“Pretty great, right?”
“Why do I not have one of these?”
Ashby laughed. “I bought one a few years back, right after I made that same face you’re making. I’m sure we can get one before we leave.”
“Yes, please.”
“The elders couldn’t believe you’d need a blanket.”
“Why—ah. Because I’m warm blooded. Right.” She laughed.
“Everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely. I just needed a little fresh air.”
“Yeah, I know, these things can be a bit much after a while. But you have had a good time?”
“I’ve had a great time. I’m really glad I came.”
“Good. Tell Sissix that, too, it’ll make her happy.”
Rosemary smiled, but thought again of the several hours she’d spent watching Sissix being petted and pampered by a loving family. How cold and rigid life on the Wayfarer was in comparison. Sissix deserved better than that.
Ashby cocked his head at her. “What is it?”
“I don’t know if I can put it into words. It’s just…” She thought. “How does she do it?”
“Do what?”
“Get by without a feather family.”
“Sissix has a feather family.”
Rosemary blinked. A long-distance relationship with a feather family? Given the closeness she’d just witnessed, she couldn’t see how that would work. “She’s never said anything about them.”
Ashby smirked. “When you have a minute in private, pull up her ID file. As ship’s clerk, you should have access to it.”
Late that night, curled up in her guest room, Rosemary did just that.
ID #: 7789-0045-268
GC Designated Name: Sissix Seshkethet
Emergency contact: Ashby Santoso
Next of kin: Issash Seshkethet (GC designated)
Local name (if applicable):
oshet-Seshkethet esk-Saskist as-Eshresh Sissix isket-Veshkriset
Rosemary chewed her lip as she studied the words on her Scrib. Seshkethet was obvious. Saskist was Sissix’s mother, and Eshresh sounded like a name, which meant he was probably her father. Veshkriset, however, was unfamiliar.
She pulled up the official Aandrisk family database. Somewhere out there, there was a team of archivists whose sole purpose was to follow Aandrisk family drama and track the changes accordingly. She felt exhausted just thinking about it.
The letters on the screen shifted as her Scrib translated the text into Klip. Please choose a family name, it read. “Veshkriset,” she said, hoping the database could understand her poor accent. A listing popped up. Rosemary’s brow furrowed. The Veshkriset feather family had only one member. Sissix.
She leaned back into the nest of blankets. Sissix was in a feather family by herself? That didn’t make any sense. Sissix was the walking definition of gregariousness, and Aandrisks didn’t view loners kindly. Declaring yourself the sole member of a feather family would be an act of defiance, a signal that you didn’t want anything to do with other Aandrisks. Rosemary remembered how Sissix had reacted to the old woman back on Port Coriol, how she had dropped everything to give a stranger a few moments of company. Being alone and untouched… there’s no punishment worse than that. No, it didn’t fit at all.
She looked out the window. A thought flickered by. The database was Aandrisk made, and from what Sissix had said, its most practical purpose was to prevent inbreeding. If that was the case, would other species appear on the list?
“Scrib, translate,” she said.
“Specify language path,” the scrib said.
“Reskitkish to Klip.”
“Reskitkish to Kliptorigan confirmed. Please speak the word or phrase you want to translate. If you cannot pronounce it—”
“Veshkriset.”
A brief pause. “No definitive match found. Would you like a linguistic analysis to help determine possible matches?”
“Yes.”
“The suffix -et implies a proper noun. This suffix is commonly used to denote an Aandrisk family group. Do you wish to search the Aandrisk family data—”
“No,” Rosemary said. She thought. “Remove the suffix from the search phrase, and search again.”
Another pause. “Veshkrisk. Noun. A person on a journey. Traveler. Wanderer.”
Wayfarer.
Sissix propped her chin up on her fist, watching Hashkath get smaller and smaller through the window in her quarters. Somewhere down there, her hatch family was laughing, coupling, fighting, cooking, cleaning, feeding the hatchlings. Her skin was still shining from Kirix’s homemade scale scrub. The palm-sized snapfruit tarts Issash had sent back with her were still just a little bit warm in the center. She didn’t want to leave. She loved the Wayfarer, and she loved the people aboard it (mostly), but she always forgot how hard it was being away from other Aandrisks until she had spent time back home. It was more than just missing the smell of the desert grass or being able to fall back into Reskitkish. It was that people there understood. As dear as her crewmates were, constantly having to explain cultural differences, to bite back a friendly remark that might offend alien ears, to hold her hands still when she wanted to touch someone—it all grew tiring. And while visiting home was a welcome salve for her homesickness, the thing she always, always forgot was that for a short while after leaving Hashkath again, being away was even harder. It was as if she’d stuck a knife into herself when she’d first left home—nowhere vital, just her thigh, or perhaps a forearm. The longer she stayed away, the more the wound healed, until she often forgot it was there. Returning always pulled the scab right off.
Still, perhaps it was better that way. If she stopped caring about her hatch family, being away wouldn’t hurt, but cutting those ties was unimaginable. Besides, without leaving, she never would’ve met all the friends she’d made elsewhere. Perhaps the ache of homesickness was a fair price to pay for having so many good people in her life.
Someone knocked on the door. “Come in,” she called. There, another thing to go on the list of alien annoyances: The assumption of locked doors. It had been so nice to be without that feeling for a day.
Rosemary walked in, carrying a bottle of wine and two cups. Something about her scent was different. She had taken a shower recently, but there was something else there, something subtle that Sissix couldn’t quite pinpoint. She’d noticed it before, though in a less prominent way. It reminded her, inexplicably, of being in a bar. Maybe it was just the wine. Unraveling smells within the sealed walls of the ship was always more difficult after becoming acclimated to planetside air. It was the difference between locating objects spread out across a table, and digging for them within a crowded box.
“I hope I’m not disturbing,” Rosemary said.
Privacy. That was going on the list, too. “No, no, I would love some company. And a drink, since I think that’s what you’re offering.” She glanced down at herself, then at her pants crumpled on the floor. Self-consciousness. Modesty. Screw it. Rosemary had just seen her and her whole hatch family naked. She’d even been a good sport about a hatchling grabbing her breasts. She doubted that Rosemary was bothered anymore by having a clear view of someone’s genitals.