The Rings of Ferocina by T. K. Rex

Fifteen years. I count them by converting Standard to Gregorian badly while my feet move forward without me. It’s been fifteen years since I’ve seen another human and here’s one at the Stones on Ferocina underneath the glowing rings and stars, swirling a red gourd-bottle while he stares into the bonfire like a human would, like any human would, with the flames flickering across his brown and bearded face. He looks up and he sees me and that must be the same expression that I had a moment earlier: is that a human? No way…

He shrugs, the closest gesture he can make to the common greeting of the Hounds. I shrug back and then remember how to raise my hand and wave. He grins then laughs and now my feet have brought me close enough to hear his voice. It’s so familiar, so human, that sound of laughter like a bottled sip of thunder.

I lean against the standing stone he leans against and I tear the wax off my own gourd with my teeth, spit it out into the bonfire like the local Tensshridians do. The human nods. I hold my drink up, inviting. “Cheers.”

“An English lass, is it?” He tips his own gourd at mine and they thunk together with a thick slosh. I can’t place his accent but I think he’s mocking me. He looks vaguely Indian.

“California. It’s… been awhile. You?”

“Singapore.”

“Heard it’s lovely.”

“Was.”

I nod. Most of the Bay Area was underwater, too, when I left.

“Almost as lovely as the sight of a human woman all the way out here,” he says.

So it’s like that. I remind myself I have a small array of firearms and a personal Force field and he must have seen my mood shift because he says, “I mean, you look like home. A man would, too, it’s just, a tiny added benefit. Doesn’t have to mean anything. Maybe you’re not even into men, doesn’t matter, I’m still glad to have two eyes with whites in them to look into.” He seems genuine.

My shoulder softens into the stone. A sigh, a swig, the sweet and buttery brew slips into me warm and welcome and while it never gets me sloshed the way it does the Hounds, it’s been known to turn my cheeks red, take the edge off. “What’s your name?” I ask.

“Vinay. You look like an Emily.”

I’m not an Emily. Emily was the waitress I obsessed over for two years in college who was never into girls even though she made out with me twice when she was drunk, and ended up with my ex-boyfriend. I shake my head and frown. “Janine. They call me Nine.” I nod back toward the small crowd by the gourd vendor, clacking scutes together in slow, traditional rhythms like a ritual of lazy, loud high-fives. It’s become so normal to me but now I see it through Vinay’s eyes, or maybe it’s all normal to him too now but he’s seeing it through mine.

My eyes linger on the yellow rings above us, the shadow of Ferocina cast against them by a red sun that set three rituals ago. I look back at Vinay.

He nods. “Hey, you ever been to Hong Kong?”

“Just the airport.”

“Ah. Nusantara?”

I shake my head and try, “San Francisco?”

“Nah,” he says. “New York a couple times.”

“Never made it there.”

He takes a swig and gives up on geography. “What kind of work did you do?”

“Same thing I’m doing now. Ecology. You?”

“Hired assassin.”

I feel the weight of my weapons. The three under my jacket, the one on my thigh, the two in my sleeve, the four in my boots and the one…

He’s joking. “Nah, I was a venture capitalist. But I had you there for a second.” Flash of teeth, tip of gourd.

I sigh. I should get back to my shipmates, back to our ship, back to the blockade, back to research station on the other side. I take a long oily drink.

“Hey, you ever go to church? Temple? Circle?” he asks.

“Nope. Never messed with religion.” I’m done here. I shift my weight away from the stone.

“Hey, Janine. Hold on.”

I hope he’s not reaching for my arm. He is. There’s a laser spitter in my hand before he can blink.

“Damn. Sorry.” He pulls away, from me, from the stone, from whatever he thought this was, and I step back, tracking him with the spitter.

“I never had that much in common with other humans. Sorry Vinay.” I turn back toward the sound of clacking scutes.

His voice follows me. “Hey! You remember the moon?”

Lots of worlds have moons. Ferocina had one, once. Before the rings.

I close my eyes just for a moment and remember ours.

People thought it was white but it was actually gray, dark gray, it just looked bright against the night sky when the sun was shining on it. It had seas, not real seas, just gray blotches that all made a sort of dragon shape when it was full.

And I remember it crescent and red at the top of the hills on a weekend up in Calistoga, and I remember it up close, in the livestream, when the astronauts flew by the day I turned thirteen.

Always the same side facing us, tidally locked, sometimes slipping through thin high clouds, light reflected from the sun to make a rainbow ring on cold nights against the ice high, high up in the atmosphere.

I glance back at Vinay. “Yeah.”

“When it was all getting real bad back there, I used to look for the moon, you know up in the sky — well obviously it was up in the sky. That’s dumb. But it…” He shakes his head, makes a futile gesture with his gourd. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say, sorry.”

I know exactly what he’s trying to say. “I did the same.” I smile and he smiles back, and I wonder if my smile looks as sad as his. “See you ‘round, Earthling.”