Survive

by Vera Nazarian

  That’s because, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, among its cool blue waters, on Earth, the ancient dimensional rift has been sealed. The last of the pegasei passed through it, supposedly together with the mysterious Arlenari Kassiopei and the man who used to be the Imperator of Atlantis. The pegasei’s tentative, entirely unconfirmed presence on Earth itself for all millennia is now come to an end.

  It is said, the area of the Bermuda Triangle no longer reports anomalies: strange colorful lights like the rainbow, flashes of ghostly brilliance, disappearances of solid objects and people, or electromagnetic disturbance. Elsewhere on Earth, will-o-wisps are less prevalent, and there’s a noticeable difference in the nature of the Southern and Northern Lights. On the other hand, Earth’s magnetic poles are shifting rapidly, and have been for quite some time, which could explain some of it.

  What matters is, the rift is sealed. Although, we will never really know what actually happened in the process—whether Romhutat burned up like a glorious meteor somewhere along the way at the flaming Rim of Ae-Leiterra, or if the quantum ocean swallowed him during the wormhole passage. Anything is possible, including the miraculous possibility that he somehow mysteriously survived the ordeal and is now headed toward an unknown cosmic destination. His complicated memory will always be with us, and Aeson in particular, who plans to honor his late father with a black armband for his final service to all.

  As for Arlenari Kassiopei, the remarkable woman who was purged from history and forgotten for eons, we have a plan to remedy this. After all, whoever she was—whoever she really is—she ultimately saved us by sharing her knowledge and gentle wisdom across time, and her name deserves to be properly recognized and passed on to the next generation. Arleana is so much more than an ancient children’s story about a girl who played with Starlight—she could be our evolutionary future. So much to learn, so many secrets yet to be revealed in the ancient places recently uncovered, both on the Ghost Moon surface and deep inside Vimana itself. The museums, the archeologists, the antiquities experts, the historians, and Charles Lark, my own Dad, are going to have so much amazing work before them. Arlenari’s legacy is a treasure trove to be explored.

  For that reason, in about a month from now, at the start of Yellow Season, there will be a Naming Ceremony, in which Atlantis will officially recognize its fourth planetary moon. We’re giving the Ghost Moon a proper name, and it is “Arlenari.”

  Now, Arlenari can take her permanent place in the Atlantean star-filled night skies along with Pegasus, Mar-Yan, and Amrevet—that is, as permanent as relative things can be in our constantly moving, wondrous universe. At least we’re getting the weather control algorithm working again, this time with four gravitational tide-causing planetary bodies in the mix.

  When we return to Atlantis after our ordeal, and the godlike aliens take care of OSIRIS and depart, it is good to know that the military conflict never made it as far as the planet itself.

  There are a few violent skirmishes in local high orbit, with randomly forming “mini-grids” of energy drones from the Ishtar grid that traversed space-time during the astroctadra blast and somehow ended up here in our neighborhood.

  Fortunately, War-1, under the skillful leadership of Command Pilot Manakteon Resoi, makes short work of them. The Earth Cadets—the shìrén—are dispatched in Waves alongside native Atlantean Fleet personnel. Hundreds of Wings comprised solely of shìrén Pilots fly bravely, various Pinions show amazing resourcefulness and courage, and veteran officers in the Fleet remark that there is raw talent and even astra daimon material there, no doubt.

  So, yeah, it’s a little weird to think about it, but my baby sister Gracie participates in her first real space battle—and so do Laronda, Blayne, Chiyoko, Logan, Brie, and so many others. They have some insane flight stories to tell, and now we’ll get to hear it all the time, whenever we get together, which is as often as anyone can imagine.

  As for all the remaining members of our fateful astroctadra mission, our international partners Anen Qur and Sheolaat Heru are now returned safely to their respective countries, Ubasti and New Deshret—we are being informed.

  And then of course, there’s my family. Right after I used Starlight to show the aliens that we homo sapiens, as a species can be permitted to stick around (and we found ourselves in orbit over Atlantis), I use Starlight again—to bring Dad and Gordie home, after making an interstellar call and visually confirming their present whereabouts on board one of War-8’s sebasarets.

  As soon as Gordie and Dad get to the Palace (accompanied by Oalla who took very good care of them during the entire mission, according to my Dad), and we all take hot showers and order a “monstrous big” niktos meal service from the Imperial Palace kitchen—Gordie insists—we spend a wonderful, weird, and bittersweet time being together as family and friends.

  Right now, we are all still shellshocked—still numb from our ordeal, and amazed at just being alive—and yes, we are in the Imperial Crown Prince’s Quarters.

  The Imperial Quarters on the top floor are now legally ours to occupy. But . . . maybe not just yet.

  Everyone has been invited, and everyone who can make it is here. Gracie, Laronda, Blayne, Dawn, Oalla, several other daimon, Consul Suval Denu. Meanwhile, Keruvat is still on his way here, on a fast ship coming from Ishtar, where Aeson left him last, to handle things as the SPC next-in-command.

  Quoni, Nergal, Radanthet, Culuar, and others who have gone on the rescue mission to get Manala are still afield and will need an explanation of what they did not find at the coordinates when they got there. They are still running sweeps of the area of the wreckage of War-6 for survivors, and additional ships have been sent to my own former coordinates to sweep the area of War-2. Even despite all this time, it is theoretically possible that someone out there is still alive, and the SPC does not leave troops behind.

  Meanwhile, Erita and Hasmik are being treated for long-term space exposure at the finest medical center in Poseidon—where they will be for the rest of the day and the next, as a precaution—and Xelio is there, keeping them company, as he insisted.

  According to Erita—who’s been messaging back and forth with me from her medical bed all throughout—Xelio has been making “sweet eyes” at Hasmik, and Erita says she is “ready to chuck up her own niktos meal if this keeps getting any more sugary-sweet.”

  “How are you feeling?” I continue to ask her worriedly.

  “Don’t you worry about me,” Erita messages me back. “Worry about your dear friend Hasmik in the next bed over. Our bad boy Shamash has lost it completely. He’s been smacked hard by amrevet disease, taken by her all the way to its cruel and inevitable end, which leads to vows and babies. And your girl has it too. They need a private room. I need a private room. Somebody, please, kill me now.”

  Reading her text message, I repress a silly giggle. And then I sober up again as I look around the room.

  Right now, Devora and Manala mostly weep quietly on the sofa. Aeson, myself, my Dad, George, Consul Denu, and the rest of us, do what we can to make the painful time easier to bear. George has gone down to Manala’s Quarters on the floor below and brought Khemji over, carrying the huge cat in his arms, this time without any mishap (and without gratuitous floor-mopping action on a harness).

  But Aeson himself is not doing too well right now, even though he tries to hide it underneath his usual stoic mask of composure.

  The really surreal part is—Aeson, im amrevu, my Imperial Husband, is now Archaeon Imperator.

  He doesn’t want to talk about it just yet.

  There will be a Coronation Ceremony in a few days when he officially ascends the Imperial Throne of Atlantida. The First Priest, Shirahtet is making all the arrangements, and the IEC is calling meetings all this coming week about the state of the government, the nation, necessary changes due to the current life-changing events, and “the course from here on.” The media is having trouble processing and keeping up with all the events of the last few days,
so we’re keeping the TV feeds off, to retain our own sanity.

  Instead, we sit around the room and talk. Heartfully, tiredly, silly with exhaustion and pain and deflated stress, breaking out in nervous laughter upon occasion at the absurdity of it all, and then some of us showing tears. We talk about the godlike aliens made of golden light who came and left and changed our world—or maybe we changed theirs—these things are not mutually exclusive. We talk of battles and energy drones, of pegasei and those who have left us.

  The elephant in the room is me and my role in what has happened.

  No one really understands, and I’m not sure I can even begin to explain this thing—this fragile, ephemeral, higher-dimensional concept of universal Starlight. Aeson glances at me often, meeting my gaze with his own. There are few words between us, but we know.

  I suppose there will be formal questions raised later, tech and science commissions set up to investigate. And I will have to try to explain to them—to stuffy individuals such as STA Director Rovat Bennu, ACA Director Hijep Tiofon and their ilk—what it means to work with . . .

  . . . Starlight.

  The evening is over at last, and everyone goes to their beds, either here at the Palace in guest quarters, or home. Dad and George get ready for bed in their own guest quarters, while Gordie takes an adjacent guest room to be with all of us, and Gracie gets to sleep in my bedroom with the astroctadra window.

  Just before I leave them to it, I notice that Mom’s urn once again stands on top of the side table in its gentle place of honor. Dad placed her back there when he returned today, and I am quietly grateful for this small, steady reminder of a sense of home.

  When Aeson and I are finally alone in our Master bedroom—for the first time after our impossible reunion in space and all that came after—we simply come together, and there are no words, as we hold each other in silent intimacy.

  At first, we are stilled in a motionless, tight embrace, as we stand listening to each other’s beating hearts for a few intense minutes. I reach up with my fingers and stroke Aeson’s cheeks, feeling him begin to shudder and tense up under my light touch.

  “Gwen,” im amrevu says, taking my face between his palms and holding me like a precious thing. “Who are you, my love? The things you did . . . the impossible, wonderful things that seem to go against all known laws of physics, and yet make perfect sense now. How?”

  “I’ll show you sometime,” I say, glancing at the star-filled night outside the window. “It’s just something anyone can do, really. You just need to focus with all your heart, become very, very small, and reach out into the fine, quantum fabric of everything that’s around you. . . .”

  “They will honor you and worship you for this,” he says, suddenly thoughtful. “You deserve so much more than mere acknowledgement.”

  “Wow, I hope not.” I smile. “I’m sure, as with all things, eventually they’ll forget. I might forget too. Arion was right—Starlight is so elusive. It requires constant focus and practice just to remember it exists, much less how it works.”

  My husband shakes his head with wonder, and continues to look deep into my eyes. His own expression is filled with a complex mixture of yearning, unconditional love, and—simmering underneath it all—his own pent-up grief.

  “How is it,” he says, “that I have you in my life, im amrevu? Of all the rare and precious coincidences that brought us together, when I first happened to visit the Pennsylvania RQC-3 and you were there. What made me reach out and find you?”

  I gaze at him with all my soul. “Maybe it was Starlight.”

  And then, out of nowhere, we are consumed with sudden passion. It takes us over, like a summer storm. . . .

  Aeson and I pull at each other’s clothing, hair, grasp each other’s bodies, pull and squeeze and pant, flesh against flesh. Aeson enters me with a desperate gasp and when it’s over, he collapses and cries in my arms.

  I hold him to me, stroke his hair, his face, embracing my love tight as he weeps for his loss, at long last—his wordless, tortured loss of the difficult man whom he loved and who was his father.

  Later, we make love again, this time without bitterness. Sweet, gentle, starry night fills the open window, and a flock of moons travels the boundless dark sky.

  “Look, there’s Amrevet,” I say, pointing at the grand lavender moon as I lie with my cheek against Aeson’s chest, feeling his warm skin, and breathing his musky scent.

  He chuckles softly. “They say that if you see Amrevet first thing after you make love, you will be with child—”

  Oh, crap!

  I realize in that moment that, while I was marooned in space these past few crazy days, I’d missed taking my weekly dose of my special contraceptive.

  Yellowday is my usual day to take it, but even if I could, I was a little too busy saving Earth on Red Mar-Yan 17 to remember!

  And so, I tell Aeson, and I laugh, and he laughs with joy, because, boy oh boy, are we so pregnant now!

  But, just in case we’re not, we then again engage in certain highly pleasurable activities to assure, without the shadow of a doubt, that we are.

  And over the next few days and weeks, it is confirmed.

  Gwen Kassiopei, Archaeona Imperatris, is going to have a baby.

  We don’t announce it just yet—there will be plenty of time for that in the coming weeks. But I do have a good intimate talk with Devora who embraces me warmly and then tells me all she can to help with the important process. I sense that Devora, now a former Imperatris and still gently grieving her own loss, will find much joy and solace in taking an active part in all these loving interactions still to come.

  But first, we have so much other business to take care of.

  There is the Coronation. Not much I can say, except it is all the pomp and ceremony you might expect from a traditional Atlantida Court event, and I have to be there too since—I get crowned also. Aeson wears the full Imperial robe and regalia, all in Blue, and his Khepresh with the Uraeus is impressive, while all I get is a delicate coronet (for which I am highly grateful, because the weight of all that head gear is terrifying, especially in this gravity). Everyone who’s anyone gets to be there, and the amount of lapis lazuli, sapphire, azure, cerulean, navy, and other blue shades is overwhelming.

  Aeson is now Archaeon Imperator, and the transition to power takes a lot of his daily work hours. Aeson is planning to resign as chief commanding officer of the international Star Pilot Corps which would be a conflict of interest for any head of state and is forbidden by the rules of international cooperation. He now needs to appoint a successor, and several of the daimon are in the running for this most responsible position of Commander. My gut tells me that it will be either Keruvat or Oalla, but I’m not willing to bet on it, nor do I rule out Xelio or Radanthet.

  Among some of his other duties as Imperator, Aeson presides over the ceremony of honoring the dead and the fallen, and the presentation of the black armbands to three new recipients—two of them still living, amazingly, just as himself.

  At a solemn evening ceremony with a thousand orbs of light illuminating the Hovering Gardens of the Imperial Palace, Erita Qwas and Hasmik Tigranian are honored with the presentation of black armbands (in addition to noble rank and citizenship a few days earlier, in the same ceremony when the rest of my family get theirs—which stuns them both), while Devora Kassiopei receives the back ribbon on behalf of her husband, Romhutat. Afterwards, voices join in song and the memorial harmony rises to the sky.

  And then we remember the other dead, at my request, those who perished in this year’s Games. I sing for Zaap, who will be honored in a few days yet again, when we go visit the spacious verdant lands where we have established his natural preserve. It will be called Guvai and will remain untouched by human hand, allowing the wild sesemet to roam free. . . .

  With all this business of transitioning to Imperatris, I am pleasantly surprised that my personal assistant Lolu Eetatu is invaluable. I’m ashamed to admit that I�
�d completely forgotten that I hired Lolu to work for me, with all the events that had come to pass, so now I call her in, and Lolu gets to work organizing my time, my life, my very existence.

  It is very helpful to have her deal with some of the little things and meticulously go over the details with me, Consul Denu, and other Imperial Palace experts, on how to manage an estate, deal with foreign dignitaries, and various media.

  It is also very helpful when I need to get away from it all, such as the time when we have a private family matter to take care of.

  There was a digital photograph that Aeson had hanging on the wall in his office on ICS-2, a picture of a beautiful landscape with a waterfall.

  Apparently, it is one of the many Kassiopei Family estates, one where he spent some of the happiest times of his early childhood.

  We head there now, Aeson and myself, and my immediate family—my siblings and my Dad. We climb the rocky verdant hills, hike up to the top of the exact same spot on the picture.

  The waterfall cascades down a cliff into a glorious abyss of a distant lake below, and the early light of dawn breaks into a clean white radiance over a mauve and silver sky, over tree-covered mountains in the milk-haze of distance. We stand, leaning into a crisp wind, and watch with exultation the sparkling white spray of water as it dances and falls.

  Dad holds our Mom’s urn to his chest, tight against his heart, and for several long moments he does nothing, merely smiles faintly and squints his eyes into the light.

  And then he opens the lid of the urn, leans forward slightly, and pours the beloved ashes into the wind.

  Just in that moment, a flock of small birds lifts from the trees nearby, and circles, silhouetted against the rising dayfire. In that abyss of air, and mist, and watery spray, the ashes mingle with the light that splinters into rainbows—and there, a lark among them, just for a moment, Margot flies. . . .