With today’s filming behind them, Frank and Amethyst arrive back at the clinic, looking to fill Grent in on the latest developments.

The lab door’s lock greets them with a green light.

“Grent, you in here?” With a careful press of a button, Amethyst gets the door to open.

She steps into the lab, Frank following after her.

Inside, Grent jumps in front of the operating table and covers something with his body and outstretched arms.

“Y-you should knock before you enter, even if I... forget to lock the door.”

“Why?”

“Who knows what I could be doing in here.”

“We agreed that I’d know exactly what you are up to... so, let’s see what’s on the table.” Amethyst crosses her arms; Frank flinches as the elbow blades swoosh close by.

“Ugh… but it’s not even finished yet…” Grent’s arms fall back down, and he steps aside.

Revealing behind him two human-like legs made of metal with ball-like joints for knees and ankles.

The legs are detached from the equally gray artificial torso, apart from wires running between the two.

The body is hollow from the middle, full of panels, wires, and holes for said wires. In this gap, Pineapple sits inside, only its head and tails visible.

“What have you done to Pineapple!” Amethyst gasps.

“What?” Grent looks back at the operating table, ”Damn, get away from that,” he shoos the cat away.

Pineapple jumps out and onto the floor, proceeding to zoom around playfully.

“Is that the robotic body for your… wife?” Frank asks hesitantly.

“Yeah, or well, it’s supposed to be. Assembly isn’t exactly going as smoothly as I hoped… especially with this two-tailed twat around.”

The body looks crude - unfinished. Frank has difficulty imagining it acting like a person, moving, or even talking smoothly.

Much less the person not reeling in horror for finding themselves in it.

It’s a work in progress… I guess?

“What’s that look for?” Deep furrows on Grent’s brow gradually give way to frustration.

“Ugh, anyway, how did your school thing go? I assume you came here to talk about that instead of gawking at my misfortune.”

Amethyst and Frank tell him of today’s events, building the table, the classroom, their students, and how it ended. Frank leaves out the Luna portion, not wishing to touch that subject.

“Mm-hmm, they seem rather clever, don’t they? Forming some sort of relationships, capable of learning and acting independently, even if with quite primitive motives...”

“Would you say they are sapient?” Frank asks.

“Well, are chimpanzees that repeat human instructions, learning from them and acting a little on their own — sometimes even innovating — sapient?

Are they capable of empathy, are they aware of their own feelings, their motives, who they are on a physical and spiritual level?”

Grent tightens a few screws on her wife's chassis with a wrench as he speaks.

“Do they weigh their actions against right or wrong? What effect will it have on themselves and others around them?

Do they have morality, restraint?”

He connects two wires and solders some; the faint smoke and smoldering smell floats in the air briefly.

Putting down the soldering iron, he shrugs.

“I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist or anything, just a scientist with some interest in the secrets of the mind. My doctorate isn’t in arguing with or against the dictionary definition of sapience.”

“Helpful.”

“What did you expect? It’s not exactly easily quantifiable, especially with new species. Why do you think ISSA has that elaborate ‘evidence’ or whatever gathering for.”

“Right, point taken.”

Frank looks at Amethyst; she’s been quiet this whole time.

She looks at the ground - Frank isn’t sure if he’s imagining it - or if her blades are trembling.

“Amethyst… are you okay?”

Remaining quiet momentarily, she lifts her gaze and looks at a wall.

“… was I not sapient before? I should know the answer to that, shouldn’t I? But I… don’t... it’s confusing…”

“What do you mean?”

“All of my memories seem hazy, clouded, but what if… they are actually intact…

I can’t remember anyone from my past, only what I did, where I was, never who I was with.

They are like… still images.

I don’t remember anything of what I thought of at the time. Why I did what I did, why I was there, who I was actually with...

All I have left in those memories are basic emotions—fear, anger, hunger, happiness…”

Her hopeless eyes fixate on Frank.

“Shouldn’t I recognize everyone - or at least - a single one of my kin?

I’ve been with them all my life…But… what would I recognize them as… the yellow-haired one? The one with the blue-tinted blades?

Before today… none of them even had names…

The past seems so distant… like it was lived by somebody else… “

She closes her eyes and lets her head fall; pools of loneliness start forming under her eyes.

“Oh, Amethyst…”

Grent stiffly holds his shoulder, remaining silent in the background for a while before quietly continuing to work on Amandebot.

“B-but… everyone… they’ll never be like you… like me. I can never…”

Her throat completely dries up, and even swallowing doesn’t remove the localized desert.

Feel at home… feel belonging.

I… I still love them like my brothers and sisters, but…

They will never be able to hold a conversation…

Just single-worded responses, repeating what is told...

Never be, never feel like me…

Never understand me.

“Maybe it’s better this way, to not subject them to that pain...”

Amethyst's face scowls and a few sparkling drops fall.

A pressure on her shoulders makes her lift her head, the hands of Frank.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how hard it has been for you.”

His comforting smile fades for a moment but pushes back into the surface, more potent than before.

“I… I’m the odd one out, Frank… All of my species is united out there, but I- I… am a freak…” She says and looks away.

“No, you are not. You are just… a part of the galaxy now, and soon officially too.

All sorts of sapient alien species inhabit the Milky Way. Even my home planet is really diverse, probably the most varied population in history.”

“R-really?” Amethyst’s dark blue eyes flicker with hope as the tears run dry.

“Really. You will have no trouble fitting in if you want to.

Who’s to say you can’t just be you, the only one - your own unique gem in existence.

You are still a Tyrchid, just cut out to be a little different, but that’s what makes you -you.”

“T-thank you, Frank...”

“Try and make the most of it; you have endless possibilities ahead of you now.

You can be or do anything. Even learn to dance, or sing, for example...”

Frank lets go of Amethyst's shoulders and turns his head to the tinkering scientist.

“Oh yeah, Grent, we promised both of those things today. We will hold some celebration on the last day.”

“What?”

Suddenly, Amethyst hugs Frank. Startled - his arms lift into the air, out of her blade’s way.

Amethyst’s bone crown is shoved to his face, and the head wing's long bones prod at her shoulder, too.

“Can we really...?”

A tight, vice grip of an embrace.

“Can we dance?”

The rugged armor pressed against his chest like the side of a cliff, unmovable and indestructible. Trails of cool squeeze run over his sides and across his back.

It’s getting a little hard to breathe.

“Don’t… hold me… so hard…”

“Oh... sorry…” Amethyst loosens her grip and lifts her head from his shoulder, her head wings leaving his airspace.

Carefully shifting hybrid eyes, bolt around and steal glances at him from up close. In her gentle grasp, Frank shakes ever so slightly.

She quickly blinks twice and retreats from the hug entirely.

Momentarily, Frank’s hand pursues after her retreating wrist, but they are too far apart already.

“I-it’s fine…” He thought of this response before the cold shivers shook his body- but now he could no longer recall why and to what.

Despite the cold on his skin, an ember, a feeling in his chest remains a strange yearning.

Downcast, Amethyst doesn’t look at him, her arms slightly crossed.

“Umm... I can teach you if you’d like. To dance, I mean.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Amethyst's slightly open mouth and focused eyes betrayed her surprise.

“May I have this dance?” Frank offers up a hand to her and slightly bends his back and knees. His other hand behind his back, like a ballroom socialite.

“Yes!” The widest smile on her lips as she places her armored wrist on his vulnerable hand.

Frank closes it in his embrace, his grip like soft clouds surrounding the sharp, cold mountaintops. However, the clouds were not pierced by them, not shredded on the sharp spires.

The unyielding peaks were tamed by his flexible skin - molding against - instead of fighting a futile war against her wrist.

Though softer and smoother than the rest of her armor, it still had its jagged edges as they collided and caressed each other in this touch.

“Sure, sure, great, but do it outside the lab!” Grent comments and loudly clangs metal against metal; some small parts clatter onto the floor, accompanied by his cursing.

Holding hands, or rather, Frank holding her wrist, he escorts them through the lab’s doorway.

As they are about to leave through the door, Frank turns back for a moment.

“Oh, right, Grent, can you compose us some songs for the party? I was thinking of one to dance to and another to sing along, like a choir with the Pioneer’s crew.”

“What, me?”

“I’m sure you can do it!” Amethyst beams with such a radiant smile that it feels unnerving to Grent.

“I will do no such thing…”

“Give it some thought. What’s a song or two to a great scholar like you?” Frank says, and the door whooshes closed behind them.

“Hmph...”

Pineapple looks at Grent from afar on the other side of the room.

“What?”

Without blinking, the cat continues to stare.

“Think you can compose songs better than me?”

The Solarophone blinks both eyes.

“Oh yeah? I’d like to see you try!”

----------------------------------------

“Frank, can we dance already?”

They had already cleaned up a space in the middle of the junk-filled room, but Frank sat on the sofa instead.

It had gone on for way too long, at least if you asked Amethyst.

“Yeah, just a moment.”

Frank’s sitting on a sofa, leaning forward and intently gazing at his communicator. Periodically, he swipes the screen with a downward motion.

“What are you looking at?” She approaches him and tries to get a peek at the screen, but Frank quickly turns it away and presses it to his chest.

“Do you not know how to dance either?”

“I-I know how to dance! It’s just... been a long time since…”

“Oh? What dance can you do?”

“Tango, it was mandatory in high school.”

“Tango? Sounds like a fruit.”

“No, no, that’s Mango or Pango now, I guess. Tango is the oldest dance in the galaxy, the most popular one too. Though its history has been lost to time, it's believed to always have existed.”

“Because… the original home of humans was destroyed… Right?”

“Yeah, well, humanity was wiped out on Earth; that’s the current understanding. All evidence supports it was the original, where we evolved.

Although, nobody can explain how our ancestors could have crossed half of the galaxy to land on Divine Cradle, using the technology they had back then…”

Frank narrows his eyes, “how do you know of this?”

“I think this was part of Amande’s knowledge package… Or is it technically Grent’s?”

“Ah, I see, part of the ‘necessary information for easy control of the mind.’“ Frank does an arrogant scientist imitation of Grent’s voice. “Or something like that.”

“Exactly!”

They have a little laugh as Frank stands up.

“Okay, I think it’s time to Tango.”

Frank looks up at Amethyst standing right in front of him.

Oh yeah… she’s so much taller than me.

But I think we can make it work...

“Okay, let me show you the basic steps first,” He walks to the middle of their dance floor, ready to give a demonstration.

“Slow left,”

Frank slowly steps forward with the left foot leading, keeping his weight down and bending his knees ever so slightly.

“Slow right,” stepping forward again, continuing with the right foot, his outdoor boots clop against the stone floor.

“Quick left” he slides his left foot to the side,

“second quick,” bringing them together with a sharp but smooth motion by sliding his right foot against the left.

“Ooh!” Amethyst claps her hand blades together.

“Then your steps are basically the same but mirrored. You start with the right foot instead and go backward. Want to give it a try?”

Frank steps aside, granting Amethyst room on their humble stone stage; she eagerly takes his place.

Oh… but she has four legs?

Amethyst prances to the dance floor and tries the steps out.

“Slow right…” her right front leg moves backward, almost meeting up with her back leg.

“Slow left…” Her body rises even higher as her legs end up in this pincer-like shape.

Somehow, she keeps her balance and continues, “quick right,” to the side, then the last step, “quick left,” moves her legs together.

Her body and legs stretched sideways, Amethyst starts to wobble.

She slams her front legs apart hard against the floor before she falls.

Getting them back into normal positions, with the cost of a terrible scraping sound, gnashes, and cracks on the natural rock floor.

"Uhh... Did I do that right?"

Ouch… If she steps on my toes... I don’t think I’d walk away with just bruises from that one…

“That was good, Amethyst, but well, I didn’t account for your… four legs.”

“Aww... I can’t dance then, can I...?”

“No-no, we just have to figure out some custom steps just for you.”

“Hmm...” Frank inspects Amethyst’s spider-like insect legs; unlike human’s, they aren’t pointing straight down but are curved with three joints…

Kind of like big sharp fingers, now that he thinks about it.

Sitting on the sofa to think, he runs four fingers along its backrest, trying out some steps, dancing on it with his hand.

Amethyst looks curiously at his strange mannerisms and actions, continuing to wait in the middle of the cleared space.

After a few minutes of experimentation, Frank is happy with his D.I.Y choreography, “this should work, but you’ll need to do some extra legwork.

“Really?” Amethyst asks, hope glimmering in her voice, "what do I do?"

“Always when you step back, can you also step back with the opposite back leg? So, start with the right front leg and left back leg; that way, you can keep your balance and keep on moving.

The sideways maneuver is trickier. You probably have to move your legs one at a time since you’d be left without balance on one side otherwise.”

Frank recites his discoveries while doing the steps on his hand to ensure he explains them correctly.

“I think I get it.”

Amethyst tries doing the steps as Frank instructed. It’s a lot harder than the first two-leg steps, but she finally gets into the rhythm of it.

“There you go! That’s the basics down, now we just need to dance it together.”

“Together?”

“Didn’t I say it was a pair dance?”

“Right… we did promise that to Pioneer.”

Frank approaches Amethyst and stands close to her. Looking up at her, he recites memorized instructions:

“The man places his right hand on the woman’s shoulder blade to hold her. Please raise your left hand.”

Amethyst does as she is told, and Frank slides a hand on her back from under her armpit, gently grasping the cool and hard armor.

“Then you’ll place your arm on top of mine and towards my shoulder.

The woman is supposed to hold the man’s shoulder from the side, but maybe you'll just rest the side of your blade on top of my shoulder instead.” Frank jokes and smiles wide.

“Okay, like… this?” Amethyst places her heavy hand on top of Frank’s; the now almost familiar coldness seeps from her armor through his green shirt.

He spots the cracked hole in Amethyst’s shoulder, easily visible in this position; she’d had the wound ever since she first met her.

The damaged gray skin was healing nicely -did he imagine it- or were the edges of the damaged armor smoother now, too?

In his peripheral vision, he sees the deadly blade gently resting on its side, so very close. She’d need only to crook it slightly, and it’d sink straight into his neck.

It would undoubtedly slash open an artery and…

Frank pushes the uncomfortable and unnecessary thoughts of danger away.

“T-that’s good. Then we keep them in this position, bent this way the whole time.”

“Alright, I’ll try my best.”

“And for our other hands, we hold them up like so,” Frank extends his hand to the side and bends it from the elbow, up and forwards.

Amethyst carefully brings her dagger-like hand forth, and Frank grabs it from the wrist once more.

It feels somehow warm this time, or maybe it was just his hand warming it up already.

Smoother, too, like a stone spending a decade at the bottom of a river, being polished by years of current.

“What is it, Frank?”

“Oh, nothing. Now that we are ready to dance try your best not to step on my toes." He laughs. "I don’t think my shoes or feet would survive it.”

“O-oh… of course...” Amethyst glances at his arm, still bruised from earlier.

Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything...

“A-anyway, in dance, the man is usually the one who leads, so try and follow my movements and rhythm.”

Frank takes a deep breath and concentrates.

“Ready?”

“Let’s do it.”

At first, Frank calls out each step’s speed to artificially keep them in rhythm.

It’s a janky and stiff show, as they first take two steps forward, then to the side and backward again, moving in a forced rectangle.

The movement isn’t especially graceful, even by Frank, but soon, he stops saying the steps as they find a united rhythm.

“You’re a natural at this!”

“Thanks,” Amethyst blushes slightly as they continue to dance.

“Ready to take it up a notch?”

“W-what do you mean? Wasn’t this all of it?”

“No, we can’t just erode a square on the floor,” Frank laughs, grinning with tinted cheeks.

“In a ballroom with other people, a couple needs to be able to move and sail around the room, navigating the crowd while keeping the dance going.”

They keep on dancing through the conversation, though their pace slows down.

“O-oh, let’s try it,” Amethyst smiles.

Frank leads her into a gentle spin, each step taking them further away. He adds slight swaying to their motions as they in-sync dance around the room.

They both first concentrate on their own footwork, but once Frank feels comfortable with the change again, he focuses back on Amethyst, who meets his gaze as if she had been waiting for him.

Amethyst beams with glee, like she’s about to burst out laughing.

An evening sky blossoms on Frank’s face as they gaze deep into each other, having found the grace in their steps, gliding across the lobby’s floor.

The beautiful moment is much too fleeting due to their graceful union robbing them of their spatial awareness.

“Frank!”

“W-” The back of his knees hit the sofa on the side of their parquet, costing him his balance.

Frank's hand slips from Amethyst’s back, but he holds on tight to her wrist.

With one foot on the ground, he spins around its axle while his boots lose grip and his legs slide underneath Amethyst.

He holds on tight to her wrist with both hands like his life depended on it.

As his movement finally stops, he notices he’s positioned halfway underneath her leg space.

“Frank, are you okay!?” Amethyst looks down at the man beneath her legs.

“Y-yeah...”

Amethyst lifts his arm, and Frank is effortlessly pulled back from under her and on his feet again.

“Thanks,” She’s so strong!

“No, thank you, Frank, for teaching and… dancing with me.”

“R-right, of course.” He massages his shoulder, a little sore from the sudden spin and tension.

“It was so much fun! I can’t wait till we get to dance in the celebration!”

“Right, me neither...”

----------------------------------------

Discreetly and quietly, the door of the lab closes in its entirety.

Grent turns around, and Pineapple stares him down.

“What? Don’t pretend like you weren’t spying on them just a second ago, too.”

Pineapple jumps straight at him. Grent slightly cowers but keeps still regardless.

The cat grabs the edge of his lab coat with nails drawn, holding onto it, looking up at him with big, round eyes.

“What? What do you want?”

The cat tugs on his coat.

“You… want to dance too? You’re a cat, though.”

The cat momentarily dips its head lower and returns it to its original position again.

“Wait… did you just nod?"

Pineapple looks at him intently for a few more seconds, lets go of his coat, and trods away, disappearing behind lab equipment.

Did I imagine it?

...

What is up with that cat?