Heaven's Vault: a variety of verbs
for @laughingpinecone
The sunlight of Iox lay overhead like an animal at rest. Paused in the doorway of the Nightingale, Aliya blinked up at the splintered wing mast. Easier to look at the broken wood than at Mina and Huang. She’d intended to come see them to compare some translations, but had limped into Iox with unnoticed wear on the ship finally collecting its due.
Iox couldn’t get parts as reliably as Elboreth, but would involve fewer people trying to talk to Aliya, at least.
Instead, the complications of their own distinctly Ioxian sort started early.
“Do you need any help with that?” Huang asked, waving from where he stood beside the landing pad with Mina by his side. Aliya still felt a pull between herself and Huang. So much had happened since she had begun to see his polite but unmistakable advances as doors, not walls. She had Enkei on board now, and had walked on ancient flagstones and through sites horrific with the long-gone blood of forced transformations. She hardly felt like the same species as Huang any more.
And yet there was something nice about having someone on Iox she truly enjoyed talking to, as much as they disagreed with each other over everything from philosophy to translations.
“You’re better at linguistics than repairs, and we both know it,” Aliya replied, approaching Huang and thereby taking on the full force of the Ioxian daylight.
Huang's smile was strained but sincere. “I can’t argue with that. Do you still have your robot this time?”
You couldn’t have Enkei, first of all — the empress had to at least make it sound like following you was her idea. “Not a scratch on it,” Aliya said after a moment. “How are you settling in, Mina?”
Iox’s sun put highlights in Mina’s mousy hair. “Found, not lost,” she said. “Not yet.”
Aliya’s smile was genuine, although she still wasn’t sure what to say. She’d imprinted on Mina, wanting the girl to have what Aliya had — the resources and experience of Iox — while also feeling like she herself was more Elborethian than Ioxian. Mina would get to see the moon’s three libraries as much as she wanted now, but she would also find her foot in the mud of university politics.
Huang felt like home for Aliya more than most places did, but he was an antagonym, and meant the opposite, too. Aliya could be comfortable with him near her ship — near an escape route — in a way she couldn’t in the library. One was her turf, the other, his. She could almost forget the Loop as the Nightingale flew. Maybe that was part of why her feelings were up and down: Rivers really did break off a chunk of the soul.
Except, no. Aliya chuckled softly at her own fancy.
“Good. I’ll be repairing the ship, so be careful around the masts,” she said.
“Can I look at your library?” Mina asked. “There are so many new subjects I’m interested in now. I didn’t even know to look for them last time I was on the ship.”
Well, that isn't a surprise. You were so afraid you hardly moved.
“Go ahead. I’ll be working on the outside spar,” Aliya said. If it falls, it will fall outward…
Huang caught her eye as he followed Mina inside. Aliya couldn’t read his expression. It reminded her of a robot’s programmed, flat speech, and for a moment she resented the lack of information. She hadn’t ever wanted to kiss him, hadn’t ever wanted to stay with him. So why did the idea of someone else being with him gall her? She might have scowled, because his gaze flickered with concern before he passed her without modifying his speed.
Aliya looked up at the splintered spar again. That wouldn’t be easy to fix, either.
It took work, to find someone on Iox willing to help a River pilot. Aliya had built up contacts, though, and with some help she had the mast re-bound. It would still need a replacement on a moon with more trees, but it would be able to fly off Iox. By the time they were done she was sweating, her hair mussed. She directed her helper to Myari’s coffers, a perk of technically working on university orders. Myari didn’t need to know — or knew she couldn’t do anything about — how much of Aliya’s initiative was … extracurricular.
As Aliya entered the Nightingale after the job was done, the air immediately cooled away from Iox’s bright light. A squeaking, shuffling noise heralded the presence of the Renaki gecko, although Aliya could not see where it was hiding. Mina stood on her tip-toes to pull a book — a rudimentary dictionary — off the shelf, while Huang stood by the shelves on the other side of the room, tipping his head as he checked for the newest work from a renowned academic he and Aliya both respected (mostly). The portholes turned Iox’s harsh light into a softer blue that cascaded over the ladder, bookshelves, and the red, geometric-patterned carpet. The dusty smell of the ship blanketed the room.
At first, Aliya’s heart sank as she looked around the nooks and crannies of the small ship and realized Enkei was nowhere to be found. Then she remembered that the robot had claimed she had no interest in tarnishing her memories of the glory of Iox, and confined herself to the cockpit. It was a way to both preserve her pride and to not have to talk to anyone new or give out any more information, Aliya figured.
“All fixed?” Huang asked.
“Strea’s newest paper is on the table,” Aliya replied.
“Oh!” He hurried over, but met Aliya’s eyes as soon as the folio was in his hands. He flipped through it, clearly eager to focus on it but torn between trying to be social with both Aliya and Mina.
“It’s good,” Aliya jabbed. “But it still dances around the idea that history might be in the past.”
“That’s a very literal interpretation of the Loop, Aliya,” Huang said idly, without rancor, as if their philosophical arguments had themselves been set in stone to repeat for the next cycle.
Huang started talking to Mina about Strea’s paper, and Aliya sat half-comfortable in the hammock as if she was getting ready for bed during a long journey. The watery light even reminded her of the Rivers.
Maybe what she had really wanted was to sit and listen to someone else’s intelligent conversation. Even if it did have too much of the Loop in it, Huang and Mina used jargon Aliya knew, worked through more advanced versions of concepts she had learned as a teen. It was better than being alone and better than having to talk to someone, because she could just listen. Huang and Mina both wanted Aliya there, wanted her to feel included. She could tell by their glances at her, the sweep of placid eyes. Their voices rose and fell, sometimes authoritative, sometimes curious, sometimes laughing.
(Aliya felt some some resentment, too: they wanted her help, but wouldn’t fly a River to come see her, to enter her world …)
Aliya still grated against the idea of what she wanted from Huang. She’d thought she might love him, if he didn’t love the Loop. Mina matched him on that, though. They would learn beside one another and hold each other in their familiar, comfortable orbits, whereas Aliya was always trying to pull one or the other of them out of true.
It had been what Mina needed to get away from her father. Maybe what she needed now was stability, though.
Maybe what she had needed today was to sit in a library while someone else was working on making sure it didn’t physically fall apart around her…
That didn’t sound bad. Aliya flopped down in the hammock and watched the gecko traverse the ceiling upside down while Mina and Huang muttered to each other across the room. The noise and smell of books comforted Aliya, too. As unlikely as it was, she thought all three of them had that in common.
When they had flown from Renaki to Iox, Aliya had thought Mina’s stillness was religious terror. Maybe part of it had been. As she sat in the same room, though, Aliya relaxed enough to start to understand some of what the ship had been to Mina. The familiar books had been as alien to her as a thousand-year-old inscription was to Aliya. While for Aliya, the familiarity of the Nightongale was what made it feel like home, Mina had the instinct that drove baby scholars: the ability of the unknown to feel instantly familiar. It wasn’t a practical skill, and leaning too much on it made a researcher vague. It was essential in the beginning, though. It could make you sit still with just awe.
Aliya closed her eyes, comfortable.
Things certainly could change. Six to Enkei, small town girl to university librarian, words across generations. It was good to take the quiet comfort where she could get it. Aliya only just recently figured out vault was a verb, after all.
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