Starsight

They chose to investigate a career very unbecoming of a dione, one pibling had said. They could never be happy like this.

These same relatives gave Morriumur fond lip-draws, touching hands with them as if seeing them off on a journey. The drafting pod was much like a large bed, though with the center hollowed out. Shaped of the traditional wood with a slick polished interior, once Morriumur climbed into it, its lid would be affixed and a nutrient bath injected to help with the cocooning and redrafting process.

Their eldest grand, Numiga, took both of their hands as they stepped up to the pod. “You did well, Morriumur.”

“If that’s so . . . why have I failed to prove myself?”

“Your job wasn’t to prove yourself. It was merely to exist and let us see possibilities. Come, you yourself returned to us and agreed the process needed to continue.”

Morriumur’s left hand gave a curved gesture of affirmation, almost on its own. They had returned. Departed the docks while the others went to fight. Fled, because . . . because they’d been too upset to continue. Defending against delvers was one thing, but going to shoot down other pilots? The idea horrified Morriumur.

You’d have been too frightened to fight a delver anyway, a part of them—perhaps one of their parents—thought. Too aggressive for dione society. Too paranoid to fight. Redrafting is for the best.

For the best, another part of them thought.

Morriumur stumbled, feeling a disorientation caused by the two separating parts of their brain. Numiga helped them sit on the side of the drafting pod, their deep reddish-violet skin seeming to glow in the candlelight.

“It’s beginning,” Numiga said. “It is time.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“It will not hurt,” Numiga promised. “It will still be you who comes out, redrafted. Just a different you.”

“What if I want to be the same me?”

Numiga patted them on the hand. “Almost all of us went through a few drafts, Morriumur, and we all survived it. When you emerge again, you will wonder why you were so bothered.”

Morriumur nodded and put both feet into the pod. Then they paused. “When I come back out, will I remember these months?”

“Faintly,” Numiga said. “Like fragments of a dream.”

“And my friends? Will I know their faces?”

Numiga pushed them, gently, into the pod. It was time. Morriumur’s two halves were unraveling, the minds separating, and their personality . . . stretched thin. It was . . . hard . . . to . . . think . . .

The chamber rocked with a sudden extended tremble. Morriumur grabbed the side of the pod, hissing out in surprise. Around them, the others stumbled against one another, crying out or hissing. People fell as the trembling persisted, until finally it grew still.

What had that been? It felt like the platform had been hit by something—but what kind of impact could be so large that it would shake all of Starsight?

Outside, screams sounded in the streets. Morriumur’s relatives climbed to their feet in a mess, pushing aside the drapings in front of the doorway. They opened it and let light flood the small dark chamber.

Trembling, barely able to control their limbs, Morriumur crawled out of the pod. Everyone seemed to have forgotten them. What . . . what could be happening? Pulling themself up on the equipment near the pod, Morriumur got to their feet and stumbled to the door leading outside, where many of their relatives stood staring upward in a wide-eyed stupor.

A planet had somehow appeared beside Starsight. A dark, dust-shrouded thing, with terrible lines emerging from within its black center. Deep red lights played beneath the dust, like eruptions of magma. It loomed over Starsight, a spectacle so vast—so unexpected—that both of Morriumur’s minds reeled. How could that be there, interrupting the calming depths of space that had always been on the horizon?

It’s a delver! one mind trembled. Run!

Flee! the other mind screamed.

Around Morriumur, relatives scrambled away, running—though how did you run from something like this? Within moments, only Morriumur was standing there before the building, alone. Their minds continued to panic, but Morriumur didn’t let go, and slowly their minds relaxed and knit back together.

It wouldn’t last long. But for now, Morriumur looked up and exposed their teeth.

Cuna gripped the rail of their balcony, trying to take in the awesome sight of the delver.

“We’ve failed,” they whispered. “He’s destroyed Detritus. Now he brings it here to show off his power.”

The scent around them turned sharply angry, like that of wet soil. “This is a disaster,” Zezin said. “You said . . . I didn’t believe . . . Cuna, how could Winzik do this?”