Vasiht’h grinned. “Good point. Dinner, then ice cream.”
Jahir let his friend steer the conversation away from the unease in his own mind. They had time enough to wear at each other’s anxieties and pains. Little by little.
Chapter 13
Sleep was the furthest thing from Lennea’s mind when she arrived for her next appointment. She took to pacing instead, like Ametia, but utterly unlike her. The Harat-Shar swept to and fro in their office, striding as if over the battlefields of her dreams; Lennea darted and paused and drifted, then halted abruptly. They reflected her disordered thoughts, for she had been talking for several minutes and still Jahir was uncertain what had distressed her.
/She’s talking about everything but the problem,/ Vasiht’h guessed.
/A natural reaction./
/But not helpful!/ Aloud, Vasiht’h said, “Lennea? Would you like a cup of tea?”
“A... a cup of...” She stopped walking, tail twitching behind her. And sighed. “Do you have anything stronger?”
“Hot chocolate?” Jahir offered.
She blinked at him, then burbled a laugh, touching her mouth. “I was thinking of alcohol! But come to think of it, chocolate is the top of the top when it comes to medicating anxiety, isn’t it.”
“I would not go so far,” Jahir said. “But you may find a denser, fattier drink more engaging. You have a great deal of energy.”
“I do.” She exhaled gustily, shoulders drooping. Covering her eyes, she moaned, “It’s been such an awful week, and it’s never going to get less awful again.”
“Definitely chocolate,” Vasiht’h said.
She parted her fingers around her eyes to peer at the Glaseah, let them slide off her face and laughed. “All right. Chocolate.”
Tea they could make. Hot chocolate had to be ordered, or fetched. As Jahir went forth to that task, he murmured, /Having a kitchen adjacent to our office would be useful./
A wistful reply, accompanied by the image of Helga’s abandoned office. /I bet she has a kitchen in there./
/One step at a time./
/As usual./
They reconvened over little cups of rich cocoa augmented by melted chocolate and thick froths of cream whipped with flavors—mint for Lennea, cinnamon for Vasiht’h and honey for Jahir. “So this thing... I... my news.” Lennea’s ears drooped. “I got promoted.”
“That does not please you.” Jahir said it not because he was surprised, but to prompt the dialogue.
“No! I didn’t ask to be principal. I don’t want to be principal. I don’t care that I’m good at the paperwork. The paperwork is the easy part. The hard part is all the... the people parts. The soothing angry parents, and talking donors into donations, and keeping all the teachers talking to one another when half of them don’t like each other...” She sighed. “But no one else could do it. We did a job search, but we didn’t have any takers.” She stared glumly at her cup before meeting their eyes. “You may not know this, but starbases are actually pretty small communities. We don’t normally have loose people wandering around, waiting to fill jobs. Or if we do, they’re young people who were born here and are training up into starter positions. They don’t have the experience or seniority for positions of this kind of responsibility.”
“We know a little bit about it,” Vasiht’h muttered.
“Surely if there is a vacancy, someone will be permitted to immigrate to fill it?” Jahir asked.
“We just started a broader job search, yes,” Lennea replied. “But our former principal hasn’t left the base, so we have to justify her replacement rigorously to get them in. And everyone wants me for the position! I told them I’d be acting principal until they found someone official, but it’s very comfortable for everyone to just leave me there.”
“Except you,” Vasiht’h pointed out.
“Except me.” She sighed. “But I’m not so good at sticking up for myself. The job has to be done, and the kids need someone to do it. I don’t want it to be me, but if there’s no one else, what will happen then?”
“What would happen if you quit?” Vasiht’h asked.
“I couldn’t do that!”
“Hypothetically,” Jahir said.
“I guess they’d have to have someone else fill in, who wasn’t as good at it,” Lennea said slowly. “But... I wouldn’t be able to be a teacher anymore, not there. If I left. I’d be letting them down, and they wouldn’t forget that.”
“That seems unfair,” Vasiht’h said. “Punishing you for not being capable of a job you didn’t even sign up for.”
“That’s the problem! I am capable. And for anyone else, it would have been a great thing, to be promoted. The money. The prestige. All of that.” She shook her head. “And they wouldn’t punish me on purpose. It would just be... this thing in the backs of their heads. They’d remember me as the one who couldn’t handle it. They wouldn’t trust me anymore.” She sighed. “The only way I can get out of this without losing my job as a teacher is to find a replacement who wants to be principal. Then I can go back to doing what I love, and I’ll be the hero who got them what they needed and then gracefully stepped down to let this new person have their chance.”
/She’s not wrong,/ Jahir murmured, chagrined.
/No. And she’s really smart for noticing all those undercurrents./
/We have always noted her sensitivity. This should be no surprise to us./
/No,/ Vasiht’h agreed morosely. /I just wish we could help her fix it./
“When you entered,” Jahir said, “you said your weeks were never going to get less awful. But it appears that there is an exit for you from this situation, yes? If the school succeeds in finding a new principal. They are advertising?”
“For now,” Lennea muttered.
“Are they likely to stop?” Vasiht’h asked, ears sagging.
“No! No, I guess that’s unfair. At least, I hope they won’t.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I’m just... I’m really upset. This was my first week at my ‘new’ job and I hated every minute of it except the paperwork and even that was less engaging than my teaching work. And I don’t know the first thing about trying to find some person to replace me if the original job search didn’t turn anything up.” She looked at them, pained. “What do I do? How do I cope with this? Sleeping it off doesn’t seem enough...!” Tilting her cup to look at the dregs, she added, “A problem that sleep or chocolate can’t solve... I didn’t know those existed.”
“You can still make jokes,” Vasiht’h said. “That’s a good sign.”
She smiled weakly. “I guess you’re right.”
“Let us take apart your issues with this temporary position one by one,” Jahir said. “And see if we cannot find coping mechanisms that will help you.”
“All right.” She looked into her cup again and added, “This was really good. I don’t suppose we can have another?”
/Your turn this time?/ Jahir asked.
/I’m on it./
Vasiht’h brought back scones, fruit, cheese, and the hot chocolate, and over this repast they separated all of Lennea’s challenges and discussed options for minimizing their effect on her. It was a poor bandage over the true wound, though, which was that she was unsuited for the work no matter her competence at its most basic aspects. Watching her depart, Jahir said, “A regrettable situation.”
“Very,” Vasiht’h said, cleaning up the table. “Poor woman. They’re taking advantage of her inability to say no.”
“Perhaps this incident will teach her to do so?”
Vasiht’h lifted his head, frowned. “I doubt it. Lennea wants to be helpful and make everyone happy. That’s not a bad thing. We can teach her to say ‘no’ more often, but if she values harmony and peace more than she values her own discomfort, she’s still going to default to saying ‘yes.’ And in a situation like this, where everyone’s depending on her?” He shook his head.
“A strange viewpoint for therapists,” Jahir murmured.
“Is it? We’re
not here to turn people into something they won’t recognize or like. We’re just here to help them deal with their problems and challenges better. In the specific way that works best for them. Ametia’s never going to deal with problems the way Lennea does.”
That comment set a reaction chaining up his spine, like a moving series of static shocks. The strength of it seized his thoughts so completely his partner looked up abruptly. “Arii?”
“Nothing,” Jahir murmured.
“That wasn’t nothing!”
“Nothing... yet.”
That was all Vasiht’h got out of him, too. Pieter came after Lennea, and dropped to sleep for another of his adventures; watching them, Vasiht’h wondered when they were going to tell him maybe he should go back to Fleet. He wondered when they were going to tell Helga they knew about her machinations. He wondered when they were going to tell Tiber to stick his nose in someone else’s business.
He wondered why they were waiting. They wandered to the commons market and bought essential oils, as suggested by Joyner; they saw Ametia and their other clients. They ate dinner and lunch and ice cream and breakfast, took long walks, left one another alone when they needed time apart. Vasiht’h worked in the garden, talked with his neighbors, chatted with Sehvi about her wedding, visited the siv’t; Jahir slipped in and out of the warp of his days like a weft thread, steady and dependable without ever becoming less mysterious. They lived a life that would have contented Vasiht’h at any other time, except that everything looked settled but nothing was.
“...and it’s driving me crazy!” he finished.
Hector mmmed over their lemonades. Vasiht’h had brought the drinks; his neighbor supplied the food at what had become a weekly chat on Hector’s porch. The elderly man seemed to enjoy listening; he reminded Vasiht’h a little of his grandfather, who’d also had the habit of bright-eyed interest and pithy commentary. “It’s just what my father always used to tell me.”
“What’s that?” Vasiht’h asked.
“It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you down, it’s the stone in your shoe.”
Vasiht’h blinked, then chuckled, rueful. “I guess it does sound small, doesn’t it.”
“The small things grind you down, if you’re not careful.” Hector resumed setting stitches in his latest creation.
“You don’t seem very ground down by anything.” Vasiht’h folded his arms on the table, watching. “What’s your secret, alet?”
Hector grinned. “My secret? To find the funny part of everything.”
“Oh?”
“Like, say, this woman who’s secretly a xenotherapist and pretending not to be while sending you all her clients? As if you’re one of her grandkids who thinks he’s making breakfast in bed for her while all along all the ingredients have been lined up on the counter and all the tools put on shelves in easy reach?” Hector chortled. “Can you imagine how much fun she’s having?”
“Watching us be confused?” Vasiht’h said, ears splaying.
“Watching you succeed!” Hector glanced up at him, tufted brows rising. “What else? That’s what we want out of people we’re helping. We want them to do well. It’s a pleasure when they exceed our expectations.”
Vasiht’h frowned. “You think we’re doing that? Exceeding her expectations?”
“Good question. I don’t know.” He laughed. “If I ever meet her, I’ll ask her.”
Canting his head, Vasiht’h said, “Promise?”
Hector eyed him, tugging the needle through the fabric.
“Just asking…”
The man guffawed. “I doubt that.” And shook his head, amused. “All right, then, I promise.”
“Great,” Vasiht’h said, surprised to discover he meant it. He grinned. “I hope you like home cooking.”
Two days later, Vasiht’h set out four place settings instead of two and sent Jahir a message to bring back extra groceries. When the Eldritch returned with his shopping bags, the query preceded him in the mindline, a bemused fog. “I invited our neighbor,” he told Jahir. “He’s a widower.”
“Ah, the quilt-maker.”
“I thought he and Helga might enjoy each other’s company,” Vasiht’h said innocently, taking one of the bags. He ignored the stern look, feeling it just fine through their link. Setting the bag on the counter, he added, “Trust me.”
“I do,” Jahir said simply.
The ease of it flustered Vasiht’h, as it always did… that he might have earned the trust of a member of this rare and reclusive race, and this particular member. Who was so much everything. Not an angel, like what’s-her-name from his novel, and not a hero chiseled into stone, but something finer and realer. More real? His friend. His best friend. Setting the bread in the warmer, he said, “It’ll be great.”
And it was. Helga arrived first, settling in with her preprandial tea and teasing them both about this or that. Hector came by ten minutes later, and to Vasiht’h’s delight he was wearing a carnation in his buttonhole. The two of them sized one another up, and as Vasiht’h expected, grinned at each other with similar expressions of mischief. After that, dinner rolled along, with both Hinichi and human trading amusing stories and bantering.
/Matchmaking?/ Jahir asked when they were clearing away the plates for the dessert course.
/I think so,/ Vasiht’h said, surprised to discover it was true. Some part of him had known they’d like one another. /Why be alone after your spouse’s passed away if you can find company again?/
/Wise,/ Jahir murmured, with a hint of that autumn-wind softness Vasiht’h associated with his acceptance of what life would be like for him in the Alliance. It dissipated when Vasiht’h sent him a twinkle of stars to decorate the sky for that wind. His friend smiled at him over the coffee pot.
“So,” Hector said as Vasiht’h set out the flan. “Helga-alet. You’ve known these youngsters a bit longer than me, I think.”
“Since they got here,” Helga said agreeably, leaning back with her hands on her now distended belly.
“And have they done well by your lights?” Hector asked. Too innocently, maybe, because Helga rotated one ear slowly toward him.
“I think they’re doing fine,” she said.
“Oh, come on. They just fed you a meal fit for a queen.”
“And flan,” Vasiht’h said.
“And flan!”
“Flan is special,” Helga admitted, staring up at the ceiling. “But do they grind their own coffee beans?”
“It would be easier to do so in an apartment with a better kitchen,” Jahir said.
Vasiht’h sat on his sudden laugh. /You did not say that out loud!/
/She wishes to play with us, in a kind way. It is only polite to join the game./
Helga thought so too, apparently, because she was watching them with a smirk. “A better kitchen, is that it?”
“We do like to cook,” Vasiht’h said.
She guffawed. “Let’s have this flan, then.”
After dessert, Hector took his leave—“Quilts to be finished before the weekend, I’m afraid,”—leaving them with their… mentor? Proctor? Self-appointed foster grandmother? Hector had been right. There was an element of humor to all of this, and resting his cheek on his fist and watching the Hinichi drink the last of her coffee, Vasiht’h could finally see it.
/I’m glad it no longer irritates you./
/Me too./
“So, you figured me out, mmm?” Helga asked.
“We have, yes,” Jahir said.
Vasiht’h nodded wisely. “We think he’s your type.”
She’d been about to speak but this comment made the words stop on her tongue. Incredulous she stared at him. “My… type?”
“Oh yes,” Vasiht’h said. “And we were right! You two liked each other.” He grinned. “Don’t worry, we’ll invite him back so you can keep seeing if he suits you. We know you like to test people out for a while.”
Helga’s eyes widened, and then she let out a peal of laughter. She
laughed until her shoulders shook and her eyes ran and she started squeaking for breath.
/Should we…/
Jahir sipped his coffee, eyes lowered. /Let her finish. Laughter is good for the spirit./
Wiping her eyes, Helga pointed at Vasiht’h. “You… you are… I… I deserved that. Possibly.” She snorted, exhaled. Snickered. “Oh, that was good. I haven’t had a belly laugh like that in ages.”
“I take it we can invite him back?” Vasiht’h asked.
She grinned, pushing back from the table and standing. “You do that, young man. I’ll see if he suits me. But if things go as well as they did today, I don’t think it’ll take long.” She waggled her brows. “If you know what I mean.”
“I think we do,” Jahir said.
After she’d gone, they commenced with clean-up. Vasiht’h couldn’t help the smug satisfaction that leaked through the mindline. “That went well.”
“Do you feel better?” Jahir asked, putting away the plates.
Did he? Vasiht’h chuckled. Did he have to ask? “I do.”
Chapter 14
Pieter’s dream of the EVA emergency returned three months into their therapy, and after weeks of hunting with him through jungles and deserts, jumping out of airplanes or off canyon cliffs, and playing innumerable team sports that often resulted in bloody injuries, Jahir was grateful to see it. But also curious. Hanging with Vasiht’h off to one side while their client drifted, staring into the infinite abyss, he said, /Why now?/
/Maybe he’s done with us?/
/This is the most genuine expression of his longing,/ Jahir said. /His incompleteness./
Vasiht’h shivered. /That’s… an extreme way of putting it./
/Do you disagree?/
The Glaseah was silent for a long time, bearing witness with him. /No./
When Pieter woke, Jahir handed him a cup of coffee. The man nodded his thanks and drank.
“There is a question I wish to ask, alet. If you are willing,” Jahir said.
“Sure.”
“When you left Fleet… was it that you retired?”
“Retired? No. I could have, I guess.” Pieter frowned over the cup, eyes losing their focus. “But no, I didn’t. I applied for a hardship discharge, since I was my children’s only surviving parent. The Pelted grant those a lot easier than humans do, so it wasn’t difficult.”
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