Dreamhearth Read online

  “It is a vital part of our health,” Jahir said.

  She opened her eyes and smiled at them, and she had dimples Vasiht’h had never noticed before. “Yes! It is. And that’s what I want for Joyner. Do you have time for him? I’ll tell him to come straightaway... he’s never had luck with therapy, but I bet one real nap a week will do more for him than an hour of talking.”

  “By all means, send him to us.”

  “Wonderful.” She rose, smiling again. “What you all do... it’s really magical. I have to say. I don’t always leave here happier, but I always leave feeling stronger, if that makes sense.”

  “It does,” Jahir answered for him. “And you honor us.”

  Her ears flushed. “Well. I’ll tell him to get in touch. Thank you. See you next week.”

  The door closed on her and Jahir tilted his head, waiting.

  “Real sleep,” Vasiht’h repeated.

  “There is an element of mystery in what we do,” Jahir said. “I suspect our role now is to be open to it, rather than attempt to corral it into a modality we understand.”

  Vasiht’h sighed, chuckled. “All right. I just wish…”

  Jahir did not push him to finish the sentence, but did he have to? They were both aware of their deadline.

  Chapter 10

  Jahir knew of his partner’s agitation, but he could not help but find their situation promising. One client had become four, one of whom had begun seeing them twice a week, and of those four two had been referred by existing clients. Such a pattern boded well, even if, like Vasiht’h, he was often mystified by what benefit their clients were deriving from their naps. The rounds they’d done as students in the university clinic had not prepared them adequately for solo work—perhaps because these were working adults, and not young people? He didn’t know why it seemed different, but it was. But that too fascinated.

  They had time. Even if they had to leave, they would have time to explore the many permutations of the humanoid psyche. Including, he thought, his own.

  The time on Selnor had marked him, as surely as the long-ago duel that had left the scar on his shoulder. He knew it for the tendency to glance at the hospital’s job vacancies, and the vague itch that drove him to buy chemistry textbooks, and medical ones.

  He did not want to be a healer—yet—but he missed the camaraderie of the hospital. There had been a pleasure in being part of a team.

  “So you miss working in a group?” KindlesFlame said to him during their next call. “Or is it the type of work?”

  “Yes?” Jahir answered, and smiled as the Tam-illee guffawed. “I am not being obscure intentionally. I don’t know the answer.”

  “I suspect not,” KindlesFlame said. “Do you regret going into private practice?”

  “No,” Jahir said, and that answer he was sure of. “Even given the youth of our business, I still find it rewarding.”

  “And you still enjoy working with your partner.”

  Jahir cocked his head. “That sounds like fishing, alet.”

  KindlesFlame grinned over his coffee. “Believe it or not, it’s not. It’s just that working with someone outside the university’s sheltered environment… it brings out problems and personality conflicts you might have missed while you were still operating with a safety net. Running your own practice is complicated, and establishing yourselves… well, it’s a lot like the first stages of a marriage. You’re figuring out how to work together, live together, pay bills, resolve problems. Sometimes you discover you can’t make it work.”

  Did he worry about that? Not on his own behalf. But Vasiht’h was fretting. “I have some concerns. But without the challenge, there’s no opportunity for growth.”

  “You say that like you’re hoping I’ll agree with you,” KindlesFlame observed, sipping from his cup.

  “Do you?”

  The Tam-illee chuckled. “Yes. But sometimes growth takes you away from people, as well as toward. I hope you have a fallback plan, in case this doesn’t work out for you.”

  The idea distressed him. To plan to leave Vasiht’h? “No,” he said, so reflexively that his mentor pricked both ears toward him quizzically. “I don’t doubt my relationship with Vasiht’h,” he said. “The mindline does not permit it. We are too close.”

  “Dissolving the business relationship doesn’t have to dissolve the emotional partnership,” KindlesFlame pointed out. “Your Glaseah could do something else with himself. You could go work in a hospital. You might be happier that way, instead of trying to make something work that’s creating stress in one or both of you.”

  That sounded eminently reasonable, but Jahir still hated the idea. Working with Vasiht’h was a source of peace he couldn’t imagine surrendering. And yet, if Vasiht’h never settled, would it poison their ability to work together? Jahir liked to think he could ignore his friend’s surface agitations, but if they dragged on for years… would it become easier to deal with, or harder?

  KindlesFlame was watching him with far too much canniness. Jahir exhaled slowly. “I admit I find this discussion uncomfortable.”

  “I know,” the Tam-illee said, not unkindly. “But I’m interested in your welfare, not in helping you preserve a status quo that might not be serving you.”

  “Still my advisor, despite my graduation?”

  The foxine chuckled quietly. “You can take the student out of the university, but you can’t take the student out of the advisor’s schedule. Besides, I can see too clearly that you’re not done yet. You might not come back to school for your continuing education—though I’m willing to bet that you’re going to end up back here again—but you’re not done learning, Jahir.”

  “I hope I am never done learning,” Jahir said.

  “I hope not either. I’m a strong proponent of the value of education.” He grinned, let the smile fade. “More seriously, you could consider a compromise.”

  “A… compromise.”

  The Tam-illee nodded. “Most hospitals do have a number of part-time contractors. You might see if you can be put on their contractor list. You’d get some work that way, but it wouldn’t be the commitment that becoming full-time staff would be.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Jahir murmured.

  “Now might not be a bad time to establish yourself with them, before your practice gets busier.”

  That too made sense, though he found himself wondering how much friction it would create in his relationship with Vasiht’h if he developed a second income stream when his friend wanted so badly to be financial equals.

  “Still not good?” KindlesFlame guessed.

  “The heart is rarely reasonable,” Jahir said.

  “That it isn’t,” KindlesFlame said. “And you should be grateful. It keeps you in business.”

  Vasiht’h might never have finished HEALED BY HER IMMORTAL HEART had he not checked the annotations. He wasn’t even sure why he did. He was thinking of Sehvi, maybe, but his tablet checked him when he selected her name from his list of contacts to build a call. ‘Local time on Tam-ley, Timezone 2, is three hours after midnight. Do you wish to continue?’ And of course, he said no, because just wanting to chat was no reason to wake her up.

  He was agitated. He knew it because he was catching himself rubbing at his own feet again, and if he didn’t stop soon he’d wear away another patch and that, no doubt, would inspire his partner to ask him what was bothering him. ‘I’m just worried,’ wasn’t enough of an answer when everything looked like it was going so well. They had clients. The clients kept coming back. Two of them had even sent friends. They were developing friends and acquaintances of their own: Helga, who now had the habit of stopping by for dinner every week, the waitstaff at their two favorite cafes, Karina at the ice cream shop. Ilea wandered past too, though her visits were erratic. They had a place to live, and money to spare, and it was all going so well that the fact that it might be amputated by the housing authority was painful. Worse, the nagging feeling that he was somehow failing a
t learning how to be an independent adult kept waking him up at night. That he wasn’t an independent adult, technically, both did and didn’t help; he was profoundly grateful—proud, pleased!—to have Jahir as a partner, but he wasn’t sure he was pulling his weight, either.

  He missed Sehvi, and in lieu of talking with her he pulled up the book. Since he still didn’t want to read it, he checked the sidebar and found the annotations function active. That was how he stumbled onto a conversation between his sisters about what the mystical Eldritch/Tam-illee hybrid was going to look like.

  KAVILA: I’m voting for an Eldritch with fox ears.

  SEHVI: Humanoid with skin and fox ears isn’t materially different from how some Tam-illee already look.

  TAVYI: Well I want a snow-white Tam-illee with tragic eyes. And floor-length white hair.

  MANDARA: She would have a voice sweet as jingle bells!

  KAVILA: They put those bells on harnesses, you know.

  MANDARA: Maybe she’ll be into that?

  SARDA: Ugh, don’t even go there, yucccck

  NINEH: I’m voting for bilateral asymmetry. The right half of the baby can be Eldritch, the left Tam-illee.

  KOVRAH: Maybe it’ll be bisected at the waist instead? Top half Eldritch, bottom half Tam-illee? So it’ll have the cute tail.

  SEHVI: I’ve got it! Twins! One Eldritch, one Tam-illee!

  TAVYI: Boooooring.

  MANDARA: Yeah, who wants a reasonable answer? Stop reproductive-sciencing at us, Sehvi.

  SEHVI: Fine. How about the baby can turn from one species to the other at will?

  SARDA: Yes! Totally good with that!

  TAVYI: PLOT TWIST—Dad is actually a Chatcaava!!

  MANDARA: Great, horror instead of romance! I’d read that!

  Their annotations littered the text: underlined passages they’d found funny, wailing over ridiculous plot twists, extended commentary on what they would have done as one of the protagonists (“why’d he bring her flowers? She’s pregnant! I bet she wants sardine sorbet or something”). He paged back to the beginning of the book and found they’d started early. Had all of them read it?? He checked the list and found all seven of them contributing. Grinning, he started re-reading, and in his mind he heard their voices as clearly as if they were scattered around him, throwing pillows or brushing out one another’s coats. It reminded him that he had a family that loved him, that wanted to include him in their jokes and their lives. He sent Sehvi a message for when she woke, asking her who’d decided to buy the book in the first place, and how long it had taken all of them to read it, and then set it aside to look out the window. The morning sun was bright on the street, and Jahir was taking a walk. Maybe he should too.

  And, he decided, he would walk through the Garden District, and confront his discomfort with living there directly.

  The morning was glorious; if he hadn’t known he was on a starbase, he would never have guessed. There was even dew jeweling the edges of the plants, and he could hear birdsong. And people were out, jogging or strolling. They had the tranquility of people with a great deal of leisure time, and Vasiht’h let their calm infuse him. They didn’t have to live here forever, after all—and what a startling thought that was, when he was spending so much time fearing that he wouldn’t be able to! He stopped in the middle of the street, bemused. How ridiculous that he was both convinced they should leave the place they were living—the Garden District—while also upset that they might be forced to leave the place they were living—the Starbase. How could he hold both those things in his head without it exploding? Vasiht’h chuckled and resumed trotting down the street.

  Maybe it was his chuckle that attracted the attention of the human on the porch. As he approached, the man called, “Good morning!”

  It was such a merry greeting that Vasiht’h halted alongside the steps leading up to the deck. The human was old, his hair nearly entirely white and laugh lines sketched around his mouth. His hands, resting on a gaily-patterned quilt, had the thin delicacy of age, though they looked strong yet. But he had clear eyes and there was laughter in them, and Vasiht’h couldn’t help grinning back. “I recognize you,” he says. “You’re the man who sells quilts at the weekly street market.”

  “That’s right,” the man said. “And you’re half of the new couple that moved into Ilea’s rental, aren’t you.”

  “We’re not a couple—”

  He lifted a hand. “Pair. Sorry! I don’t mean to imply anything.”

  “I’m sorry to jump on you about it,” Vasiht’h said. “A lot of humans don’t know how we work. We Glaseah, I mean.”

  The man chuckled. “That’s fair. A lot of Pelted don’t understand how we humans work either.”

  Vasiht’h thought of Ametia’s rants and winced. “Probably not, no.”

  “Not a very good beginning,” the man said, smiling down at him. “Maybe I can fix you a cup of tea and we can start over? Without assumptions? It’s a nice day to sit outside and get to know your neighbors.”

  “I’d like that,” Vasiht’h found himself saying before he could censor himself, and the old man beamed and rose from his rocking chair.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  So Vasiht’h walked up onto the porch and sat on the opposite side. He inhaled the freshness of the morning air, smelling the water in it, and watched the faint breeze ruffle the broad-leaved plants that edged the wooden deck. The plants in this man’s garden grew closer than the ones in Ilea’s, and had darker foliage. It reminded him a little of home.

  The fragrance of tea preceded the man as he returned with a tray, one with folding legs. Setting it up, he said, “My name is Hector Avila. I’m an old hand here in the neighborhood… been living here since I was twenty-two when I moved here with my wife.”

  Vasiht’h looked toward the front door.

  “You won’t find her there,” Hector said. “She’s dead these past fifteen years.” His smile was gentle. “I do miss her, but I feel her nearer every year. Here, do you take sugar?”

  “No thank you,” Vasiht’h answered, accepting the mug. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “I am too,” Hector answered, chuckling. “But she wouldn’t thank me to mope. It’s why I took up quilting. She loved quilts but never had the patience to make them. When the one she loved best started coming apart, I tried my hand at putting it back together.”

  Vasiht’h grinned. “The beginning of the end!”

  “Of my life of sloth!” he agreed. He sat back in his rocking chair with his mug and pushed it into motion with his toe. Without, Vasiht’h noted with bemusement, sloshing the tea. “But then, retirement was getting boring. I like working. It gets me out, talking to people. Gives some structure to my days. What about you, then? What do you do? And what’s your name? I’m gone and rambled on and didn’t even ask.”

  “I’m Vasiht’h. As you noticed, my partner Jahir and I are renting the cottage while the Starbase decides if it wants us. We’re xenotherapists.”

  “Therapists!” Hector nodded. “That’s a useful thing. I can’t imagine them turning you away.”

  “I’m glad someone can’t,” Vasiht’h said ruefully. And added, “Is that one of your quilts?”

  The man beamed. “Why, yes.” He set his mug on the tray-table and spread the quilt out on the porch rail. The pattern reminded Vasiht’h of stars, and they’d been sewn in bold blues and whites that reminded him somehow of Jahir. “This is a Mariner’s Compass design. I think it quite smart… it’s one of my favorites.”

  Vasiht’h reached out and petted it. “It really is beautiful. I was looking at your quilts at the market.”

  “But?” Hector asked.

  “I don’t get cold very much!” Vasiht’h fingered the edge, admiring the stitching, and the cloudlike softness of it. “I could hang it, I guess, as art.”

  “Oh no,” the human said, shaking his head. “Quilts are meant to be used. They’re like a hug you can carry with you. Maybe you know someone who needs
a hug?”

  Vasiht’h thought of Jahir wrapped up in a nautical blanket and smiled. Somehow he couldn’t quite make it work. But Lennea popped up in his head and he stopped, struck.

  “Ah, you do know someone,” Hector guessed, grinning.

  “I think they’d work very well for my couch at the office,” Vasiht’h said. “We’ve been looking for ways to personalize it a little. Maybe you could show me your inventory? If you have inventory?”

  “Do I have inventory!” The man guffawed, slapped his knee. “Don’t I. I’d be delighted to show it to you. But!” He lifted a finger. “After tea. Business after pleasure. Or what’s the point of retiring?”

  Vasiht’h said, baffled, “I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead.” And then laughed. “Oh, my, that probably sounds ridiculous to you.”

  “I’m not saying a word….”

  “But you’re thinking it, and you should.” Vasiht’h laughed. “So tell me how you ended up here at twenty-one, and what you were doing to make the starbase decide you were a good bet.”

  About an hour later, Vasiht’h left his neighbor’s company with a bag and a great deal on his mind. He’d enjoyed the morning, and the fact that this surprised him was… strange. He liked people; talking with them was one of the pleasures of his job. Had he become so insular that he no longer thought of striking up conversations with strangers? He was letting worry drive him from the habits that gave him strength, and how could he conquer his anxieties if he relinquished those coping mechanisms?

  What a field day a therapist would have with him! He chuckled ruefully. No doubt this was all just new adult problems, and he would figure them out the way he did the problems that beset him when he decamped for Seersana University. But it certainly felt like the sky was falling. Shaking his head, he trotted back to the cottage and found Jahir returned from his walk.