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Sing me to sleep on the starry sea
And I’ll dream through the night of my suit and me
I won’t fear the heat of a desert breeze
Or contaminants high in the jungle trees
Even in space I shall never freeze
Because I’ve got my suit and my suit’s got me.
Most had never seen a quarian outside her suit before. The drell came to her and stood near, hesitantly, like wary dogs around a new pup. They breathed the air she breathed. They reached out, gingerly, and one by one she held their hands and squeezed them, flesh-to-flesh contact, every cell of her body containing the possibility of grace. They stood so close, close enough to contract her healing infection. Tears coursed down her cheeks and the hanar touched them, wiped them away, and Qetsi’Olam tried to pretend that meant they forgave her. Child elcor smelled her scent and let her fingers trail through their slats. Batarians were rougher, they swore at her as they crowded in, snarling, a
nd she could not pretend then. One spat at her. She had never in all her life felt anything like it. It felt like being struck in the heart by a rifle.
And all the while she trembled, and shook, and gooseflesh rose on her pale flesh as she entered zones not meant for her, for her anatomy, for her respiration, for her comfort. All the while she wept and sang.
Oh, I love my mother who holds me tight
And I love my father taught me right
Oh, I love my ship sailing strong through the night
And I love the homeworld for which we fight
But what do I love like a lock loves a key?
What holds fast my heart, head, shoulders and knees?
I love my suit and my suit loves me.
Qetsi’Olam thought of her parents burning away into ash on their home ship. She thought of the feeling of the algae on Erinle crawling into her lungs, creeping inside her, taking her prisoner. She thought of Senna’Nir, his joy and warmth when they were young. She thought of Malak’Rafa, his fire, and what they would do to him when she was gone. She did what she could on her walk of penance. Touched them all though it turned her stomach, this intimacy of skin on skin, flesh on flesh, no suit, no protection.
It would have been beautiful, she thought. My Andromeda would have been beautiful.
She finally collapsed in the volus zone, the last of them, the ammonia raising boils on her skin, the pressure making her eyeballs bulge. She fell to the ground and they stood around her in clumps, breathing in loudly, roughly, needing the medicine her body offered so badly.
Qetsi’Olam, for all that she had done, tried to hold on as long as she could for them. She sang as loud as she could in the fumes, clinging to the last of life, the last lyric of her long journey into the black.
When I grow up I shall have a house in the sun
On my true homeworld where the wild rivers run
I’ll plant flowers in soil where now there are none
And there’ll be plenty of room for everyone
But till I see Rannoch with my very own eyes
And kiss the sweet ground where my ancestors lie
We’ll sleep safe as engines as forward we fly
My self and my suit
My suit and I.
When it was over the Keelah Si’yah streamed on like a sailing ship through the night, a silver wake behind it. Frozen, glittering, beloved corpses, laid to rest in the bosom of space, and among them, one without sores or blood—Malak’Rafa, his crystallized eyes turned backward toward the Milky Way.
