#redcurrants

Refuge

- written by Ava Kelly; photo by Fie

“Wha—how many did you steal?” Yv asks as Enk rushes to arrange the orbs in a neat layer for safe transport, all four upper limbs trembling with exhaustion and fear and critical urgency.

“As many as I could carry,” Enk says just as one slides off the tray, taking with it all six of xir hearts, but only for a fraction of a moment because Yv’s deft tendrils catch it and return it to its place. Yv’s amorphous shapes support Enk as well, as xir bones mush into cartilage, a vestigial response to sudden fright. “Most are intact, some got damaged, but they’ll heal by the time we get there,” Enk reports, just to focus on something else for a moment, on their mission.

“And where exactly is… there?” Yv asks, but nonetheless plunges a tentacle into the piloting port above their heads—well, above Enk’s head, because Yv doesn’t have one, not exactly—and the ship immediately rumbles as they push through the atmosphere, against wind and heavy air and the oppressive radiation of the planetary shield.

“I found a suitable place,” Enk says while punching the coordinates into the navigation terminal, “a planet where the hatched do not exist solely to serve the birthed, as if coming out of a warm body is somehow superior to emerging from a shell.”

~

They’re deep into open space, a vast distance between them and their pursuers, when Enk, pliant and warm in Yv’s grasp as they keep watch over the red glimmering ovules, whispers, “Do you ever fear me?”

“I used to, back when we were children and I was given to you,” Yv admits, because they’ve promised to be truthful with each other, “but not for a long time since. My most precious memory is of you hiding me beneath your clothes when the conservators came to take me away because I was too old to serve as a toy, and after, of you letting me live as your skin for years, keeping me safe from reassignment.”

Yv solidifies enough to return Enk’s embrace, and adds a reassurance and an oath: “Never doubt, you are my refuge, just as we’ll both be for them.”

—

[Image description: A layer of redcurrant berries, resting on a dark surface, fills out the entire field of the picture and goes on beyond.]

—