Staphas, Abigail is 21, Sophie is 22

Sophie and I are attending Steve and Beth’s housewarming party. They have moved into a two story unit on Staphas, a few suburbs away from Beth’s previous place according to Sophie. It is more angular and less moundlike than a lot of the dwellings I’ve spied here, though it has rounded windows with distinctive wave patterns, and their street is lined with lampposts that droop like trees bearing fruit that glow. This planet is so interesting; I add it to my very short list of planets I’ve visited (well, at least compared to Sophie's very long list) and absorb every detail I can. Robyn is very happy to give me a detailed history of the planet, including its political tensions, revolutions by the working class against the arboreal aristocrats, prominence of lesbian literature, and eventual coordination with the Alliance, which is of course why Steve and Beth live here - it’s a very short commute to the Alliance Base in orbit, where their team used to work from.

Robyn talks at length about her role as an Alliance liaison and commissioner on the planet Thoo, which she left Sophie’s team to work in shortly before the Weraynian War. I don’t realise how engrossed in this conversation I’ve become until Sophie eventually comes pestering us to come to dinner.

We take our seats at a makeshift dining table that apparently was procured solely for this event. Beth explains that this isn’t the normal type of party they throw. Mickey goes on about how lovely the house is, and how kind they were to set up a temporary playroom for his daughters for the night. Robyn reminisces about her time wrangling them through a new growth period while she babysitted while Mickey was in the Staarus System for months during the war.

Steve, who I haven’t gotten the chance to talk properly to tonight - and in general, really - asks me about the trip over here; Sophie and I took a weeklong transport craft to Staphas. It was very different to our previous teleport watch trips, but it was good, and I tell Steve so. I ask him about the shift in jobs at the Alliance since their team disbanded, and he says he gets plenty of work as a pilot, and Beth chimes in that there’s plenty of comms work on the base for them as well, it really hasn’t been that bad a job transition.

I am poking at a fleshy fruit of some sort on my plate when Mickey speaks up hesitantly, using the topic of job changes as a segue to an announcement he’d clearly been preparing for. He tells everyone that he is planning on moving to Earth, taking up a position as a practice medic in an alien settlement out on one of the planet’s oceans.

We all enthuse at him about the notion, but I pay special attention to Sophie’s reaction to the news. She looks bewildered, though she encourages Mickey that she thinks he will like the Earth. He rattles off all this information about countries and culture and I can see her blinking and I can just tell what she is thinking - he knows more about her planet than she does. I give her hand a squeeze under the table, and she looks at me and smiles weakly. I say to Mickey that it must be enticing to have a fixed job now that his girls are getting older and he grins widely at me and agrees, explaining the learning plan he wants to put in place now that they’re starting to talk in sentences, and praises the daycare program at the medical centre in the settlement. It is very exciting news and we discuss it a bit more before the conversation shifts back to Beth and Steve’s new place.

They’ve already given us a tour when we first arrived but Steve insists on showing us all the gadgets he’s installed around the place so far. Him and Sophie end up on the ceiling in the upstairs corridor for some reason while Beth shows me the trinkets in the office and we return to Robyn scolding them to get back down.

Before dessert, Mickey checks on the girls, and Sophie and I poke our heads in and I smile as Sophie picks them up and coos at them. They remember her name which is very sweet but they take a while to wrap their brains around mine, since Mickey mostly talks to them in Ranigrousian. He puts them down in their portable pods for a nap and we go back to where Beth and Steve have plated desserts that have sparks coming off them. I quietly question the safety of this but I take the plate I am offered and am surprised at the taste of the pudding, as they call it. I have a weird existential moment as I remember I am on another planet, so far away from my home, and with a culture so unlike my own, but I calm down as I sip from my glass, washing down the unfamiliar tastes.

The group lounges after dessert and start to discuss games they can play. This is where my anxiety starts to slip through; I am an interloper in this group of friends, former colleagues, people who lived in close contact for years. I quiet the thought that I am only here because of my attachment to Sophie, because honestly I do know that it is more than that. Mickey and I became fast friends during the war - we actually have far more in common than either of us do with Sophie, but of course she is the center our worlds revolve around - and though I don’t know Beth and Steve as well as I do Mickey I like them both and I know they like me, even though Beth took a bit of getting used to when we first met. It took me a while to figure out Beth’s deal. I used to worry there was something romantic between them and Sophie, but I’ve realised that what I thought was Beth flirting is just how they are with everyone. They’re definitely not attracted to Sophie that way. I have learnt a lot about expressions of affection I haven’t been around before, witnessing the friendships in this group. Robyn I met tonight, and she has the strangest standing in the group, as their former boss and apparently previously quite an adversarial figure in their lives. I like her a lot, and I can see the fondness she has for everyone here, even if it presents more rigidly than might be expected. She’s very attached to Mickey’s kids too, and that aspect binds the group together even tighter. It is endearing to observe.

Anyway, the group plays stupid games, and Robyn and I team up for a strategy game on Steve’s holopad, and we are laughing and joking and I feel shockingly light. Robyn bids us goodnight and departs before the night gets too late, and then we help Beth and Steve set up bedding in the main room. They project a playlist of videos they apparently used to watch together and we lie together chatting and sleepy in the darkened room. I am on the edge of the group, more because I’m not as used to sleeping in the same room as so many people as the rest of them, but I don’t feel left out. It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced before. I’ve only ever had one on one sleepovers with my closest of friends. This is a relaxed and silly environment. Though I expected to be totally on edge here on this alien planet in this place I’ve never been in before, instead I am at ease.

I drift off easily - Sophie always says I sleep so much quicker than her - but I do jerk awake hours before the sky lightens outside, and tense for a moment in the dark unfamiliar room before I remember where I am. The other bodies in the room are all breathing steadily at different rhythms, all still asleep. I roll and take a rare opportunity to observe a sleeping Sophie in the low light from hibernating technology in the room. Her mouth is slightly open and her hair is everywhere, as per usual. I smile softly to myself, and then unbidden my mind prods me with the memory of the last time we slept in the main room of a friend. My mouth feels dry. In other times, this sort of reminder would devastate me and would keep me up the rest of the night dwelling on horrible memories but, here in this comfort, I think instead about how far we've come since then, of how we've endured and we're here and we're happy. After our trip to Halapatov all those years ago I never thought I'd travel anywhere ever again, let alone to a planet in another star system, yet here I am. Here we are. So I roll back over and let softer thoughts wash over me and lull me back to sleep.