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Prelude: Nadim

I feel the stars.

Energy pulses against my skin, murmuring secrets about this small galaxy, about orbits and alignments and asteroids streaming in space. Impulse makes me want to dive and cruise those currents, but I control these urges.

I shift my attention to the flutters of life within my skin.

Marko glows orange with crimson streaks. He is warm, always the easiest to find. Just now, he stands and stares at the blue-green orb swirling below us. I cannot swim down to see what he remembers of this place. The planet’s gravitational pull would break my bones. But he shows me flashes: smiling faces, a field of flowers, an old woman with eyes like slices of sky.

“I’ll miss you,” I tell him.

He flinches a little, surprised to hear me, as if he’s ever truly alone. “Me too. It was a good run. ”

He once told me that it’s strange when we talk; he thinks I should find him as insignificant as he does the bacteria in his stomach. But I have had time to acclimate to the strangers in my system. I safeguard the small voices, as is my privilege and duty. There will be more to my life, but only when I’ve proven myself.

The stars sing again, this time in sleek, seductive harmony.

Despite my passengers, I am empty in a way I cannot name. Marko tells me it is because our voyage is over; he calls this sadness. Perhaps I have learned this feeling from him. My first Honor gave me a human name, Nadim, and I have kept it safe, along with the other words and shapes and colors that shade my new existence. Like sadness.

I do not like this low orbit, but I must wait. I have been ordered to wait.

My new Honors will come.

Will they be warm and orange like Marko, or crisp and gray like Chao-Xing? She is harder to find, a shadow in my skin, and her silence feels like scraping. Yet her thoughts tap at me endlessly, asking questions I am not permitted to answer. Some answers have not even been given to me, so she can scratch as deep as she wishes. There will be no sudden brightness at the bottom. She is an itch I cannot shake out and I will not be sorry to see her leave. Marko touches where my skin is thin. Such gentleness, I should not feel it, but his feelings amplify at the point of contact. Warmth rolls through me, through layers of muscle and bone, until there’s a happy shiver in my depths.