After a moment, he recited,“Through the deeps we wander,
Far beyond the coldest stone.
Yet cast we songs afore us,
To find our way back home.”
Sil glanced up at him and tilted his head, so with a sigh, Teq sang the next verse too.
“Galaxies may crack and fall,
And darkness mark our bones,
But we’ll join hands across the void
And find our way back home.”
As the sound of the synthetar faded away, Sil held the instrument out to Ollie. “Would you like to try?”
The hatchling jumped up with alacrity, reaching out. “I wish I had more fingers like you.”
Sil vibrated out a laugh. “You’ll just make your own kind of music.”
As the two huddled around the instrument, Adeline let out a slow breath, even more plaintive than the song. “I’ve made a mistake.”
Teq stiffened. “Our kisses—”
“Not that.” She looked away. “Or at least not only that. Coming here, I mean, leaving Earth. When has running away ever fixed anything?”
“If orcs had stayed on our homeworld, we would’ve gone extinct.” He gave her a hard look. “From what you said, you faced something almost as dire.”
When she bit her lip, he wanted to put a finger or three over her mouth to stop her from hurting herself. Or to stop her from speaking?
But she wouldn’t be stopped, he knew. Not by him, not by her ex, not by her own fears.
“I just packed up my problems with me,” she said. “I won’t—I can’t expose Oliver to this much uncertainty. I thought I could tell him this was the adventure of starting a new life. But it’s…just chaos.”
Stung, he sat back, breaking the connection between them. “The universe was born from chaos,” he pointed out. “As it sounds like Oliver was. And from that came love, yes?”
She jerked back too, to glare at him. “Don’t try to spin this as some poetical abstraction, crusher Teq.”
He straightened, ruffling his carapace. “Crushers seek what’s hidden in the stone, to bring it to the light so we might live.”
“I never had secrets,” she mused, “or dreams. I did have riches, though, and what some people on Earth would’ve considered a fortunate life. It made me weak and afraid to lose. I won’t let that happen again.” When her jaw went hard, she still wasn’t anywhere near as imposing as an orc with tusks jutting, and yet he felt the pending impact of her words. “I think it’s best that I take Oliver away from here, away from whatever that rock is saying to him. I’ll be speaking to Mag and Amma after I explain to Oliver, but…I wanted to tell you first.”
The pain of her decision went off within him like a depth charge in a deep-space asteroid— devastating and utterly silent.
He inclined his head. “TheDeepWander’s path has always gone through rough places with no guarantees, and while I might hammer asteroids into dust, I realize I can’t promise the way will ever be perfectly smooth. You must do what you believe is right, for Oliver and for you, and no one here would ever stop you.”
“Teq.” She reached toward him.
But he evaded her. Easy enough to do when she only used one hand with a mere five fingers and she didn’t really want to hold on.
The wail of the synthetar under Ollie’s delighted but awkward touch followed him as he escaped.
Chapter 10
What was she doing?