He arrived at the designated chamber — a door inset at the end of a curved corridor, marked not by signage but by a subtle shift in lighting: from soft blue to a warm amber that pulsed once as he approached. The panel slid open with a muted exhale.
It wasn’t a mess hall.
The room was medium-sized and quietly symmetrical — more private conference than communal dining. A low table sat at its center, shaped from a single sheet of smooth composite and flanked by two modest chairs. Lighting strips curved upward from the corners of the floor, casting the room in the filtered hue of late morning. No servers. No noise. Just stillness — engineered for conversation.
Seated across the table was not a Virellan.
Ax let the breath slip from his chest without meaning to.
A Silvarian stood to greet him — tall even by their species' standard, near eight feet in height, but with a posture that radiated calm rather than imposition. Their movements were slow, deliberate, the kind of grace that didn’t seek to be noticed but couldn’t be ignored.
They were young — or at least, younger than most Silvarian emissaries Ax had encountered. Their frame was long and lightly built, supported by a biological latticework common to their kind: hollow-boned for agility among the canopies of Sylvaan, stabilized by fibrous muscle strands and cartilage bands that flexed with leaf-like tension.
Their skin bore the deep moss-green tone of open-field Silvarians, ridged and textured like bark that had softened with rain. From their collarbone to the crown of their head grew living flora — not decorative, but symbiotic. A soft carpet of moss clung to their shoulders, brightened at the edges with threads of creeping ivy that coiled down their arms in slow, deliberate patterns. Interspersed along their left side bloomed several aurora flowers — pale yellow with a flush of violet at the petal tips, each bloom gently pulsing in rhythm with their breath. The species was named for the lights that swept the northern hemisphere of Sylvaan — and here, they seemed to glow faintly, like memory made luminous.
The scent in the room changed. Subtle, but present. A warm, earthy sweetness — soil after rain, crushed wildflower, a note of sun-warmed bark. It wasn’t perfume. It was him.The Silvarian offered a shallow nod — the kind that wasn’t quite a bow, but conveyed its own gravity.
“Ax of Lioren,” he said, voice low and textured, shaped by breath and resonance. “I am Alderin. I’ve been waiting.”
Ax offered a nod in return, polite but brief, and stepped fully into the room. The door sealed behind him with a soft pulse, isolating the space in a quiet hush. The table between them was already set — two small trays arranged with symmetrical precision: nutrient broth, steamed grainfold, and a spiral of something violet and gelatinous that pulsed faintly at the edges, probably Virellian-grown.
He took his seat across from Alderin without comment, adjusting the chair slightly to allow his legs more room beneath the table. The height difference was notable — not awkward, but apparent. Alderin had the effortless posture of someone who didn’t need to make themselves smaller.
Neither of them spoke at first.
The silence was not uncomfortable. Just ambient. It filled the space like mist — not demanding to be broken, only observed.
Alderin moved with quiet ritual. He breathed slowly, eyes lowering as he placed one hand near the edge of his tray, palm open. A scent rose faintly — something floral edged with ozone. Not for Ax. Just part of the rhythm.
Ax watched, unsure if it was religious, cultural, or merely habit.
He reached for his utensils, but Alderin beat him to it — not with movement, but with words.
“You don’t like Virellian food,” Alderin said gently, not accusing, just observing.
Ax blinked. “I didn’t say that.”
“You thought it.” Alderin smiled, eyes flicking briefly to the gelatin spiral. “Your expression changed. Just slightly.”
“It’s not the food,” Ax replied, clearing his throat. “It’s… the texture. I don’t prefer things that pulse.”
Alderin gave a soft, amused exhale — not quite a laugh, but something close. “Understandable. I wasn’t raised with it either. Sylvaan cuisine has more roots than gels.”
“You’re from the fields?” Ax asked, before he could second-guess the question.
Alderin nodded. “South of the high canopies. My kin group tends pollinator vines. We rarely ate anything we couldn’t uproot with our hands.”
Ax tried not to picture that too literally.
They ate in short, quiet intervals, the sound of utensils soft against ceramic composite. The broth was better than expected — subtly spiced, warm in a way that didn’t coat the tongue. The grainfold had a texture like firm bread, but unfolded into layered curls once bitten. Ax found himself surprised by how much he didn’t hate it.
“You’re quieter than I expected,” Alderin said after a pause, breaking a sprig of leafy something with his fingers.
Ax tilted his head. “You expected me to talk more?”
“I expected a Rheunarian delegate,” Alderin replied. “And Rheunarians often lead with inquiry.”Ax almost smiled. “I’m not really a delegate.”
“Neither am I,” Alderin said. “I’m a pollinator handler with a passable academic record and a knack for not panicking in enclosed spaces. That’s all it takes, apparently.”
There was something disarming in the way he said it. Dry, but not bitter. Like he didn’t mind being underestimated.
Ax set his spoon down. “Why do you think they paired us?”
“Because we’re different,” Alderin said. “But not so different we’ll ruin the mission.”
“And if we do?”
Alderin’s eyes glinted — pale gold reflecting the table’s light. “Then we’ll grow something new from it.”
Ax stared at him for a moment, unsure how to respond.
Then, quietly, he picked up his spoon again.
And kept eating.
They ate for another stretch in silence, the rhythm of shared motion gradually smoothing into something less self-conscious. The room held its warmth, though the lights shifted subtly — indicating the close of the meal cycle. Time was passing, but unhurried.
Ax reached for his cup — a thin metal vessel holding a gently steeped brew of something floral and unfamiliar — when Alderin spoke again.
“I’ve always been fascinated by root systems,” he said, conversationally. “Not just their structure, but their decision-making.”
Ax looked up. “Decision-making?”
Alderin nodded, fingers absently brushing a trailing vine along his collarbone that had begun curling toward the heat of the nearby tea steam. “We used to think roots were reactive. That they simply followed gradients — moisture, minerals, density. But they make choices. They evaluate. They plan routes to avoid toxic sediment. They share. They warn each other. Even across species lines.”
“That sounds like a metaphor.”
“It’s also a dataset,” Alderin replied, calm but precise. “Documented across six moons. Including two where there’s no native plant life — just terraformed substrates seeded with Sylvaani stock. Roots still spoke.”
Ax raised a brow. “You study this professionally?”
Alderin didn’t look up from his cup. “I trained in astrobotany for six years before I returned home. Studied exo-ecosystem feedback on atmospheric calibration. Spent one year in the southern vaults beneath Silvarum — their vault-lichen is highly responsive to pressure shifts, almost sentient in dense clusters.”
“You’re a botanist.”
“I’m a field handler,” Alderin corrected gently. “But yes. My focus is symbiotic networks — especially how transplanted flora maintain or reestablish communication across disrupted terrains.”
Ax leaned back slightly, studying him. “That’s… more than I expected.”
“I know,” Alderin said, smiling faintly. “You assumed I was just tall and photogenic.”
Ax didn’t answer right away. But the corner of his mouth lifted, just enough to be noticed.
Alderin tilted his head. “And what about you? Ax of Lioren — political archivist, academic recluse, reluctant delegate. What’s your specialty?”
Ax hesitated. Then: “Collapse.”
Alderin blinked. “Collapse?”
“I study systems that fail,” Ax said simply. “Civic. Cultural. Symbolic. The stories we tell about ourselves when things are working — and how those stories mutate when they’re not.”
Alderin’s expression softened. “That sounds… lonely.”
Ax shrugged. “It’s honest.”
There was another silence, but it felt different now. Full, not empty. The kind of pause between people who no longer needed to search for the right tone.
Alderin set his cup down. “I think that’s why they paired us.”
Ax arched a brow. “Because I study collapse and you study plants?”
“No,” Alderin said, eyes glinting again. “Because I know how to grow things. And you know why they don’t.”
Ax sipped what remained of his tea, watching Alderin over the rim of the cup. The Silvarian had fallen quiet again — not out of discomfort, but reflection. His breath had deepened, and the faint purple of the aurora petals along his shoulder had faded to a softer hue, something like dusk.
Ax tilted his head. “Did you want this assignment?”
Alderin looked up, mildly surprised — not at the question, but that Ax had asked it aloud.
“No,” he said. “Not at first.”
Ax set the cup down.
“I was working on a long-term project with a Nethari lab,” Alderin continued, fingers idly brushing the moss along his wrist. “We were cultivating a strain of fruiting kelp beneath one of the vent-cradle reefs — thermal-dependent, high-yield, psionically active.”
Ax’s brow furrowed. “Edible?”
“Very,” Alderin said, smiling faintly. “It blossoms in spherical nodes at the end of long kelp coils. The Nethari call it vethaun, which loosely translates to ‘mind-orchard.’ The fruit pulses when touched. It doesn’t bruise. And it sings in chemical tones when cut from its vine.”
Ax blinked. “It sings?”
Alderin nodded, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Softly. You can’t hear it unless you’re submerged. But the Nethari say that sound carries memory — and vethaun has a long one.”
He paused then, gaze dropping to the table’s surface. For a moment, the silence stretched.
“I almost declined,” he admitted. “I didn’t want to leave the reef. The fruit was nearly ready for harvest. We’d spent three years aligning the cycles. It’s rare to get that kind of collaboration between surface and sea.”
“So what changed?”
Alderin’s breath slowed. The aurora petals on his shoulder flared again — a shade deeper this time. When he spoke, his voice had lost its edge of levity.
“I had a dream the night the assignment was confirmed,” he said. “I was standing in a field that wasn’t Sylvaan. I don’t know where it was. There was no sky, only roots — endless, coiling through the air like inverted trees. Above me, not below.”
Ax didn’t speak. He just listened.
“There was a fruit,” Alderin said. “Not one I’d seen before. Smooth-skinned, glass-colored. It hung from a vine that shimmered like water. I reached for it, but when I touched it, it split open. Not violently. Gently. Like it had been waiting.”
He closed his eyes for a moment.
“Inside wasn’t pulp. It was memory. Not mine — older. And not a story, exactly. More like... the feeling of a story. A long silence. A held breath. A question that had waited too long to be asked.”
He opened his eyes again. They were brighter now — not in color, but in clarity.
“When I woke up,” he said simply, “I knew I had to go.”
Ax stared at him, unsure what to say. He wasn’t someone who spoke in symbols. He didn’t trust dreams. But something about Alderin — the steadiness in his voice, the way the light caught in the folds of moss across his arms — made it difficult to dismiss.
“Do you think it meant something?” Ax asked.Alderin smiled softly. “Everything means something. Especially the things we can’t explain.”
He picked up his cup again and breathed in the scent before drinking.
Ax didn’t reply.
But he was still thinking about the fruit.
They finished the meal in an easy quiet, the earlier current of conversation settling into something softer — not absence, but presence without pressure. The kind of silence that meant both had said enough, for now.
Alderin leaned back slightly, one hand resting along the curve of his tray, the other absently brushing the soft moss along his collarbone. The aurora blooms on his shoulder had dimmed to a twilight hue, petals curling at the edges like they, too, were preparing to rest. Whatever scent he had been releasing — floral, earthen, sweet — faded into something calmer now. Grounded.
Ax set his utensils down. “We launch in the morning.”
Alderin nodded. “Three cycles through the corridor.”
“Do you think you’re ready?” Ax asked.
A pause. Then Alderin smiled — not wide, but real. “I don’t think you get ready. I think you just arrive.”
Before Ax could answer, a chime rang softly from the wall — a polite signal marking the end of the cycle’s meal period. Alderin stood and gathered his tray, but as he turned toward the door, he paused.
With slow fingers, he reached up to his shoulder, brushing a thumb beneath the stem of one of the smaller aurora blooms. It detached without resistance, as if the flower had been waiting.
He held it out.
“For calm,” he said simply.
Ax looked at it — pale yellow petals rimmed in a violet gradient, pulsing faintly in time with Alderin’s breath. He reached out and took it, careful not to touch Alderin’s skin.
It was lighter than he expected. Warmer, too.
Alderin nodded once — not formal, not perfunctory, just… soft.
Then he stepped out through the door and disappeared into the corridor beyond, his scent trailing behind like a memory still being written.
Ax stood alone.And for the first time in a long while, he had no immediate instinct to move. He just stared at the flower in his palm.
And let it glow.
That night, Ax fell into sleep as if he had been swallowed. It came slowly at first, like mist pooling at the edges of consciousness, then all at once — dragging him down into a silence too vast to resist. He didn’t remember the moment his body relaxed or his breath deepened. One moment he was watching the ceiling pulse faintly with the ambient lights of the station; the next, there was only blackness laced with color, like ink suspended in oil.
He was standing.
Not on a floor, exactly, but on something broad and living. The surface beneath his bare feet pulsed in low, rhythmic intervals — not cold, not warm, but reactive. Every step made it ripple slightly, as though responding not to weight but intention. It was smooth as stone but moved like skin, shifting under him in slow waves. He looked up and saw no stars. Only one massive shape overhead — a moon, impossibly close, silent and still. It hovered just above the horizon line, not spinning, not shifting. Watching. Waiting.
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