Gratuitous Epilogue [Touchstone: Extras]

19 - June

June 28

Baby overload

Bad morning sickness every time I wake up. Plus I successfully made Kaoren sick too, when he touched me just before I was about to vomit everywhere. He was very annoyed with himself. Fortunately we can still sleep together, but after our vomit morning he makes sure not to be too close when I wake up.

I’m just ever so slightly showing. No wriggly sensations as yet. Zee has joined in – she and Nils are having a daughter. Nils is impossibly happy, has been ever since Zee finally agreed to marry him. This, unfortunately, increases the Nils Effect – even Ys and Lira go pink when he visits, despite Nils being well above the age range they are starting to be confused about.

Mara has had her babies early. Kyo and Jerl are very identical, and Sera, who will have four brothers, is extra-small and tiny. I’d say she was doomed to be spoiled and overprotected, but given that she’s Mara’s daughter I expect her to be kicking their asses in no time. They all had to stay in hospital for a couple of days, due to being early, but they seem to be healthy despite being so tiny, and Lohn and Mara have been able to bring them home. I took just Sen to visit so as not to be overwhelming, and Sen was very good, staying extra-quiet and treating them like snowflakes – not even letting herself breathe too hard near them. Mara is pretty exhausted – her pregnancy really started to wear on her the last few weeks – and poor Lohn was totally exhausted as well – he worried himself to the bone, and still hasn’t gotten any sleep, I think. Shar has taken over the household during their distraction. He’s very low-key, but somehow the things they need all just happen to be right at hand. And he changes nappies.

He’s still a very close-mouthed boy. I sometimes wonder what Shar thinks about being placed in with the sacrifices, since he is one of two of the absolute highest rank who survived. Very few of the Nuran children at the talent school will ever talk about the families they lost. Partly because they miss them, but also because there is a good deal of quiet speculation as to whether any of their immediate family were part of the conspiracy, since it’s believed to have been almost entirely confined to the noble caste. The question of whether your parents decided to sacrifice not only your world, but also you, as part of a bid for immortality is hardly a thing you want to poke at too deeply.

I don’t think he’s unhappy – he seems to enjoy various sporty things, and training his talents, and reading – but Mara worries about the distance he keeps between himself and most everyone else, and the fact that he doesn’t have any close friends. Though she did say he seems to like bringing Fein over to Arcadia, and she thinks that’s because he likes talking to Kaoren. If Shar was ten years older, he’s the type of person I guess Kaoren would socialise with, and Kaoren has also been helping him with Sights training. Maybe, when the age gap isn’t so big a part of the whole, they’ll end up friends.

Muina is preparing for elections in a few months – it’s taken ages for a method of government to be agreed upon, and it’s basically a watered-down version of the Taren system, with a combination of merit and election for whole heaps of very important positions, including each city’s governor, but also a straight-out popularity contest for world governor – which is a more practical role than you’d expect given that anyone can nominate – and is not even required to pass a basic civics exam. It’s going to be very interesting (and a bit worrying) to see what the policy decisions will be once KOTIS is no longer in primary control. Now that they’ve finally agreed on that, the news has been full of discussion about who is going to nominate for what, and of course Kolar v Tare issues, not to mention what little Nuran representation there’ll be.

They’ve slowed down settlement the last few months, wanting to get the four main cities better established, and the first few of the big farms producing. The big farms are mainly around Zurenath and Liriath. Zurenath was the site of a lot of farms before the disaster, and Liriath is handily flat and fertile and far enough south to not be snowy. In a way it’s kind of awful – vast areas being cleared for farming – but they are at least making a strong effort not to completely destroy habitat, and keeping what Earth would call wildlife corridors in.

They decided that it was really important to do that. Muina’s ecology is a bit all over the place because outside the circles of coverage around the platform towns, Ionoth have been pretty rampant – cleared by the Ddura on a far more sporadic basis. Native species have survived out there – just dealing with a lot more predators and competitors – and there are some adapted Ionoth too, which the Ddura no longer seem to recognise as foreign to the planet. Settling outside the protected areas is still a big risk at the moment.

The tears into the Ena are healing – painfully slowly. Since they no longer gape, there’s no longer nearly so many Ionoth finding their way into real space, but Ena missions are still necessary on Tare and Kolar – and scheduled on Muina for research and to clear the few non-Ddura-protected settlements like Kaszandra. Fourth and First-Second (currently captained by Grif) have been very busy the past month. Maze and Lohn have both taken long leave (and Regan will take leave once his two sons are born). Kaoren’s continued to exhaust himself with Ena missions, and will be up to when our baby’s born, which has annoyed his mother a great deal.

Teor just won’t let herself believe that Kaoren really enjoys being a Setari. Partly, I’d say, just because of his own sheer excellence at it. He likes the challenge, he likes doing well, and he likes being in charge. The exploration tasks are his favourites – he usually talks about those missions with me afterwards, describing what he’s seen and talking about all the worlds which must be out there in fact or fiction to produce those spaces. It’s dangerous, and the longer missions exhaust him, but if he didn’t take it so seriously it would be fun for him.

I get stressed about it when they’re on long missions, but I’m managing fairly well. It’s very much a part of who Kaoren is, and I don’t feel a need to press him to change direction any time soon. He’ll have a long break when the baby is born (sleepless nights don’t make for combat efficiency) and Fourth will probably be split among other teams or be assigned a new captain. He says he’ll have to evaluate after that whether to make a more permanent change to primarily real-space work. I’ve asked him if he’s ever considered swapping to focus on art, but he doesn’t want to make such a complete shift any time soon, and isn’t really sure it’s something he could ever do.

Talking about drawing always leaves him quiet and withdrawn. His perfectionism, his all-or-nothing approach, is very different from my casual attitude to life, but I have no urge to push him to do any particular thing. Drawing or fighting, he’s still Kaoren.