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The Intention of Light

by Aimee Kuzenski

It’s five minutes before solar noon, and the colony is cold and dark. Something broke the sunmirrors last night, and if the mirrors aren’t repaired, we won’t have light in the town square for two months more.

That is unacceptable.

I stand at the base of the mountain looking north, looking at the terminator line of sun and shadow. The southern mountains that brace this valley block the light of the planet’s two suns for most of the year, thanks to its extreme axial tilt. The original settlers would have noticed the aberration when they arrived, if they’d had the time for a proper survey. Now it’s a generation later, and we all must live with the unexpected consequences of that emergency landing.

A gravelly voice mutters from the vicinity of my elbow. “You going up there?”

Strelka has rolled up behind me, silent on greased wheels. I startled at this habit for months after I took over Mother’s job, before I learned to brace for it. I glance down to gauge Strelka’s mood. Their whip-thin tentacles are laced through the webbing of their wheelchair, the normally grass-green flesh tinged with gray. Their torso is even more pallid, the fibrous sheathing damp and slick. They are stressed and hungry.

The Koshmar are unpredictable enough in the winter months, when they gather in the square to bathe in the weak reflected light like desperate, sickly flowers. With the sunmirrors broken, they will eventually become completely predictable. Dangerously, brutally so.

I step back from Strelka, slowly, making it look like I’m simply turning to face them. Their tentacles ripple like kelp in a tide, floating towards me and settling back.

“Someone has to,” I say, unsmiling. The Koshmar do not like our teeth.

Strelka watches me with unblinking eyes. Their many, many eyes. “Not an answer,” they point out. “You going or not?”

I shrug, hands carefully at my sides. “I’ll go,” I admit.

I have in fact already packed my hiking gear, tools, and supplies; I’m in town only to pick up water and say my farewells. The sunmirrors are nearly two thousand meters up the mountain, hardly an impossible climb, but the path is rocky and my burden will be heavy.

And I won’t be coming back. I look away, fighting for control of the panic eating at my insides.

“Nadya.” Most of the time, Strelka can’t pronounce Nadezhda, so I reluctantly gave them permission to use the diminutive form. My mother would be horrified if she knew. Honestly, so am I.

“Nadya. You must hurry.” One willowy tendril breaks the distance between us to touch the hem of my thick coat.

I’m unable to clamp down on my reaction. Become suddenly ice cold, I take another step back and wrap my arms about myself. “I know.” My voice goes hoarse.

They regard me silently. It’s hard for humans to discern emotion in the Koshmar, but I’m better at it than most. They know more about the sunmirrors than any human living, and as a result, I spend a lot of time with them.

Strelka’s palm-sized eyes, crowning the flared and spongy head in a beaded ring, shiver in their sockets. Their tentacles reach and then retreat into tight clumps.

They are very, very afraid.

So am I.

The last time the Koshmar went without sun for more than a few days was just after the landing, before anyone understood them or their hungers. Two humans died, and the colonists nearly drove the Koshmar into the radioactive mountains to die.

Without sunlight, the Koshmar need blood, and they can be very, very quiet when they are hungry.

We are both silent for a while. A frigid gust of wind howls down the mountain, slamming into me like a hammer. I grit my teeth and duck my forehead into the blast.

When it passes, Strelka stirs their tentacles, with a sound like rustling autumn leaves. A request for attention. I frown, and they shuffle their chair forward and back, forward and back, as though caught in a loop.

“I hate when you do that,” I say, as mildly as I can.

They stop. “We go with you.”

That gets my attention. I stare at them. It has to be a metaphor, or a joke. They can’t be serious.

“Strelka,” I say as though to a stubborn child, “if you leave the valley, you’ll die.”

Strelka tilts their head to glare at me. “I know more about the radiation in the surrounding mountains than you ever will, Nadezhda.” Their Russian becomes clear, liquid, exquisitely accented. “Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”

I hate when the Koshmar’s human halves float to the surface like this. It’s a reminder of things best left in the past.

The Koshmar were parasites, before the long journey. Microscopic. We brought them with us to this planet a generation ago, all unknowing, circulating in the cryofluid that kept the colony members alive. They liked cold as much as my Russian ancestors did, even more so, and a perfect storm of technology, genetics, and radiation occurred on the way to our new home, binding us all together.

When the colonists emerged from their cryochambers, some of them came out changed.

Not even the panic over the damage to our communications system and engines would’ve kept the colonists from burning the Koshmar to cinders if they hadn’t helped to guide the damaged shuttle to safety, speaking with the voices of their loved ones.

Avoiding Strelka’s gaze, I look back out at the dark creeping up the side of the mountain. It’s full winter, and the suns’ short sojourn over the town is already nearing its daily end.

“I’ll teach you to suck eggs if it appears you’ve forgotten how.” I keep my tone light and friendly. Strelka balls up their tentacles again, but stays silent.

Guilt grows a stone in my throat. “Strelka.” They do not respond, so I screw up my courage and sit on my heels beside their chair.

“Grandmother.”

Strelka’s skin shivers with their distress, like the hide of a fly-stung goat. A Koshmar can’t look away without ducking behind something; the full circle of eyes means nothing is ever truly out of view; some of them wear veils for that very purpose. Strelka doesn’t bother around me.

I press harder. “Your chair keeps you safe, but you can’t take it up the mountain path.” My unspoken implication hangs in the air - you are too fragile to climb. They know this as well as I do, a fact that bites at me. They know better than I do, as they just pointed out.

I’m getting angry, and the heat feels good in the winter air.

“If you even made it to the mirrors, you’d be subject to the same ill effects as me.” My voice is rising. I hide my shaking fingers in my coat. I’m just cold, I tell myself.

“The mirrors are my responsibility, just like they were Mom’s.” I swallow hard. “As they will be Vera’s.” Sooner than I’d ever dreaded.

“And you, Grandmother, Strelka,” I say, leaning closer, until I can smell the salty, fishy tang of them, “are a living memory of the colony. You are the last engineer from Old Earth.” Strelka actually designed the sunmirrors out of the wreckage of the shuttle’s comms. They will have to train Vera when I’m gone, in case something else breaks and she has to follow me up the mountain.

That’s a thought I can’t really face right now. I press harder. “We can’t spare you.”

Strelka rocks their chair forward and back. “Not you, either, Nadya.”

The truth is that the colony can spare me. It’s my family’s responsibility to be dispensable.

Squeak, squeak. The dry snow creaks under Strelka’s wheels.

The sound snaps something inside me. My response is a chaotic flood of fury and fear and bitterness.

“This is my job, thanks to you. Grandmother.” I snarl at Strelka, my voice rising in pitch until they wince away. “You may have designed the mirrors, but you sent your husband up the mountain to build them. And when the mountain killed him, you sent Uncle Sasha after him to finish the job.”

Strelka’s tentacles are tight, ugly clumps. “Free will,” they protest. “They knew.”

I’ve seen Sasha’s last statement, recorded on a salvaged tablet. He’d laid out exactly what he’d planned to do, before he bid his husband a heartbreaking farewell. Sasha’s death wasn’t a murder, it was a sacrifice. Today, that distinction feels completely immaterial. I grip the arm of Strelka’s chair, leaning over them.

“I’d send you up there in my place if I could, if I thought you’d actually make it.” I’m panting, and my eyes are wet.

One tentacle touches my cheek. I flinch, and Strelka pulls away as if burned.

The moment stretches, and embarrassment heats my cheeks. Strelka offered to come with me, to die with me, and I respond with curses.

I rock back on my heels, taking in my grandmother, the Koshmar. Their tentacles are black lumps on their gray-green flesh. To cover the awkwardness, I stand up, brushing snow from the knees of my pants. The cold has seeped through to my skin.

“I’m heading back home for dinner, before I leave in the morning.” Before I leave - I can’t believe I’m using so many euphemisms. “You’re welcome to join me.”

That’s untrue, but it’s also a peace offering.

Strelka curl further into themselves. “Your mother has made her wishes known.”

I grunt acknowledgment. It’s an old argument, begun when Grandfather introduced Strelka to my mother, newly awake after the long voyage. Mom was an adult, thirty-two Terran years old, but she did not take to the change well.

I shrug to hide the relief I feel at Strelka’s refusal.

“She is who she is,” I say lightly.

“Goodbye, then. Granddaughter.” Strelka shivers in their chair.

To my shame, I hesitate before extending my hand. When their tentacles coil about my fingers in obvious gratitude, guilt tightens a noose about my throat and I am unable to say anything.

Once I extricate myself from Strelka’s grasp, I trudge through the snow and toward the town’s eastern edges, where my family lives. When I sneak a glance back over my shoulder, their chair is gone.

The clinic emerges from the encroaching gloom. The core of the building is the sole intact lifeboat from the colony’s difficult planetfall, and the years have cloaked it in soil and native plants. We’ve put enough additions in that it’s almost more of a community center than the makeshift triage tent it was after landing. There’s a light burning in the obstetrics wing, and I smile to myself as I pass it. It’s good to know the town has a future, even if I won’t see it for myself.

The light dwindles behind me in the darkness, as does my smile.

When I open the door to my home, a wave of glorious smells waft over me. Rosemary, tomatoes, goatsmilk cream, and the rich scent of coney envelop me in a warm blanket. I stop in the doorway, inhaling deeply.

“Nadya! Shut the door, you’re letting the heat out.”

Mom is bent over the small fusion stove, her treasured wooden spoon clenched in one swollen-knuckled fist. True wood, maple her own mother brought from Earth. You could almost make a broth by resting that spoon in a pot of boiling water, Mom always said.

I hurriedly comply, shoving the door closed with shoulder and hip, where the old gasket doesn’t quite seal. We’ll need a replacement soon. Ilya has been coaxing rubber plants to grow in the greenhouse, but the lack of light has withered them all so far. Maybe next year -

Pushing the thought aside, I open my coat and kick snow from my boots. “Sorry I’m late,” I begin.

I am cut off by a blond-topped streak that slams into my abdomen, almost knocking the wind out of me. “Mama!” squeals my daughter.

My heart is in my throat. I wrap my arms about her tight, murmuring “Vera, Verusha, Verochka,” into the top of her head like a rosary prayer. I hold her long enough that she squirms away, her dark eyes wide with premonition.

“Mama,” she says. The pink bow of her mouth shows me she’s lost a milk tooth sometime in the past two days, a gap I somehow missed. “Are you ok?”

I want to tell her nothing’s wrong. I want to bury my nose in her neck and drink in the scent of skin and milk and the tisane my mother makes for her. She’s so young. Too young.

No younger than I was, when I learned the truth of this place. I look over Vera’s shoulder to share a glance with Mom. Her face is drawn with the expectation of grief, but there will be no begging from her, no screaming or hysterics. She knows the stakes as well as I do; it was her job before the advancing arthritis forced her to step back and hand the responsibility to me. I thank her with my eyes and turn my attention to my own daughter.

I brush a lock of hair behind her ear. “Verusha -” No. I won’t sugar coat this with endearments. I straighten my spine, and it breaks my heart when she does the same.

“Vera.” There are tears brightening her eyes now, but I push on. “You must be strong, daughter. I have bad news.”

She says nothing, only watches and waits. Her nose has begun to run, and I unzip my jacket so I can wipe it clean with the hem of my shirt.

When Vera was born, I wrote a speech to give to her on this very occasion, full of flowery words and high-minded self-sacrifice. When she began to talk, I rewrote it, focusing on the love I had for her and obfuscating the hard truths. She’s nearly ten, now. I never wrote another.

The words fall from my mouth like ugly dead insects. “The mirrors are broken. I have to fix them. I won’t be coming back.”

There is no change in her expression. No disbelief or bargaining or panic. My heart sinking lower, I contemplate having to screw my courage tight and try again.

But she surprises me. She always surprises me.

“Did you talk to Strelka?”

I blink at her. “I just saw them.” Suspicion settles on me like a storm cloud. “Did they tell you before I got home? About the mirrors?” I feel cheated of my long-anticipated moment. And relieved at the same time, if I were more honest.

A pained look crosses Vera’s face. “Well, yes. I saw that the square was dark, and asked them.” When I stiffen, she touches my cheek. “Mama, they’re only trying to help.”

Mom slams her wooden spoon onto the table, hard enough to make the bowls jump. Her shoulders are stiff with anger. “Vera. You know I don’t like you talking to the Koshmar.” Mom wipes her hands on her apron, bunching the fabric between her fists. “And to talk to them today of all days, when the square is dark -”

“Strelka would never hurt me!”

“Don’t interrupt your elders, girl.” Mom’s face is fierce. “You don’t remember the landing, but I do. I remember what happened that winter, before we built the mirrors.”

“That was so long ago -”

“They aren’t human!”

I can’t take it anymore. I cover my face with my hands. “Would you please stop? Just stop!”

My plea is louder than I’d meant it to be, and the echo of it rings in the sudden silence.

This is nothing like I’d imagined it. I scrub tears from my cheeks and force a smile. Mom and Vera both wear chastened expressions.

“Let’s just have dinner, please? It smells wonderful, and I’ll need the calories for the climb in the morning.”

They both nod silently. Mom spoons out the stew and we all sit together, for the last time. The gloriously fragrant stew tastes like ashes.

###

The next morning’s farewell feels anticlimactic. An embrace, a promise from them both to take care of each other, and I shoulder my burdens. The spare mirror segments are wrapped in cloth and stowed in the padded backpack, and the tools are hung on my belt. A little food, a sloshing bottle of water, and bottles of both stimulants and anti-nausea meds. There’s nothing left to do but climb.

I’m halfway up the climb before I start feeling ill. When I make my first misstep that pitches me to my knees, my hands start to shake again, badly enough that I have trouble opening the bottles. I dry-swallow one pill from each, haul myself to my feet, and keep going.

When I fall again a half-hour later, I drop the bottle of stimulants. Thank God it’s made of solid, pre-colony plastic and doesn’t break. I snatch it up angrily, making the pills rattle.

And then it slips again through my already-clumsy fingers. The bottle caroms off a rock and vanishes into a lush stand of ferns.

I collapse against the damn rock and curse, profanity after profanity, calling into question the purpose of the planet’s every miserable rock and orifice until I run out of steam. It takes concerningly little time. I shouldn’t be so tired, not yet. I wonder if a rock fall has exposed a vein of the ubiquitous uranium ore near the path I’ve chosen, and cough out a bloody laugh. I wipe the red from my lips and shrug off my pack of supplies, dragging myself to hands and knees. I’ll need that bottle, and soon, or I won’t even make it to the mirrors. I will have killed myself for nothing.

There is a humming in my ears. It takes me a moment to realize the sound isn’t a new symptom.

The colony’s single grav sled is making its determined way up the slope in my wake, vegetation bending away from the field beneath it. Perched atop it is Strelka, their tentacles holding the steering wheel in a death grip.

I gape at them, open-mouthed, and the hollow fear in my chest is pushed aside by a burgeoning anger. My outrage lends me strength and I stagger to my feet, cursing.

“Strelka, you damned idiot. You thoughtless, traitorous fool.”

They flinch, but they keep coming. So do my curses.

“What the hell are you doing?” My voice is ragged and thick. I turn my head to the side and cough blood and sputum. “I tell you to stay, and what do you do? You steal the colony’s only grav sled and follow me like a witless child. The colony needs that sled and now it’s going to rust up here, useless.”

The sled coasts to a halt in front of me. Strelka’s eyes are bulging. That’s anger, not fear. “I would never leave the colony to die, foolish girl. I’m an engineer. I programmed the sled to return when we reach the station.”

I gape at her, unexpected hope blooming in my chest. “You mean … we can go home?”

Strelka twitches and their voice goes gravely. “No. We dead already.” They point one tentacle at the rad counter pinned to my coat. I look, but I already know what’s there. The indicator is black as the void. A lethal dose, already. My foolish hope turns to ashes, and I slump back.

“It’s my job, you idiot mushroom. Mine, not yours.” I massage my temples. “What will the colony do the next time they need an engineer?”

Strelka’s free tentacles curl tight against their body. “Need this more.”

I want to argue with them. I want to slap them, shake them, scream until they understand the mistake they’ve made coming up here. But the burst of energy has run its course and my knees are shaking. I lean back against the rock and slide to the ground, panting. Tears are welling in my eyes.

They stare at me, then turn the sled. The jolt of fear that goes through me at their apparent retreat is both a complete surprise and a miserable shame. I want to call after them, whether to applaud their retreat or beg them to return, I can’t say.

But they aren’t leaving. Instead, Strelka guides the sled to the ferns a few meters away and slips off to vanish in the greenery. They return in the space of a breath, the bottle of stimulant pills gripped in their tentacles. When they crawl back onto the floating sled, I see dark ichor leaking from a gash in their torso.

Fragile. Just like memory.

They return and give me the bottle. I shake out a stimulant, a fat red pill like a drop of blood, and swallow.

Strelka lowers the sled until it’s mere centimeters from the ground and waits.

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Did you know?”

They bend their head. “These eyes we have,” they say, their pronunciation perfect, “they see more than I used to. The magnetic field is thin as silk right now, and the suns are burning hot.” They tilt back, looking up at the sky.

I squint up with them, useless though it is. “Not the uranium, then?”

They roll their head, a Koshmar shrug. “No idea. I see magnetic fields, not radiation. Both, for all I know.”

Their voice changes. “Can’t make it without sled.”

Strelka is right and I hate them for it, in a resigned, exhausted sort of way. I climb shakily to my feet and hoist the pack onto the sled before I drag myself up as well, to sit beside Strelka. Their tentacles undulate, but I don’t shy away. Why bother, at this point?

Strelka, it turns out, is a terrible driver.

“How did you even make it this far,” I grate out between clenched teeth. I shove them aside after the second near-collision with one of the bushy thorn trees and take control. My vision is blurry and my head is splitting, but I manage to steer us back into the clear.

I hear Strelka muttering to themselves, the gravely rasp alternating with Grandmother’s clear Russian.

“Should be able to see.”

Strelka’s voice turns liquid and biting. “At this angle, buried under all these thorn bushes? Don’t be an idiot.”

“Please stop arguing with yourself, Strelka.” I squeeze my eyes closed for a second, wishing the colony had had painkillers to spare me.

They don’t stop muttering, but the volume reduces to a whisper. I wish I had the energy to curse them into silence.

The sun has already set by the time we reach the mirror base. We slide to a shaky halt at the base of the mirrors, gaping at the scale of them. Meters of polished metal atop sturdy, vine-covered bases. I’ve seen pictures, and trained most of my life for the very eventuality in front of me now, but there is simply no comparison to the reality of standing before them.

Tears catch in my throat. My grandfather and my uncle built them, and they never came down the mountain again.

And where are they now? God, I hope they didn’t die in the building. The thought is so selfish I cringe. Popping another stimulant, I scan the mirrors, looking for shattered segments, or maybe a downed tree blocking the light path. But nothing is broken, and the path toward the colony is shear rock. The sunmirrors should be pointed straight down that path, toward the town square. But they aren’t. Instead, they point up at the darkening sky. There are arced streaks of rust around metal joints, as though the entire array moved recently.

How did the mirrors move? My tongue is thick and dry in my mouth, but I can’t stop staring long enough to uncap my water bottle.

How did they move? And what caused it?

Strelka slithers off the sled to collapse in a fleshy heap beside it, their flared head straining toward the the mirrors, their tentacles so tight against their body I can barely see them. I stagger after, leaving the heavy pack of unneeded mirror segments behind.

Strelka follows me into the hardened alloy shack housing the solar-powered controllers. The interior of the building is dark, and electronics blink green and red. I pause in the doorway to allow my eyes to adjust. Strelka skids across the floor on discolored primary tentacles, heading for a screen blurry with dust.

“Hey!” I lurch into the room, my vision narrowing. “Don’t touch anything, we don’t know what’s wrong.” Anger tingles in my fingertips.

They lift one tentacle in warning, and I stumble to a halt. My head hurts abominably.

“Easy, granddaughter,” says Strelka. They wipe an arc of the screen clean. “Don’t teach me to suck eggs, remember?”

I blink, trying to make sense of the words. It’s getting harder and harder to focus. “You -”

They don’t turn; they don’t need to. Koshmar see everything at once. “We designed this place,” they say, “don’t you remem-”

Strelka freezes, and their eyes shiver violently. Fear drenches me in cold sweat.

“What? What is it?” I step closer, trying to peer past Strelka’s wide head.

“Holy Mother of God,” whispers Strelka. Their Russian is clear as a church bell. I realize that they haven’t spoken in broken sentences since we arrived. Grandmother is in the fore.

Strelka touches a glowing square, and a green frame blooms on the black screen. Text flies by, fractured and incomprehensible.

Impotence is worse than the pain, but the fear of breaking something I don’t understand keeps my hands fisted at my sides. I know how to fix shattered mirrors, how to repair the canisters of weed killer that keep plants from growing over the solar panels. I’m a technician, not an engineer.

But Grandmother was. Is.

The lines of text stop scrolling and vanish. Another window opens. This one, I can read.

:Diagnostic complete. No errors reported. Show last message? Y/N:

“Last message?” I’m whispering, and I don’t know why.

Strelka’s body tentacles are unknotted, and they strain towards the screen. I have only ever seen Koshmar do this when they brim with intense emotion. “The sunmirrors are controlled by a system cobbled together out of the colony ship’s comms array,” they say.

I hiss in frustration. “I know that.”

“The operative term is ‘cobbled together’, Nadya. The system is not equipped to respond properly to messages anymore.” Strelka shifts, tentacles hovering over the screen.

“Something tried to talk to it.”

Something? I don’t know how to process this information. “What would do that?” A solar storm? A glitch?” The thought of the sunmirror system failing permanently is almost more than I can bear.

Vera.

Strelka shivers. “It was a message. From something in orbit.”

The implications of the words are slow to coalesce, but eventually the weight of the situation bends my knees and I slump to the floor.

“What,” I whisper, “is sending us messages from orbit?”

Tentacles writhing, Strelka stares at the screen, and at me. It’s as if they can’t find the words, not even with two consciousnesses to draw from.

“Strelka?”

They don’t reply, but they do tap on the screen some more. Brightly lit squares fill with text. I take a breath to demand an update and the air sticks in my throat. The tickle devolves into a wet, hacking coughing fit. When it finally subsides, the palm of my hand is coated red with blood.

Strelka is watching. They’re always watching.

I wipe my hand on my trousers. “Never mind me,” I say hoarsely. “What’s going on?”

They shrug, a gesture utterly at odds with their body language.

“It’s a reconnaissance probe,” they say finally. There is a hush in their voice, a breathy whisper of fear. “After twenty-eight years, someone finally came looking for us.”

I can’t tell whether my breathlessness is the result of my coughing fit or the revelation. A probe, in orbit above us? Come to check on the colony after our long silence, maybe. Mother of God, will they rescue us?

I won’t be there, not with the blood on my lips and that pitch black rad counter. But Vera. Mom. Everyone in the colony that sits at the base of the mountain. They could leave this cursed, cold place. They could live.

Strelka doesn’t seem to share the joy surging through me, though. Their tentacles twitch forward and back, forward and back.

I tense. “Strelka. What aren’t you saying?”

They go still. “Nadya.” The sounds of my name are slushy again. “What about Koshmar?”

I frown against the headache thudding in my temples. Do they mean the mirrors?

“We can fix the mirrors even after we respond to the message -”

Forward and back, forward and back. Never thought I’d miss that creaky wheelchair.

“Koshmar not human,” insists Strelka. They pause as if taking a breath. “Not enough human, anyway.”

And then I see it.

The colony has had almost thirty years to get used to the Koshmar, their gray skin and tentacles and their ring of enormous eyes. And even now, many of us shudder in revulsion and fear when they pass. My own mother hates them like my ancestors hated devils.

What would a rescue party think of them?

I don’t have time for this ethical problem. My lungs are already bloody, my head hurts, and pretty soon the stimulants and anti-nausea meds won’t do a damn thing to keep me moving. Strelka isn’t doing well either; the gash in their side has left a black trail across the floor and their skin is completely gray.

“Grandmother,” I say through loose teeth, “you can’t be saying we should ignore it. Please tell me you aren’t saying that.”

Strelka is silent, but it’s clear they’re saying just that.

Panic rises in my throat, panic twined with outrage. “You - come on. How long do you expect the colony to survive out here? The cold, the hardship, the tiny valley we can never leave -”

Strelka’s voice is urgent. “The rabbits and goats are doing just fine. And so are the greenhouses.”

I change tack, crawling closer. “Then what about the Koshmar? It’s only a matter of time before the sunmirror system breaks for good. What do we do then? Do we send half the colony up the mountain to die and leave the other half in the dark valley to be eaten by the Koshmar?”

Nausea pitches in me, but I ignore it, reaching out to Strelka with one shaking hand.

“It’s a risk, I know. But a risk is better than certain death.” I force a smile. “Besides. The young ones will fight for you. Verushka will fight for you.”

“She is nine. A child.” But I see a crack in their fear, and I press harder.

“We know how to live with the Koshmar now,” I insist. “You know the people up in orbit better than I ever will, but I can’t believe that a society that sent so many people into the unknown will destroy the first strange people they find.” I fight back another soul-deep cough and play the last card I have.

“We didn’t.”

The shaking of Strelka’s eyes stops.

With a heavy sigh, the knotted tentacles relax. One reaches out to grasp my hand, and I don’t flinch, not even deep inside where no one can see.

“I guess you can teach me something, after all. Alright, granddaughter,” says Strelka. “Help me compose the message, will you?”

My chest hurts, but I’m light with relief, lighter than I’ve felt since the mirrors went dark. I return their grip as well as I can.

“Let’s see what our cousins have to say.”

Aimee Writes Things