Page 107 of Blightfall

“Even if you could see it,” Alanik said, “it wouldn’t be the same light that we see. The light takes thousands of years to reach across the galaxy.” She shrugged. “It’s…hard to explain, but the universe I feel in my mind, the one I sense with my powers—it’s not the same as the one you can see with your eyes. The light we see in the sky is just a memory, an impression of the way the universe used to be. A bit of radiation the star emitted long, long ago, like an ancient photograph. And the universe is in constant motion, churning, shifting. You can’t visit that image of the past, because nothing is the same as it was. To visit the star you see, you’d have to go back in time.”

“When you think about it that way,” I said, looking up at the branches as they passed by overhead, “it’s hard to imagine that anything we do matters.”

“I suppose it depends,” Alanik said. “Matters to whom?”

That was a good point. I supposed almost nothing we did mattered on the scale of the universe, but our actions mattered very much to the people closest to us, and even to the future of humanity. “Thanks,” I said.

Alanik shot me a confused look. “For what?”

I shrugged. “For being you.”

Alanik looked surprised and then fell quiet. The silence felt awkward, like neither of us was sure what to say. On the ship in front of us, Sadie and Nedd were laughing about something. They both leaned back on their palms, looking up at the trees, like being together was the easiest thing in the world, and I was suddenly struck by jealousy, not just because they made it look so easy, but because I knew I was the one making this hard.

“Those two look awfully friendly,” I said.

Alanik glanced in their direction. “Do you think that’s ethical?” she asked. “Hypothetically, I mean.”

She was mocking me and I deserved it. “He’s her superior, so maybe not. But I’m not going to stop them.”

Alanik was quiet for a moment. “Do you think it is easier for them?” she asked. “Because they are the same species?”

My heart stopped. I’d just been thinking as much, but I didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t care that Alanik was UrDail. On the contrary, I liked her that way. Her species was part of who she was. I stared up at the sky, at the star that wasn’t a star, imagining all the stars beyond it, twinkling dots in the vast sky, so far away that the lights we saw were only glimmers of the past. Alanik was right. Nothing in the universe stayed the same, and you couldn’t go back to the past, to the way things used to be.

“I don’t know that taking a chance with someone else is ever easy,” I said. “Especially with lives as complicated as ours.”

“What makes it so complicated?” she asked. “Social conventions?”

“Yes,” I said. “My parents may disown me.” It was the first time I’d said it out loud. Maybe the first time I’d fully admitted it to myself. I hated thinking about the lectures I knew I would get from my mother. I was already angry about things she would say about Alanik, and she hadn’t even said them yet.

“I don’t imagine mine would be thrilled,” Alanik agreed. “But I don’t think I care. Do you?”

I wanted to say that I didn’t. But obviously I wouldn’t have hesitated if I didn’t care. I still valued my parents’ opinions of me. I still wanted to be respected, to make them proud, to make my community proud.

Trouble was, I wasn’t sure I wanted the sort of life my parents or their friends took pride in. Not anymore.

“I do care,” I said. “But I think I’d be happier if I stopped.”

“Is it that easy?” Alanik asked. “Can you just stop?”

“No,” I said. “But I don’t have to let what other people say govern my choices, even if it still bothers me. Does that make sense?”

Alanik leaned back in her seat, looking up at the branches. They cast a pattern over her face that shifted as we moved. “I don’t want to be something you’re ashamed of,” she said.

That hit me like a tree trunk to the chest. She didn’t deserve that. Alanik was too amazing to be something anyone was ashamed of.

“You couldn’t be,” I said, struck by the truth of it. “If I were with you, I could never be anything but proud of it.”

Alanik smiled. And then she reached over and took my hand below the dash, where no one else could see.

Thirty-Six

Sadie

I sat beside Nedd on the wing of the ship, which was illusioned to look like the deck of a boat. My hair was hidden beneath the kerchief I’d bought in town, with clips beneath it to keep stray strands in place. If I was going to my death in the nowhere, at least I was accessorized for it.

“Is there a way to tell which trees are scions?” I asked.

“One kind moves and the other doesn’t,” Dayan called from the other wing.