Page 2 of The Build Up

We don’t know the gender yet.

Being the control freak that he is, Tarak wanted to know straight away. Maybe he already does. Kordolian tech can probably determine it through molecules in the air or something like that.

ButIdecided not to find out.

While I was stuck onSilencewith the Universe raging around us, it was a sliver of control. The choice to not know. To let fate decide.

Because it doesn’t matter whether our child is a boy or a girl. Either way, it’s a miracle.

Tarak andmychild.

Can we actually start living a normal life now? Is the danger gone? Have all threats been neutralized?

Neutralized?I shake my head as the breeze turns into a gust, ripe with the promise of rain.

Sometimes, I worry I’m starting to sound a bit likehim.

The wind dances around me, making the distant trees sway.

And then, they start to fall.

Big, fat raindrops. It’s a tiny patter at first, quickly coalescing into a downpour.

I look up to the sky, filled with awe.

This phenomenon never ceases to amaze me.

Rain in the desert.

It happens so very rarely—maybe once a year or less—and it won’t last for long, but the creeks will be full for a few weeks afterward, and the wildflowers will bloom in a riot of color. Birds will flock to the newly formed waterways to feast on temporary abundance.

I extend my hand, collecting fat droplets on my palm. The scent of rain on red earth is intoxicating.

So real.

So alive.

I missed this so much.

I missedEarth.

Can we be normal now?

Not really.

Because ofwhoI married, things can never be normal again, but I can still appreciate the only planet in the Universe that will ever really feel like home.

Sweet, incomparable Earth.

“Hm.”

When I hear his voice behind me—that deep, rumbling expression that could mean a thousand different things, depending on the inflection—I’m not even surprised.

Not anymore.

My husband moves like a wraith. He doesn’t mean to. It’s just how he is. At first, his stealth used to startle me, sometimes even irritate me. He adjusted by becoming intentionally loud whenever he approached—with a word or a sound, a scuff of his foot, or a rustle of a limb against his body.

It no longer bothers me. I’ve grown used to it, just as I’ve become accustomed to his Kordolianness.

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