Quantum storm. I didn’t understand what that meant, but looking at the sky, I knew it was worse than any weather Earth’s shields could produce.
“Danielle?” Andrek’s voice was weaker now. “The shelter?”
“I see it,” I said, already moving. “I’m getting Pip there now.”
“Good. Good.” A pause, filled with the sound of his labored breathing. “Pip will be frightened. You need to…” He broke off with a pained sound. “You need to calm her. The fear, it can damage developing empathic centers if it’s too intense for too long.”
I reached the shelter door and wrenched it open, stumbling inside with Pip. Emergency lighting kicked on, dim and blue-tinted, but better than nothing. The room was small but well-equipped, lined with supplies and featuring a reinforced door that I pulled shut behind us. The moment it sealed, the sound of the storm muffled to a distant roar.
But Pip didn’t stop screaming.
“How?” I called out, hoping Andrek could still hear me through the door. “How do I calm her?”
I looked down at Pip, and tears streaked her face. Her small body shook with the force of his sobs. Her eyes were squeezed shut, chest heaving with hyperventilation.
If I didn’t stop her tears, she’d have permanent damage to developing empathic centers.Not on my watch.
I held her close and attempted that low, resonant hum that Andrek taught me. What came out was pathetic. It did nothing to soothe Pip. “I can’t make the sound.”
I was alone with a terrified, traumatized child who needed something I couldn’t give. All those hours of practice, all those failed attempts at replicating Yxian techniques, none of it mattered now. I couldn’t do this. Pip needed a real caregiver.
But all I had was myself.
I’d been so focused on trying to be what Pip needed, trying to become some hybrid of human and Yxian caregiver, that I’d forgotten authenticity formed bonds, not perfection.
Pip didn’t need me to be Yxian. She needed me to offer whatever comfort I had to give.
I couldn’t hum like Andrek. But I could sing.
I shifted Pip in my arms, holding her against my chest the way Andrek did, and allowed Pip to feel my heartbeat. I found a rhythm that worked for me and was more natural to my human body. Once I settled into a pattern, I sang.
The lullaby came from somewhere deep in my memory, a place I hadn’t thought about in years. My grandmother sang it to me when I was young, before she died, before my parents embraced the surveillance state philosophy. It was old, pre-regulation Earth, passed down through generations in a language that was itself almost extinct.
The words were simple. Something about stars, sleep and safety. I didn’t remember all the verses, so I repeated the ones I knew over and over, letting my voice find its own melody rather than trying to force it.
“Hush little starlight, close your eyes,
The night is gentle, full of lulls and sighs,
Tomorrow brings the sun again.
But for now, just rest, my little friend…”
It wasn’t the powerful, resonant humming that Andrek produced. I sang with my untrained and off-key human voice. I poured every ounce of love and desperation I had into it.
Pip’s crying tapered off.
Her small hands, which pushed against me, relaxed their grip on my shirt. She wasn’t clutching in panic anymore.
I kept singing, swaying in the dim blue light of the shelter, and felt Pip’s breathing sync with mine. Her skin patterns stopped their frantic flickering and settled into a soft, pulsing glow of lavender and pale blue, colors I recognized as calm from my observation notes.
Not long after, I felt it.
The sensation started as a warmth in my chest, right where Pip’s head rested against my heart. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but definitely noticeable, like drinking hot tea on a snowy day.
Except it didn’t stay in my chest. It spread upward into my throat, my head, my mind.
And then I felt Pip.
