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They all look up to find a willowy redhead rushing them from the commune. Noting all the eyes on her, she falters, skidding first to a stop and then edging hesitantly forward, her hands open and placating.
“Um. I heard you were—” Emmaline’s enormous eyes drift up to Thon, her lips parted in shock. “I didn’t believe them.”
“Good. You shouldn’t believe them in general,” Krista agrees, grinning at Emmaline’s reflexive scowl. She’s just the same as Krista remembers—responsible, rule-abiding, faithful Emmaline. She will react horribly to the news that Krista has to share, but at least she will carry it back to their sisters. The Patriarch will not. He would take it to the grave if he could.
“But if they told you I’m carrying a Harkurian’s son, they’re actually right this time. I wanted you to know.” Unlike she had with the Patriarch, Krista allows herself to look up at Thon and smile shakily, seeking reassurance. Unlike the Patriarch, Emmaline still has a little power to hurt her. Not much, but more than Krista would like.
The younger woman’s mouth falls open, but instead of storming off or shouting or changing colors she lifts her chin to look Thon boldly in the eye.
“Um. H-His?”
Krista nods, leaning into him slightly and feeling marginally less volatile when he hugs her to his side. “Emmaline, this is Thon. Thon, Emmaline.”
“Hello,” Thon offers agreeably.
Emmaline stares for a while longer. Thon remains perfectly still like he’s deeply uncomfortable but he refuses to show it. He doesn’t know it yet, but this is actually a much better outcome than Krista expected or even hoped for. Emmaline has always been the sternest of her sisters. She was always the one who put her head down and did the work and obeyed without question. That she’s still standing here without raging about aliens or sin or piety is a minor miracle.
“You …” the young woman wets her dry lips, her eyes darting briefly to Thon. A delicate blush rises from beneath her porcelain cheeks and she’s sort of looking at Krista’s forehead now, but she swallows whatever embarrassment she’s feeling and manages to ask softly, “Are you happy?”
Krista’s eyes fill, but she blinks before the tears can fall. She never, in a million years, expected this. “Yes. Happier than I’ve ever been,” she admits with a tiny, tentative smile. “Are you?”
Emmaline glances away, feigning interest in the turmoil that has erupted just inside the gates. It looks like they’re trying to close them, but there are still outsider merchants in the market, protesting loudly and scrabbling to collect their wares before they’re sealed inside and forcibly converted or something.
A grin spreads slowly over Krista’s face as an idea comes to her. She pulls the data pad from the inside of her pelt where she’s hidden it, swiping open one of the programs and adding her own contact information with a flourish. Krista has never really believed in providence, not even when she had a High Priest who told her she should, but right now, as she holds the data pad out in front of her, she knows to her bones that this is correct.
This is the next step.
“Here you go, Em! Read. Enjoy. Share with our siblings, if you like. The battery should last a few years yet. And when you’re ready to leave this grim and muddy shithole, you can contact me at the address I just added to your contacts.”
Krista already knows what Emmaline will choose. She isn’t sure how she knows, because really and truly this isnotlike Emmaline—but when the younger girl reaches out slowly and curls her fingers around the data pad, it feels inevitable. Emmaline tucks the pad quickly into her bag, eyes wide, breathing hitched, like she knows she shouldn’t but cannot help herself.
“Thank you,” Emmaline says, so quietly that Krista nearly misses it over the din.
Noss chooses that precise moment to stomp up to them furiously, growling loudly in Harkurian as his boots churn up clods of sticky mud. He’s complaining about something in Harkurian—something innocuous about how the market was a waste of daylight—but Emmaline shoots Noss a single, terrified glance and slips away in the confusion, throwing one last wave in Krista’s direction as she disappears through the gates.
Behind Noss, Pel speaks up. “You gave pad?”
“It what?!” Noss barks in Standard. He knows they came all this way, in part, to retrieve that data pad, but he isn’t as angry about it as he sounds. That’s just Noss.
“Emmaline was one of your sisters,” Thon guesses.
“Yes. This is better,” Krista assures them, feeling lighter than she has in months, in years, maybe in her whole life. She reaches out and loops her arm around her Harkurian’s. “Give it a few months and I promise, this will besomuch better.”
