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I did not know the human word for ‘run’.
It has been many, many sunsets, and yet these images remain clear in my headspace. Each time they replay, they sting at my heartspace with all the sharpness of djenti berry paste on a fresh wound.
Sam is returned to us now, more joyful even than before, her sufferings at the hands of Basran’s tribe only short-lived and easily cured by her mate’s devotion. I try to feel the full depth of joy I should feel in this, try to let it soothe over the wounds in my heartspace.
Sam does not bear me any ill will. Nor my tribe, who have tried to convince me many times over that I could not have done more than I did.
And nor, it would seem, does my goddess.
My gaze is drawn back towards the Mercenia hut, travelling in my headspace’s imaginings beyond the front door, down into the lower level, down the long corridor to the large room at the back. The room where twenty females are frozen inpods. Sleeping endlessly through the seasons without aging, without dying.
Travelling to her.
My mate. My linasha.
A blessing from Lina.
At first I thought it just infatuation, as many of my brothers have experienced, with the idea of a mate. Easier to feel it for a female that sleeps, who cannot show her personality. There are no ways I can learn that she is incompatible, the way I have done with many of my sisters. No way my lonely spirit could be dissuaded of interest.
But this feeling in my heartspace is not as Callif’s fickle affections. It is strong and deep and knowing.
I have looked at all of the frozen females’ faces many times, and it is only one that triggers this feeling in me.
We have been told since the youngest of our youngling days that mates meet in the dreamspace as soon as they come close enough to one another in the waking world. There is no delay, no waiting. Unless one is grievously injured and needs their strength for recovery, there are no barriers to the dreamspace. Mates just are. But our new tribe sisters are not raskarran. Their headspaces do not work in the same way. Somehow they have the ability to avoid Lina’s dreamspace if they are not ready for it to come to them.
With humans, the shape of our matings has changed. But thanks to Vantos, we know the new shape they take.
The heartspace knows.
I think of her face, visible through a window into thepodwhere she sleeps. Just a tiny part of her, an impression of the person she is in the shape of her features. But it is enough. For my heartspace, it is enough.
It knows.
And you know you do not deserve it.
The voice in my headspace is sharp, needling. I try to push it down. Sometimes that works, but ever more often it does not, and the voice continues to torment me.
Why would Lina bless a failure with a mate?
“Do you think Lorna will soon have the knowledge to open thosepods?” Delfom asks, rubbing his hands together before holding them out to the fire.
He is one of Walset’s brothers, a male of similar seasons to me. We are also accompanied by Razhan, another of Walset’s mating age brothers, and Karvin, who is of Darran’s tribe and approaching elder status. More often than not, I am accompanied by new brothers, rather than old. Those of us from Gregar’s tribe are much needed back at the village to teach the newcomers the hunting routes, the patrols. Besides which, many of them are mated now, with younglings on the way, and not keen to leave their linasha’s side, even for a few short days.
I understand this desire deeply. It is why I am always here, as much as I can be, for I do not wish to leave mine.
“Impatient for a better look at the females?” Razhan asks, grinning.
It is the teasing question that should have been on my lips, but I find my tongue far slower than it usually is of late.
“Impatient for my own bed,” Delfom grumbles, though he looks to the Mercenia hut, the same longing we all have in our heartspaces shining in his eyes. “Don’t pretend you’re comfortable here, Razhan. You are no more immune to the ill feeling this place stirs in the heartspace than I am.”
Razhan cants his head to the side, considering. “Perhaps. But it doesn’t change, there is that. There are no new mysteries and strangenesses that come from it. Perhaps I’m growing used to it some.”
“Perhaps I am more into my elder seasons than I think,” Karvin says. “For I do not think I shall ever grow used to it.”
“Maldek here is ready to move in and claim the place as his own,” Razhan says.
I drag my headspace back into the present moment, meet Razhan’s teasing gaze.
