Space Ninja laughed. "My cousin and his girlfriend. I have lots family here, too, but luckily they not trying to tell me what do. Always say should go at own pace. But—" He toyed with his empty cup. "Too many exceptional people in my family. Bit hard being ordinary one, times."
"I know that feeling," Maxen said, thinking of his own results on the intake exam.
Oriel returned then, and smiled at Asterra’s passionate avowal that Sky Wing was a great guild, and no-one who had any sense would think of leaving it.
"We’ll work out something fun to do next week, and maybe go on a recruitment drive," Oriel said, and watched the girl go out.
"Do you want join my family’s Snow Day?" Space Ninja asked. "We have big field ourselves, just out of city. Fifty or so of us. Teams of three, so work out really well."
"I’d feel we were intruding," Maxen said, awkwardly.
"It’s friends and family, and already got permission to invite people if want. More importantly, be saving me from maybe having be on team with my Mum’s boyfriend or something, which am totally not ready for. No chance of us winning anything, but will be lots fun. Think about, okay?"
With a quick, shy smile, he waved a hand and left.
"Nice kid," Oriel said, then sighed and bent forward to rest her forehead on the table.
"Coping?"
"Surviving."
She was taking it harder than he’d thought, then.
"Want to get out of here? Home, sweet food, watch a vid?"
"Yes."
The club was underground, part of the sprawling shopping and transport complex that lurked beneath Pandora’s gentle hills, so it was very easy to slip away, and take the subway to the nearest exit to their distant apartment cluster. At the interchange, Oriel led him out of the underground network rather than take the travelator to their building, and they walked in silence along gently-lit paths beside roadways of frost-bitten grass. It wasn’t that late, but Maxen felt as tired as Oriel looked.
A tiny mote drifted into Maxen’s field of view, a delicate dancing thing, and he lifted a hand to try to catch it. Oriel, noticing, glanced up, then stopped to try to catch another.
"Ice that falls from the sky," she murmured. "Despite all the pictures, I still couldn’t really believe it."
Well-timed ice. Maxen smiled at his sister as she reached for the specks of white sifting down. She was tall for a Kolaren woman, handsome rather than pretty, and usually maintained a serious expression that some people found off-putting. Lit with wonder, she was arresting.
"We’re going to need thicker clothes," Maxen said, burying his hands back in his pockets.
He regretted saying it when the weight of responsibility pulled Oriel back to practicalities.
"Let’s do some more short-term work before training starts. Even with the training supplement on top of base level, we could use the extra credit, and I’d like a few pieces of quality gear. Not that the base level stuff isn’t functional, but have you noticed that you can usually spot it?"
"Incentivising participation," Maxen said. "While it’s the best thing for us that Muina adopted Tare’s social systems, at least in guaranteeing everyone a place to stay and the basic essentials, it does make me feel more manipulated than I like."
But it was a long way from being only one slip from disaster. Even if it was still just the two of them, still rootless and kinless, they were really and truly now legal citizens of the home world, with a level of security that could not be taken away, where the future wasn’t a line someone else drew for you. Where ice danced in the skies.
"Let’s not go in straight away," he said, and they walked a while longer.
Oriel supposed that by the end of winter she would be thoroughly tired of snow, but two weeks in it was still magic, particularly on a clear day after a fresh, thick overnight fall. An hour after dawn, everything in Old Town glittered.
Snow Day had become an official holiday in the third year of Muinan resettlement. Playing in snow was, of course, something that could be done any time over the next few months, and Oriel had already spent some time hurling ice at Maxen, but Snow Day turned winter games into a shared event. That was all because of Kaszandra, of course, the Earth person who had made the settlement possible, and whose every action was watched, endlessly discussed, and widely imitated. Because Kaszandra held a yearly fight in the snow, everyone in Pandora wanted to do so.
Making an official day for snow fights meant competition for the best parks and other open areas, especially once people from other settlements started travelling specially to join in. The enormous Moon Piazza had been reserved for classes of smaller children, with appropriate escorts. Entering without permission would alert various minders, and also cause increasingly irritating noises in the intruders' heads, so Oriel and Maxen only looked down at the preparations for the event from the wall of Amphitheatre Hill.
"Not too late to back out," she said.
"Why do you keep thinking I want to back out?" Maxen asked, in his grumpiest tones.
"Elbowing into a Taren family get-together? It’s the kind of thing you’d usually run from." She paused. "Have I seemed that badly in need of cheering up?"
"You think I was looking forward to a day of watching other people having fun?" Maxen asked. "And we’re all Muinan now, remember?"
"Sure, sure."
Maxen laughed, then admitted: "I only decided to go after Kadol made sure to let us find out they’d organised a get-together for their new guild, no doubt supplemented by however many KOTIS personnel Jaxa really is related to. You just know that if we meet up in training, they’re going to ask what we did for Snow Day."
"Jaxa just isn’t going to forgive being second place," Oriel said. "Too soon to gauge whether she has any real influence in KOTIS, but keep a hold on your temper, even if they fail to hide their bias."
"Don’t I always? I’ll simply almost-mock them." Maxen tugged the edge of his knitted cap lower over his eyes. "I love watching them trying to decide if they’ve been insulted."
"As long as it’s almost. Let’s get on—we don’t want to keep our ride waiting."
They traced their way through barely-trodden drifts to Fireplace Dock, one of the few additions to the foreshore of the ruined, ancient town that formed Pandora’s heart. There was only one permanent mooring, for an emergency vehicle. The rest of the dock was used for a ferry service, and collections and pick-ups by the private boats owned by those living in the more heavily developed areas north and south of the Old Town.
Despite the early hour, there were quite a few water craft on the move, and Oriel and Maxen stood to one side, waiting to be called forward when Space Ninja’s boat arrived. The far part of the dock moved up and down with the water, and Oriel could not help but grip the nearest handhold warily, despite standing on a rigid section. Kolar did not have surface oceans or lakes, and all this exposed liquid felt dangerous, like a large creature just waiting for a misstep.
Oriel looked up from the hypnotic swell to see that a covered boat suitable for no more than half a dozen people had drawn into position at the end of their dock. Space Ninja, skinny figure swathed in coat and scarf, waved at them. Hiding her doubts, Oriel followed Maxen out onto the floating part of the dock, and made herself step over the tiny gap onto the boat.
"Grab seat," Space Ninja said. "It doesn’t let me release traction lock until everyone sit down."
He sat down in one of the two forward-facing front seats, and Oriel obediently took a spot on the outside bench seat in the rear, nodding politely to a second occupant of the boat, a petite, fine-boned girl wearing a white coat and matching cap embroidered with blue flowers. The girl nodded briefly in return, but did not appear particularly welcoming.