Chapter Text
1. 26 years after landing
The first dustings of Quiet snow drift down to the ground where the wall used to be, falling into the cracks between debris. Solarium’s heart sinks as he looks at the hole torn through the once-sturdy defenses, memories of the attack from over two decades ago brought uncomfortably into the forefront of his mind. The walls were supposed to be sturdier now, rebuilt first with the materials from the Heliopause and then reinforced to be stronger and stronger with every breach.
But as humans learn to get better and better at fighting off the xeno hordes, the planet gets better and better at wrecking the colony.
“What’s the plan for today, boss?” He turns to see Nougat at the forefront of a small group of builders, all of them people who’ve been on the construction crew almost as long as he has. Burnish is still nominally in charge, but as age and grief made it harder for him to keep up with work, Sol and Rex became the de-facto leaders.
Few people outside of the stewards and soldiers work the day after the end of glow funeral. Classes are cancelled, administration takes the day off, survey teams don’t leave until a day later. But Sol needs something to do with his hands, and he knows everyone who came out here today does too.
“Full reconstruction is going to wait until we can meet with Engineering and see if there’s anything stronger we can use this time,” he says. “But we still need to keep kiddos in and xenos out, so we’re gonna clear the space and put a fence up for the meantime.”
“That gonna hold?” she asks.
“It has to,” Sol shrugs. “It’s Quiet season and there’s not much around, and it’ll be easy enough to tear down and recycle once we’re done.”
The snow starts to fall harder as they get to work, coating his hair and clothes as he drags the debris off to the side to be sorted and recycled. It’s quieter than it ever is, even Nougat’s irreverent sense of humor and poorly-timed jokes blunted by the somber grief the colony is sharing in. His mind wanders easily, seeking the hazy memories of how this attack went the last time around and what they need to do before next year.
There’s only so much clarity they can give him. His teenage memories were easy to differentiate, but adulthood starts to blend together, not to mention how different his life is this time around. He knows what he’d need to do to keep the other Sol’s kids safer, but the kids he’s raising with Rex are wholly different creatures. Half the time, he’s flying completely blind.
“Sol,” someone calls. It’s Tammy, dressed in the muted shades that much of the colony wears during mass mourning. His eldest lurks just behind her.
“Everything okay?” he asks, his heart picking up. They don’t look hurt, but they’re far more subdued than usual, their gaze listing towards the ground. Tammy leads them down the path, and they follow along quietly.
“Everything’s okay,” Tammy says. Mel drifts over closer to Sol like a flower carried on a river. “I think they just need you right now.”
He suddenly realizes he hasn’t had to kneel to get on eye level with them in over a year. “You alright, kiddo?”
They shrug. He knows they’re getting to that age where they’ll start talking to him less, but this doesn’t seem quite like that.
Sol turns to address the crew, finding a few of them already smiling and waving at Mel. They lift a hand in a halfhearted wave back. “Need to break for a minute. Call me if there’s any emergencies.”
“You heard him, gang,” Nougat says. “Don’t let there be any emergencies.”
“C’mon,” he says. “Let’s take a walk.”
It’s easy to tell at a glance that Mellifluous is descended from him and Marz, their cloud of hair predominantly a brilliant blue that’s streaked with black and gold, and Marz’s irridescent eyes peer out from under thick eyebrows. They’re strictly Sol and Rex’s kid, though, the two of them coparenting while Marz takes the role of favorite auntie.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
They glance around, as if trying to make sure no one else is in earshot, and their voice wavers when they answer. “I miss auncle Val.”
“Oh, sweetie,” he says. That heavy cloud of grief descends closer over him, and he pulls them into a hug. They wrap their arms around him, sniffling against his chest. “I do too.”
“Why does this have to keep happening?” they ask. As much as they’ve shot up over the past year, they still feel so small in his arms.
The smallest funeral shroud yesterday covered someone not much larger than they are.
He tries to remember what his mother told him all those years ago, when the ship he lived in his entire life in was destroyed in one single, horrible night. The other time, it was his father giving him that same talk. Fluorescent and Tammy surviving, Marz serving as Governor for eight years, Echinacea being alive at all, it’s all proof that things can change for the better, they’re not doomed in the way he was so convinced they were back when he was barely fifteen.
But maybe you could’ve prevented this too.
“Here, sit down with me.” He drapes his jacket down on the ground, and sits down next to them on the snowy grass. They look up at him, expectantly.
How the fuck is he supposed to comfort a thirteen year old who’s never known a year of peace in their life?
“Um, okay. How much have you learned about Earth?”
They shrug. “Enough. A couple people got really rich off war and pollution and convinced everyone else it was okay.”
“Right. And when it got too bad, your grandparents and a bunch of other people got on a ship and came here as refugees.”
“So are we going to build another ship?” they ask. There’s nowhere else to go even if they did.
He shakes his head. “This isn’t Earth, we don’t have rich little weirdos pulling the strings.”
Mel pulls their knees up to their chest. “Congruence says you need 200 people to have enough genetic diversity to build a population.”
“That’s about right.”
“So soon we’re not even gonna have enough people to sustain the colony.” They bury the lower half of the face into their knees, bright eyes staring out at the hole in the wall.
Sol rubs their back. “What are you feeling right now, Mel?”
“Sad, angry. Horrible.”
“What do you want to do about it?”
They pull their knees in tighter, as if they’re trying to curl up into a ball. “I want to hurt something. I want to sneak off and join the hunting party next month and just,” their fingers clench around their skirt, “just shoot anything I see.”
“I understand,” he says, squeezing their shoulder. “I wanted to do the same thing, when I was your age.”
“How’d you make it stop?” They sound like they’re on the verge of tears.
“It took a long time, but there’s something your grandmother told me once.” He gazes up at the wormhole. “Eventually, all that fury is going to dry up, and you’ll have to find something else to sustain yourself.”
“Like what?”
“It’s different for everyone. For me, I build things. That’s why I’m out here today, and not on break.”
“They’re just going to knock the wall down again.”
He brushes snow out of their hair. “And then we build it back up again, stronger this time. And every time, I fill it with hope that this time, it’ll be enough. Just like with you and your siblings. Your dad and I filled you all with hope when we made you.”
Their lower lip trembles. “I don’t want to do this again.”
“I know.” He wraps his arm around their shoulders, and they lean into him.
“It’s just going to keep happening.”
“It probably is.”
Sol feels the telltale way their shoulders shake as they try not to cry, then hears a soft sob they can’t hold back. He doesn’t say anything, knowing acknowledging it will make them too self-conscious to let it out, and silently wipes his own eyes as he listens.
“Do you want to stay here a bit longer?” he asks once he’s sure they’re done.
They shake their head. “I know you’re busy.”
“Your Aunt Nougat can hold down the fort a bit longer. As little as I’d have believed that when I was your age,” he chuckles. “You know I used to babysit her growing up?”
“She mentioned that.”
“She was a menace. Drove us to our wits end and back. Once she hid so well in hide and seek that Auntie Tammy almost cried trying to find her.”
“Aw, no,” they giggle, wiping the remnants of tears off their cheeks. “I can see that.”
They get to their feet, and Sol ties his jacket around his waist. “I’ll walk you back to the creche. Or home, if you want.”
Mel hesitates, wrapping their own jacket tighter around them. “Can I come with you?”
“Yeah,” he smiles, hope blooming anew in his chest. “Yeah, of course.”
Everyone’s just as hard at work as when he left them, the somber mood and its unnatural quiet still hovering about. “Alright, everyone, we’ve got an apprentice for the day,” he announces, and basks in how a few faces brighten when they see Mel tagging along.
Nougat whoops. “Hell yeah, Mel. You having beers with us too after?”
“They are not,” Sol says.
“I’ll sneak you one,” she winks, then hastily tacks on “in a couple years” when she sees Sol’s glare.
“So what are we doing here?” Mel asks.
“Well, when we start a new project the first thing we do is mark off where everything’s going to go,” he starts, and smiles when he captures their attentive gaze. As they carry on, spending the rest of the morning working through snowfall before Mel joins their group for a warm lunch, the lingering cloud of Glow about him starts to lift.
2. 97 years after landing
The water is a magical place.
In her time as a human, Soliloquy taught herself how to swim in ponds and lakes, setting aside time during expeditions to be in the water. And it was always beautiful, the water cooling her overheated skin as she watched tiny little fish darting about under the surface, treasured memories for her to hold close whenever she was stuck in the colony.
All that pales in comparison to the majesty of the ocean, an endless abyss full of life all the way down to its near-bottomless depths. It’s placid and beautiful and surging and powerful all at once, and she’s spent days on end drifting just under the surface to watch light from the suns and wormhole dance through the rippling waves. All the knowledge of the ocean is already in her head, tens of thousands of years of data informing her of the biosphere and geological patterns of every region, but those inherited memories don’t come close to the experience of living in the ocean.
Unfortunately, the part of the ocean she sees today is full of trash. At least her colony was respectful enough to use the recyclers for their own waste, but with the mass influx of humans, it seems there’s either not enough recyclers or not enough care to use them. And plastic? seriously? Didn’t they learn their lesson about that last time around?
“There’s just so much of it,” Neri says, xyr words coming as high pitched clicks that travel easily through the water. Xe’s in a form similar to the one Soliloquy’s currently using, with powerful prehensile fins and a mouth full of sharp teeth. The only difference is Soliloquy’s continued preference for bioluminescence, while Neri camouflages xyrself to match the shades of the shallow ocean.
“Not when we’re done with it,” Soliloquy answers, trying to inject as much light as she can through a mouth that isn’t designed to communicate complex emotions. “You ready?”
Soliloquy learned the typical process for the creation of new Gardeners in her infancy, within the first decade of her ascension. It’s not much unlike creating a new program on a holopalm, still connected to the core computer but capable of operating semi-independently- if the process of creating it involved sewing together code from other programs that already existed. In the following decades, the influx of new arrivals from Earth and subseqent baby boom that followed meant that humans were becoming a significant environmental concern for the area, one which needed a dedicated gardener to take care of.
And with two newly-minted gardeners full of knowledge on human behavior and history, with some of those human instincts still baked right in, the source code for that new gardener was obvious. Start with the base gardener code, borrow heavily from Soliloquy and Dys’s ‘DNA’, supplement with that of gardeners working in similar areas, and viola: Neritic is ‘born’.
“Eww,” Neri complains, or at least Soliloquy reads the noise that comes out of xyr mouth as such. “What even is this stuff?”
It’s an odd question for a gardener to ask- if Neritic doesn’t know something, Soliloquy nor anyone else attached to the array would have an answer. Soliloquy assumes it must be a quirk of her own lingering human habits that xe inherited.
Despite xyr complaints, xe knows the job and how to do it. Xyr maw opens, allowing xem to draw in the garbage floating along the currents and keep it stored under xyr tongue for safekeeping. Unlike the creatures they’re modeled after, neither of the pair’s current forms have a swallow reflex, allowing them to act like biological cargo haulers. Soliloquy grabs a mouthful of trash of her own, the texture dulled against blunted nerve endings, and she follows Neritic up the current.
“Have you seen the boats they’ve been using lately?” Neri asks, unimpeded by the trash in xyr mouth. She had, in fact, swam alongside one recently to gather data for the array, which Neri knows. “They’re almost as big as that ship you came in on.”
“I think they’re looking for other land masses. Seeing how far they can spread.”
Xe thrashes xyr caudal fin in irritation, sending ripples through the water about xem. “Isn’t taking over that basin enough? They have to spread all over now? We’ll have to make another one of me for when they hit the southern islands. I’ll be Boreal-Neritic and fae’ll be Austral-Neritic.”
“It’s just what humans do,” Soliloquy explains, trailing behind to catch some trash Neritic missed. “I think it’s some evolutionary drive.”
“I’m gonna smash up their ships. I bet Noctilucent will help me design some super big squid body like Dysthymia’s, and I can drag em down to the ocean floor.”
Despite the fervor she knows xe must be feeling, she also knows xe won’t do anything of the sort. Soliloquy has never been able to bring herself to participate in the yearly attacks, and while she wouldn’t try to stop xem if that’s what xe wanted, Neritic is very much made of her programming.
It’s nighttime by the time they reach the city on the coast, tall monuments to Humanity’s reign stretching up to pierce the starry sky. They navigate over to the docks, and while Neritic doesn’t make any attempt to actually sink a ship, xe does bump one hard enough to make it rock along the water’s surface as they approach the shore.
“Careful now, don’t beach yourself,” Soliloquy guides.
“I know, I know.”
Neritic’s massive head breaches the water right along the edge of the docks, perching xemself right at the border of the city, and spits a torrent of water from xyr mouth. All the trash the humans dumped in the past months dropped right on their doorstep for them, unable for them to run away from like they could on Earth. Sol finds another spot a few yards further down, and deposits her own cargo onto the docks.
“That was kind of fun,” Neritic says. “Maybe I’ll come back around sunrise to try and see the look on their faces.”
“Maybe next time I’ll use a body with wings, you can pass the trash off to me and I’ll drop it right in the city center,” Soliloquy offers.
Xyr mouth tries to mimic a laugh. “Awesome.”
They swim away from shallower waters, Soliloquy leading xem down to a region of ocean dominated by bioluminescent plants and tiny fish that make their homes there. Darkness surrounds them, but Soliloquy knows Neri is right there with her.
“Thanks for your help,” xe eventually says. “Are we going to see Dysthymia?”
Soliloquy’s mouth habitually tries to form a smile. “I think you already know.”
3. 30 years after landing
“Mom!” Celadon calls, and it sounds like it’s coming from the bathroom. “Mother! I need help!”
Unsure what aside from a medical emergency could prompt a teenager to call for help from the bathroom, Resolution drops what they’re working on and hurries up the stairs, mentally preparing for blood or potentially a concussion. Instead she finds Celadon freshly out of the shower, strolling down the hallway with damp hair and clean clothes. Her brow’s furrowed in thought.
“What happened?” Sol asks, still bracing for some kind of bad news.
“Apparently I have a date tonight. In like an hour.”
Okay, switching gears. “Apparently?”
“I didn’t think it was a date,” she explains, shifting from side to side. “I thought I was hanging out with Rigs and his boyfriend, but when I mentioned it to Bel he looked at me kind of funny and said he wasn’t going to crash a first date, so I asked Rigs and yeah, he was asking me out and I didn’t even notice, which is so embarrassing and I really want to impress him.”
Sol takes a moment to translate the situation in their head. Irrigation, who wasn’t raised in the creche but is in the same classes as Celadon, is currently dating one of Rex’s kids Decibel, and evidently is interested in Celadon as well. “Are you going to be dating Decibel too?”
“No, he doesn’t date girls, and I was never really into him like that anyway. I think I kinda knew him too well when we were kids for that. What should I wear?”
Sol looks at her clothes, an off-white blouse with short sleeves and loose beige pants that stop partway down her calves. “What you’re wearing now looks nice.”
“Ugh, no, this is what I wear when I’m babysitting. I need something really good.”
“Mind if I take a look in your closet?”
Cel’s room is disorganized to the point of giving Sol a headache the moment they walk in, but they’ve long since learned not to comment on it. Her closet itself is a fair sight better, stuffed full of clothes Marz gifted her in recent years after her most recent growth spurt, as well as some of Nomi’s designs that she paid to nanoprint herself. Cel leans against her desk, watching Sol look through her clothes.
“So, is Irrigation dating anyone but you and Decibel right now?” they ask as they start looking through her clothes.
“No, he broke up with Em a few months ago. Bel has another boyfriend and a partner, I’m pretty sure the those three are all together?”
Sol takes a dress out of the closet. Celadon looks for a second, then shakes her head.
“Give me something to work with, kiddo,” Sol prompts. “Wrong color? Not looking for a dress? Need something fancier?”
“Something more comfortable,” she says. “I was thinking about wearing that to the end of glow party.”
They nod, and return to the closet. “How big is this polycule, anyway?”
“Umm…” she starts counting on her fingers, then goes ‘oh!’ and opens her holopalm. “Here.”
She holds out her palm, which is protecting an organized chart mapping out the polycule in question. Sol spots Irrigation and Decibel over in one corner, the latter of which leads into a triangle that spreads out into the rest of the chart. “Very well organized,” Sol notes.
“Ubiquity made it,” Cel says, gesturing over on the other side of the chart.
Sol nods, recognizing administration’s current rising star. “Say no more.” They scan over the chart, finding twelve names on it. “What’s that circle mean?”
“Ubi doesn’t really do romance, so she’s not like, dating dating anyone, but she’s still involved with those three.” She shuts off her holopalm. “I guess if me and Rigs do start dating I’ll have to report any updates to her. It sounds like she takes it very seriously.”
“Surprised Marz didnt’t come up with a system like that while we were dating. She’d have loved the excuse to keep up with all the gossip.” They take another dress to show to Celadon.
“Hmm…” she looks at it contemplatively. “I think I do want a top and skrit, actually.”
“Alright, let’s see here…” They return to looking. “Are you looking to date anyone else?”
“Maybe someday? I don’t really know yet.” In Sol’s periphery, they can see her picking at a thread on her shorts. “I like Rigs a lot, and like, I don’t think I mind that he dates other people too. I guess I just need to see how I feel down the road.”
“I’d say that’s the right way to do it,” Sol says. “You’re never gonna know how you feel right away. If you approach with an open mind and a willingness to back out if it’s not right for you, then you’re gonna be fine.” They turn around to show Cel another option. “How’s this?”
“Ooh, yeah, I think that’s good,” she says, stepping forward. “Or maybe this one, actually?” She reaches for a less flowy, tighter-fitting shirt.
“It’s incredibly hot out.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re right,” she decides. “Okay, wait right outside for a sec?”
Sol steps outside to wait in the hallway, closing the door behind them. “What are you two doing tonight, anyway?” they ask.
“We’re gonna get dinner and watch holofilms at his place. If I’m gonna be out late I’ll let you know.”
Hmm. “Are his parents home?”
A pause. “Dunno.”
Hmmmm. “Okay, well, be safe, alright? Either of you can say no at any time—”
“Mom,” she complains.
“Even if you already said yes, got it?”
“Stars, mom, I knoww.”
“And don’t feel pressured to say yes into anything you don’t want to okay? A partner who says no to something they don’t want is a much healthier partner than someone who goes along with something they don’t.”
“I’m gonna jump out the window.”
“Love you too!”
Cel opens the door a moment later, dressed in her new outfit. “How’s this?” She’s in a green shirt with a golden pattern, pairing flawlessly with her vibrant red hair and soft brown skin. Her floral-printed skirt reaches down almost to her ankles, flowing about her when she moves.
Sol beams at her. “You look lovely. Can I take a picture before you go?”
“If you have to. I’m not leaving yet.”
“Do you need me around for anything else?”
She shrugs. “If you want,” she says, which is Celadon for ‘yes please’. Sol lets themself back into her room, and leans against the bed as she starts going through her makeup.
“So, like,” Celadon starts, sitting down in front of the mirror. “How’d you start the whole poly thing?”
Sol smiles to themself. “Well, the first partner I had was Marz, and I knew going in that she was never going to date just one person. And I think that kind of signaled to everyone else our age who was interested in the same thing? So it was easier to find dates after that. Then your father wasn’t even familiar with the concept of monogamy until us humans got here, so that worked out nicely.”
She hums acknowledgement, one eye closed to paint eye shadow over it. “Didn’t you ever get jealous?”
“Sure, sometimes. It’s just natural. For me, it was more a matter of wanting more time with someone, rather than anything they were doing with another person. It was roughest for me early on when I was only dating Marz, but she had a good handful of other partners. Once your father and I got together too, things felt a lot more balanced.”
“So I should date someone else, too?” she asks.
“You should follow your heart.” They step forward to kiss the top of Celadon’s head, and she wrinkles her nose at the mirror. “There’s no right way to do this, hon. You’ll figure out what you need with a little time and a little heartache.”
“Uuugh,” she groans, and plants her face down onto the table. “That’s so annoying.”
“That it is.”
“Can’t I just be sure about all this?”
“You cannot.”
“Gross.” She lifts her head halfway up. “Anyway, can you paint my nails?”
Sol chuckles, and resists the urge to ruffle her hair. “Sure thing, Cel.”