Chapter Text
The three travelers were far from the most conspicuous group the small spaceport on the planet Lysatra had ever seen. But they were certainly the most noticeable group most people had seen that day. One human man flanked by two robed and hooded figures.
People would have assumed the other two were guards, but the man was so unremarkable it was hard to fit those pieces together. An old, white-haired man in nondescript traveling clothes, carrying his own shoulder bag wasn’t the type of person to have two bodyguards. And the cloaked visitors couldn’t have been prisoner escorts, because the man between them walked much too casually to be a captive.
So, because no one could determine with any level of certainty who they were, they lingered in the witnesses’ minds and conversations until the next strange sight came along and pushed them out.
In his brief and vague message, Eli had told his parents that he and Tovahn were coming. He hadn’t known how to explain Vanto’ar’leeya.
During the years between his last visit and this one, his parents had had to leave the tall, narrow blue house. They lived with Eli’s older sister and her family now, as they were too elderly to live on their own. But Eli didn’t even have a chance to knock on the door of the small, yellow building before the door was pulled open and Bertha and Ean ushered them all inside. While Eli’s parents hugged him, Tovahn and Toarle lowered their hoods.
For a second, Eli’s mother looked in confusion from mother to daughter. Eli didn’t wonder why. Side-by-side, a stranger would have a hard time telling the two apart. Only the subtle signs of age identified Tovahn has the elder of the pair, and those signs where difficult for non-Chiss to detect on first glance.
“Ma, Dad, you remember Vah’nya,” he said, gesturing to her.
“Vah’nya, welcome back dear,” his mother said, while his father nodded and said, “Good to see you again.”
Eli held his hand out toward Toarle. “And this is our eldest daughter, Ar'leeya Vanto.”
Their beloved child, at twenty-five, had been officially rematched to their small family, and was know in the Ascendancy as Vanto’ar’leeya or Toarle again. But like Vah’nya she had chosen to human-ize her name when among her human kin.
His parents’ eyes widened at the introduction.
Behind them, Eli’s sister, her spouse, and their children all stared at the two Chiss visitors. Bertha introduced everyone, and before long, they were seating around a large dining room table enjoying an evening meal. They brought Eli up to speed on all the changes in the family and in their small town. Not much had actually changed. Nothing on Lysatra ever really did. But Eli felt calm and comforted to hear it all anyway. For all that the Ascendancy was his home now, his homeworld held a familiarity nothing else could match.
After dinner, and after another couple hours of talk, his sister showed the three of them to a small guest room. Eli and Tovahn would share the small trundle bed, while Toarle would have the pull-out portion beneath it. It was a cozy arrangement, but no one minded. Back on Csilla, the three of them — whenever Eli was at home — still lived in the small, one-bedroom apartment Tovahn had been living in since she’d moved to the capital.
Soon, he hoped, they’d need something larger.
But just then, in his sister’s home on Lysatra, the cramped quarters were just fine.
After a few days with the Vanto family, Tovahn finally understood why Eli had once been confused by the fact that Chiss tended to marry within families. Everyone with the name of Vanto was either a blood relative or an in-law, which was the same as being a blood relative in terms of social ideas about incest. Not only that, but anyone with a different surname who was connected to a Vanto was also part of the family, and also seen as more or less the same as a blood relation.
After Tovahn had been introduced to her third-cousin-twice-removed-in-law, she looked at Eli and said, “You thought remembering ‘ranking distant’ was difficult?”
But Toarle met cousins, second cousins, and third cousins of various generations. Unlike Tovahn, she left the Expansionary Defense Fleet and joined a massive family. Not just the Vantos, but an entire network of sisters, aunts, and nieces. Thalias, Borika, and Sacher had worked hard to gather their Chiss family together. Her daughter would never feel isolated.
Before they left, Eli’s parents held a family gathering at his cousin Pandry’s home. Eli’s older half-siblings and all the local cousins who were available came by. Everyone was eager to meet her — Eli’s rumored Chiss wife — and they all seemed charmed, if largely intimidated, by the cool, confident Toarle.
After dinner, the party moved into the backyard, where someone started a bonfire. Everyone brought chairs outside, and several people carried out musical instruments, including a five-stringed guitar like the one Eli had once taught her how to play.
Tovahn and Eli each took one of the instruments. After a few moments spent re-acquainting themselves with strings, they started in on a duet of their own making.
Eli started by singing the folk song he’d first played for her decades earlier.
“Dance with me in eventide
Lie next to me at night
Wake with me in the morning
Be my love for all time.”
After the chorus, during the bridge, Tovahn began to sing the lyrics to a the aria of a Chiss opera.
They had come up with it years ago, when they were both still on the Steadfast. Tovahn had still been learning Basic, and Eli was intrigued by Chiss music. With Eli’s guitar and a borrowed Chiss dulcimer, they came up with an instrumental duet. Then they’d added the lyrics.
The ballad and the aria didn’t sound particularly similar, but the lyrics complemented each other, and the meter matched.
Tovahn touched the strings, and felt overwhelmed by memories of feelings from a lifetime ago. Sitting on the floor of Eli’s quarters, when the love she’d felt for him was so new and untempered by sorrow.
“Dance with me in the eventide.”
<I long to walk with you again through our ancient halls.>
“Lie next to me at night.”
<To hear your voice near me once more.>
“Wake with me in the morning.”
<But when the sun rises my bed is empty.>
“Be my love for all time.”
<Deprived of you, I will surely die.>
Tovahn looked around at the singing, laughing, and chattering cousins, and remembered the dream she’d had a lifetime ago, when she’d asked Eli to marry her. She’d imagined a comfortable cottage, filled with children. She’d pictured Eli coming home after his service to the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet had ended and being surrounded by at least five grown children, and their children as well.
The picture before her wasn’t the same. They had only three children, and only one of them had returned. They weren’t in their own cozy cottage in the Ascendancy, but far outside it, in the wilds of Lesser Space. But they were surrounded by family nonetheless.
Toarle’s second cousin invited her to dance, and the two of them joined in the circle around the fire.
In a few days they would leave to return to the Ascendancy. Bertha would probably tell Toarle — her granddaughter — the same thing she had told Tovahn: “You’re always welcome here. We’ll always be your family.” Tovahn hoped Bertha would live long enough to give all three of her grandchildren that invitation.
Long ago, around the same time she and Eli had come up with the duet, she’d asked him to marry her. Eli had been so concerned with logistics and planning. But, young and naive though she was, Tovahn had been sure everything would work out. So long as they loved each other, everything would fall into place.
Even though so many things were still uncertain, she felt calm when she thought about the future. She was sure, as sure as she had been that Toarle would return, as sure as when she had still had Third Sight, that Tchi’anu and Sha’hee would come home again as well. Their family would prosper in spite of all the trials they had faced.
After all, love had guided her family this far across the Chaos. It was love that had made her choose Eli over a more comfortable life with one of the Nine Ruling Families. Love had formed their small family, and bound them — in some ethereal way — when they’d been parted. It had driven Eli to escape the Grysks and compelled Tovahn to go after him.
Love had guide them for all these years. It wouldn’t fail to bring them all together again in the end.