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“Love Like Echoed Fire” by J.S. Hawthorne
Kala Theouis was travelling to the archaeological discovery of a lifetime when her starship was shot down by an unknown force. Now, marooned on a desert planet with only her dwindling supplies and the memory of her wife to keep her going, she must find a way to escape and make her way back to the one she loves.
Welcome to Pride Month.
Today’s story is “Love Like Echoed Fire” by J.S. Hawthorne, whose most recent work can be found in “In the Light of the Dawn” and soon in “The Heavens Within our Grasp,” by the Furry Historical Fiction Society. She can most easily be found on Mastodon, where she likes to talk about writing.
Read for you by Rob MacWolf — werewolf hitchhiker.
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https://thevoice.dog/episode/love-like-echoed-fire-by-js-hawthorne
Transcript
You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.
Speaker:Welcome, friends of every shape,
Speaker:ability, gender, and species
Speaker:to Pride Month. This is Rob MacWolf, your fellow traveler,
Speaker:and Today’s story is
Speaker:“Love Like Echoed Fire”
Speaker:by J.S. Hawthorne, whose most recent work can be found in
Speaker:“In the Light of the Dawn”
Speaker:and soon in “The Heavens Within our Grasp,”
Speaker:by the Furry Historical Fiction Society.
Speaker:She can most easily be found on Mastodon, where she
Speaker:likes to talk about writing.
Speaker:Inevitably, every year, even if we are fortunate enough not to have to see it, there will come the question - ‘but
Speaker:why do you need a pride month?’
Speaker:Assuming this is not asked in bad faith, which is very generous of us,
Speaker:the short answer is:
Speaker:because without love,
Speaker:without pride, without pride in our love,
Speaker:we could not have survived.
Speaker:There are as many long answers are there are stars in the sky,
Speaker:but for one long answer,
Speaker:Please enjoy “Love Like Echoed Fire”
Speaker:by J.S. Hawthorne I groan as I roll over,
Speaker:confused for a moment by the rocky ground beneath my back
Speaker:instead of my comfortable cot mattress.
Speaker:You’re not there,
Speaker:that’s not uncommon,
Speaker:but that doesn’t make it right.
Speaker:The sky is too bright,
Speaker:too. Instead of the cool pearly light of a computerized glow-panel, a blazing orange-red ball hangs overhead.
Speaker:That wakes me up.
Speaker:It has been close to a decade since I’ve been on a planet with a natural sun,
Speaker:and I don’t believe I’ve ever been anywhere with a sun that angry.
Speaker:Or hot. I promise you, my love, I know I complained about the climate control on our last shore leave together, but I will never do that again.
Speaker:Assuming I make it off this desolate rock, you have my word
Speaker:that you shall get to set the temperature as low as you want.
Speaker:Lower even—let’s turn our cabin into an ice cap and keep each other warm.
Speaker:My internal chronometer tells me it is approximately
Speaker:1730 hours universal time,
Speaker:calendar date 323.
Speaker:I’m missing a good day, at least, of time, so I have to assume I was unconscious.
Speaker:There’s no connection to the ship’s computer, so I also have to assume that there is no ship.
Speaker:I know you keep telling me that these upgrades are no good for me and you can’t imagine adding anything to that wonderful brain of yours,
Speaker:but my implants are giving me all sorts of useful information.
Speaker:For example, the flashing red light hovering in my vision
Speaker:means my left arm is broken.
Speaker:The rest of me seems to be intact,
Speaker:or at least I’m not getting any alerts from my sensors and I don’t feel any pain,
Speaker:except maybe a slight bruise where I landed on my tail.
Speaker:I must say, dearest, I have often envied that luxuriously thick skunk tail of yours,
Speaker:and lamented my own little cotton ball, but us bunnies do have one advantage there.
Speaker:At least there’s not a meter of tail to get trapped under wreckage.
Speaker:If you were here,
Speaker:you would tell me I’ve put off
Speaker:getting up long enough, I think.
Speaker:My left arm is three kilograms of useless weight hanging from my shoulder and I don’t look at it.
Speaker:Instead, I think about that vacation we took on that starliner a
Speaker:few years back. Do you remember, my love?
Speaker:It was the first time you had seen the replacement,
Speaker:and you had laughed and told me I wasn’t allowed to complain about my arm falling asleep when you laid on it.
Speaker:Remember how you used to tinker with it when it wasn’t working well?
Speaker:Whenever the sensory connections went screwy you’d have me lean back and
Speaker:close my eyes and you’d start playing with the connections
Speaker:until you had it just right.
Speaker:No one else could ever get it adjusted just right,
Speaker:not even the mechanics who installed it in the first place.
Speaker:Oh, Arako, my Arako, my beautiful priestess. If I make it out of this, I will never complain about your body against mine again.
Speaker:No communication,
Speaker:no sensors, no arm, no Arako. I don’t think I have ever believed in the hell your religion preaches, my love, but if I did I should imagine it was very like this.
Speaker:Well, perhaps not so hot,
Speaker:far from the warmth of the Sacred Flame.
Speaker:I climb to the lip of the narrow crater I awoke in,
Speaker:and see the remnants of my escape pod, scattered in a line over a kilometer long.
Speaker:I marvel that enough of the pod survived to keep me alive.
Speaker:Much of it is still smoking from either the crash or the atmospheric entry.
Speaker:The landscape itself is a burned desert of cracked rock broken only by the occasional dim chasm
Speaker:or scrubby and dead-looking plant.
Speaker:In the distance is a mesa,
Speaker:still smoking where my escape pod must have clipped it on re-entry,
Speaker:but that is all I can see to the horizon in any direction.
Speaker:My last memory before waking up is travelling through superluminal space,
Speaker:myself and another professor, on our way to a site on what the Republic records state is a world
Speaker:that has no record of population.
Speaker:An exciting find, on the edge between the Republic and your Theocracy,
Speaker:that might be evidence for my progenitor theory.
Speaker:I check to see what my visual extensions recorded
Speaker:—maybe some visual data was noted before I, apparently, blacked out.
Speaker:I’m shocked to find I saved a video
Speaker:to my cerebral extension without
Speaker:any memory of doing so.
Speaker:I access the video and
Speaker:find myself in two places at once:
Speaker:on the face of a burning planet and in the comfortable weightlessness of the little freighter I rented.
Speaker:I’m in the central area with the professor,
Speaker:a lanky squirrel with auburn hair
Speaker:by the name of Calenum.
Speaker:We’re examining a survey map of our destination, engrossed in a conversation about
Speaker:geology and geography,
Speaker:trying to pinpoint a place to start.
Speaker:There’s a flash of light outside of the ship,
Speaker:reflected in the console to which I’ve taped your picture.
Speaker:Neither Calenum nor the past version of myself notice it, we’re too engaged in our conversation,
Speaker:not expecting an attack in the great lanes.
Speaker:No one would dare.
Speaker:There is a second flash as the projectile hits the ship, and then all
Speaker:is chaos. Calenum grabs a handful of maps and papers, while I grab the portable computer even as the sudden wind of decompression begins to blow anything not secured down out of what is now
Speaker:a gaping hole in our hull.
Speaker:Your picture is the last thing I grab, and then I’m diving into an escape pod.
Speaker:I launch away from the ship and, through one of the portholes, see the rented freighter break up
Speaker:even as a dozen more projectiles strike it.
Speaker:Another escape pod is launching in the
Speaker:opposite direction,
Speaker:hopefully carrying Cal to safety.
Speaker:There’s a sudden jump
Speaker:and then the video ends.
Speaker:I find your picture in the wreckage, heavily scratched, one of its sides torn.
Speaker:I tuck it carefully
Speaker:into a pocket of my jumpsuit.
Speaker:I wish you were here with me, my love.
Speaker:I can imagine your stern expression, the irritated twitch of your tail as you survey the desolation with me. I can see
Speaker:the dim glow of your replaced eye, just a shade paler than the other, original, one.
Speaker:I am sorry about that, by the way. I know you don’t blame me,
Speaker:but if I had just been a hair quicker, maybe I could have prevented it.
Speaker:That’s neither here nor there, I suppose.
Speaker:Much like you. I can imagine your voice, imagine the gentle, musical inflection of your voice, the neat,
Speaker:clipped vowels, the subtle way you trill your Rs.
Speaker:“Quite a mess you’ve found yourself in, bunny.”
Speaker:I love your voice, Arako. I love you.
Speaker:I speak to the you I’ve imagined, because I don’t have anyone else to speak to,
Speaker:and I don’t know if I will survive this.
Speaker:“I’ve been in worse. Remember that time we got together on Vestis and
Speaker:got into a brawl with those pirates?”
Speaker:If you were here, you would chuckle
Speaker:and shake your head and tell me, yes, you remember.
Speaker:You’d have a little quip,
Speaker:a sharp comment about how it was my fault
Speaker:—wittier than that, you were always the wittier of us
Speaker:—but you’d share that grin that you only ever shared with me and that would take the sting out of your words.
Speaker:I would fall in love with you all over again.
Speaker:But you’re not here
Speaker:and you’re the wittier of us and I don’t have a sharp little comment and a grin to take the sting out.
Speaker:I only have the burning, angry sun and the desert full of dead plants.
Speaker:“What do you think?”
Speaker:I ask the you I have imagined.
Speaker:“Trouble,” is what you’d reply,
Speaker:“Best work on surviving, I think.”
Speaker:You would look me in the eyes carefully, then reach out and take my paw in yours.
Speaker:Your imaginary paw has no weight, no warmth, no realness to make me forget the danger I’m in.
Speaker:“Make sure you come back to me, Kala.
Speaker:Do what you have to, whatever it takes,
Speaker:but let me see your face again.
Speaker:Let me make you laugh with my sarcasm, let me complain about the temperature settings and tell you not to pick fights
Speaker:with pirates twice your weight.
Speaker:Let me hold your hand again and kiss your lips.
Speaker:Let me have the joy of sitting with you and listening to passersby
Speaker:take one look at us and say, ‘those
Speaker:women are so in love with each other we can taste it in the air.’”
Speaker:I do not imagine the tears, but they come anyway.
Speaker:Do you remember the war,
Speaker:dearest Arako? Not the big war, I mean, but the little one.
Speaker:Your empire and mine, vying for control of
Speaker:a handful of planets that
Speaker:probably never even noticed
Speaker:that they had become our battleground.
Speaker:Do you remember every communique you sent me having to be passed through three levels of intelligence before
Speaker:your government would permit it to be transmitted?
Speaker:I never told you—I was never allowed to tell you, at the time,
Speaker:and then it never really seemed so important to bring up
Speaker:—but each of your messages was delayed a week
Speaker:for Intelligence to dissect it for even the tiniest morsel of information,
Speaker:the slightest hint of any useable item to shift the war.
Speaker:I think about that war as I set about surveying the wreckage.
Speaker:I think about that separation as I dig the survival kit out from a chunk of hull
Speaker:thirty meters from the nearest edge of the crater.
Speaker:Is it wrong that I prayed for peace only
Speaker:so your messages would come faster, so I could hear your voice more often?
Speaker:So that strangers with green-bronze rank insignia on their collars would stop intruding on our love?
Speaker:I suppose that makes me selfish,
Speaker:but then you were always the giving one.
Speaker:“Don’t you have some handy piece of scripture about that?” I tease the you I have imagined,
Speaker:forgetting, or trying to forget, that I have only imagined you.
Speaker:But I don’t know the
Speaker:scriptures of the Holy Flame,
Speaker:I don’t know the Hearth Prayers. That is your purview, my Arako,
Speaker:and I cannot recite what I don’t know.
Speaker:I cannot forget that you are not
Speaker:here. Two days pass
Speaker:in the blink of an eye.
Speaker:I find nothing identifiable as food in this barren place, and the rations in the survival kit are nearly out.
Speaker:Water is scarce at best,
Speaker:and I’m forced to carefully ration the little bit I’m able to find.
Speaker:I spend my time huddling in my tent,
Speaker:staring out of the open flat at the line of debris.
Speaker:If you were here, you would tell me that I am dawdling again.
Speaker:“What do I do,” I ask the you I have imagined,
Speaker:“if I cannot escape this place?
Speaker:Even if I don’t starve, how can I live without you?”
Speaker:It’s an unfair question to ask a you that isn’t real,
Speaker:and it would have been an unfair question to ask you if you had been there with me.
Speaker:What can you say to something like that?
Speaker:What you would say, of course, is that I’m falling into my own head
Speaker:and to get to work so that I don’t have to find out.
Speaker:I smile as I imagine your voice, so crystal clear, that musical Theocracy accent taking the sharpness out of the imagined lecture you’re giving me.
Speaker:I take a deep breath
Speaker:and look at my left arm.
Speaker:I imagine your shock as you see what I see.
Speaker:The faux-leather weather covering is hanging off in tatters,
Speaker:revealing dark titanium and steel and
Speaker:shining chrome components.
Speaker:The sight turns my stomach,
Speaker:and I don’t think I will ever wear a covering again.
Speaker:Most of the hydraulics are broken open, and there are dark trails along the pistons and wires where the fluid escaped.
Speaker:Several wires are snapped,
Speaker:and there are dark scorches in places where live power must have passed from broken wire to metal.
Speaker:“That’s not good,” I say aloud.
Speaker:I imagine you nodding in agreement, that serious face you get when you are puzzling something out.
Speaker:Have I ever told you that I love the way your eyebrows bunch up together at the bridge of your nose when you’re focused on something?
Speaker:I have no tools to fix my arm and even if I did,
Speaker:I would need a full workshop to replace the lost hydraulic fluid, to repair the damage and rewire the thing.
Speaker:All I can do is yank the leather cover off completely and use it like a glove
Speaker:as I find the power converter and switch it off. At least
Speaker:now it won’t spark,
Speaker:and I won’t starve when the battery gives out and it begins to use up my own bioelectricity.
Speaker:I still have a broken hunk of metal hanging down from my shoulder, though.
Speaker:“If you have any advice,”
Speaker:I ask the figment of you,
Speaker:“now would be a good time to share it.”
Speaker:Of course you can’t have advice for me, you’re something I’ve dreamed up because I’m alone on a desert planet devoid of life.
Speaker:If you were here,
Speaker:you’d ask me if I knew the parable of saint so-and-so, I’m sure. And I wouldn’t, obviously, so you’d patiently tell me a story
Speaker:about a devout adherent of the Sacred Flame.
Speaker:“Do you know the story of Saint No-Name?”
Speaker:I pretend you ask me. I don’t, because they’re not real, so I make it up.
Speaker:“Saint No-Name was a fisher
Speaker:on an island village.
Speaker:One day, there was a terrible storm which destroyed the village’s boats and their rods,
Speaker:leaving them without the ability to fish.
Speaker:They could rebuild, of course, but that would take many long months of hard work,
Speaker:and they would have little food to sustain them in the meantime.
Speaker:The village elders argued for days over what to do.
Speaker:“While they argued, Saint No-Name gathered up all of the broken nets from the storm
Speaker:and he tied them together,
Speaker:using their neighbors’ old rags and clothes to fill in the space in the net.
Speaker:They then climbed to the tallest mountain on their island and unfurled it,
Speaker:the clothes spelling out a message of help.
Speaker:While others dithered over how to survive on their own,
Speaker:Saint No-Name summoned aid from their island’s neighbors,
Speaker:who came to help replace the equipment destroyed
Speaker:and share in their own bounty.”
Speaker:Maybe you had told me that story before, my Arako,
Speaker:or something like it.
Speaker:I’m sure there’s more to it
Speaker:—it doesn’t seem to me to be all that special to think to make one working net out of two broken ones
Speaker:—but you planted that seed in my brain.
Speaker:“A lovely story,” I would tell you,
Speaker:though my concentration is still on my useless arm.
Speaker:There are some useful components in there, if I can figure out a way to get to them,
Speaker:not to mention the battery pack.
Speaker:I can at least take the thing off,
Speaker:though I don’t have a way to put it back without a maintenance bay.
Speaker:“A lovely story, but I don’t see much fish here, do you?”
Speaker:I can hear the sigh you’d give me.
Speaker:“It’s a parable, Kalan,”
Speaker:you would say, using that strange diminutive of my name that you theocracy types are so fond of.
Speaker:“It’s not meant to be literal,
Speaker:it’s meant to instruct.”
Speaker:“And the lesson here is that bureaucracy kills,
Speaker:obviously.” I can’t help but smile.
Speaker:Even a hundred light years away and you still brighten my day.
Speaker:“No,” I imagine you saying.
Speaker:And I realize what you’re trying to impart to me
Speaker:without needing to pretend you telling me.
Speaker:My arm has an emergency release, which I hit. There’s
Speaker:a soft hiss, a strange crawling sensation as the connections between my flesh-and-blood parts
Speaker:and the mechanics are severed,
Speaker:and then it falls to the cracked and dusty ground.
Speaker:I feel lopsided,
Speaker:but at least the warning sensor in my HUD has stopped flashing.
Speaker:What did you call it, when I explained to you all of the various upgrades and enhancements they had built into my new arm?
Speaker:“A useless contrivance designed to transform a perfectly well designed limb
Speaker:into a multi-tool knife,”
Speaker:I believe? Do you remember teasing me about having a corkscrew installed when we couldn’t get the wine open?
Speaker:I’ll make sure to have one added when I get this replaced.
Speaker:What do I do, my love?
Speaker:I have no tools, no way to undo the delicate connections of the mechanical limb in my lap.
Speaker:I fumble with the wires, disconnecting a few,
Speaker:pulling some of the broken hydraulics out,
Speaker:but all it gives me is a headache and a pile of scrap.
Speaker:The power source I can unplug, but then what?
Speaker:The sensors and controller are
Speaker:carefully sealed in the space between the metallic radius and ulna,
Speaker:pivoting with the bones and carefully out of the way.
Speaker:Even if I could get at the components, then what?
Speaker:You are the mechanical genius, my heart. That’s not my talent.
Speaker:I give up on the controller box and scan the upper arm,
Speaker:where less delicate, and hopefully more accessible, electronics lie.
Speaker:There is something between the pistons,
Speaker:tiny and almost invisible in the harsh light of the alien suns.
Speaker:It is quite deep in the arm,
Speaker:tucked into the bundle of wires that wrap around the titanium rod that functions as a humerus.
Speaker:It takes some effort to pull it free.
Speaker:My dearest Arako,
Speaker:I hope you are able to fully imagine the bafflement on my muzzle
Speaker:as I unwrap the note you left, revealing a delicate multitool.
Speaker:I wish you had been here to see it.
Speaker:I hope you realize you’re going to get an earful from me
Speaker:about leaving me gifts
Speaker:inside of my body. I read the note, thrilling at your familiar handwriting and its delicate, beautiful swoops and swirls,
Speaker:the unnecessary little adornments you put on the letters.
Speaker:Even the little hesitations,
Speaker:the soft grapheme stutter as you remember how to draw the unfamiliar Republic characters even as you write to me. “Ach
Speaker:-hKalan,” the note reads,
Speaker:“I know you will be furious with me when you find this,
Speaker:but I swear it is for a good reason.
Speaker:It was easier to tuck this here when I was fiddling with your electronics than to have to constantly remember
Speaker:to pack a tool whenever we met.
Speaker:If you took better care of your arm,
Speaker:I would not need to go to such lengths.
Speaker:With greatest love,
Speaker:Arako.” I read and reread the note a dozen times,
Speaker:alternating between laughing and sobbing.
Speaker:Oh, Arako. I will make it out of here,
Speaker:only to yell at you for being too lazy to carry a tool that can’t weigh more than three grams.
Speaker:I will make it out of here,
Speaker:so I can hold you in my arms
Speaker:and kiss you and tell you that you saved me.
Speaker:Ach-hKalan… The language of your Theocracy is complicated, nuanced,
Speaker:and your salutation evades translation into the much more logical, and much less poetic, language of my Republic.
Speaker:Something like, your Kala,
Speaker:but the declension implies a closeness beyond that of even lovers.
Speaker:I cannot translate your words, Arako, but I do understand them.
Speaker:Our very souls are entwined.
Speaker:It is your love that will guide me from this hell.
Speaker:With the multitool, it is a trivial matter to pop the controller cover and get at the electronics inside.
Speaker:Luckily, I already had the schematics downloaded into my cerebral extension,
Speaker:and my HUD lets me
Speaker:navigate the mess of wires and circuits inside.
Speaker:Most of this is useless, or at least it’s useless to me.
Speaker:You’re the tinkerer, my love, no doubt you could have made
Speaker:an entire spaceship with the components of this arm.
Speaker:My lap is not large enough to hold everything,
Speaker:and I relocate to a mostly flat boulder a few meters away.
Speaker:This is not my instinct. I like to hold things, to feel them, to play with them.
Speaker:You’re the one who arranges things all neatly sorted and organized.
Speaker:I hope you appreciate the effort I’m taking, my love.
Speaker:The rock affords me ample room to fully disassemble the arm,
Speaker:down to the faux-bones.
Speaker:I’m starting to get hungry and thirsty, but nothing here is particularly appetizing to me, so I push that off to the side.
Speaker:Distress beacon first.
Speaker:I imagine you looking over my shoulder.
Speaker:You always notice the little things that I miss,
Speaker:and I hope this figment-you is the same.
Speaker:What would you see, my love, that I wouldn’t?
Speaker:I can’t repair my pod with this.
Speaker:I can’t build a transceiver, not one that would broadcast outside of the atmosphere any appreciable distance.
Speaker:What would you say?
Speaker:“If you sacrifice the receiver, you can use those parts
Speaker:to boost the strength of the transmitter,”
Speaker:you would tell me.
Speaker:That’s a start, but unless something happens past the solar system I’m not likely to get a rescue like that.
Speaker:I still need a way to boost it.
Speaker:I imagine a smug look on your face,
Speaker:that infuriating smirk you get when you’re waiting for me to realize what you’ve already figured out.
Speaker:I love you, my beautiful wife, but even in my imagination you can be insufferable.
Speaker:“Oh,” I say when I realize what you’ve realized.
Speaker:I probably should not be treating this figment as a separate person from me, but you can judge me after you’ve been marooned on an alien desert.
Speaker:I pretend you’re nodding in agreement,
Speaker:and we say the words we’re both thinking, or which I’m thinking and I’m assuming you would have recognized long before I ever got there.
Speaker:Hell, if you were actually here you probably would have known that’s what we should have been doing from the start.
Speaker:“Reflector.” You are wrong, my love, in one very important respect:
Speaker:my enhancements let me quickly scan the wreckage of my escape pod and identify a likely surface,
Speaker:and the downloaded ship’s schematics in my cerebral extension
Speaker:gives me a good idea where to start.
Speaker:There’s not much.
Speaker:The pod itself isn’t paraboloid shaped,
Speaker:and even if it were,
Speaker:most of it is made from non-conductive alloys that wouldn’t bounce the radio waves.
Speaker:Titanium in the inner hull is my best bet.
Speaker:According to the schematics, there’s a cone-shaped piece of titanium around each of the portholes,
Speaker:so that’s where I’ll start.
Speaker:There are six portholes on the style of escape pod my ship carries.
Speaker:Or carried, I suppose.
Speaker:There won’t be anything left of it now.
Speaker:Any one of the titanium cones will be sufficient for my purposes,
Speaker:provided I can find a way to cap it.
Speaker:I start with the easy option:
Speaker:the narrow crater alongside which I’ve been camped for the past few days.
Speaker:The front of the escape pod is there, and likely saved my life.
Speaker:Make a note, Arako, in case you want to send a thank you card to the manufacturer.
Speaker:The front end, including the portholes,
Speaker:is caved in. The titanium cones are probably fine, but the rest of the pod has buckled around them,
Speaker:and the multitool will definitely wear out before I can cut them free.
Speaker:I do find an aluminum baffle that will do well to cap a cone if I can find one.
Speaker:“Everything is turning up roses, eh?”
Speaker:I ask you. “Then why are you stopping, Kalan?”
Speaker:you tell me. I try very hard not to notice that I’m pretending
Speaker:you’re actually here with me.
Speaker:It takes me most of the rest of the day to walk the line of destruction,
Speaker:tracing it all the way to the mesa and back.
Speaker:One of the sides, probably the part that hit the mesa,
Speaker:is so thoroughly damaged that the cone has been ripped in half.
Speaker:I shudder at the thought of the forces involved.
Speaker:A portion of the ceiling of the pod survived mostly intact,
Speaker:though it takes a few hours to dig it out of the dirt so that I can get to the seams of the plating.
Speaker:Another day of hard work, in which I have very nearly ruined the tool you left me, Arako,
Speaker:sees the cone free.
Speaker:It doesn’t match the schematic perfectly, but it’s close enough.
Speaker:With a little luck, it should boost the transmission enough to escape the atmosphere, and then
Speaker:I just need to wait
Speaker:and hope that someone hears me.
Speaker:The rest of my evening is spent building the transmitter and a feed antenna.
Speaker:The mechanism that allows…
Speaker:allowed… me to control my arm is already a kind of transmitter,
Speaker:and thankfully easy to adapt for my purposes.
Speaker:Before I turn in for the night, I record a short message asking for help,
Speaker:then broadcast it through my makeshift transmitter.
Speaker:Without a receiver, I can’t know if I’m successful until someone drops out of the sky,
Speaker:but I feel, for the first time since I woke up in that crater, hopeful.
Speaker:As I fall asleep, I don’t
Speaker:think about rescue.
Speaker:I can’t let my hopes get up, I know—I don’t know the specific composition of the atmosphere and whether my transmission is reaching space,
Speaker:let alone whether anyone will pass close enough by to hear it.
Speaker:Instead, I think about you.
Speaker:Arako, my heart, my soul,
Speaker:my burning priestess,
Speaker:I promise you, I will make it out of here.
Speaker:There is no rescue the next day.
Speaker:I stay within sight of the antenna
Speaker:as I redouble my effort to refill my dwindling food supplies.
Speaker:The plants here are totally alien to anything I have ever seen
Speaker:or that’s saved to my survival manuals.
Speaker:I don’t have enough information to even guess if
Speaker:they’re edible.
Speaker:I manage to find a few more muddy pools of water and set
Speaker:about collecting and purifying some,
Speaker:but no food. The day after that,
Speaker:I wake up early and pack up
Speaker:everything. Instead of hauling it with me, I eat the last few rations.
Speaker:Everything else, including the antenna,
Speaker:goes in the survival pack, which I tie to my waist. Then I go to the mesa. It is rough and craggy,
Speaker:not a particularly difficult climb, but I am as careful as I can be all the same. I’d hate to break a leg without you here to nurse me back to health. The sun is just setting
Speaker:when I reach the top and the
Speaker:land is bathed in golden orange light.
Speaker:It’s beautiful in a terrible,
Speaker:empty way. I see nothing to break up the desert,
Speaker:only endless, dead land glowing with the life-giving energy of a sun that finds no purchase in this place.
Speaker:I set up the transmitter first,
Speaker:and begin sending my message out into the void again,
Speaker:this time with my logs from the past few days.
Speaker:Just in case. Then I set up a tent.
Speaker:Arako, my heart, I promise you I have done everything I can.
Speaker:It might be selfish of me,
Speaker:but I pray to your deity for deliverance,
Speaker:if only to see you one more time. * * *
Speaker:I don’t know when I pass out,
Speaker:only that it is after I have drunk the last of the water.
Speaker:I don’t know how long I am out, either,
Speaker:and when I wake to the soft sound of talking near me, but I don’t understand what they’re saying.
Speaker:My cerebral extension is offline,
Speaker:either deliberately or because of some power-saving measure.
Speaker:I struggle to open my eyes,
Speaker:but the light is too much and
Speaker:I flinch away from it.
Speaker:“Ah!” comes a voice, a hint of growl, “Aran! Ur ve, Aran! Ivekhses takh merah-vensh!” Is that the language of the Theocracy? Something
Speaker:about being awake, I think?
Speaker:“Who?” I try to say,
Speaker:but my throat is too dry.
Speaker:I crack one eye open and squint into the brightness.
Speaker:Everything is white,
Speaker:shot through with red highlights.
Speaker:On the far wall is a hologram
Speaker:of a single, massive flame.
Speaker:The Holy Flame. “It is alright,”
Speaker:the voice says, and I turn to squint up at a lion with a dandelion puff of a mane.
Speaker:He’s smiling in a
Speaker:surprisingly reassuring way.
Speaker:“Aran, the wife-of-you,
Speaker:she comes.” “You mean
Speaker:Arako?” I manage,
Speaker:and then you are there at my side,
Speaker:brow furrowed in concern.
Speaker:I can see the panic in you, though
Speaker:I don’t think anyone else would pick up on the particular way your tail twitches,
Speaker:the faintest of wrinkles in your stole of office,
Speaker:the bunching of fur around your collar from how you’ve played with your uniform.
Speaker:I reach out to you and you take my hand.
Speaker:“Mirrakh ve, Cawsh,” you tell the lion,
Speaker:and he bows and vanishes out of the door.
Speaker:“Archbishop Cawl Vesin,”
Speaker:you tell me, switching my language.
Speaker:“An old friend.” “You saved me,”
Speaker:I croak. You shrug uncomfortably.
Speaker:“Your colleague was picked up by a Republic cruiser and they sent word ahead.
Speaker:It’s been a joint operation. It’s only luck that I’m here.”
Speaker:“No, down there,” I wave
Speaker:vaguely, fully aware that the chances I’m actually waving at the planet are slim to nonexistent.
Speaker:You tilt your head,
Speaker:your brow furrowing a little more.
Speaker:You’re adorable when you’re confused.
Speaker:“You should rest. You were very dehydrated, but the clerics say you’ll make a full recovery, with time.”
Speaker:I squeeze your hand as best as I can.
Speaker:“Stay with me.” You smile,
Speaker:and it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Speaker:“For as long as you want me to.”
Speaker:“Forever.” The last thing I hear before I fall asleep
Speaker:is your musical laughter.
Speaker:This was “Love Like Echoed Fire” by J.S. Hawthorne,
Speaker:read for you by Rob MacWolf, werewolf hitchhiker.
Speaker:You can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,
Speaker:or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:Happy Pride, and Thank you for listening to The Voice of Dog.
