Ember notes: I can orient the thoughtspeak signs correctly; FFN cannot.
I sat on the couch, watching life unfold in front of me. For once I could sit back and laugh.
"Jake, who's that?" Sara asked, who was pointing to Cassie, who was eagerly chatting to my parents about her latest environmental endeavor, who were smiling politely.
Jake grinned. "That's my friend Cassie."
Jordan whispered something to Sara and they dashed off, giggling hysterically.
Jake followed them. "Hey, what was that about?"
A beaming Sara informed him. "Well we know Marco's your friend, so that makes Cassie…your girlfriend!"
By the time Jake could speak they had already escaped. But five minutes later, Cassie had them engrossed in a game of Parcheesi.
"Hey Rachel," Tom called. "Who's your new friend?"
Huh? Oh. Ax. He took the initiative of answering for himself. "I am a foreign exchange student. Stu-dent."
"He's still learning English," I hastily interjected.
"Oh…okay." Tom nodded critically, his eyebrows narrowed. "Nice to meet you." He extended a hand.
"In our culture, we shake people's hands when we meet them," I tried to be discreet." This, of course, prompted Ax to grab Tom's hand in both of his and vehemently shake it.
"Whoa! Uh, welcome to the U. S.."
I guided Ax across the room, hoping not to arouse Tom's suspicions (rather, the suspicions of the Yeerk in his head) any more. All of a sudden his head twitched. "Excuse me a minute." He clenched his teeth as if thinking hard and then asked, "Is the orbit of the planet malfunctioning?"
Oh boy. Out of all the things that could go wrong, a malfunctioning orbit had not been on my list. "Why do you ask?"
"There's a peculiarity in its motion at the moment."
Tom was coming over. "Ax, quiet down and try to calculate in thoughtspeak instead. Hey Tom, how's it going?" I said.
"Pretty good."
We talked about school, and life. He invited me to join the Sharing, I said that I would consider it. All of a sudden a familiar voice resounded through my brain. >Rachel? Don't try to reply, but it's me. I'm outside. I just wanted to tell you that there's no malfunctioning orbit. Today's the winter solstice, that's what Ax was noticing.>
Ax added to this sheepishly. >I noticed the null derivative, but didn't bother to check for something as menial as a local extremum.>
"No worries," I whispered.
The winter solstice. The longest nights of the year, the most time for stargazing. The time when the days began to lengthen instead of shorten. The time of change.