Page 99 of Shadows of Stardust

But there’s no way to snatch the words out of the air and hoard them for myself. There’s nothing to do but trust her and tighten my arms around her.

“Washington,” she says quietly, eyes fixed on the jungle below, though distant and slightly unfocused in memory. “That was the name of the place where I lived. The state. Not the city. Although… I suppose it doesn’t really matter now that it’s all abandoned.”

I place my hand over hers on the railing and squeeze. “Of course it matters.”

Roslyn relaxes into me. Overhead, the first evening stars wink to life in the sky, and a sea breeze catches the soft strands of her hair as we float above the jungle.

“We lived on an island and had to take a ferry back and forth to the mainland. And even when the rest of the world was going up in flames, our little corner of it stayed untouched almost until the end.”

Roslyn talks a little more about her home, this place called Washington, and what it was like to leave it.

In return, I tell her what little I can about Revexor. I tell her about the stark cliffs my childhood home was built on, the wild winds from an even wilder sea, the rough-hewn beauty of it all that I can only recall in vague, time-blurred vignettes of memory.

The conversation isn’t filled with the sweeping declarations or passionate promises so trite and familiar to Mate Match viewers, but I couldn’t care less. The production team will air it, or they won’t, and it’s not for me to worry about now.

The hover banks left, charting a course into a deep valley between two mountain peaks. The jungle below grows evendenser, the canopy reaching up over a dozen meters from the valley floor.

And from those trees, an aquamarine glow.

Brighter and brighter as we get closer, the glow gilds the leaves and shines from the wings of night insects and butterflies flitting through the jungle. As the evening grows deeper around us, it casts Roslyn and I in earthbound starlight, a breathless, awed silence falling between us.

The hover dips even further, until we’re nearly brushing the treetops, and Roslyn lets out a soft gasp. She leans over the railing to trail a hand along the glowing leaves, and I steady my hold on her, making sure she doesn’t go toppling into the sea of light below.

“I wonder what makes them glow like that,” I murmur, though in truth, I’m more consumed by watching her than looking at the scenery.

“It’s a type of organism similar to the bacteria that once lived on Earth,” she explains, wonder in her voice. “It’s not harmful to touch, and it makes its host glow with bioluminescence. Here, in the canopy, and even in bodies of water scattered across the planet, it really is—”

She stops speaking abruptly, glancing first at me, then at the cameras as a slow flush spreads over her cheeks.

“Sorry,” she mutters. “I’m rambling. I don’t want to bore you or—”

“Tell me more. You’re not boring me at all.”

I’m not one for scientific study—beyond what I might need to get me through a mission—and can’t pretend I fully understand what she means about plants and bacteria and all the complicated mechanics of the living world around us.

But if it puts that light in her eyes? That wonder in her voice?

I’ll listen to Roslyn talk about it all night.

Still, the color doesn’t fade from her cheeks, so I lean in closer and speak low into her ear, hoping the cameras above won’t pick it up.

“Tell me more,” I say again. “I’d like to hear about it.”

She laughs softly and murmurs her reply, nodding at the cameras. “I don’t think me going on about plants really makes an entertaining conversation for… well, you know.”

“Do you think I care if they’re entertained?”

Another laugh, this one with the huff of sarcasm I know so well, and she falls back into the conversation, cameras be damned. She tells me more about the bacteria, the plants, the wonder of their symbiosis.

While she speaks, the hover drifts over another section of the forest. The trees here are taller, and crowned in clusters of flowers that glow more magnificently than anything around them. Instead of just coating the leaves and petals, the glow seems to come from within, lighting them from their very core.

They’re all around us as the hover slows to a stop. A glowing meadow beneath a sea of stars.

“This is a passion of yours?” I ask, voice a hush in the surrounding night, and I almost regret breaking the silence. “Botany? The study of plants?”

Roslyn shrugs. “Kind of. And not really in any formal capacity. It’s more of a hobby. One that I hope…”

She trails off, and I can’t help myself.

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