“Ah,” said Rosemary. “So this is a matter of pride.”
“I suppose,” said Sissix. She paused. “Yeah. In a good way.”
The vox snapped on. “Sissix,” said Kizzy. She sounded timid. “You know I love you, right?”
Sissix sighed. “What did you do?”
“How much will you hate me if Jenks and I don’t come to your family’s for dinner tonight?”
“Deeply and unendingly,” said Sissix in a tone that suggested otherwise. “Why?”
“Well… oh, now I feel bad…”
There was a rustle on the vox. Jenks’ voice took over. “Sissix, we just found out that the Bathtub Strategy is on tour and they’re playing at that big concert field in Reskit tonight.”
“The Aksisk?” Sissix sounded impressed. “Guys, I will hate you if you don’t go.”
“You sure?” Kizzy said. “Because it’s not a big deal, really—”
“Kizzy,” Sissix said. “Go.”
“You’re the best.” The vox switched off.
“You can go with them if you want,” Sissix said. “The Aksisk is an amazing venue.”
“Charthump’s not really my thing,” said Rosemary. “Besides, dinner with your family sounds nice. I’m excited to see where you’re from.”
“Well, it’s a lot less exciting than the Aksisk, but it’ll be friendly, at least.” Her hands flurried with commands. The ship veered to the left. “You’ve never been to an Aandrisk home before, have you?”
“No.” She cleared her throat. “And, ah, if you don’t mind, I could use a refresher course.”
Sissix laughed. “Humans are so cute.” She met Rosemary’s eyes and smirked. “Don’t worry, it takes all of you forever to get this. Okay, so.” She took one hand off the controls and counted down on her claws. “Hatch family, feather family, house family. Tell me what you know.”
Rosemary leaned back. “You’re born into a hatch family.”
“Right.”
“Then you grow up and leave for a feather family.”
“Stopping you there. It’s not like you leave as soon as you get your feathers. You leave when you’ve found a good feather family, or when you find other adults worth making a feather family with.”
“A feather family is friends and lovers, right?”
“Right. People you emotionally depend on.”
“But feather families change often, right?”
“Not often, necessarily. Often by your standards, I guess. People change feather families whenever they need to, and people need different things at different times in their lives. It’s almost unheard of for an Aandrisk to stay with the same people their entire life. Two or three people, maybe, sometimes, but not a whole group. Groups change regularly.”
“So, feather families are usually people all around the same age?”
“Oh, not at all. Young Aandrisks tend to stick together at first, but once they gain a little confidence and experience, they branch out. We don’t worry about age differences as much as most other species do. If you’ve got feathers, it’s fine. And it can be a great experience for youngsters to group with an older crowd. I was the youngest by far in my second feather family, and—” Sissix chuckled, her eyes far away. “Yeah, I learned a lot of things.”
“Do you—” Rosemary felt herself blush. “Does everybody in a feather family, um, y’know—”
“Couple? To some extent, but it’s different than what you think. At least once, almost definitely. But not everybody within a feather family has romantic feelings toward everyone else. It’s a whole web of different feelings. So, yes, there’s a lot coupling going on—especially on holidays, a holiday without a tet is unheard of.” Rosemary had learned the word. Its literal translation was “frolic,” but its colloquial use implied something far more risque. “But many members are platonic toward one another. They’ll touch each other much more than Humans do, but it’s still not coupling. Or, well, then again, sometimes it can be. We tend to think about coupling the same way that—hmm, how to put this—okay, like how you think about good food. It’s something you always look forward to, and it’s something everybody needs and enjoys. At the low end of the scale, it’s comforting. At the high end, it’s transcendent. And like eating a meal, it’s something you can do in public, with friends, or with strangers. But even so, it’s best when you share it with someone you care about romantically.”
“I can see that,” Rosemary said. She nodded. “So, then, house family. House family raises children. But not their own children, right?”
“Right. We can breed as soon as we’ve got a full head of feathers, but we don’t start thinking about raising children until we’ve gotten old. That’s when we make house families. It’s usually made up of elder members of a feather family, who all decide to settle down together. Sometimes they might contact favorites from previous feather families, see if they want to join. And don’t misunderstand, house families change members from time to time, too. They may be old, but they’re still Aandrisks.” She laughed.
“So, younger Aandrisks give their eggs to a house family.”
“Right.”
“Do they find a house family that has someone they’re related to?”
“It’s nice if you can, but usually you just choose whoever’s most convenient. When a woman has a fertile clutch—we call it a kaas—she goes to the local registry and finds a good house family with room for more.”
“What if she can’t find someone to take them?”
“Then she buries the clutch. Remember, most of the clutch will die anyway. Most won’t even make it to hatching. That’s not because they’re unhealthy. That’s just how it is. Stars, I can’t even imagine how many of us there’d be if every egg hatched. Too many.” She shuddered.
Rosemary thought about this. “I hope this doesn’t sound ignorant, but why don’t feather families raise their own hatchlings? Aren’t there enough people there to help out?”
“Yeah, but it’s not a matter of resources or support. It’s a matter of where you are in your life. In our early adulthood, it’s expected that we’ll want to travel or study, and it’s a given that we’ll switch families often as we age. Elders don’t shift around as much. They’re more stable. And most importantly, they’ve got life experience. They’re wise. They know things.” She smirked. “I’ll never understand how the rest of you expect brand new adults to be able to teach kids how to be people.”
“That’s… okay, that’s a fair point.” Rosemary closed her eyes, trying to keep it all straight. “So, the house family becomes the hatch family for those eggs.”
“Right. And a house family is usually good for two generations of hatchlings. It’s common for first-generation adults to bring their own eggs back to the family that raised them. That’s what I did.”
Rosemary sat up. “Wait. You’ve got kids?” Sissix had never mentioned this, not once.
The Aandrisk woman laughed. “I had a fertile clutch.”
“When?”
“About three standards ago. I’m told two hatchlings lived. But that doesn’t make me a mother.” She winked. “I’m not old enough for that yet.”
Rosemary looked out the window. She chided herself for being so species-centric, but something about this knowledge made her view Sissix differently. She was surprised to realize the depth of her Human concept of motherhood, the idea that procreating fundamentally changed you. But then, she was of a mammalian species. If she ever chose to have children, it would mean spending the better part of a year watching her body stretch and contort, then another year, or more, of letting a fragile, helpless thing that didn’t understand its own limbs feed from her body. Aandrisk hatchlings developed within a detached object, and emerged ready to walk. But though she understood the biological distinctions, she still struggled to wrap her brain around the idea of breeding as something nonchalant, nothing more complicated than sticking eggs in a basket, handing them off, and getting on with your day. Did they use baskets? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t push away the image of a white wicker basket filled with speckled eggs, the handle tied up with pastel bows. “Do you talk to them, or…?”