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2075
The camera panned in on the news anchors sitting at their desk, and both anchors' faces were far more serious than they'd been a couple of minutes ago when they were discussing a new charity initiative from a basketball legend.
"Okay, now, to wrap up tonight's broadcast, we're presenting a biographical program that was recorded for the 2040 Berlin Winter Olympics along with a tragic update on the story.
The presenters, instead of actual journalists, were a retired American figure skater who'd had her heyday in the 00s and a young MLH player and now Team Canada forward who was getting a lot of attention for being openly gay, in a relationship with another alpha, and also very handsome and charming.
The footage on screen swooped up over the cottage to show the lake and then honed in on the outbuilding that housed the skating rink.
The presenters' smiling faces came on screen then, complete with microphones. "Welcome to Chez Hollander! This beautiful home in the Muskoka Lakes area of Ontario, Canada was built for Shane Hollander more than 25 years ago to be his private retreat from the rigors of his MLH career. Shane and the rest of the Hollander family refer to the property as 'the cottage,' and TWO young athletes from Team Canada grew up spending their summers in this beautiful location. The Hollanders are a Canadian family, but by no means an ordinary Canadian family.
"Irina Rozanova Hollander, 18, is representing Canada in Ladies Figure Skating at the 2040 Winter Olympics in Berlin, and her sibling Addison Hollander, 20, is playing as part of Canada's Women's Hockey team, also in Berlin this year. Viewers may recall that earlier this year Addison, known a Addie to friends and family, came out as non-binary and uses both she/her and they/them pronouns. When she did so, she changed her name slightly from her birth name Adelina to the more gender neutral Addison, which she said suits her better. Both young athletes are part of a family legacy of athletic excellence internationally. Irina Hollander, known as Reenie to her friends and family, was named in honor of her grandmother Irina Rozanova, who competed for Team Russia in the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Canada. Unfortunately, she did not receive a medal, but she could not have known that within a few years she would give birth to a son who would go on to become a Canadian citizen and a beloved sports figure in the nation she had only visited for competition. Tragically, the first Irina Rozanova died by suicide in 2003 after a long struggle with depression. When she passed away, her son Ilya was only 12. In 2009, he was drafted to the MLH, originally playing in Boston, and then he played in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi as captain of Russia's men's hockey team.
Meanwhile, at that very same 2014 Olympics in Sochi, the Canadian men's hockey team included a young man from Ottawa named Shane Hollander. Shane was also drafted to the MLH in 2009. In fact, while Ilya Rozanov was named the #1 draft pick, Shane Hollander was named to #2. The two went on to compete head-to-head in the league for several years with their relationship assumed to be that of bitter rivals. In 2019, Hollander and Rozanov surprised the hockey world when they announced that they were friends and were also starting a foundation together. It was to be the Irina Foundation, in honor of Ilya's late mother, with the central goal of raising money and awareness to support organizations that help people dealing with mental illnesses. Their main method of fundraising was running summer hockey camps for children. Those hockey camps were staffed mainly by then-current and former MLH players and were ahead of the curve in promoting broader inclusion in sports, which would go on to be a theme in Rozanov and Hollander's lives.
If the formation of the Irina Foundation and the revelation of the two men's friendship was a surprise, the hockey world was truly shocked in 2020 when the two men formally mated each other in a ceremony that was covered by major news outlets internationally. In men's hockey, a sport that at the time was considered to be for heterosexual male alphas only, the news that two of the league's biggest players were a queer alpha and a queer omega shook up the establishment in a way that cannot be overstated, even if it may sound quaintly overly dramatic to modern ears. This year, in 2040, the two men are celebrating their 20th mating anniversary, an achievement that has been hard-won for both of them. Ilya, who continued to play hockey as Ilya Rozanov for a year after their mating, took Shane's last name to legally become a Hollander after being warmly accepted by Shane's parents, David and Yuna Hollander. Speaking of David and Yuna, they had their own contributions to make to the legacy behind this year's young Olympian Hollanders. David played hockey for McGill University in the late 1980s, and though his own athletic career ended there he was his son Shane's first coach and lifelong supporter. Yuna was Shane's professional manager throughout his MLH career and traveled with him to the games in Sochi. We asked Shane if he or Ilya were planning to go to Germany with their children this winter.
The screen, which had been showing a series of archival footage clips, changed to show Shane sitting on the cottage's deck, his freckles glowing in the sunshine. "No, neither of us is planning on traveling to Germany for the games. If either of them were to need us, we would certainly get there, but we decided that it was better to allow them to be independent at this point in their lives so that they can fully enjoy the experience without their old dad there slowing them down. Plus, this is a professional accomplishment for them. They need their coaches on hand, not their fathers." The retired figure skater came on camera then, smiling. "It might be nice for young Irina to have her fathers waiting for her in the kiss and cry, but I'm sure that was a family decision. I can only imagine having young Hollander and Rozanov waiting for me off-ice when I was competing. Hoooo boy! I wouldn't have been doing any crying in the kiss and cry, I suspect." The camera panned out then to make it clear that Shane was sitting in a manual wheelchair, not an ordinary deck chair.
"Shane, who we know was an extraordinarily capable athlete as a younger man, has required the assistance of a wheelchair since a serious illness several years ago that left him with extreme muscle weakness as well as other health issues. As a result of that illness, which was alleged to be caused by medication that was originally given to Shane by an MLH team doctor, the Hollander family filed a lawsuit against the MLH, which was later settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. Shane's illness was a major stress on the whole family, as was made clear by the incident in which Ilya Hollander, with his two future-Olympian children in tow, verbally assaulted a news reporter who found him outside of the hospital where Shane was then recovering. Please note that the next segment of footage does include some brief adult language, so you may want to skip forward a bit or mute the volume if you are watching with children.
The screen changed then to show footage of that day, when the small news crew had ambushed Ilya outside of the hospital, when he and the girls had been walking back from getting a treat at a nearby ice cream parlor. Ilya watched himself from 2031 visibly startle at being called "Mr. Rozanov," clutching the girls close to his sides as he turned to glare at the reporter and cameraman. "Mr. Rozanov, is it true that Shane Hollander is being treated in this hospital for an illness caused by a lingering injury from his MLH career?" Ilya's nostrils flared, and when he opened his mouth, he said, "Fuck. Off. Die. Please," with a strong accent before turning and ushering the girls into the hospital. Seconds later, a uniformed hospital security guard exited through the door that Ilya and the girls had entered through and gestured for the small news crew to leave the property.
2040 Ilya, shown next on the deck standing behind Shane's chair, shrugged off his previous behavior. "Yes, as I have stated before when I apologized publicly to the reporter in question, all of my media training did fail me that day. I had gone through a traumatic experience, very nearly losing my beloved mate, my alpha partner, the father of our children. That day when they found us, we could have very well been burying Shane. It was a very close thing. Instead, the girls had been able to visit with Shane for only the second time since he had been taken to the hospital, I was deeply exhausted, and my own emotions very still very raw. My girls were only eight and ten years old then, too young to be in the glaring light of the media. I had to protect them, and I had to protect myself and also my mate. Was it my proudest day? No, of course not. But do I truly regret my reaction? Eh, I wish I had chosen better words, but English can still be difficult when I am stressed, even after being in North America for so many years. If reporter had contacted me through representation or approached me civilly in my native language, maybe I would have been nice Ilya. Who knows?" Ilya gave the camera a small wink.
"Well, I'm very glad for you and your family that Shane did survive that illness and that he's still here and going strong several years later."
"Yes, we have been very lucky in so many ways and very unlucky in only a few ways."
"Do I remember correctly that you had a leave from the MLH yourself for an illness shortly before you retired from the league?"
"Yes. I had been grossly overprescribed very strong omega suppressants from the time I was 13 years old, and after many years the suppressants were trying to kill my liver. Was very unpleasant but the Hollander family saved me, and I am luckily very well now at 49 years and able to be here for my family in this beautiful place." Ilya gestured around himself at the house, the deck, the yard and the lake beyond.
"Speaking of that," Shane said, "Do you want to see our skating rink? Ilya, do you want to take them out there? I'll meet you." The camera watched as Shane wheeled himself through a gate onto a platform built next to the desk, which then lowered him out of sight toward the ground.
"Wow," the young hockey player said, "that's a nice piece of technology."
"Yes, we're very grateful that we were able to have so much of the property retrofitted for greater mobility access to allow Shane and others with mobility challenges to continue to enjoy his favorite place in the world. This device here is called a vertical platform lift. It takes Shane down to a paved pathway that leads to the dock as well as the practice rink."
"I'm glad that he's able to have that. I have to say that as a player at the beginning of my career, this whole property is seriously GOALS. I feel like I need to find my own favorite place in the world and invest in some real estate."
"There are definitely a lot worse ways to spend that MLH salary. Just, if you don't mind some advice from an old guy, remember to prioritize your own long-term health. The league won't, and your team sure won't. If a doctor connected to the team offers you any kind of medication, do your future self and the people who love you a favor and make sure you know what it is and what the potential risks are and also what the recommended usage is. Getting on the ice to play each game is important, but your life is more important. Another player can go on the ice in your place, but in your family and your personal relationships you are unreplaceable. Also, one last thing. I recently had an old friend and team mate die from suicide after some years of suspected CTE, which was confirmed on autopsy, so do not mess with concussions. You can get a knee or hip replaced, but your brain is yours--is you--straight to the end."
"Wow, thank you for sharing that with me. I'll certainly keep all of that in mind going forward." The scene on the TV changed to show the young hockey player in front of the lake with contact information for the national suicide prevention hotline superimposed over the water followed by a graphic memorializing Cliff Marleau, the retired player who had died recently.
On the TV screen, the camera was panning around the inside of their private skating rink.
On-screen, they were showing a series of family pictures of the kids in the rink, including a short, grainy early model iPhone video of Reenie on the ice for the first time, stumbling on itty bitty skates with Ilya behind her, holding her little hands. "Wow, that's really some footage!" the female presenter said in the voice-over, "a future Olympian, possibly a future medalist, taking her literal very first steps on the ice. It's not every day that we come across something like that. It's truly remarkable." Another somewhat less grainy video showed Reenie doing a slow spin on the ice while Addie chased a puck around her, showing a hint of their developing talent in stick-handling. The broadcast then transitioned to interviews with Addie and Reenie in which they talked about their childhood skating memories, many of which involved either Shane or Ilya witnessing important firsts on the ice.
"What was really bittersweet," Reenie shared, her face more serious than usual, "was the first time I ever landed a triple. Neither of my fathers were there for very good reason, so the only person to see it was Mrs. Pike, a really good friend of our family."
"Is that Jacqueline Pike, wife of former Montreal winger Hayden Pike?"
"Yes. We call her Aunt Jackie, and Addie and I pretty much grew up with their kids. Dad and Mr. Pike have always been super tight. Anyway, she was here at the cottage keeping an eye on both of us that time when my dad, Shane, was so sick. Addie and I, I guess we didn't actually see him at his sickest, but we were pretty scared anyway. Dad hadn't been his usual self for a couple of days, and then while we were upstairs we heard a whole commotion downstairs, and we watched from an upstairs window as dad was wheeled out to an ambulance. Papa and Gramma and Pop were all so upset, and then we spent a bunch of time being as quiet as we could manage at the hospital, which of course wasn't fun, especially when we couldn't even go see Dad until days later because we were too young to be allowed in the ICU.
"Eventually, he got somewhat better, enough that they didn't think he was going to die soon, so they moved him to a room where we were allowed to go. Papa's friend Uncle Sven came to pick us up from here to take us to the hospital, and on the way there he told us about how hard Dad had fought to stay with us, how much Dad loved us and wanted to be there for us and also how much Papa loved Dad, which was so very much more than I could really process back then. So, then we saw Dad, and he was very pale and weak and kind of sleepy, but he was his normal nice self to us, rather than cranky like he'd been before the hospital for a couple of days. Then the next time we went Papa took us for ice cream to thank us for being well behaved while Dad was sick, and then that reporter came out of nowhere and scared us, and Papa said bad things to him, which was very weird. Uncle Sven drove us back to the cottage, and I begged Aunt Jackie to come out here to the rink with me so I could skate for a while. I had so many feelings mixed up inside of me, and the ice was what I needed to help straighten them out. So I just skated around and around in loops for a long time until ai started to settle down inside. I was working on getting more consistent with double jumps then. I mean, I was eight years old, so that was appropriate.
"Anyway, I decided to try for a jump, so I did another loop around the rink picking up speed for the approach, and I was thinking about Dad and how strong he was and how much I loved him. Then I launched into the jump, definitely meaning for it to be a double, and suddenly I had completed three turns! And then I landed it cleanly! And then I ran off the ice, and Aunt Jackie let me sit on her lap while I cried and cried."
The screen changed over to show Jackie Pike, first in a still photo all dressed up and young next to Hayden in his tux from some MLH event and then dressed normally and middle-aged in her living room at the Pike house. "Just try to imagine this tiny little thing. Maybe four feet tall, maybe 50 pounds, maybe smaller. I'm not sure. Just a tiny bundle of strength and energy, and then she was up in the air like a rocket. I knew just barely enough about figure skating to think that what I was seeing wasn't only a double, and I thought for sure she was going to land on her head, and her fathers would kill me, but she held onto a perfect landing, grinning like crazy until she started to cry. It was shocking and not a surprise all at the same time. Both of her fathers were extraordinary so young, and Shane at least was always an odd duck. The first time he agreed to come have dinner at our house, I seriously had to go to the library to find a book of recipes for macrobiotic diets so I could feed the guy. What the heck kind of men's hockey player doesn't want to tear up some subs or pizza? I had to cook a grain that I had literally never even heard of before at the time."
Back to Reenie. "So, you know, if you ever hear me say that love lifts me up, I mean that freaking literally, okay? I talked about that with Papa one time, and he told me that if I have my own baby one day, I might just find that I have a quad after I recover and get back in shape, because he thinks that's how much love I would have for my baby. Of course, it would probably be too late for me to have another shot at the Olympics then, but it would still be nice to know what a quad even feels like. I am working on one, but it's tough to do safely. So, yeah."
"Wow, that's very powerful. Thank you for sharing that with us, Reenie. I noticed that you mentioned your Uncle Sven. Do you want to clarify who that is for our audience?"
"Oh, yeah, sure. Sven Vetrov is my Papa's best friend from forever ago in Russia. He and his mate and their kids would always spend part of the summer here with us, just like the Pikes. Sven's father was an MLH hockey player, too, so he had an idea of some things from our point of view. Anyway, Uncle Sven is very special because when he was born people thought he was a girl, but he says he always knew for sure that he was a boy, and after he moved to Boston when Papa got drafted he started to make himself into the man he was always supposed to be. He taught me a lot about dedication to a dream and to making it come true, and he's always been such a good friend to Papa. When Dad was sick, Sven flew up here from Boston just to help out, mostly driving us around or babysitting us."
The presenter then switched to the hockey player. "Sven Vetrov's father, Sergei, was a star player on the Boston team back in the 1990s, but he returned to his native Russia with his family after retirement." The screen showed footage of Sergei Vetrov barrelling around the ice in a game. Ilya was pleased that the producer had decided not to use any pictures of Sven from back when he's been Svetlana and avoided even using that old name. Reenie had of course gotten approval from Sven to discuss him and his gender at all on-air.
The screen switched back to a focus on Shane, this time on the ice in a hockey sledge. Shane talked about how proud he was of the team he'd been coaching and the diverse kinds of players who were on the team.
As the piece was wrapping up, the camera focused in on Ilya sitting with the female presenter on the edge of the dock over the lake. The camera operator had been balanced in a small boat several feet out in the water with an assistant standing in the water to try to keep the boat from tipping over and dumping the camera and operator in the lake. The resulting footage looked great on TV, all bright summer colors and peaceful vibes.
"So, Ilya, I understand that you and Shane have co-authored a joint memoir that's due to be released around the time of the Berlin Winter Olympics this year. What do you want to tell me about that?"
"Oh, yes, we worked on it for a long time because we thought our story could be both important and interesting. The full title is Playing the Long Game: a story of alpha and omega in men's ice hockey, and while some of the story is being told in what you've been filming here, the book includes a lot of information that has never been released anywhere before."
"Oh yeah? Are you interested in giving us a scoop? Just a little taste of what's to come in your book?"
"Sure, hmm. Well, the book doesn't name names on this topic, but I can tell you that during the time Shane and I were playing in the MLH, we were far from the only queer players in the league. It wasn't just us and Scott Hunter holding up the rainbow flag in our personal lives."
"Oh, really? That's fascinating to hear that Hunter, Shane and you weren't the only gay men in the league back then."
"Yes. And just to clarify, I want to tell you that I don't actually identify as gay. I'm pansexual, commonly shortened to 'pan.'"
"Okay, thank you for sharing. Can you tell our viewers what that means?"
"Sure. It means that my attraction to a person isn't ruled in or out by their biological gender or gender presentation. I'm attracted to the human being, not to what they have or don't have between their legs, to be honest. Do you remember the reputation I had with ladies in my earlier playing days?"
"Ooooh, yeah, I sure do."
"Right. So, that wasn't done to hide my true sexuality. It was real, as is my attraction to men, obviously.
"Okay, well, thank you for letting us know. As we wrap up, is there anything else you want us to include?"
"Yes. I want to make a point of calling out David Hollander--Shane's father and 'Pop' to the kids--for being a truly wonderful man. He welcomed me into this family with a warmth and love I had never been privileged to know before that. He took care of me when I really needed help, and he made this whole beautiful life we have here possible. David, you brought Addie and Reenie into this world as much as I did. Thank you, David. I love you. We all love you."
The screen changed to show the ruins of what had clearly been some kind of building but had been reduced to a pile of ash, blackened lumber and other jagged pieces of debris. A picturesque lake scene stretched out behind the burnt ruins. "On August 4th of this year, 2075, authorities in Muskoka Lakes, Ontario, Canada released a report stating that the home that was originally built for Shane Hollander in 2014 was apparently struck by lightning during a summer thunderstorm and subsequently burned to the ground. Tragically killed as a result of the fire were the elderly alpha and omega couple Shane and Ilya Hollander, both former star ice hockey players in the MLH. Next up we have statements from the subsequent generation of Hollanders, both star athletes in their own right.
On screen next was a broad-shouldered, short-haired middle aged person standing in front of the iconic Madison Square Garden in New York City. The person is identified on screen as Addison Hollander, staff sports psychologist for the New York Admirals ice hockey team. Hollander is also known as the author of Secrets of Winning Teams, a well-regarded sports self-help book that was published in 2052.
"I'm very sorry to say," Hollander spoke into the microphone in the podium they were standing behind, "that I can confirm that my fathers were both tragically killed two days ago as a result of a fire in the home that our family called 'the cottage,' a spectacular lake house where we spent summers during my childhood and for many years into my adulthood. The only upside can find to this horrible event is that they died together in their favorite place on earth. Neither of them had to learn to live without the other, which would have been extraordinarily difficult for either of them.
"During their professional sports careers, both of my fathers exemplified mental toughness, team leadership, and the ability to focus on winning above all else. In their personal lives together, they were an alpha-omega pair with a deep emotional and romantic connection that brought them together despite deep-seated homophobia and omegaphobia in sports at that time and then through decades of triumph and near-tragedy. They were both born in 1991 and were 84 years old when they passed. In the later part of his life, Shane went on to become coach of Team Canada's sledge hockey team, which took gold in the 2044 Winter Paralympics in Warsaw. For the rest of his life, up through this past spring, Shane continued to coach sledge hockey teams, and he was due to return to that later this month. Both of my fathers are believed to have died from smoke inhalation in their sleep and were discovered by firefighters before their bedroom succumbed to the flames.
"For two cis-gendered men who spent their young lives coming up in a conservative sport, my fathers were both the most open-minded and accepting people that you can imagine from a gender and sexuality standpoint. I came out to my dad and my papa as non-binary when I was twelve years old, and they completely embraced me and celebrated my identity. I struggled to figure myself out, as most young people do, but I never had one moment of worrying that I wouldn't be loved and accepted for who I was. My wife Mei is due to have our first child in a few months, and I deeply mourn that our child will not know their grandfathers on my side and also that Shane and Ilya didn't get to enjoy time with their third grandchild. My sister Irina and her alpha partner gave my fathers two grandchildren, and my niece and nephew are both young adults now. Shane and Ilya adored being grandfathers, passing on their love of the cottage and their passion for ice sports. My grandfather David was even able to meet Irina's first child, her son Charlie, and both David and Ilya attended Charlie's birth to provide emotional support to Irina and to carry on a family tradition. For a short window of time, four generations of Hollander omegas existed in that room, though of course they didn't know it at the time since Charlie was only a baby and so his secondary gender was of course unknown. Charlie was drafted to the MLH this summer to play for the Ottawa Centaurs, the team which his father Allen currently captains and also the team that both Ilya and Shane played for in the last years of their MLH careers.
"Charlie's grandfather Ilya, drafted 66 years before Charlie, was forced to suppress his heat cycles using toxic suppressants, which have long since been removed from the market, in order to be able to play hockey in the guise of being an alpha. Charlie, on the other hand, is now able to play professional ice hockey as a proud, strong omega, thanks largely to the efforts of his grandfathers. That is a legacy that I hope gives Charlie a great deal of pride. I, certainly, am very proud and very grateful to be a Hollander."
The scene on screen changed to show a petite woman and a large man standing behind a microphone podium in front of a large, attractive home. The woman, wearing a neat, pink athleisure ensemble, is identified as Irina Rozanova Hollander, free-lance footwork coach to several Canadian MLH teams. The man, wearing an Ottawa Centaurs hockey uniform, is identified as Allen Robinson, captain of the Ottawa Centaurs ice hockey team. Irina stepped up to the microphone. "Thank you all for joining us here, at my family's lake house, which I inherited from my Hollander grandparents. This house is located very near my fathers' beloved cottage, and when I heard a large number of sirens two nights ago I had no idea that those sirens were the first cries of mourning for my fathers' deaths. My sibling Addison has already confirmed their deaths to the media, but I want to add my own perspective on their lives together.
"When my fathers met, shortly before they were drafted to the MLH, it was in fact the twenty-first century but culturally it may as well have still been the twentieth century in many ways. They grew up in a time when hockey players frequently openly used homophobic and omegaphobic slurs on the ice and in locker rooms. For Ilya, it was even worse, as homosexual activity was actually illegal in Russia at that time, while it was fully legal and much more accepted in Canada then. They both came up in the sport getting conflicting messages from the people around them--that they were very talented players who were the future of the sport but also that who they were was wrong and did not belong in the sport. They had to be very outgoing about their athleticism, playing it up for the media, while also keeping so much of their lives securely locked down. The fact that they later shared those secrets with the world in their best-selling joint memoir was a triumph for them.
"One thing that I don't believe they ever did share publicly is that while neither of them was traditionally religious, they both had what I would describe as a romantically mystical side. Ilya came to believe that I was truly the reincarnation of his mother, the first figure-skating Irina Rozanova, who died by suicide decades before I was born. He also believed that the reason I am a fundamentally happy person while she was reportedly depressed and persistently sad even as a child is that he magically healed her generational trauma by sending her soul the joy he felt on the day of his mating with Shane. Shane, for his part, always believed that he would have died from his bout with sepsis when I was a child if Ilya hadn't joined him in a sort of dreamscape and saved him there. Both beliefs are sweet but not what you would necessarily expect from a couple of retired hockey players.
"It is my sincere hope that as their bodies gave in to the smoke inhalation that their souls found each other in their shared dreamscape and perhaps live there even now, still together that way, still deeply in love with each other and still loving me and my sibling and my children as they did in life. I don't believe in a traditional concept of heaven, but I choose to believe in some part of my heart that my fathers still live on some other plane of existence where their love literally makes and shapes the world around them. I am very sad that I will never see them again, never feel their arms around me again, never again hear from them how proud they are of me, but it's a true source of joy to think that their love goes on and may potentially continue that way indefinitely. And if Irina's healed soul could revisit the earth in a time that was better for her to live in, then perhaps my fathers' souls can return one day, too, in a time and place when and where they won't have to hide who they are or who they love in order to share their extraordinary talents with the world.
"I'm not saying that any of my fathers' mystical ideas are strictly true, but they are beautiful ideas, and I want to live in the world of those beautiful ideas. I had the privilege of being loved by Shane and Ilya Hollander for the first 52 years of my life, and my memories of them will be a joy for the rest of my years, however many there may be. I am so very proud to be their daughter."
The camera moved in close enough for the viewer to see that Irina was smiling through tears, and as her mate's arm wrapped around her, she leaned into his side.
The screen then changed to an aerial view of the Hollander-Robinson home and then moved along tree-lined roads to return to the scene of the fire, the destroyed home that was known as Shane Hollander's cottage and then transitioned to an image of the home in its former glory with a rainbow flag fluttering proudly in the breeze on the front porch. The last frame was an image of Shane and Ilya kissing at their mating ceremony, young and healthy and handsome with so many decades together ahead of them.