First and Second seems delighted, at least, most of them gathering at my house on the day of the announcement to have a big gossip session. Nils all of a sudden pounced on me and asked "How long have you known?"

"Since Sen greeted Alay with a joyous cry of Baby about a month ago," I admitted, and he laughed and said Maze must make more convincing threats about spankings, and they were all surprised but sort of reassured that I’d known about it.

The engagement party was fun. Sen announced that the baby’s name was Secret (Katen), which Maze and Alay thought very sweet, but they’re underestimating how much she means it. The party was at Maze’s parents' house, which I hadn’t visited before, and again involved interesting traditional baked treats. Since it’s not picnic or patio weather it was a tight fit, even though they’d restricted the guest list down to closest friends and family. Alay got taken off and given a stern talking to by the rest of her squad. Nils teased Keer about him having to hurry up and get engaged to one (or all) of the few remaining Senior Setari still available, and less lightly teased Zee about getting left behind (he wants to marry her, but she wants to hold off). I spotted Mara talking a bit sadly to Lohn – it bugs her a lot that she didn’t immediately fall pregnant.

We didn’t stay too long: I did some projections (to explain ice-skating) and we left the party fairly early to put Sen to bed. And maybe to think about some of the complexities of being parents ourselves.

Lira might (technically) be a little younger than Ys (we’ve settled on next month as her twelfth birthday), but she’s far more physically developed. I’ve already bought her training bras, though she refuses to wear them just yet. Kaoren and I had the funniest conversation at the party, because we’d both noticed Del (Mara’s nephew) and Lore (Ketzaren’s young brother) watching Lira with unmistakeable interest, and both of us immediately wanted to hide her away. She is undoubtedly going to have a great many guys after her, not only because she’s getting more and more gorgeous, but because of the whole tragic Lantaren heroine almost-princess thing. And she has a certain proud charisma which can be very compelling. For the moment she’s following Ys' lead and being painstakingly polite and wholly unwelcoming to anyone, male or female, who pushes to get closer to her, but I don’t think that’s going to last. She’s perfectly conscious that people think she’s beautiful, and enjoys that, and she’s somehow transformed Enna into an admiring follower[11].

But Lira is also a touch capricious, now that she’s no longer isolated and angry. She constantly shifts her interests, exploring something, growing quite fascinated by it, then dropping it completely, bored. Art, music, dancing. Her latest is cooking, and she’s still in the very interested stage of that, but I have no faith in her not dropping it entirely next week. I don’t particularly care – to a degree I even encourage her to try out as many things as possible – and the only stricture I place on her is that she has to complete her set school work, and participate in family activities. But I’m hoping to teach her to be aware that if she behaves that way with people she could really hurt them. Perhaps I’m being unjust – she’s remained very firmly Ys' compatriot – and she was lonely long enough to not want to hurt people. But she sometimes doesn’t think things through, and I don’t know if she is going to be able to handle the immense interest she is starting to inspire half so well as Maze.

Ys is perfectly aware of social consequences, for all she picks and chooses who to bestow her compassion upon. She clocked Del and Lore ogling Lira just as readily as we did, and was very scornful of them as a result. Scorn is still Ys' default reaction to most things, but that’s a cover for a wider range of responses. Just looking at her reading access list tells me so much about Ys that I start feeling guilty for something which I do think is parently-appropriate. I made sure she’s aware I can look, anyway, and I think she decided it was okay.

Currently she mainly reads great heaps of history and sciences – lower high school level for the most part, dipping into more advanced books when she wants to pursue an explanation of something. She’s already more than equal to handling anything her age level at school can throw at her and well beyond. Ys is so intelligent I’m surprised she didn’t work out how to read just by looking at an alphabet, and her only weakness is that the classes are always starting on areas which she’s never studied at all and she has to do catch-up before handling the current work.

But she also gets through huge galloping realms of fiction – she allows herself a novel a day, slotted between school reading, extra reading on the subjects on her courses, and a thorough review of the newspapers and interface sites she has bookmarked (all the kids, even Sen, are incapable of not checking to see what people are saying about them each day). Her fiction interests range all over the place – she especially loves Earth fantasy stories and is forcing me to both keep conjuring up new books to read to her, and also to write up a proper translation dictionary of Taren to English. Dinner every day involves me adding a mandatory three words to the dictionary while we eat, and then answering Ys' cross-examination of the fine detail of their definitions. Kaoren says it’s very useful, and is keeping up with the lessons as well (Lira, Rye and Sen to a lesser extent), but none of them can rival Ys, who simply doesn’t forget anything she doesn’t want to. She wanted ten words a day, but that would have made dinner very long.

But along with history and science she has an absolute soft spot for teen romances and schoolgirl chum stories about close knit groups of friends overcoming spite and pettiness. Being brilliant doesn’t stop Ys from being human, and she wants acceptance and romance every bit as much as I did at her age. The influx of Taren students at the talent school is helping her get past the way she was raised (though making clear the education hurdles she’ll have to overcome to catch up), but she’s never going to forget being three against the world, and she doesn’t trust unknown Nurans at all.

The visits to Isten Notra are fantastic at cheering her up and giving her an outlet, but I think she’s starting to realise that finding a boy her own age who even comes close to her intellectually is going to be a challenge. Sometimes I see her looking at Lira – luminous skin, masses of waving hair, thick sooty eyelashes, gorgeous features and the beginnings of curves – and it’s obvious she’s running a comparison with her thin figure and inclined-to-be-short hair. I think in a few years Ys' looks will settle into a not-unattractive whole, but I know it would have been hard for me to have Lira as a sister! Fortunately Ys doesn’t seem inclined to resent Lira for it – Lira’s far too important to her.

If Ys ever lets her guard down she might find that more people are drawn to her than she expects. For the moment I think she has a crush on Shon (who scored brownie points both by being great with Rye, and by being related to Isten Notra, and pretty damn intelligent on his own account). She pretends to find him boring, of course, but Isten Notra is not the only reason she’s so careful about her appearance when she goes on her monthly visits.

I’m such a softie about Ys. I went to one of the few custom clothes-makers in Pandora a couple of weeks ago to talk wedding dresses (to make projections of what I mean by wedding dresses and to try and design one which doesn’t look completely out of place) and my primary preoccupation was that I needed flower girl dresses that were both girly and yet suited Ys. Ys won’t wear girly clothes because she thinks she doesn’t suit them, so my secret mission is to find something which looks so good on her she can’t help but want to wear it. Fortunately the dress-maker seemed to properly understand what I wanted, and to take the request seriously[12].

That’s about all the planning I’ve managed for my wedding. Maze and Alay’s baby will be born just before it. I did agonise for quite some time over whether to postpone getting married until I can try to bring Mum here, but Kaoren had to struggle to hide how much he hated that idea, and I think Sen would be too upset.

Other than First Squad romances, it’s been a quiet month, the highlight being Kaoren’s and then Sen’s birthday (I had a winged fairy princess dress made for her, which she would wear for every moment of every day if she were allowed to). Kaoren thinks we’re over the first bad stage of her Sights development, and we’ve been having more unbroken nights, and Siame is being very useful and encouraging and giving Sen confidence that things will get better[13].

Siame spends most of her time being fascinated by snow, and has been making very white paintings – and naturally all the kids find snowball fights and building snowmen and discovering icicles to be amazing and new and fun. Only a light snow layer at the moment – the heavy snowstorms haven’t started yet – and first weekend after it starts to snow properly we’re going to go across to Siriath and have another epic snowball fight, but this time with children and random family members involved. We’re going to make a yearly tradition of it.

Rye’s rather mournful for the effect of Winter on his garden, but was handily distracted into documenting the Winter habits of all the animals he’s discovered in Summer. And is practicing faithfully for snowball throwing.

Lira’s twelfth birthday is in two weeks and I’m really stuck on what to get her. It would be easy to buy her a statue, but she seems tremendously judgmental about the statues she doesn’t like, so I think I’d better leave her statue-collecting to her.

9 - August

August 15

Epic Fight is Epic

So much fun. The big snow dump finally came, and First Park (as we’ve taken to calling the park between Lohn and Mara’s and Jeh, Ketz and Grif’s houses) was a fantastic place for it – we knew where the benches and rocks were, and there were enough trees for a little bit of cover, but not enough to be getting in the way. The fight was in two parts – first a massive, silly free-for-all which all the younger kids got to participate in. It was great to see Deal running about shrieking with the rest of the younger kids – and also that he went and clung to Grif when he got a bit overwhelmed. He’s still a pretty trembly sort of kid whenever anything unexpected happens, but is no longer constantly dependant on Zaranar, and has become rather possessive of his three new parents – he gets jealous if they pay too much attention to anyone but himself, Zaranar or Enna.

After the first fight, Alay and Ketzaren took all the younger kids for a snowman building competition on the patio of Ketz, Jeh and Grif’s house, and the snowball fight became serious business. Well, as serious as it can be with ten year-olds. The second game was a paired hunt, and each Setari was paired with a relative to make winning harder. Kaoren was paired with Rye, of course, and I teamed with Ys while Lira teamed with Siame until deciding to pretend that she’d been injured and going to Lohn and Mara’s to watch (and obligingly help) Mara’s grandparents prepare some of the truly massive amount of lunch needed – her interest in cooking hasn’t waned yet. The hunt was a frantic affair with so many people (all Setari on Muina had been invited, plus any relatives they wanted to bring) and though everyone was supposed to keep it light-hearted, it got rather intense in spots. It was a very close fight – Raiten’s younger brother has a strong Combat Sight and together they were extraordinarily good, and there were plenty of other excellent teams. Rye doesn’t have Combat Sight, and he was totally white with nerves beforehand because he hates the idea of letting Kaoren down. Fortunately Kaoren’s just god-like at these things, and also rather good at creating opportunities for Rye to get shots off, and though he didn’t win as totally as last time, he still brought Team Ruuel in first. He said afterwards that wanting Rye to win was excellent motivation for doing his best, and I have a nice image for my collection of Rye’s celebratory hug with Kaoren. Kaoren totally looks like Rye’s Dad in the picture (except for only being ten years older) and it’s one of the few images I have of him publicly smiling.

After that there was the snowman judging (carefully arranged for the maximum number of prizes – most creative, most colourful, scariest) and then a huge and somewhat frosty picnic lunch and some more generalised snow sculpture and then everyone staggering off to their respective homes. Nils and Zee were my bodyguards for the afternoon, and so it was a quick and nippy flight back. I did a projection of a bunch of mugs of hot chocolate and pushed to make them as real as possible, and they at least lasted long enough for us all to taste. Overall it was a great day.

Not everything was perfect of course. I’ve got a serious chocolate jones now, and Sen’s a little ill. Getting waterproof Winter clothes for everyone wasn’t too hard, since there’s been plenty of preparation put in for dealing with Winter, but keeping it on Sen is almost impossible, so we had to hunt about for the layers she’d shed, and she’d managed to chill herself enough to be running a fever the next day. Nothing too serious according to the medics, but she’s very grouchy and hard to please when she’s got a cold. We’ve poured a couple of fortifiers down her and that should be enough to kick it.

Plus, while the Setari extended family is very cheerful and happy and supportive, no-one’s cheerful and happy and supportive 100% of the time, and there were little spats of grouchiness, particularly from a couple of the elder kids. Lohn’s eldest niece is a bit of a drama queen and so far as I can tell she thinks Shar should pay her some attention. Shar has just turned fourteen and is in an increasingly complicated position since a news story about "Nuri’s heir", and is almost certainly going to have to walk an even finer line than Maze did regarding fluttering hearts. Lohn and Mara have been a real boon to him.

But not everyone in the Setari extended family is super-nice, and one of the things that underlined that was when complete details and tons of scans of our snowball fight turned up on the news by evening. It’s very likely someone sold the story, and the problem with it being someone who came to the fight is that they’re all family. Kaoren says we’ll have to think about a slightly more restrictive guest list next time, which is probably a good idea anyway, since it was a lot of people.

Oh well, it was a very positive story and all the shots of my kids were good ones - particularly Ys and me throwing snowballs at each other (and Ys actually looking like she was having fun, which she would since the thing she likes most about snow is an excuse to throw things at me – I think she finds it therapeutic). There’s a cute one of Lira sprinkling crushed nuts on a cake, and that scene of Rye throwing his arms around Kaoren when they were announced the winners and Kaoren smiling down at him. And also one of Kaoren’s snowball interceptions, when he knocks an incoming ball out of the air with one of his own. I have to agree with his increasingly frenzied fandom that he looks so hot when he does that. Kaoren’s fan club is beginning to rival Raiten’s, and all the Setari sites completely boiled over with all the great off-duty images of them. Shar and Lira both have sites devoted to them which make me tremendously uncomfortable, though, and I definitely want to avoid feeding them.

But my biggest down for the day was Eeli, who still hasn’t shown any signs of waking. She was so happy when she was first to capture me last year. She would have enjoyed this year so much.

Neither Third nor Twelfth have been posted to Muina in an age, but both are due to be rotated in soon and I’m really looking forward to seeing Zan again.

10 - September

September 20

Super-Grumpy Month

A stupid action group decided to put forward a stupid motion in the parliaments of Tare, Kolar and Muina demanding changes to the proposed laws written up regarding the use and control of touchstones. They want an oversight committee, complete disclosure of all mission tapes, committee approval for all tasks performed, and permanent second level monitoring of both Lira and myself to ensure that nothing is ever done without permission. We’ve fought so hard to keep Lira off second level monitoring, and were making progress toward getting me off it, and it’s sounding less likely by the day.

I caught the initial announcement and warned Kaoren while the kids were in the middle of breakfast. The action group (translates as Citizens for Responsible Management of Touchstones, more or less – I call them the Crummies) tried as much as possible to make their motions simultaneously on all three worlds, so there was no forward notice from KOTIS.

Kaoren’s eyes went to slits while he was reading the detail – just because we half-expected something like this eventually doesn’t mean any of us liked it – and then he called a family meeting and explained what it was the action group was trying to do, and what was likely to happen in the short and long term.

Fortunately the talent school was in school holiday mode – no formal lessons, just supervision for those who needed it since quite a few of the kids still don’t have homes to go to. They’re well past the halfway point of adoptions, and quite a few of the Setari extended family have chosen to add another child to the mix, but KOTIS Command has been careful to settle the kids into families which are ready to look after them, which isn’t necessarily everyone as soon as they arrive on Muina. Many Tarens, particularly, have to go through a psychological adjustment to all that sky, and lack of ceiling, and things flitting and jumping and creeping and crawling everywhere. More than a few Taren immigrants have gone back to their nice enclosed cities.

School holidays were good timing for this stressful patch because I wanted the kids sheltered until the petition was settled one way or another, and so I kept them home even when the rest of the students started managed lessons again. The interface does most of the schooling anyway – attendance is really babysitting, sport and socialisation, and the classes themselves very rarely require the kids to be there or even interact.

This whole thing with the Crummies also shifted the feel of having Setari guards, because of the demand that touchstones be monitored to prevent inappropriate use of powers. KOTIS Command was ordered to at least temporarily put this into effect. Even though there was no actual change to what was happening – I’m already on second level monitoring, and two Setari are assigned to be my guards every day, swapping over mid-afternoon, spending the night, and leaving the following afternoon – the simple fact that they were not simply there to protect me, but also to stop me from Doing Evil, was just so annoying. They were all aware of the shift, of course, and embarrassed by it. Maze has been careful to only schedule people I’m close to for the entire time, because that made it less uncomfortable.

We’re thinking of building a second, smaller house a little around the side of the hill for our daily bodyguard detail. Even though most of the Setari assigned to look after us are friends, we’re not going to be close to everyone who gets scheduled over the years, and it’s just very weird to have a permanent rotation of houseguests. They only need to be within quick reach of me, not actually in my presence, and if Lira and I really are going to have to have mandatory for life guards (as now seems impossible to escape) then we may as well accommodate them properly.

The first couple of days after the motion was made were pretty quiet for us. We just stayed on Arcadia and read the frenzy of response on the interface and tried to distract the kids. There was an enormous backlash against the Crummies, up to and including death threats, and a couple of huge public demonstrations on Tare. Lots of petitions and rabid message sites. But also excitement at the hope of having all the mission logs released (and, indeed, some people were keen on the Caszandra version of The Truman Show and making every single thing I do public knowledge). And between it all, growing conversation regarding the extent of a touchstone’s powers, and what exactly it was KOTIS was getting me to do, and what it might get me to do, and what Lira and I might choose to do on our own account, and after all, wasn’t Lira the reason the spaces had been broken in the first place?

Since the governments of three different planets were involved (which basically means four governments, since Kolar is firmly differentiated between North Continent and South Continent), there was a bit of a delay while they decided how to handle a response. It didn’t suit anyone’s purposes for four sets of laws to evolve. Since I was a stray from Earth living on Muina, and Lira was Muinan, and we had made a permanent home of Arcadia, Pandora was the obvious place for an Inquiry Into Touchstones to be conducted. Each planet got to have two members on the board of inquiry, and they would hear evidence from KOTIS, and submissions from the petitioners and any other interested parties, and then redraft the laws. And then I imagine there would be some inter-government negotiation.

They’ve only just managed to get set up, and start to hear initial evidence (they want complete details of all my assignments and training and test results, and the medical information about Lira). Then they plan to question the people who control me, and then me, and then take submissions from anyone who cares to make one. It’s going to drag on for months and I can already see that it’s going to be even worse than I feared. Anyone who had a plan or opinion about touchstones will have their little say, and some of the proposals which have already come up don’t exactly acknowledge that Lira and I are people.

It was tough keeping Lira’s spirits up. One of the news articles was about a person questioning why I’d been given control of Lira and whether I was the right person to be in charge of her care and development (being, after all, a traumatised stray prone to nearly dying). This sparked the only uncontrolled projective-dream Lira’s had since she’s been with us: she dreamed that she’d never escaped, that she was back in a world controlled by people who were using her, and would poke her with spears when they saw her. She made our house look very like a Lantaren house, and conjured a bunch of people with spears who promptly chased her out into the back garden to flounder through the snow. Siame, whose window overlooks the back garden, got it open and zapped the spear-carriers before they’d managed to catch Lira, and Nils and Zee came boiling out via the kitchen, closely followed by Kaoren.

Lira was absolutely terrified, shaking and sobbing, and half-frozen after ploughing through drifts of snow in her pyjamas. I took her into the shower with me and calmed her down, and we had a touchstones-only conversation in there that I’m hoping doesn’t get reviewed since Lira was being very wild and angry in response to having been afraid. We’d already had several conversations with the kids about the gap between what people propose and what’s likely to happen, and been all very calm and reassuring, but of course we couldn’t say absolutely 100% that Lira wouldn’t be taken away from us, or that neither of us would ever be plugged into another machine like the one which had destroyed her life. I did tell her that I wouldn’t accept such a thing, though, any more than Kaoren would, and I think my tone made her believe me. Of course, she’s also aware that her claim of no longer being able to project is pretty much busted, and we had to take her for a medical, but she’s valiantly pretending she hasn’t given herself away.

Sen had been woken by the fuss, and I settled Lira in the baby’s room for the night and took Sen in with us because she was upset by Lira being upset. Since then Ys has been sleeping in with Lira, though not advertising the fact. Nils once said that Ys' character could be judged by Sen’s, and I think that’s really true. For a really sensitive Sight Sight talent like Sen to be so full of love says a lot about who raised her. The care and protection Ys and Rye lavished on her were enough to overcome even the truly negative environment she was raised in.

We’d all calmed down more by the time it was Lira’s birthday, in part because the days had ground on without anything happening. I’d eventually decided on jewellery for Lira’s main present – good, expensive stuff that would keep and look nice at any age. That went down well – much like Sen, she likes pretty things, and dressing up, and jewellery is something she recognises as a sign we consider her important. And we all had a fun discussion about getting ears pierced, since my ears are pierced, even if I don’t wear anything in them[14].

Maze and Alay’s wedding is in two days – it’s going to be at Keer’s house at Mesiath (Keer really likes the tall trees and is the only one of the Senior Taren Setari who took his land grant somewhere other than the islands). Alay’s just starting to show, and she and Maze are so funny together right now. She’s been rostered on light duties, and drops to only training at the talent school after the wedding. Maze wants to wrap her in cotton wool, and you can see him making himself not do that, and you can see Alay trying not to enjoy too much how he’s fretting over her. They’ve fallen so hard. I always enjoy when they’re rostered to guard us – Sen insists on saying hello to the baby by wrapping her arms around Alay’s waist and kissing her stomach. Alay goes all pink when she does this, but says that there’s no need to tell Sen not to. I’ve been seeing quite a lot of them both because Maze and Rye, having finished preparing the place for Maze and Alay’s wedding, have started working on "The Wedding Garden" for Kaoren and me, and have been pulling out trees and scooping out dirt and experimenting with water features on the south side of the island. Alay comes and watches and is highly amused and happy about how much Maze enjoys it all.

I feel very protective of them, which is silly of me, but I don’t want their wedding spoiled by the brewing shitstorm about touchstones. Between the kids and the Setari I’ve been busy playing down any upset I might be feeling myself. Kaoren’s not fooled of course, and knows that I’ve had to wake myself up out of a few projective dreams as well. I make sure I don’t dump all my stress on him, and after over a year together I’m better at spotting when he’s stressed or worn, and knowing ways to make it better. His meditation garden is really important to him that way: a space even I don’t go into unless he asks me. His sights are so overwhelming sometimes, and one of the things we designed the entire house around was this quiet and peaceful place. He’ll go out there even when it’s snowing when he needs to de-stress.

But he smiles more easily these days, and that makes me very happy indeed.

11 - October

October 19

Grilled

Just finished being examined at the inquiry. It wasn’t fun – they had a Sight Sight talent I’ve not met before who acted in combination with a medical scanner as a lie detector. They started out by checking whether there were any missions I’d done which hadn’t been presented, and then if anyone had ever asked me to use my powers for non-mission things, and then whether I ever used my powers of my own accord for non-mission things. Which of course was yes, and then they wanted to know exactly what and when and why and spent ages trying to get me to admit to doing anything which could be seriously disapproved of. I’m so glad I resisted the temptation to peek on Nils and Zee when they went off camping. They also wanted to know if I thought I had any limits to what I could "make real". I said: "My tendency to collapse after ten seconds, and then for whatever it is to fade away." They wouldn’t just leave it at that – particularly when Lira is still non-faded. I still don’t know if I made her or not, and they weren’t tremendously satisfied at my answer to whether I thought I did: "I could barely think at all at the time. All I knew was that the roof was falling in, and so I tried to stuff us both into a corner. I’d completely forgotten she was projecting herself. I wasn’t trying to do anything more than stop bits of rock hitting us."

The questioning wasn’t hostile, just a lot of polite, clever questions to go with the lie detector, but I hated it all the same. When they’d run out of new ways to try and trip me up, they asked if I wanted to say anything, and I said: "Just that it’s very uncomfortable being treated as a potential criminal all the time."

That comment got a lot of headlines (though for all the protests, people are thoroughly enjoying all the information coming out via the inquiry, and the viewing statistics of me being questioned are pretty much 99% of the population – the other one percent being too young to watch). Kaoren says it’s lucky that I live such a blameless life, or at least am too embarrassed at the idea of being found out to spy. We talked about what would have happened if they had hit on the only things that I did want to hide, which was my theories about the creation of Muina, and the Kolaren government trying to buy me. I’d spoken very briefly to Raiten to ask him what I should answer if I was asked anything which touched on that, and he told me I should just tell the truth. I’m still glad that the subject didn’t come up, though.

There was a lot of discussion about whether Lira should be questioned, but fortunately we won that argument by pulling the too traumatised card. The nightmare worked for us in that respect, and KOTIS had mine and Lira’s main medic talk for a while about the anxiety attacks the inquiry had caused her and how her loss of conscious control of her powers could be psychosomatic given the extreme trauma associated with them. Lira was very annoyed about any of this being public, but pleased that she didn’t have to front the inquiry. It would have been damn interesting if she had – she would have given them all an imperial dressing down, because her response to upset is to attack.

It’s the submissions stage next, which should be even more annoying. I’m going to try and ignore it, but I’m not sure I’ll succeed in concentrating on other things. I’m going to have to start properly planning for my wedding, which is, gods, only five months away. It’s weird – I feel like I’m already married to Kaoren – but the idea of the wedding itself makes me nervous. I wish Mum was here. No sign of the gate to Earth becoming active again in the near future, which has disappointed me a lot – I want to send more letters. Probably January, if it really is a Muinan year between each opening.

Maze and Alay’s wedding was glorious. Early Autumn, so that the heat had dropped away, and there were berries on bushes, and birds everywhere and a kind of gauzy haze over everything. And it smelled wonderful. Snow is all very amusing and different for a Sydney girl, but it was so nice to be away from it for a day. Keer’s property is all ferns and beams of light spearing down through the canopy, and edges around a narrow bit of tea-coloured lake. Most of it hasn’t been cleared at all, except around the house. And the whole place is totally infested with different varieties of deer – some where the adults are no taller than Ys and some almost moose-sized. Mesiath is a bit more dangerous to live in than Pandora – more snakes and poisonous bugs, and there’s already been a couple of incidents of people finding the local hunting cats – daturs – stalking them or sitting uncomfortably close watching them. And there are lots of smaller hunting creatures like the martens (named for the pine martens shown in the Planet Earth documentary) and hordes of little nut-eaters, and too many birds to count. Mesiath totally seethes with wildlife. It’s always great fun watching Tarens deal with outside – they’re getting better at it, but the Setari families had some real adjustments coming from Tare to live on the islands. Mesiath is even more overwhelming for them, and there always seems to be someone shrieking about bugs or lizards.

Part of the pre-wedding preparation had been to sweep the area using Combat Sight, and relocate a couple of snakes, and Keer and Maze had been having a lot of fun finding and arranging big stones into natural seating areas, and shaping stone benches to cover enough seating for the wedding. Most of the benches they donated to other people once they were done, but before then the lot of them arranged in two rows did make it feel rather like an enormous cathedral. The ceremony was different from Lohn and Mara’s – not so strictly traditional. None of the bathing and painting the bride and groom, or the thing with the blindfolds. Still had the cake-making thing, except both the bride and the groom’s family made one (gi-normous flat brown cakes) with incredibly intricate patterns on top made of a kind of dusted sugar which were apparently luck-wishes – wealth, joy, fame, family, all that kind of thing – and there’s a great deal of interest in which pattern you get on your piece of cake when it’s shared out. Alay wore a gorgeous filmy dress in shades of violet and gold instead of the more traditional robe (somewhat Grecian with a kind of laced bodice) and simply looked fantastic. Completely radiant. Maze was so at peace, and didn’t seem able to take his eyes off her the entire time.

The after-wedding party was fun – Maze’s mother is a musician, and played nice music with a couple of friends, and there was some light-hearted dancing – Zee and Nils did an aerial slow dance and then everyone who could manage to get themselves in the air followed suit and that was pretty awesome to watch. Kaoren and I didn’t dance because Sen had been playing with Ketzaren’s hair – she loves trying to do everyone’s hair – and Deal had run up and pushed her over and she’d jammed her elbow. Deal used to get on quite well with Sen, but as he’s grown attached to his new parents, he’s become very jealous of them. And Sen’s tendency to treat all the Senior Setari as adored favourites, clambering all over them, makes him particularly upset.

Sen was mainly just shocked to start with, but then found that her arm really hurt when she moved it and burst into tears. And Ys zoomed down from the top patio – literally: she levitated – and snatched her up and I (a little too far away to have done any snatching) fully expected her to turn a total basilisk glare on Deal, but instead she just said sternly: "They’re not going to stop wanting you, no matter what anyone else does. Stop being so afraid," and lifted herself and Sen over to me and Kaoren.

We did some hugging and found a numbing salve to put on Sen’s elbow, and then we had an interesting talk with Ys about the fact that her levitation talent isn’t strong enough for her to lift herself, let alone herself and Sen. Seems Ys worked out how to expand her connection to the Ena shortly after touching me when I had my senses fully extended, but decided not to mention it in case we expected her to spend more time training her talents – or trying to train other people to expand their connections – which would cut down on her reading time. She’d tried teaching Rye, and since he hadn’t managed it, had kept quiet about it. "Rye is too interested in bits and pieces of what’s nearby," she said, shrugging. "It stops him from looking at it all at once."

This was a very interesting development from the Setari’s point of view, because Ys is the only person without a strong Sight talent who has managed to make the expansion, and she can also obviously do it very quickly, which is what the Taren and Kolaren Setari who have achieved it have been working on. We held off on interrogating her too much during the party, but she got to have a long conversation with Kaoren, Tsur Selkie and Maze a few days later. I was actually more interested in what she’d said to Deal and told her quietly, after Ketz had brought Deal to apologise, and Kaoren had taken Sen off to fly up to the very tops of the trees, that she had reminded me of Isten Notra. This is a huge compliment to Ys, so of course she didn’t believe me, but I explained that while she’d said it a lot more bluntly than Isten Notra might have, it was the same sort of clear-sighted response. Then I threw her further off-balance by telling her how much I envied her for being able to levitate.

Maze and Alay’s house wasn’t quite ready in time for the wedding, but they’ll be moving in soon. It’s on the top of one of the small hills on Siriath, and Maze has endless plans for a kind of rock garden and lawn and all sorts of trees and things made of stone. I showed him some pictures of Mount Tomah, back near Sydney, and he was very pleased and inspired by that, and has stolen some idea from it for The Wedding Garden as well.

It feels strange not working while the inquiry is on. I was used to the routine of it all. I still get physical training, and the kids get to train with me now, instead of at the school, but it’s a different kind of routine, and I feel very shut in at times. Fortunately it’s warming up, and the drifts are melting, and the early flowers should be poking through soon. I’ve been burying myself in subtitling the last few days. Ages back now I projected a TV and DVD-player and a bunch of DVDs and did my best to make them last a long while, and the technicians have been trying to untangle the DVD coding ever since. We could make the machines run easily enough, but what we wanted was, instead of me spending hours projecting Earth documentaries really slowly, that I just project a DVD and we copy the data off it and then voila! And that meant not just being able to get to the data on the DVD (apparently not too hard – Tarens went through a similar technology stage) but translating the DVD coding. That’s taken an age, but they finally did it. I projected and copied Blue Planet and The Life of Mammals and that sort of thing to start with, and then a whole bunch of DVDs for my own entertainment – so nice to watch some of my favourite movies again. I’m slowly going to subtitle these for the kids' benefit, but aren’t really planning to turn myself into a film industry, so I’m setting them so they can’t be spread about.

I’ve been working on Spirited Away first, running it in Japanese, with English subtitles, and adding Taren subtitles underneath that. I chose it partly because Ys is still pushing through on learning English (but very annoyed at how illogical it is) and also because the lead character is called Sen. Sen will love it when I’m done, no matter how little she understands.

I’ve also realised I can project DVDs of movies I haven’t even seen, which will be pretty cool.

Twelfth is finally going to be posted here soon. It’s been so long. Zan and I write occasionally, and she seems okay, but I want to see her to be sure.

12 - November

November 20

Kiddie-palooza

Siame and Rye’s birthday this month. Siame went home to Tare briefly for hers (proving a point, I think, though Kaoren didn’t try and stop her).

Rye’s twelfth birthday was a few days ago (in Earth-time it will be a little later each year, which is very confusing to me), and we had our first party on Arcadia since everything got really snowy. Arcadia’s been nicely de-snowed and everything’s all over with flowers or buds on trees and it’s very nice in the middle of the day, though still nippy at night. Rye wanted a swimming party, much like his first one, except with all his new friends involved, and I’d decided to make it a relatively large party. Lots of kids, First, Second and Fourth – and Third and Twelfth who have finally been rostered here (some of them have moved their families here, but unlike the senior squads they can’t choose a permanent Muina assignment just yet).

It was a big guest list, and I’d decided to do a hangi and was rather anxious about how it would turn out. Uncle Steve (Aunt Bet’s husband) had introduced hangis to our family and it had become a holiday tradition, but I’d never actually done any of the technical stuff myself. I’d visualised myself a manual (I very tediously have to ask permission to do the smallest thing now), and Kaoren helped me experiment with finding the right sort of rocks, and we’d prepared a small pit a week beforehand for a mini test run, and that had worked out quite nicely (Siame stopped looking at me as if I was insane after we’d sampled the small amount of food I’d cooked, anyway, and Zan and Kiste who were my guards for the day were very complimentary about the flavour). Kaoren – pretty much everybody – was fascinated by the idea of burying your food to cook it, though most everyone’s initial reaction was total incredulity, which was very funny. After hearing about it, an awful lot of our guests wanted to come over early to see us assemble the larger pit, and so Rye ended up having something of a party for breakfast as well as for lunch. Thankfully it all worked very well, with that real fall apart texture for the food, and a delicious smoky touch. Of course it made the news, though not immediately, which suggests that none of the people who attended is a direct news source. I got quite a few fascinated queries via KOTIS from cooks wanting to know how to do this, so I’ve given them a translation of the manual.

I had an interesting time sourcing food close to what I’ve known used in hangis in the past. KOTIS makes sure that vat-grown food production keeps ahead of immigration, but the population has been increasing far faster than farm output can currently manage – and sparking lots of debate about opening up the platforms to use them for freight and casual day-tripping rather than making people wait for air-ship transport. I managed to get a pile of patta (yam-things that taste a lot like sweet potato but are more purply in colour) and this weird fruit the greysuits had recommended for cultivation which looks a bit like a zucchini the size of a coconut, and is rock-solid inside, but really delicious like a mix between mashed potato and bread when it’s baked. And also purple carrots, and some varieties of onion, and also pretty much a whole lamb, and two pigsies (the pint-sized striped brown pigs which are so common everywhere – another of the animals where the name I call them has become common usage) and some spicy sausages. And I had quite a few volunteers to make side-dishes and desserts among those dropping by at breakfast.

We’d done most of the preparation beforehand – scooped out the pit and assembled the firewood and soaked the closest approximation I could find to Hessian sacks and had the food all ready to go (raiding Rye’s herb terrarium) – and Kaoren had gone down just before dawn with Par and Glade and set the fire so that by the time we were done with breakfast it was about time to bury everything. Maze and Alay were early arrivals, and were enjoying themselves making a fuss of Rye, when Zee, Ketz, Mara and Jeh arrived all in a group, carrying various food offerings. Sen, busy trying to peek under the cover of the dish Maze and Alay had brought, froze at the sight of them and then it was like she lifted herself up on strings – coming totally alive and bouncing on the seat of the chair she’d been kneeling on and inhaling in this incredibly excited way as if working up to an explosion of joy. And then she caught herself, and stood there looking like she’d been found with her hand in the cookie jar, all frozen and guilty and yet still bubbling with excitement. She very abruptly hopped off her chair and dashed to where I was stacking the dishwasher from breakfast, pulled me down and whispered: "Is it a secret?" urgently into my ear.

I managed to resist saying: "Not any more" – all the senior Setari know by now how Sen had announced Alay’s pregnancy. I also knew that Ketzaren had been talking about trying for a baby and I wished I could find a way to get Sen to think before she acts when she’s excited. She at least had tried, though, so I patted her head and said: "I don’t know. Maybe you should go somewhere private and ask?"

Sen immediately dashed around to where everyone was putting their dishes down and to my complete surprise grabbed Zee’s hand, but Sen wasn’t finished and hauled Zee across and told her "Zee talk Cassandra now," and then gleefully insisted that Jeh, Ketz and Mara come look at the canopy we’d put up over her bed. Ketzaren told me later that she’d then hauled each of them separately into her bathroom and demanded: "Is baby a secret?" All three of them were looking pretty stunned when they came back, but so happy – Mara disappeared off to find Lohn, and Jeh and Ketz came to laugh about it with me and Zee. I was a bit surprised about Jeh, since I gather she’s 100% only into girls, but I guess maybe Grif found a turkey baster for her or something – I’ve never enquired too deeply into the exact complexities of their relationship. They were apparently all only a few days along and didn’t know they’d conceived. Zee’s reaction had been the best – for a moment there Sen really had her wondering if her contraception had failed. Sen spent the rest of the day pouncing on Alay, Jeh, Ketz and Mara at random intervals, hugging them and going "Happy baby!" Except with Mara she kept going "Happy baby baby baby!" so I eventually asked Kaoren if Mara was having triplets and he nodded. Mara figured this out and asked Kaoren as well and he told her it’s two boys and a girl and after that she and Lohn went pretty quiet. Even happier, though, I think.

Sen is a tremendously transparent Macchiavelli. But she’s going to be scary once she has some vague ability to be subtle.

Baby excitements distracted everyone thoroughly while Kaoren and I were assembling the hangi, but that was a good thing in my eyes anyway, and soon we had a faintly-steaming piece of ground and everyone went away to calm down. Kaoren and I had another little talk with Sen, but not a very stern one since she did try not to give away anyone’s secrets. I did get a chance to talk to Mara just before they were heading back and gave her a hug and told her that she always does things so thoroughly. She tweaked my nose.

Later that day when all the kids came across for the party, Shar seemed pleased for them both, but Fein fairly subdued and both Enna and Deal showed signs of being upset and trying to hide it. Deal reverted to clinging to Zar. I’m glad I’ll have had my four a good long time before any question of being pregnant myself comes up.

Rye’s birthday was also our cautious introduction to two new Setari adoptees. Maze and Alay, now that they’ve moved into their house, had decided to adopt a boy and a girl, but only after having a few discussions with me, and me having a very careful discussion with Ys and Rye. The problem was mainly Lianzrenar, who is one of the few other survivors from House Renar – the only one at the talent school.

The important part was how Ys and Rye felt about Lianz. Maze and Alay like him, and wanted to take care of him, but there were other kids they liked and Ys and Rye are far too important to them for them to adopt someone who had been directly or indirectly involved in traumatising my kids. I think if they’d asked a year ago, back around when the talent school was first established, having anything to do with Lianz on a social basis would have been too distressing for Ys and Rye. But I’m very pleased with how they reacted – a bit of startled discomfort, but then one or two positive comments about Lianz generally. The removal of the scars on their backs made a huge difference to Ys and Rye’s attitude toward Nurans. They don’t automatically like or trust anyone from Nuri, but they no longer have the weight of a shameful secret to hide. And so the possibility that Lianz might know is no longer is a bogeyman to them. From what I saw of him during the party, he’s a shy sort of kid, super-obedient and inclined to blush and be anxious and avoid the spotlight. I’m willing to bet that he didn’t have too great a time in House Renar either – no-one in a household run by a sadist would be likely to.

Their other choice, Karasayen, was a challenging prospect for a slightly different reason. She was a first child of a powerful house, one which has numerous survivors, and though she’s by no means a nasty kid, she is one very much used to being deferred to, to having her opinion taken into account, and to assuming command. I remember very well meeting her that first day of talent school, and really wishing she wasn’t commenting graciously on my kindness in taking on Sen’s servants. A real A-type personality, she was also one of the main opponents of interface installation within the school, at least until Rye’s attitude changed her mind, and then she strongly influenced people in the opposite direction. She’s smart, and strong, and rather fixated on the idea of being a Setari.

And she also hasn’t been adopted. Alay told me that at the end of the school day when all the adopted children are collected or head off home Kara very clearly demonstrates how little not being collected bothers her. Indifference underlined and oh, so painful. The fewer unadopted kids remain, the more the fact begins to sting, and there are very few unadopted kids at the talent school now – mainly older ones who are nearly adults. Karasayen and Lianzrenar are both thirteen, and I suspect Maze and Alay will be good for them in a lot of ways.

I am always very careful to keep an eye on any Nurans who come to Arcadia, to make sure that Ys and Rye don’t feel that their territory is being invaded, and to ensure that no-one even momentarily considers looking down on them. I’m not very fierce about many things, but no matter what cultural expectations anyone might have, or how traumatised they’ve been, I won’t tolerate people treating my kids as some kind of underclass.

No dramas, though. Rye (who is just the sweetest kid) decided to take Lianz under his wing, and Lianz revealed an interest in Rye’s gardens (possibly why Maze was so taken with him). They weren’t exactly comfortable with each other, but by the end of the party Lianz didn’t seem quite so stressed. Kara was a bit like Shar had been – and spent a fair amount of time talking to him – staying in visiting dignitary mode except when startled. She does seem to be quite close to Alay, though, and went rather pink during a private conversation, and looked at least briefly happy. Sen didn’t act overly concerned by her – no hugs, but no flinching – so I decided to relax.

Sen’s nightmares have cooled down a bit, and her main preoccupation at the moment is being a witch. I’ve subtitled a few Miyasakis for the kids, and Ys repeatedly watches Spirited Away, while Sen is devoted to Kiki’s Delivery Service, has decided she’s a witch, insists on being called Kiki, and keeps trying to ride about on a broom she had Ys make for her. With requisite cat stuffed in a basket and tied on the end. Tick-tock and Mip won’t go near her any more, and she likes nothing more than getting anyone with Levitation or Telekinesis to fly her about on her broom delivering things from one end of the house to the other. It’s hugely funny, and makes me miss Ghost rather. Ghost probably would have ridden about on the broom.

Twelfth and Third have only been here a few days, and I asked Maze directly to assign Zan plenty of bodyguard duty so I could see more of her. It’s also a good idea because it cuts down the way KOTIS Command likes to overwork strong Telekinesis talents. I had a heap of fun showing her around the island when she and Kiste arrived for their first turn preventing me from Doing Evil.

I’ve spent a solid chunk of time carefully watching Zan for any hint of how she was feeling, but as usual Zan was not giving any of her inner life away. Kiste was cheerful, and the rest of Twelfth seem to be in a good place. I really like how they’ve changed toward Zan, how the squad atmosphere is positive and comfortable. And Sen showed no inclination to bring Zan cushions, which was good to see.

I almost sound disappointed that she’s not miserable. Must stop myself from fumbling attempts to set her up with someone.

I’ve seen less of Third in the short time they’ve been here, but I think they’re okay. There’s a streak of sadness, and of course without Eeli the dynamic of the squad has changed significantly. I think both squads enjoyed Rye’s party a lot.

13 - December

December 25

Merry Christmas

I got to do a projection of my family this morning, and catch up on what’s happening back home. Thankfully some behind-the-scenes manoeuvring has made the Crummies' Inquiry less invasive now that it’s coming to its end, so the question of bringing my family here hasn’t been publically debated, and a special (and very closed-mouthed) committee can approve my projections without any suggestion that everyone on three planets needs to know what I’ve been doing. The Inquiry’s recommendations won’t be made public for a while, and then the laws will be formalised.

Jules is getting so tall – it’s really disconcerting. He makes me feel like I’m a stranger. I’ve been gone more than two years now, and I’m very different inside my head, and home has become the place I used to live. Kaoren knows enough English now to catch a little bit of my conversation with my Mum, but not to have more than a disjointed idea what we talked about. If the gate aligns according to schedule, I’ll be able to send a letter to Mum in February trying to arrange Operation Move-to-Muina, and I wanted to discuss with fake-Mum things I should tell real-Mum about in the letter. Whether it needed to be a complete secret, how extensive the Move-to-Muina invitation was, whether it was possible for anyone to just visit. Whether it was okay to bring our cat.

Then Mum floored me by telling me Dad had gotten married! And I’m going to have a new brother or sister in a few months. I am so not dealing with that. I have a step-mother named Sharon. Mum didn’t properly answer when I asked what she’s like, but, argh, I guess it means Dad’s happy, which is a good thing. I suppose I might meet her in a year and bit.

Kaoren and I have been starting to put together proper ideas for our wedding. Neither of us are particularly traditional, or devoted to a particular image of what the wedding should be like. I want to wear something resembling one of the less over-the-top Earth wedding dresses, and Kaoren is going to wear formal robes in colours complementing the girls' dresses. He’s very against me being blindfolded and picking him out from a bunch of other guys, but does want to do the exchange of patterned cakes. We both very strongly want to make our wedding day adoption day as well, though we haven’t discussed this with the kids yet. Basically, we want to have an additional stage of the ceremony where we’ll formally adopt them. And, after much pressure from Sen, we’re going to see about producing one of these babies she’s so keen on.

The idea having a baby myself is pretty scary. Alay let me feel her daughter kicking, and I had to restrain myself from making Chestburster comments, because it just weirded me out having something which wasn’t Alay moving beneath her skin. Very normal and all that, I know, but just…weird. Kaoren told me on his birthday that he’s a little nervous about having babies too, but more because even with all Tare’s technology, it’s still one of the most dangerous things women do.

My big amusement of the moment is a new program from the same producers who are behind The Hidden War. The Hidden War will wind up after this season – and all the kids except perhaps Sen are extremely pleased about that because they despise the way they’re being depicted (they opted to not communicate more than their ages and the scriptwriters – perhaps trying not to offend – came up with these tremendously brave and noble children who are a little too good to be real). But just as we’re coming into the final throes of The Hidden War (next episode is the one where I get sucked into the Cruzatch’s trap), this new show has started called Muina Ez (Into Muina) which follows two settler families (one from Tare and one from Kolar) from the acceptance of their settlement applications onwards, showing all the minutiae of what average people are encountering when moving to Muina.

It’s interesting and well-produced, and really gets the feel of the process right, I think. But it’s truly funny to me because of the way my family is depicted. They don’t get actors to portray us – or show images or anything – just long-distance shots of Arcadia and the other islands as this near-mythic goal on the horizon. Both sets of settler kids are shown as completely fascinated by me and Lira and Kaoren (and Setari in general), except for the primary heroine of the story, who is fixated on Ys. Ys, Rye, Sen and Lira’s personalities and traits are better known now, and the primary heroine of Muina Ez is this smart, slightly socially awkward Kolaren girl whose head is stuffed full of stories of epic derring-do, and Ys has been her hero since saving me after I projected the dragon. She has a counterpart (and obvious future love interest) in a brainy Taren boy and it looks like they’re going to play up Kolaren-Taren-Nuran culture clashes for all it’s worth. It’s a fun show, and very informative about the settler process.

Ys' reaction to the first couple of episodes has been priceless. She’s used to the focus being on Lira or Sen, but Ys is definitely the mythic heroine of this plot so far and she’s trying to be infuriated but it’s hard for her to withstand such a high compliment. Lira teases her a little about it, but not too much (most of the other kids on the show are severely Lira-worshipful, which she’s loving).

I probably shouldn’t be enjoying it so much. Being such public figures is a whole extra strain on them, but so far the kids are handling it better than I expected. The last episode had a long discussion about House Renar and just what was going on inside it, and the whole issue with Sen’s parents – and even just who Ys and Rye’s parents are too (a subject too touchy for them to discuss even with me). All pure speculation – according to Maze they’re not going to present anything as fact about us which isn’t known as fact, but they’re certainly willing to argue through all the rumours. Both families are based in Pandora (with parents with exotic jobs which mean they get to visit other settlements) and the characters' absolute aim is to get canoes and paddle to Arcadia – exactly as two Kolaren teenagers attempted to just recently, except they don’t want to be intercepted by greensuits as the teenagers were. The show’s entirely produced and created here and Lira’s very curious to try and spot the actors whenever we go into town. Muina’s gradually accruing more and more personalities and celebrities, and famous people from Tare and Kolar seem to be constantly migrating here. It fortunately takes some of the focus off me and the Setari (although a lot of the famous people are just as much Setari-fans as the next person).

There’s whole heaps of rumours going around about my wedding plans now. All wildly wrong except for the obvious guess about it being held on Arcadia. Kaoren’s parents will be coming back to Muina a little beforehand – they’ve decided to emigrate, but to my relief don’t want to be based in Pandora. Arden’s going to visit, but not emigrate as yet.

14 - January

January 15

Close Call

Sight Sight talents are tremendously useful.

Since Maze and Alay adopted, Alay hasn’t been scheduled to be one of my minders, but we do see her quite regularly. She’ll drop in to chat (to me or to my minders), or we’ll see her when we go visit to view the latest things Maze, Rye and Lianz have done to Maze’s garden, or during one of the school runs or at someone else’s house. Still, it had been a few weeks since I’d seen her – she’s been travelling about a bit less now that she’s getting toward the awkward end of her pregnancy. The weather’s been tremendously hot and sunny lately, and our shady pool is excellent for swimming on these really sunny days, and the waterfall is always a favourite, so I invited Mara, Alay, Ketz and Jeh to bring their kids over for a small swimming party while Fourth and the combined non-pregnant bits of First/Second were due to be off an on Ena mission. Sen of course leapt on Mara and Alay to say hello to their babies. Babies are definitely her favourite thing in the whole world (and she’s literally counting the days till our wedding and is expecting Kaoren and I to produce one immediately).

Kaoren has been giving Sen a lot of Sights training the past couple of months while she struggles with Place, and also teaching her the ethics and social conventions which have grown up around talents who can see things people might wish to keep private. Sen, while a very joyful little girl, is well-versed in harsh realities. I’m willing to bet she was in no doubt about the enjoyment Kimirenar got from his treatment of Ys and Rye, and Sight Sight can reveal all sorts of infections and fatal diseases and cancers and things. Kaoren says he’s seen pregnant women and known that the child wasn’t viable and there would be a miscarriage, and it was obvious that Sen had seen much the same thing. We’ve been giving her lots of tips about what she should do when she sees personal information about someone – particularly how to keep calm about exciting pregnancies, or what to do if someone’s sick or ill. Dragging someone into your bathroom to ask if their secret is a secret is not the best way to go about it. In the end, since anything Sen could see would probably be obvious to Kaoren or Siame as well, we told her if her Sight showed her something she wanted to talk about, she should check with one of them before doing or saying anything.

Sen still isn’t much of an actress yet, though, so when Lohn, Mara and Alay arrived with their horde, I knew that something was up by the way she behaved after her usual greeting-the-babies hugs. She wasn’t totally obvious about it, just getting rather subdued, but it was enough to have Ys and Rye, who know Sen backward and forward, trying to work out why she was hiding being upset. I simply opened a channel to all my kids, and asked Sen if this was one of those Sight issues we’d been talking about, then was all approving about the fact that Sen had sent for Siame. I could see Mara had picked up on the atmosphere too, and after a sharp glance at Sen and then me, she tidied everyone down to the pool, making sure Lohn was along as supervisor, then came back. I did my part by keeping Alay distracted, and giving Sen a hug to make her feel better.

Siame was in her studio, which we’d built her on the sunniest side of the hill – south, and kind of around the corner of the hill from the house on the way to The Wedding Garden[15]. Rye (with Maze and Kaoren’s help) worked out the course of pathways between our house and the two new buildings, and laid stone paving and even steps in a few places, so they’re both connected but quite separate from our house. That Siame, still mildly paint-daubed, suddenly dropped out of the air on our patio rather than walking told me that Sen must have sounded quite urgent in her summons.

This was one time I really appreciated how in-command and self-assured Siame is. Completely unfussed, she sat down beside Alay, asked if she minded her checking something, and then when Alay shook her head, bent down and rested her cheek against Alay’s stomach. Then she said in exactly the same unhurried tone: "No immediate danger, but the umbilical cord is wrapped around her throat. You’d best visit the medics."

Alay had gone completely white, of course, but Siame being so calm and businesslike helped and Mara very practically said that she’d borrow our sled and take her straight away. Jeh, Ketz and Lohn could stay to watch the kids, and of course I would be there and so were my guards for the day (two from Twelfth Squad) so there were no problems leaving them. Siame enhanced and levitated herself and Alay down to our boathouse, and Mara turned and gave Sen a sudden, fierce hug, squeezing her tightly, then trotted off after them. Sen waited till we were safely alone and then burst into tears and told me that the baby was unhappy, as I suppose an unborn baby might be if something was twisting around her throat.

It hadn’t pulled too tight, thankfully, but was apparently on the more dangerous end of occurrences. I’m not sure what the solution would have been on Earth – an emergency Caesarean? – but Taren technology plus psychics meant that a telekinetic medical technician was able to carefully untangle everything within a short time and, though they kept Alay in medical overnight just to be sure, she and the baby seem to be fine. Not fun for Maze to come back from an Ena mission to find Alay under observation in medical, and no more fun for Mara or Ketz or Jeh, all of whom are just starting to show, and all of whom really really don’t want to think about all the things which can go wrong with babies. Lianz and Kara had spent a pretty terrible afternoon as well, since they’d immediately noticed that Alay had left, and no matter how reassuring you try to be, you can’t make kids not worry when you explain things like that.

It was really good to see how supportive all the kids were of each other. Of course, they all really like and care about Maze and Alay, but when the day stopped being a swimming frolic and became a long and tense wait around the pool, I could see that a lot of the divisions which had originally existed had at least relaxed a little, and that Ys and Rye treated two children which they’d had such huge walls erected against with a good deal of sympathy and compassion. And no suggestion from Lianz or Kara that mere servants didn’t know their place or anything like that. Ys and Kara actually had a little private conversation together, and I suspect that Kara has come to value Ys' ability to get information out of the interface.

By mostly living on the same island, the senior Setari have made sure that they have a convenient support network set up for themselves – just as the junior Setari who have reserved all the land on the other islands will if and when they can take up a permanent Muina residency. Once we’d had the good news about the detangling, Lohn took Lianz and Kara over to his and Mara’s house for a sleep-over, and Maze’s parents brought them a change of clothes and so forth. It’s a very large extended family.

Maze dropped over, after he’d reassured himself that Alay was all right, and swept Sen up in the hugest hug and thanked her and ended up taking her on a quick visit to Alay so that Sen could be sure that the baby wasn’t unhappy any more. And her cheerfulness after seeing that was so in turn reassured Maze and Alay a great deal. She still had tremendous nightmares for the next couple of days, but Kaoren said to expect this because of the amount of fear of could have been everyone was dealing with. He had a nightmare too, and wouldn’t talk about it, but it’s pretty easy to guess what it was about.

After all that, the announcement of the laws the various governments had decided upon to deal with touchstones was a bit of a non-event. Especially since, other than having an oversight committee and being stricter and more transparent about what mission assignments I (and eventually perhaps Lira) am given, they aren’t really changing a great deal from the way I’m treated now. They’ve made "touchstones screwing with people with their powers" illegal in a vague kind of way, but haven’t made it illegal for me to conjure up hot chocolate or videos. When it boils down to it, they want to leave flexibility, and don’t want to risk ending up being forced to prosecute me for doing something like conjuring a dragon to fight off a Cruzatch attack. It’s all pretty much what Kaoren and Maze said we’d probably end up with, back when the whole issue was raised, but it’s nice to have it over.

My workload at the moment has been ramped up, because KOTIS knows that I won’t be doing any visualisations or projections at all if I can help it, if I get pregnant. Since they’re extremely interested to know if I have little baby touchstones, they’re quite happy for me to get married and have kids, but they’re trying to cram heaps of visualisation projects in beforehand. Not taking me anywhere near any of the powerstones, or doing things they consider really risky, but they’re keen to reproduce the teleportation platforms and the process of creating aether, and though they think they’re beginning to understand, they’d love to have some extremely confusing points cleared up. Unfortunately they haven’t found any convenient books in the Kalasa library explaining any of this, and have been working on the office I visualised once before, and other rooms like that.

Going for a fitting for my wedding dress tomorrow, and Kaoren and the kids' outfits. I had to ask Kaoren whether his sights would drive him insane if he didn’t get to see what my wedding dress looked like beforehand, and he thinks it will be okay, especially if I tell him about it generally. After the fitting we’re going to talk the kids through what we’ve decided on for the ceremony, and explain how it’s going to be more than just a wedding, and talk over issues like surnames. Sen is tremendously excited to see the dresses. So am I.

15 - February

February 28

Preparations

Just under a month to go now. I’d feel stressed about setting up a party for what will be my largest guest list so far, but now that Kaoren’s parents are settled into their new home at Liriath, almost all the wedding preparations have been taken out of my hands. It’s not too bad – if I’m very definite about the things I do want, Teor does everything to ensure that I get that. But I had to make very clear that I particularly want the kids' clothes the way I’d already chosen, and bits of the ceremony to go a particular way, and especially the family-making ceremony where we formalise the adoption of the kids. But overall, though she’s frustrated me a couple of times, I’m pretty glad Teor’s here and so effortlessly looking after marquees in case it rains and catering and transport and all that kind of stuff. She happily makes all the decisions, and some time later mentions what’s going on, and reorganises if there’s anything I want to change, but usually there isn’t. She’s only added a few non-relatives I don’t know to the guest list.

Kaoren not only has grandparents, but also great-grandparents still living, though not all of them are able to make the trip, and also a reasonable swodge of other relatives, so it’s lucky we put quite a few rooms in the guest/guard house.

I’m very happy with my dress and the girls' dresses, and highly curious about what Kaoren and Rye look like in their matching formal robes (Kaoren decided that we may as well both have a surprise on the day). The girls' dresses were the defining theme – I had a long talk with Chiane (my dress designer) about the colours which would best suit Ys and yet also look good on Lira and Sen, and Chiane basically designed a dress for Ys which really suited her, and then we worked from there, although of course that’s not how it gets explained to anyone else. The colours we ended up with were moss green, a sage and a near-white green. The girls' dresses are these deceptively simple knee-length sleeveless sheathes of the sage with side-panels of the moss green and this longer transparent material over the top which tends to swirl and flirt about their knees and has embroidery in the moss green and sage of leaves and flowers kind of caught in the act of drifting down and gathering in little curling piles about the hem. Sen’s version has no overlay and is mostly white and sage with some ribbony bits, while Kaoren’s and Rye’s robes will be longer, with sleeves and without the overlay, and with a more formal and stylised set of leaves around the hems and cuffs.

My dress is off-white with a very exactly tailored bodice with a high neck with tiny little buttons all down the back (something I’ve always thought the coolest look for a wedding dress) but no sleeves, so my shoulders are exposed. The skirt starts low down on the hips and is straight up and down at the front, just touching my toes, while stretching out to a tiny little train at the back. It looks very simple and classic, and is only minimally embroidered (more falling leaves and flowers done in the same colour as the dress, and mainly on the train). I decided to go with a veil, not one of those poufy mosquito-net looking ones, but instead a sort I’d seen in a lot of old-fashioned photos which is basically a single piece of fine, transparent material. It’s the same ivory off-white, with embroidered falling leaves and petals just visible, and since it was a totally non-Taren sort of thing to wear, it took a lot of discussion back and forth with Chiane to get something I liked and which would stay on my head. She ended up commissioning a jeweller to make me a circlet of enamel flowers and leaves. It’s basically a silvery wire curled around three or four times in a circle, with clever little flowers in white and pale green leaves. I liked the rough design of that enough to get matching little slides for the girls, and also earrings for me. The veil fastens over it, falling to my butt at the back, and to my waist in the front, and just wide enough to rest across the top of my shoulders at the side.

The interface allows for complete body modelling and I’d been scanned at the first consultation, so I’d been able to spend ages looking at a virtual image of me wearing a virtual image of the dress, but I was terribly worried that I would look completely silly when I put the thing on in real life. Fortunately, I had two very harsh critics with me, so when Chiane brought them in to check how we looked as a group, and there was this moment of quiet with no hint of suppressed scorn or pity, I knew I’d achieved something of the effect I wanted. It makes me look really tall and grown up, which is probably a silly way to think of it, but it really made me feel like The Bride[16].

Ys recovered enough to ask if I’d be able to get about without tripping over, but then rather shyly joined Sen and Lira in gingerly touching the edge of the veil, which is incredibly sheer and soft. I could tell Ys had deeply impressed Sen with the need to not leap on me when I was wearing my dress – and to be careful of her own – and Sen was so funny, moving about like everything was made of spun sugar and making these adorable little peeps and sighs of happiness. She absolutely adores the sash and ribbons on her own dress as well, and kept patting and stroking them. We stood in a group to make sure the dresses worked well together and so Chiane’s assistants could make sure Ys and Lira’s hems were even, and the girls put their matching hair slides in, and lots of little tucks and adjustments were made and I completely enjoyed watching Ys taking sidelong glances at herself in the mirror. She’d been so resistant and long-suffering at the first consultation, enduring and hating the requirement that she be dressed up, and plainly expecting the worst. But the colour really suits her, and the cut and the overlay gives her a suggestion of elegance and also takes tall and skinny and turns it into long-limbed and leggy, thanks to the skirt of the under layer ending well above the knees, while the overlay drops down below. It’s not frilly or flouncy or overtly trying to be sexy, is just girlish enough, and really does suit her and I’m so pleased.

Lira looked amazing, as I expected, and was very pleased about it. She also relaunched the discussion of getting her ears pierced, once she saw my matching earrings, and I said she could get them pierced when she was thirteen, and thought that it was awfully early for me to have turned into my Mum. After we’d been carefully de-dressed, we went to a hair stylist that Chiane had recommended for us and tried out various styles for us to wear. My hair, sadly, hasn’t grown nearly long enough for some kind of gorgeous up-do with trailing tendrils – but then it probably never would have managed something spectacular anyway, and eventually I decided it would probably be best to have it trimmed shorter again. I did toy with the idea of extensions, but decided against it in the end. The flower slides and a bit of judicious shaping did wonders for Ys' hairstyle, and of course Sen and Lira’s gorgeous manes were perfect for everything. Mara and Zee joined us for this part, and toyed with different styles too, and since we’d used a closed flyer to go to the spaceport and then a solo carriage on the subway and then back entrances into the stores, we managed the whole trip without having half Pandora trying to catch a glimpse of us. Kaoren and Rye went later the same day, and came back well satisfied. In the afternoon we walked through The Wedding Garden Rye, Lianz and Maze have been constructing and did a kind of rehearsal to work out the getting there and where to sit and stand parts.

The Wedding Garden was necessary because there simply wasn’t room at the house for the number of people we want to invite, and we don’t want to thin out the trees around the house anyway. So we picked an area on the south side of the island - the guesthouse is on the north, and Siame’s studio in between the house and the Garden, and now that the stone path stretches all the way there the island seems much smaller. Over Winter Maze did most of the big work – cleared a lot of the trees out of a big flat patch below the hill with only a small window to the lake, and seeded a long ornamental whitestone pond – a very straight, flat affair shaped a bit like one end of a thermometer, with a kind of bridge/pagoda thing to sit above the round pool at the end for the wedding ceremony. Instead of leaving it as whitestone, though, he did this very clever thing of pressing all these slices of blueish-black stone into the sides of the pond after it had formed, and paving a border around the edge the same way. That part took him ages, since it’s a very long pond, but he says he enjoys it and the effect was really spectacular – it’s about knee-deep the entire way (frozen solid most of Winter) and reflects the sky beautifully.

Since then, Rye (with Maze and Lianz’s help) has been slowly encouraging it into being a shady garden a bit like First Park, except with more ornamental flowering bushes and garden beds. It’s clearest around the pagoda, paved with squares of stone with the cracks all filled by a tiny flowering ground cover that reminds me a little of Australian Native Violet. Poor Rye’s been stressing incredibly over not being able to make the plants grow any quicker, or keep up with the weeds, and we’ve been trying to reassure him that we really just need a relatively private large space, but over the next few weeks we’ll all pitch in to help him with the workload. Before Kaoren’s parents moved to Muina, I was happy with Kaoren and Maze and Rye looking after the venue issues, but made the mistake of saying when showing it to Teor that it would look way cool at night with Chinese lanterns in the trees and candles floating in the pool and we’d have to have a night party there one day. Teor had me explain what I meant, and next time I turned around my wedding had been moved to the late afternoon so that the reception would be in the evening, and Teor was designing different sorts of lanterns as her wedding present to us. The perils of an artistic family. It will look way cool, though.

It also occurred to us that there was a lack of bathroom facilities, and we tossed up the equivalent of portapotties for a while, then eventually designed and grew a rather weird little building, which is a combination of ground floor bathroom and half a dozen toilets, and on top of that a lounge, kitchen and a bedroom in a little stack. It reminds me of a lighthouse, except we tucked it back among the trees behind the round bridge with a very shaded path to it. The view is all ferns and bushes out the windows, with just a glimpse of the lake from the bedroom. We’re calling it another guest house for the moment, and having it there will make getting ready on the day a bit easier, and maybe one of the kids will want to use it eventually, and just have a lot of extra toilets[17].

I’m being very focused and exercisey on my training days, primarily so I can look good in my dress, and otherwise I’ve been feeling a touch overworked, reading a lot of Taren novels, and pressing slowly onward with doing Taren school lessons, just so I can avoid my kids graduating before me.

The other major event of the month was my second letter home.

This was a complicated letter to write, since I needed to get it approved not only by KOTIS Command, but by the governments of a couple of planets. In its way, it was a first step in interplanetary relations between Earth and Muina. KOTIS Command would prefer this happened via the deep-space gate rather than the natural gate, but I suspect also thinks it would be convenient to have a handful more Earth people as a sample group – mainly about whether all Earth people have security access to Muina. There are a lot of potential consequences to writing a letter which explains precisely when and where a gate to another planet would open.

It’s pretty rough when your letter home to Mum requires a Tri-Council sanction.

I tucked an image of us at the dress fitting in which was entirely unsanctioned and unapproved, but also unobjectionable, and the gate opened right when we expected it to – it seems to shift about ten minutes and four metres each year, which takes us to the beginning of March next year and thankfully I’ve already been able to confirm that the letter got through to Mum.

16 - March

March 10

Katen

Maze and Alay’s baby arrived yesterday, and they called her Katen just as Sen wanted, and she is very tiny and perfect and shows absolutely no signs of ill effects from umbilical cords. We went on a visit this morning and I’m maybe looking forward a little more to adding to our child collection, though I expect I’ll be sick of all the crying and pooping soon enough. Sen was very much in danger of absconding to spend the day with the baby, and I suspect that inviting Alay over for a long visit will be the only way to keep Sen’s baby longings in check.

After much discussion Kaoren and I decided that it would work out best for us to do all our child-raising relatively close together, and so I’ve had my contraception cancelled. I can just imagine some of the awkward and no doubt embarrassingly public conversations I’ll be having in the future if I don’t get pregnant in the first couple of months of trying – Sen is adamant that I have to provide "all" her little baby brothers and sisters without further delay.

Can’t say I’m looking forward to periods.

It’s been a month of mixed ups and downs, with Katen being the biggest up. The biggest down was Eeli’s funeral (or remembrance ceremony). Her parents had accepted the judgment of the medics, and asked for the life support to be switched off. Taarel brought her ashes out and scattered them on Lenecki (the island where she’s taken her land grant). Taarel is for the moment remaining as Senior Captain on Tare, but her family is going to move to Lenecki, and eventually Taarel will probably be an islander too.

The Muinans believed – and Tarens and Kolarens sort of believe – that your spirit returns to the world’s heart when you die, and so dead people are not floating about as individuals, but are transfigured so that it’s like the planet itself briefly remembers being Eeli. During the remembrance ceremony, one of the things we did was find a quiet place and talk to Muina which would in its way mean talking to Eeli.

Whether or not that’s at all true – and on Muina who knows? – I liked the idea of talking to Eeli, and sat myself under a shady tree and told the wind about the way Inisar looked at Taarel, and how I couldn’t tell what she thinks about him in return, and how she’s very inconveniently spending most of her time on Tare. And I told her all about what my wedding will be like, and then I cried rather a lot. I couldn’t tell if the wind cared.

I have invited countless wedding guests. Of the squads, mainly those who are primarily assigned to me (First, Second, Third, Fourth, Eighth, Twelfth, and Squad One). All of them with and guests so they can bring along any family or friends that they want, which more than doubled the numbers. And Kaoren’s family, and Isten Notra and her family, and Inisar, and a few of the medics and other technicians who I’ve grown a little closer to. And I invited Tsa Lents and his wife and Nenna and her sister, and was glad when they accepted. Tsur Selkie is actually going to officiate at the ceremony, which I find hugely amusing, but Kaoren’s rather close to him – all that Sight Sight training I guess. Tsur Selkie has two kids who are Kalrani, which I didn’t know at all. I’m curious to see if they’re his own little Mini-Me’s.

He’s been mostly on Tare since the gates re-opened, and I gather that – just as he was the main architect of KOTIS' method of training Setari – he’s the one behind the announcements just made about the future of the program.

They’re not cancelling the Setari program, but they are changing it, easing back on it in some ways, so that it’s more like it was when the senior squads first started: a day school, or weekly boarding. They’re going to expand it in other ways, though, bringing it into line with Pandora’s talent school to train strong psychics more generally.

The idea’s been very well received, for the most part. It’s still going to be a disciplined edging on harsh childhood for those in the Setari channel, especially because KOTIS wants to explore Nuran methods of focusing the bond with the Ena, but they won’t be so cut off from home.

Ys' thirteenth birthday coming up (I’m giving her a diary bound in gorgeous tooled leather).

17 - April

April 3

All Official

Cassandra Eloise Ruuel Devlin. And Kaoren Devlin Ruuel. Not to mention Ys, Liranadestar and Sentarestel Ruuel Devlin, and Rye Devlin Ruuel. I’m fairly sure that this is a naming tradition used on Earth, but I can’t remember which country, or if we’ve followed quite the same rules. It was the solution which we liked most, though I did find all the possible name combinations we came up with very funny. Ruulin or Devel. Too silly.

The week before the ceremony was very busy and hectic, with us doing a lot of work on the Wedding Garden, and Kaoren’s parents, brother and grandparents arriving, and also Nenna and her family – all of whom were to be guests on Arcadia. I was very relieved that things weren’t as awkward with the Lents as they could have been – Nenna’s enthusiasm (and her sister’s shrieking over bugs) smoothed over a lot, and Sen thought Nenna great fun.

Arden brought along the most impossible girl as his guest. A model he’s using for something he’s working on at the moment, who is gob-smackingly gorgeous and totally awful – obsessed with herself and tremendously bitchy, like she’s trying to be a caricature of all the bad things people say about models. Ellema. I couldn’t work out how Arden could stand being near her, no matter how good-looking, given his Sights, but in the end the whole thing made me understand him a little better – he was kind of torturing himself to get a certain result in his art, and also amusing himself at Ellema’s expense. The main piece he’s working on is something called "Hollow" which about says all of his opinion of Ellema.

She spent her time annoying the hell out of me, cross-examining me on my guest list and being obviously disappointed that it was mainly Setari, no-one important, and wanting to know why I hadn’t invited this or that celebrity, acting like the cats were a rodent infestation, and being generally infuriating to everyone. Plus she tried to seduce Nils practically in front of Zee – and then stormed off when Nils murmured something he says would be impolite to repeat in her ear. In the end I mostly just made sure to keep her away from the kids – and wasn’t quite able to resist calling her "The Llama" every so often and had the greatest difficulty stopping Lira from calling her that to her face.

I think maybe Arden was trying to annoy Kaoren with her as well. They have a difficult relationship – they care a lot about each other, but they’re kind of at odds.

I was feeling more than a little stressed the day before the wedding, and wished I could just abandon all my guests, and that everything would be over and done with – and seriously not looking forward to another dinner keeping an eye out for simmering arguments.

Just on sunset, as I was working on putting dinner together, Zee and Nils sent me off to have a shower, taking over the cooking duties, and when I was unenthusiastically getting dressed to go down, Kaoren sent me a message to come up to my eyrie.

My eyrie is one of my favourite places in the universe, especially just on the ends of sunset, with a light breeze and the sky fading to midnight-blue as the colours creep away. Kaoren was standing before one of the big windows, looking out over the lake, the sheer gauze curtains swelling around him.

"You won’t mind if I beat up your brother will you?" I asked, wrapping my arms around him from behind and snuggling into his back. "Just a little. All this combat training has to be good for something."

He let out his breath, one of those little snorts, but wisely didn’t comment on the likelihood of me succeeding in beating up even someone who left the Setari program before his teens. Then he loosened my hold on him enough so he could turn, looking down at me in the half-light.

"Arden was hoping for tantrums," he said. "You’ve been too tolerant for his tastes."

"Improbably sweet." I laughed, but broke off when Kaoren reached down and scooped a hand under the back of my thighs, lifting me easily. "We’ll be late for dinner," I said, not particularly firmly.

"Taken care of," he told me, then turned and flew out the window.

Once outside we flew straight up, so that in seconds the house was visible only by the patio lights, and I could clearly see the bright gems of Pandora and the far smaller clusters on Siriath and Lenecki. We flew away from all of these, heading briefly toward Nurenor and then leaving the lights behind us, zooming west and then south until the lake’s main southern bank had curved to hide anything but the night and the stars.

Then we began to drop, and I looked down, tightening my arm around Kaoren’s neck instinctively, and saw that instead of black water there were barely visible balls of light, little muted moons. They rose around us as Kaoren gently touched down and lowered me to grass-covered ground.

We stood at the edge of a circle of trees on an island not twenty metres wide, completely alone except for stars, and the hush of water, and white paper lanterns the width of two cupped hands suspended in the branches.

Kaoren is much better at keeping secrets than I am. And psychic space ninjas can totally take sweeping a girl off her feet to new levels.

He’d curled his fingers through mine, and I had to grip his hand tightly and take a breath not to ruin the magic of the moment. I took a step forward, and found an edge of a blanket, a little nest he’d made for us beneath the lanterns.

What do you say to that? How do you put into words any kind of response to a perfect gesture, to a thing which fills your heart and makes your throat ache, and your eyes shimmer with tears? There wasn’t a song, or poem, or story I had ever read which could express how I felt then, beneath stars and lanterns, holding the hand of the person I love.

I touched him instead, brushed fingers across his cheek, his lips, knowing that his Sights would tell him everything that I could not.

And then, well, lots of sex.

In his ever-efficient way he’d thought of all contingencies, from the sumptuous picnic basket to a spicy-scented insect repellent. We spent half the night there, touching and talking, swimming in dark star-studded water, then curling chilled and damply together to make every kiss count. A few hours before dawn he flew us home, and one day I guess I’ll tell Taarel that Kaoren is indeed capable of being romantic.

Absolutely.

Fortunately we had enough sense left in our heads for a quick hot shower and some semblance of clothing so that when our kids woke us mid-morning for breakfast in bed we didn’t have to dive beneath the sheets. They made a very sweet procession, Ys and Lira carrying a tray for each of us, Rye with a jug of juice, and Sen coming last with a big vase of flowers. Which she promptly dropped, her hands flying to her mouth.

Kaoren caught the vase with Telekinesis and set it out of the way. He’d anticipated her reaction, having seen the same thing Sight Sight had shown her, and thus was prepared for Sen leaping onto the bed to strangle me with a hug, shrieking "My Baby!".

I stared at Kaoren, whose eyes were almost closed because he was very happy. He said: "A boy" and I got very overwhelmed by that and kind of understood how Alay had been so off-balance even after preparing for a month for the possibility of having a baby. I asked Sen if she’d enjoy being a big sister but she was busy rubbing her cheek against my stomach and going "My baby!" so I looked at Ys, Rye and Lira and said: "I think I need a group hug," and waited as they somewhat stiffly put down their plates and came around to hug me. Kaoren rested his hand lightly on Rye’s head, but waited until they’d let go to hug me.

I said: "So efficient!" to him and laughed, and then made sure to turn my attention to the treat the kids had brought and to try and make clear without being clumsily obvious that they were by no means less important just because Kaoren and I were having a baby. It’s not public knowledge yet, though not precisely a secret (with so many Sight Sight talents in the house, there was no hope of that). I think the kids are okay about it, but I do feel the need to watch my tongue, and not talk about "our first child" or anything like that. Of course it does feel different to me to actually be having a baby, but this is our fifth child and I made sure to be very clear about that.

Our morning was low-key, since nothing was scheduled till after lunch, and there were no major dramas leading up to the ceremony, just tiny annoyances like Tick-tock kidnapping one of my earrings, and the flowers I was planning to carry as a simple bouquet having been ravaged overnight by one of the tree-critters, much to Rye’s chagrin when he went to pick them. He dashed off on a frantic hunt for the same kind of flower, until Kaoren went and fetched him, and they ended up bringing totally different flowers, but Kaoren had obviously been saying just the right thing to Rye, since he was looking a great deal happier than he had all morning. That was just when we were about to split up to start getting dressed, and I gave both of them a big hug, and then took the girls off to the lighthouse, which is where we were due to meet Chiane to get dressed.

We’d partially furnished the lighthouse and so, while it still needed things like plates and cooking utensils, it worked well for getting ready. Zee brought Chiane and the small collection of attendants and hairdressers and of course the clothes, and I set them to working on the girls first, since I knew that Sen and Lira’s hair would take a lot longer than mine. Then I went up to the bedroom on the top floor, sat on the bed, and started crying.

I hadn’t meant to. I hadn’t realised how upset I was, but then I found I was sitting there with tears running down my face, and it was a good thing that it was Zee who came up to chat to me because I think that would have confused the girls endlessly. Zee wasn’t fussed, just sat down and put an arm around my shoulder and said: "Well, it can’t be second thoughts, or your Kaoren would not be looking half so pleased with himself."

"My Mum won’t be here when my baby is born." I started to cry all over Zee, then realised she’d changed into a very gorgeous dress which wouldn’t be improved by snot, and managed to snivel into my shirt sleeve instead. "Sorry, should be happy, but I just – just–"

"Want your family on your wedding day. And your mother to talk about babies. Of course." She squeezed me lightly, adding: "Congratulations. I know this is something you’ve been looking forward to. Or at least Sen has on your behalf."

"I’m really very happy," I said, sounding miserable. "Everyone is so good to me, and I couldn’t stand losing the people I have here."

"But you are still a girl very far from her home. Though your family here is getting very large. And colourful."

The wry note in her voice made me feel suddenly more settled, and a little giggle bubbled up. "I’d hate to imagine what Arden would do to a squad, if he had stayed with KOTIS. Did you see his face while The Llama was trying to climb into Nils' lap?"

"Considering the potential of the scene. He makes no attempt to hide her purpose. A strange variation of a Sight talent – just as uncomfortably able to see to the heart of matters, but also…meddlesome."

"He likes to stir things up and then see what happens," I said. "He always watches Kaoren when talking to me. And I think he was hoping you’d go snap The Llama like a twig for touching Nils. I sort of like him, but only despite the things he does. And I’m so glad to know you, Zee."

She ruffled my hair, and told me to go wash my face, and ran interference so I could get down to the bathroom without anyone noticing that I’d been crying. Then I was taken over by Chiane’s minions and primped and clipped and dressed and arranged and when only the veil was left I went and joined the girls.

I have beautiful daughters. I was half-expecting Ys to be lost in a scowl, since her tolerance for primping is pretty low, but she was watching Sen and looking very relaxed and thoughtful and reminded me so much of Isten Notra. One day I think she will inspire the same sense of awe, will be someone who the world thinks it a privilege to spend an afternoon with. Plus she looked great in her dress, with her hair styled in a way which really suits her, and just a touch of lip gloss. Unexpectedly adult. She’s so tall for her age.

Sen and Lira were really thoroughly enjoying their fairy-princess hairstyles, and their fancy dresses and their flowery hairclips and unashamedly preening in front of the mirror. Sen was spinning in a circle and watching her skirt flare out, but then made one of her delighted noises and ran and hugged my legs.

I’d ordered a special present for them, gossamer-fine chains with tiny white flower pendants, and really enjoyed putting each one round their necks in turn and seeing that they all really liked it. Then we paused to have a glass of water and a quick visit to the bathroom and by then it was nearly time to go down, so we carefully attached the veil to my flower circlet. I’d really appreciated Chiane’s attitude, and the straightforward way she’d told Ys her best colours and ideal styles and makeup, and so asked if she wanted to take some scans for her records (which, I’d worked out, is tantamount to doing some publicity shots for her) and obligingly let her pose me and the girls and tweak the dress to be just so. I took scans for myself, since I wasn’t really planning on posed pictures otherwise – just had a scanner set up down in the Wedding Garden to catch the ceremony and party.

We went as a group down the stairs (it would have been pretty pathetic if I’d tripped on my dress while half-blinded by the veil after all), and Zee went ahead and we waited for the music to signal it was starting (not an Earth bridal march, but the Taren the parties approach music) and then Sen started out, followed by Ys and Lira and then me. Sen – who had been aching to show Rye her dress and new necklace – skipped out enthusiastically, forgot what we’d covered in rehearsal, and whizzed across to meet Kaoren and Rye and pirouette in front of them (much laughter from everyone watching). Both groups of us (boys and girls) were supposed to walk out at the same time, but I guess this evened up the numbers and Kaoren rested one hand on Sen’s head and the other on Rye’s shoulder and walked on. I handed my bouquet to Lira and took her free hand and Ys' hand, and so it ended up looking like our children were leading us to the wedding.

Kaoren was impossibly gorgeous. I hadn’t seen his outfit, but it had been described to me, and I’d teased him about it sounding like the Setari uniform with something over the top. He’d said it was a lot more effort to put on than the Setari uniform. Still, it was definitely the same high-throated, close-fitting black, and over it a dark moss robe/coat which hung to his knees (and obligingly had gaps at the front and side so you could admire his totally hot body). As per Taren tradition, the pattern of his and Rye’s clothing was more geometrical, though still based around leaves and occasional blossoms. I don’t remember much of the walking out onto the little island, or anything of people’s reactions, and it was probably just as well the girls ended up leading me, because I didn’t take my eyes off Kaoren the entire way.

The ceremony was a mix of Taren and what you’d get for a Sydney wedding. Kaoren’s Sights made him really want to see my face throughout, so the first thing he did was lift my veil. I’ve watched the scan of the ceremony now, of course, and fortunately I don’t look like a complete idiot, just overwhelmed and very happy and barely managing to respond at the right moments because I was too busy gazing at Kaoren. He was definitely looking very pleased (extra-possessive), and kissed me very thoroughly, audience or not, when I was officially Certain.

Fortunately he was the one supposed to do most of the talking for the adoption part. We’d spent ages trying to figure out a ceremony which would be heartfelt without mortifying the kids too much, and eventually decided to have Tsur Selkie start out by announcing the adoption, and then Kaoren and I had the kids stand between us, and Kaoren made this really great speech about how family was a charged term to the Setari, that the word had come to cover dorm-mates, squad members, more than just the blood relatives they only saw once a year. That he had always been reluctant to add to the people who he felt that way about, and had only just accepted that I had become everything to him when three new lives had walked into his. How his first instinct had been to separate them from me before I got too attached, but then he’d wanted to know more of them himself. How helpless he’d felt to do anything for Lira but not lie to her. The straightforward enjoyment he’d found in giving them a place to feel safe and welcome and how he’d found that the word family now, for him, meant them.

A pretty spectacular speech from someone usually so reticent. When he finished and it was my turn, I said: "I’m just in it for the hugs," and laughed and hugged them and people applauded. Even Ys hugged me back, if only briefly, but was relieved to escape the centre of attention afterwards. Then it was lots of chatting with people, and food and dancing, and much of this is a blur but I remember some parts of it really distinctly. The flowers they’d set to floating in the pool, and later the careful lighting of all the lamps Teor had made – dozens in the trees and even more which we floated in the pool (some of which escaped and floated off into the lake). They were very cool and fantastical and I was careful not to compare them to the simple white lanterns Kaoren had made, which wholly own my heart. Later I held Katen (and had to sit down because I felt all strange about being pregnant). Inisar and Taarel danced together, incredibly grand. Then I gave in to Sen and put my circlet and veil on her, and Nils levitated her about for a little dance to keep the veil off the ground.

He also danced with Tsur Selkie’s two young daughters, who are not very much like their father at all. Allidi and Haelin Selkie, aged eight and twelve, both Sight Sight talents, and with the strong-minded certainty which comes with that, but unexpectedly relaxed for a pair of Kalrani among their seniors. Perhaps it’s because they didn’t inherit Tsur Selkie’s Place Sight as well? Place is by far the hardest of the Sights. I asked Kaoren if they took after their mother, who wasn’t in attendance, and he made a slight face, and shook his head.

I didn’t get the story behind that out of him till much later. Tsur Selkie had married one of the senior device technicians at KOTIS, and all was well until their daughters tested as strong talents and he refused to find a way to exempt them from the Setari program. Presumably because he’s not a great steaming hypocrite. His wife not only divorced him, she more or less divorced her daughters as well, and has nothing to do with them. That’s pretty hard for me to imagine, but apparently it’s not uncommon for the families of Kalrani to feel like they’ve become strangers.

I have hopes of a far more positive future. One of my favourite moments of the wedding was sitting in a circle with the kids and Kaoren, while Sen (who has embraced learning English of late) pounced on each of us in turn, chanting: "Kaoren is father. Cassandra is mother. Lira is sister. Rye is brother. Ys is sister." Then she repeated on a rather frantic and high note: "Rye is brother and Ys is sister!" and burst into tears and had to be hugged a lot by everyone. It was just such a relief to her, to have that confirmation, to make Ys and Rye officially her family. I got a nice lean from Ys after that, since the idea of sibling is more important to her than the idea of parent and she is very glad Kaoren and I have made it possible.

Sen happily calls us Mummy and Daddy (and Rye after a very shy conversation calls us Mother and Father). Both use the English words to distinguish us from their blood parents. Ys and Lira stick with Kaoren and Cassandra (or You).

I’m an official parent now. And baby will make five.

Instead of a honeymoon, we instituted Family Holiday. Just like Mum and the Aunts and Uncles used to take us all camping, each year for our Family Anniversary we’re going to go on a holiday together. Mostly camping, but sometimes we might visit Tare or even Kolar. This time was camping, with Lohn, Nils, and Zee along as bodyguards, and Mara, Shar and Fein along for company. And Siame, who now is four and a bit-times an aunt, and has barely said a word since she saw I was pregnant.

We were given use of a nice big roomy flier, packed it with tents and food and went somewhere no one had been. Northern hemisphere, about the same latitude as Pandora, but on the western edge of the next village over’s Ddura-range. A grassy, hilly place specked with wide, low-branched trees perfect for climbing, with lots of streams and countless hidden pools. We cruised in the flier until we spotted a nice place and then hovered while Nils, Zee and Lohn went and double-checked that there was no threat, then pitched tents on a cute little grassy island at the join of two streams.

There was a girls' tent (Sen, Ys, Lira and Siame), a boys' tent (Rye, Fein, Shar) and then smaller tents for each couple. Nils and Zee were technically on duty, but were more openly a couple on this trip than they usually behave around people. Mara is already getting to be very noticeably pregnant, so she got a cot in case the ground was too uncomfortable, but the grass was very thick and cushiony thanks to a clover-type plant, so we didn’t have any real problems, and Lira even slept in the tent, despite insisting she’d sleep in the flier. Lira very much disdained the idea of camping and could find no discernable reason why anyone would want to sleep in a tent when they had a perfectly good bedroom – or at least a cushioned seat in the flier. Ys started out indifferent, so long as she was permitted to read with as little interruption as possible, but turned out to really enjoy exploring the area.

Fein and Rye are really great together. Fein overflows with energy and schemes. He’s always overcoming Rye’s shy and obedient habits and – while he can never get Rye to break any of the strict rules we’ve made – is teaching him to push a little at the edges, and to be more confident about boundaries. Rye in return has given Fein some respect for the unfun stuff which Rye treats as a privilege. Particularly, I think, because Rye is always quick to find practical applications for the things he’s learning.

They both got very involved in identifying all the species of plants and animals around the camp, and provisionally describing and naming everything they think is new. Rye’s studies are really showing through in his use of language, and he’s very exacting in his descriptions. They sometimes drafted Shar as an assistant, which Shar tolerated with faint amusement. Shar’s making slow progress toward becoming family, and now reminds me more of Siame than anyone else – very in command of himself but still holding himself back. He’s closest to Mara, whose down-to-earth honesty seems to appeal to him, and I can see why Mara said he would have been captain material, so I’m curious to see what he’ll end up doing with himself. Mara tells me he hasn’t quite escaped being expected to settle Nuran disputes, but is mostly focused on his studies, and has been suffering a bad spate of Place Sight-related dreams. Like most of the older Nuran kids, he’s only a few years from legal adulthood, but incredibly behind in terms of a Taren curriculum, and he needs to find a role and a career in an entirely new world. I wonder sometimes if he’ll end up becoming a leader of the Nuri in the end anyway – he has a kind of low-key authority and certainly a lot of charisma which would probably do him well in politics.

I was a little worried when Lira decided to try out her new-found powers of attraction on him, but fortunately Shar seems to think her overly young – and even at fourteen he’s used to girls chasing him, so he was quite adept at being clearly not interested without being insulting. I wondered if Ys would find all this a potential threat to her friendship with Lira, but I had the distinct impression Lira was discussing it all with her before making each attempt – Ys certainly watched with a kind of amused curiosity.

The two of them also cornered me alone one day, and we had the most amazingly funny conversation, full of blushes in every direction. Lira wanted to know about my early love life and whether I’d ever been with anyone but Kaoren. It’s not the sort of thing either of them would have considered asking me a year ago, and certainly not a conversation I’d ever want to have with my Mum. Ys was using Lira to get answers to questions she won’t ask herself, but Lira was also frankly curious about something she’s become interested in.

Lira interested in sex is an idea which horrifies me, of course, and I had to work to not to go into a meltdown of denial about them being too young to have this discussion, but I think they were both really just curious, and far from ready to put anything into practice.

I was fairly honest with my answers, though I did set some boundaries about the kind of questions it was appropriate to ask. I tried to capture something of Mara’s practicalness when talking about the fact that people were sure to try to go to bed with them just because they were famous, and certain difficulties they’re going to have doing normal social stuff because of their fame. Lira (an Ys question, I think) wanted to know if I regretted having sex with someone before Kaoren, but I don’t really. It was what I wanted to do at the time, and even though it turned out that neither of us really felt strongly about the other, it wasn’t a negative experience, and I felt a lot less pressured during my last year at school because sex became a bit less of a focus for me. It wasn’t some massive mystery of ultimate importance any more.

Then I gave them both a very clear understanding of when and what they’re legally allowed to do, what I’d prefer them to do, and things they should do if anyone does something they don’t want. And also techniques for turning down people, especially ones who seem genuinely to care. I gave Lira a particular look at that one and said: "You know very well you’re very beautiful. You’re going to hurt people just by looking like that, no matter how you behave. But it helps if you try and minimise harm."

Since then, Ys occasionally teases Lira about wearing a warning sign, which is a private joke she has just with us three. It amazes me, and makes me very happy, that both of them have reached that level of comfort, with each other and with me.

It was a lovely break, surrounded by people who are special to me, seeing new places, plants and animals, catching and roasting fish on an open fire. Kaoren was feeling super-possessive and we spent a hell of a lot of time kissing. Everyone got a little sunburnt, and it was so very much one big family, with even Shar and Siame looking settled in and enjoying themselves. I’m already looking forward to next year, and I’ve only been back one day.

Trying not to hope too hard for it to be a full family holiday, and that Operation Move-to-Muina will be a resounding success.

18 - May

May 13

Time off

Now that I’m not working (no scheduled projections till after the baby’s born), I’ve been able to get some solid work in on my school work. And, well, have been replaying my wedding (and pre-wedding honeymoon night) rather a lot. The posed scans turned out very well, and there are some special images from the ceremony itself which I adore. Tons of press leaks, of course, but I’ve come to factor that in to any event which has more than the people closest to me there.

One of the reasons I avoid public events so much is that everything any of us do is picked apart and analysed and adopted into popular culture. Veils are suddenly in for weddings (I’m so not going to tell anyone what Mum once told me they symbolise), and there’s all sorts of fan art based on the leaked scenes, and endless forum discussion about every minor leaked or made up detail. Plus there was a documentary about me which premiered the evening of the wedding which was really accurate and detailed and had an awful lot about the kids and what they’re like in it. Albeit, the kids have fan clubs and it’s rare bad things are said about them, but I know that can change, and that I’m the cause of this pressure of attention.

I had to laugh, though, when the next episode of Muina Ez was all about the characters speculating over where we’d all gone after the wedding. The rumour was that we were holidaying on Kolar, and there were tons of false sightings. And then the real story of what we were doing leaked out, and there was lots of scandal about Lira and me being allowed to go anywhere even mildly risky. Fortunately that was on our last day, and we were home before they reached the point of ordering us to return. The rumour mill immediately switched over to whether I’m pregnant, and though we haven’t confirmed that, taking a year of leave from doing any form of visualisation kind of gives away our plans. Endless discussion over whether I’ll obligingly pop out more touchstones, or stronger or weaker talents than Kaoren. And discussion on how me having real children will effect my adopted children, which of course annoys the hell out of me.

I’ve been bonding with Lira rather a lot since we got back. Occasionally beneath her prima donna acts I still glimpse a lingering band of hurt and uncertainty. Ys, Rye and Sen are so strongly a unit, and although Lira’s become family, she knows herself to be an outsider to the couple that Kaoren and I am, and the deep bond between Ys, Rye and Sen. It must feel as if everyone loves someone more than they love her. I fully sympathise with her need to be loved for herself, not for being a touchstone, nor even for being the very brave girl who saved my life.

She’s continued to question me about what I was like when I was her age, and has talked a little about the things she does and doesn’t want to do, and the fun parts, the problems and the ethics of being a touchstone. Lira and I aren’t very alike – she enjoys reading novels about as much as she enjoys anything else, but is far more interested in more social activities. Since the kids started attending the talent school again, she’s accrued a little coterie of followers, and likes to talk about them with me (partially I think because Ys is impatient with too much of this kind of talk). Fortunately she and Ys seem to have found a happy balance to their friendship, and Ys acts in the role of confidant, while everyone else gets to be Lira’s admirers.

Ys on the other hand would barely speak if she could help it. Even in the mandated school and family group activities, I’ve noticed that she has that faint air of abstraction, and her usage logs show that she’s reading. This isn’t something I’ll criticise specifically, since I certainly read a book or two sneakily under the desk in particularly boring classes, and she seems quite good at dual-tasking. Importantly, she’s not withdrawn or stressed by social situations – she’s just so engrossed in reading that she doesn’t want to waste time with people. I’ve told her the occasions where she has to give her full attention, but otherwise more power to her. She has, I think, finally gained a strong enough sense of security to truly relax, and simply being able to learn and learn and learn makes her deeply happy.

She’s quickly improving her English. Not enough to read most novels by herself, but we can hold limited conversations now. Dinner is an English-only meal, which annoyed Lira very much until she decided it constituted a secret language which only a privileged few were capable of speaking. She’s quite good at learning when she sets her mind to it, and she and Rye are settling onto a similar level, which is good because Lira’s most inclined to refuse to do things she’s the worst at. Kaoren really enjoys being able to speak English. He wants to be able to read more of the books I grew up reading, and to better understand my culture, and understanding the language will make a huge difference to that, though he had to shake his head when I started explaining how English was like the Borg, assimilating all these others languages, and that Earth was hundreds of languages washing up against each other. Since I have only the vaguest knowledge of anything but English, Earth’s other languages aren’t a primary focus for him.

I’m just glad that, if I ever get to introduce my family to Mum, that they’ll be able to understand each other.

Kaoren and I have been very desperately in love with each other for the past couple of months, and finding it difficult to get enough time alone with each other, now that he’s returned to duty. He says me being pregnant is making it difficult for him to not be excessively protective and possessive. I can’t say I’m not enjoying that.

A little over six weeks along. I still don’t feel pregnant, though the medics have confirmed it. No morning sickness, no sudden enlargement of breasts, nothing but not having a period, which I’d grown used to anyway. Mara, Ketz and Jeh are all looking thoroughly pregnant now (Mara looks very thoroughly pregnant). A little under three months to go for them.

Zee told me she and Nils are going back to Tare to get married in a tiny ceremony, because Nils wants his only living relative, his extremely fragile great-great-grandmother, to be able to be there. That’s a bit of a secret.

19 - June

June 28

Baby overload

Bad morning sickness every time I wake up. Plus I successfully made Kaoren sick too, when he touched me just before I was about to vomit everywhere. He was very annoyed with himself. Fortunately we can still sleep together, but after our vomit morning he makes sure not to be too close when I wake up.

I’m just ever so slightly showing. No wriggly sensations as yet. Zee has joined in – she and Nils are having a daughter. Nils is impossibly happy, has been ever since Zee finally agreed to marry him. This, unfortunately, increases the Nils Effect – even Ys and Lira go pink when he visits, despite Nils being well above the age range they are starting to be confused about.

Mara has had her babies early. Kyo and Jerl are very identical, and Sera, who will have four brothers, is extra-small and tiny. I’d say she was doomed to be spoiled and overprotected, but given that she’s Mara’s daughter I expect her to be kicking their asses in no time. They all had to stay in hospital for a couple of days, due to being early, but they seem to be healthy despite being so tiny, and Lohn and Mara have been able to bring them home. I took just Sen to visit so as not to be overwhelming, and Sen was very good, staying extra-quiet and treating them like snowflakes – not even letting herself breathe too hard near them. Mara is pretty exhausted – her pregnancy really started to wear on her the last few weeks – and poor Lohn was totally exhausted as well – he worried himself to the bone, and still hasn’t gotten any sleep, I think. Shar has taken over the household during their distraction. He’s very low-key, but somehow the things they need all just happen to be right at hand. And he changes nappies.

He’s still a very close-mouthed boy. I sometimes wonder what Shar thinks about being placed in with the sacrifices, since he is one of two of the absolute highest rank who survived. Very few of the Nuran children at the talent school will ever talk about the families they lost. Partly because they miss them, but also because there is a good deal of quiet speculation as to whether any of their immediate family were part of the conspiracy, since it’s believed to have been almost entirely confined to the noble caste. The question of whether your parents decided to sacrifice not only your world, but also you, as part of a bid for immortality is hardly a thing you want to poke at too deeply.

I don’t think he’s unhappy – he seems to enjoy various sporty things, and training his talents, and reading – but Mara worries about the distance he keeps between himself and most everyone else, and the fact that he doesn’t have any close friends. Though she did say he seems to like bringing Fein over to Arcadia, and she thinks that’s because he likes talking to Kaoren. If Shar was ten years older, he’s the type of person I guess Kaoren would socialise with, and Kaoren has also been helping him with Sights training. Maybe, when the age gap isn’t so big a part of the whole, they’ll end up friends.

Muina is preparing for elections in a few months – it’s taken ages for a method of government to be agreed upon, and it’s basically a watered-down version of the Taren system, with a combination of merit and election for whole heaps of very important positions, including each city’s governor, but also a straight-out popularity contest for world governor – which is a more practical role than you’d expect given that anyone can nominate – and is not even required to pass a basic civics exam. It’s going to be very interesting (and a bit worrying) to see what the policy decisions will be once KOTIS is no longer in primary control. Now that they’ve finally agreed on that, the news has been full of discussion about who is going to nominate for what, and of course Kolar v Tare issues, not to mention what little Nuran representation there’ll be.

They’ve slowed down settlement the last few months, wanting to get the four main cities better established, and the first few of the big farms producing. The big farms are mainly around Zurenath and Liriath. Zurenath was the site of a lot of farms before the disaster, and Liriath is handily flat and fertile and far enough south to not be snowy. In a way it’s kind of awful – vast areas being cleared for farming – but they are at least making a strong effort not to completely destroy habitat, and keeping what Earth would call wildlife corridors in.

They decided that it was really important to do that. Muina’s ecology is a bit all over the place because outside the circles of coverage around the platform towns, Ionoth have been pretty rampant – cleared by the Ddura on a far more sporadic basis. Native species have survived out there – just dealing with a lot more predators and competitors – and there are some adapted Ionoth too, which the Ddura no longer seem to recognise as foreign to the planet. Settling outside the protected areas is still a big risk at the moment.

The tears into the Ena are healing – painfully slowly. Since they no longer gape, there’s no longer nearly so many Ionoth finding their way into real space, but Ena missions are still necessary on Tare and Kolar – and scheduled on Muina for research and to clear the few non-Ddura-protected settlements like Kaszandra. Fourth and First-Second (currently captained by Grif) have been very busy the past month. Maze and Lohn have both taken long leave (and Regan will take leave once his two sons are born). Kaoren’s continued to exhaust himself with Ena missions, and will be up to when our baby’s born, which has annoyed his mother a great deal.

Teor just won’t let herself believe that Kaoren really enjoys being a Setari. Partly, I’d say, just because of his own sheer excellence at it. He likes the challenge, he likes doing well, and he likes being in charge. The exploration tasks are his favourites – he usually talks about those missions with me afterwards, describing what he’s seen and talking about all the worlds which must be out there in fact or fiction to produce those spaces. It’s dangerous, and the longer missions exhaust him, but if he didn’t take it so seriously it would be fun for him.

I get stressed about it when they’re on long missions, but I’m managing fairly well. It’s very much a part of who Kaoren is, and I don’t feel a need to press him to change direction any time soon. He’ll have a long break when the baby is born (sleepless nights don’t make for combat efficiency) and Fourth will probably be split among other teams or be assigned a new captain. He says he’ll have to evaluate after that whether to make a more permanent change to primarily real-space work. I’ve asked him if he’s ever considered swapping to focus on art, but he doesn’t want to make such a complete shift any time soon, and isn’t really sure it’s something he could ever do.

Talking about drawing always leaves him quiet and withdrawn. His perfectionism, his all-or-nothing approach, is very different from my casual attitude to life, but I have no urge to push him to do any particular thing. Drawing or fighting, he’s still Kaoren.

20 - July

July 19

Names

Muina Year 3. The biggest downside of my pregnancy is that I don’t want to risk projecting, and so I can’t check in on Mum, and can’t ask her questions.

Back when we got engaged, and briefly talked about having babies, I told Kaoren he could name any boys, and I’d name any girls (mainly because I had a girl’s name I’d always liked, but not really a boy’s one). He’s been thinking about it very seriously ever since. Names matter to Kaoren.

Earth’s languages added a new level of complexity to his choice, since he’s seen me trying not to giggle at more than a few Kolaren and Taren names which are considered quite ordinary, but are very silly to me (like one of the technicians whose name is Fearme). Kaoren’s never volunteered any suggestions until today, when he asked what I thought about the name "Tyrian". It’s a little unusual – sounds like a name for a style of architecture – but I kind of like it. I expect it would be Tyr for short most of the time, and I don’t mind that either. We’re provisionally settled on that unless we change our mind, though we’re not sharing it as yet (Sen is very annoyed with me for saying we haven’t decided whenever she asks what the baby’s name will be).

But I really really wish I could check with Mum, in case Tyrian means something which would make her giggle.

I had an excursion earlier this week because I decided to go on one of my very rare non-interface shopping trips – Rye’s starting to shoot up a bit in size and all the kids could do with new clothes and I had maternity and baby stuff to buy. Virtual reality shopping is far beyond grainy photos on E-Bay, and I’m usually happy enough to make my purchases online because public appearances are a pain in the neck. I like my island, and I visit the other islands a lot, and we frequently go on little nature exploration trips to places that don’t have a lot of people. I can go to the cities so long as I’m not seen much in public areas. But occasionally I feel a strong need to just wander around in an actual shop.

No-one argued the point when I asked to be allowed to go shopping with the kids some day in the near future, though I was uncomfortable because I knew that there’d be at least two security meetings about me going shopping before the city police even get told about it. I sometimes wonder if it would be better if I just went out every day until everyone was bored of looking at me. I also keep picturing Lira hitting her really rebellious mid-teen phase and deciding she wants to go nightclubbing alone.

It took five days before everything was settled, and it was agreed we would go (with an escort of six Setari) during the after-lunch lull. While KOTIS would really rather I sat somewhere quietly and just let them guard me, they’ve never argued with my requests, or suggested that it’s inconvenient for the kids to attend the talent school. Even dropping them off has been a bit difficult at times, because people will come to the edge of the school grounds (now with ornamental fences and gardens) and watch the island skimmers arrive and try and take pictures.

The talent school has become, not too surprisingly, the school every child wants to attend, and there’s some wonderfully distorted stories about combat training, and stumbling across Setari everywhere. They’ve set aside a great swathe of the land to the south and east of it, and are in the process of laying out a large campus for what will eventually be a weird hybrid selective school to deal with kids with strong talents, and also kids who are attending for other reasons (primarily relatives of other students, and the children of VIPs who need guarding). KOTIS Command is slowly shifting operations on Tare and Kolar to make their Kalrani facilities into one of the new style talent schools, and Pandora is expecting an influx of Kolaren and then Taren Kalrani in the next few weeks.

They’re even talking about it being a world school if the experiments in recreating the aether-making buildings and the transport network work, and thus kids from every settlement might be attending. I’m pleased about the expanded campus because there’ll be sporting facilities, and Rye is so looking forward to more options for team sports. I’m also pleased that the draft plans I’ve seen leave lots of the trees intact.

Other than once or twice being glimpsed at the school’s dock, I hadn’t made a public appearance since the wedding pictures were released – I refuse all the invitations to events which are now forwarded to me – so me wandering about was considered likely to cause a high amount of fuss. We decided to go in two groups for shopping, with the boys hoping to stay low-key, and meeting up with Siame for lunch at the fancy café at the Pandora Museum before taking a tour of the exhibits and checking out the Gallery.

We went first to the big underground shopping complex below Moon Piazza (after a brief stop to look at the statue, on the insistence of Sen). It was reasonably non-busy once we were in the main mall, and we were wearing sunhats and were shielded by our escort (Alay and Maze, Nils, Mori, Zee and Glade) and strolled along window shopping. Alay, Maze and Zee are technically on leave at the moment, but volunteered to be part of the escort (so me, Zee and Alay could talk baby stuff, really).

While handily blocking casual view of us, Nils, Zee and Maze got recognised themselves (the senior Setari are all fairly well-known by now), and it’s really kind of fun to watch the ripple impact of an interface connected world. First a few people paused for double-takes, and then stopped altogether and watched outright while we were peering in a jewellery store window (Lira is very keen to get her earrings) and then a couple of reports appeared on the Setari-watch and Caszandra-watch pages and then there was this snowball effect as more and more people in the shopping complex spotted us, or were contacted by other people. We’d gone into a "young girl’s clothes" store and the lone assistant didn’t even look up as we came in and then suddenly spun around because someone had obviously told her we were in her store.

It’s pretty hard to shop normally when people start hanging about, watching everything you do. Ys – whose interest in shopping is minimal – put up with it because she could see how much fun Sen found the experience. The crowds disconcert Sen a little, but she’s decided it’s amusing to peep out from behind our legs and wave at people. And she and Lira love shopping, especially trying on clothes in a way which is just that bit more satisfying than virtual clothing. Fortunately one of the things which had been decided upon was to ask the stores to set their display windows to opaque while we were inside, which saved us from having too many prying eyes hoping to catch glimpses of anyone modelling new outfits. I had to prod Ys to try on anything, of course, but managed to get a good set of clothing choices for all three, and then we passed through a food court and indulged in unhealthy but gaudily coloured snacks before moving on to shoes and then a baby and maternity store before heading off to meet Kaoren and Rye.

By that time I was feeling pretty tired and was glad we’d booked ahead for one of the café's private rooms. Particularly since it was rather a fancy café, and the privacy gave Kaoren a chance to remind the kids (and, well, me) of some of the niceties of Taren table manners.

I really have to wonder what my Mum will make of all this, if I manage to get her here. And Jules. I don’t think either of them will like this part of living on Muina at all.

21 - August

August 2

Games

Siame submitted one of her paintings to an anonymous art competition and won second prize, which has annoyed her extremely so far as I can tell. She’s also slowly been resuming her Setari training, attending the talent school at Pandora. Officially she was never dropped from the Setari program, since while Kalrani usually don’t get to take a year off to paint, Sight Sight talents are rare enough and touchy enough that the bluesuits decided that she’d be permitted extended recovery time from being half-gutted by the Cruzatch. Kaoren says she’s returned because she wants to be in the exploration teams working through the ruins outside the Ddura-protected areas.

That includes Kalasa, which is slowly being cleaned as well as studied. They’re learning a lot, having translated the intact books, and those I visualised for them before I went on leave. They’re still having big arguments about whether to completely restore it, or preserve it in its damaged condition. People want to go be tourists there, but it’s still too important. One day, probably, and till then they have incredible virtual tours.

There’s a new interface game starting – being released on Tare and Muina at the same time – and maybe Kolar as well, since the interface is slowly spreading there now Tare has relaxed its restrictions on trade. It’s called Home and it’s based on what is now known of the fall of Muina and the exodus of whole villages through deep-space to find other worlds to live on. Players will take on the roles of junior Lantarens and warriors and have to find a route to a habitable planet and escort hundreds of NPC villagers and explore and settle the planets. Lots of weird deep-space stuff, battles with massives, resting in various spaces accessed on the way, searching for food and supplies, locating planets and checking to see how habitable they are, getting trapped in sprawling zones and having to puzzle a way out.

Battlestar Galactica without the spaceships, basically, but it sounds really different and fun and event-based and I’m definitely going to play a lot. Unlike the online games I’ve played, everyone gets to go through the zones, no matter what level they are, and they just get assigned different tasks according to the skills they’ve built up as the game progresses. I was a bit worried that people would recognise me from my accent, but Nils (who plays lots of online games because he likes battles which don’t have any lives in the balance) told me not to worry, that there’s always plenty of people in games pretending to be Setari, or me, or my kids. He said he sometimes pretends to be someone pretending to be a Setari.

Kaoren says he will play Home with me, and smiled even before I laughed. This is home, and nothing virtual about it.

22 - September

September 17

Echoes

This has been a month where the Ena reminded us that it might have faded as a threat, but it’s far from gone.

First came a stickie outbreak on Kolar, one which was unfortunately discovered because a few of the infected reached the psychotic break stage of the stickie lifecycle. It was in what the Kolarens call The Grey – the permanently twilight area close to the northern pole. The Grey is a highly desirable place to live on Kolar, with just enough light to navigate by thanks to the sun dancing around the horizon, and with a comfortable temperature range, edging toward chilly as you approach The Black[18].

They have more above-ground buildings in The Grey than anywhere else on Kolar, and rather lovely street lighting powered by a kind of fungus which produces a soft radiance it evolved to lure insects. As you head toward The Black it must be like living in glow-worm land. The stickie-infected people apparently ran around smashing all the lights in their building, then spread out into The Grey snuffing the glow-worm fungus leading into The Black and getting luminous gunk on them and leaping out at unsuspecting passers-by. It sounds like it would be funny, but they hurt quite a few people, and mostly died themselves, so definitely not funny.

The stickie infection was very widespread and Kolar was still mopping up when a batch of new settlers on their way from Tare nearly collided with a massive – a particularly difficult one to avoid, too, like a hungry sea urchin-octopus, all spines and tentacles. The ship – the Isadore, the largest of the passenger transports – took a bad knock, gouged all along its underside and nearly tossed off course when it powered free of the tentacles. Nor could they just race off and escape the massive, needing to keep to the delicate timing through the ebbs and flows of deep-space. It was a slow-moving tentacle monster, but fast enough to follow them through their stop-start journey to Muina.

When the Isadore came lumbering through the rift gate, too damaged to do more than avoid setting down directly on top of Atanra, I was on my balcony enjoying the Autumn view and the fact that Twelfth has finally had another posting to Muina. I hadn’t seen Zan since my wedding, though we’ve kept up an exchange of emails, and we were bonding over stepping exercises (which the medics recommended I keep up through the pregnancy).

I was just working my way up to asking Zan her opinion of Shon, who I thought might make a nice match for her, when KOTIS went to full alert. Roake (Lenton), Dess and Sora Nels had been over at Arcadia’s Setari house, and came whizzing up to stand protectively around me.

When the "Massive at Atanra" message came, Zan exchanged a glance with her squad, then they all looked at me, not impossibly large but well past the point where I have to think before bending down or standing up. I’d been dreading a massive attack, since many of the Setari still can’t reliably enhance themselves, but there’s no way I can risk the strain on my system.

"Atanra has plenty of weapons, right?" I said to Zan.

She nodded, attention elsewhere. Because I’m on leave, I hadn’t been brought into the forming mission channel, but just then Kaoren opened a private link to me, because he knew I’d need to know what was going on.

Muina’s Setari, scattered all over the planet, were already heading to Mesiath, because there’s a reliable and short route from Mesiath to Atanra via the Ena. Eighth Squad was out of the loop, busy on Arenrhon rotation. That left us with all nine Nuran Setari, First-Second, Fourth, Twelfth, Fourteenth and Sixteenth. No Kolarens – they’d been recalled because of the stickie mess.

First and Fourth had taken down the Umbrella massive, but it had needed so many more squads for the Dohl Array massive. And as information flooded in from Atanra, and Kaoren and Tsur Selkie made their initial evaluations, it was clear that Atanra’s defences were not sufficient – particularly when using most of them would destroy the Isadore more quickly than the massive. Mara, Jeh, Ketz and Alay all hurriedly made arrangements with their handily-close relatives, while Zee (frowning rather) came across to take over being my guard.

Zan spared me a glance and told me to go sit down, then she flew her squad off to Pandora’s platform. I went inside obediently enough, sending an email to the kids explaining briefly what was going on so they wouldn’t have to wonder why some of their teachers had dashed off.

"It’s bad, isn’t it?" I said to Zee when she followed me in. A pointless thing to say, really – I could see it was bad, as Kaoren was watching vision from Atanra of the massive slowly shuffling across grassy meadows towards the downed ship[19].

Zee only gave me a brief nod, and then Ys sent me a channel request. She, Lira and Rye were all in-channel when I joined.

"Will people die?" Ys asked, with typical bluntness.

"I don’t know, Ys." The passengers of the Isadore were in a state of complete panic, rushing the exits so that the ship’s captain had had to open them just to prevent people dying in the crush. "I think it will depend how long it takes the squads to get there." And how much firepower it would take to bring the thing down.

"Lira wants to help."

I paused. The question of Lira working as a touchstone has been raised over and over, and particularly after it was known I was pregnant. But Lira has so firmly refused to admit that she can still project, and has so consistently responded with anger and then panic to any discussion of her working as a touchstone, that KOTIS decided to back away from the discussion until she’s older.

Suspecting that this was perhaps more Ys thinking Lira should help, I said: "Are you sure you’re ready for that, Lira?"

"No," Lira said, sounding angry. "I don’t want to do it. But I don’t want people to die. And I want that more."

"I’m glad," I said, and then opened a channel to Tsur Selkie, Zan, and Kaoren (a second link), telling them: "Lira wants to help. I think she’s ready for it."

Zan, just short of the Pandora platform, held her squad, waiting, and it was only a few moments before Tsur Selkie gave her the go-ahead. I asked Zee if it was possible for Ys, Rye and Sen to be brought home from school early, and then sat on the couch to stress while she arranged that. My main goal from that point onward was to not distract Kaoren, which meant I did breathing exercises and tried to keep my heart rate at relatively normal levels. When the kids arrived, I had to really work at it because Sen was extremely distressed – partly because Sight Sight was working overtime on her need to know. I ended up describing parts of what was happening to her, which made it easier for both of us.

The first Setari, three of the Nurans, arrived at Atanra shortly after the Isadore’s captain had opened the ship’s exits. The massive was heaving itself into range of the ship, and there were hundreds of people scrambling over grass and rocks, trying to race a spiny octopus to Atanra’s fortified walls. Korinal, in lead, set Selreven and Otarien to scoop up as many passengers as possible while she tried to draw the massive away and avoid a large flock of escort swoops.

Fourth arrived back in real-space just as they were starting this manoeuvre, and were flying as quickly as they could from the near-space gate to Atanra. As soon as he had a direct look at the towering bulk of the massive, Kaoren said sharply: "No elementals!" and Korinal, about to fire a few Light bolts, veered away, then picked up a man-sized rock and threw it instead.

And the thing caught the rock and threw it back at her, a response she barely dodged. I checked Zee’s expression, and saw her frown deepen, and she only looked grimmer as the Setari squads made it through to Atanra and began collecting scattered passengers while struggling to draw the massive away from the Isadore. The massive would pause briefly to toss back rocks and snatch at any Setari who flew too close, while continuing to head slowly toward the Isadore, where more than two-thirds of the passengers were still trapped – and far less inclined to race out the exits when tentacles started trying to force their way in.

It was Mara, ever practical, who broke into the discussion of how to lure the massive away from the ship with: "Why don’t we move the ship? Do we have enough lift between us?"

"Possibly when enhanced," Maze said. "Let’s clear as many of these swoops as possible before making the attempt."

When Twelfth arrived with Lira, Kaoren had Fourth waiting at the gate from near-space. I blinked when I saw Lira emerge, since she was in a Setari uniform. Zan had had Sora Nels, Twelfth’s Ena manipulation talent, give Lira her uniform harness and stay behind. Lira was white-faced and looked impossibly young, and Kaoren briefly stopped being captain and switched to Dad to hug her and tell her that he’d be with her the entire time. She hadn’t had my slow progression into travelling through the Ena, and was being thrust into the deep end of Setari work, facing the most dangerous massive I’d seen so far.

"It will absorb elementals and gain strength from them," Kaoren said, as he bound his suit to Lira’s and lifted her closer to the battle. "It may be possible to draw it with elemental attacks, at least so that it separates from the ship. After that, stone bombardment, sonics, and Atanra’s weaponry, but we must be quick or its counterattack will be devastating."

The squads split into three groups – all the most powerful Telekinetic and Levitation talents with Lira, a lure group able to attack and fly, and a less mobile group trying to collect passengers between the ship and Atanra, and protect them from escort Ionoth.

For the Setari who couldn’t enhance themselves, timing would be an issue for the ship lift. It was going to have to be a quick, hasty haul, and as soon as the ship was out of the way they would have to rush to bombard, overwhelming the massive’s ability to play catch through sheer numbers.

The Isadore rocked and shifted with horrible groaning noise as the squads moved into position – the massive had a good grip on it and was trying to pry it open. The lure group began attacking immediately: Ice, Fire, Light and Lightning. Light and Lightning only seemed to sting the massive, but Fire and Ice were a little more effective, sending up a cloud of (calamari) smoke, while other tentacles were locked in mini-glaciers.

I’m not sure whether the massive even associated the attacks with the Setari, or if it just saw a cluster of people standing together unprotected by inconvenient metal shells. Whatever the case, it writhed toward them, leaving the Isadore free and suddenly flying, tilted somewhat, and trailing metal plating and the contents of its holds. It was a low, surging rush of a flight, the ship skimming barely above the ground, dropping as the first of the enhancements failed. But it was away, far enough for Atanra’s weaponry – the kind of explosive missiles I’m familiar with from Earth – to be deployed.

Kaoren had shifted Lira to meet with Alay and the Nuran, Serray, to enhance their sonic attack, and the lure group hastily whizzed as far out of the way as possible. Bombs and sonics and fortunately KOTIS could make the bombs explode rather than be thrown back, and then a wave of rock hurled from above, the full force of gravity on our side.

And then Kaoren was shouting. "Counterattack! Cover or distance!" even as he was thrusting Lira, Alay and Serray down into the grass behind the nearest tumble of rocks. The massive was fairly thoroughly damaged by then, most of its spines broken, tentacles severed. Only a handful of the spines were able to fire, and I can’t imagine what it would have been like if it had done that fully armed.

Each spine broke apart at the tip, then sprayed countless arm-length needles in every direction. Everyone on the ground had dived behind rocks, but all the Setari in the air had been able to do in the time was climb, gain as much distance as possible, and try to dodge what followed.

For the Setari with Combat Sight that was almost possible. For too many – for Zan – it was not.

No Setari died during this massive attack. But almost half of them were injured, and Zan was one of the worst, speared through the chest. Even those hiding behind rocks on the ground didn’t all escape, as the low-travelling spines hit with such force that they produced stony shrapnel. Fifty-seven of the passengers of the Isadore died, most in the crush at the exits, or in the tentacles just outside them. The danger of massives in deep-space isn’t going to go away, not so long as we continue to travel through it, and the days since then have been filled with discussion of how to deal with that. The suggestion which is carrying the most weight is using small conveys of more manoeuvrable ships, rather than ones as large and unwieldy as the Isadore.

My days have involved two main things: dealing with Lira’s nightmares, and visiting Zan. Despite the wave of adoring comment which followed, and the knowledge that they would not have been able to lift the ship without her enhancement, Lira never wants to go near combat again. She particularly has trouble seeing so many people she knows in medical – not just Zan, but Glade and Par as well. Par’s become a particular favourite of hers: his quiet consideration often defuses her temper, and since Lira hates it when anyone she cares about is sick, she’s spent the past week wracked with uncertainty and lack of sleep.

We’ve been haunting the medical section of the Setari building, a place I’d been avoiding lately since the greysuits still can’t resist scanning me at every opportunity. Tyrian just makes me more interesting to them. But I was there when she woke up, and had fun competing for bed-side space with half her squad. And Lara, the captain of Fourteenth.

Despite the real struggle Fourteenth had after being caught in the Ena during the post-blast storm, Lara’s as sleepy and relaxed as ever. He doesn’t say much to Zan when she wakes up, just checks on her, and then makes way for any other visitors. Zan’s very strange about him in return – she looks to see if he’s there, and almost seems to flinch at the sight of him. That worried me enough that I had to ask Kaoren what was going on, whether we needed to arrange for Lara to not bother her.

I don’t usually ask Kaoren to tell me the more private things he sees with Sight Sight, and on the rare occasions in the past when I’ve hinted that I’d appreciate some goss he’s quietly discouraged me. This time he laughed.

"Guilt," he said. "Namara is too hard on herself."

I had a perplexed moment, trying to work out what Zan had to be guilty about.

"Because Fourteenth was caught in the Ena-storm," Kaoren said. He half-closed his eyes, considering the situation. "Lara has had an extremely difficult few years, and while Namara knows on a logical level that she is not responsible for that, she still does not forgive herself for failing to do the impossible. She struggles to deal with him."

"Then why doesn’t Lara stay away from her?"

Kaoren just looked amused, giving me one of his fractional smiles, then left me to speculate.

23 - November

November 12

Tyrian

Tyrian arrived excitingly early, almost a full month ago. I do wonder if I triggered my own labour, since I was thoroughly sick of being pregnant by then. It at least came on very abruptly at lunchtime, without any hint for Kaoren’s Sights to pick up before he left for the day. Mip had shed his collar and I was trying to hook it out from under the couch, and was so frustrated by my inability to simply crouch down enough and look to see exactly where it was. In a bit of a temper, anyway, and then pain, and mess.

My discussions with Alay and Mara had led me to expect a slow build, and I had myself a little panic attack while, bizarrely, getting a mop and bucket and cleaning up the floor. I think I was trying to convince myself that it was a mistake, that I’d just had some kind of super-cramp, and I had to clean up just because.

I calmed down at the second contraction, even though it was quite soon, and went to stuff important things into the bag I’d been planning to pack, then sent a text to Kaoren, despite him being in the middle of a scouting mission at Telezon.

"Tyrian’s coming. I think it’s going to be quick. Going to get Nils and Zee to take me to medical."

Kaoren immediately opened a channel to me, but only said: "Heading back. Keep the link open."

Mori tells me that he stopped in the middle of the ruined street they were exploring, and just stood still for an exceptionally long time, then ordered them back to Pandora in such a curt tone that she thought some major disaster was underway. But he seemed to remember himself after they’d started flying back to Telezon’s platform, and said quietly: "Sorry, Cassandra’s in labour." Mori says it’s the first time she’s ever heard him apologise.

I’d gone on to tell Zee and Nils, who were at the guard quarters, and they came around immediately, and took me back to the mainland and were calm and amused and Zee stayed with me till Kaoren arrived, while Nils went and collected the kids and kept them distracted and entertained. I did have a baby-focused doctor, but also Ista Tremmar, who is my favourite of the Setari medics. Taren drugs handily kept me aware that pain was happening without obliging me to truly experience it, and even though my labour was barely more than three hours, Kaoren arrived in plenty of time to suffer through it with me.

Tyrian was a tiny newborn, and is still undersized for his age, but his lungs were fine and other than keeping us in overnight for observation, the medics consider us problem-free. He’s also not a touchstone, which gave me a great sense of relief. Today we took him back for baby’s first brain scan, and found he has the same power set as Kaoren, but with Ice instead of Light, though I knew after the first few days that he was Sighted. If I watch anything upsetting while holding him, he gets distressed, so I have to make sure only to read happy books while feeding him.

Overall I guess Tyrian would be considered a quiet baby, but he still poops and pees and cries enough to leave me feeling ragged most of the time. Fortunately Kaoren’s Sights effortlessly translate baby shrieking, so we can usually address the cause of the shrieking, except for the "shrieking because I want to" occasions. If I hadn’t fallen so instantly and utterly in love with the little screamer, I’d be wondering why I’d gotten myself into this.

He looks so much like Kaoren. But there’s just a little hint of me. I have a lot of trouble letting him out of my sight.

When not changing nappies, Kaoren has organised all the kids into doing a little project, creating The Book of Arcadia, which was meant to be a surprise for me until Sen told me all about it. Ys has done the maps, Lira and Sen have been pressing flowers and leaves, Rye has been contributing information about all the animals, and Kaoren has been doing illustrations. Once he realised that I knew, Kaoren roped me into the process, and I’ve added an ongoing history. After I’d kissed him rather a lot.

24 - January

January 1

This is the year

In just over two months, my two families will meet properly for the first time. I hope. Five minutes seemed like a long time when I learned how long the gate stayed open, but now I’m convinced that our calculations will be off, that we’ll be a day late, that the way Earth’s years work, the way leap years work, means that I’ve told Mum the wrong day.

I’ve been stressing over it, enough that I went through a patch of not being able to eat well, and had Ista Tremmar giving me stern lectures and threatening to medicate me. Kaoren went over the comparative calendars with me, and then we had a visit to near-space to visualise Mum to do the same thing, and check that everything was going to plan on her end.

Aunt Sue is planning to come, but not Aunt Bet and Uncle Steve (Uncle Steve has a huge extended family and isn’t keen on leaving them for another planet). And Dad.

I have a sister called Teresa, and a Step-Mum who thinks my entire family is insane and who wouldn’t want to go to some alien planet even if she thought it was real. Apparently. Fake-Mum kind of avoided giving me any opinions about this, as she does whenever she has to talk about Dad, but she did point out that if the gate really does open once every year-and-a-bit, this won’t be Dad’s only opportunity.

I didn’t tell fake-Mum about Tyrian. I want to see her real reaction.

After that, Kaoren turned what little energy Tyrian leaves me to planning a place for Mum and Aunt Sue to live. A pair of houses around past the guard quarters, with lots of room, and beds for gardens, though I decided not to have them planted out so Mum could pick what she wanted to grow. I got the kids involved in that, and we had a lot of fun designing it.

There’s been a fair amount of adjustment adding Tyrian to the family. Sen wants to be with him all the time, and we ended up making up a little bed for her again in the baby’s room. She’s at least been relatively nightmare-free. Lira finds Tyrian a little annoying – babies are definitely an attention-suck, and she’s a fairly finicky, cleanly creature, not accustomed to milky spew or drool. Rye, in the first few days, was painful to watch: some of the old uncertainty came back, the sense that now Kaoren had a real son, he wouldn’t be necessary any more. Fortunately the time off from active duty has given Kaoren the chance to spend more time with Rye, and along with the book project, he’s been giving him plenty of one-on-one combat training, and is pleased with his progress. Ys showed no hint of being threatened. She’s taken our measure now, and was simply pleased that Tyrian was healthy, and that I seemed to be coping. Tyrian always seems to quiet down when she holds him, too.

Have told Sen firmly that, no, no more babies just now.

25 - June

June 10

Everyone

I was an absolute stress-bunny in the week leading up to Operation Move-to-Muina. I got so bad that I needed to prepare myself before picking up Tyrian, or I’d set him bawling. All the practice I’ve had with visualisation exercises came in handy, though Kaoren eventually had to resort to the pillow barrier in bed to allow one of us to get some sleep.

We’d decided, after much debate, not to take the kids with us, but to stream what we were seeing to them. This would satisfy Sen’s overwhelming need to know, and also KOTIS' extreme reluctance to stand both of their precious touchstones in front of a gate to another planet. Siame, who finds Tyrian a strange and fascinating creature, agreed to be official adult-in-charge, with Jeh and Ketz as back-up. The rest of the First and Second, both those on active duty and those taking breaks, came along to watch me fret.

KOTIS has built a little observation station out near the Earth gate. It’s usually unmanned, but the technicians go on day-trips out there to take readings from the gate, and it proved a good place for us to sit while waiting in the chill of late Winter. The gate was due to align about an hour after dawn Pandora-time, and in the late afternoon in Sydney. My Mum-projection had assured me that they’d arrive early and stay well past the time we’d predicted – and she promised to check the day before and the day after, but I was still this white knot of nerves.

KOTIS has decided not to send anyone through the gate to Earth – at least not until they’ve found a way there via deep-space – which I think may be due to my guesses as to how alien emissaries (without spacecraft) would likely be treated by the authorities. Two greensuits were standing at ready by the gate, and when it aligned they held long, thin poles with little triangles of cloth on the end through the gate to form a makeshift corridor since, while natural gates don’t have the same issues about attracting Ionoth, it still isn’t a good idea to run into the edges of them.

I was struggling not to dig my fingers into Kaoren’s arm, holding on to him hard and occasionally remembering to breathe. Because for an achingly long time – at least THIRTY SECONDS – there was nothing, just some poles vanishing.

And then, Jules.

He was running, mad grin on his face, light brown hair sticking up in a Tintin crest, arms and legs everywhere. He almost crashed into one of the greensuits, spun to a halt and then bounced around in a circle so he could see acres of snow-dusted forest, observation post, and the numerous spaceshippy looking fliers we’d used to get there.

"It’s real!" he said – shouted – as he bounced. "Take that, you fuckers! It’s real! It’s real!"

Jules hadn’t been able to keep his mouth shut about his sister off touring alien planets. That went as well as could be expected, but I guess he’s getting the last laugh now. Other than wishing he’d been able to bring a few of his (few remaining) friends, he’s been in a ferment of joy ever since.

While Jules was still sproinging in a circle, I let go of Kaoren and ran forward, because Dad was there, and I hadn’t known how much I’d missed him until I saw him blinking and giving the greensuits his bemused "I-come-in-peace" smile.

"I thought you weren’t coming," I said, as he swept me up in a bear hug, and made me feel all of five again.

"You think I’d pass up a chance to make sure you’re happy, kiddo?" His voice was all choked, and he squeezed me tight, lifting my feet off the ground.

"This is Kaoren," I said, and they had a moment of awkward Dad-meets-Husband, but I’d taught Kaoren the shaking-hands custom and so he was prepared for it.

I’d been distracted by new arrivals: not Mum and Aunt Sue, but a vaguely familiar woman, and a man carrying a girl tucked into a blanket, her head covered by a fluffy pink beanie. It was only when I saw Alyssa that I recognised them as her parents.

"Alyssa!" I said, surprised and pleased but inwardly shocked because Alyssa should be a lazily smiling blonde girl with a perpetual air of amusement, not strained and grim with red-rimmed eyes.

"Do the meet and greet later, Cass," she said, gripping my arm. "How good is their medicine, really? Your diary said they could cure cancer."

I probably gaped a little longer than absolutely necessary, but then turned to the greysuit escorting us for the outing, Ista Temen, and explained, with help from Alyssa. Ista Temen, though she was no means an expert in the area, asked a couple of questions and looked cautiously at the fragile, stick-like being which should have been Mad Maddy, Queen of the Caldwells, or at least Alyssa’s youngest sister.

"What you describe is something we are usually able to correct," Ista Temen said. "But this child is at the edge of death. There could be no guarantee."

"But it is possible?" I asked, and she nodded, so I translated and Alyssa’s parents started crying, but there was no time, and the monitoring greysuits were already giving the warning that we were past the halfway point.

Mum had arrived when I wasn’t even looking, and Kaoren had gone to greet her and Aunt Sue. Aunt Sue was carrying a furry cat-carrier, with Mimmit inside and decidedly unimpressed. Mum was wearing her Celtic dragon t-shirt, which she must have resurrected from the old clothes boxes in the garage specially for the occasion. Mum thinks she’s so funny.

With a quick smile for me, she told Alyssa’s parents that the gate was going to close soon, and Alyssa’s Dad carefully handed Maddy to my Mum, and then hugged Alyssa, and said something in such a choked voice that I couldn’t understand him.

They left and Alyssa stayed – the Caldwells have three other children, and lots of family they weren’t willing to leave behind, so Alyssa is here to be Maddy’s family. Then Dad came up and squeezed me again and followed. I’ve asked Mum what his new wife is like, but she won’t say much. Aunt Sue tells me more by pulling faces.

"Everyone this is?" Kaoren asked Mum, in his tentative English, and she nodded, so the greensuits began to withdraw the guide flags.

And then Nick came through, backward, falling flat on his ass in the snow. The greensuits were the quick-thinking variety, and immediately dropped their flagpoles and grabbed Nick instead, pulling him away from the gate (thus saving him from being a considerably shorter Nick). Nick, who naturally would find visiting alien worlds an excellent preoccupation, had chosen not to go with Alyssa because he felt he had to stay and look after his Dad. And his Dad had pushed him through the gate at the last moment, which I privately think might be the best thing my former Uncle has ever done.

The day’s mood had of course shifted considerably with the arrival of Maddy. Maze took Maddy from Mum, freeing her to hug me, and I was suddenly exhausted. Nick, after a moment’s shock, shook his head, dusted himself off, and went and hugged Alyssa, who promptly burst into tears.

Tsur Selkie, who had rather unexpectedly come along to watch, suggested we get everyone out of the cold, and we piled in the fliers and took a quick trip to the platform to check and fix security clearances. The aether didn’t like them, which I guess means my original security access was purely because I was a touchstone. And of Muina’s handful of Earth immigrants, I’m still the only touchstone. Kaoren and I explained a little more to the kids – and various officials – while we travelled and by the time we were through the platform processing a small group of medical experts were waiting at the KOTIS facility. Ista Chemie took everyone else for the usual inoculations and interface install – and an interesting discussion over whether Mimmit needed to be immunised – and then we sat for a while, waiting for the experts' early verdict on Maddy’s chances.

She was in terrible shape. She’d been diagnosed a few months after I’d strayed, had gone through chemo and into remission, and it was only about six weeks before Mum was quietly making arrangements to "go overseas" that Maddy’s condition had nose-dived, and the chemo just didn’t seem to be helping. And there was Mum with my diaries, full of regrowing eyes and limbs, and cures for most cancers.

When Mum had first received and read them, she’d photocopied certain sections and gave them to Dad and Jules, Nick, Alyssa and the Aunties – she says that she figured I’d not be comfortable with everything I’d written being passed around. Outside a very small group (and the kids Jules had shot his mouth off to), the official story was that I’d turned up alive and well overseas. It wasn’t until Maddy’s relapse that Alyssa had made any attempt to tell her parents about what I’d really been doing, and of course they didn’t believe her. But as Maddy got worse and worse, I guess even completely off-the-wall ideas became something to cling to.

Mum, Aunt Bet and Aunt Sue had all sold their houses, and made an outrageous offer to the person who owned the house in front of my estimated gate location. Those people wouldn’t sell, so Mum & co bought the house next door. That made waiting for gates to other planets a lot easier, and also really helped when Maddy’s parents "took her overseas to see a specialist". It was a terrible risk, and even in the short time they had Maddy at the new house, her condition went so rapidly downhill that it was no wonder that Alyssa was barely holding it together by the time the gate opened.

The first thing the Muinan medics did was bathe Maddy in aether, which is something they’ve been trialling for critical cases. Even Taren medical science can’t cure cancer in a day – a least not the kind of bone marrow issues Maddy has. For one thing, they use the interface to assist treatment, and Maddy was in no state for an install. It took nearly two months before she’d recovered enough condition even for that, but the effect of the aether was immediate and very apparent. I wish it had been possible to tell Alyssa’s parents the good news straight away.

Earth will never be the same if KOTIS manages to find a way through deep-space. I stupidly hadn’t even thought of the implications for Aunt Sue, who has been listening to so much music, and who dragged my Mum off to skin treatment and came back looking thirty. Life expectancy is so much longer here, and by Taren standards they’re still relatively young.

Alyssa wanted to stay with Maddy, but after the medics assured her that her sister would be unconscious – and stable – for most of the day, she let out her breath and looked at me, and said: "How is it that we’re on an alien planet, and I can see a spaceship through that window, but all I want to do is lie down?"

"You wait till the headache hits," I said, and hugged her. "C’mon, let’s go meet my kids."

"It’s going to take me a long time to adjust to the idea of you having kids."

"I think it’ll take me a while too," I said, and laughed.

My big adjustment was to Nick and Alyssa being here. Of all the people I knew before I stepped onto Muina, Alyssa was the one I spoke to the most, trusted with my thoughts. We’ve both changed so much, and it was a little weird between us at first, especially because I hadn’t known she liked Nick, and felt like an ass for all the times I’d talked to her about him without realising. Kaoren has become what Alyssa once was to me – the person I talk to – and it took weeks before Alyssa and I had a conversation which felt in any way normal. But then something clicked, and we were sitting down on the lake shore watching the kids dare the chilly water for their first swim of the season, and suddenly we were Cass and Alyssa again, different but the same. It was easier with Nick, who was a little shocked to be here, but has decided it’s a good thing, and is very glad not to have had to give up Alyssa after all.

Mum – in a way it feels like Mum’s been here all along.

I’m so glad that the kids and Kaoren have at least a basic command of English. When we all trooped into our lounge/dining room around midday, Siame and the kids had lunch set out ready for us, and were waiting in a line (looking rather like Siame was drilling them on how to stand up straight). Tyrian was asleep, tucked in his portable cot, and I saw Mum’s eyes go briefly to the cot, but then she was guessing their names, and telling them they could call her Grandmother or Nan or Laura, and introducing Aunt Sue and Jules, and Nick and Alyssa. And then I showed her Tyrian, and she was very quiet for a moment, and said she wouldn’t wake him up. We’ve had quite a few discussions about him since, of course, and she says she can see a hint of her father in the shape of his face, but that he really is extremely like Kaoren. Thankfully Tyrian would mean, at most, from Tyre in English, so she didn’t laugh.

Mum had brought presents for each of the kids (other than Tyrian) – she had the hugest backpack, but only one change of clothes (and no-one had brought coats). Aunt Sue had brought a year’s supply of coffee and chocolate (OMG TIM TAMS!). Nick’s backpack had two laptops and a dozen portable hard drives, with every movie and book and game he and Mum could collect in a year.

After lunch, after settling everyone in their rooms (Alyssa had slept even less than me), Mum emptied out her backpack. Sen of course loves presents, and tore hers hastily open. It was a collection of fairytales, worn from frequent use, the cover beautifully illustrated with a coiling dragon. Sen touched the edges almost reverently, then turned and held it out to Kaoren eagerly. He took it, then smiled. "It’s full of you, Cassandra," he said, then added the same thing in English. We’ve been doing a lot of saying the same thing twice, with distinct vagaries in the translation. All our newcomers opted for the language injection, after the medics decided it was probably my touchstoneness causing issues with it, but it’s still an entire new language.

"That’s was Cassandra’s first book," Mum said. "I would read her a story from it every night."

"And when I could read I must have read them a million times more," I added. No wonder they could feel it with Place. "I’ll read you one tonight, Sen."

"Two!" Sen insisted. She always bargains for treats. And then she hugged Mum, which was an excellent sign, and I saw Ys relax at it, and carefully pick open the tape on her own gift, which was an ereader in a black leather cover patterned with Celtic knot work.

"That, on the other hand," said Mum, "contains many books Cass has never even read. And many that she has. All my favourites." She pulled another present out of her backpack and handed it to Lira. "And this is something quite different."

Dolls. She’d made one of each of us. Kaoren in his uniform. Me wearing a lab rat t-shirt. Ys and Rye holding Sen’s hands – along with a book and a little furry animal. Lira, busy creating a statue of a cat. Mum’s dolls aren’t the cuddle-at-night variety, but fit in the palm of your hand, incredibly detailed, with a stylised realism which is very precise and exact. They’re utterly cool. Lira adored them. So did Sen, which nearly brought on a temper tantrum of epic proportions, but fortunately Mum distracted her by pointing out that she hadn’t known to make one of Tyrian, and would have to get Sen’s help with that. Sen and Lira have both been having doll-making lessons ever since. Lira’s infinitely better at it than I ever hoped to be.

Once Sen and Lira had stepped back from all-out war, Mum hauled out Rye’s present, which was taking up most of the rest of her enormous backpack. He nervously picked at the tape until Sen impatiently "helped" him, tearing the whole huge package open and spilling out hundreds of little packets and bundles out onto the floor. I recognised them immediately, but it wasn’t till Rye picked one up and saw the picture on the front that he understood.

Seeds. Seeds, bulbs, grains, even a couple of Mum’s favourite roses. Hundreds and hundreds of flowers, but also fruit and vegetables, herbs and spices.

"Only scratched the surface, really," Mum said, shaking her head at it all, then smiling at Rye. "But I think we can guarantee a pretty spectacular garden out of all this, if you’ll help me plant it. I’m not used to gardens which are snowed on."

Rye has become my Mum’s biggest fan. So has the botany department, since Rye rather sensibly presented most of the hoard to them. And I had to give her extra hugs because she’d managed to get her hands on seeds for cinnamon trees and cocoa beans. It’ll be years before they’ll produce anything harvestable, but still!

I’m so glad she’s here.

Though I almost took it all back when I noticed how often Tsur Selkie was visiting Arcadia. I was really quite upset when I realised what was going on, and I think that surprised Kaoren, but Tsur Selkie is just so humourless and grim, and didn’t seem like a good fit for Mum at all.

Kaoren listened to the little storm of angst which came flooding out of me, then hugged me and said: "I am almost certain that Sight told him that they were a match the very first time he saw her, in the log of your retrieval from Earth near-space. At that juncture he would have thought it impossible, and I wondered at the time what had hurt him so. I doubt you would have believed the ferment he was in, waiting to see if the gates would align as anticipated. He is someone who has carried a harsh load, and–" He paused. "And I think your mother equal to almost everything. Certainly to knowing her own mind, and heart."

Aunt Sue thinks it’s hilarious, and says it took a while for Mum to even realise that Tsur Selkie was being more than politely helpful. Of course, he doesn’t speak any English, but Mum’s a lot better at languages than I am, and soon was having long talks with him. Which is pretty amazing given that he makes Kaoren look wordy.

She calls him Gidds.

I am so not ever going to be able to process that, or the idea of him being my step-Dad, let alone that Mum’s seriously thinking about the idea of having a baby with him. But Kaoren was right – she’s perfectly capable of deciding whether Tsur Selkie works for her. And I guess he does, because I’ve never seen her smile the way she does now. So I can’t be upset about her doing something I didn’t expect.

Mum brought me a gift too. The book that I’d left half-finished on my bed, so many years ago. Because there’s nothing better than finding out how things end. And starting a new story.

THE END

1

They behave almost as if they’re not together, except just occasionally their eyes meet and – well, The Nils Effect triples.

2

And Shon’s two sisters, partially because I wanted to see if the youngest would scream and point at everyone. She and Sen got along extra-well, despite the age difference.

3

It was easier than I expected to have a barbeque made. Kolar has a lot more things like this than Tare, and so it wasn’t like I was asking for something extraordinary.

4

Zee tells me that it’s a very bad idea trying to fly over the top of the walls there.

5

Kaoren really doesn’t want anyone else handling the objects which mean a lot to him because of how they feel through Place Sight.

6

Now I’m picturing Teor trying to organise my Mum, which would so not work. Mum goes her own way.

7

Autumn is now well advanced, and we get warm enough days, but cold evenings.

8

A terribly complicated situation, since he’s basically a member of the ruling family who was left to die with the crowd, instead of joining whatever it was the Nuran Cruzatch allies were trying to achieve.

9

We’ve since had the whole pack over to our island, for a mass swimming lesson, and gone over to Siriath for another.

10

Rye’s not able to do the level of courses that Maze is doing, yet, but they can both attend all the practical farming courses which the university is running. Re-learning how to farm Muina, and getting large-scale food production established, is a very important part of KOTIS' settlement plans.

11

Lira’s actually done Enna a world of good, just because Enna really wants Lira to like her, and is so absorbed with getting Lira to accept her that she’s distracted from her nightmares and the overwhelming grief of losing her family.

12

Of course, being able to say she designed Caszandra’s wedding outfits gives her plenty of incentive to take me seriously – I have to admit I find this fame useful at times.

13

Siame is getting along very well with everyone but me. Me she still tries to have as little to do with as possible, and we’re letting it go at that for the moment.

14

I wonder if the holes might have closed by now.

15

We’ve also planned the guest house for our Setari minders, but it’s only just been seeded.

16

Not the one with the sword out to kill Bill.

17

Sen adores it, of course, and treats it like a particularly elaborate cubbyhouse.

18

South of The Grey is The Gold and then The Sere. Then it reverses to the southern pole. Kolar is a planet of latitudes.

19

If I were the goats that live by the rift, I would definitely consider permanent relocation.

Content

Höst Andrea K. Gratuitous Epilogue [Touchstone: Extras]

1 - December

2 - January

3 - February

4 - March

5 - April

6 - May

7 - June

8 - July

9 - August

10 - September

11 - October

12 - November

13 - December

14 - January

15 - February

16 - March

17 - April

18 - May

19 - June

20 - July

21 - August

22 - September

23 - November

24 - January

25 - June

1