by Mary E. Lowd
An excerpt from You’re Cordially Invited to Crossroads Station. If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead to the next chapter.
The brief moment stretched into the late afternoon, and the kids would clearly have been happy to stay well into the evening. But Anno didn’t want to get trapped in her childhood home. She wanted space. Somewhere that was hers and Drathur’s and their kids’ and no one else’s. Suddenly, in comparison to the chaos of her extended family — which used to be her nuclear family — her new nuclear family didn’t seem chaotic at all. The previous week crammed into a tiny pair of rooms with her husband and three kits seemed downright peaceful, and she wanted to get back to that sense of serenity.
Somehow, the moment Anno stood up with the intention to politely begin the extended process of saying goodbye and extracting her children, T’reska knew — she immediately knew and hissed, “You aren’t leaving, are you?”
“Of course they’re leaving,” Kya meowed. “If they stay any longer, Ma will come out and try to feed all us teenagers—“ Though at this point, Kya was the only teenager left hanging out with the adult siblings; the others had excused themselves to their own rooms. “—and Anno’s whole family will get roped into staying for dinner. You don’t think she wants that, do you?”
“Look how happily our kids are playing.” Iko’s round face had continued to be filled with the widest grin for most of the afternoon, but the grin flickered now.
Anno smiled weakly. Her plans for politely demurring had been completely obliterated by her sisters’ responses to her merely standing up with too much intention. She’d forgotten what it felt like to be around this many people who knew her this well; she’d also forgotten what it felt like to have every little plan she made get derailed by a dozen other preferences and points of view. There was a reason she’d been such a grumpy teenager herself. There hadn’t been room for her here; there were too many other personalities, and it made her own personality feel squished and cramped all the time.
“I’m sorry,” Anno said, “but yes, we really need to go check into our quarters and get settled in.”
“I can make room for you in my quarters,” T’reska offered. “They’re just next door—“ Because of course they were. “—and all the kids could share a room. I’d be happy to sleep in there with them, and you two—“ T’reska gestured at Drathur in an oddly dismissive way, like she didn’t understand why Anno felt the need to bother with keeping a whole spouse around. “—can take my room. I know the kids would love it.”
“I’m sure they would,” Anno agreed through gritted teeth. She was gritting her teeth so hard, because it helped her keep her ears from flattening. T’reska had always been overly sensitive about it when Anno’s ears flattened while they were talking. Something about not having ears of her own made T’reska extra touchy about everyone else’s, whether that had ever been fair or made sense or not. “But I know my kids, and they need more down time than they’d get if we stayed here.”
“I can keep my kids under control,” T’reksa hissed testily.
“I don’t think Anno’s saying you can’t,” Kya meowed soothingly. “Just… I mean… look at them.” Kya gestured at the continued chaos. It had been ongoing, nonstop for hours now.
Iko chuckled. “Kya’s right. All these cousins together is a force of nature. No one would calm them down. But hey, if it makes you feel better, I can lend you my little one to entertain your kids tonight.”
T’reska’s forked tongue flicked, but then she shrugged and agreed. “Alright.”
Anno sighed. This meant she’d be pulling her kids away from a cousin sleepover, and she’d never hear the end of that, possibly for the rest of her life. But she’d just have to live with that consequence. There were limits to what she could handle, and she’d hit her limit for spending time with her family for today.
Fortunately, while Anno’s sisters had been arguing over whether she’d be allowed to leave, Drathur had taken the hint and already started gathering their three kits up. Even so, it took a while separate their grabby paws from holding tight to whatever cousin or piece of furniture they could latch onto. T’reska’s human child even suggested one of them should run away and hide, because if all three of them weren’t available, then probably none of them could leave. Anno suspected that child caused a lot of trouble being too clever for their own good. Made her think of herself a bit, actually.
By the time they made it out the door and back into the Xeno-Native Enclave courtyard, separated from all the family in the doorway waving goodbye, Anno felt like she’d spent more time saying goodbye to her family than she’d spent on the space freighter flying there.
The walk from the Xeno-Native Enclave to the quarters Drathur had rented for them passed in a blur of aliens walking by, enticing smells from food stands, and clamorous noise, largely coming from the three overexcited kits who couldn’t stop talking about their afternoon with cousins and also every exciting thing they walked past. The noise in Anno’s own head didn’t help — she kept replaying moments from the afternoon, re-listening to things her siblings had said, and analyzing, re-analyzing, and over-analyzing things she’d said herself.
Stories that had become exactly that — stories, repeated over and over again — had suddenly been new when told to Kya, Iko, and T’reska, because none of them had been there when Anno and Drathur got married, or when Loi took off into the wilderness as soon as she learned to walk, or when Mei and Darso recreated scene-by-scene their favorite holo-vid program with their stuffed animals. All those stories that had become part of the DNA of Anno’s life, just stories that everyone who knew her had heard already, probably several times, were suddenly fresh, like they’d been happening for the first time again. It had been a deeply weird, disorienting feeling, and nothing else could have driven home for Anno how thoroughly she and her siblings had been out of touch for so long.
As they walked along, Drathur took note of what foods were available from where and which things the kids were most likely to actually eat. So, when they finally made it to the rented quarters — just two small rooms, even smaller than the ones they’d had aboard the freighter — Anno collapsed on one of the beds while Mei and Darso ran wild in the adjoined room; Drathur and Loi, who was feeling the most adventurous of the kits, ventured back out, now freed of their suitcases, to gather up some appropriate take-out that everyone could eat in the quiet of their two rooms.
In spite of all the excitement, the kits were exhausted, and after devouring several plates of stir-fried meats and vegetables — alien dishes not quite like anything they’d ever eaten before — they conked out fast.
Anno found herself curled up on a rented bed, too tired to dig through her suitcase and find her pajamas.
“Hey,” Drathur said, laying a paw on her arm, after he finished clearing away the empty cartons from all the takeout. “Big day?”
“Big day,” Anno agreed, curling up tighter and yanking a bit of the rented bed’s quilt over her fur. It was thicker than her blankets at home and a very dull shade of gray that matched the metal walls. Her quilt at home was one she’d designed and created with the 3D printer, decorated with swooping rainbows. She missed her quilt and bed back home.
“Your siblings are fascinating,” Drathur said, taking ahold of one of Anno’s paws and beginning to massage it. She hadn’t realized how tense she was until his touch began drawing out the pain, coaxing her muscles to at least consider relaxing.
“How so?” Anno asked.
“Well…” Drathur paused. He thought things through carefully before saying them. Though, that didn’t always stop him from saying things he maybe shouldn’t. “Like the way Iko and T’reska talked about helping Kya decide whether she wants to go to college or travel or—“
“—join the enclave,” Anno cut in.
“Right, they kept saying how stubborn and picky Kya was being.” Drathur frowned. “It was weird to put their sister down that much in front of, well, someone they’d never met before.”
Anno blinked, thinking back on all the things Iko and T’reska had said during that part of the conversation. To her, they’d sounded really helpful and concerned for Kya’s well-being… but… Had they really called her stubborn and picky? The more Anno thought back over their words, she realized they had. She just hadn’t noticed or thought hard about it at the time. That was a normal way for Iko and T’reska to be toward the younger siblings — honest to the point of critical. Maybe even critical to the point of judgmental.
Anno hadn’t even noticed that it wasn’t very kind.
“I think that’s the nicest I’d ever heard them be to Kya,” Anno said, still trying to sort out what that even meant. If that was the nicest she’d ever seen Iko and T’reska be, and someone meeting them for the first time didn’t think it was very nice… Were they just not very kind? It would explain a lot, she supposed.
“It still seems like a weird way to talk about your sibling, calling them stubborn and picky for wanting to make the right choices for their own life. I can’t imagine someone I was that close to disrespecting me like that and just going with it.” Drathur’s words were spoken gently, but the truth in them was sharp.
Anno worried sometimes that she had carried the curdled toxicity at the heart of her family with her, inside her, running through her veins. But Drathur had never spoken to her like that — she’d never given him reason to.
Anno was glad she’d gotten away from the family she’d grown up with, even if they were kind of fun to visit for a day. The whirlwind of chaos in those rooms in the Xeno-Native Enclave… that had been her childhood, and it had been kind of addictive. A constant adrenaline high, competing with her siblings, fighting with her siblings, tying to one-up and outsmart each other, constantly fighting for limited resources — or at least, the limited resource of their mother’s attention.
Sometimes, just having a family of five — herself, Drathur, and three brilliant, vibrant kits — seemed dull in comparison. But really, it was all Anno wanted. All she really needed.
Anno slept soundly that night, in spite of the bed being new and different. And when she woke up, even though the view from the windows in their room was mostly obscured by support beams and didn’t really change from morning to night (as if those words even meant anything on Crossroads Station…), everything felt brighter. Bright and new.
The week of travel had been hard, and being taken off-guard by her family and swept back into a childhood she’d fought so hard to leave had been dizzying. But now she was here, with the family she’d built, and she could show Drathur and their kits all the wonderful parts of the place where she’d grown up.
Continue on to Chapter 13…