I hear sounds first. The sound of my mother’s voice. Then Xy’s exasperated sigh beside me. I can feel the warmth of his breath on my neck. I open my eyes—by the dark and by the light…

  “You’re awake,” Xy says. I can hear the relief in his voice.

  I wish I wasn’t. The pain is terrible and it’s everywhere.

  “I can’t see,” I declare. My voice comes out raspy and soft and it hurts like hellfire.

  “Drakera Sol is treating your wounds. She says it’s likely you’ll gain some of your vision back, but there is a great deal of scarring. What were you thinking, Siluastryx?”

  “I was thinking this project needed to be done right. And I bungled it anyway.” It hurts to speak and I decide I’ll keep my words to a minimum.

  Xy’s tail traces its way along my scales from one hurt to another, somehow drawing the pain away. He doesn’t say anything more. Not now. But he is there, beside me to listen to all my aches as I groan at them. Even though it is awful to be awake, I’m glad he’s the one next to me. I’m not looking forward to my mother’s scolding.

  I can hear Drakera Sol’s voice in the other room. She’s as old as Drake Rov, maybe older, and I’ve always loved the way she talks. Like the characters in Drakera Hyver’s stories of ancient times. Slow and precise and with all the cricks and rasps as her old bones. When they shuffle into the room I imagine her voice, her distinctive look before she even speaks.

  “It may not feel this way just now… but is a good sign you’re awakened. How is your pain?”

  “Significant,” I say, my own voice cracking.

  “You are eminently lucky… Vely found you when she did.”

  The old drakera settles beside me. I could feel my mother’s worried eyes. “Vely…?”

  “She is in pain… but not as much as you.”

  “She’s in the other room recovering,” my mother added.

  “Now… I am going to…” Drakera Sol pokes one of my sore spots on my back and I wince, the pain lacing through my whole body. I may have lost consciousness.

  “Yes… much pain… but what drakera can grow… without her scars?”

  I feel Drakera Sol smile beside me and I know I will recover. With time.

  “May take some time to… regain vision. But it will return. Once the scars… have settled… we may be able to perform… surgery. I’m afraid your flame glands… weren’t so lucky. Between you and me… you needn’t breathe fire to be fierce.”

  I hear my mother’s intake of breath, but it doesn’t bother me. I never used them anyway.

  “Sleep now,” Drakera Sol says. And as if her voice is magical, I do.

  I am in and out over the next while. Mostly out. But every time I wake, either Xy or my mother are beside me. My mother tells me old stories I used to love and worries that I will be forever changed. Xy tells me new stories and knows that I will be forever changed. Just as he was after his altercation with his father.

  The cluster moves beyond the confines of this small galaxy. Staying in one place too long is a death sentence for a small cluster like ours. A few of the others visit me as we once again journey into the black between galaxies. Jade and some of my other classmates who are worried, Vely comes after her wounds become scars, Drakera Hyver and Drake Rov bring gifts and stories.

  The class has moved beyond our project. At least until we return on our next sweep. The others presented theirs and I missed them all. I feel awful about it, but Drake Rov assures me they will present again on our next visit and I will get the chance to present my own project upon our return.

  As Drakera Sol predicted, my vision begins to come back. Slowly. It doesn’t hurt so much to speak anymore. And as sure as the stars will nova, so too do my wounds become scars. One of my wings was badly damaged and it will take me time to learn the new flesh when I fly, but that is a concern for another time. I must first learn to walk before I can soar.

  My recovery is slow. My throat heals first, one octave at a time. When I first started talking more, I sounded like Drake Rov, my voice soft and low and crackling. Now it’s still soft and raspy, changed but recognizable. Next came my vision. I still feel like I’m looking through a cloud and my third eyelid is so scarred I can’t see through it. Drakera Sol says it will continue to get easier, but I probably deserve that punishment for my hubris. Mobility is even slower. My back got hurt pretty badly and stretching out my wings is nigh impossible. Vely’s claws did some pretty serious damage, as she had to drag me out of the slag. I don’t hold it against her in the slightest, but she feels bad for her part in my suffering. I don’t quite think it’s registered for her that I’d be dead without her, so I’m happy to call it even.

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  Over time, everyone in the cluster comes to visit me. They bring gifts and kind words. Baubles from across the universe meant to speed my healing. A rock from Elbab’s Nebula that I am to rub on my back to promote growth in blood flow. A feather from Chigok’s Hunting World that I am to grind and eat with my next meal to increase vision. A snatch of dust from the Blitan Black Hole that I am to mix with water and some other ingredients and rub onto my scales to erase the scars. A hundred other trinkets and baubles all for me, to show their love.

  I’m moved when Drake Rov and Drakera Hyver bring me their gifts. From Drake Rov a spiritstone from one of his innumerable adventures. I am supposed to learn its history in my own time. Not for a thousand sweeps, he tells me, but I will find out. From Drakera Hyver a story of patience and healing. Patience was never a strength of mine, but perhaps I need to learn.

  Once I’m home, I use some of my mother’s tools and cobble together a necklace to wear Drake Rov’s gift. For now, I see it as a constant companion and a reminder of Drakera Hyver’s story. Any time I get frustrated with my recovery I grasp the stone and breathe deep. Patience. After a while I stop calling it my spiritstone and start referring to it as my patience stone.

  Getting back to school takes me a good, long while. Not because I don’t want to learn. I am forcing Xy to reteach me everything after their lessons so I don’t get too far behind, but the sheer lack of time I spend focusing on learning makes it impossible to truly keep up. Xy is good, though, and he realizes that he ends up remembering things better when he teaches me than when he learns in school. I think it’s good for both of us to take our minds off of my injuries, which he blames himself for, at least in part. But no matter how much I tell him it’s simply not true, I know he doesn’t believe me.

  We all play what if… It’s a favorite game of ours. What if my mother had insisted on diving with me as she originally wanted? What if Psy Dwok had stayed connected? What if Xy had convinced me to find a different planet? What if Vely had used her teeth less or her tail more? What if I hadn’t gotten so fixated on my project or my choice? It does none of us any good.

  In the end, regret gives way to slow, painful progress. When I finally do get back to school, nearly a quarter sweep has passed. I am given leave to not make up the work, but I’ve done most of it with Xy already and I happen to like learning. Much like my healing, it’s slow, painful progress. But it’s progress and I wouldn’t find it without making the effort.

  We have a celebration, led by Drakera Hyver and an unlikely candidate in Jade. They make my favorite meal—with a bit of help from my mother—of copper-stuffed silver balls. I’ve always liked the sweet tang of metal over the crunch of stone. Everyone comes to the celebration, the whole cluster asking if I’ve tried their remedy. If it worked. Once they’re gone and I can settle into my seat beside Xy while one of the other students presents the galaxy we’re approaching, I am finally able to relax. Sadly, I relax a bit too well because just before our next meal Xy is waking me up.

  It’s hard to fathom just how exhausting it is to recover from such grievous injuries. Not unless you’ve done so. Every time I wake up, I am just counting the seconds until blissful sleep once more takes hold. Each tiny exertion—like flying to school—takes far more energy than monumental tasks might have done before my injuries.

  My mother wants to be there for me through it all, but I finally am forced to tell her I need to do some things on my own. It isn’t an easy thing for me to say and if you take her account of things, it’s the hardest thing in the universe she’s ever had to hear. My father is even given leave to visit once again, but he declines. He doesn’t want to see me broken.

  Through it all, I only truly care about one thing, though. Will my experiment succeed?

  It’s silly to think. This project is so new, but it’s all I can think about. Not what stars might make good hunting grounds in some new elliptical galaxy. Nor the chemical makeup of this system or that. Nor the Fundamental Theorem of the Universe or the various theories about how it all began. What—or who—came before the beginning? Nor what elements are used in various healing salves or how we craft starcoats or what collection of foods comprises the best diet. Nor the complicated process we use to pilfer water from any of a number of planets we pass along the way, drawing it up to our cluster with a series of contraptions and some crafty uses of telekenesis. Don’t get me wrong, I like learning. But I care about a specific collection of anaerobic bacteria stuck on the third rocky planet orbiting a yellow dwarf star drifting in the armpit of a galaxy far, far away more than anything else at the moment.

  I can’t stop myself from building dozens of predictive models for how things might turn out. If the planet cools at this speed, how long might I have to wait for my experiment to bear fruit? Of my first dozen sponges, which might succeed? I look at the star and try to figure out if it’s safe from harm’s way. But the truth of it all is that I’m working with imperfect data and none of my models will succeed. Not in any meaningful way.

  So to say I pass the next three-quarters of a sweep in a bit of a daze is an understatement. Much like space debris, my mind floats away, always back to that tiny, insignificant planet.

  I spend so much time in Psy Dwok’s transtemporal she makes a permanent space for me to hole up in the corner. I start paying attention to my mother’s cooking and take an interest myself. I drift along with Xy, who opts out of playing with the other drakelings to spend time with me so often that they stop asking him to play altogether. It isn’t until another half sweep has passed that I realize that Xy has been telling me his creation. His story. Slowly but surely I am taken in by his words, the soothing sound of his voice. I can’t believe it takes me so long to realize this is his creation and I feel a fool for not noticing sooner.

  The story he has crafted is equal parts beautiful and sorrowful, full of temptation and unfulfilled longing. Once I realize what he’s doing, I am able to set aside my own thoughts and worries and give him my full attention.

  It won’t be until much later in my life that I realize his words are for me and me alone. But by then, it won’t matter.

  By then, it’s too late.