Work Text:
Netharim hovered in the air, the kafit’s wings still holding her aloft even as her massive Andalite body took shape beneath her. Her tail extended, no blade forming yet, just long enough to control her balance. She held the pose for a few moments, then retracted her wings. As she did so, her legs emerged from her torso, at exactly the right height to land on the grass without bouncing awkwardly.
‹Splendid,› said Rucolla, the commentator. ‹While we wait for the judges, this is a reminder that the next year’s schedule of visiting merchants was officially approved by the Electorate. Seafood of Earth will be particularly well-represented. You can find the full list at the central hub…›
I couldn’t help but be amused. Aximili had been so avid about commercials that the Andalite government had had to strictly regulate advertisements, especially of food products.
My phone buzzed, with a reminder that it was time to demorph. I focused on my own body, and the dog’s fur fell away from me. The intense scents dulled, and my vision grew blurry again. Hair sprouted, limbs stiffened, and I returned to the contours of my human frame.
I silenced the alarm and sprawled out on the couch, still smelling of dog. I would not be winning any prizes for morph-dancing, that was for sure. But that was okay.
Cassie insisted I was welcome to visit and take advantage of her TV even when she was off-planet. “The place is too big,” she insisted. All the kids said that. Once you’ve been a fly and a whale, human conceptions of size didn’t really matter. I was reluctant to spend time there without her, but I was even more reluctant to accompany her on business trips. She’d saved the world. I was just in the right place at the right time.
I could morph back, of course, but while watching morph-dancing never got old, I didn’t want to become too reliant on the dog’s eyes. Instead I let Rucolla’s thoughtspeech voice roll over me; Netharim moved into the lead, although one of the judges seemed to have penalized her for not doing anything too flashy in the kafit form.
The phone buzzed again. Had I forgotten to turn off the alarm? No, this was Cassie’s ringtone! I eagerly answered. “Where are you?”
“Equavator. Where are you?”
“At your house, following along with the morph-dancing broadcast. is everything okay? I thought you weren’t due back for another couple weeks.”
“Fine. Z-Space projections were overly pessimistic. I think they deliberately overestimate those because they don’t want a repeat of the Leera Conference incident.”
“You’re due for luck,” I insisted.
“Maybe,” said Cassie.
I knew what she meant. The Animorphs—and, later, the Andalites—hadn’t been able to explain how the Escafil device had worked on me. Usually, morphing healed any physical injuries that weren’t part of someone’s DNA, which was how the kids used it to recover from battles. But whenever I returned to my human body, I was still blind.
Instead, it had fixed something deeper. The memories that had been taken from me by the car crash, or by the Ellimists screwing with me, which amounted to the same thing, had been restored. I just took it as the Ellimists figuring they owed me one. This didn’t entirely placate the Andalite scientists, but it made total sense to me.
Ever since then, I told myself that I’d had more than my share of luck. What surprised me was that the kids said the same thing.
A few days later, we were curled up in bed, as I listened to Cassie discuss her trip. The largest moon of the Anati planet had been destroyed in the war, which would lead to massive tidal changes within a generation. The Anati were undergoing a bitter schism between those who wanted to stay and modify the planet, and those who wanted to evacuate. The latter had support from the Hork-Bajir, who knew only too well what unintended consequences could arise from terraforming projects.
Of course, the easiest way for both sides to get what they wanted would be if some left and some stayed, but there were enough hard-liners who wouldn’t be satisfied by even that, that they’d called in the galactic diplomatic corps to research conditions on the ground. Cassie had come away from the summit increasingly convinced that most, if not all, of them would migrate.
“The Andalites have plenty of ships,” I pointed out. “Can’t they loan some, or are they afraid of another war?”
“Most of those are fighters, and they’re not really efficient for large-scale transportation. The Dome ships would work, but there are still some qualms about technology sharing.”
“Don’t tell me they’re still going on about Seerow’s Kindness, that ship has long since sailed!”
Cassie laughed. “Definitely not. It’s more of an...isolationist tendency.”
“Did they finally get burned out on Cinnabons? I thought that would take a few more centuries.”
“No. It’s more...it was wrong to assume that Seerow knew better than the Yeerks what would be good for them, it was wrong for Alloran to assume he knew better what to do about the Hork-Bajir homeworld. Maybe everything Andalites do off-planet makes things worse, and they should just stay home.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I pointed out. “Elfangor would be first to tell you that he didn’t have all the answers, but that didn’t stop him from trying.”
“I know. But the people who are more scared of what could go wrong, than hopeful about what could go right, seem to have the upper hand at present.”
“Enough about Anati. Did you make it to any of the other planets?”
I couldn’t see Cassie’s smile, but I could tell when her voice lit up. “See, this is what I like about you. Everybody else just cares about the treaties. You actually want to know about the weird aliens, even the ones that don’t talk to us.”
“You can literally acquire the DNA of any animal in the galaxy. Don’t tell me that’s not the coolest thing ever.”
“If you tag along you could, too—”
“Vacation, yes, business, no. We’ve been through this.” Even Tobias, though he was thrilled for us both, was still a little weirded out by us being whatever-we-were. I didn’t want to have to explain to the rest of the galaxy.
“Okay, well, the furthest planet from their sun—Vushmir—isn’t exactly a tourist trap. The sun is so far away that most of their heat is from geothermal vents, and there isn’t really a ‘daytime.’”
“Mmm?”
“There’s a species called a tapidal. A little bit like a Gila monster, but bigger. You’d like them.”
“Would I?” I teased. Other people brought back souvenirs when they traveled. What Cassie did was even more special.
“Just a minute.”
I listened closely for the familiar rustle of her clothes falling off her, skin hardening, bones folding. A few moments later, something hard and bumpy pressed close against me, almost four feet long.
‹Osteoderms,› Cassie thought-spoke. ‹Their skin is very sensitive.›
“Aren’t Gila monsters venomous?”
‹They’d be dangerous if you were a Vushmiri life form. As it is, the effects on humans are minimal. Maybe some lowered inhibitions.›
“Don’t tell me you tried it…”
‹We’re all morph-capable, it’s fine. That’s not really what I was experimenting with, though.›
“Experimenting?”
‹Z-Space was faster than we anticipated, but there was still a lot of time. Check this out.›
As she pressed close against me, the tiny bumps of the tapidal’s skin rubbed my arm. Then a couple of them stiffened and deepened. Two diagonally-adjacent bumps; a Braille letter I.
The letters of L-O-V-E took shape one at a time; I wasn’t sure whether she had the finesse to do more, or if this was just a concession to people who read linearly. Then the five-dot contraction which abbreviated you.
“Cassie,” I whispered. I didn’t know what to say, so I scooted down to kiss her somewhere on the tapidal’s body that I hoped wasn’t too venomous.
‹I know it’s probably a little clumsy—›
“Can all tapidals do that? How long did it take you to figure out?”
‹They don’t have language, it’s not as precise. It’s more just a kind of courtship or dominance display, like color signaling.› Vushmir was a dark planet, I remembered. It wasn’t an accomodation; it was just how they were. ‹I think Nal and Gonfalon could probably do something similar, but it would be slower, like Morse code.›
“You learned this just for me?”
‹Sure,› said Cassie. ‹Not just because you’re blind, but because the novelty of the alien stuff doesn’t wear off for you. That’s what makes you special.›
I rubbed the bumps of the tapidal. No patterns anymore, just the texture of a lizard from another world. “It’s a good thing I’m not an estreen, or I’d want one of these.”
‹You’re allowed to tag along even if you don’t have perfect motor control, you know.›
“The universe has been pretty nice to me. I don’t want to push my luck.”
‹You’ve lost a lot, too,› Cassie said gently.
I nodded, stroking her bumps. “Maybe someday. Thank you.”
‹The pleasure was mine.›
The morph-dancers could keep their wings and their swirls of color. I had a warrior and a peacemaker who held me close enough to let me feel every bone. That was a treasure, no matter what she spelled.