She stammered as he shook her hand. "Sorry… I mean, I suck at this…"
"Siha, perhaps we should go inside."
"Yeah, that would be smart, wouldn't it?" She giggled and flushed again. "I'm making enough of an idiot of myself out here."
Kolyat stepped aside and let Father gesture her across the threshold. He used to do that for Mother. His shoulders tensed, but whether at the gesture or at the intrusion of memory, he couldn't quite determine. Part of him wanted to glare at this alien intruder, but he forced himself back. It's not her fault that Father treats her that way. She probably doesn't even know. Father removed his weapons, and raised an eyebrow rather than just asking where to lay them aside. That habit hadn't changed over the years, no matter how much it drove him insane.
"Over here, beside the door."
"You don't have a weapon rack?"
"I have one pistol, Father. I don't need one."
The Commander removed her guns as well, and as she bent over, she hesitated. "Sorry, is this good?"
He nodded. "Do you always carry that much firepower?"
"Usually a lot more. Especially if Cerberus is going to be riding our asses."
"You didn't need so many weapons for a simple dinner, Siha."
"And yet you brought your full arsenal." She grinned at Father, though if he'd been in her shoes, he'd have stomped hard on his instep.
"I am your arm, Siha. The weapons are for your protection."
"Hypocrite!" She grabbed Father's hand and smiled wider. Now that he saw her genuine smile, he started to see just what had lured Father in.
She doesn't take any of his guff, but she doesn't take offense at it either.
"Dinner's ready, if you're hungry, or we can sit for a while."
She stood and took a quick look around her. "Nice place!"
"I'm sorry if it's not up to your standards, Commander."
"Did I say something to offend you?" Her brows tensed and she gripped at Father's hand again.
"Kolyat!"
"I mean it; it's a beautiful place. You've made a lot of the space. It's yours."
"Sorry… I would have thought a ship's Commander wouldn't be comfortable in anything but the lap of luxury."
She snickered. "You've obviously never served with the Alliance. Anyway, please call me Ellen. I'm not Commander of anything anymore."
"Perhaps we should sit and speak for a few moments," Father said.
He settled easily upon the blue floor cushion. He chose the yellow cushion farthest from Father as the Commander stared at the makeshift table he'd cobbled together from spare wire and metal scrap. Maybe one day he'd be able to afford the real thing, but it worked well enough to hold Mother's meditation sculpture. She ran her hands over the wire and stared deep into the sculpture's heart. He thought it was pretty, but it never called to him the way it had seemed to entrance Mother or Father. Beauty wasn't why he'd held onto it, and had packed it in custom-made shipping foam for the trip to the Citadel.
"Querido, you never told me Kolyat was an artist."
"Some things are best left to the discovery."
"And that mysterious thing never gets old." She smiled, and at him this time. "I've never seen anything like this. The work you did with that wire…"
He'd spent hours trying to make it look presentable. Time he had, but credits, well, Bailey's stipend just barely covered food and rent.
"Have you ever thought of going into business for yourself? Because I know a few people who would kill for something like this. Not to mention me…"
She ran her fingers over the netting he'd woven to approximate the waves on Kahje, and he wondered what those bright human eyes saw. Maybe the waves would be obvious in the filigree to someone who lived near water, but humans lived just about everywhere from what he'd read. He remembered how the design had seemed to flow from his fingers, the pinch of the wires as he accidentally caught his flesh in a sloppy twist, and the weaving of the panels, four in total, that kept the four narrow strips of scrap from collapsing underneath the weight of the table's top, let alone Mother's sculpture.
"Kill for it, huh? It's just a bunch of scrap."
"Just like your apartment isn't the 'lap of luxury.' These are waves, aren't they? Kahje?"
He nodded. "You think this is 'luxury?'"
"Spend almost a decade on Alliance warships with only a locker to your name, and you'll probably agree with me. I shared a sleeping pod with two other people on every single ship I served on until the real Normandy. And even then the captain's cabin still felt like Anderson's until I lost the ship."
"Councilor Anderson?"
"The same. You know, even if these are waves, they still remind me of home."
"Earth?"
"Mindoir."
"One of your human colonies."
"Yeah… My family had a huge allotment, and we grew wheat and alfalfa. I remember every spring how the winds used to blow over the fields, and the immature wheat looked just like a green version of the oceans I'd seen in vids."
"You were a farmer?"
"Yeah. The sculpture's so beautiful—are those dunes?"
"As they once were on Rakhana, Siha, similar to those we saw in your Sahara desert. It is more than dunes, it is the call of the gods in our hearts, and the memory of home in our souls."
"Or, in short, a thing to stare at and listen to as you meditate."
He hadn't expected her to smile. "You don't have Thane's unique way of looking at things, hunh?"
"He talks in circles and riddles. Drives me nuts."
She laughed. "Funny, I find it kind of poetic. So this makes noise?"
He spun the half-hidden pole at the top of the center dune until it clinked against its partners on both sides. The movement set the metal to tinkling as it traveled to each of the other dunes. She watched, seemingly entranced until she closed her eyes, made a quick movement with her hands, and muttered some words in some human language his translator didn't pick up.
"Father?"
"It's Ellen's form of prayer."
"Sorry… I just… I didn't know how else to honor it." She flushed again.
"Don't bother. It's all bunk."
"I… um… All right. I just felt for a moment like I was looking at a Buddhist prayer wheel or contemplating a rosary."
Religious, but not in the way I've heard humans usually are. He looked at her, and back to Father, who raised his brows again. He didn't know what to make of this Ellen or her spirituality. He hadn't expected her to have a taste for art, or to appreciate things that weren't human, not from what he'd heard of her. So that's why you're with her, Father. The religion.
Whatever it is that you expect from Ellen, she will likely shatter it to pieces the moment you meet her.
Shattered, not really. More like exploded. With some kind of incendiary device that seemed to burn away every last bit of resistance and bitterness.
"That was Irikah's," Father said as he crouched beside her. "I spent many hours with her contemplating the mysteries of the gods and of the galaxy."
"And its aura is here. Everything centers around it, and the colors, the layout of the furnishings, everything blends to bring it into focus."
"Auras?" More bunk. "Are you both hungry?"
"I… If you want. Listen, I'm sorry I punched you, Kolyat. I…"
"It's ok. Things would be a lot worse if you hadn't."
"And I'm sorry I suck at this. I've never done this before."
"Done what, Siha?"
"You know, 'met the family.' It's kind of a big deal for humans. Thanks for inviting me."