“Experiences are like feathers. Some may ruffle, but every one of them is important if you want to fly.”
- Ceres Flavia, Prian minister (24 PA)
Stray was eight days away at superluminal speeds. Gripper spent most of the jump in the cramped engine room, working. Since he had been denied the ground time on Axis to make repairs, the air recycling systems and FMS relays were still broken. Gripper watched the SL drive jump and shudder with paternal worry, clenching and unclenching his huge hands at every sputter.
In her usual caring fashion, Xia made sure that the fretting Arboran ate and slept with some sort of regularity. She brought Gripper plates of vegetables from the garden and remained with him until he had eaten them all. When the Phoenix’s lights dimmed in the evening, she lured Gripper away from the engine room with questions of his home until his words became a tired mumble and he finally fell into much-needed sleep.
On the second such night, Xia was sitting up with Gripper in the cargo bay. He was perched delicately on the edge of one of the suspended planters, desolately inspecting his garden. Unable to finish restocking on Axis and well picked over by Xia, they were largely empty.
“Claws let me set these up when I came on,” said Gripper. “When he found out I couldn’t eat that protein goo that everyone else does. Said that a sick engineer wouldn’t do him any good and so to put in whatever I needed.”
It sounded like the kind of thing Tiberius would say. The Arboran was young, innocent and openhearted. Surely their captain cared for Gripper, but it would never occur to Tiberius to say so. Instead, he would agree to let Gripper survive. Barely. Xia smirked to herself. She sat down on steps made of a steel mesh that led down from a narrow catwalk and into the bay, balancing her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.
“Tell me more about Arborus,” Xia said.
She hoped that Gripper would weary himself with talk, but it was already late and she was too tired to think of any less obvious ploy. It was the same one she had used last night, but Gripper always had plenty to say about his homeworld. If he realized what Xia was doing, he gave no sign. She half listened to Gripper as he spoke, her multi-faceted eyes darkening to a deep, sleepy blue-black. Xia knew the story. Everyone on the Blue Phoenix did, but that didn’t mean Gripper didn’t like telling it.
“I don’t even know where it is, Silver. I’ve looked through the Alliance survey index and it’s not there,” Gripper sighed. “Maybe it’s somewhere out there on the rim. There are a lot of uncharted worlds out there. Arborus might be one of them. But maybe it’s not. It might be in another galaxy or something.”
The world was a green one. The very air seemed alive. The leaves of the great trees, as broad as Alliance cruisers, overlapped and wove together to create an emerald landscape, complete with lakes and streams of clear, sweet rainwater. Arboran villages dotted the smooth leafy hillocks. They built their homes of deadfall and crudely cut strips of leaf tied with vine. Simple but sturdy.
Dead stone and metal were almost unknown to the tree-dwellers. Almost… but those dangerous places were far below the tree canopy where the Arborans made their homes. Amongst the verdant treetops, the threats of the world on the ground seemed so very far away.
