Claddagh

“The space is wide, there between the stars. And I have no way, with no wings to fly. But give me a ship that can carry two, and I will go, my love to find.”

- from “All Space is Wide”, traditional song

The days flew by. The daily and weekly routines set into place as the Iron Dreams worked a month long route between Emerri and one of the relatively "nearby" mining colonies around an otherwise deserted star. Hauling metals and other resources from mining operations was one of the most tedious jobs a ship could land a contract for, but it was also one of the most stable routes. Interplanetary commerce was relatively unstable, new colony setup was too infrequent to be a reliable source of income, and the Iron Dreams wasn't equipped very well for passenger travel, so the Dreams ended up being a mining hauler most of the time.

It was midyear, the high holiday of the summer, according to the Emerri calendar, and it was marking the last week of Yan and Sylva's stay on the Dreams, before they were to head back to start their apprenticeships. Yan and Sylva were sitting on the front pew in the Dreams' small shrine. It was a room capable of seating about fifty people, if they squeezed.

Sylva was dressed in one of the borrowed robes that she had been using all summer while she acted as cantor for worship on the Dreams. There were different robes for different occasions, but the ship had a full set. If she took up a permanent cantor position somewhere else Sylva would probably end up with her own set, but since she hadn't come on the ship expecting to be leading worship, she was making do with the too long borrowed ones. They were nothing overly fancy, but they were voluminous and white with embroidered red trim. These were the robes for the midyear holiday; there were different colors for every season and high holiday.

Sylva had the music book on her lap, and was humming out the songs for the upcoming worship. Yan was leaning her head on Sylva's shoulder and looking at the book halfheartedly.

"You'll do great," Yan said. "There's only like, two cantos that are different from the regular worship, and you've been doing fine at those."

"Three," Sylva said. "And that means three places for it to go wrong."

"Even if you mess up, no one will notice. It's not like anybody else knows all the songs for all the high holidays," Yan said.

"That is really a small comfort. I’ll still care that I messed up. It’s important." Sylva returned to her humming.

Yan looked at her phone to check the time. She was dressed in her long cassock and short red cape; it was the nicest outfit she had, and since it was the holiday she might as well dress nicely.

"We should probably get going soon, the dining hall is a little ways from here."

"I know where the dining hall is," Sylva muttered. "I'd prefer to just hold three smaller services here rather than one big one there."

"It's a community bonding thing, and even three services probably wouldn't fit everyone in here, since everyone likes to come to the holidays."

"Yeah. I guess." Sylva slapped the book shut. Yan removed her head from Sylva's shoulder.

"Ready to head out?" Yan asked.

"Yeah. Still nervous, but I don't want to make everyone wait." The pair stood up, with Sylva tucking the book under her arm. They began walking out of the chapel and down the eerily deserted hallways.

"Is there a stand in there for you to use, or will I have to hold this the whole time?" Sylva asked.

"I have no idea," Yan admitted. "There isn't usually one over near the windows, which is where you'll be standing, but maybe there's one that they bring out for special occasions?"

"What does your regular cantor do when you have service in there?" Sylva asked.

"Memorize it, I think."

"That's just great."

"Look, worst comes to worst, just-" Yan used the power to slip the book out from underneath Sylva's arm and levitate it in front of her.

"That feels like cheating," Sylva said. Yan rolled her eyes.

"No it isn't. If we were in the no grav section, you'd just float it- this isn't any different."

"I still just feel awkward using the power outside of the Academy. It feels... I don't know, rude?" Sylva said.

"I do party tricks all the time, the kids love it," Yan said.

"No they don't, they just laugh at how silly you are."

"You're right that kids raised on a ship probably don't think that floating objects are that impressive, come to think of it. But I do other tricks too,” Yan said.

"If you find doing party tricks fun or not is beside the point," Sylva said. She was nervously running her hand over the back of her neck. Luckily her mass of reddish curls was tightly braided on top of her head, so she wasn't tangling it up any.

"It will be ok," Yan said again.

The pair reached the entrance to the dining hall. They found Pellon standing outside. He was dressed in his best clothes, appropriate for the holiday, and he was holding two small lights, with another sitting at his feet. They looked like the moveable lights that were used to illuminate areas in the ship where no standard lighting had been set up, like empty cargo bays, or areas under construction.

"Glad you made it on time," Pellon said. "Thank you again for being the cantor for our services, Sylva, the whole ship really appreciates it."

"You're welcome. I've had a good time, and I'll be sad to be done at the end of this week," Sylva said. "Hopefully I don't wreck midyear, though."

"You'll do fine," Yan and Pellon managed to say at the exact same moment. They both laughed.

"Here's some lamps for you," Pellon said, handing them each one of the lights he was holding. He picked up his own from off the floor. "You ready to go in?"

"Yeah," Sylva said, lighting the lamp.

"Hold on, let me slide in there before you process in," Yan said. She nudged Sylva's shoulder in a friendly gesture, then quickly dashed into the dining hall, shutting the door behind her.

The lights in the room were dimmed, and the room was full. Aside from the barest of skeleton crews in essential positions aboard the ship, the entire ship's complement was in the dining hall. The tables had been stored against the walls and everyone was standing. Yan jostled through the crowd to find a space near the front, where she had a decent view of the big bay windows where Sylva would stand. The crowd was quiet— a few people were whispering to each other, some children were giggling and playing quietly in the back, but there was the usual hush of anticipation that accompanied the high holidays.

Suddenly, the dimmed lights completely shut off. Aside from the standard set of emergency lighting and the glow from the stars outside, the room was dark. A few of the kids let out quiet laughs or shrieks of surprise, but all the whispering stopped.

A long moment later, Pellon's voice rang out from the back of the crowd. It was traditional for the leader of the community, in this case the captain, to introduce the ceremony on the high holidays.

"It is midyear. The night has come. The long night is coming. We are here: strangers and friends, kin and kind. Together we bring our lights into the coming darkness," Pellon called out.

Sylva began to sing.

"Glory to God, creator of the light. Glory to God, who brought forth the darkness. All good things come from the Lord."

She processed in. As she walked in, holding up her light, everyone she passed lit the lamps that they were holding, and the light flowed out in chains between people's hands. Yan noted with a slight smile that Sylva, finding it too hard to juggle lamps and book, had decided to take her advice on how to hold the text.

The service was beautiful. Sylva did lose her place on one line in the third canto, but quickly recovered from the mistake and continued on.

There were conflicting feelings battling in Yan as she sang along with the rest of her extended family in the response sections. The feeling of unity and closeness that came from being there, everyone participating, with no judgement towards the individuals in the group, just the warmth of the community, was wonderful. It was rare that Yan's family life felt so close to the rest of her life: her time spent at the Academy and her future. The sound of Sylva's voice and the feeling of her presence could have almost made Yan believe that her family life was somehow compatible with her life off of the Iron Dreams. It wasn't, or it didn't feel like it was most of the time.

And yet. The missing feeling of the group presence at the Academy weighed on Yan. With so many sensitives gathered in one place, one could think and sing in such close concert with other people in the group meditation. That feeling of utter completeness and devotion was gone. First Sandreas's warning from more than a month ago began to haunt her. Yan thought she might never be able to have that again; as soon as she learned anything important, the group mind could overwhelm her and let pieces of knowledge escape. Maybe this feeling, around her family, and around Sylva, was the best that she was going to get from here on.

Yan tried to put all of that out of her mind as she focused on the important message of the holiday. Midyear was a holiday fundamentally about change, which didn't help Yan avoid the thoughts. If they had been on a planet, the year would have started shifting from the warm summer months and the lengthening days to the shorter, more turbulent, darker, and colder months ahead. The holiday was to thank God for the good things that had come during the first half of the year, and to accept and persevere through the things that would be coming in the future. On most planets, it was a holiday that was loosely harvest related, but that wasn't so much of a thing on ships.

As a child, growing up on a ship where the weather (really, climate controls) were the same every day and there were no external markers to mark the seasons, the messages about longer nights and changing seasons had confused Yan, or bored her. Midyear merely meant that she would get to eat a lot, and worship would be in the dining hall with everyone, instead of just in the chapel whenever her mother (and later uncle) felt like going. When she began attending the Academy, midyear marked the point where her summers aboard the Iron Dreams were partly over.

The worship began to come to its end. The last canto was not a midyear specific one, and it was one that had no call and response like most of the others. It was a song that was sung at the end of every worship, so it was very practiced and familiar. Everyone raised their voices together.

"God of all creation

we praise and worship your name.

Keep us safe in your protection

and bless us through our days.

The joy of your works sustains us.

The joys of our faith sustains us.

Let us come to know

Your power and mercy,

Your empire and glory,

in this life and the life eternal."

As the worship ended on the last few swelling notes, Sylva processed out. She was followed by Pellon, and the rest of the crowd trailed out in a stream behind him. Pressing through the crowd, Yan made her way towards where Sylva was standing against the wall. She and Pellon were greeting people as they headed out, but she waved Yan over to stand next to her as the crowd of people flowed by.

After the crowd had mostly thinned, Yan was finally able to talk to Sylva.

"You did a good job," Yan said. "Best midyear I've had all year."

Sylva rolled her eyes. "Thanks. I messed up the third canto a little bit, though."

"Nobody noticed," Yan said.

"I certainly didn't hear anything amiss," Pellon agreed. "I think you did a wonderful job. More than paid for your travel this summer."

"Thanks," Sylva said. Though Sylva had been doing shifts in the greenhouse and kitchen, it was true that her singing the worship had been her largest contribution on the ship.

"I know you're heading out as soon as we make it back to Byforest Station, so if I don't see you again Sylva, I did want to give you this token of our appreciation for singing midyear for us. It would have been a shame not to have anyone." Pellon reached into his pocket and pulled out a small wooden box, which he handed to Sylva. "This is from the crew and I, though I'll admit I consulted Yan about what you would like."

Sylva accepted the box. "Thank you!"

Yan smiled as she opened it. Though she hadn't put anything into the gift other than a suggestion of what Sylva would like, it was still quite exciting to watch her open it.

Sylva opened the box. Inside was a medium sized cloak pin, a bright gold, with an elaborate motif of clasped hands on the ring. Sylva immediately took it out to inspect it.

"The metal came out of the shipment we're hauling, and I had Juahin make it in our parts forge. I'm told that these are all the rage among Academy grads," Pellon said.

"It's really beautiful, thank you so much!" Sylva unexpectedly reached out and hugged Pellon, who awkwardly patted her head.

"You're welcome. If you're ever travelling somewhere the Iron Dreams will be, Sylva, you're always welcome to stop by. Any friend of Yan's is a friend of ours." Pellon extracted himself from Sylva's grip.

"I hope to get the chance to take you up on that offer, someday," Sylva said.

"Please do," Pellon said, then ran a hand over his head. "Well, I'm off to bed. See you for your shift tomorrow, Yan?"

"Absolutely. Goodnight," Yan said.

"Goodnight Yan, Sylva." Pellon nodded at the both of them before heading off down the corridor.

Sylva examined the pin closely. "It is really beautiful, thank you for helping pick it out."

"Of course. I know what you want better than you do," Yan said.

"You wish," Sylva replied. "Every time I tell you to bring me a snack from the dining hall you bring me the grossest choice."

"Ah, but I do that on purpose to stop you from being lazy," Yan said, and Sylva shoved her shoulder a little harder than was strictly necessary. "I don’t think it’s working, though."

"Are we stopping back at the shrine so you can change, or are we just heading back to my room?" Yan asked.

"Let's get these robes back to the shrine. I really don't want to accidentally bring them home with me, or forget them in your room when we leave."

"Good plan." The two girls headed out back towards the shrine, where Sylva deposited book and robes and changed back into her normal clothes. At least, they were the normal clothes that most wore on the ship: a borrowed uniform.

They made their way back to Yan's room in companionable silence. Once they arrived, they kicked off their shoes and just relaxed in the microgravity, with the lights on low.

"So, what do you want to do with the rest of the night? We've got a little while before we absolutely have to go to bed," Yan said.

"I don't know, got any movies we should watch?" Sylva asked.

"You know I always have a movie to watch. What are you in the mood for?" Yan was something of a movie buff, having spent a significant amount of childhood with unfettered access to the Iron Dreams' media library and excessive free time due to having no family obligations.

Eventually, they settled on a Terlin romantic comedy, where a hapless restaurant owner kept accidentally intercepting love notes intended for one of her employees, which caused a predictable slew of comedy and light tension as the owner tried ever more desperate attempts to deliver the notes to their intended recipient without seeming like she was the one placing them. Sylva, from constantly practicing with anyone who would talk with her, had picked up enough basic Terlin that she only relied on the subtitles a medium amount.

It was a good movie, and as its ninety minutes wrapped up, Yan and Sylva floated in the dark and watched the credits scroll past.

"Hey Yan?" Sylva asked after a minute.

"Yeah?"

"You know I love you, right?"

"I love you too," Yan said. She rolled over to look at Sylva. "You're the best friend I've ever had."

"No, like," Sylva laughed in a choked kind of way, "Love, love."

"Oh." Yan had no real response to that. "I didn't know."

"Sorry," Sylva said. She was staring up away from Yan.

"God, don't apologize," Yan said hurriedly. She tried to sound casual, but this was a somewhat shocking revelation.  "It's ok, I'm just an idiot."

"You’re not,” Sylva started. “I didn’t...I sound like a fourteen year old," Sylva muttered unhappily. Yan chose not to respond to that comment, not because it wasn’t weird, but because she didn’t have anything productive to say.

"Why didn't you tell me before?" Yan asked. Buried in that question was 'how long have you felt this way?', but Yan couldn't quite get those words out.

"I thought it would be too much of a mess," Sylva said. "I liked things too much, just, the way we were? Are?”

“Did you think I would be mad or something?” Yan asked.

“No!” Sylva said defensively. “I just… didn’t want to wreck everything. I don’t want to wreck everything.”

"Then why are you telling me now?"

"Because everything's changing, and we're both going to go away, and maybe we'll never even see eachother again! And I couldn't live with not..." Sylva began in a frantic tone, then trailed off.

"You idiot. Of course we're going to see each other." Yan paused, then exclaimed, "Fuck, Sylva, if you had told me this two months ago I would have never taken my stupid apprenticeship!"

There was silence for a moment, then Sylva let out another one of those strangled half laugh half sob sounds.

"Sorry, sorry," Yan said. She reached out one long leg to gently push off the wall and float herself closer to Sylva. They bumped together gently, and Yan awkwardly wrapped her arms around the shorter girl. The hug was friendly and comforting. It was the same gesture that Yan had done to Sylva uncounted times in the past, but what was it now?

"I wasn't trying to yell at you, I'm not mad, it's just a lot to take in." Yan said.

Sylva turned and buried her face in Yan's shoulder, leaving a bit of a damp spot. "This sucks," she said, voice muffled.

"No it doesn't." Yan said.

Sylva laughed, a real laugh, this time. "Yeah it kinda does."

"It's ok anyway," Yan said. "It's fine."

Despite saying this, Yan was somewhat dazed. There was not a single thing in her life that she could point to as stable, aside from God, she guessed. This was... a nice change, maybe, but it was still more than she could really take in.

The question remained, though, what would happen next. This was unlike so many other things, where Yan felt more like she was carried along by the mechanisms that governed how people behave. She went to school because that was what people did; she took an apprenticeship because that is the next stage after graduating. Regardless of her feelings toward it, Yan would show up for the first days of her apprenticeship, because that was what was expected of her. Here, though, with Sylva, this was personal.

It was as if she had lost the comforting old rules of the relationship they had. The old framework: 'Sylva and I are friends because we find each other interesting and nice to be around. Friends behave in these ways towards each other. If we behave in these ways we will stay friends' was all gone. Now Sylva had disrupted the foundation that Yan stood on, and apparently she had been wanting to do that for a long time. If the old thing is broken, will the new thing be better?

Sylva was here, asking Yan to make a choice about how to behave, and it felt like the first choice Yan had ever really made.

The pair were drifting in silence in the dark, with Yan still loosely hugging Sylva. The credits of the movie had ended, and the illumination from the screen and electronics cast dim colors and heavy shadows on everything.

"Sylva," Yan started, "I don't... I don't really know what to say or how to feel right now. Maybe this is a good thing, maybe, I don't know... I don't want to do anything that would hurt you, and maybe it's too late for that-"

"You wouldn't do anything to hurt me," Sylva protested.

"No, I just mean, like, maybe the damage was already done by me not noticing, or me not loving you first, I don't know— that probably hurt, and it probably hurt that I didn't see that you were hurting."

"Yan, that's not... It's not important," Sylva said.

"I know it's not. I'm just saying, or trying to say— I don't know how to behave. I don't know what you want to hear from me right now, and I don't know what you want me to do this week, next week, the future, any of it."

Sylva gave a halfhearted laugh. "That's probably made more difficult considering your conception of time is 'right this second', 'two weeks from now', and 'the entire future'. You don't always have to have your whole life right there."

"I know," Yan said. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I do— I do love you. You're the person I like to spend all my time with, and I want to do things that will make you happy, and you make me happy just to be around you— and maybe that's not what love is because it's how I've felt for a long time? Or maybe it is and I'm just dumb and oblivious or whatever, but-"

Sylva wormed her hand up out between Yan's arms and put it gently over Yan's mouth.

"Stop talking, you're making yourself sound sappier than me," Sylva said.

Yan licked Sylva's hand. The tension in the room was broken immediately.

"You are so nasty," Sylva complained. She squirmed away from Yan, an action which sent both of them drifting towards opposite walls of the room. "I'm going to wash my hands and go to bed."

"But, Sylva," Yan called after her jokingly, "Didn't you just get finished saying how much you wanted to kiss me?"

"Yeah, and I'm beginning to regret it." Yan heard the faucet go off in the bathroom. "Spit belongs in one place, and that place is not on my hands, thank you very much."

Yan cackled. "Maybe someday you'll learn your lesson about putting your hands over my mouth."

"Maybe someday you'll learn your lesson about not saying ridiculous things," Sylva called back.

"Hey, I'm not the one suffering here. If you want me to learn a lesson you'll have to find a better way of teaching it."

Yan could hear that Sylva was brushing her teeth in the bathroom and generally getting ready for bed. Yan decided that was an excellent course of action and changed into her pajamas. When Sylva exited the bathroom, Yan went in and did her usual nightly routine.

When she came back out, she found Sylva already ready for bed and tucked in her sleeping bag. Yan's sleeping bag was set up near the door and Sylva's was attached to the opposite wall.

"Goodnight," Yan said with a yawn as she drifted towards her own sleeping bag.

"Night," Sylva agreed, already having closed her eyes.

The room was already dark, so Yan didn't even have to turn off the lights. She struggled for a minute with the fastener of her sleeping bag, but then slid inside. It was warm, and comfortable, and she could hear Sylva breathing. It was nice.

As quietly as possible, barely breathing the words, Yan whispered her nighttime prayer.

"Lord, all creation comes from you and returns to its source at the determined time. Let the days flow like an untroubled river to the sea, so that from the rising of the stars to their setting we can know the beauty of your creation and the abundance of life."