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CHAYA
Life had been quiet since their world ended; the silence brimmed with absence, with the knowledge of vast death, yet the emissaries of Earth were undisturbed as Blackbird sailed through the stars.
In that interim, Chaya Panaguiton and Li Aixue were coiling around each other, tight as springs.
Most days went like this: Aixue would come over to bathe, and they would linger after, and would not leave for a long while. They fell into experiments of creation with Blackbird. They ate burgers. They talked.
Everything we do affects the others, Chaya reminded herself on one such day, with Aixue’s head in her lap. She had succumbed to sleep reluctantly, mumbling about their work until Chaya had held her cheeks and told her to sleep.
Chaya considered her sleeping face. She was dreaming of something brilliant as she snored atop her thighs; Chaya could see the truth of it, as easily as she could see the sun on those summer days she used to love — Li Aixue had never stopped gleaming.
Chaya didn’t know what to do about her at all, in a way she’d thought she left behind in her adolescence.
Blackbird was no longer unspooling her soul like taffy, but being close to Aixue, touching her, made her feel like she was congealing to the woman, like their souls were brushing, and keeping each other anchored.
Through and through, she was a fool. All of this for a girl who wouldn’t invite her into her home.
Aboard Blackbird, their homes were all they had besides their memories and each other. They were a way to express themselves, to innovate — both for practicality and to keep connected to the ways of their dying planet. Would they meet people who slept in beds like they did where they were headed? Who needed the same light spectrum to see?
Everyone had someone they would often host. Chaya had Aixue, one-sided though it was. Erik had Clayton, for better or for worse. Khaje had Davoud. And then there was Anna Sinjari.
Anna seemed to have most of them. Anna seemed to be taking their new world the best. At the very least, she acted like it — smiling like a wildcat, and offering them snake drugs.
“Are you sure that’s safe to keep ingesting?” Chaya asked one day, giving into the urge she tried to stifle at times. To step in, to assess the problem, to fix it. It wasn’t really her business, but on their little ark, if someone had a problem, everyone had a problem. And Chaya had not forgotten disquieting Anna into pulling the gun out of her mouth, how narrow it had been, how if she had burst in a minute later, they could have all been doomed. It was instinct to keep an eye on her.
“Sure it is.” Anna said confidently. “It’s a serendure thing. The knowing, not the safety — you could have some just fine. Want to give it a shot?”
“No thanks,” Chaya said.
Anna seemed to have most of them. Except — Chaya had seen her once, watching the path to where Khaje and Davoud were stargazing. Anytime Khaje wasn’t with her, she was with him. There was a complicated longing in Anna’s eyes that ran through the tense lines of her stance. Moms were hard. If her mom were here, she probably would try the drugs. Ssrin-factor and all.
Chaya wanted to be someone to Aixue, to have a place in her space, to see the work she did apart from her, to sip water and sit cross-legged on seats of fat and skin, bouncing ideas back and forth. She tried to be casual about it.
“I haven’t been inside in a while. You aren’t getting the walls to whisper to you again are you?” Chaya asked after walking Aixue back to her door. She had fallen asleep at hers again — Chaya had ushered her into bed this time; She’d had to ask Rosamaria to expand it enough that the two of them wouldn't touch unduly.
“Not anymore, no.” Aixue laughed, though it faded into bashfulness. “I'm fixing it. Making it perfect.”
Chaya blinked. “Mathematically speaking?”
“Of course!” Aixue said brightly, like what other ways are there? “I’ll tell you when it’s right.”
Chaya looked warily at said door. It was the same as ever. Sometimes it felt as though the game of life that wriggled across Aixue’s steel mocked her. When I said thou shalt reproduce, you weren’t included, holy woman.
“Alright,” Chaya said, and she did not ask again.
There were times Aixue would not come over, and would stay holed up for days at a time. On those days her absence nagged at her. Chaya would knock until Aixue would call, I'm okay, or I’ll come over tomorrow, Chaya.
And she would, she never lied to her, so Chaya learned to leave, and wait for Aixue to come to her.
Blackbird was voraciously curious. Blackbird was impulsively creative. Feed her a pattern and she spread it out like a paper people chain. Ask her to widen your bed for a girl once, and she began to accommodate her without being asked.
Blackbird had synthesized baking soda from lye and carbonic acid, and they had made toothpaste from it. After the first sleepover, a ledge formed next to hers for Aixue’s makeshift toothbrush. When Aixue needed equipment from her place, Blackbird sent it. Favored computer monitors, pages scrawled with notes, the pieces of the world that Aixue needed to explore it pooled and gathered here. Chaya’s home yawned and stretched like a content creature for Aixue.
Perhaps it was favoritism to the genius who had taught her to fly. Perhaps she had a health incentive to nudge the emotional lives of the humans who were embedded in her stomach lining. Perhaps, she simply derived enjoyment from being nosy and a meddler.
Clayton stood in the middle of it all, surveying. “You’ve made some renovations.”
He sounded amused. Chaya stared at him sternly, doing her best to mentally transmit how much he would regret it if she heard any joke involving truck rentals.
“We’re looking to make some more,” Aixue chirped. We — linking them decisively. “You haven’t even seen the black box.”
The black box was a massive room, where everything within revolved like a sun around its centerpiece: a radio telescope the size of a truck, reverse engineered to catch the signal from Earth. An entire corner had been made into a computerized optical telescope, integrated meticulously into Blackbird’s outer wall, observing and devouring. Much of the remaining floor space was dedicated to plush seating. A sole painting of a sirena decorated the walls; a beautiful one that Chaya had not asked for and attempted to be rid of, but had delighted Aixue so much that she made one herself to put back.
The name was all Chaya — she’d thought it was cute. Their little Blackbird black box.
“Jesus.” He said, impressed. “It looks like you have it all handled.”
“We do,” agreed Chaya. “We really just wanted a consultant.”
“The main issue is targeting.” Aixue chimed in. “Waves coming from Earth are out there, but we have to guess at the trajectory they’re taking. We have some wiggle room in our current flight path according to our piloting team, but it's all geometry, really. It's likely we’re already on the path for something.”
Clayton’s mind was already churning — he had lifted himself lightly up on his toes. “If I can locate a thread that isn’t chopped up by trip here, that might be enough to figure out where exactly from earth they’re broadcasting.”
“And if we do that,” Chaya said. “We can work backwards. Specific cities. Known broadcasters.”
“What exactly are you trying to catch?” Clayton asked.
“Anything,” Aixue said resolutely. Her hands had already been at work — flipping on devices, checking levels — and they slowed. “Anything Earth wanted to say, or said by accident. Things to help us remember. Things to keep.”
“We’ll be giving it to Rosamaria, too.” Chaya always tried to mention that name with lightness when she spoke to Clayton. “The more she learns, the better. And music would be nice. I miss it.”
There was a moment then, when she could see that Clayton was elsewhere, remembering an old song or a place, or a person — all gone now. Then he smiled, and said, “I can do that.”
Clayton got to task. The three of them worked well together — better than they had in the collective lab in Tawakul without the pressure of Iruvage and Blackbird rummaging around in their souls. The training from his dead empire made the signal clear as it could be, and sweet with possibility. It was late he left them, they were hot on the trail. Searching, recalibrating, searching again. They spoke briefly and only in whispers. They were close.
There was a final upchuck of cold, buzzing static. A click. Then, a voice. It was low and lilting and they gasped at the sound of it. “…and she asked me when I’d call it quits. I told her: never I hope! Five years on the same beat, so to speak, was rough, she said. She wished me luck. Well, now it’s been twenty.” They laughed. “If I saw her again, I’d only thank her for the luck. I’ve certainly used it. I’ll play a song she loved instead. Here’s Nat-the-King-Cole with Ramblin’ Rose.”
“ That’s what I'm talking about.” Chaya hissed in her excitement, bubbling with pride.
“Yeah. Yeah.” Aixue was grinning, and had been clutching Chaya’s hand since the signal caught. “I knew we’d catch it.”
They recorded every second of it. It was exciting. What might Blackbird do with music? If they got enough of it, could she make her own? Could she reverse engineer instruments? Could Chaya teach her what a remix was?
They were tired, but rapt. There was something beautiful about it, the waves they recorded, all the waves still to capture. Telling the galaxy: Look! We were here! We are here, and unpinioned. Our story is still going.
“We’re gonna end tonight with one of my favorites,” crooned the host. “Thank you, truly, for listening. You make it worth it.”
The needle dropped. Can I stop my life so I could just be with you?
There had been a revelation.
Anna had finally conceded to discarding her torn-up shoes in the red disposal hole. Inside one of them was a sliver of leaf, withered and crushed to powder by Anna’s sole. Almost nothing, but not so little that Rosamaria couldn’t find the pattern and extrapolate it. And then, there was flora — a cutting of a branch.
Chaya had spent some hot, gratifying weekends on Ugandan farms during corporate charity excursions. Armed with that knowledge and a soil mixture of excrement and bone meal, she went to work.
“It’s not going to smell great right now.” Chaya warned, pulling on a pair of paradermis gloves. “If we get good growth, we can start using the plant as a base, but for now it’s mostly—” She waved her hand vaguely bowels-downward.
“I can take it.” Anna said. She was smiling faintly. “I always wanted a garden.”
It flowered quickly under the intense plasma light and Blackbird’s urging — to be more, to be vast, expanding, unpacking, unspooling cellular information to make life. The flowers were bright yellow and plentiful, dotted with black. Anna had trampled on a plant in the prime of its production. Lucky shoe.
They took the plant to Khaje. “I know it well. Siveh ran. The flowers make tea. I drank it for headaches.” Khaje murmured, cradling it in her hands. “Tawakul still provides.” Quiet grief, quiet gratefulness.
“It’s also used as an antidepressant,” Rosamaria added brightly from the air around them. “Useful!”
They all began to get really into tea. It was something new to taste, a bittersweet, strong, herb. They could brew it with sugar water, and dip energy bar blocks into cups of it — transforming it enough that it felt a little like eating something different. A medicine from Earth, their home that only got further away.
This simple thing changed the humans’ lives. Chaya and Anna built more yards. They made tea together on each other’s thresholds.
All of them except Li Aixue, who had been scarcely seen in days, and had only responded: “Working.” And, generously. “I’ll have some later.”
Chaya reached her limit at three days more of this. Three, the holy trinity. Three, the days the Son lay entombed. Significant. A prime number. Too long.
Aixue’s home had changed. From the outside she could see that the structure had curved and expanded, steel walls spiraling wide. The game of life still played. She rapped her knuckles on the door. “Aixue.”
“Chaya?” She said her name mechanically, automatic response. A little bleary, like she was coming out of a fog. Or, not a fog, within some great billowing of clarity, that fogged the rest of the world out. “Working still.”
“Even Jesus rested, you know.”
Silence. Chaya imagined Aixue, a lizard sunning in rays of truth, stirring reluctantly from the warm rocks. “Jesus wasn’t a mathematician. And I'm so close .”
It was clear what she was going for — at least on the outside. The perfect spiral, the golden ratio. Evidence that the world and mathematical law were utterly intertwined and dependent on each other. What wasn’t clear was why she had to complete it now , instead of taking care of herself, instead of being with people.
Chaya put her forehead on the door. “You aren’t lonely in there?” She sighed then, pressing firmer onto the cool metal and whispering, “I miss you.” The populated grids near her head dispersed in groups of four and three out of politeness, or embarrassment.
The door swung inward, and she propelled forward, right into Aixue — who gave a startled squeak and got her arms out just in time to brace Chaya’s stumble.
In sheer surprise, they clung to each other. Then, abashed, they loosened and Aixue wiggled into eye contact range. “I didn’t think it was so lonely, until I met you.”
“Oh.” Chaya drank her in. She looked clenched tight as a fist, but slackening. She looked tired, and as lovely as ever. A flower drooping downwards in want of rain.
Aixue relaxed further back into Chaya’s grip, and pressed her forehead to her sternum. When Aixue touched her, she felt stronger. “It was a good thing, I think. It was there, I was just trying to feel anything else. You help me remember that I need this too.”
Kneaded tender by her words, Chaya’s voice was low. “Have you been sleeping?”
“Some.”
“Come to mine,” Chaya said. “Take a bath. We’ll make tea.”
Chaya watched the drink pass through Aixue like sunlight through a clean window. “That is good,” she sighed. “Really good.”
“I told you.” Chaya said, pleased that Aixue was pleased. “Though I’m sure our diets being so shet bump the rating.”
“Probably,” Aixue’s mouth turned up and she breathed out a laugh, watching the air ruffle the surface of the cup. “My mother loved tea.”
“Mine too.” Chaya murmured.
They made soup of her meat stewed in bone marrow stock, and Siveh Ran leaves fried in salt. Chaya saw Aixue’s attention wandering as they ate, sliding to the door, and then the ceiling.
“Ready to head off to the lab again?” She asked mildly.
“Not yet.” Her eyes were fixed now, glittering in intensity. “I want to go see the new sky.” She pointed. “It’s growing. I can feel it.”
They passed Erik and Clayton, sitting on Erik's porch, pressed together from shoulder to ankle, talking quietly. Clayton nodded to them and Erik waved.
Erik had started leaving garments on people’s doorsteps. He must have asked Rosamaria for measurements, because they all fit perfectly. God bless Anna. Those two had really done a number on him.
Spotlights followed them down Blackbird’s glass. Impossible shadows collected under their steps, wrestling and whispering. They looked up at the sky.
Imagine a sunset, a beautiful one. Over a lake, or after rain, or on the edges of a cold winter. Imagine a sunrise too, and all the feelings that come with it — beams of light on tired eyes, anticipation of the day ahead. All of that was here.
Blackbird had sparing sunrises and sunsets to view before takeoff, but they had been premier ones. On the morning of the last day before the end of their world began, Chaya and Sabiti had gotten up early to sip coffee and watch the sun roll a golden carpet over Kurdistan. Ahead, Tawakul had shone.
This sky shone too. An aurora with stars in its brightness. Earth’s envoys had been talking to each other, cooking for each other, sleeping in each other's beds. Every action has its equal and opposite reaction. They had woven a tapestry of truce and community, and a sky was coming to life in response, welling up like a freshwater spring.
“It’s beautiful,” Chaya murmured. Just an hour ago, she could have said with confidence that it would be a long time before she saw an Earthian sun transition again. Years, or decades. But here it was. Thank you , she prayed, for the reminder .
Aixue had her head tilted up when she spoke. “This really would be a lovely place to dance.”
This made Chaya smile, for ‘lovely’ had not been the word to come to mind, with the hazy movements of monsters under the dance floor. She went to joke, but her eyes caught on Aixue’s face. There was a wistfulness there, as if dancing here was a world closed off to her. Chaya held out a hand without thinking. “Dance with me,” she blurted.
Aixue stared at the hand. Her face wavered, like she wasn’t sure if Chaya was being serious. “But there’s no music.”
“You don’t need music to dance.” She took a step closer.
“It helps though,” said Aixue, voice wry, though she considered the hand before her, and Chaya saw her fingers clench.
And then, music, rising all around them. Chaya recognized it – recorded from one of their radio shows. They exchanged a glance, warm, mirth-filled. Rosamaria might as well have pushed them into each other’s arms herself.
“The factors are in place.” Chaya teased, trying to be charming, smiling to hide her nerves. She really wanted Aixue to say yes.
“Okay,” Aixue said, shy in a way she rarely let show. “Alright.”
They shuffled close to each other. Chaya took her hand. She remembered the first time she really touched Aixue, washing her in the labyrinth of mazes, feeling her bend under her touch as Chaya humored her brilliance. It had been jarringly intimate for a woman she hardly knew, when the whole world was on the line. Chaya touched the small of her back like she had then. She was still ticklish, and giggled. Chaya felt her heart move with the noise.
Everything we do affects the others. She almost laughed. It had been too late from the start.
Aixue kept looking at their feet as they danced. Her head bobbed when she did it, and it made Chaya think of the green-pigeons back home, and feel unbearably fond. She looked like a bird keeping her balance. She looked like —
“Are you doing calculations?” Chaya asked in disbelief.
“Only a little,” Aixue defended. “I don’t want to trip over my feet.”
“It’s fine if you do,” said Chaya, exasperated, captivated. “I’ll catch you.”
Aixue found her boldness. They strode and spun as if they were in a ballroom. The music was like a living thing, morphed to fit their rhythm. Aixue’s hand was curled and she tapped her shoulder pointedly, and Chaya leaned down to hear her. When Aixue spoke, her voice in her ear made her shiver.
“Is this how you danced in Manila?” She whispered.
“No,” Chaya murmured, pulling the rest of her closer. “We can do that another time.”
Above them, the sky shivered and cracked further, an aurora of colors spilling its yolks, reflecting on the glass around them. But now, their eyes were closed, and they were swaying together like old fence posts, or saplings in a gentle summer storm, or two people after the end of the world, so they didn’t notice for a while yet.
Billie Holiday crooned along to trumpet-song. All of me. Why not take all of me? Can’t you see I’m no good without you?
LI AIXUE
They walked back from the most romantic thing that had ever happened to her, bodies drifting towards each other, hands brushing. A month ago, she would have hardly given the significance of this a thought — it was a thoughtless product of proximity, a subconscious lean that came with the prosociality.
Now though, having watched Chaya’s face closely as they danced and murmured to each other, having done so for all these long months of orbiting each other, she was not so sure.
Chaya had seemed nervous, though she had certainly danced with girls far cooler and more put together than Aixue. She could see it in the angle of her smile, how careful she was, and how clear it was that she wanted this dance to be good for Aixue. And Chaya’s hand was damp when she had taken it, though Blackbird’s temperature was controlled to the best approximation of an average of their tastes.
Of course she likes you, her mama had said. Loathe as she had been sometimes to admit it in her old life, her mother was often right. It was improbable, but it was true. Aixue knew the truth, had her soul honed even more precisely to its facets.
There was a night in the black box where they had worked until Chaya had fallen asleep, leaning back against a radio telescope, though Aixue was right there and willing, with a very comfortable side to sleep against. You touch, but you can’t be touched. Aixue had lingered on her sleeping face, loose and handsome, and slid half the headset off to listen to her breathe.
Aixue had loved that night. She loved every night they spent together. Truly she had found an answer to a question she had given up on, not will anyone ever fully understand me? because no one had the time to learn every fork of a soul, of a story that was not their own, but will anyone ever try? Would she ever find a partner like that, who would try because they wanted to, wanted her in all her disaster?
She would. She had, and she was right there beside her, they were at her door, together.
So at that door, Li Aixue took Chaya Panaguiton’s hands and pressed her lips to them. These hands, these beautiful hands that were firm with her when she needed it, and gentle with her though she didn’t deserve it. It was only right to thank them.
She made sure to be meticulous, kissing the segment of each finger, lingering along the lines of the palms. Pressing thank you for putting up with me and thank you for caring into each inch.
“You’re trying to tell me something.” Chaya’s hands began to tremble, despite the composure of her words. She looked like she might cry.
“Yes.” Aixue said simply. “Do you want to come inside? I have equations for the finishing touches I've haven’t asked Rosamaria to make just yet. I'd like you to look over them.” Aixue kissed the heart of her palm, looked up into Chaya’s impossible eyes, focused wholly on her. “And not just that.”
“Yeah,” Chaya said. The answer was in those eyes too, in quadruplicate. “I will.”
It was difficult to deny how much she trusted Chaya: with her days, with her mind, with her life. Aixue reached for her, and Chaya angled into her hands.
CHAYA
Ssrin had begun her trainings. She took them one at a time to her place on the ship that only the Sinjaris visited for leisure. The place that had a sky since the beginning, the alien skies of the place that had reared a thing like the Khai.
Chaya had not seen it. Chaya was being saved for last, Anna informed her. “A courtesy — she knows you hate her.”
Chaya wasn’t certain if this was better or not. Ssrin looked like a human woman, richly dressed and white — still a threat, but one Chaya knew well. But the paint peeled at the corners; her voice was a layered mass of movement.
This way, though, she had weeks to explore every inch of Aixue’s home. She had built her own bath with heating capabilities. Alongside a beautifully angled main laboratory, there was a dedicated room for archiving and continuing the research of Professor Huang and his scientists. There was a bedroom for two, with a muscle mattress padded with fat. The golden ratio was everywhere.
Chaya kept busy. She had been experimenting with new materials — Ssrins venom to be specific, both venomous and healing. She had also started her translation of the holy book. Though there was scripture she remembered, exactitude was hopeless with how vast the text was. She positioned those verses she knew first, and began to reconstruct the rest herself. In a way, it felt like prayer.
There was time too, in those weeks, to have Aixue come back to her. To pour herself onto Chaya’s lap to tuck her operancy-cold hands under her shirt.
Chaya hissed at the chill, turning her face into the parts of her that were warm. “You smell like Khai,” Chaya muttered.
“Really?” asked Aixue in fascination. “What does that smell like?”
Chaya took another sniff for a larger sample size. “Musky. Oddly sweet though, like the steam from burning maple syrup.” She wrinkled her nose. “With an iron undertone sometimes.”
Aixue hummed thoughtfully. “She’s a tactile teacher.”
Aixue seemed sharper, after operancy training. Her soul was gleaming, focused, for hours sometimes. Chaya did not resent the opportunity to tire her out. The body linked to the brain linked to the soul, all drawing back at the low tide. She did her best to avoid the snake bites.
“I have work to do, you know.” Aixue murmured, hand wound in Chaya’s roots.
“You could have said that an hour ago.” Chaya rose up her body, carefully so as to not dislodge her hand, and kissed her.
“Well–” said Aixue. “I like it when you look a little…” She slid her hand from Chaya’s rumpled coils to her disheveled clothing.
All that focus, all that attention, all for her. Chaya grinned. “You dog.”
“You’re no better.” Aixue tutted. “Let me touch you, then we’ll start.”
On the bad days, Chaya thought of nothing but throwing dinners, real dinners with her family, of leading a full room in grace, and breaking bread like no terror had ever happened. And bread of course, made her think too of Kabite and her Hamidi, who was good at more than life preservers. He had baked like he was blessed.
They were likely dead now. She would never taste those meals again, would never sit and eat among her family. She would never sportingly defend Hamidi from Kabite’s teasing. That world was almost certainly closed to her forever. Oh, how she prayed they were alive, still in those woods, protected by their honeymoon tent. Foraging for life, laughing maybe, loving definitely.
She held Aixue’s hand tighter without realizing it. Aixue hummed in acknowledgement, eyes on her work— calculations in anticipation of their approaching landing. A few Earth months away, Ssrin had said. An eternity and nothing, all at once. The path would grow more treacherous now.
Bahala Na, all in God’s hands, even in these worlds beyond all who knew Him as she did.
Aixue’s thumb tapped the back of her hand and rubbed against it, like she was thumbing a rosary in her pocket. Chaya relaxed at the feeling, gazed at the woman to her side, and decided she’d quite like to spend the rest of the end of it all doing so. She kissed her cheek. Aixue kept doing math, but smiled.