Halva Erith moved to the desert for the heat, the solitude, and the lies she needed to tell to finally feel real.

She told the Genetic Futures Office she was forty-three—old enough to qualify for Level Three sperm straw priority. In truth, she was barely thirty, but her eyes had aged from the inside. Being adopted does something strange to a person. It rewires the roots. Halva didn’t feel unloved. Just... unplaced.

She wanted to be gravid.

Not to mother. She had no instinct for it. Her eggs, once laid, would be abandoned in the haylofts and sheep sheds of various neighbors. But the urge to swell and lay and hum while nesting was biological. Cosmic. Like tides. Or dreams.

She found herself in the dry valleys of Prickle Province, in a village with no proper name—just a wind-blasted sign that read “Oof.” That’s where she met Levi, a red panda–faced man with heavy-lidded eyes and a skeptical tongue. He was the only person who looked past her hooked nose, past her sharp shoulders and unpredictable silences, and into her actual soul.

“You’re the most genuine harpy I’ve ever met,” he said once, handing her a tea made from boiled lichen.

“Don’t say that like you’ve met dozens,” she muttered.

“I’ve met three,” he replied. “You’re the only one who didn’t bite me.”

Together they built a life that was both practical and slightly holy.

They harvested the Sunspine Succulents—pale yellow, with vibrant magenta tips—and juiced the thick, rubbery leaves by hand, letting the liquid settle in clay jugs under moonlight. Then they boiled it with coconut sugar and burr-ground thorn bark. The result was Cactus Mylk, which they sold at 7.5 credits a quart—on the lower end, sure, but never too low.

Halva said the price kept them humble.

Levi said the price kept them off corporate watchlists.

They lived in a squat dome house built from woven cactus ribs and mudbrick. They wore linen. They rarely spoke to neighbors. Halva continued to lay eggs now and then—she’d leave them anonymously, sometimes with small notes:

“This one dreams of flight.”

“Name her Thornetta.”

No one ever saw her return to check on them. And no one dared move the eggs until they hatched.

People whispered about the mylk.

That it calmed nightmares. That it made old wounds ache in preparation to heal. That one time it made a bat-faced man speak his ancestor’s name out loud for the first time in 40 years.

But Halva and Levi didn’t drink it much.

They preferred coffee. Bitter and black. With dry toast and cactus jam. Quiet mornings. Stillness.

And love, of the kind that doesn’t soften you—but hardens your edges just enough to survive the wind.