"The Seasons are controlled by our Sire. His flaming eye lights up the day, and he beds down to sleep when comes the night. He has his rhythms as he patrols his territory to protect us. The cold of Lowsun is when He is farthest away from us, while He is closest at Highsun. Halfway between Lowsun and High is the Rising Sun, and when He heads out again to the farther ranges, while the midpoint is the Falling Sun."
--Fable of the Sire's Eye
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Huh. One side of Rae's face was colder than the other. That swiftly went from a mere fact to an annoyance, and with an effort, she tried to open her eyes. Succeeding with one, she frowned when her mind refused to make sense of what she was seeing. She slowly realized she was laying on her side, and the lower eye was pressed too close to the surface under her to open. That explained why everything seemed... sideways. Levering herself up she found she'd been sleeping on the floor of her dig, surrounded by chunks of rock, and a thick layer of dust.
Standing, she slapped clouds of rock dust off of her before surveying the chaos around her. Why didn't she lay out her bedroll? This mess wouldn't do. She summoned her board and began loading batches of the useful rock on it, telekinetically bundling the scraps along with her. By the time she was done carrying the rock out and her bags in, she felt too grimy to stand herself. She took off her coat and began loosening her shirt when she heard a jingle from the trio of slender chain links attached to the metal cuff on her left wrist.
She froze. Usually, she never noticed the faint sound, but it was so quiet, her oathband rang abnormally loud to her ears. She stared at the band and the engraved panels depicting each of the four seasons, sucking on her lower lip. She wanted to sound it deliberately, to shake her wrist and launch the familiar music to wherever the other of the pair was, around the wrist of her spouse. She'd always used it as a non-verbal way to show she was thinking of him. But...
Rae's stomach clenched in tension at the thought, afraid of how he'd react if she signaled to him. The oathbands weren't a Qard thing. They were the symbol of marital union on the distant world where she joined her life with the human, Jeol Harden, over a millennia ago. They had the same meaning as wedding rings, but the symbolism of bondage to each other was rather more explicit. The tension stretched at her nerves within her, then won out over her urge to connect back to him.
Swiftly she took off the band, stuffing it into a pocket of her clothing pack. Transfixed by the light gray skin that had been covered for centuries, her breathing quickened with guilt until she found a handful of dark dust to grind into her pale wrist. Hunting among her gear she took out a black strap that she laid over her shoulder, then found a portable scanner and walked to the riverside. The nearby shore had a small section of sand and rounded pebbles among the otherwise grassy, overgrown banks, and she knelt there to test the water.
It was free of contaminants and harmful carbon-based biotics, and when Rae tasted the water, it was good, clean, and fresh. She emptied her pockets and waded into the water, a streak of murky gray making its way downstream from her. Taking off each item of clothing in turn while waist-deep in the stream, she briskly rubbed them free of the dust, then tossed them onto the pebbled beach. She scrubbed herself with handfuls of sand, before finding more between her legs than she expected. She, or rather, he, had Changed their phase to male.
Double-checking, he patted his flat chest. His body had morphed with the newly turned phase, shoulders widening some and his hips becoming narrower. Still noticeably androgynous, some of his subtle curves had bled away into wiry, more masculine lines. He didn't recall ever Changing without noticing before. Usually, there was some discomfort involved, but the way he'd been working lately, it was entirely possible he'd attributed the aches to the labor instead. The Change was inevitable, happening twice a month since his birth. It was simply part of being a Qard. They would slide from expressing one gender to the other, and at times lingering in a state in between.
Gendered pronouns like 'she' and 'he' weren't part of Qard culture or language. When the race still lived on the homeworld, the language contained a myriad of subtle nuances describing sexual preferences and the Change cycle. But that was generations ago. The refugees who survived to see carbon-based life arise on the new world were rather put off by the way its genders often differed. His parents, although raised by the first generation, weren't as repulsed by dimorphic genderism, but neither did it affect their sense of personal identity. Rae's own childhood, on the other hand, was steeped in it. He'd chosen to identify as (marginally) feminine because he was most attracted to male forms.
In spite of their chemical & genetic incompatibilities, the reason he'd looked to humans for a partner was that his kind was nearly extinct. The number of Qard when he was born was five. Rae could count them on one hand with a thumb left over: his parents, a grandparent, his elder sib Jonai, and himself. Every other Qard who'd ever been was Passed. As a young person, he had personally walked the five circles of the Catacombs and verified that every niche was filled, except the few of his family. With no suitable options, and only close blood family, who else was there?
His youth among humanity made him willing to accept a human as a lover, but for many reasons, it wasn't at all easy. It wasn't necessarily even sex that urged him to look for someone. He could go years without that if needed. It was the companionship he wanted; a way to fight the long, lonely years that lay ahead. His parent's relationship was still strong after hundreds of millions of years. He wanted that kind of relationship, and children of his own, but at the same time never thought he'd have them...
Grimly, Rae set his teeth and scrubbed his pale wrist clean. Ducking under to rinse the grit away, he came up to the shore and dressed again, letting his sopping garb dry from the radiant warmth of his frame. Wrapping the dark strap a few times over his band-mark he buckled it shut. It was enough to quiet the guilt he felt when looking at his bare wrist, at least a little.
He raised his gaze to look across the river, evaluating the trees clustered on the other side. He needed wood and a break from the digging. Returning to his bags, he set up the compact mainframe and its solar panels and took out coils of metal cable and a sharp axe. Donning his goggles, he linked up to two kinds of drones; a camera variety, and smaller 'no-seeums' designed to sample the genetics of native flora and fauna. In this initial run, the drones would film and sample everything, and then it would be run through the lab after he returned, to be added to a database.
Upstream, on a grassy bank, was a shallower stretch of river, and he forded there, trailed by the skyboard. The waters averaged knee-deep, burbling around him as the samplers plunked under the surface to chase after fish and other water dwellers. He watched them, the goggles picking up the outlines of the sampled plants and animals. Once they cataloged this stretch of river, the little drones rose up, dripping.
On the other end of the shallows was a large patch of tall reeds. Cutting and splitting one with his bush knife he evaluated it for bendiness and tensile strength, for use as a kind of withy. This close to the river's far side, he could see a large kind of bamboo among the regular trees. He nodded to himself. Reeds and bamboo could both be used for weaving mats or other crafted items. Rae cleared away the middle third of the reeds to make a pathway, wrinkling his nose at a murky, sour smell coming from some of the dislodged and tangled roots. Bundling up the harvested reeds, he lashed them to the board.
Coming up on the far bank, he moved through the undergrowth, tapping on the trees and bamboo with the back of the axe. He was looking for boles that rang with a clear note, indicating they were free of rot or hidden splits. The most common type of tree was a deciduous birchy sort, with tall narrow trunks with few branches on the lower two-thirds of their height. The tree's upper third had a vertical canopy of shiny, silvery foliage which reflected the predominant colors of the sky.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The other sort reminded him of oaks, having shorter, thicker trunks with heavy, sprawling limbs that loosely intertwined with those of their neighbors. Though examples of the latter sort were similar in overall appearance, their bark and leaf colors differed oddly from tree to tree in a way he didn't understand but resolved to find out, eventually. He was never one to overharvest, and by force of habit strictly limited the amount of anything he'd take from any given area, based on the rarity. These woods were roughly 50 hectares, and he only needed a small amount of wood at present. He decided to take three mid-sized individuals of the birchy type and the bamboo, with trunks roughly the width of his thigh. He'd also take ten each the diameter of his wrist. For now, he'd avoid fully mature examples, or felling any of the oaky types.
Walking the woodlands, small animals skittered away from him, and the sound of him felling trees spooked larger bone-faced browsers. He collected fallen oaky branches where he found them. Vines entangled the bulkier sort of trees, making it hard to maneuver around them. Chopping the wood and bamboo trunks and branches into 3-meter lengths, they were lashed to the board as well.
Leaving the leafy canopy parts behind for the moment, he made his way through to the far side of the woods. There was a tall outcropping of greenish shale in the middle of a grassy meadow that he climbed, spotting the black plateau to the east. Marking the site as a landmark for his records, he took a 360° video from the vantage, getting a good look at the denser woods from the river. There weren't as many of the bamboo there. Maybe they were hydrophilic? Sitting on top of the rock shelf, he rubbed over the wrist strap and looked off into the distance.
When Rae first met Jeol, the human was a happily married man with a young son. His wife intuited the not-entirely-platonic admiration Rae held for the dashing pilot but nonetheless encouraged him to remain a close family friend. Unfortunately, Karis Harden died a few years later, and Rae honored her dying wish by being there for the new widower and his boy. The closer the two of them got, and the stronger their affections, the more difficult their closeness was for Rae.
Even when ready to move beyond mere friendship, their differences threw up barriers against them. Mortals were so... ephemeral, and fragile. It took Qards almost half a century to reach adolescence, and twice that to be old enough to reproduce. Their bones were stronger than any man-made alloy, and their strength was enough to pulverize carbon-based life. Their inner heat made an incautious transfer of body fluids instantly fatal, so it took the utmost care to be intimate without harming them.
Add to all that the cultural and gender differences involved. Most of his relationship problems were from that last issue. One firm rule Rae drew with monosexuals was that a lover must accept all of him; male, female, and in between. The few times he didn't insist on that ended in sorrow and tragedy all around. Jeol... passed that test. Accepting Rae as an ambisexual person was difficult for him, but out of love, he'd managed. They were both males the first time they were together, both physically were in their mid 20's, or the equivalent, though Jeol was a third his own chronological age at the time.
Rae had given up on the dream of a forever spouse and accepted the certainty he would outlive Jeol. At least they could be together for his fleeting lifespan, however long Rae could extend it. Their love would be something Rae could remember in later years, a sad and bittersweet warmth to hold in his heart. Strangely, it was only when he stopped obsessing about what he truly wanted did he receive it. The Light, who'd created the Qard from star stuff, was still involved in their affairs. When Rae moved past his fear of being lonely and alone, the Light intervened in their relationship. Explaining that the Qard race was not meant to be extinguished, Jeol was given the opportunity to become one. Being a fully compatible partner to Rae was everything they wanted, and Jeol accepted the offer.
Since he'd reached physical maturity Rae had been a mother and a father on a nearly equal basis, mostly with Jeol. They had the same longevity now, and their marriage to date had lasted a thousand years. The only difficult thing was teaching Jeol how to manage the physical and emotional aspects of the Change. Years passed before Jeol was really comfortable with his own feminine side, but in their lives together there was no combination of their gender phases they hadn't intimately experienced. Rae sighed and shook his head, thinking about Jeol wasn't helping his mood.
Slipping down the other side of the stone outcropping, he spotted a relatively fresh grazer's skull half under a ledge, the scattered remains of the skeleton nearby. Examining the bones he found the tooth marks of a big predator on it. Looking about, he spotted paw prints of large felines in a drying patch of mud. Rae identified closely with big cats, with a black jaguar as his totem. He looked forward to when he encountered the cats and could study them.
Retracing his path back among the trees, he gathered more oaky deadfall, and coil after coil of the tough vines. The leafy tops he'd left behind were strapped to the logs already on the board until there wasn't room for them anymore. Tying the last few in a bundle he carried on his back, he turned to the river. Hearing chittering past the reeds ahead of him, he crouched and approached stealthily. There were several sizable bone-skulled rodents among the disturbed reed roots, Some were chewing on the roots, others were noisily tussling over them. He spotted more of the creatures downstream to the south, swimming after root bundles the waters swept away.
Not wanting to disturb the creatures, he set a few camera drones to observe and teleported to the far side of the ford, directing the board to swing wide to the north to avoid them. Bringing the wood to the cleared area in front of the plateau's entrance, he started dividing the types and giving each piece an inspection. He half sank some of the birchy logs up against the plateau's footprint as anchors and lashed the smaller poles to them to frame a wood drying shed. Stacked stones made the rear and sidewalls, and he would close in the outermost side with two wooden gates.
Splitting pieces of the bigger bamboo, he fashioned them into roof tiles, using a multitool to bore small holes to tie them down to the frame. Experimenting with the vines, they proved to be a good form of natural cordage. Terran bamboo was highly durable, and this species seemed fairly similar. By the time he'd need to replace them, he'd likely have a stock of clay tiles to use. He tiled the roof, then started moving the logs into the shed. He would build the gates, and pallets for the excess cut stone tomorrow. Also on his to-do list was a workbench for future woodworking projects.
Once the lumber was put away, the day was sliding into the evening. He started on cutting the leafy branches from the upper tree trunks. Those he spread over top of the roof tiles, bound with vines and held down by the remaining poles. The floors of his dig weren't flat enough for sleeping yet so he heaped the remaining springy branches just inside the shed's opening and put his bedroll there.
Not ready to bed down just yet, he flew on the skyboard to the top of the crag and pulled his harmonica from his boot. Rae serenaded the sunset and the goats, using the thumb switches to change the key or octave when needed. If the music he played were mostly sad songs, well, that was alright. Almost unwillingly, his thoughts were drawn back to his spouse.
His parents disapproved of him choosing a mortal to be with, pointing out that they had caused him heartbreak before. Rae not-so-politely told them to shut up; they had their happily ever after, and he was reduced to snatching shards of companionship where he found them. His critical inner voice agreed with his parents, and he stopped playing for a moment to wonder where that notion came from. Jeol was ephemeral no more and was as comfortable with his phases as a born Qard. If anything, Rae didn't think he was worthy of Jeol.
They didn't always live and work together, and he'd had the occasional fling with someone else, but Rae could never leave his spouse for long. The wake-up call was Warren, an Immortal he was looking after. He still regretted the way he'd hurt Warren when the young Immortal wanted Rae to leave Jeol and how devastated he became when Rae declined. That sort of thing never happened to Jeol and didn't happen to Rae anymore, either. Friendships were fine, even with benefits, but he'd learned where to draw the line.
And now, he was... damaged... somehow. Seriously enough he felt the need to withdraw from the Family, and especially Jeol. Like a lit powder keg, there was an explosion imminent, and Rae wanted to be alone when it happened. After that, he'd try and put himself back together again, one shard at a time if he had to. In the meantime, he'd dance the familiar tune of working a wilderness camp.
The first stars were coming out when he took the board back down the slope. He checked the computer in the dig to see if a suitable volcano had been located yet, but the results were still negative. His eyes swept over his work, lingering over the pack where his band was hidden. Until this… anomaly in his head was dealt with, he needed to limit his distractions, so the band would stay where it was.
Rae pushed away from the computer and went to the woodshed. He laid down on his bedroll and relaxed his constant levitation, an ingrained instinct to avoid causing excessive damage to this sort of environment. The leftover branches crackled underneath his weight. They'd be wood dust by morning, but at first, it would blunt the planes of the hard ground. He closed his eyes and eventually, slept.