Page 81 of Tail, Dark and Handsome: Celestial Mates
Oh yes,Chase.
Winter knew that during the years of his absence, Chase invited himself over, ostensibly to check on the property. How his sense of familial duty included hosting weekend parties in the house, he never explained to Winter’s satisfaction.
“All that data was retrieved at the time of the accident,” he said. Probably. His father would have seen to it at the time of the accident. Thankful was nothing if not diligent at preventing scandals. “Have it gone by the end of the day.”
“And if Mr. Cayne inquires as to the vehicle, what would you wish me to say?” Asan worded the question carefully, as if to avoid angering Winter. They did not know each other well, but Winter’s reputation preceded him.
“You may tell my cousin that contrary to his belief that what’s mine is his, this house and its occupants are very much mine and I do not share.”
Chapter 18
Washed up and burned out! Rebel Cayne, pictured here carousing with Chase Cayne…
-Tal Tattler
Marigold
Mari tugged down the hat to cover her ears.
Time was a slippery thing. She had measured out her entire life by artificial increments. On a spaceship or a station, there was no morning or sunset. Life happened on a constant cycle, around the clock—that clock being the standardized IU clock.
On the station, nothing real moored the concept of time in place. Mari slept for eight hours and was awake for sixteen. Lighting never changed to mark the progress of the day. Environmental temperatures never changed to mark the transitions of the seasons.
Local time varied because time was slippery and planets still rotated and made their orbits the same as always. Most habitable planets all fell within the same range of sizes—not too big, not too small—and the same distance from their sun—not too close, not too far. Local time usually coincided with IU time, but gaps happened. She knew all this abstractly, and mentally juggled the time differences as her ship approached a new planet, but to experience time so viscerally startled her.
Mari held out a hand, watching the shadow on the ground. Its position was ever so slightly different from where it fell yesterday and that boggled her mind. Somehow, with measuring her life out in minutes and hours, days and weeks, two months slipped by.
The weather app claimed the late summer heat would break soon, but she didn’t believe the temperatures would plummet so drastically. Brae had told her that the cold arrived early and stayed. Mari needed to purchase cold-weather gear but felt ridiculous buying a coat and sweaters when the outside felt like a churning supernova.
Now that it was actually cold, Mari had only a light jacket. She ran to the nearest town, Drac, and bought a matching hat and glove set at the local general store. The other stuff she could order online and have delivered. So what if people looked at her like she was overdressed for a little autumn chill? At least she was warm.
Planets were a lot of work, and the weather was messy. The sun clearly defined day and night, marking off increments as shadows shifted. Weather was a whole other thing that charmed and aggravated her in equal measure. So much changed during the day—cold in the morning and unbearably hot in the afternoon—that the smaller changes that happened from day to day went unnoticed.
Between running Zero to school and Winter at the CayneTech facility, then back again to pick up Zero, she had difficulty finding the time to get done what she needed, like turning her driving permit into a license. Her IU license, recognized on every planet in the Interstellar Union, only qualified her as “temporary” on Corra. She did not understand how she could have spent so much time on the planet and yet accomplished so little.
Slippery, tricky concept, time.
The provincial government sent out a new resident packet that arrived almost immediately, complete with a charmingly retro identification card. Seriously, who still used bits of laminated paper for identification?
Every IU citizen got a chip implanted either in their thumb or their palm. The chips could be read by scanners anywhere on any planet and contained not only identification information but professional qualifications, banking accounts, credits, and so on. Mari didn’t need to bring anything more than herself to prove she was herself. Easy.
But on Corra? She had to pay a fee for the card and was expected to hold on to it, like a piece of paper with an awkward photo of herself proved anything. Every place she went, however, still scanned her palm. The ID card was just another layer of bureaucracy.
The planet baffled her but, luckily, also charmed her.
The handbook covered many aspects of traditional Corravian life, like how many families were two males and a female. Mari had wanted to ask Brae about her two husbands, but it felt rude, so she limited her curiosity to network searches.
The handbook also had a thick chapter just about the hazards that new residents needed to be aware of. First, the weather. Severe storms often lasted for days. Businesses and schools closed for safety. Second, mornclaws. The invasive predators had devastated the planet a century ago. While the worst of the infestation was over, pockets existed, and the further out a settlement was from urban areas, the greater the chance of encountering a mornclaw nest. The provincial governments had a network of watchtowers designed to control the pest’s population.
The doors of the school burst open, and students spilled out. The youngest students were released first, and they ran wildly to waiting adults or to the vehicles to take them home. Then the older students ambled out, each looking disinterested and more disdainful than the last. Teenagers, basically.
Zero appeared with a slender Tal girl at his side. She stood a few inches taller than him but appeared to be close to the same age, maybe older, but the height difference meant nothing for teens that age. They could have a growth spurt and shoot up half a foot overnight. Okay, not literally, but Mari remembered being surprised the day she realized at nineteen that seventeen-year-old Joseph was taller than her. She could have sworn he was an inch or two shorter than her the day before.
“Merry-gold, this is Clarity. We’re on the cross-country team together. Is it okay if we give her a ride home? To her home. Not ours. Obvious. Haha.” Zero grimaced at his forced laugh, then awkwardly shifted the bookbag on his shoulder.
Mari pressed her lips together to stop from laughing. “Of course. Delighted to meet you, Clarity.”
Zero threw his bag into the back of the vehicle and climbed in. The two teenagers sat stiffly next to each other. It was the most adorable thing Mari had ever seen. Zero muttered something about chemistry.
