by Hana Starr
“That’s easy enough. I told you the family that runs the bakery runs the farming. If you spoke with them and explained that this would mean increased production, I don’t think you’d have a problem.”
“Good,” she said, relieved. People in certain professions or positions were often insistent that their way of working or thinking was the best, and wouldn’t even consider a change. “I’ll stop by there on my way back to the lab tomorrow. In the meantime, I suppose I should get some sleep.”
The lights had only just dimmed, which meant she had about an hour before everything was too dark to see, but she was so tired that she didn’t think she’d have a problem falling asleep.
“Ah,” Eban said, looking surprised. “Well, if that’s what you want to do, I won’t stop you.”
Her heart fluttered a little in her chest. “Did you have something in mind for me to do?”
Like…you?
“Actually, I was hoping to invite you out for a flight.”
Her hand went back to her heart as the nervous fluttering increased. “What do you mean? I can’t fly.”
“No, no!” he waved his hand. “I didn’t mean it like that. Just, this is a day we take to break from our normal nightly routines. Work ends early and we all gather in the atrium to spend time with each other. It’s been quite a bit since I’ve worn my wings, so I thought I might want to make sure that I haven’t lost my edge.” He paused, lowering his head a bit to think about it. “And you haven’t seen me fly, have you?”
Her thoughts raced. There was no reason for her to think this was anything but an invitation, to get her out and mingling with her new people, but she couldn’t help the butterflies. If a man said this to her anywhere else, she would have considered it a personal interest. A date. And she was getting excited, old habits and former meanings urging her to think too much into this.
“I…don’t think I have,” she managed, trying to calm herself.
Eban nodded, pleased. “Good. I should tell you right now that the commander of the Icari is meant to be one of the best of the fliers. Shall we go?” He held out his hand.
Deftly and politely, she pretended she misunderstood and walked past him like it was a gesture for her to head out first. He said nothing though, and she wondered if her pretend misunderstanding had led her to the correct choice after all.
He sped up a bit to walk beside her, and they headed down the empty white halls flanked on either side with metal doors. “I was starting to think you were afraid of heights,” she teased.
He smiled a little bit. “Not quite. And it’s not like I couldn’t fly where I needed to go, so I’m not afraid of being seen as frivolous.” He seemed to search for more words as they turned the corner and walked out into the atrium where most of the flock had already gathered. “I just think that change is difficult. We have had to change once before but now we’re settled into this like it’s actually life. I wish so much that soon, there will be more changes. I want to make sure that my people are ready, and I have to start small in order to do that. Not wearing my wings is just one of many things they consider an oddity of mine.”
“I see,” Saffron murmured. “It must be difficult to be the start of change.”
The commander glanced sideways at her, and it was only then that she realized what she’d said. After all, she’d done exactly the same thing once before and was meant to do it again. He patted her shoulder with a fond laugh, and then guided her towards a bench.
With the lights low like this, it was such a calm and romantic settling. Couples ancient and new were wrapped in each other’s arms. The flights were luxurious and slow, wings stretched to their fullest length. That was one of the things she loved the most about watching them. No one was the same color. The biomaterial of their feathers could be changed at will by a visit to a doctor, but Eban told Saffron that most people stuck with their original color or made just a single change during their entire lives. Looking up now, she saw two pairs of shimmering black, and plenty of shades of downy grey and pleasant off-white. One little girl scrambling around a set of monkey bars had blood-red speckles melded in her tawny feathers. They were beautiful and so graceful.
She even felt graceful sometimes, sliding around the hallway even though she still had none of their control and lifelong dexterity.
Eban touched her shoulder again, but it wasn’t merely a pay this time. He kept his hand there, leaning over her shoulder to speak softly. “I have to fetch my wings. Just relax and I’ll be back soon.”
“Okay,” she replied, but he was already gone.
Someone handed her a scrap of muffin, and somewhere in the distance strange music began to play. It sounded like plucked, discordant strings being tugged on and it was terribly beautiful. Closing her eyes, Saffron let the music wash over her and mingle with the faint lilt of accented voices, conversations all around her. The scene reminded her of the saloon she’d been in once during her travels, where everyone knew everyone else and acted like they did even if they didn’t. It was such a homey, loving atmosphere and she had no idea how long she spent there just listening to lovers whisper sweet nothings in each other’s ears. Even those who were just friends had only sweet words and calm conversation.
No one spoke to her but she didn’t mind, lost inside herself as she was.
Then, someone murmured, “Would you look at that?”
Saffron opened her eyes. The music had changed, and was fading away as the player brought their song to a soft end. The talk slowly died down, and she followed the direction everyone was looking in.
Up above, all the way up to the uppermost balcony. Saffron craned her head back and saw a pair of blazing white wings, shimmering with health and gloss. Eban stood with his toes at the very edge, arms outspread.
“It’s been ages,” a teenaged girl whispered to her friend. “I can’t remember the last time I saw him do anything. He’s so amazing though!”
Her friend trilled back, “I know! I can’t wait!”
Saffron turned her head slightly to watch the girls, wondering exactly how much they knew. She’d never be able to try to talk to anyone about her feelings because she just didn’t want anything accidentally getting around her consent, and that would definitely happen if she talked to a stranger. The problem was that everyone was Eban was a stranger to her.
From above, Eban’s faint voice drifted down. “This is your commander speaking,” he said lightly, earning a polite smattering of laughter. He had his hand up by his mouth as though he was speaking into an intercom microphone. “You all deserve this. Take your time. Be happy. Celebrate, and when the morrow comes, we’ll be able to work even harder.”
He spoke calmly, but was tilting dangerously more and more during the last sentence until finally, he dropped and fell like a stone with the final word. Saffron gasped, vertigo lurching inside her, but his face was so calm and mesmerizing that she didn’t feel worried after that initial jab of fear. His position was perfect as he hurtled down, looking like a professional swimmer diving from the high board. Then, his wings flashed out and caught the blue glare of light, sending broken rays outward as he brought himself around and spun in the air. His hair tossed about his head, he flapped just once and hovered for a moment mere feet above the ground before turning and lofting himself higher with only a few strokes.
For all that he didn’t fly, she couldn’t see any stiffness or warming up in him like the others. He was smooth immediately, swooping effortlessly in spirals that caught hoops, tucking his wings in close to his body with a mere flex of muscles. Sliding through the circlets easily, he moved on to grabbing the side of one as he passed. The motion of his stopped arm and continuing body movement sent him careening rapidly back the way he’d come.
With no apparent goal in mind, he played like no one was watching. Reaching out, he turned out acrobatics faster than she could even register. It was a dance, a flicker of wings and a subtle motion of his arms. Every gesture pulled at the straps and tight harn
ess, which was connected tightly to the wings and threaded through with a system of complex pulleys and joints that translated into flapping, or banking, folding or spreading.
It was second nature to him, to all of them. And out of them all, he was easily the best.
He said the commander is expected to be the best. Did he become commander because he could fly like this, or did he work for it? I bet he worked for it. A man like him wouldn’t settle for anything less.
After Eban had been alone in the air for about five minutes, someone else finally lifted off from their perch. It was a young man, and they wove around each other for a moment before breaking away. After that, the air was filled with flapping sounds and soft, jubilant calls as most of the Icari took to flight to celebrate their own existence. Saffron could hardly imagine being so happy. What if it felt like that every single time she walked around? Such an amazing way to live.
All the while, the day continued to end. As the lights grew darker, the participants began to sink lower and alight back on the ground. Adults filtered away, toting small, yawning children with them.
Her eyes never left Eban though, and she quickly noticed that he was coming back.
Dropping down neatly beside her without a sound, he reached out and motioned around. “How did you like it?”
“It was beautiful,” she whispered, surprising herself with a few tears in her eyes.
“It was like this every day back on Daeden,” Eban said, and folded his wings with a few neat motions, like a preening falcon. “But, times change. Yet have you ever noticed that the more things change, the more they stay the same?”
“I guess I have,” she agreed. His palm was burning hers, her legs starting to tremble at his touch. He was so close and smelled so good that she was having trouble thinking. And her tiredness didn’t help. She’d been able to ignore it for awhile while she was distracted but now that everyone was heading to bed, she wanted nothing more than to do the same for herself.
When she tried to move away, he kept her in place and looked right into her eyes. “Saffron? I should like to join you tonight.”
“What?” her mouth fell open in shock. She could hardly comprehend what he just said, it was so much what she had been wanting all this time. And yet, now she didn’t think that she could! He was too busy. He had such a duty to perform and such a following to keep happy, there was no way he could deal with all that while trying to have a relationship with her. Even if this was just a one-time offer, she had no idea how doing that would affect his status.
She couldn’t risk everything he’d worked for, everything he’d struggled to accomplish. No, daydreams would just be daydreams. There was no way around it.
Every word from then on felt like she was being torn in half. “Oh, I’m not sure.” She hesitated, swallowing hard. “I think I just want to go to bed.”
With any luck, he would just assume that she was being naïve. The look in his eyes said that wasn’t going to be it, however. He dropped her hand and back away, his wings jostling against his arms. Every part of him seemed to bristle with hurt. “Oh. Yes, I see. That’s fine, then. I wouldn’t wish to keep you awake.” The rejection in his voice was so painful, each syllable a stab to the heart, and she immediately changed her mind just so he wouldn’t have to hurt.
But by the time she finished saying, “Wait!” he had shot up into the sky and was gone.
Some of the Icari standing nearby turned to look at her with their eyebrows furrowed, but she ignored them. Lowering her head, she trudged to her room alone.
Chapter Eight
Eban seemed to have decided it was for the best that both of them pretended that his disastrous attempt at flirting never happened. While it hurt to have to pretend, to basically lie to him, that she had no interest, Saffron knew that was really for the best.
In any case, she threw herself as deep into her work as she could. Deeper than ever before. She wrote out lists of new instructions and heavily discussed them with the young woman in charge of the bakery. She was all for it, as Eban had said she would be.
“Now, you’re sure that all this is going to make everything better?” She blinked up at Saffron from beneath a furrowed forehead, strands of scarlet hair dangling down in her eyes.
Saffron nodded very eagerly. “It will, pretty quickly. I can work with you on that, if you want.”
The girl was practically head over heels at that. “You will? Fantastic!”
From then on, for about a week, she divided her time between taking samples and teaching the Icari how to accomplish their actual physical work. Much to her surprise, they caught on pretty quickly and treated her with a lot of respect. That was surprising, seeing as she wasn’t anyone in particular, but then she had to remind herself that she wasn’t just another person to them. She was meant to be their savior.
“I was right after all,” she murmured, changing slides on her microscope. For the past couple hours, she’d been studying very intently the inner workings of the cells in order to figure out how to draw out their full potential. The base of the first round of serum was boiling in a test tube; much to her delight, she’d discovered that they had the chemicals necessary and in a very large quantity. All that remained for her to do, once everything else was just right, was add in a few tweaks to the formula that would send the plant growth spiraling. In order for her to do that, she had to know more about the structure.
But, now that she’d broken her concentration, she sat back and let her thoughts wander a little while adjusting the new slide’s position. She was important, too. Right now, she was more important than she’d ever been back on earth. The last thing she needed was to be distracted by all this when she was trying to make such a big change for people so resistant to changes.
And that was an interesting contradiction right there. Against her will, her mind wandered away even further. The Icari were so accepting of small changes and differences amongst their people, but so stubborn and resistant to something like an addition to daily schedules. She supposed that made them like most other living organisms, really.
Someone knocked at her lab door. Annoyed at being interrupted in the middle of the day, she took her time with answering. Eventually though, when the knock came again, she called out, “What is it?”
The door burst open and the girl in charge of the bakery practically fell inside, panting and breathless.
“Tullia!” Saffron exclaimed, and ran to catch her.
The young woman was already up on her feet though, and Saffron realized that she wasn’t terrified. Far from it, she was shaking with excitement and gesturing wildly. Her wings twisted and fluttered with every motion of her arms, rising high over her head. “You have to come quickly!” she blurted out.
“What is it?”
“Eban sent someone to find me, so I could find you. We have found a planet! The gravity appears to be acceptable, from our initial tests. We need you present when we send a receptacle down to collect samples. Please come?”
There was no way she was ever going to say no, so she hurriedly followed Tullia out down the hall and into the body of the ship. Once they were there, the girl set off into flight but she was admirably not distracted by any of the perches or obstacles. Even so, Saffron didn’t have any problem tracking her. Even if she had, she knew how to find her way to most of the calandmarks of the ship by now. She didn’t say that out loud though, because that would be rude.
Eban was waiting for her, poised on his ladder up in the command room. As she went inside, he slid down a few feet to the bottom to greet her. “Hello, Saffron.”
There was no amount of familiarity in his voice, which hurt, but was to be expected. It wouldn’t stop her from giving him the same treatment right back, though. “Hello, Eban.”
He blinked slowly, expression unreadable. “That will be all, Tullia.” When they were alone again, he turned to her and said, “Navigation has picked up a planet out here in this system that might be habitable. Those are
only preliminary readings based on how our signals react when sent near it. We would need to get closer to even be able to tell if the air breathable and the ground workable. The first part can be handled by my own people. The second part, is where we need your help.”
“I was told something about a sample receptacle?” she asked, churning her legs through t try and keep up with him as he briskly led her through a maze of busy workers all tapping at a multitude of screens.
“Yes. It is a detachable miniature pod with an appendage attachment. Remote-flight-controlled, of course.” He stopped by someone who only glanced at them before focusing on their screen again. The screen showed a capsule which looked very much like the one Eban landed on earth in, only with seven attached flasks to show how small it truly was. It also wore a flight harness and a pair of green wings, which she found to be somehow adorable. “We don’t have the energy to waste on second chances. We can spare the flight down and the flight back up, with enough room for seven samples of whatever you find. Garem here is the pilot. When we are in position, I will have the craft’s captured images shone up on the front screen. Guide him.”
