I am used to inhabiting this hill at night, sitting under the stars in the cool air, but tonight it is illuminated by the strings of light Jayken has rigged up around the tables and decorations. We have feasted on a plethora of mostly human and paladanian delicacies, and have watched a dance performance to Earth music arranged by Mickey and Zara. It was a pretty wonderful experience. More music was played in the background afterwards and Sophie and I twirled around briefly surrounded by our friends and community and now I am completely, pleasantly exhausted.
Sophie is continuing to dance, currently showing off moves with Mickey while Zara and the girls try to copy along, but I have sat down for a break with Lexie. She has remained pretty vigilant throughout the day, helping Robyn run interference with the press and haranguing Greg and Max Jones, as well as putting out fires for Jayken’s and our sake. I’m glad to see her sitting down for now, but she is still upright, arms crossed, scanning the crowd.
I nudge her shoulder. “I appreciate you being on bodyguard duty, but you can relax now, you know. Everything’s okay.” She glances at me. I watch her expression flicker and I frown, heart sinking. “Alright… what have you seen?”
I nod, thinking of the Weraynian war - and Lexie’s sporadic glimpses of things within - against my will. “You should’ve told me, Lex.”
She raises her eyebrows at me. “Abigail, you have been so stressed. You did not need an extra source of things to worry about. But you’re feeling better now, right? You talked to Sophie?”
I smile at her. “I did.” She smirks back, and I punch her lightly on the arm.
We sit in silence for a moment and then the music changes to another human song, one by the band Baab, I believe. I know it vaguely, but am immediately amused to see Lexie absentmindedly tapping her foot and humming along to the music.
“Damn it, Jayken’s been playing all this wedding music so much I’ve learnt it by accident.”
“It’s not that bad.” I laugh and she scowls at me.
“It’s not my type of music, okay?” I laugh more and start singing along to the song, causing her to scowl more. I nudge her and she rolls her eyes and sings along with me. We are singing and giggling and it’s immeasurably nice.
I close my eyes and hear Lexie trail off suddenly. When I open them she is staring, eyes wide, and I whip my head around and take in the sight of Robyn, absolutely plastered, dancing erratically and staring intently at Alexa. I should have seen this coming; Robyn has been drinking a lot of paladanian substances which inebriate other species far more potently than us. She gestures at Lexie, demanding for her to get up and dance with her. Lexie is blushing furiously and I am laughing desperately, bent over and fighting to catch my breath.
“Damn it.” Lexie mutters again. I put my hand on her shoulder.
“Off you go, you’ve been summoned.”
“Come with me.” She begs. “I don’t know her that well.”
I cross my arms. “Nah, I’m okay.”
Robyn is calling her by name now, and people are turning and looking at us in bemusement. I lean back and gesture for her to go over.
“I hate you.” Lexie says, and she pushes back her seat. I watch, feeling lighthearted, as she crosses to Robyn and is immediately grabbed by the hands for a ridiculous drunk dance session. She gives it a good go, to her credit. I keep my eyes on them for a glorious minute before letting my gaze wander back over to Sophie, who is nowhere near as inebriated as Robyn but dancing just as crazily, right now in some sort of routine with Kris. They complete a wild but coordinated movement, and then spin around by the elbows and each move on to a new partner, Kris with Beth and Sophie with []. I breathe in this moment of joy and light and movement, content, now, and then I get back up and rejoin the fray.
Flauraan, Abigail is 17, Sophie is 19
Pottering about in the kitchen with my mum, I try not to smile at the sounds of laughter from the roof above us. I am remaining stoic and dutiful, passing my mum measurements of twine as she divides up her herbs, then moving over to cast an eye over the sterilised jars lined up pristinely by the window, which is ajar and letting in a slight breeze. When she turns around I am distracted, gazing past her and focusing on the sounds of mechanisms carried by the wind. She smiles knowingly at me and before I can even be embarrassed to be caught she crosses to the cooler and pulls out a pitcher.
“Why don't we fix up some refreshments for our hard workers?” She teases gently and I accept the inevitable shedding of my own aloofness. I don't even know why I feel the need to hide what this means to me. It's all a bit overwhelming, really.
We carry out a tray of one of my mum’s slightly fruity concoctions and I squint against the sun as I take in the construction site that Sophie and my dad have been toiling in. My parents have good reason to worry when Sophie and technology mix in our home, and honestly I don't know how she convinced them to let her mess around with the preexisting wiring there. Alright, I know how she convinced them. They love her almost as much as I do, and even though I have played it cool, they clearly all know that this is affecting me.
We are standing there for a while, watching them work, my dad supervising as Sophie crouches in the now exposed communications unit and tinkers with a focus I've rarely seen her show anything except machines.
Mum clears her throat and speaks over the wind, “Are you ready for a break?”
Dad turns around and smiles warmly at us, Sophie tries to do the same but gets snagged on something and starts yelping and apologising. Dad quickly reaches down to help her get unsnagged and now I am the one laughing, clear and happy, and I don't try to stop the sound from carrying into the sky.
Once Sophie is untangled with only a few minor scrapes and cuts in her clothes to show for it, she stands for a moment and looks right at me as my laughter dies down. For that moment it feels like we are the only two people in the entire universe, and I try to transmit all the feeling I've been trying to suppress straight into her. Then the spell is broken, they climb off of the roof and we sit and chat together as a family as they take a well earned break before returning to their work.
Once it is all done, and Sophie is covered in grime from some unclear source, she presses into my hand the communicator she made for me the first week we'd met. It is surprisingly pristine.
“Obviously we still need to test it.” she is speaking casually, as if she's handed me a trinket, as if this is any other gadget in her bag, as if she doesn’t know that I know that she is giving me a direct line to her, a lifeline, as a way of trying to apologise for all the time I spent tortured by her absence. Making up for her joining the Alliance and continuing to be so far from me by using Alliance transmission technology to ensure we can talk even if she is systems away, a promise that she will always be here for me, always come back for me, always be in contact with me from now on.
I couldn't hold it against the suffering Sophie, the aggrieved Sophie who'd just watched a friend die and blamed herself for it. Even when days turned into weeks and months and I didn't know if she was dead or alive. And I certainly can't hold it against this Sophie, who is doing everything in her power to make it up to me, to earn back my trust. I can’t pretend it doesn’t make me incredibly anxious, that there hasn’t been lasting damage from the way she abandoned me. I really do hope that this new era of both of our lives with assuage my anxiety.
Time will tell. But now when I am sick with worry about her, I at least have something to do other than wait and see.
She is surveying her work but all I am doing is looking at her, and thinking how lucky I am.
Day Three of the Wedding
I have already visited Sierra and Jason since the birth of their son, but Sophie obviously had forgotten Sierra was ever pregnant, and she is very excited to see a baby. She reaches out to play with Aether’s hands, and looks up all smiles at Jason and says simply, “Wow! Jason, you’re a DILF now!”
Sierra and Jason both look to me as if for translation, but I am as bewildered as they are. I’ve seen the word before - on Mickey’s fishbank profile - so I make the educated guess that Sophie has learnt the word from Beth and does not know what it means. I turn quickly to her, hoping to dispel the confusion, but Zara is pulling at her arm, looking incredibly embarrassed and smiling in a way that tells me the word is far worse than I had been thinking.
“Come on, ammi, Jayken wants to ask you something.” She lies deftly, and Sophie cheerfully excuses herself, oblivious to the bemused atmosphere she leaves in her wake.
“What did she mean by that?” Jason asks curiously.
“My analysis is that it’s a joke descriptor, though I think she meant it sincerely.” Sierra smirks goodnaturedly.
“It’s not worth analysing everything Sophie says, she says a lot of things that have a nonsensical basis behind it.” I say fondly, and smile widely back at Sierra.
“And this is the person you’re marrying?” Sierra teases me, and I raise an eyebrow at her. She winks back.
It’s nice to have someone I know as well as Sierra here to talk to, to ground me a bit, after the overwhelming amount of Alliance people I’ve been greeting. My talk with Steve earlier helped a little, but the opportunity to slip back into the Paladanian banter I was brought up with is helpful. I feel like a normal person, I convince myself. The three of us talk for a few minutes more on work updates and baby things, and then with the weight of social expectations and all the other wedding things needing my attention, I move on.