The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

The Greenfield Family.

It's just a typical morning in the Greenfield house.

Only... maybe it's not so typical.

Mother and son don't typically look at each other by the pool in quite that way.

And Marcus and his girlfriend don't typically get up to those kind of antics right in front of his mother.

And his siblings aren't typically watching either.

https://storiesonline.net/n/52852/the-gr...d-family/7

Princess of the Void.

Qilik-mek-Eqtor’s nostrils flicker; her broad chest expands with a slow, pondering inhale.

When I was Ipqen’s age, I lived with a sledge convoy on the Southern Ice. I was the best diver in my convoy. Put me down below the ice with a spear and a searchlight and I could come up with a banquet’s worth of fish. And I loved it, loved the pressure and the dark. Like the ocean was embracing you. I moved to Highstep because I caught something called Whirlpool disease. A degenerative infection of the gnuik.

The tablet puts a dot next to that, and an amber line of text: (trans. note: an Eqtoran organ responsible for electroreception and barometric stability)

When I went below two lengths, Qilik says, that embrace I loved spun me around instead, made me sick and panicky. I met with an Eqtoran doctor who told me that I could never dive again. I met with a Taiikari doctor a smallspan (trans. note: eight days) ago, She tells me that I could have an artificial gnuik within a cycle. That I could dive deep again. Told it to me as if she was advising tea for congestion.

Qilik pauses to take a drink of her own tea, as if she’s only just remembered she’s holding it.

I fought so hard against this. And I still remember my reasons. All my reasons. And how important they were. And now I am so comfortable, and I remember them as if remembering something embarrassing from my childhood. Is that right? Is that how it ought to be?

He realizes by her probing face that this is a genuine question. “I don’t know,” he says. “I haven’t been in the Empire long enough to know. But if there’s anything amiss, anything you can think of, I want to hear it.”

A greedy sorrow.

It had been my fear that when the Empire claimed us, they would be cruel. Treating us with suspicion or derision.

“Have they?”

Oh, no. Of course they haven’t. Qilik shakes her head. There is a—matronizing attitude I can detect at times. They think us provincial. This rankles some of my colleagues. But I find little grit in the bite of it. We are, after all, provincial. As splendid as we thought ourselves, we are provincial. No; you have treated us well in these early days. There is friction, there are incidents, there’s compulsion and confusion. Inevitable that these things should happen. When they are brought to your attention or that of your ministers, they are rectified. My problems… aren’t logical, Majesty. It’s just a greedy sorrow. You need not listen.

“I know I don’t,” he says. “But I want to.”

Qilik sighs, and speaks:

Ipqen-honoring-Taqa now lives a life of awe and discovery. A long and splendid life. And the Empire is discovering in her the best of our kind. We are strong, and civic-minded, and loyal, and to many Taiikari, I’m told, we are beautiful. The integrated ships and the integrated armies. They progress well. You told me we’d fit, and we do.

But Ipqen is the first, you see? Before I go to the far shore, I will bear witness to generations of Eqtorans who have never seen the first aurora of the dark season, who have never seen snow or the sun shining through the ice. They’ll never suffer from Whirlpool disease, as I suffered. And they’ll never dive Eqt’s waters, as I dived. They’ll never know the Republic. They’ll have their lives laid before them, packed and prepared like a gorgeous gift. Already they grow accustomed to obedience. When your Empire masters the peak and the music, it will only accelerate.

It took many long turnings of the Republic for my people to learn to love such a wide and woeful thing as freedom. The vertigo of a choice placed firmly in their hands. It took scripture and song and generations. It will go away quickly, and the ones to come after will not miss it.

Grant remembers his conversation with Ipqen. The way she has to remind herself to be sad.

And so the Empire will adopt the Children of Eqt, as it adopted you. They will board Imperial ships and journey across the stars, away from the cold, dark, backward chill of their homeworld. They’ll find their place in the Imperial sun. As warriors and explorers and engineers and husbands and wives. They’ll learn how to fly Taiikari ships and how to sing Taiikari songs. And here I stand like a still-breathing wraith, asking the unlistening wind—who will teach them to fish? Or ice-crawl? Or carve wqinik (trans. note: religious charms wrought from ivory or qlek nut) to the gods? They will have more of this life than my siblings in the council could ever offer. And I should be happy. I am happy. I am, Majesty.

She chuckles ruefully.

I’m like an overshelled qipnuq (trans. note: Southern Ocean shellfish, common food source of the High Ice Eqtoran tribes). My joints are too calcified for the crawl forward. My fellows will cheerfully drag me along, I’m sure. I’ll be no trouble, Majesty.

Her thick, blunt hand pats him on the shoulder.

Better this way, maybe. Better for everyone. Even for me, with my grumblings. Forgive an old woman her sentimentality.

“Nothing to forgive. Really. And, uh—” Grant hesitates. He doesn’t know what to say. He raises his hand to his eye, puts thumb and forefinger together around it. It’s a gesture he’s seen the Eqtorans make many times.

Qilik smiles and mirrors the gesture. “Mjuk Eqt nqunuik,” she says, but she’s already tucked her translator under her arm, and Grant doesn’t see what it meant.

https://www.scribblehub.com/read/1419041...r/2023451/
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/120617...edy-sorrow