Different Senses
Page 62
Yashi had charge of Nita, who had just started to crawl and who was investigating one of the chairs. “I should take her outside,” he said. “Care to join us, Javen, Shardul?”
“In a bit. First, there’s something I want to do. I’ll come find you guys.”
He nodded, and hoisted his daughter up in the air, making her laugh. “Outside with you, little girl. Come see the lovely Uterden sun.”
Shardul turned to me. “What do you have to do?”
I took his hand. “This.”
I led him through to my rebuilt flat, and to the bedroom. Mum hadn’t had a hand in the redecoration here, and I’d added a few touches, to make it more welcoming and comfortable. I had a reason for that. “This is my home, and now it’s yours too, whenever you want it to be. When you’re ready, if you can see your way to it, I want to build a house with you, and live with you in it for the rest of my life.”
He pulled me down onto the bed, and kissed me, nibbling gently at my lips and cheek in that teasing, delicious way he had. “Javen, are you asking me to marry you?”
“I don’t know. Is that allowed in your moral code?”
“I think my moral code positively demands I marry you. Does your moral code allow me to ravish you when there are children in the house?”
I lay back, dragging him on top of me. “Hope so, because there are going to be children around for a long time, and I need a lot of ravishing.”
“Shall I lock the door then?”
“What an excellent idea.”
~~~~~~~~
My journey to Shardul had begun a hundred and fifty years ago, when my ancestor had fallen in love with a woman of a different race and faith, and joined his destiny to that of a beautiful new world and people. But it had really begun thousands of years before that, when the ancestors of both our peoples had spread through space, seeking new homes and new freedoms, diversifying and recolonising. His blood and mine both ran red through skins of different colour, and we saw the same world, even if his eyes were sky blue, and mine earth brown. He believed in a higher power, I believed in science and logic. We both wanted justice and decency to rule our behaviour and that of humankind.
Our differences could divide us, or strengthen us, and our peoples. We chose to make a whole stronger than the sum of the parts, and that was what we would fight for in Hegal, in Medele, even for the whole planet of Uterden. Each of us would be the reminder to the other what was at stake, and what could stand in our path.
One day, Shardul could be this country’s first indigenous governor, and I would be there, supporting him to the hilt.
We’d make a hell of a team.
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