Page 155 of Every Almost

She continued and told him about California rain and how it was different. Softer, but more chaotic, almost as though rain in Southern California didn't know how to be rain itself.

She told him about how the Pacific Ocean would look on a gray day, how the ocean and the clouds merged and you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

And, she told him about Katie, and how, at seven years old, Charlie remembered her just standing in the driveway in a bright yellow raincoat with her arms spread wide and her face turned up, mouth open, trying to drink the water from the sky.

She paused, and Orion waited. There was no rush, no pressure to fill the silence. He stood there, next to Charlie, right next to her console in the Engineering Bay, his amber eyes showing her he understood that some memories need a moment before you can keep going.

"Sorry," Charlie said, standing up from the console and letting her arms drop to her sides.

"Don't be."

"I haven't talked about... much of this, since arriving."

“But, I mean, there's a reason,” Charlie said. “Back home, if you want to be with someone so wholly, no matter the obstacles, there was always a way to make it happen. You could drive four hours in the dead of night. You could pick up the phone at any time of the day. Distance was a hurdle easily overcome.” Charlie shrugged. “But out here? It isn't just a problem, it's a fucking wall with nothing on the other side of it.”

Orion tilted his head. “You speak as though the story is already finished.”

“It is,” Charlie said. “I've got a departure date and everything.” She said it lightly with a forced laugh, hiding behind any feeling.

It just didn't work.

Orion nodded his head in understanding. Then, his eyes sparkled as he turned to look at Charlie again. "Perhaps that's exactly why it matters," he said. "Not just for the archive. But for you, as well."

Charlie looked over at him. Somehow, after weeks aboard the Emberkind, reminding herself this wasn't a dream or a nightmare, he'd said the one thing she didn't know she needed to hear.

Yet now, the idea of going home and leaving all this behind, gave her pause. It wasn't as though she could decide to stay in space. That was a pipe dream.

Wasn't it?

And even then, the pipe dream had a catch. The more of this she let herself consider, from the ship to the work to that damn woman two consoles over who kept turning up wherever Charlie was, the worse the leaving would be. There was no version of it that ended with her coming back. Non-contact protocols had seen to that. It ended with a shuttle ride to the surface of her home planet and then complete silence. Thinking about the possibilities more, however small already, didn't result in her keeping the Emberkind. It just raised the price of the goodbye she already knew was coming.

"Perhaps that's true. What else would you like to know?" she asked.

"What else is there?" He asked, his eyes still sparkling.

Charlie laughed, loud and real, practically surprised right out of her. "Orion. There isso much else."

"Then I have time," he said. "And tea. One must always have tea for important conversations."

"You know what, actually..." Charlie pushed off the console. "Hold on. There's something I want to show you."

She grabbed her datapad, the one now connected to the music system they'd just built, and scrolled through until she found it. Then she pressed play.

The opening bars of "We Didn't Start the Fire" filled the Engineering Bay.

Orion's eyebrows rose as Billy Joel started rattling off names and events at breakneck speed, the Voxlink translating in real time.

"What is this?" Orion asked, leaning forward.

"This," Charlie said, grinning, "is the history of my world in four minutes and twenty seconds. Every name, every event, it's all real. Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnny Ray, those are all real people and real things that happened. It goes all the way up to 1989, the year before I left."

"Hey, Charlie!" Tavi shouted across the bay, grabbing both Charlie and Orion's attention. "What's a 'Disneyland'?"

Charlie laughed. "The Happiest Place on Earth, Tav!"

"I wanna know more!" Tavi replied.

"Perhaps I should share all my notes from our sessions with our young Head Engineer over there, hmm?" Orion asked, his eyes twinkling. "Now, please, play it again."