I had been the apple of my father’s eye, the treasure of his hopes and now it was all ashes. Burned by panic stricken villagers as I stumbled blindly away into the bush, choking on my own blood. Ebola had come to our place and I was glad… glad that the others would no longer ridicule me for not being a man when I knew they were right.
I didn’t know why I was crying, maybe it was grief for myself because I was sure I was dying, maybe it was anger at my parents… not so much at them as at the culture that ensured they could never accept me.
I wanted to go away, so badly…but my family needed me. On my frail 10 year old shoulders lay the legacy of my line. I could never manage to tell them that I would not be the father of the next generation… Never had the courage to tell them I was their daughter.
Now none of that mattered.
Everyone I had ever known was dead or dying and I was going to join them.
I wanted to do it on my own terms. My parents were dead, my sisters were dead, the entire village was dead or dying.
There was no one left to care.
90 years later
I awoke from my flashback/nightmare once more, sheets sticking to me as I tried to recover my presence in the moment. That had been 90 years ago and it had never lost its power to bring me to a horrified awakeness…
It had been worse since Absalom died. We had been so certain we would live for an eternity when the Phage came and took almost everyone with sudden shocking finality.
For some reason the antibodies generated by Ebola survivors(any variety) resisted the phage and we survived… a bare few thousand…
Enough.
Enough to ensure the salvage of all but a very few backups. Most of humanity would be back when we finished growing their clones to the appropriate neural maturity. You can’t download an adult mind into a child body, the brain simply isn’t well enough developed to get a complete read. You can’t download a child’s body into an adult brain either, the individual winds up with fairly severe negative effects in many ways, emotional and physical.
As a result our children remained in their storage, dormant while the world slowly regrew itself. Early on we had made the commitment to each other that everyone who could be restored would be. They would be missing whatever time had happened since their last backup but in most cases that was a mercy.
Who wants to remember the world dying? I would love to scrub it from my brain if it didn’t mean that I would lose the last of my love, our very last days we would ever have together.
Absalom had been one of the ones whose backups were destroyed. There was only the first one, taken long before we met when he first emerged from his Amish community and accepted the nanos that would grant him endless life and perfect health.
Long before the Mercy Corps finally overcame the straggling remnants of deliberately primitive and murderous religious fanatics to help the last of them survive an epidemic disease that had been cured everywhere else decades before.
My mind flew back over the years to that summer in Provence. I was just 23 and still learning to enjoy being free, being myself. Learning to enjoy the sun upon skin that I was finally happy to show the world.
It had taken 13 long years to become just a little less fragile, a little less wounded. To grow into myself. No they didn’t force me to grow up as the wrong gender, that would have been cruel and cruelty in any form is not something our society will allow any more.
At my young age the change was actually fairly simple and they did it as soon as I was healed and they could be certain. By 11 I was complete and soon to embark on the travails of puberty. It took years for me to be able to put aside the burqa though, the role of women in the sick society of my father had been beaten into me so thoroughly that as soon as I realized I was now properly female I demanded the garment.
Over the years I had progressed to a less obscuring burqa, then just the hijab and all skin covered. By the time I entered college I was almost comfortable wearing mid length skirts and was even daring sleeveless tops.
By graduation I could manage shorts and a tank top and here I was now celebrating my first postgrad degree with a well-deserved summer off and sunning myself in a bikini. Not in public, I was still far too self-conscious for that… but it was nice to feel the sun upon my skin and to see how the uncovered skin darkened a little, leaving slightly lighter areas where the cloth had covered me.
Wildflowers nodded at me as the breeze ruffled through the meadow where I lay and caused the vines up the hills to voice a rustling pleasure. I was so relaxed that I barely even noticed a car pulling up in front of the cottage I had rented just down the hillside.
Even less did I notice the soft tread that approached me… at least until a voice that scraped the edges of my world with a pleasant burr sounded from a few meters away.
“I’m sorry to bother you but I’m looking for Kadijah? I wasn’t given a last name…”
“Nor will you be. I have no ancestors, I am simply who I am. Kadijah.”
I propped myself on one elbow, shading my eyes with the other hand to see a man with an oddly flat wide brimmed hat and rough but clean dungarees and shirt. They looked like he had made them himself and not well.
“We are the same then. I too have no ancestors, no surname to lay a burden upon me. The burden of my given name is enough.”
And your name is?” I arched an eyebrow at him. Strange how I wasn’t having my normal reaction to men… I wasn’t scrambling to cover myself, not trying to hide behind my clothes or my hair….
“Absalom”.
He gave nothing more and his face was equally silent.
“That is a name I have not heard before. What burden lies upon it that you find so heavy?”
“Probably something like yours…. Although to be fair mine is a dishonorable weight and yours is one of glory.”
I repeated the arch of an eyebrow. I knew full well where my name came from and I had discovered that the woman whose name I took was so much more than my father had taught me…
“Kadijah, first wife of the prophet, the mother of Islam. She gave women power over their own lives when they had none.”
“Well you know your Qur’an…”
“And the Torah, and the bibles… all of them. The Bhagavad Gita, the Books of the Dead, Tibetan and Egyptian. I have studied all of the Holy Books and yet… there is just one person my research led me to, one who could perhaps share my… rootlessness.”
By now I had sat up, drawing my knees up to my chest.
“How could I possibly share your experience?”
“I am… was… Amish. I grew up in much the same way, no technology that wasn’t muscle powered, no medicine, nothing but faith… when faith was not enough I left and found out just how strange and wonderful the world is. It was my Rumspringa, my time to discover my path.”
“And what did you find on your path?”
“Loneliness… joy, pain, grief…. An endless desire to serve others. And I found you, finally.”
“What were you seeking?”
“Happiness… peace… someone like me in a world that has no room for wounded souls. Just… something... someone… who would be able to understand me.”
I rose from my position and began walking toward the house.
After a few yards I turned to the man who still stood there looking lost.
“Are you not hungry?”
He came to himself with a visible start.
“Hungry?” His question was betrayed by a rumble from his midsection.
“Where have you come from?”
“Kentucky.”
“Where is this Ken-Tuck-Eee?”
“North American Union. Mountain country.”
“Do you like it there?”
“It is… has become… home. Beautiful green mountains, the oldest range on earth. It suits me.”
“I would like to see this place.” I shocked myself a bit with that one. Why was I being so forward with this man I had just met?
“We can be there in two hours… If you want…”
“2 hours?”
“Well we have to road out for a good 30 minutes and the same at the other end. My car is LEO rated so a suborbital hop is no problem.”
For some reason going to these green mountains with this man didn’t make me nervous. I knew somehow that he would not make advances I didn’t invite.
“First we eat. Then we go to these green mountains you speak of. Do you mind a Croque Messier?”
“A what?”
“A sandwich. I will show you.” I walked down the hill toward the cottage and noticed I was deliberately swaying my hips a little. I could feel his eyes following me and my skin heated where I knew his gaze was drawn, bringing up the old need to cover myself. I managed to restrain the familiar impulse, leaving my blanket and wrap where they lay.
The walk back to the cottage seemed to take forever. I could hear the soft footfalls behind me, the rustle of cloth that told me he had retrieved the items I left behind. Somehow that simple gesture renewed my determination to build bridges with others. I had left the burqa behind but the weight of my past still hung on me.
Neither of us spoke as I made our sandwiches. He thanked me when I sat his down in front of him and we ate, still in silence.
I had no idea what to say and I was beginning to realize how much he was also robbed of words. I examined his face, the muscles in his jaw bunching against a faint stubble as he chewed. He seemed to be all sharp angles, the only smoothness where living had worn his skin to the look of soft leather. An untidy mop of shockingly dark hair dangled a curl onto his forehead like an answer searching for its question.
When we finished he went to wash the dishes without asking and I picked up my wrap and blanket. As I climbed the stairs to pack a few things I marveled at myself, that I had not hidden myself, that I could actually be around a man and not be afraid… there was no understanding within me of how this could be but I was willing to see where this lead.
13 years is a very long time to be so utterly alone in a world that held no place for me.
When I came down everything was washed and dried, back in its place. Absalom was sitting where he had been, examining the play of sunlight and shadow from the windows. He said nothing still, simply took my 2 heaviest cases and walked out to put them in the boot of his car. I took a few moments to ensure I had forgotten nothing and closed the door behind me, the charming little cottage becoming a toy in the rear mirrors.
The silence was comforting somehow, as though we simply didn’t need to speak. I will admit to a little bit of a squeak when he abruptly cut in the boosters and pointed the nose of his car straight up as soon as we left the ground, wings fully retracted. I’d been on commercial suborbital hops and they were considerably more gentle than this!
I wasn’t frightened, for some reason I couldn’t seem to summon up that feeling just now. What was left was a thrill as we rose above the atmosphere and transitioned to more level flight for a few moments before cutting thrust. The thrill of microgravity followed. I have never been able to be like some of the business travelers I see, to me being weightless is like a childhood dream of flying.
I grinned over at Absalom and he returned the expression, equal delight obvious on his features. He slowly rolled the car so we could see Earth speeding by over our heads and we drank in the sight until he had to roll back for reentry. The slightest bump signified the release of the tail assembly so it could slow our speed without the fiery reentry that used to plague spaceflight.
Things got a little bumpy for a moment as we entered the atmosphere and began to fall into thicker and thicker air, slowing progressively until we were barely doing 250 knots and the flight systems crawled the wings out for a little more lift. The wheels touched pavement with a feather kiss, barely noticeable amongst the sounds of the car reconfiguring itself to surface mode.
We were on a small two lane road, surrounded by shockingly green rolling hills. The wrinkles of mountains seemed blue in the distant air, inviting and brooding at the same time. The brooding seemed to lessen as we made our way out of the foothills and the mountains showed themselves to be just as vibrant.
Soon we were leaving pavement for a gravel road which turned into a dirt track and then just… ended. The whine of the car’s turbine dopplered down into silence and the majesty of forest rushed in to fill the void.
I sat for a moment, drinking it all in and breathing the air, redolent with the scent of wildflowers. There was no sign of human habitation other than the remnant of road and the car we sat in. Absalom came around to my side and opened the door, offering his hand to assist me out. I didn’t need it but I took the hand anyway and felt a little thrill as our skin touched for the first time.
“So you live in the forest?”
“Yes… and no…” He lifted my bags from the boot and walked into the forest, following a barely visible track that looked more like a game trail than something humans used. I followed, noticing how he left almost no trace of his passing and being equally careful to cause no disturbance, skills I had not used since childhood.
After a few minutes we broke out of the forest into a small meadow. The far end seemed to vanish into nothingness and a babble of water collected in little rocky pools, stepping down in multiple small cataracts before rushing to its freedom in the misty air.
I stood rooted to the spot, unable to move or speak. How could this be? How could I have painted this very scene over a decade before? As crude as my skills had been then I could remember the mental image, the dream from which I had drawn it.
“Kadijah?” That soft burr caressed my ears again and broke the spell, allowed me to move.
“It is a place of great beauty…” For some reason I dissembled, not wanting to share just then.
“It is.” He agreed and turned to walk into the forest on a slightly different trail. Within a few feet he vanished behind a screen of greenery and I joined him to see a set of gnarled looking wooden stairs that looked almost as though they had grown that way.
“I will show you the rest shortly but I thought you might want to settle in first.” I followed him up those tricky stairs. The footing was just fine but the eyes blurred things, made it look like the few visible steps of the untidy spiral were all there was.
Suddenly the stairs debouched into a large open space but this time it was obvious the trees had been coached to grow into a deck with railings and even benches all made of living wood, branches growing from it and bursting with life. Above us graceful arches of living wood formed the bones of structures which were linked by hidden aerial bridges, a cluster around us and another above.
“Upper deck or lower?”
I took a moment to consider. Being here in the canopy was wonderful but I could see clear sunlight slanting onto what looked like another of those grown decks.
“Upper I think… I am enjoying the kiss of the sun.” I was glad of my dark skin right then since it made my intense blush at thinking what or who else I might enjoy kissing my skin a little less visible.
He seemed not to notice as he led me up into the sunlight and into one of the deceptively diminutive looking structures. It was simple inside in a comfortable homespun way. A large and comfortable looking bed anchored one wall and sunlight spilled into the room through a transparent roof. There was no ornamentation, just that supplied by nature putting forth shoots from the living trees which formed its bones.
A door on one side opened into an adjoining structure which turned out to be a luxurious bathroom. The tub was easily deep enough to be covered up to my chin and large enough for two. Everything was formed to look like it had simply grown that way, even the fixtures were camouflaged.
“This is magnificent. Thank you Absalom.”
“My pleasure.” He seemed to want to say something more for a split second before he turned to stride out onto the deck.
A few moments later, having taken care of the necessary, I followed him out onto the deck. The sun was burning golden almost directly overhead and it was quite warm but the treetops rustled around us as the wind combed through leafy tresses and provided a breath of coolness.
“It is very warm, would you care for a swim before I make lunch?” He faced out over the railing, his boot propped on the lower rail.
I took a moment to admire the way his figure cut against the green. His clothes might not fit that well but there was no disguising the physique underneath. Strong shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist and hips and I blushed a little as I realized I was noticing how powerful his legs and butt looked, a little flash of what he could do with those muscles running through my mind.
“Will you swim with me?”
“If you wish. I was prepared to give you privacy if you wanted it.” He didn’t turn around but a little muscle at the corner of his jaw flexed.
I had to take a moment to steel myself. I have never so much as had a friend and yet I was incredibly attracted to this man who seemed almost as damaged as I was. I wanted him to swim with me… wanted to see his body without the rough homespun cover that blurred his sensuality, muted it… And yet I was afraid.
Afraid of him, afraid of me… Just afraid. The same fear that had kept me buried in my studies, in a way the fear that was responsible for how far I had come from the illiterate 10 year old fleeing flame and terror.
Somehow I had been able to accept Absalom’s invitation, to come to this magical place… to begin to overcome the fear. Maybe I was healing a little bit?
“Yes, I would like a swim.” I stepped toward him, caught his arm and pulled him around to face me. “I would like a swim with you.”
He tried to keep the look of relief out of his face but I could tell somehow that beneath that impassive exterior lay as much turmoil as within my own heart.
“10 minutes then, I’ll meet you at the bottom of the stairs.” He turned and made his way deliberately toward the stairs, vanishing into the greenery with almost no sound.
15 minutes later I stared into the full length mirror in the bathroom with a critical eye. I had taken the time to apply just the tiniest bit of waterproof makeup to my eyes and lips and to don the bikini I had been wearing earlier.
I was on the bony side of thin, fried eggs for breasts, hipbones jutting through my skin. I had never been able to eat well, the guilt always overcame me. That was so much stronger than the religious thing…
Starvation leaves marks upon the psyche even if the rare person manages to weather it without physical damage. Physically I was perfectly healthy, the deficiencies of my childhood having been repaired with no visible trace.
Emotionally? Before Ebola destroyed my father’s culture the damage was long done. I had shared most of my food with my younger sisters until they died… The weight of being able to eat my fill was so hard to bear when faced with such horror.
I tried to eat… tried to force myself to snack between meals. I knew I was 15 kilos underweight and on my frame that translated to looking like Aeon Flux from the animated series. Sharp angles, bony hips, ribs defined as visible slashes. Strings of muscle and tendon clinging to bone accented the darkness of my skin.
He couldn’t be attracted to my body. Everything about me was unattractive, ugly even. For years my therapists had told me this was untrue, that I was in fact beautiful. I will admit that everything seems to be where it should be and it is quite symmetrical. Since bilateral symmetry seems to be one of the major factors in whether a person is considered attractive I suppose I had to grant them that much.
Still, I was not blind. The women I saw in advertisements, even the women I saw on the street were something I was not. Rounded curves where I had flat sharpness, faces soft while my own was made of angles and planes. Hair that was so shiny and glossy and entirely unlike the tightly kinky hair that seemed to want to stand straight out from my head in every direction.
Oh well, I did not become myself to be beautiful. It was a matter of survival, do or die. Well actually die again since I’d already done it 3 times. I had not understood at the time what they were telling me. To my very limited knowledge dead was dead and there was no coming back from it. I understand now that they were telling me I had been so sick I very nearly died and was clinically dead for several minutes each time.
So much about the world had been beyond my grasp then. I did not even have the most basic framework, the cultural grounding to understand. In many ways I was like a time traveler might be if they journeyed into the future. Until I was 10 I had lived in a world straight out of the 7th century. No electricity, none of the comforts of modern life. The only modern things were guns and a few satphones scattered amongst the warriors and to me they were magic.
Something so basic as taking a bath had been wondrous and new. To turn a handle and see the water come spilling out, hot or cold as I chose, filling a large basin that was made of… something… The smells of the soaps and the foamy caress of something called bubble bath. The sheer pleasure of being able to lie there in water so hot I could barely stand it until it cooled if I wished.
Then I had been guided, dripping and with bits of foam clinging to me, over to a small room where the same hot water poured out from every direction and overhead. Standing there in hot rain while the water scoured my skin with needles of fine spray made me begin to understand how much there was yet to learn.
Now it was again time for me to learn, to discover an unknown world. I slowly descended stairs that I had realized were in fact living wood, marveling at the time this must have taken, the infinite care.
Absalom rose from his seat, what looked like a fallen log until the eye traced it and discovered that it too was living wood.
“How long?” I gestured around and above.
“58 years.” He turned and walked down another invisible path into earth and living stone, another staircase that looked like the stone had simply eroded into the shapes needed. 25 or so meters down the stairway abruptly opened onto a large, airy looking space which looked out from the cliff face and into soaring emptiness, the wall of green which marked the other side of the valley in the distance.
Part of the brook that babbled its way to freedom had been channeled down here to fill a large pool and then on over the edge, not trapped but dallying for a while in cool rocks and vibrant greens. Everything looked as though it had eroded into its current shape.
“This is…” I was unable to complete the thought.
“As you dreamed it?”
His words shot through me, a thrill up my spine and over my scalp.
“I know because I dreamed it too. I read the description you gave in your story and it was like you wrote my dream. I found… made… this place from my own dreams long before then.”
He fell silent for a moment.
“I dreamed you…”
I was shaking now. Everything, even this moment, just as I had dreamed it so long ago, so many times through the years.
“I… You… I never told anyone, never wrote about you… that part of my dream. I could never see your face, only ton chapeau… your hat.”
“I could only see your hair…”
I self-consciously touched the unruly puffball that stood out from my scalp at least 20 centimeters. It sprang immediately back into shape as I let my hand fall.
“I think it is beautiful.” He cut off my attempted protest. “I think you are beautiful.”
I had no idea how to respond to that.
“I’m sorry…” he looked sheepishly at me through a mop of hair. “I shouldn’t have said that…”
“Its ok. I wanted to say the same to you.”
“Me?” The idea was clearly as foreign to him as it was to me.
“In my mind you have always been a part of this place. Perhaps the most important part. It is not complete without you.”
For a moment he stood beside me, looking out toward the green.
“You were just 15 when I first read your dream. It took 8 years for me to get the courage to approach you.” He turned toward me and caught my gaze with his eyes. For a moment I simply stared. One eye was grey, the other blue.
“When I read your thesis I knew I had to come. I think I can build your picoplane projectors.”
So much to take in in such a short time… and now this final piece of the dream… It was almost too much. There was no way the universe was this beneficent.
“I feel like I am still dreaming.”
“If you are I’m glad you dreamed me. Or maybe glad I dreamed you, I don’t know… it is surreal. I know that I am happy to share this dream, finally.”
“Je suis heureux aussi…”
“What?”
“Sorry… English is still a little foreign to me. I am glad too.”
I turned back toward the pool. “Shall we enjoy the water?”
No reply but he had his shirt off in record time and his trousers followed. I could just see him out of the corner of my eye and was reluctant to look openly at him so I slipped down a gentle incline into the pool, gasping a little as the icy water embraced me.
With my head just above the water the pool seemed to simply disappear into space at its outer edge, the ripples I caused vanishing into air. I heard him ease into the water behind me and waited while he swam over to stand on a hidden ledge under the water and prop his elbows on the liquid line.
The water was crystal clear and I could see now that he was wearing very tight swim briefs. The musculature I had admired earlier was even more defined and suddenly the water wasn’t so cold. I joined him looking over the edge. From here I could see that the edge of the pool was maybe 4 meters back from the cliff face and there was another level several meters below. One more validation of the dream…
“You were focusing on using hypersolid holography.”
I wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “I could not find a way to generate the density required.”
“It has to be spread spectrum. Your gamma ray projection has to be modulated with far infrared holographic pulses. That gives the density required and results in a cycle time of just over 3 Terahetz. I’m not sure about the yield, the math gets beyond me at that point.”
“9.38256% efficiency.” This was it! “I’ve never been able to get above .000001 percent…”
The implications of this spread out before me, a vista even more dazzling than the one my eyes beheld. This would provide the power needed for a growing human species just building its first arcologies on the moon and mars, the prospectors who were slowly spreading through the Belt. It would make fusion power look bulky and clunky by comparison.
“Kadijah?” He touched me gently on my arm, his finger a torch.
“Oui?”
“You’ve been frozen like that for over an hour, you have to be cold.”
“Je ne sens plus mes pieds. Je pense que je besoin d'aide.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand?”
“My feet, I cannot feel them. Help please?”
He swept me up into him arms and carried me out of the water as though I weighed nothing. His torso against me blazed with heat and I suddenly began to shiver uncontrollably.
“Si Froid…”I was just barely able to focus as he gently carried me through a rock passage and into a bathroom. Like everything else it had been made to look like natural formations of stone. He gently laid me in a huge tub and began running water that felt as though it would scald me.
“Trop chaud! Il me brûler!”
At his look I had to take a moment to translate. “The water is too hot, it will burn me!”
“The water is not hot. It is 87 degrees. Any hotter would burn your skin. I will warm it up gradually as your core temperature rises. Do you think you can stand it?”
I managed to shiver out a nod.
“I’m going to get you something to warm you from the inside, ok?” I heard him but I was not really able to respond just yet.
A moment later he was back with a steaming cup of something. I still could not manage to grasp it although the shivering had eased considerably. I lay there and allowed him to bring the cup to my lips, slurping a tiny bit of viscous scalding liquid and allowing it to explode across my tongue. Potatoes and… something else I could not identify. A little like cucumber but not quite…
I must have looked surprised because he chuckled at me.
“Borage. The blue flowers with the fuzzy leaves in the meadow. They like direct sunlight. I didn’t use the flowers in this because they can act as a mild laxative but the leaves have other medicinal effects.”
He proffered the cup and I took another sip. After a few moments of this the cup was half empty and he ran hot water into the tub for a minute until it was just at the level I could bear. The shivers had finally eased enough to allow me to hold the cup on my own and I continued to sip.
As I gradually finished the rapidly cooling soup the cycle of adding hot water went on twice more and the shivering finally eased completely.
“I did not know you could eat Starflower. I am afraid you saw the limit of my cooking skill back in Provence…”
“My sister Hannah taught me. She left on Rumspringa 4 years before I did and did not come back. I missed her so badly and could not understand… until I finally got to Normandy. She moved me in with her and out of the student hostel where I was staying and that night I discovered one of the reasons she had not returned.”
“One of the reasons?”
He chuckled at me again. “Well ok, two of the reasons. Her wife Angelique and their beautiful little daughter Yvette.”
“So Amish do not accept the LGBT?”
“They do not accept many things. Even now they will not accept most medicine, including the nanos.” Sadness creased his features. “Last year my youngest sister died of old age. She was the last of those I knew in my youth and even though I had not seen her for almost 70 years it was… difficult for me.”
“I am sorry for you. I know what it is to be alone…” My eyes prickled and I felt tears run down my face. For a moment I was lost in the blood and flame, the screaming…
“I do not want to be alone, not any more.” The tears came fast and hot.
“You are not alone. You never have to be alone again if you do not want to be…” There was a hopeful note in his voice and I finally began to understand how very much alike we truly were.
To Be Continued…
“I could not ask you… I am too damaged. I have never... Never even had a friend, really. I do not deal with people well. The therapists tell me I will learn but I have never managed to reach out.”
“I think I have to contradict you on that one Kadijah. You reached out to me, just now.” He reached over to touch my forehead with the inside of his wrist and I flinched away for a moment before allowing it.
“You’ve warmed up enough to sit in front of the fire.” He reached over and popped the lever to drain the tub and grabbed a huge fluffy towel.
I hesitated for a moment, my old modesty demanding I ask him to leave the room. He saw even though I didn’t want him to and began to turn and rise before I reached out to take his hand.
“Don’t, please?”
He looked at me, the lack of understanding clear in his eyes.
“I… I have to learn. I have to allow myself to be more open, to not hide. It took me years to get out of a burqa…” I automatically looked down as I spoke, not meeting his eyes until he grasped my chin and gentle but inexorable force lifted my gaze to his.
“You don’t have to make yourself uncomfortable Kadijah. If its difficult for you I will be happy to leave.”
“No… I need to do this.”
I rose from the tub acutely aware that I was only wearing scraps of cloth and was surprised when he wrapped the soft bath sheet around me. It felt… warm but not just physical warmth. Something I didn’t recognize, something entirely new to me.
Was this what it felt like to be cared for, really cared for by someone who wasn’t a nurse or a housemother or…?
The question occupied my thoughts as I followed him into a spacious room dominated by a large fireplace. He drew large comfortable recliners over to sit in front of the fire and I gratefully took one, opening the towel to allow the heat to find chilled flesh. Absalom vanished for a moment and reappeared with a cup of hot herbal tea, floral but pungent. For himself he had coffee that smelled so strong it took me back to my years in Amalfi.
We sat for a time, sipping our respective cups and enjoying the warmth of the fire without the need for speech. It was me who finally broke the comfortable silence.
“Absalom?”
“Yes?”
“Would it be inconvenient for me to stay here for a while? I find I like this place very much and…” I had to pause for a moment, I was about to jump off the cliff, metaphorically speaking. “and I find that I like the company very much as well.”
I couldn’t look at him directly but in the corner of my eye I saw him move toward me and I automatically flinched, then cursed myself for doing so when the movement stopped and withdrew. I was beginning to realize that I wanted him to touch me and this too was new, frightening.
“Inconvenient? The inconvenience would be if you went back to your cottage since I would be travelling to Provence every day.” I looked over and he smiled at me, causing some sort of flying creature to have spasms in my middle. “I find that I like the company very much too. I would be pleased if you would consider this your home, no strings.”
“Strings like thread? I don’t understand. I need my loom to make cloth and for that I need thread.” I was confused and beginning to wonder if I’d made a mistake.
I got even more confused as he laughed at me for a moment before explaining, still chuckling. “I’m sorry, I’ve never heard anyone misinterpret that expression in quite that way. I meant that nothing will be asked or required of you in any way.” He sobered. “I have not watched a woman weave since before I left home. I’m looking forward to it and I’m afraid my own skill is… somewhat lacking, as are my sewing skills.”
I had to laugh at myself a little. “I am sorry I misunderstood. I was not going to say anything about…” I gestured at his shirt.
He grinned back at me. “This is actually my best effort. I tend not to wear much in the way of clothes when I am at home alone and I buy most of what I do wear. I’m not sure why I wanted to wear this… and the hat. It seemed important.”
“It fit the moment well, I think.”
“Does it fit the moment now?”
I had to think about that one for a moment. What was he asking me, really? He had donned his shirt while I was in the tub but left his shorts off and would be wearing only those tight swim briefs if he removed it. Did I want that?
A flush of heat in my face told me that I did, very much. “I think… no, it does not. Now that I am warmer, this towel does not fit the moment either.”
I stood and folded the towel neatly, laying it on a nearby ottoman before sliding back into the welcoming embrace of the recliner. I was aware of his eyes on me as I did so but what I had told him earlier was true. I had to allow others…. this particular other… to see me, unvarnished.
Where was the unabashed woman who had not even thought of covering herself when he first approached in the meadow back in Provence? Had not done so until it was time to travel? Had that even been me?
Those thoughts fled my mind as he stood and removed his shirt and I saw him from the front for the first time with his arms over his head, almost naked. The flush that had heated my face before ran all the way down to my toes. I was no stranger to the male body from either a medical or artistic viewpoint but never had it had this sort of effect on me and I worried that I was becoming ill.
“I didn’t realize a person could blush with their whole body.” He smirked at me with a little rise at the corner of his mouth, teasing.
“I… I didn’t either. You have very sharp eyes.” I was amused to notice a flush creeping over his face, much more readily visible against his fair skin than mine had been. He didn’t look away though, and neither did I.
“I… I cannot do more than this, for now.” I saw the look of understanding in his eyes and was grateful for it.
“Will you eat if I cook?”
The abrupt change of subject took me off guard and it took a moment for me to make the sounds into words. I hadn’t realized I was hungry until he mentioned it but now I felt the familiar pangs and for once did not push them away. I had eaten more than I usually do in a day with the sandwich earlier and though the part of my mind that always punishes me for eating my fill was silent for now I wondered how long that would last.
“I think I could eat, yes. I do not have any special dietary requirements. I put those aside with the niqab.”
It was like I could see him file the word away so he could look it up later and decided to let that lie.
“May I help?”
He smiled at me happily. “Only if you wish. Have you ever had a bacon cheeseburger?”
“A what?” Bacon I knew but cheeseburger? That part wasn’t so clear.
“I’ll take that as a no.” He beckoned me to follow and led the way back out into the… I guess you’d call it an atrium of sorts. We were on the lower level, beneath the shelf of stone that formed the upper deck and the sunlight was slanting in almost diagonally, just above the mountains to the west. He busied himself with lighting a large charcoal grill and left it to burn down, making his way into a spacious and well-appointed kitchen with gleaming stainless steel set into stone everywhere but the intricately tiled floor and the work surfaces which were smooth stone polished to a high sheen.
Within a few moments he had gathered his ingredients. He set me to mincing half of an onion and slicing the rest while he busied himself with ground meat, adding various spices and a sauce of some kind to it before mixing it all in with his hands, adding the minced onion before forming it into 4 large patties. I watched this with interest, beginning to understand what a ‘Cheeseburger’ might be but having no clue still just what the sauce he’d used was. He called it Woostershar but the bottle said ‘Worcestershire”.
I tasted it and wasn’t sure I wanted it in or on meat but I’d try it. He melted butter while I sliced a huge heirloom tomato and minced garlic, then he made garlic butter and brushed it on the insides of 4 round loaves of bread with sesame seeds on it and it looked like onions baked into it which he’d cut in half like a cake to make 2 layers. Obviously this was going to be a sandwich then.
With all of this prepared he put quite a bit of bacon on the griddle, tending it until it was brown and crispy. The grease from the bacon was scraped into a small hole on the edge and he removed a cup from beneath it, having neatly saved it for later use. While he did this I prepared lettuce as he directed, large mostly intact leaves with the stems removed.
We carried all of the prepared foods out to the grill and he oiled it before plopping the patties on, right in the hottest part. The smell and sizzle was bewitching and he grinned at me as I sniffed appreciatively.
“It gets better.”
My stomach picked that moment to rumble loudly and he laughed while I snuck a fingernail sized piece of cheese. It was extremely pungent and my mouth watered so hard I worried I would drool.
He flipped the patties and covered each of them with a layer of cheese and bacon before putting the bread onto the grill, buttered side down. The bread toasted quickly and he removed it, then spread mayonnaise from a jar onto it. He followed with a generous amount of coarse ground mustard, then chopped pickles. A layer of lettuce on each side of the buns and then he scooped two of the patties onto buns and put the other two on a plate to rest.
With the addition of a layer of tomato and onion he closed them into two toweringly thick sandwiches, put 2 long toothpicks into each one and put them on a plate before cutting them in half. He handed me one and led the way over to a table and bench affair, stone like most things but with the same gleaming top as the work areas in the kitchen. While I sat he ducked into the kitchen and returned with 2 bottles, beading with condensation as he worked the wires until the corks popped free.
“Bacon cheeseburger and a beer. Can’t get any more American than that!” He smiled and took a sip.
I looked at the bottle. “American? The beer is Czech.”
I grinned at him as he lowered his bottle and looked at me with puzzlement. I took a sip of mine and was surprised at the taste. It was… I didn’t quite know how to describe it as I had hadn’t tasted much beer before. It was nothing at all like the wines and spirits I had learned to enjoy as part of my culinary curriculum but I liked the taste.
“Of course it is. The beer is Czech, the cheese is… well Canadian actually but the type of cheese is from the UK, a place called Cheddar. The beef is… well its also Canadian but of a Japanese type called Kobe.” He looked proud and I realized just how much effort and expense must have gone into this meal.
I removed the toothpick from half of the huge sandwich and pressed it down a little before I picked it up and tried to figure out how to take a bite. I managed to get an edge crammed into my mouth and bit into it.
Juices escaped and ran down my chin but I didn’t care. The burst of flavor that filled my senses only grew as I chewed and wiped at my chin with a napkin. Once I managed to swallow I took another sip of beer. It was the perfect complement and I made a little moaning noise.
Absalom watched and laughed as I did all this. “So I take it you approve?”
“How did I not know this existed?” I took another bite with almost as much difficulty as the first but this time was more successful at not getting juice on myself.
He took a moment to reply as his mouth was otherwise engaged. “You lived mostly in France, Italy and Spain, and not in the larger cities, right?” I nodded. “I can’t remember seeing a cheeseburger outside of Paris unless you count McAwful’s.”
“I have never been into one of those places. They look… disturbing.”
“The first time I ate at one I had just left home… I wondered if the food was made of cardboard. The only decent thing there are the fried potatoes but you have to eat those within 5 minutes or they taste horrible.” He grimaced at the sense-memory.
“I think perhaps I shall continue to avoid them then. I do not think I wish to taste a lesser version of this… cheeseburger. C’est manifique!”
He didn’t need any translation for that one. “Thank you! I’m really glad you like it. I tend to eat more autoprepped meals than not because it isn’t really worth the effort for one…”
I didn’t know how to reply to that so I addressed myself to the delicious food and drink and he did the same. We ate in companionable silence and I found myself studying the way the muscles bunched up at the corner of his jaws when he chewed. I could tell he was looking at me but for some reason my old reluctance to look anyone in the eye had returned with a vengeance and I couldn’t meet his gaze.
I was astonished to find that I had finished the entire burger and was draining the last of the beer as the sun sank below the mountains. That was 2 days’ worth of food for me and I was full to bursting, my stomach pooching out a little. I could barely move as Absalom got up and cleared our plates away, returning with two more bottles.
“There are more comfortable chaise lounges or we can go back into the greatroom if you like?”
I took a bottle from him and worked the strange wire contraption that held it closed until I got it open.
“I think I would like to stay out here for a while. It is beautiful.” I rose and allowed him to lead me over to a smaller sort of alcove situated so that we were at the very edge of the mountain face. He turned on subdued lighting and an insect repellent device and we got comfortable, watching dusk steal over the mountains until it was fully dark.
There were area heaters on so even though the occasional vagrant breeze told me it was getting fairly cool outside it was quite warm and I was comfortable. He had made several more runs for fresh bottles and I was getting quite well buzzed. I was no stranger to alcohol… Having lived where I had and taken the schooling I had I was quite fond of wine but I was not well acquainted with beer and I found I liked it.
Even more unusual to me, I did not feel the need to conceal myself which had always gotten stronger when I got inebriated. I thought about that for a moment after using the bathroom and stood there examining myself in the mirror. All of the glaring flaws were still there, still just as sharp as they had been earlier in the day but they seemed to matter a little less for some reason and I knew it wasn’t the alcohol, that usually magnified my insecurity.
Something about this place… about the man who lived in this place… took the ragged edges off. I was beginning to feel comfortable in ways that I never had around another person, not even in my very earliest childhood.
Whatever this was I wanted… needed to pursue it.
In the faint glow of the concealed lighting night seemed to wrap around me as I sat beside him again and handed him one of the beers I’d retrieved from the kitchen.
“I am sorry I have not been better company. I am not used to having conversations that do not have a clear purpose.”
His voice rumbled back at me. “I’m not used to having conversations at all. I’ve been alone here for most of the past 30 years.”
He fell silent for another moment. “I like just being quiet with you. It feels comfortable.”
There was a stiffening breeze now and it was beginning to overpower the heaters. “I would like to go inside now.”
I walked toward the kitchen entry and heard the slight rustle as he rose to follow. We spent a moment tidying up the kitchen before he set it to autoclean and we sat in front of the banked coals that had been a fire. He used some fine kindling to get the blaze going again and within a few minutes a large log was blazing merrily and we were both ensconced in recliners facing the fire and each other.
“I think perhaps I should stay down here tonight. It smells like l’orage. A lovely smell but I do not think a house in the trees is a place I want to be.”
“I already got your things down. This storm was unexpected but it will give you a chance to see some of the beauty of these mountains. They’re still very wild, especially here.”
It was beginning to storm outside and we sat there in safety and comfort listening to the thunder and the sound of rain hissing down, blown into the atrium area by the winds. I have always loved thunderstorms, even as a very young child.
Young… I am very young and he? How much older is he? He said he had been building this place for 58 years and I did not think he started it as a teenager so probably at least 60 years. He must regard me as a child.
“You said you had not seen your sister for 70 years?” I had to find out just how large this gulf between us was.
“71. I left when I was 16. That is the customary age for Rumspringa. I never returned because I left that life behind me and would not have been welcomed. The answer to the question you carefully did not ask is that I am 87 years old, 64 years older than you. Does that bother you?” He took a sip of his beer and focused that amazing heterochromic gaze on me.
“I must seem like a child to you.”
“Were you ever really a child? That seems so hard to believe having met you.”
I had to look away from his eyes to give myself a moment to think. Had I ever been a child? Of course I had, I mean everyone is at some point.
But when I gave it serious thought I realized… none of my life had been what anyone else described as childhood. There had been no carefree play, no love from any adult. From my very earliest memories I had always been hiding, calculating, surviving… then my sisters came and I did my best to help them survive too.
When that nightmare was over there still was no play, no love. Caring, yes, provided by people who saw me as a patient or a client or… anything but a child. Not that I had allowed anyone in.
“I do not think I was, no. I never thought about it that way.” I managed to meet his eyes again.
“I wish I could change that for you.”
“Entropy’s arrow only points one way.”
“You know that’s not actually true, right?” He grinned at me and his eyes lit up.
“I know one thing that is true. We make our own reality.”
“What sort of reality do you wish to build Kadijah?”
The answer came more quickly than I had intended. “Perhaps the question is what sort of reality do we wish to build?”
His eyes widened and his pupils dilated. “We?”
“Is that not what you wish?” Suddenly I had to know the answer.
He took a moment before replying.
“Wish? Dream perhaps. Want definitely. Even need I think.” He took a sip from his bottle, watching carefully for my reaction.
I had this feeling, of things falling into place, a lock opening and a door swinging wide, endless vistas beyond.
“I feel the same. I think I need to be here, now, with you. It frightens me a little.”
“I will never willingly hurt you.”
“You cannot make such a promise Absalom, any more than I can. I would not ask that of you.”
“What would you ask?”
“Patience and forgiveness. I am afraid I will need a great deal of those things.”
“I think perhaps I will too.” He gently took the bottle away from me and set it on the floor with his own.
I was transfixed, unable to move as his face drew closer and then his lips touched mine, gently, a feather caress that sent a bolt of lightning right to my core. He drew back just a bit and looked into my eyes from a few centimeters away.
“Forgive me?”
“For what?”
He stared at me for a moment gauging my reactions and I managed a small smile for him. I wasn’t sure what I felt. The only thing I could sort out was that my heart wanted to jump out of my throat and my lips still tingled where he had kissed me.
This time I was the one who leaned forward ever so slowly watching his eyes as he watched mine until vision became extraneous to the world of feeling that focused on the touch of our lips together, the rasp of his slight stubble against my palm as I reached up to feel the muscles in his jaw.
I’m sure it was only a few seconds but it seemed like an eternity we kissed, a little more firmly than last time but still quite light. Why this slight pressure should make me feel this way I had no idea but that heat returned and this time, stayed and grew. Then his finger came up and traced along my jaw and another thrill joined the first.
I had to pull back for a moment, this was too much to handle right now. I realized my eyes were closed as I drew back a little and wondered at that… I hadn’t even realized I closed them. When I opened my eyes there his were, one gray and one blue, staring straight into my soul. His hand trailed from my jaw to my cheek, wiping a tear I hadn’t realized I’d shed away.
He gazed into my eyes for a moment and then withdrew, sensing somehow that I was at my limit. I was at once grateful and bereft, wanting to reach out and draw him back but unable to as my hand fell away from his jaw and seemed to trail off into the air with the slowness of dreams. We both slid back into our seats with that same languid pace and stared into the fire, feeling the stone grumble in sympathy with the air as bolts of lightning ripped it apart into its constituent particles.
After a few moments we had both drained our beers and I got up to get us another. One wall of the kitchen was transparent, facing out from the sheer cliff face and only inset half a meter or so. As I stood working the wires to open them I was transfixed by the show outside. Brilliant flashes showed the slopes on the other side of the valley, wildly tossing trees in chaotic motion and wisps of cloud floating between.
I’m not sure how long I stood watching but I felt Absalom come to stand beside me with his silent gait and felt… somehow safer, warmer. I handed him his long forgotten beer and took a sip of my own.
“I do not thik I could ever tire of this.”
“The storms are spectacular up here.” He was quiet, reflective.
“Those too.” I looked away from the storm and into the maelstrom of my own emotions for a moment. “But more… watching them with you.”
He didn’t reply but did take my hand and lead me up a staircase I hadn’t noticed beside the extensive pantry. This opened out into decently sized lounge area which ran lengthwise along the outside of the rock face with a high ceiling. A flash of lightning showed that the floor was just as transparent as the roof and walls.
There were lounges, chairs and tables scattered around the area so it looked like a long verandah hanging in space with no floor. The effect would have been stunning in almost any weather but in the fierceness of this storm it was otherworldly. It was time for me to take the lead, to make sure I could control how far things went. I trusted Absalom implicitly but I wasn’t sure if I trusted myself just then.
I skipped ahead a bit and drew him over to a wide chaise lounge that looked built for 2, sitting without letting go of his hand and scooting over to make room for him to sit… but not too far as I wanted to be touching him.
He sensed my intent and lowered himself next to me, sitting so that our legs just touched. As slight as the contact was it felt electric, sang along my nerves and brought more warmth than his physical closeness should have. I leaned into his warmth and raised his arm a little, encouraging him to wrap it around me along the back of the lounge.
Nestling into him and feeling enfolded by his musky scent was so relaxing that I simply sat there with my ear against him, the faint noises of his pulse and breathing almost hidden beneath the increasing violence of the storm outside. I noticed the lightning would repeatedly strike in particular locations and started wondering… was he harvesting any of that energy or just diverting it?
I decided to wonder about that later and just enjoy the show. We sat there like that, his arm around me and me leaning into his comforting bulk until I drifted off to sleep. He must have done the same because when I awoke in desperate need of a bathroom we were still in the same posture but the early morning sun was pouring almost horizontally at us.
I managed to slide out from under his arm with a little bit of effort, it was quite heavy. He remained asleep apparently while I scampered off to the bathroom. As I entered I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Still the same, all angles and planes. Somehow, though, for the first time in a long time I didn’t see a skeleton. In a piece of 20th century speculative fiction an author wrote of a species called the Heechee, who had no body fat at all and I could imagine in some way that I was that type of alien… that being able to see my bones and muscles was normal.
I knew it wasn’t so… but how do you break that cycle? I realized that for the first time in a very long time I had eaten very well, more than 3 days worth of food in 2 meals by my old standards. Maybe, just maybe, I was beginning to see a way clear.
I had eaten my fill with only twinges of guilt and even now that guilt was not what it had been. I did not feel the need to hate myself for being so selfish as to no longer be hungry. Somehow, Absalom had taken that from me, at least for a few moments.
I did not sense that he was a man who slept easily yet he had fallen asleep holding me… in the middle of a tempest. Was it possible that I was able to help him in some way too? Could it be that we were somehow healing each other?
Was it possible that I was one of those women who needed someone else to complete them? I had always thought of that as a weakness and tried to avoid any hint of it but here I was, realizing that this man brought to my life something I had never been given, something that I very much needed.
How do you know if you are thirsty when you have never experienced water?
Once you have had the first sip, how do you not plunge your head into the river and drown trying to absorb a torrent long denied a path to the sea? How do you not fear that the torrent will simply take you along to your doom, filling its need as you fill yours?
More to the point, was any of this something I really wanted to fear? I had ample reason for fear and all sorts of resistance… but every fiber of my being was straining for the water.
I took care of my morning ablutions, including the needlespray shower I had come to love. When I emerged from the shower cubicle I didn’t look any different… but I realized I didn’t have any clothes with me and had no desire to rewear yesterday’s slept in swimsuit. I did the normal thing with a bath sheet but this thing was big enough to make a sari out of so I did just that. Somehow the plush fabric felt just right.
I emerged into the kitchen area to find a very naked man with is back to me, busily tending something or other on the griddle in front of him. For a moment I couldn’t move, being stuck in place, staring. I had seen almost this exact view with him in his swim briefs but there was something about him being just that primal. I could see his manhood dangling from behind and I found it entrancing, hypnotic.
I wondered if I would ever be able to be so comfortable within myself. Literally the only place I had ever been completely naked was the bath and a hospital. For some reason a little part of me whispered that I should join him, that it would be rude to embarrass him and then I blushed to my toes realizing what I was contemplating.
Blushing or not, I found myself undoing my improvised sari and laying the material aside on a chair. Until this point I had thought him unaware of my presence but as the cloth rustled to its rest his rumble followed.
“I hope you don’t mind, I tend not to wear clothes if I don’t have to.”
“And you feel like you do not have to, with me here, watching you?”
“That isn’t how I meant it.”
“I understand. Still, the question is valid? Do you feel like you do not need to cover yourself with me here?”
He cocked his head, still paying attention to the grill, his back to me. “I feel naked with you here, right now, and I usually don’t. Do I want to cover myself? Desperately.”
He paused for a long moment. “The thing is that I am not comfortable with clothes and I wanted to be comfortable and for you to be comfortable… I really thought you’d be in the bathroom a few more minutes.”
I thought for a moment, content to let the hissing sizzle of the griddle fill the silence. I knew this man was going to be my mate, my other half, with the sort of certainty that I knew I would have to pee when I awoke in the mornings. I had to do this now.
“Absalom?” He was still busy at the grill, keeping his back to me.
“Yes Kadijah?” I could hear the longing and fear in his voice and in a way it comforted me to know that he felt the same as I. It took me a moment to find the right words in English, my mind kept jittering back and forth between languages.
“Turn around please?” I could not keep the tiniest quaver of fear out of my voice. A milliard things raced through my mind, chief among them the wish that he would find me attractive and the fear that I would be repulsive to him.
He turned and his eyes did not look at my body. I know because my own eyes were locked onto his and our gaze met. For an eternity we stared into each other’s eyes before I made the first move. I flicked my gaze down to his chest… right that moment standing corded with muscles as he gripped a spatula and tongs with all his strength.
I felt a flush begin in my face and a warmth in my core as I saw him follow suit, his eyes dropping down to take in my small and rather underdeveloped breasts. I felt like crossing my arms in front of them to cover myself but resisted the impulse and instead squared my shoulders and let my hands hang by my sides.
I saw his gaze flick down and I did the same, making sure he saw me do it.
I saw his eyes widen as his own flicked down and then up to meet mine and my training told me that meant arousal… I knew my own eyes had done the same.
“Would you like an omelette?”
His demeanor, aside from the color on his cheeks and on his… oh my… his member which jumped… Was calm, as though it was every day that he showed his rampant manhood to a naked woman in his kitchen and offered to feed her.
I did the whole blushing down to my toes thing and my nipples tried to jump off my chest.
Before I could think to hold myself back I said to him “Perhaps a kiss first, then breakfast?”
To my great disappointment he refused.
“Milady, it would not be proper for me to take advantage of you in such a way at this time…”
He winked as he said it and I took that as a promise of future amour…
The strange thing was that I was in much the same emotional state.
I found myself saying “Good Sir… I shall be content to await our proper betrothal and handfasting.”
We both looked at each other in amazement, completely disregarding our naked states and had the same realization.
He was he first to say it. “Is this our betrothal…?” There was a sense of wonder in his voice.
I had to think about that for a moment before I realized what I wanted, needed to say.
“Do you wish it to be?”
He was silent for so long that I began to worry about what he would say when a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“More than anything in my life.”
“Then I accept.”
I registered the evidence of his arousal and though a part of me discounted the possibility that it was due to me… It still made me feel as though we were on some level equal as my nipples crinkled hard.
“You mentioned something about an omelet?”
“I was thinking hash browns too…”
We fell to working together, seemingly dancing around in the kitchen and brushing lightly against each other… teasing but not teasing, simply small coincidental caresses. After the first moments I was comfortable with him in a way that I have never even been comfortable with myself…
I began to understand that this was a new thing for him as well. Could it be that something so simple as being naked together was healing a part of our souls that had been damaged by pain and isolation? It wasn’t about arousal, although that made its presence known rather frequently. It was about being so open and free that it didn’t cause embarrassment or even anything more than a simple sharing of beings, souls.
We sat and ate in the slanting morning light in what I had decided to call the Crystal Verandah. It seemed even more grandiose, intimidating even, to feel as though you were walking on air above jagged rocks hundreds of meters below.
The things he called “Hash browns” were an exquisite combination of shredded potatoes fried to lightly crispy brownness, mixed in with chunks of ham and onion and then covered with a cheese that, though bland, fit perfectly. The omelet was nothing I would have recognized as such in France but it too was a delicious confection.
We ate in near silence, broken only by my little moans of appreciation as I savored the food. I could only manage to eat a little less than half what was on the plate and even that was more than I usually ate in a day. I did not want to be rude so I toyed with the food, pushing it around on the late and trying to make it look as though I was still eating.
“Kadijah?”
I looked up into his eyes and saw infinite tenderness.
“You do not have to pretend. You do not have to feel guilty for not eating everything sat in front of you. You do not have to feel guilty for eating your fill, ever.”
I looked back down at the uneaten food, now a mangled and unappetizing mess. It seemed as though it was time to rip all the old scabs off, let the wounds breathe.
“I have eaten more than my fill. What I just ate is more than I normally eat in a day. Yesterday I ate 3 days worth of food with you and it made me feel very uncomfortable… not just physically.”
Back up to meet his gaze and fall into his bottomless regard. “It is something I have struggled with. When I was a very young child, before Ebola came and changed everything, my father would feed me before he fed my sisters so I always saved most of my food for them. There was still nothing I could do, they all died, all of them… only I survived. I did not want to survive, I wanted Allah to take me to his grace and release me from hell.”
“Eating always reminds me of that, of the blood and pain and fire and terror… I feel guilty if I am not at least a little hungry, as though someone else is going without because of my greed.”
I couldn’t speak for a moment and he waited while I choked back tears.
“The therapists have helped me with that a great deal. I have been getting better and now… well I seem to be getting better a little more quickly. I would like to be able to gain some weight…”
“I think you are beautiful the way you are… You remind me of Aeon Flux from the animated series. Sharp angled, dangerous and sexy.”
I felt my face heat again as he said that. “I always thought of myself more as a Heechee…”
“If so, then you’d have to be StarMinder…” His voice was husky.
I had no reply.
“Kadijah you are beautiful to me as you are. If you gain weight you will be beautiful then too. Even if you were not beautiful in body I would be in love with you still. Your soul has called to me my entire life…”
“It is just hard for me to believe that anyone can think of me in that way. I do not feel beautiful, attractive… any of that. I don’t even know what that means. I didn’t know sex could be anything other than violent rape until I was rescued and it took me many years to believe it.”
“I will never push you to do anything. If you ever do want to…. You know…” he blushed. “I will be learning about it along with you.”
My mind drew back from the happy memories of our beginnings, the memories I knew he would, could, never share. When next we met he would not remember me, would not remember his children and grandchildren…. He would be the innocent young man, just having made the decision to join the world, so many decades before I was even born.
He had told me he had the dream even before his Rumspringa… Was it possible the universe would bring him back to me and if so what on earth would I do? This time I would be the older and he would be the younger… I could not imagine how that would play out.
I didn’t really have time to think about it right now anyway. While I’d been musing I had automatically dressed and made myself presentable. It didn’t take much really… a few moments with a pick to unflatten my hair(not that it needed it, it would resume its shape without any help given time) and don a short jumpsuit accompanied by toe shoes. They were like gecko gloves for the feet with gripping tread on the soles over the top of the foot and individual toes.
Suitably attired, I grabbed the bag I’d packed the previous night and stepped off the edge of the upper balcony into a waiting car. The car waited for me to secure my gear before crabbing sidewise and tilting steeply upward, accelerating at a rate just short of discomfort. In a few moments the sky deepened past purple to black and I was able to see the multitude of habitations, industrial plants and shipyards that cluttered Low Earth Orbit. Acceleration eased to 1 g once escape velocity was reached and the cabin gimballed so that down was down. The trip to the L5 shipyards would take about 2 hours so I leaned back and immersed myself in the specs for the Orion’s propulsion systems.
The hour before turnover went quickly and after a brief moment of maneuvering in microgravity boost resumed. I missed the approach to L5 and its agglomeration of shipyard facilities but didn’t mind, I’d seen it before.
Tessa’s pleasant Aussie twang pulled me out of my reverie and I spent the last few moments in the familiar back and forth of approach control. Soon enough the car had tethered itself into a docking bay and the pressure signal showed green. By the time the car agreed with it and allowed the door to open my welcoming committee was piling through the hatch in an unruly flying mob of crew, both Delphin and human. I launched myself into the middle of the melee and spent a few moments hugging and being hugged. Spacers tend to be a little unrestrained when welcoming friends and this batch was about as informal as they come with an easy familiarity gained through years of work together.
I’d missed this, missed the contact and the camaraderie holed up in my Kentucky retreat with only the mountains and trees for company. We all flowed through passageways in an untidy chattering mass which lasted until we’d made our way onto the Orion and to her bridge when the group went to their duty stations and immediately began running checklists in preparation for the upcoming tests. I floated around looking over shoulders and heads until all was reported in readiness then strapped into a seat beside Lars as the calm orderliness of the bridge routine flowed around me.
Gangways retreated back to the station as the massive ship slipped her moorings and began to slowly pull away from the dockyard that was Asimov station. Once fully clear of the docks Lars called for 1% throttle from the main engines and a very faint acceleration began, just .01 g. In another few minutes we were well on our way and Asimov station was dwindling rapidly behind. Acceleration gradually increased to .25 g, then to full cruising power at .5 g. Delphin crew made their way over to watery workstations which were now available to them and happily left their spindly walkers behind, chittering to each other.
The normal noises of bridge activity made a soothing sort of susurration and I was wrapped in my thoughts until Lars turned to me.
“Sooo… I’ve altered the flight plan just a bit.” This one had to be pretty big, he looked quite proud of himself.
I quirked an eyebrow and him and coolly replied “A little bit? Taking a swing out to Ringside are we?”
I’d apparently guessed correctly as a grin spread over his face. “I can’t put anything over on you Deej. I won’t take credit for the idea though, that was Flash. You’ve been away too long little sister… Your family misses you.”
“Apparently enough to hijack me clear across the solar system… I wonder if that counts as Sol’s first interplanetary kidnapping?”
“If so it’d be an odd one for sure… we brought the ransom with us!” Stark poked his snout in my direction and gave a chittering laugh.
“Only you and Flash would consider sardines to be currency worthy of using as ransom…” I shook my head at him in mock dismay.
“Not my fault you humans have no taste, is it?” He rolled around and winked an eye at me.
“So you don’t want my lemon garlic poached trout?” I was having to fight to keep from laughing at him as he dramatically flapped a fin in the air and made low mournful sounds.
“You see this, right? She’s trying to starve me into submission! Meanie!” he rolled back over and clicked to himself, doing his best to appear disconsolate. That was just too much and I couldn’t contain the giggles but I wasn’t alone, the entire bridge crew was chuckling and clicking with laughter.
The joking around continued for a while as the tension of finally launching Orion began to dissipate and it wasn’t long before my decision to skip eating before I left had me thinking about food in a serious way. There would be some things available but it would be a little while before a decent meal could be prepared. Attempting to cook in microgravity could best be described as a sport and was something most avoided so it had been a week or so since most of the crew had eaten freshly cooked food. Not that they would have been able to taste it properly, that environment does bad things to smell and taste in humans.
I took my leave of the bridge and made my way to the closest wardroom, smells from the galley permeating the air and causing my mouth to water suddenly as the hatch snapped open in response to my approach. I grabbed a high sided tray and began to load it with fried items as that was one of the first things spacers usually did when there was sufficient gravity. Trying to fry items in microgravity was unspeakably dangerous and had resulted in more than a few rather nasty injuries over the years.
Other foods that were only practical in gravity would be available later but they took longer to prepare. In another 3 hours or so there would be a ship wide feast with spacers practically gorging themselves in shifts. For now I settled into a corner with a large mug of pale beer and wonderful greasy things, an array of dipping sauces crowding a second tray. I was only a bite or 2 in when I found myself bracketed by a grinning Lars and his hench – erm… brother. Both snatched morsels and popped them into their mouths before realizing quite how hot they were and making comical faces while breathing in and out rapidly, fanning at their mouths.
I almost launched a scallop across the room trying not to laugh at them but I managed to get it down. A sip of beer helped a bit with that and I offered the mug to a clearly suffering Gunter who accepted it with a look of gratitude and drained half before passing it over me to his brother. Lars promptly drained the remainder and handed the mug back to Gunter. A moment later Gunter returned with 3 mugs and we all settled down to some serious eating.
Delphin and human crew were filling the space rapidly and the press of bodies and conversation was a little overwhelming. It was good though… I hadn’t felt this way for a very long time and having 2 of my oldest friends on either side began to relieve an almost ignored pressure of sheer loneliness that had become my world. Sometimes its hard to see these things when you’re in the middle of them… realization only comes once you’re on the pathway out. Our eating slowed as we filled and as we all leaned back with a fresh mug I let out a long sigh of relief.
“Feeling better Deej?” Gunter’s expression was back to its usual inscrutable stoniness but we’d known each other since we were children and I saw the concern and hesitant joy in his eyes. I put my mug on the table and snaked an arm behind both of them to give them a hug.
“I’ve missed my brothers… I’m sorry I stayed away so long.”
Gunter shrugged uncomfortably. “We’ve missed you too but I understand. I wish you would have let us help…” he trailed off.
“Right… and you expected her to miraculously change? Since when have you known Deej to accept help from anyone?” Lars’ teasing tone belied his words and he grinned before ruffling my hair. It didn’t bother me, he was right after all. I had been unable to accept offers of assistance and to a large degree that had not changed since childhood. They had both tried so hard to be a friend to me but I had not been able to truly reciprocate until many years later when we were all adults.
They had been a little older than I, having been rescued as toddlers by a Swedish couple after the previous Ebola epidemic killed both parents. Magda and Sven had been able to help the traumatized boys and they were much better adjusted than I. It likely helped that they were boys from a region that did not follow the extreme fundamentalist religion practiced in my father’s culture.
“Hey I was getting better... “
“Says the woman who told us to stay away when we offered to help bury your family. Its ok Deej, we understand… It just hurts to watch our little sister in so much agony and not be able to help.”
“It is the custom, that I be the one to prepare the bodies of my family for burial…” I couldn’t keep the stiffness out of my tone, it was an automatic defense mechanism from childhood.
“It was the custom… and we are your family, their family… We wanted to help you, to be there for you, you knew that…” I could tell my tone had hurt him and it was the last thing I wanted to do.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to hurt you…” I couldn’t manage much more than a small voice through the tightness in my throat. I found myself enveloped from both sides by the two men and we all took a few moments to simply enjoy holding and being held. Sometimes words were insufficient and this was one of those times.
Once we disentangled ourselves more beer was gotten and the serious drinking began. Sure we could have had liquor but for spacers that was the microgravity drink. Carbonated beverages were a really bad idea in that environment… burping didn’t work well at all with no gravity to hold the stomach contents down.
Over the next several hours the compartment we were in was the scene of much drinking and merriment and it did a great deal to allay the weight on my soul. I had been stupid to stay away from the people and things I loved and only now was I beginning to realize just how much damage I had done to myself and to others by doing so. I tried to tell Lars but for some reason he had gone to sleep and Gunter was right there on the other side snoring. I finally gave up and tried to make my way to the nearest head but for some reason the deck was tossing under my feet and it was seriously rough going. I did finally make it and got myself sat down, did my business and crawled back over to Lars and Gunter, climbing under the table and curling up between them on the bench. My last thought was how fine a pillow Gunter’s arm made and I smiled a little as I drifted off.
People from before the Phage might have found the whole scene bizarre and I suppose it was in many ways but the experience left its mark on the psyches of humans in particular. We survivors huddled in more closely together and felt aloneness more keenly than before and especially among spacers this sort of fairly wild party with its resulting dogpile of sleeping revelers was not unusual. The result was more cohesive crews who were far more efficient and ships in better condition, although some balked a little at the informality it fostered aboard ship.
I was not one of them. My early distaste for rigid hierarchies had only grown over the decades and I had been one of the ones who militated against them surviving. Perhaps in war they were useful but we were not at war, had not been for many decades now and we could not allow the destructive social patterns created by conflict to persist. That is not to say the inhabitants of Sol system were defenseless by any means, one of the legacies of so much highly automated industrial capacity being available was an extremely robust space defense network we all hoped would never need to be called upon.
It might have seemed a wasteful expense but our expansion into our own solar system had given us a clue just how ubiquitous life, even sentient life, seemed to be. To assume that our own recently peaceful nature was shared by other possible starfaring species would have been to ignore what happened in our own history when aboriginal cultures encountered more technologically advanced ones. That was not the only long shot prospect we had taken steps to prepare for by any means but it was one of the more controversial ones. It was also the reason Orion was heavily armed and armored with triply redundant systems for literally everything including propulsion.
None of this occupied my mind as I drooled on a nice soft arm that for some reason was abruptly replaced by a hard tabletop. The shock of the cold metal on my face was enough to wake me quickly and send me scuttling for the nearest head with a sense of desperation. Nanos might take care of the hangover but the extra fluid still had to go!
By the time I returned to the table most of the wardroom was awake and the aroma of breakfast filled the air. There was as usual a wide selection but I stuck with strong coffee, black and triple sweet along with a stack of flapjacks topped with 2 sunny eggs. The ponderous stack sat in the middle of a sea of syrup in which bacon and sausage were drowning and as I sat Gunter looked down at his newly emptied plate with a mournful sigh.
“Go get your own! Mine!” I snapped my teeth at him and he stuck his tongue out at me before stealing a piece of bacon and making his escape back to the buffet. Lars slid in on the other side with his own overburdened plate and began shoveling hashbrowns into his mouth, alternating with gulps of hot coffee and forkloads of rice with a raw egg broken into it. He made some sort of incoherent noise at me and turned his attention back to his rapidly dwindling pile of carbs while I addressed my own somewhat more modest repast.
Half an hour or so later I pushed back my second plate and leaned back into the bench with a happy sigh, sipping at my coffee while the boys dropped off our pile of dishes. Over the years my inability to eat until I was full had receded until I was able to gorge with the best of them, glad of the nanos and their ability to use any excess intake rather than packing it on as fat. For myself I had chosen a combination of fast response, strength and endurance which the nanos happily augmented whenever they had the excess.
They returned and we exited the wardroom together. “I haven’t been out to Ringside for a long time. Thanks!” It had been almost 35 years since I’d last set foot on(Or more accurately in) Europa and I found myself looking forward to it. The research station had grown into a small city in the intervening time although only a few scientists and their families occupied it now, carrying on the research into the bizarre panoply of aquatic life that flourished beneath the ice. It had long been suspected that a few of the life forms were at least protosentient but no one had been able to confirm that yet.
The Delphin and Hunter contingents were deeply involved in their own projects but assisted the human researchers as a matter of course since it was far easier for them to venture out and about, needing only a rebreather and basic containment suit to keep from contaminating the biota. The cetaceans considered it a fair trade since the suits also provided more comfortable anchor points for the manipulation harnesses they used.
We had finally established communication with the cetacean clans a bare 15 years before the Phage and they had gone technology crazy. It was rare anymore to see even the deeply aboriginal clans in Earth’s oceans without at least a manipulator harness and usually a full complement of other gadgets as well.
I made a mental note to message ahead, my old Delphin friend Flash had given birth to her third child just a month ago and it would be great to see her clan again. We had actually met a few years before the big breakthrough and frolicked in the surf together along with my great grandchildren. She had been very young at the time and brash enough to ignore her mother’s warnings to go play with the strange human children. The oldest of the children had become special friends with her and the duo was partly responsible for the communications breakthrough.
Cetaceans had adopted the nanos as soon as they could be modified for their physiology so barring catastrophe Flash would be there to greet Hannah when she finally awoke. The loss of her friend had been very hard for her and she was a much more serious dolphin now, driven in many ways. I understood that sense of urgency well as did most of Earth derived life.
The Phage had fundamentally changed the survivors in many ways and in some ways was the event that marked the end of humanity’s infancy. Each of us humans had survived Ebola to start with and that experience had marked us for life but at least when it was done there was someplace else to go, other people who were eager to help. With the Phage the disaster had been near total and we had simply been stuck with the bodies of everyone we knew, entire cities full of bodies with perhaps a single soul alive in a million.
Some retreated within, unable to cope. There was still an entire hospital full of them, alive and nominally conscious but existing on a barely animal level, unable to take care of their most basic physiological needs. Others chose to join their loved ones in death, certain they were the last human alive. I could understand the allure of seeking peace in that way, we all considered it, some of us more frequently or intensely than others.
We had each been preselected in a way by our history and were likely best suited amongst humanity to cope with the emotional devastation but resilience had its limits. It had taken several months to find the last of the survivors and it was possible there were still some left in more remote areas. If so they were actively hiding as every effort had been made to ensure that no one would think they were alone on the planet.
As devastating as the Phage had been for humanity the rest of earth’s species had found it to be a boon. The cities had largely been left intact but altered in ways that made them more a part of nature. Much of that had been underway for nearly a century but the ability to cherry pick what to leave and what to demolish or move without really worrying about the people living in or using the structures was a real estate developer’s dream… only this time around we were developing something more permanently sustainable for both human and nonhuman habitation.
Most of the cities remained empty of human or cetacean inhabitants who weren’t working on a project there, cared for by automatic systems to preserve them for the influx of inhabitants in future. For many of us the empty cities were almost too much to bear even after all the bodies had been removed and it was a very rare person indeed who chose to live apart from others. So many things about our situation were fairly unique in human history but it was no surprise the culture that had grown from the devastation was almost universally suffering from extreme Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
For a time the torch of civilization had been carried almost exclusively by our cetacean cousins and that too had altered the tone and character of what we now had to call Solarian culture. Soon we would push even further outward and that too would be inaccurate as we became a multistellar group of species. We had an almost unique period of time to work with when the majority of our automated industrial output was unneeded to support billions and could be diverted wholesale to building craft like the Orion and pushing for development of even faster craft with new methods of propulsion.
The terraforming of Mars was well underway but the surface would not be open sky habitable for many years yet. With some alterations to make the living area available to cetaceans the process of roofing over the Valles Marinares for pressurization had been allowed to proceed on its automated path, overseen largely by Delphin crew. It had become a popular resort spot for cetacean spacers, especially the larger Hunter clans as it provided freedom of movement unequaled anywhere but Earth itself.
When the process had run its course Mars would be beautifully green and wet as Earth with very mild temperatures due to a greater relative proportion of greenhouse gasses than our home planet. Until then the valley could shelter nearly a billion inhabitants in the area already sealed off for pressure. It was an amazing wonderland, as lush as the surface would one day be and as dramatic as any environment on earth. The cetacean idea of vertical building was an impressive and beautiful thing which took full advantage of the reduced gravity and provided gentle gradients between levels so that water could be recirculated up and down. It effectively created water escalators which could be quite entertaining to ride for human and cetacean while efficiently providing vertical transport, essential in a city which towered almost 4 kilometers up the cliffs and into airy pylons that looked like gigantic hanging gardens.
When the first rush of humanity came back into the world they would discover a fairyland, a civilization that had advanced so far in such a short time that adaptation would be difficult and along with the efforts to ensure their physical needs were met both education and psychological care would be paramount.
For now though, it was a time to reconnect with old friends who had survived, each in their own way, and had found a reason to carry on, to build something new from the ashes of the past which weighed so heavily upon us all.