Archive of Our Own

Rocky has decided to start teaching me a lot of Eridian legal jargon recently. Or, at least, their equivalent. I had never truly grasped or fully understood the American legal system, so attempting to understand Eridian law and give it equivalent words in English is slow going.

“I don’t think there's any kind of word for this,” I say as I close the browser in defeat, taking my twelve tabs with it.

Rocky stamps in irritation. We’ve been at this for a while, and it turns out that a lot of our more technical terms and complex ideas outside of science and math are hard to translate. Who'd have thought?

“Is simple idea. How humans even fight?”

“We tax each other and when that fails we blow each other up, we’ve been over this. Do I really need to know like…every single kind of economic warfare Erid has cooked up?”

Rocky, despite not having a face, has learned to stink eye me incredibly well.

Eridians aren’t capitalists like most human nations are, but they certainly aren’t utopian and peaceful communists either. On average, clusters share resources with each other freely, but past that it’s a bit of a messy free–for–all with plenty of backstabbing. At least, that's my understanding of things. I know even less about economics than law.

Eridian society is a web of alliances that date back to the migratory hunting days of early Eridians. Clusters are grouped into clans, and some clans have massive alliances called conglomerates. Those are new, UN style 'everyone chill out' organisations that kicked into overdrive during Erid's astrophage crisis. On a whole, Erid is a highly intricate mess of politics and social dynamics that even Rocky seems to struggle to keep up with, let alone me.

“Is important, basis of much Erid law and culture.”

“—Which highly affects Erid’s scientific community, right, right, I do remember some things.” I slouch back into the chair, rubbing the back of my neck.

Rocky wants me to know as much about Erid as possible so I’m prepared once we arrive. He's trying to make me feel less like a complete foreigner, or assure that I can assimilate as quickly as possible. I appreciate the sentiment, I really do, but I don't think any of this will be useful to me. Erid is a long, long way away, and my food stores get smaller by the day.

I've only just started combining the coma slurry with taumeoba to make it stretch longer, and every time I have to ingest it my hope of reaching Erid alive shrinks by several magnitudes.

“Do I need to know all of these terms right now? Or can it wait when I’m less—" I wave my hand. Less exhausted, less slowly starving, more alive. Which probably means never.

Rocky—who has been bobbing from side to side while he probably berates me either internally or at volumes I can’t hear or feel—stills.

Despite his utter refusal to face the reality of my probable death, Rocky is deeply aware of my health and its decline. Probably more than I am.

“Not need know,” Rocky decides after a long pause. “For now.”

I sigh in relief and take this as a break in dictionary building for today. I stand and stretch, very gently. It hurts a lot more and feels a lot less good than it used to. Muscle aches and bone aches and everything aches are now just part of the daily routine.

I should eat. My next actual chewable meal from Yao and Illukhina's supplies isn't for four days. This rationing schedule hasn't done wonders for my appetite.

“Grace want Rocky talk?” Rocky asks the minute I start moving towards food storage.

God, I love him.

“I don’t think you’ve ever told me how you and Adrian met,” I say.

Rocky trills, something mournful and fond and nostalgic and slightly dull all at the same time.

“Will recite,” he tells me.

“Oh,” I say, shocked. "Only if you want to."

Reciting is something Eridians from Rocky’s clan do. It’s a special kind of storytelling, used for recalling important or emotional events, and is possibly also a form of soothsaying if I understand correctly. He’s only done it for me two other times.

It requires pin point accurate frequencies and gestures, a certain air of gravitas, and a specific grammatical tense that implies what is being spoken about has happened, will happen, and is continuing to happen now. It’s infinitely cool, and an absolute headache for me to translate without major help from the computer.

The computer which we have largely stopped using.

It’s a very crafty tactic to keep me as distracted as possible from my meal.

"Want," Rocky assures me.

I fish out a portion of my newest batch of Tau-Slurry—Coma-Meoba, Evil Sludge, whatever— from the lab fridge and we settle in.

Rocky shifts into the right stance for a recital, legs arranged at very specific angles. His first leg is positioned towards the cockpit, which he has designated as east. The rest of his legs are held in various directions and angles. It’s a blending of two different types of superstition and cultural symbolism. The legs all have specific uses and connotations in speech, and directions are associated with certain ideas and feelings. Both of these practices I only know the barest details of. I can piece together just enough to tell that this recital is of something very happy, and that it makes Rocky look a bit like an interpretive dancer caught in a freeze frame.

He lets out a long note. It starts with just one of his voices, but the remaining four slowly build and connect together until it's a complex chord.

"When you are younger, you go to a conference between your clan and two others. You are in training to become an engineer. This meeting is for young Eridians to share knowledge. You meet other engineers from other clans for the first time. You all do not speak same languages. You must use translators, other forms of communication when not all thrumming as one. Thrumming is harder with many languages and variations in culture. You love every second.

Eridians from other clans have big ideas, new ways of thinking. Grace is not eating—"

The abrupt switch back to normal Eridian nearly makes me jump. Concentrating on translating has made me forget to even eat. I take a swig of Evil Sludge, and I register the taste just a little less.

"You want to go to more. Any chance, you take. Your cluster has reservations. Right when you are right age for apprenticeship, you meet your mentor at another conference. Some other engineers are discussing an idea. It is a stupid one. You tell them it is such. By then, you are learning an attempt at an Eridian universal language."

I make a mental note to show Rocky Esperanto at some point.

"This is popular with Eridians your age, but many of the engineers you are talking to do not know it. So, you get creative with how you correct them. An older Eridian notices."

The recital spins briefly out of the correct tunes again.

"No name in English," Rocky says "Will call Gold-Mill."

I snort.

"Gold-Mill says that you are crude and abrasive, but you are good engineer and problem solver. They like that you are willing to work with many other ideas, and also know that a new idea is not always a good one. Gold-Mill is a very old and established engineer. They built first space elevator. You show them your work, and they take you as an apprentice. Gold-Mill is from another clan. Your cluster thrums for a long time about this, but there is a current movement of trying to put old grudges aside. You leave home, and join Gold-Mill in—"

Rocky abruptly cuts off the recital again. "No good word. Like conference, thrum, school and cluster at once, but also not. Will use always-meeting."

"Always-meetings are new, established by progressive thinking conglomerates. You go to one far away, run by conglomerate with no ties to your cluster or clan. There are not just engineers, but scientists, artists, historians. Eridians from all over Erid."

"You start to miss your first language, your cluster. Then, in thrum between biologists and engineers, you hear Adrian. Eridians can sense individual Eridians in thrums, sometimes. You know they are thinking and thrumming in a language very similar to your own. You had never seen them before, so you find them in the crowd. You hear their carvings, and know they are from a cluster within your own clan. Your clusters no longer get along. It is a long, stupid argument. You like how they speak, how they thrum, so close to your own voice, and you feel home."

"You find them later to talk. They are nervous, worried about your clusters. They think you will be hostile, but you are only glad. You start to meet, just to talk. It begins simple, but then you talk about your work, and then you talk about everything. The always-meeting breaks for one Eridian year. By then, Adrian and you know you want to marry."

Rocky does this cool transition out of recital frequencies, voices briefly overlapping before he relaxes back into a normal pose.

Eridian storytelling—or at least when Rocky tells stories to an alien not fluent in his language or culture—seems to mostly be wind up to a short and punchy conclusion.

I had known bits of this. That Adrian and Rocky's marriage had been a controversy, and that their clusters did not get along. But, wow, that's quite a grand love story.

"Aw, that's so sweet! And you got married soon after?"

"Yes."

I prop my head on my hand and sigh.

"That's very romantic."

I get hit with a flash of something. A new feeling I know is actually very old. A specific stab of wistfulness.

"Makes very good story," Rocky says, puffing up. "Adrian just right sound to harmonise with Rocky in all things."

Adrian, when Rocky does speak of them, brings out some of the most flowery language I hear from the guy. He practically becomes a poet.

I chug the last of the Evil Sludge and repress a gag.

"Thank you for telling me," I say.

"Grace should know." Rocky shifts and bobs, voice warbling in a way I think means guilt, or discomfort.

"You don't owe me this, Rock. I get it."

Part of me does think I'm owed it. Rocky is happy to brag about Erid and its accomplishments. Sometimes, he also likes to complain about Eridian things he doesn't like to someone who won't be offended or scandalised. But, Rocky doesn't actually talk about himself much.

I'm in no place to demand personal information from him. I sure as hell haven't told him everything about me.

I stand up to come over to where Rocky is standing in his tunnel and lean against the wall.

"You don't have to tell me anything. I know Adrian can be hard for you to talk about."

"Grace will probably meet, should know about. Is an impolite introduction otherwise."

"Hold on—probably?"

Is Rocky admitting I might not make it to Erid?

Rocky drops his carapace so low it is almost touching the floor. In a very quiet voice, Rocky says, "Rocky don't know if Adrian is still waiting."

"Oh." Oh, oh Rocky.

Rocky seems to droop even more.

"Rocky, Rocky, hey."

I stare at Rocky until he shifts towards me, signalling that he is paying attention. It soothes my ape brain that wants to look at someone's face when I talk to them about something serious. Rocky picked up the habit of accommodating this very early.

"You are going to return as a hero. You will have saved not one, but two planets. You've done things, seen things no Eridian has before you."

"Not necessarily good thing," Rocky cuts through the pep talk I'm ramping up towards. "Rocky see much, become different. Worse."

This hits me like a sideways blow, a slap I don't see coming. I think I feel grass and dirt under my fingers, ripping and crumbling apart under my grip.

I ignore it.

"Adrian married you despite the issues between your clusters. They said they'd wait for you when you left. Adrian is a smart Eridian. Of course you've changed! Even if the mission went as planned, you would have changed, and they will have changed as well while you've been gone. They will know and understand this."

Rocky fidgets with his claws on his fourth leg, clearly unconvinced.

"Aren't you insulting Adrian by doubting their commitment?"

It's my big guns, a rhetorical gotcha I've pulled out a time or two when I'd talked to kids struggling with imposter syndrome or self doubt.

"Is also insulting to assume nothing is different," Rocky says immediately.

I sigh and rub my face. And Rocky calls me stubborn.

"Alright, then you can't assume they aren't waiting for you either. Deal?"

"Deal," Rocky agrees, grudging.

We fist bump over it.

"Thanks for the recital."

"Grace understanding of Eridian improving. Is good! Will recite more when Grace better."

I'm fairly sure Rocky is being incredibly fast and loose with the rules of recital to do that for me. He has to shift pitches and modify words even more then he normally has to in regular Eridian to keep things in my hearing range, which is I think a pretty big no go.

"Is that something you should be doing, like, culturally?"

Rocky imitates a scoff. Four times the vocal power means he can pack quite a lot of derision into it.

"Dumb rules. Very dumb rules. Grace tell story now.”

"Uh," I rack my brain for a story I know well enough to tell off the top of my head that I haven't told already. I can't find one. "How about I read to you?"

"Good, yes."

We end up mostly talking about fish instead.

—

"It's sort of a one, two, three, one, two, three."

I demonstrate a waltz, arms hovering in the air, stopping myself from looking at my feet too much.

I've never been self conscious of my terrible dancing. I spent too much time drunk or high on dancefloors in undergrad to care anymore, and that specific confidence survived though amnesia until I remembered its source again.

However, introducing formal partner dancing without a partner to an alien with superior understanding of musical theory is something else.

I make another circuit around the crew quarters, arms held out awkwardly.

"Grace terrible at this, statement."

"Do better, then."

Rocky attempts to copy me, and does not do better. This eases my bruised pride a bit.

"Grace say dance important?" Rocky prompts us back on topic once I make him admit defeat.

I drop my arms finally, feeling an embarrassing amount of strain for only holding them aloft.

"Sort of, but more so a few generations ago. Slow partner dances like this are now mostly for formal events, or between mates."

I head over to the computer and turn down the waltz.

"Meaning of word before events?"

"Formal. It means a certain kind of social event where you are expected to be more serious and respectful. There are different expectations for clothing, eating and behaviour. The opposite of formal is casual, and semi-formal is in between."

"Ah, Rocky understand. Eridian word is [formal]."

I put it into the translator, still swaying along to the waltz.

A memory explodes behind my eyes, so sudden and encompassing that it's all I feel for a moment.

My grandmother teaching me how to dance in the living room. My bare feet shuffling on the shag carpet, hers clad in nude stockings. She'd already started to decline, her hand thin and unsteady in mine. We'd gone slow and careful, and she used me as a crutch as much as a dance partner.

She had smiled and said something to me. What had she said? What had she looked like?

I don't remember.

I abruptly cut off the waltz mid chord. Rocky doesn't remark on it.

"Eridians have many different kinds of formal. Humans, less so."

"No," I say, shaking the memory away. "Americans and a few other similar cultures have less kinds of formal, but other humans have way more types."

"Understand," Rocky says. "What formal events have waltz?"

"Uh, fancy parties? Weddings have partner dancing, but not necessarily waltz."

"Second one is marriage ceremony, yes?"

"Yup. Humans around the world all do them differently, but Americans normally have a ceremony with all of their friends and family, and then after the actual marriage there's a big party. Traditionally, both of the people getting married formally dance with both of their parents."

"Nice tradition. Eridians dance very different."

"Oh," I say, starting to grin. "Show me."

—

Rocky is sleeping, so I'm leaning against the xenonite tunnel. I eat a meal here, sitting as close as possible. It satisfies both the human want for shared meals and the Eridian want for observed sleep at the same time, and also renders the whole thing infinitely creepier and off putting in both cultures. I'm killing it at first human-alien cohabitation.

When I'm done, I just sit there and stare a hole into the ceiling. My food situation is mostly sorted. Either the rationing works, or it probably doesn't. There's nothing left to calculate, and there are no more world ending fires to put out.

Without any pressing issues, my brain has returned to thinking about my lost memory. It's like a hole in my mouth, like prodding at the gap after losing a tooth with my tongue. A strange, jarring emptiness with a faint whisper of pain. The fundamentally wrong sensation of touching flesh never meant to be touched. I can't help myself from poking it.

Some things I know I'm missing. Faces, names, most of my childhood and the chunk of time from the start of grad school to receiving my PhD. But, I know there are other things, important memories I can't remember enough to miss. Holes and skipped events my brain has just invented connections across so I don't feel the lack. My favourite food. My first apartment. My pre-Stratt daily routine. A million small details of a whole life that shaped who I was.

I've had nightmares about my missing memories. I can't shake the thought that something else important looms somewhere past that hole. Something to decimate whatever small amount of respect for myself I have left. Something else awful I've done, waiting to sweep into my life and upend it again.

I've left the stove on. My apartment door's unlocked. I've misplaced an entire stack of assignments.

I've forgotten something important. I've forgotten something important. I've forgotten something important.

I know I probably haven't, not something that will seriously affect the mission, or my current life. But I just can't shake the feeling.

Rocky is deeply disturbed by my amnesia, so I don't really bring it up. But I do prod at that gap, especially when he's asleep.

Dancing with my grandmother, I remind myself. The smell of her house. What did her house smell like?

I scrunch up my face and squeeze my eyes shut so hard I see bursts of colour.

"—for when. Teach you—"

Her mouth, her formless mouth moving. She's telling me something about slow dance. I can taste some of my childhood embarrassment and irritation. Something else, too far away to grasp. Dancing with your grandmother is lame, especially when—when what?

It's gone again. I thunk my head against the xenonite behind me and sigh.

"I hope Adrian likes me," I tell Rocky's still body. "I mean, I'm probably not going to make it to Erid, so it's not something to bother worrying about, right? Maybe I should write them a letter or something."

I grimace.

"Nah, that's weird."

I've been toying with writing Rocky a letter…in case. It'll probably be easiest now, when my almost certain death still feels far off and not fully real. But, I haven't figured out a way to hide it so it won't be found until I die, all without Rocky not knowing to look for it.

Apparently, neither Armando nor Mary are programmed to deliver postmortem messages. I'd checked.

But, I also just don't know what to say. I love you, thank you, don't blame yourself? Such short, stupid words that don't capture a fraction of my feelings. Maybe those words sound better in Eridian, or there are other, more suitable ones, but I don’t have the biology to make them.

I'm just being a coward.

I slide down the xenonite, feeling a joint dig into my spine, then slide across my shoulder. It hurts.

I lie on the floor. Rocky spends most of his sleep cycles here, in a random stretch of tunnel. It is about equidistant to every important system that Rocky might need to get to in an emergency, just in case anything happens while he's out. It's also a bend in the tunnel, so there's a curve to the wall. I can wrap myself a little around the xenonite, pressing my front against the faint warmth, tucking my arms close to my chest and wedging my feet under a little ridge. It's surprisingly comfortable.

"I love you, thank you, I'm sorry," I mouth.

It's progress, I guess.

—

I'm hiding under the covers. My quilt is pulled up completely over me and tucked under my head. It's a perfect and complete covering, the barrier taut and held in place by my tight grip.

My grandparents are gone for the night. They left in the evening. My grandfather needed to go to the hospital. Nothing serious, they had stressed, but he might need to be kept under observation for the night. They had talked to me about this happening before, that I might need to take care of myself for a night or two.

I had eaten a lot of snacks and stayed up late reading, before finally attempting to sleep. Now that I have turned off all the lights, I can feel how empty the house is. How dark. Something about it is terrifying.

"You're being a baby," I tell myself, but it doesn't help.

"You're being childish." Someone says. I feel their weight on the bed beside me. I tighten my grip on the quilt.

"Hiding like this? It's cowardly, Ryland. Come on, I know you aren't actually too tired."

A hand tugs at the quilt. I hold tight, frozen in fear. I am completely covered, the quilt tucked tight around me, a perfect barrier. She doesn't go away.

"You don't love me?" She asks, and her voice breaks. "You said you did."

I am still. There is no place for me to run to, so I am still. Still like something not even alive.

"A liar and a coward, then." She is crying, hurt and angry. It's my fault.

She shifts, leaning over me and grabs the quilt with both hands. She rips it away.

My eyes fly awake, my nose an inch away from xenonite. I blink a few times and one of Rocky's legs swims into focus.

"Grace?" He asks.

I realise I am both cold and breathing heavily.

"Awake," I confirm, feeling around for my glasses. I snag on the quilt, completely thrown off of me and mostly off of my bunk.

"Nightmare, question?"

"Just a bad dream." I find my glasses and nearly stab myself in the eye with an arm that isn't completely unfolded.

"Grace want to talk, question?"

I probably should, just to try and make sense of whatever that was. Every part of me recoils at the idea.

"No," I say, like I've said every time Rocky has asked me this question.

"Okay," Rocky says quietly. I feel bad about that, which just combines into the lingering feeling of guilt and misery from the dream.

I roll over, away from Rocky and resettle on my other side.

I lived with my grandparents, at least for part of my childhood. That's a solid part of that dream I can grasp onto. And I was, what? A terrible boyfriend? That sounds about right.

I'd remembered Linda early on, and snippets of our break up argument. I still don't remember what she looked like, or much of anything else about her.

Great, just great.

I don't bother to take my glasses off, just let them bite into the skin of my temple.

I lie still and pretend to be asleep for several hours. Rocky can almost certainly tell, but he doesn't call me on it.

—

"So verbal agreements, in some cases, can hold up as fully legal?"

Lying on the floor of Mary has become a pass time. I'm starting to be able to tell where I am in the ship simply by the sound of the mechanics below me.

"Yes, verbal agreements can be legal. Only in some circumstances, when no other option available. Thrum, if more than two Eridian, but two cannot thrum. If no one else there, no way to record officially. Two Eridians can make verbal agreement."

"Couldn't that be pretty easily abused?"

"Meaning of word?"

"It's another version of 'hurt.' Can also mean to use something incorrectly, often in a way that harms it."

"Yes, can be used for bad. But rare, uncommon. Verbal agreements important, respected."

I throw the ball up and catch it on its way down. I've only hit myself in the face once.

"Is there a special way you make a verbal agreement?"

"Yes. Say in perfect harmony together, so words exact and agreed upon, then tangle together. Not hug like humans, but…hm. Hug easy way to hurt other Eridian. Sign of trust to be so close."

This chokes me up a little. Rocky's been hugging me for ages and I've been thinking it meant nothing to him culturally. Apparently, Rocky's been doing trust falls with me.

"I trust you not to snap my neck, too, bud."

"Would be very easy to do," Rocky says disdainfully.

"Hey," I catch the ball and point a finger at where he's standing somewhere over my left shoulder. "All I need is a tool and I could do so much damage to a joint or two."

I can’t help but picture it, Rocky killing me. Probably as a quick mercy once the starvation becomes clearly fatal. It would be easy for him, physically. I push the thought away violently.

Rocky imitates a spitting noise, which always makes me crack up. "Humans tool for everything. Need tools to eat, drink, sleep, remember. Die without tools, statement."

"Okay, mechanical engineer. Tell me all about how bad tools are."

Rocky disappears from his tunnel, heading back towards the other side of the lab. He's heading for his ball, which means he is about to menace my shins.

"Name of third form of Eridian to Eridian legal agreement." He calls as he heads to the airlock.

"Uh, oh, uh," I fumble to my feet, abandoning the ball.

"Wrong answer," Rocky says, and I bolt.

—

Rocky has stopped drilling me on Eridian law. I think he's accepted that my current understanding is as far as I'm going to get under the current circumstances. I expect him to jump into another complex element of Eridian society, but Rocky hasn't started up another barrage of lessons yet.

I'm doing laundry. This means moving my clothes out of the freezer, letting them mostly defrost in a container and then hanging them to let them finish air drying. I have a load in each stage at any given time.

I'm whistling the opening number of The Sound of Music as I unfasten my improvised pegs and gather my dry clothing.

Maybe I should put a laundry line in the Don't Go Crazy room, just so I can get some rolling hills and distant Alps as a backdrop while I do this. Put a fan in the corner, even, to simulate a breeze.

This is all deeply pathetic, but I think I'm deserving of some pathetic-ness these days.

Rocky walks into the room through the tunnel.

"Hey," I say around the peg in my mouth.

I don't have a laundry bag, so I've improvised by using a storage bag I've cleared the supplies out of.

Rocky doesn't respond to me, he just kind of hovers. He does that sometimes, needing to be in the same room as me. I can't blame him. Honestly, I’m deeply glad he's the one who follows me around, so I don't need to start doing it myself.

"Grace never married?"

I accidentally bite down on the peg a bit too hard. I spit it into the bag.

"No, I never married. Why are you asking?"

Rocky fiddles with his fifth leg's claws. The fifth leg, according to his clan, is the leg for taking or asking for something. Rocky sometimes fiddles with those fingers when he's psyching himself up to ask an important question.

"Grace miss anyone on Earth?"

Ah.

I put the bag down.

"Sure," I say. "I miss my students. Marissa, my friend. Carl, some of my other colleagues." I almost say Stratt, but her name gets stuck in my throat. I do miss her, even after everything. I miss sitting next to her while we both work. I miss her deeply hidden and somewhat sadistic sense of humour. I miss her conviction. I've only mentioned her to Rocky once, in passing, and I don't want to talk about her. I don't want to explain.

"But," I continue. "I don't remember all of them very well. And I've been gone a lot longer from their perspective than on my own. I sent messages to some of them on the beetles. I…I don't regret coming back for you."

I've spent more than a few of Rocky's sleep cycles sobbing. Crying about my death, crying about the life that was ripped from me. I cry when Rocky is awake, too, but I don't tell him it's often because I've remembered something I will never experience again. That I will never feel the sea breeze on my face, or the bite of a winter morning, or find out what kind of people my students grew into.

He doesn't need to know.

A liar and a coward.

Rocky shifts. "Grace have no cluster."

It's not a question because Rocky already knows the answer.

"No," I confirm. "Not like Eridians do. I had a family, blood relatives, parents, but not a cluster. And, uh, my family was quite small. My parents were dead by the time the Hail Mary launched."

My grandparents certainly were. I'm starting to wonder if my parents weren't in the picture at all.

Rocky manages to droop and perk up at the same time.

"Grace will have cluster on Erid. Rocky's cluster."

Adopted into a big collective family of sentient rock aliens. Would I be their weird squishy pet? A mascot? An actual family member?

I want it, I think. Yeah, a big rock family wouldn't be so bad.

"That'll be nice, looking forward to it," I say. It won't happen, but it'd be nice.

"Yes, make sure Grace no lonely. Many young Eridians in cluster. Grace will be able to meet pebbles."

I squeeze my eyes shut, hard.

Rocky has been bombarded with questions about Eridian children. I'd wanted to know about Eridian growth from hatching to adulthood, of course, but I'd also wanted to know what Eridian children were like. What they looked like, how they sounded, how they were raised and how they were taught.

Rocky is torturing me, all with oblivious good intention.

I reach for another shirt, tugging it off of the line.

"I can't wait." The wobble in my voice must pass for overwhelmed happiness.

—

I've been feeling a memory niggling at me for hours. The conversation with Rocky had knocked it loose. I resist the urge to really poke at it until Rocky is asleep again. It's a long wait, but the fleeting traces of sunlight and floral smells keep following me around the Hail Mary for hours.

I check that Rocky is truly asleep before I give in. I poke at the hole, hard. The memory rushes forward.

I'm young, stuffed into a button up and slacks. It's hot and I'm sweating. We're somewhere in an old growth forest, and I'm tucked between my grandmother and my grandfather. Someone tall is sitting in front of our row, so I need to peer around them, but I can just make out my cousin up at the altar. I watch her get married. I cry.

My grandfather offers me his handkerchief that he mostly carries for me. My grandmother pulls me to her side.

"Alright there, Sweatpea?" She asks when the ceremony is over and people start standing.

I don't know my cousins well. They're much older than me, and don't live close. But the emotion of the wedding, the love I could feel between her and her new husband, had seemed to fill the entire forest.

"I'm happy," I say, unsure of how else to put it.

My grandmother strokes my hair. Her eyes are also red rimmed. "One day, you'll get married yourself, and we'll all be so happy for you. You're going to be the brightest thing in your future wife's life. She'll be very lucky."

I grin, bashful and delighted.

"Will one of you walk me down the aisle?"

My grandmother laughs softly. "That's only done for the bride, darling."

"Oh."

"But, and you'll see this soon, we'll both dance with you during the reception."

The memory fades, not cutting off or ending abruptly but smearing into something indistinguishable. Like a corrupted file.

I groan and rub my face. More evidence towards the no parents in the picture hypothesis.

The happy memory curdles and feels sour in my stomach. I had certainly not had a lovely, emotional wedding where I danced with my grandparents. Nor have I been the brightest thing in anyone's life, except maybe Rocky.

How had they died, and when? I'm not looking forward to finding out.

"I haven't asked about your parents," I tell Rocky's asleep body. "I know you have siblings. Adrian's parents are from that other cluster. Are they, like, evil parents-in-law? Do Eridians even do parents-in-law like humans do? I know you aren't super big on the whole nuclear family."

I stand and jog over to grab my computer from where I'd left it on the floor. I can technically be anywhere in the room when Rocky is sleeping, but I feel anxious if I'm not pressed against the barrier. I don't want to risk Rocky waking up and thinking he is alone, even for a second.

I start re-reading the three papers I'm working on. Academia in space is strange. I have no funding, but a state of the art lab. I have plenty of time, but pretty limited resources. I have no oversight, no committees and no collaborators except for Rocky. I’m working in one and a half times Earth's gravity. I'm also on the cutting edge of multiple fields, some of which I've personally discovered and pioneered.

I sent plenty of data back home on the beetles, but I'm continuing to experiment and fine tune some of my hypotheses, as well as logging anything about Eridians I can. I floated the idea of Erid sending a probe to Earth with information to Rocky once, so hopefully he'll do that with my work when I'm gone.

I settle back in, tucking a balled up jacket under my head so I can press my cheek to the xenonite, and get to work.

—

Rocky rolls into the crew quarters in his ball. I'm taking a nap, supposedly, but it's more dozing right now.

"W'sup?" I ask, flicking my eyes open a crack to greet him.

"Rocky want to feel Grace's hand."

"Uh…why?"

I'm already closing my eyes and uncurling a hand from where I've tucked them against my chest.

"So hear better, want to check," Rocky explains.

I grunt in agreement. Rocky occasionally asks me to press myself to the tunnel or the ball if I haven't done so in a while, so he can hear me better and thus check on my internal workings. I'm pretty sure I have been plastered to a wall or two recently while he was awake, but whatever. Maybe he wasn't paying attention.

I flop my arm over towards him and listen as he tries to roll the ball to get the flexible panel pointing the right way. I hear him curse. I'm about to open my eyes and start helping when Rocky stills. I feel warmth encircle my wrist. It's strange, the tiny panels are flat and the joints are a bit pokey, but I can feel the pressure from Rocky's fingers and the heat of him. He holds me by the wrist, hearing my pulse.

I let out a long, appreciative sigh. It's not physical contact in a way my ape brain will recognise, but it still feels really nice. Rocky shifts from my wrist to trail up my palm. I let him do whatever he wants, sinking into the mattress as he taps against my knuckles. I drift off with Rocky still holding my hand.

—

I have a movie day. That's what I call it when I only do the bare minimum of what Mary and the taumeoba need from me and camp out in the Don't Go Crazy Room. I watch movies, but also documentaries, soundscapes and nature scenes. I stuff myself with Earth until it hurts. I'm not sure if this is grieving, or some attempt to preserve the Earth of my memories.

These places, and the people who made these movies and recordings, might all be gone. I may be the only human alive who escaped an apocalyptic climate disaster. The only person left who doesn't know what Earth looks like now, as the planet started to cool. Maybe it's my duty to burn this version of Earth into my mind, as well as passing it onto the Eridians.

Or, it's just an excuse to mope.

Rocky normally spends movie days with me, in his ball and tucked against me. He's picked up a knack for knowing when I want him to bombard me with questions or when I want to watch in silence.

Today, though, he keeps darting in and out.

"Sorry, sorry." He says as he comes back, and I need to adjust the quilt to let him roll into place again. "Sensitive project, needs to be checked on as it sets."

"What are you working on?"

"Grace see later."

"Right, right. It's always secrets with you."

Rocky is frustratingly cagey about his work. For projects where he's repairing something or making something very important, he lets me watch and ask questions. When he's making something new, he's not very interested in talking about it until it's done. He also seems to physically hide it from me while it's in progress. I'm starting to think it's performance anxiety, which is very endearing, honestly.

I let him settle back against me.

"What is this?"

I'd changed from Scottish highlands to Blade Runner while he was gone. I'm only a few minutes in, feeling the memories of a movie I had watched a thousand times slot back into my brain, but I'm really not feeling it.

"Something I don't want to watch anymore."

I look through my list of sci-fi greats I'd put together once I remembered I used to be a huge sci-fi guy. Nothing really catches me until I get towards the end.

"Hey—I should show you this one. It's about aliens coming to Earth and us having to learn their language."

I had loved Arrival when it came out, I remember. But as the scenes crawl on, I just feel agitated. So many of these old movies I had loved all land strange and rub the wrong way now. Too close to what I've experienced, too far from actual reality, and too concerned with depressing ideas that might be applicable to me. I guess living in space with an alien will kill your inner science fiction fan.

Or, maybe this version of myself would have never liked these movies.

Rocky likes it, though, so I watch the whole thing and pause it for him when he needs to duck out again.

—

It's another normal routine day when things shatter.

I've finished my taumeoba farm check ins and have headed down into the crew quarters for lunch. Rocky joins me for the meal. This is an actual, solid, real meal today. Rocky understands the significance of these last real meals, so he often tries to be very human about it for my sake. We sit and chat as I eat.

My past self hadn't really cared much about shared meals. I'd often preferred to eat on the go, or snack throughout the day when I remembered I was hungry. I've really come to appreciate a good sit down meal with Rocky. It eases something in me.

"Thanks, bud," I say, standing to gently stretch and head back to the lab.

"Wait," Rocky says.

He sounds…nervous?

"Turn on computer," Rocky says.

"You want the translator?"

That is not a good sign. It means Rocky wants to make sure I don't misunderstand him.

"Okay…" I scramble to find the computer and boot it up. Rocky's human voice echoes through Mary for the first time in a long while.

"Can you look in the airlock?"

He points, with his first arm—the most important and serious of the two arms for giving—and then his fifth arm—his taking arm. I have never seen him do that before.

I walk over to the airlock built into the crew quarters and pull it out. The airlock drawer is completely cool to the touch, and doesn't blast me with a wave of heat or the smell of ammonia. It's been sitting here equalising for a while.

Right in the middle of the airlock, placed carefully so it isn't crooked, is a small box.

"What is this?" I ask, and I'm already reaching for it. The lid is on a hinge and the xenonite slides smoothly up.

I stare at the ring suspended in a honeycomb of xenonite.

I stare at the ring the clerk has handed me to look at. It's gorgeous. Not a diamond, since Linda hates the diamond industry, and not anything too flashy or expensive. There's a small gemstone embedded in the middle, but the ring's main draw is the pretty twist of its silver construction. It's exactly what Linda would like out of an engagement ring, matching all of her jewellery that I've secretly combed through multiple times. The band for me is simple without any embellishments.

I've been idly fantasising about ring shopping since I was old enough to understand the concept. My grandmother had painted such a pretty picture of romance to me, and I had wanted it so much.

Linda and I have been dating for years. It was time to start thinking about the big questions.

But now that I am here, considering it, I feel nothing but dread.

I blink down at the ring. The ring box. It looks like a plain band at first, silver in colour yet also not completely opaque. After a moment, I notice there are tiny facets across the outside of the band that occasionally catch the light and shine. I think my hands are shaking.

"I'm proposing," Rocky says.

"What?" I say, barely recognising that I'm speaking. Surely he's misunderstood something.

I can see Rocky puffing himself up in my periphery vision. I'm still staring at the ring.

"I want to propose a marriage," Rocky says. It lands like a slap.

"I was incredibly lucky to meet you, Grace—"

I stand and turn. I need to—I need.

I head for the bathroom. Rocky leaves me alone in there, mostly.

I reach for the handle.

A memory hits. Standing in the spray of the shower for too long, staring at the shower curtain. Running calculations for how long I can stay in the bathroom, and when Linda will be mostly asleep when I come out.

I jerk away like I've been burned.

"Grace?" I hear Rocky calling for me, somewhere far away.

It's only three steps to the ladder out of the crew quarters. Humans are faster than Eridians outside of thirty second spurts.

I throw myself up the ladder. I can hear the clatter of Rocky's claws on xenonite and it only makes me move faster.

I don't know where I'm even going, until I do. I punch in the code to open the first door of the airlock. Rocky makes a shrill, panicked noise from behind me that almost makes me stop. Almost.

I throw myself into the airlock and slam the lever down on the other side to close me in. I think Mary is talking to me, voice joining Rocky's, but it's all just noise.

I stagger backwards until my back slams against the outer airlock door. It's cold, almost freezing. Only this metal between me and the void.

I slide down the airlock door until I'm sitting. No one can come in. Rocky can't get in. The thick metal dampens his voice to a faint ring and a low vibration in my chest.

I go to put my hands over my ears, but something hard collides with my head. I pull my right arm away from my face.

I didn't drop the ring box, nor did I close the lid. It's a real compliment to Rocky's work that the ring is still sitting snugly inside its little slot.

I force myself to breathe, breathe. The ring glistens.

I see flashes of Linda's face, the glint of cocktail glasses under smokey lighting, my grandmother's smile. I close my eyes.

I breathe. I close the ring box and press it to my forehead.

And then I think about it. I think about my idle childhood fantasies about being a husband. I think about the snug weight of a ring on my finger, the promise of it. The promise that Rocky won't turn away from me, that he’s committing himself in the strongest way he can to me.

Except, except. Rocky has a mate. Rocky doesn't know. Rocky hasn't accepted that I'm going to die. And I'm—

I bury my face in my hands.

Fuck.

A rhythmic thumping starts up against the interior airlock door. Loud, insistent. It's rocky in his ball.

"Grace!"

My brain is finally registering Eridian as words again. His voice is far too high pitched.

Part of me just wants to stay here, to stay in the one room Rocky can't get into. Except Rocky will probably start undoing the bolts to get inside, and he sounds scared. Oh, I'm scaring him.

That gets me moving.

I pick up the discarded ring box, stick it in my pocket and reach for the airlock controls. The access code takes me a moment to remember, and then I'm pushing the lever back up. The door slides open. Rocky barrels in.

The words Rocky is spewing are so rapid fire, strangely pitched and complex that I would struggle to understand them on a normal day. I just kind of blink at him. Rocky cuts himself off and rolls towards me.

I shift away so he isn't blocking me into a corner. He stops moving.

"Bad!" He yells. "Grace die, die, die, die, die, die. Stupid!"

Rocky's carapace dips down to the floor suddenly, like a collapsing card tower.

"Why?" he asks. So quiet I can barely hear him.

"I'm okay," I say.

"Grace is a liar."

I flinch.

"Sorry," I say. I don't look at him. The air is cold in the airlock. There's no reason to waste energy on keeping it a nice and even 20 Celsius. I notice the goosebumps on my exposed arms.

"Rocky," I say. I put a bit of my stern teacher voice behind it. A firmness I don't feel. "I'm not some replacement for Adrian."

Rocky recoils so much the ball moves backwards.

"It's not fair. It's not fair to do that to Adrian, and it's not fair to you either. You can't just—just give up!"

Rocky makes a low noise I feel resonate throughout my entire chest. It's loud, climbing in volume, before it abruptly cuts off.

Rocky just…rolls away. He pushes himself over the lip of the open doorway and back into Mary. I watch him go

Oh, oh god.

—

Mary starts yelling at me about an open airlock door pretty quickly, so I step back into the ship and close the door behind me. I stand there for a while.

Rocky has tucked himself in a corner somewhere. We don't have many of those, so that's pretty impressive. Admittedly, I don't look in the tunnels at all as I head back to the crew quarters. I flop down on my bed.

Faintly, I think I hear a crash somewhere deeper in the ship.

I roll over and shove my face into my pillow. It needs to be freezer washed.

Suffocation doesn't sound like such a bad way to go, honestly. Just smash my face into this pillow until my brain gives out. I don't know if it's supposed to be particularly painless or not, but you at least lose consciousness.

I lie there for a long while, letting my mind settle and chase away the scraps of memory still flickering at me. Finally, I feel grounded back into my current life and self again. That's when I roll over again to face the ceiling. I reach down and take off my untied shoes, chucking them across the room. Then, I kind of feel like I've run out of anything to do at all.

I love Rocky. I know that. I know it with a kind of certainty I've only felt towards basic scientific facts. Earth is spinning through an empty void, there is no gravity in space, and I love Rocky. But do I love him?

A lot of my old pathetic love life has just been revealed to me. A deeply awkward first date set up by mutual friends. Catching on far too late that someone had been flirting with me and having to turn her down while we were apparently most of the way into a relationship already. Dozens of fizzled out connections where it always seemed to be me who was the problem. An embarrassing drunk attempt at making out with a guy to see if that was what the problem was. It had always seemed like people just…wanted something I didn't know how to give, or things I didn't have. It'd left me on the back foot, constantly blindsided by steps in a dance everyone else knew better than me. I'd thought I might have figured it out with Linda. I had loved her, her mind and her work and her drive. I'd thought we might marry. I thought I would be alright with that.

Eventually, I just stopped trying. I was busy with my students, my little routines. I thought I was alright with that, too.

I dig the ring box out of my pocket. It really is beautiful work. Mostly human, but with a little hint of Eridian design philosophy. Rocky had found a way to make it appealing to me in a sense he didn't even have.

If I can't love Rocky, then really I don't think I can love anyone at all.

I think I can try. I think I could really try. It wasn't like he would want to have sex with me, at least. And what would even change much? How we talked about each other? Maybe a few Eridian style romantic social norms would be introduced? Would I, what, blow a kiss at him through the xenonite and wish him luck on his work every day? Would he talk about me like he talks about Adrian?

I make myself hold that picture in my mind. It's…weird. Strange, but not exactly unpleasant. I could probably get used to it.

We could marry, here on this ship. Exchange vows before Mary's central computer as a witness. And then I would die before we got to Erid, and Rocky could just go back to Erid and Adrian and not tell a soul.

I take the ring out of the box and put it on my ring finger. It fits perfectly, the inside smooth and pleasantly cool.

Am I seriously considering being an alien homewrecker?

I take the ring back off and stuff it back in the box, slamming the lid shut.

"What the hell, Grace," I say to myself. How did I ever get into this situation?

—

After about an hour of staring at walls, interspaced with bouts of panic, I force myself up.

I am a coward and a liar, but Rocky doesn't need either of those right now. We need to sort this out soon, before it festers into even more of a nightmare. There is no space to avoid each other for long on this ship, and we both will need to sleep eventually.

I stand and take my quilt with me, wrapped around my shoulders.

"Rocky?" I call as I climb the ladder. I hear nothing echoing back, no sound of Rocky moving around or speaking. That's not a very good sign. Unfortunately for both of us, there are no places to hide on Mary.

I find him in his ball in the Don't Go Crazy Room.

Normally, I'd walk out to the middle of the little catwalk and sit so my legs dangle and my side is pressed up against his ball. Now, I just hover by the entrance.

I don't sit so I'm not towering over him, and he doesn't turn to face me like he's looking at me.

How long has he been in this room? The screens were off until I walked in—some motion sensor or something else that activates the room when I walk in has always struggled to notice Rocky—and he doesn't have his light sensor so there hasn't even been anything for him to hear.

"Rocky?" I ask. He still doesn't turn. "I'm sorry for freaking out."

Rocky finally twitches in my direction. I pop a squat, resting my elbows on my knees. The quilt billows out around me.

"I just—I really think we should talk about it."

"I am not giving up on Adrian," Rocky finally says. His voice is as flat and tuneless as an Eridian's can get. "If Adrian has moved on, then Adrian has moved on. If not, then Rocky will return to them. Will face what waits."

"Okay," I say, "And, what, Adrian will just be cool with you showing up with a whole other spouse?"

Rocky turns towards me. "Why Adrian not be?"

Oh. I sit down. My knees aren't exactly factory standard these days.

"In many human cultures, in my culture, you only marry one person at a time. It's actually illegal to have multiple spouses where I live."

"What?”

Oh, thank god.

I let myself switch into teacher mode, teasing the right answer out of Rocky so we're back to understanding each other. There's less room in my brain for panic, like this.

"I'm guessing Eridians aren't like that?”

"No. Only one marriage? No clusters, no thrumming? Humans basically solitary species!"

Rocky paces. His ball wobbles on the catwalk. If he falls off and doesn't hit the floor he'd totally wipe out a screen.

"Yeah, yeah, humans are terrible. Adrian has no say in you taking another spouse at all?"

Rocky hesitates. "Not no say," he admits. "Normally, would already know Grace before Rocky or Grace ask for marriage. If Grace and Adrian hate each other, may be issue. But this is uncommon. Grace not marrying Adrian, only Rocky."

I squint meaningfully at him. He gets that as pointed scepticism more than a raised eyebrow, for some reason.

"…And will Adrian be alright with you marrying an alien you never introduced them to?"

“Special circumstances. This is respected concept. Adrian will not mind.”

“You’re assum—“

“Adrian will not mind.”

I raise my hands in surrender. If Rocky really thinks so, then it’s not my place to question him. I’ve already been working off of a misunderstanding already.

“Okay, great, good.”

“Grace find it that terrible?” Rocky asks. He's drooping again, curling in on himself.

“What?”

Rocky's carapace drops even lower.

“Marriage to Rocky so bad Grace need to go hide in airlock? Such awful idea, question?”

“No! No, not at all.” I half scoot, half crawl over so that I’m sitting next to Rocky. The quilt drags and catches on the catwalk.

“I just—" I have absolutely no idea how to explain this. There is no good way to say ‘it’s not you, it’s me,’ and I’ve had practice.

“Well, first off it was a big shock. People date first before jumping into proposing, you know.”

“Date is spending much time together, often alone. Do activities, eat together, care for each other, live together. Come to love each other. Are Rocky and Grace not dating?”

I take my glasses off from where they’re hanging from my ear and toss them somewhere further down the catwalk away from me. I bury my face in my hands.

“Grace?”

“Rocky, do you love me?” Heat burns in my eyes, promising incoming years.

“Yes. Question with obvious answer. Grace is Rocky’s best friend. Closest in galaxy. My mercy.”

I press the base of my palms into my eyes so hard it kind of hurts.

“But are you in love with me? Romantically?”

“…Rocky not understand.”

I force myself to take my head out of my hands. I stare at the screens. It’s picked a forest I don’t recognise. A speaker somewhere to my right is playing birdsong.

“Romance and friendship are different. They are different kinds of love. Like how a parent loves their children is different to how that parent loves their mate, which is different to how that parent loves their friends.”

“Rocky tilts his carapace back and forth. “What is difference between friend and romantic partner for humans?”

I throw my hands up. “You get obsessed with them. You feel happy when they look at you. You want to touch and kiss them, you want to have sex and maybe have kids. You—you orbit around them.”

Rocky stamps in irritation. “Why is different, question? How? Why no do these things with friends also? Friends not also feel this about each other, question?”

“I don’t know!” I yell. I lose the battle against the tears and they spill down my cheeks. “I don’t know what kind of special emotion everyone else feels is, or what it looks like and how it's different. They all just know. I don’t have a clue, Rocky!”

We both sit in silence for a moment. Rocky shifts, unsure and anxious.

“I really wanted to get married, when I was a kid," I begin.

I stare into the canopy of a forest that might not exist anymore on a planet that I’ll never see again.

“I thought, ‘wow, that sounds great!’. I loved—I loved the idea of it. A massive wedding. Someone I went places with, who lived with me, who cooked and helped me clean and who I could greet every time we got back from work. All that domestic stuff. I was—I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to meet someone who would, who would want to put up with me for the rest of our lives. And then I was old enough to start looking and it, just…”

I do some stupid gesture with my hands and sniff.

“It just wasn’t ever right. It never worked out, and—honestly I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand what they wanted from me, sometimes. I thought about getting married to Linda, my ex-mate, but I just…I couldn’t. I liked her, I really did, and by then I was pretty good at pretending I knew how to love her. Here was my chance to be a husband. But, it was just—I knew, maybe, that it wasn’t fair. Or that it wasn’t—I don’t know. She broke up with me pretty soon after that.”

I pause to wipe my eyes on my sleeve. Rocky starts to speak, and I raise my hand to stop him. I need to get this all out before I chicken out.

“Rocky,” My voice wobbles so much I break to breathe before continuing. “I love you. I love you so much, like I’ve never loved anything else. There isn't a single person or thing I love like I love you. You mean so much to me, man, but I just don’t think I can be in love with you. I can try, if you want me to try then I will, but I don’t know if this is something I’m able to feel."

I let out a barely controlled sob and wipe at my face again.

I feel warmth bump against my side. The smooth plane of xenonite.

“Grace hug Rocky.”

“Huh?” I say through another sniff. Nothing makes you more self conscious than being snotty in front of an alien that’s largely inorganic.

“Grace need comfort. Hug.”

I shift back, swing my leg around so I’ve got one on each side of the ball and collapse against him, arms holding on tight to something without any give.

“I’m sorry,” I say into the panelling.

“No apology. No apology ever.”

I blink and new tears fall.

“Rocky and Adrian's clan have only one kind of marriage. Some clans have more. Many different words, many different kinds of marriages. Some important, some less important. Rocky meet Eridians from clans like this at always-meeting. Think very dumb. Rocky and Adrian love each other. Spend time together, grow to care much for each other. Decide we want to be with each other for all decades of our lives. Want to be clustermates, family, so Rocky and Adrian get married.”

Rocky nudges the ball in a way that jostles me ever so slightly. It’s sort of his way of squeezing me back.

“Rocky meet Grace, come to love. Spend much time together, want to spend rest of life together. Every rotation of both Erid and Earth. Want Grace to be part of family, part of cluster. Grace want this also?”

“Yes,” I sob.

"This Eridian marriage. Maybe marriages are different feelings, different loves, but is all marriage. In Rocky’s clan, difference irrelevant to all other Eridian besides married pair. Is all same.”

I pull back just enough to look at Rocky, who has mashed himself into the side of the ball.

“Really?"

“Yes.”

“And, you want to marry me?”


“Yes.”

“And nothing changes? We just stay like this?”


“Yes. Stay like this forever.”

I want that. I want that so much.

"Yes," I gasp. "I want that."

"Good. Good good good. Can have."

I cry into his ball for a long moment. I can't have it, because it isn't fair to him if I don't tell him. I have to tell him. But I let myself shake for a minute or so first.

"Rocky," I say. "There's something you need to know."

"More thing about marriage?"

"No, not really. I mean, just something you should know about me before you really have your hearts set on it."

I think about just not saying anything and letting the moment pass. I think about just letting this happen and taking it to my grave. How would Rocky even know if I didn't tell him? But, I think the guilt would slowly eat through my stomach lining. It already has been. You aren't exactly supposed to enter a marriage on false pretences.

Don't be a coward, Grace.

I untangle myself from him and give myself a bit of space. I inhale a long, shuddering breath.

"I didn't choose to go on this mission, Rock. I wasn't supposed to go at all, originally."

Rocky stills completely.

"What?"

"There was another science officer who was supposed to go instead of me, and then there was a back up in case anything happened to him. Three days before launch, both were killed in an accident. We didn't have a third officer ready to take their place, but I—" my voice cracks and I clear my throat. "I was the leading expert in astrophage, and I'd been working on the project from the start. So, they asked me to go, and I refused. Rocky, I said no."

I wipe my eyes again. My chest is tight.

"How did Grace get on ship?" Rocky asks. He is perfectly still.

"They had to force me. God, isn't that awful? They sedated—uh, medicine that makes you fall asleep—sedated me and then put me on the ship. I'd threatened to make the mission fail if they sent me, so they gave me medicine to forget for long enough that I wouldn't remember saying that I wouldn't cooperate."

I can't look at him. I'm so full of disgust, it feels like it's pouring out of my mouth.

I brace myself for Rocky to start yelling, or something else I'll deserve.

The catwalk starts shaking slightly. I look back to Rocky and see that he's…vibrating. He's admitting a continuous noise I can't really hear, but is making the ball rattle and shake with the force. I've never seen him do something like this before.

Rocky starts shifting from leg to leg, continuing to vibrate so much that the details on his carapace blur.

A particularly aggressive shift makes the ball wobble.

"Woah, hey," I reach out with both hands to try and prevent Rocky from toppling off the catwalk and breaking the Don't Go Crazy Room. The vibrations are so strong they travel up my arms and into my core. I feel it behind my teeth. "Rocky?"

Rocky tones it down, the vibrating easing a bit.

"Humans kill Grace! Humans murder Grace!"

He forgets to moderate his volume to human safe levels. I rear away from him and throw my hands over my ears.

When did I teach him the word murder? I think distantly.

"Sorry," Rocky says in a normal angry human volume. "Am very mad at other humans!"

This…is not what I expected.

"So many people would have died if we waited for another launch window. Thousands. Millions, maybe. They didn't have a choice, Rocky. I knew that. We all knew that."

Rocky stops shifting as much.

"Fine," he grits out. I've outlined the exact details of just how screwed Earth is to him. He knows I'm right.

"But take memory?" he continues, back to yelling, "Take memory? Bad bad bad. Stupid. Endanger mission. Hurt Grace. Pointless. Hurt just to hurt."

"Well—"

"Would Grace actually not complete mission if Grace remember?"

I sigh. "No, I don't think I would have actually sabotaged the mission. But there was no way for any of us to know that for sure."

"Stupid. Bad bad bad way to fix small chance, endanger mission. Grace memory and knowledge whole reason sent on mission. No memory, less way to help. Grace remember what was needed, managed anyway, but no way of knowing this. What if Grace forget needed information? Fail mission. We all die. Bad bad bad bad bad bad."

Well, honestly, when he puts it like that I can't help but agree a bit. But, I also still understand why Stratt did what she did to me.

I raise my hands in surrender and clear my throat.

"Do you want the ring back?"

"Why?" Rocky yells with so much confused incredulity it rattles the catwalk again.

"Because I'm a coward!"

Rocky stops vibrating entirely. I pant, loud in the new silence.

"Grace not coward," Rocky says quietly.

"Well, I sure acted like one."

Rocky shakes his carapace back and forth like he's shaking his head no.

"Scared decision. Panicked. Maybe not brave, but understandable. One action not make Grace coward. Grave brave when meeting Rocky. Grace brave on Adrian the Planet, Grace brave saving Rocky, Grace brave brave brave returning for Rocky. Grace is brave many many more times than not brave."

"Oh," I say.

"Humans good at pattern recognition. Recognise pattern. Grace is brave, not coward."

I let out another sob. I don't believe him, not really, but I feel just a little bit lighter.

"So, the wedding's still on?"

"Yes. Grace is stupid."

I grin at him. I get to have this. I get to have this. I get to have this.

"Grace need to drink water," Rocky says.

"In a bit." My eyes are really starting to hurt. I blink hard for a moment before forcing myself to refocus.

"Okay, we can get engaged, but how about we wait for marriage until we reach Erid and Adrian can meet me?"

"Marriage before Erid better legally."

"Oh?"

Rocky shifts nervously. "Rocky promise Erid will welcome Grace, and Erid will be very grateful to Grace! But…"

But Erid is far from a monolith and Rocky does not know what he's returning to.

"Me being your spouse lets me claim clustership," I realise. "It'll be easier for me to enter Erid. I'll have some sort of legal standing Erid can work with, rather than none at all."

Rocky and his cluster will have a legal claim to oversee my welfare in my stead. This includes postmortem concerns and what will happen to my body.

“Yes! Grace remember lessons." "That—that might have been what you should have led with, bud."

I finally retrieve my glasses. They're almost dangling off of the catwalk thanks to Rocky

"Human proposals supposed to be surprise. Would ruin surprise, and gesture," Rocky protests.

"You didn't surprise me, you gave me a heart attack."

Rocky makes his spitting noise at me. I swing one leg back over to the side so Rocky isn't between my shins anymore and scoot over so we're side by side.

I gather the quilt and throw it over my head and his ball. It's too small to cover all of us, and my legs are entirely exposed, but it gets close enough. I use my hands to rearrange things a little to give myself more room. There's only faint light from the forest filtering up from below to see by.

"What is Grace doing?

"Human thing." I dig out the ring box from my pocket. The ring slips out of it's slot with perfect ease. I put it on my finger.

Then, I tap the base of my ring finger, bouncing sound waves off of the ring and to Rocky. He’ll be able to hear it loud and clear.

Rocky makes a noise of joy that doesn't have a perfect English equivalent. It's somewhere between a laugh and a whoop of excitement.

I grin so wide it hurts.

"Hey," I say after a moment. "Isn't the fourth leg about concession? Is this being on my fourth finger bad luck or something?"

"Mm. Fourth leg also for compromise. Meeting between the three pushing legs and the one pulling leg. Is fitting for us."

"Well, when you put it that way."

I turn my hand over and see a facet of the ring glint as it catches the light just right.

"Grace ready for marriage now? Have other ring.”

"Wuh-now? We just got engaged. You need to be engaged for a little while at least. We need to plan the wedding."

"Ah, understand."

I bump my shoulder into the ball. I'm already thinking about what a wedding between two aliens in space should look like. I wonder if I can press Armando into flower robot duty.

It certainly won't be the wedding my grandparents would have wanted me to have, but I think that's alright.

"What now?" Rocky asks.

I turn awkwardly to put one hand on the ball at around my shoulder height, and the other at an imagined waist line.

"Now, we dance.”

—

It's taken me almost two days to sort through all the rocks they've found for me within the desired frequencies. I wanted to really take my time, even though how good the colour match was would only be noticed by myself. Still, I kept going back and forth between two different choices right until the end.

I end up picking a hunk of rock almost the exact colour as my hair at the last hour. They gave me several pieces from the same vein, which is probably nice to have hanging around. Just in case.

I'm already on the beach once Rocky arrives to collect me.

"Finally choose?" He asks once he's close enough. His newest xenonite suit model is much more mobile and he's starting to conquer the art of walking on sand.

I whip the ring box out of my pocket, the one he put my wedding ring in, and shake it at him.

"Good, good," he says. "Adrian waiting outside to walk us there. Grace ready?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm ready. Are you ready? You're the one getting a chunk of your carapace carved out."

"Yes," Rocky almost groans. I've been pulling his legs about this for ages, and I can't help but get another one in right at the end.

I make a loose fist and drag my thumb over my ring. Rocky had made himself a wedding band, which he still wears. I've floated the idea of synthesising tattoo ink to the human care team. It's unfair that he's the only one who gets to wear the Eridian wedding signifier. If they can't make me ink, then I've got a few other ideas.

"Hey," I say as I look at a wave breaking and rushing towards us. "Do you think we could have a little after party on the beach? Just you, me and Adrian?"

"Of course, is good idea."

I eye him, smirking. "Are you less scared of sand now?"

"Rocky was never scared," he lies.

"Oh, oh you so very were."

"Rocky and Grace will be late," he says loudly and starts to move back down the beach. "Come."

"I'm onto you," I call after him. I start following, but then turn to look out across the biodome again.

It's sunset. A wisp of cloud hangs in the fake sky. They've just figured out how to project clouds onto the walls, and I haven't seen a repeat yet. The simulated breeze picks up. Recently, they've changed the chemical composition of the ocean enough that it smells almost like the real thing. I take a moment to simply breathe, and let the wind play with my hair.

"Grace! Late!" Rocky calls.

"Right behind you," I say, and I follow him back up the beach.