"Stop looking at them and look at me!" screamed General Graa from the tabletop. "I shall brighten my light."

"Please don't, Your Excellency."

"Imagine me with the wind pressed to my flight feathers, the leading edges of my wings sliding across the waves like the black clouds of the hurricane…"

"Laura, can I ask you something?"

She looked up. Koen was leaning over her, almost bowing. His face looked the same way she felt. What had Graa called the emotion? Empathic anguish.

"My enemy flipped, and the tines on his talons caught the dead, green light that comes before the storm."

There's no point in talking, said the upper half of Laura, while the lower half thought, kiss him!

Neither of those halves had control of her mouth, though, which left it operating under standing orders. "What is it you want to talk about?" She asked, as if she were writing up the agenda of a plenary session.

"I mean," said Koen, "privately."

His mouth is right there!

Stop being stupid. We've been striking love-sparks against each other since we first met. If any of them were going to catch, one of them would have by now.

"As salmon in the cascade, we shoved the contrary wind. Two adversaries faced a foe insurmountably greater…"

And he was waiting for her. Laura's mouth had no words in its script for this. When he took a step back, she rose from her chair as if connected to him by strings.

What are you doing? Don't follow the man into the dark forest.

This is your last chance!

It's always my last chance. And I always fail to make the leap.

"…the pressure changed! We no longer pushed, but slid down the slope of the air like a snowy mountainside. Our backs were to the Earth and we bared our talons in defiance at the inimical sky. Such was our vainglory! Friends at last, united against wind and waves."

Who was looking at her now? Laura on her feet, facing Koen. Was he holding his breath? He looked like someone feeding a deer, terrified of making a wrong move, and scaring it away.

Don't be so ridiculous!

"All right," Laura said. "Let's go."

Graa let his ribbons settle to the tabletop around him. "And that," he panted, "is how I won my first posting."

Laura marched into the woods, Koen hurrying to follow.

"Laura," he said. "We got everything we wanted."

She turned on him. Enough waiting. She was alone with him. The consequences would come now, one way or the other. "Yes?" she said. "What do we want?"

Up until now, Koen had mostly been feeling elated, relieved, confused, and angry. Now his eyes fell on Laura's parted lips. We wondered what the small of her back would feel like under his hand? She was breathing heavily.

"Uh," he said. He couldn't just say you, could he?

She grabbed both his hands and asked as clearly as she could, "What do we want?"

Koen, now thoroughly distracted, fell back on the script he'd prepared ninety seconds previously. "I'll be here, in the Zogreion. And we won't be co-workers anymore, if that's what you were worried about." He was losing steam fast. Frantically he pumped out the words. "We'll be able to…uh…"

Laura went still. It would be so easy for her to finish his sentence for him, or squeeze his hands in Morse Code, or just jump up and fling her arms around his neck.

But Laura didn't want that. She wanted a brave Koen.

The silence stretched, and Koen's mind teetered on the brink of terror. He knew where he was standing. He knew what he wanted to do. But what if Laura didn't want it? What if it wasn't right? His heart hammered in his chest. What if this was what finally killed him?

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Wouldn't that be stupid?

You make moon-eyes at a woman for years before she practically drags you into the foods to be alone with her and you're holding hands, staring into each other's eyes with the future blooming all around you, and you just keel over? Or, even worse because it's more likely, you stand here, running scenarios in your head, trying to convince yourself that what you're about to do is safe, and she gets tired of waiting and leaves?

What you're doing isn't safe, he told himself. That's what makes what you're about to do brave.

Koen pulled.

Laura found herself squeezed up against Koen, her palms and cheek to his chest. His heart thumped in her ear. He smelled like ginger and garlic, smoke and sweat, and his chest seemed to stretch out on either side.

They stood like that for a while, hearts racing, brains transforming.

She looked up into his eyes, and realized that Koen couldn't kiss her without bending down.

Laura found herself wishing they were still in the clearing. There was a table she could sit on there, and put her mouth within reach of his. And what about yesterday? She'd been sitting on the kitchen counter! She could have sent Mark on an errand or something and told Koen to get over here. Why hadn't she —

Koen grabbed her by the hips and lifted. She was up, whirling, back suddenly against a tree, and it all finally worked.

***

The Moon passed behind the trees. The lamps running down the center of the clearing cast an oblong of light, in which the diurnal humans huddled. The nocturnal Greaves and Neurospastics took to the trees, where they chattered or dangled traps, according to their natures. The Quotidian pretended she was a pilgrim of old, camping with strangers far from her hive. The Tensor turned in its vacuum tube, suspended exactly halfway between the light and the darkness. The Toxoplasmotic felt the urge to take her jaguar off into the darkness and let it try to eat her.

The Pick, who was crepuscular, felt as if he stood watch over a great carcass: an intoxicating mixture of opportunity and danger. Sometimes, when the fear grew too strong, General Graa imagined that these talking animals were part of his flock, and he felt powerful.

"And that," he said, "is how I destroyed the moon Phobos. What shall my next story be? Someone suggest to me a theme."

"Stasis relative to the Sun is in-falling death," said Arch-Beacon Clay. "So we thrust meaning. We tell stories of our effort to change position, that we may tumble ever onward."

"You are referring perhaps to my reaction to the coup among the Polyploid Roridum." Graa beat his tired wings. "So there I was, the journalist arrayed like wolves around me…"

Mark leaned closer to his neighbor. "Your Admirability?"

"Yes?" asked Fling.

"I'm wondering something. What would it be like to talk without translators?"

Her ears came up. "Confusing!"

"It may be that we can read each other's body language and still communicate," Mark suggested.

"The chances of that are very low. We will probably build grotesque miscommunications between us." She hopped in her cradle. "Let's do it!"

The two translator bugs descended and gripped their hosts' collars.

Now what? Mark had a little routine worked out. He bowed to Fling. She bowed back, ears and hands both pressed together. When Mark spread his hands in a welcoming gesture, Fling spread hers. She swished her long tale like a flag. Mark waved. Mark gestured toward the moon. Fling stuck her nose toward it. Mark lowered his hand, palm up, to indicate the stack of osmanthus cakes. He took one of the ones he had not mixed with large amounts of diphenhydramine citrate.1

Fling took one of the others.

"You drop the object and it falls," the Arch-Beacon said. "You do not eat and you become hungry. These truths are universal for us all, for we all live in the same universe. Therein lies hope."

Ensign Barker the Adventurian raised a claw. "Do you refer to our common struggle for life?"

"I already told that story," said Graa. "Choose another theme. Someone give me a drink of water."

Lasers flickered from the Tensor in a slow, considering nod. "We who were born have the ancestors who struggled hardest. Thus it is that we can do the most improbable thing in the universe. We can survive. For a time."

Mark caught Severo's eye and nodded to her. He had no choice. "I think I understand you," he said.

"If so, then I witness a miracle." Arch-Beacon Clay gestured with a docking clamp and its three hooks formed a shape like the bones inside a bird's wing. "The universe is so big and the mind is so small. As small as the mind is, the beam of speech is yet narrower."

The Tensor's laser-light expression flickered across the ground and tree trunks. Fancy Death the jaguar jumped to his feet and scrambled after one glowing dot after another.

Watching, Severo laughed. Now, here was a sign!

Severo had plenty of weapons. Guns, most of them, shipped as innocuous components through the accelerator and reassembled in the Embassy.

So far, nobody had tried to carry one outside in the city. Who knew what the Quotidians might do if they detected one. Despite what an observer might judge, Severo considered herself to be playing it safe. She had not come to the banquet armed with her rifle. Only its laser sight.

"We tumble," said Clay. "We tumble on until we fall inwards or fly outwards. Tumble on, my friends."

1 To paraphrase one manufacturer, this gentle sleep aid will help you get a full night's sleep.