Trance sat alone on her bunk on the Eureka Maru, legs crossed in front of her, hands on her knees, palms up in a meditative pose. Eyes closed, she searched for the images that haunted her dreams, the cause of the hot tears that rolled unchecked down her cheeks. Like the ghosts that haunted old ships and homes, these images remained illusive. All she saw behind her closed lids was darkness, and all she felt was a pervasive sense of loss and sorrow. It pressed at her heart and drove the air from her lungs. Strange these dreams that slipped from memory like water down a drain, that held no visions of the future, that made her feel, yet defied understanding.

I need to calm down, she thought, It was just a dream. She opened her eyes. Abandoned on the floor beside the bunk lay a flexi, still open to the colorful diagram she had been reading before her body betrayed her, the only thing out of place in the orderly berthing chamber—provided no one climbed up to Harper's bunk. She picked at her black leggings, hands moving, as they often did, as if possessed of their own life. Her arms shimmered in the perpetual dimness of her bunk. She focused on the way the sparkles caught the light, brightening the room. Even in darkness, the potential for light existed. She might no longer be Lambent Kith, but her skin still shined like her sun, the light of the universe.

She closed her eyes. This time, when confronted with the darkness she imagined a tiny flame floating in front of her. She fed it with her life-force, her energy, and it grew larger and brighter until it encompassed her, warming her. Now, she imagined the silent void filled with the voices of her friends. Slowly, the sense of loss faded and with it some of the sorrow.

I am not alone. My dreams are not real and I must not dwell on them. Though there is darkness all around me, the light is there, too. I am the light. It is within me. It is inside all I love. There is nowhere that light cannot be born.

The sound of distant footsteps tore her from her meditation. When she opened her eyes, the tears were dry. She peered into the galley though the steps sounded near the airlock.

"Hello?" These footsteps could herald the coming of any of her friends. Andromeda had declared her improved enough to return to quarters early in the morning. It didn't mean much, only that she no longer required intensive monitoring on Med Deck and could perform self-care and hygiene tasks independently. That, and Andromeda had recognized her growing desperation to be anywhere but Med Deck. Though they accepted Andromeda's assessment of her condition, her friends still worried and Rommie, Doyle, and Dylan had each made appearances, as if on a schedule, after Beka walked her to the Maru, a sack of Trance's belonging slung over one shoulder, an arm wrapped around her waist to provide support.

Their hearts were in the right place, and they had a point. She wasn't capable of caring for herself yet. Even so, she found the frequent inquiries into her well being irritating, though politeness and consideration for their feelings kept her from saying anything. After a week of constant monitoring and supervision, she longed for even a semblance of privacy and independence. For that, they needed to trust her to tell them if she required help.

I have to remember this the next time Harper or Beka disobeys my orders to rest.

"Trance?" Harper's questioning voice echoed through the Maru's halls, as if on queue. The footsteps quickened, and he came into view a moment later, standing in the open porthole separating the galley from the berthing chamber. Speaking of not resting... His plain black t-shirt may have been clean and new two days ago but now hung on his stocky frame wrinkled and stained. His hair lay flat on one side and spiked wildly on the other. Stubble poked out of his chin, tiny blonde soldiers standing at attention. Shadows like those she'd seen in the mirror this morning stretched out under bloodshot blue eyes. His raised eyebrows showed genuine surprise at finding her on the Maru. He hadn't come to check on her. Was she relieved or disappointed? "Andromeda told me she let you go this morning, but I thought you were in your quarters. I was gonna stop by after dinner. How are you feeling?"

"I wanted to be on the Maru. Beka brought me over this morning. I am feeling much better." In truth, her muscles ached from the short walk to the Maru. Even after using the lifts with Beka supporting most of her weight, the exercise had been too much. But, Harper didn't need to know the details. "You haven't been to see me in two days," she said, falling into the old habit of deflecting attention from herself, an effective strategy with Harper who never missed a chance to talk about himself.

He avoided her gaze, watching her through the corner of his eye as he crossed to the bunk across from hers and plopped down, scooting backward until his back pressed against the wall, as far from her as possible in such a small space. He remained silent. She waited, studying him, watching the micro expressions on his face; the twitching of his lips, hair-thin lines forming around his eyes. Guilty. Concerned. She said nothing. He would speak soon, silence being a foreign entity in his perpetually loud world.

"I'm sorry, Trance, I really am. I know how it must look right after you told me so much about yourself. It has nothing to do with you, honest." He finally looked up, meeting her gaze, his eyes unwavering. An unspoken plea. Please accept my words. You didn't scare me away. I still care.

"I know," she said. He heaved a sigh, shoulders and posture relaxing, forehead smoothing out, the downward curve of his lips returning to neutral. "I worried when you didn't come, so I asked Beka. She said you were working on something in the machine shop and you weren't talking to anyone, not even Doyle. She didn't have any details."

"No, I suppose she didn't." Cryptic. He either didn't want to talk about it, or he wanted her to ask. Which was it today? His expression gave away no clues, and no visions came to help her decide. The hardest part about life now was not the pain, weakness, or exhaustion, though all of those things were difficult. It was being trapped on one plane, unable to follow the branches of her choices before committing to them in reality. Sure, in the grand scheme of things, choosing what to say to comfort a friend was insignificant, but eventually she would be on Command again, battle waging. What would she do then? How many would pay the price for her inability to make informed decisions?

Stop it.

The silence stretched between them, a desert plain filled with years of words unsaid. Guilt on both sides. But, it was her fault, not his. It had been a conscious decision to push him away, to be a friend, but not a close one. A shield to protect him from the Nebula. A shield that only worked if it remained invisible. The Nebula, and she a part of it, did not make friends with organics. They certainly didn't love them—it didn't matter the type. The Nebula considered them precious pets, useful as diversions and tools, nothing more. Beneath them. Insignificant. If they had discovered how much he meant to her, how often she had changed her plans... No, their plans, to protect him...

Stop it.

She'd told him everything. Did this knowledge replace that shield, or was her presence here still a danger to him? A danger to everyone, both the friends who understood it and accepted it, and the innocents assigned to Andromeda, along for the ride, unaware of who walked among them.

Stop!

She picked at her leggings again, rubbing the soft fabric between her thumb and pointer finger. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked, deciding, unable to bear her thoughts any longer, these patterns becoming more frequent and more invasive as the realities of her new life unfolded around her.

"If you tell me why you were crying." He motioned to her face. Swollen eyes must have given her away. The others never gave Harper enough credit. He perceived and processed far more than he let on, and quickly too, his immaturity as much a mask as hers had been; one reason she'd had to distance herself from him before. A suspicious mind, dogged determination, and inquisitiveness in droves allowed him to pick up on the subtleties of her evasions. Once onto something, he pushed and pried, even if it put his life in danger. Because of this, he manipulated her better than anyone else. Like now, as he turned her own playbook against her.

A test. She could not sidestep him without appearing evasive. Was the openness of their conversation two nights ago a fluke? An exchange. Something dear for something dear. This is how they laid the bricks to build a new foundation of trust.

"That is fair," she replied, "and I would tell you, if I knew myself. I woke up crying and I do not remember the dream. I hadn't even meant to fall asleep, I was reading." She leaned down, fighting a wave of dizziness, and picked up the flexi. She tapped in on her knee, looking down at it without seeing. Harper scooted forward and reached across the gap, snatching the flexi from her hand, curiosity negating social niceties like asking. She didn't swat his hand or discourage him as she might have in the past.

"It's no wonder you fell asleep if your pleasure reading is medical charts," he said as he scrutinized it. She was about to point out that he read engineering schematics for fun, and he had gifted her with an entire database of scientific data just two days before, when she saw it click with a raised eyebrow whose chart he was looking at. "You're researching yourself?" He shoved it back at her as if it had become fire in his hands, color rising in his cheeks.

"Everything is different now. I can to heal hundreds of species, yet I know nothing about my own body. From reading today, I can say I appear to be a highly evolved genetic cousin to Humans. We are similar in almost every physical way, yet we differ at a biochemical level and in brain structure. These differences may simply be a mixture of evolving in different environments and a much longer evolutionary period for my species," She explained. Her species. Was that word even applicable? A species of one. An almost copy of a lost species from a long dead universe.

Mental processing lines appeared above Harper's nose. "Highly evolved genetic cousin? Like, maybe the Vedrans weren't the only ones who seeded their blueprints in our universe. Like humans are some sort of Lambent Kith starter kit?" The amusement in his tone did not reflect in his body language.

She raised an eyebrow at his analogy. "That is an interesting way to put it. It's possible. But, while being 'human but not human' is a starting point, it isn't much help. I still cannot tell you what will make me sick, how much I need to eat, or even how long I need to sleep. I have fallen asleep twice already, once sitting up in my hammock, so I moved in here, and then a little while ago. And every time I sleep..." she trailed off.

"You wake up from horrible, terrible, no good, very bad, gut wrenching nightmares," he finished. Her lips turned downward. She trained her eyes on him, sensing something she could not name yet. He kept his gaze off to the side. She nodded.

"Yes. They started last night. I think I was too sick before. I don't even remember them, but when I wake it feels… it feels like…" How did she finish? How did she frame her emotions using such an imprecise medium as language? She didn't have to.

"It feels like everyone and everything you know and love is gone and there is no way to get them back." His voice contained within it a lifetime of hurt and his tired stance took on a new meaning. There was only one way Harper could have expressed those feelings, her feelings, with such clarity.

"How long?" she asked. He picked up a pillow and sat it on his lap, patting it.

"I've had nightmares my entire life. The Dragons and Magog made sure of it. But, I haven't slept through an entire night since the Abyss destroyed Earth. Caffeine is the only thing keeping me going. Coffee is truly the nectar of the Gods." A glimpse behind his facade, willingly given. She had guessed years ago. Assigned the bunk beneath his for six months, awake and meditating for most of the night while everyone snored around her, it was impossible not to hear his late night thrashing—the groans and cries of a tortured soul. No one ever mentioned it in the morning and she'd taken her cue from them. Everyone was entitled to secrets, and those with their own secrets to hide did not pry.

"Harper…"

"Don't worry about it, Trance. I've learned how to handle them." He sounded flippant though his eyes told a different story. She looked away, overwhelmed, pulling her hands together on her lap, stilling them, focusing on keeping her kinetic energy under control so she would have something tangible to focus on. He accused her of being an enigma without realizing that he was just as much a mystery to her. How were people so cruel to one another, and how did someone who had suffered as much as Harper had on Earth still smile and joke his way through life?

"How? How do you handle all of it, how do you remain strong?" She stood up and took a step towards the more spacious galley, holding onto the wall for balance, suddenly succumbing to claustrophobia. Two steps. Three. Legs shaking, head swimming. She reached the table, scratched and stained from years of use, and leaned against it, arms in front of her, hands clasped. The table provided enough stability to calm her legs and head. She needed to spend time upright, anyway. A rustle. Some footsteps. Harper took position across from her.

"You are the strongest person I know, Trance," he said. She didn't look up at him, keeping her eyes on her hands, head bent down, hair hanging around her face, obscuring the surrounding room.

"No, I am not strong," she whispered, "not at all." Tears threatened to fall again. She was tired of tears. What happened to the hardened warrior who rarely cried? Who was this girl who could not stop?

"Trance…"

"You don't understand." She looked up through her hair, keeping her chin bent down. He stared at her, eyes narrowed so that fine lines stretched out from their corners.

"Help me understand."

She opened her mouth to speak and closed it again. Stop it. Pull your chin up and smile. Say nothing. Frozen in place, the default urge to protect the inner workings of her mind—to hide behind deflections, riddles, and masks—waged war with a longing to share her pain and lessen its burden. He doesn't need your burdens, he has too many of his own. They all do.

"Trance, take it from someone who knows, it doesn't help to keep everything all wound up tight inside. Eventually it snaps free and at the worse possible time. If you don't want to talk to me, there has to be someone. Dylan? Rommie?" he asked. The sincerity in his expression tugged at her defenses. She remembered. She remembered him after the Magog infested him with their eggs, gun out, firing on already dead and decaying monsters, as if those bullets might change his fate and remove his pain.

"No, Harper, I want to talk to you. I am just used to not talking," she replied once the silence grew uncomfortable. "In the Nebula, feelings are weapons."

A moment passed, then another, neither one of them willing to break it. Pressure built up in her chest. She had to tell. She took a deep breath to calm her racing heart.

"Can you keep a secret?" she asked.

Harper let out a sigh. Relief? "Andromeda, engage privacy mode."

"Privacy mode activated," Andromeda said. Now she had no choice. She lifted her chin so Harper could see her face, and so she could look into his eyes.

"I don't know what it is like for humans, but when I was in the coma, I was awake. Sort of. It was a dark place. I felt nothing and heard nothing and that was a relief," she explained, her gaze unwavering. "My twin found me in the darkness. I do not know how he communicated with me, or even if I imagined him, my subconscious giving me a voice I might listen to. He told me that if I did not face what had happened, I would die."

A knot formed in her throat and she swallowed it down. Tears welled up, and she blinked them away. Harper kept his eyes on her, deep worry lines creasing his forehead. He reached across the table with both hands and wrapped hers in his. She glanced down at the place where their skin met, tan on ivory and gold, his skin cool against hers. She looked up again.

"Harper, I wanted to. I wanted to die, to disappear and never face life like this and I told him as much. He convinced me to live, but every day since waking there has been at least one moment where I wish that I had… that I had just disappeared," she said. There. Her heart lay exposed on the table like never before, her darkest thoughts out there for judgement, spoken to Harper of all people, a man known for struggling with empathy. "See, I am not strong. I want to run because this is hard, and I am empty inside without my sun, and I am afraid."

A pause. The trembling started in her legs and spread throughout her body, energy fighting to be free from tensed muscles. What would he think of her now that she admitted she wanted to die? Over the last month, her friends had dedicated countless hours to treating her, caring for her, and entertaining her, Harper more than any of them. How ungrateful she sounded to wish it all away, even for a moment.

No judgement passed over his expression; only worry, only love, only… understanding? He squeezed her hands, grip tight, as if she were falling and in need of rescue. And perhaps she was, unable to keep her balance on the edge of a precipice, light behind her and darkness below her.

"If you have been feeling like this every day for the last week, you're even stronger than I thought," he said. "It is really hard to keep living when you want to die. Really really hard."

Yes, understanding. A memory surfaced. Four years ago, three weeks after the first Magog attack, a nervous Rommie had approached her in Hydroponics. She asked her as both Harper's acting physician and his best friend to keep an eye on him. Don't make him suspicious, don't approach him, or make it obvious, just watch him closely. She would not elaborate, only saying he was not well.

"Right now, I feel I am only living for you. For you, Dylan, Beka… I am only fighting because I don't want to leave all of you who love me so much." She explained, her voice shaking. His lips pulled into a thin, sad, smile.

"One day, you'll start to live for yourself again, too. I promise." His grip on her hands loosened, but he didn't take them away. She took a moment to collect herself. The knot in her throat loosened. The unshed tears dried. Her muscles released most of their tension. A wave of dizziness washed over her, lifting her head up towards the bulkheads, whether from the physical stress of standing for so long or the intensity of her emotions.

"I think that is about as much talking about myself as I can handle," she said, managing a small smile. "I need to sit."

Harper was by her side a second later, arm slipping around her waist, his body heat warming her, the preferred temperature of humans being at the lower edge of her comfort level. The last time they shared such close contact must have been well over a year ago, months before Seefra. She didn't tense at the sudden intimate touch as she might have before, or pull away. Instead she wrapped her arm around his back and pressed into his side, using his strength to keep herself steady without the table's solidity. He smelled of stale coffee, sweat and grease; not entirely unpleasant.

"You okay? I mean right now, physically? Nothing is wrong? Obviously you're not okay," he asked rambling the way he did in emotional situations.

"I'll be fine, I've just been standing too long." She tried to keep her voice from wavering so as not to worry him more. He tightened his hold, fingers pressing into her side just beneath her jutting ribs.

"Back to your bunk?"

"No, my room. I want to be around my plants." They moved through the hall, stepping in unison, one foot in front of the other, silent for the first few steps. She sensed that Harper had more to say. "What is it?"

"Listen, I will change the subject, but I need you to promise me something first. If your feelings get overwhelming don't sit alone with them. Find someone. Find me. Wake me up even. I won't even talk if you don't want to talk. Just… You don't even understand how fast feelings like that can get scary and out of control." He led her to her purple hammock and helped her sit down, then he stood in front of her, looking down, waiting for her to respond. She pulled back away from the intensity of his gaze and the power of his fear. Fear for her. "Promise me."

"I promise," she said, voice soft, meeting his eyes. And then, "Thank you."

"For what?" He fidgeted in place, now the one uncomfortable.

"For being here today, and especially for being there a month ago," she replied, finally thanking him for saving her life. He plopped down on the red hammock, peering at her through the sheer fabric.

"I… you're welcome. You're my friend, Trance. I can be a crappy friend sometimes, but if you need me, I'm here."

A true smile tugged her lips upward. "Harper, you are my best friend. We are all lost sometimes. We all make choices we are not proud of. It does not make you a bad friend. Now will you talk about what you have been working on these last two days, what has kept you away and why you look so drained right now?"

"Is that your polite way of telling me I look like crap?" He returned her smile with half one of his own and that somewhat bemused expression that often decorated his features in her presence.

"Not quite. And, you are evading."

"It's just something Rhade found. That's all." His tone was a poor attempt at indifference. He swung himself in the hammock. Back and forth. Back and forth.

"If it were nothing, you would not have spent so long on it." To the casual acquaintance, Harper might seem like an open and easy-going person. Those close to him realized that extracting guarded information took patient prodding. He remained silent. Back and forth.

"Harper," she pressed.

He jumped up from the hammock and paced the room his steps, heavy and loud, mingling with the hissing intake and outtake of her plants' supplemental oxygen system, creating a dissonant music that somehow matched Harper's mood. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a flexi, handing it to her on his next pass. It was almost a relief to look away from his dizzying pacing.

A Yin-Yang symbol like the one on Harper's arm appeared when she turned it on, only inside several characters had been written. She narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing them.

"It's from Earth," he said.

"I see that. These characters are Arabic, these are Roman, and these are Japanese… no, Chinese," she murmured as she attempted to make sense of what she saw. "The Roman characters say… liberation?" She looked up when his pacing stopped. He stood in front of her, mouth agape, both eyebrows raised. She blinked a few times, twisting her shoulders, the heat rising in her cheeks. "What?"

"You can read English and recognize the other symbols?" he asked. Her fidgeting rocked the hammock, and she adjusted herself to keep her balance, precarious as it was these days.

She shrugged. "You learn a lot when you have lived as long as I have. Language is important for interaction."

"How many languages do you speak?" His voice, full of disbelief, also carried the hint of a challenge. He would continue to test her boundaries, asking question after question until he found one she was unwilling to answer. At least he hadn't asked her age.

She thought for a moment, making mental calculations, compressing dialects of the same languages into one, and came up with a number. "3,789, more or less." And then, thinking she should soften the impact because Humans often became uncomfortable with statistics like that, she added, "Most of them are dead." It didn't work. Harper's eyes grew impossibly wider.

"That's amazing. And you are right, it says liberation in three different Old Earth languages. The symbol is the Yin Yang," he explained.

She nodded. "The unity of opposites. Light cannot exist without darkness, peace without war, male without female. It's a common theme in cultures across the Universe."

"Right. For us, it was war and peace. We wanted peace for our families, but could not get it without fighting every god damn Uber on Earth. It was stupid, all we ever did was annoy them. We didn't know the first thing about resistance." His eyes turned to glass and the tendons in his neck stuck out from the tension in his jaw. The bitterness in his tone was biting. So much hatred. And though it saddened her, she did not fault him for it. What the Drago Kazov had done to the people of Earth was unforgivable, even to her. "Not that it matters. Earth is gone now."

The aching in her heart from earlier returned, the combination of both their losses so palpable she almost saw it rising around them in tendrils of melancholy fog. She glanced down at the time stamp on the message in her hands so she didn't have to see his pain, unsure of how to help. It had no starting stamp, but the time of its arrival on Earth was clear.

"How did Rhade find this?" she asked, looking up again. He returned to his pacing. Back and forth. Faster now.

"You know how when communications are open Andromeda sometimes picks up fragments of other transmissions?" he asked. Communications systems weren't always perfect. They picked up a lot of noise, but not all of that noise was useless. They stored in a database to for future review in case communications were open during or preceding military or diplomatic action.

"Rhade found this in the noise after everything settled down," she said, surprised. "Andromeda intercepted it when we were trying to get you to return."

Back and forth, pace frantic now. "Bingo. Someone sent the transmission from several light years away. It arrived the very moment Earth was destroyed and somehow bounced back into space where Andromeda intercepted it. It survived, but it's pretty screwed up." It was hard to pinpoint the dominant emotion in his voice. Anger? Frustration? Despair?

"So you've been working on this around the clock, trying to make sense of it?" she asked. His pacing stopped again.

"Resistance transmissions are hidden behind three encryption codes. Once I broke those, I found the text written in encoded English. I had to break that code and translate it—since I don't speak English— which wasn't easy because it is so corrupted that large bits of text are missing." He rubbed his temples. She wanted to reach out and comfort him, but didn't have the energy to move. "I spent hours decoding it and even longer trying to figure out where it came from, but it could have come from anywhere in the Tri-Galaxies and the text is no help."

"You're smart, Seamus. You can figure this out."

He slammed a fist into his chest, his voice rising, "I am a freaking genius and it doesn't mean anything. It's hopeless. Did you read it?"

She sat up straighter, squaring her shoulders and trying not to let Harper's tone get to her. Humans often lashed out at those closest to them when upset, and Harper often attacked like a caged animal when upset, but even after all these years she found it difficult not to take it to heart. She scanned the document twice to make sure she read it correctly.

"Drop… succe... safe for no… don't know… children… next load… five… maybe less…"

She stood up, flexi in hand, ignoring the shakiness of her legs and the sudden tilting of the room, taking two small steps until she was in front of him, almost nose to nose. She placed both hands on his arms, just beneath the shoulders. Tense muscles twitched beneath her fingers, stress keeping them from relaxing.

"This message is hope. If a group of Terrans made it off before Earth's destruction, we have to find them. Even if the chance is small. We must do everything we can." She did not let him avoid her gaze, pleading with him to see what she saw. He could not give up.

His eyes narrowed. This close, she saw his pupils quivering. She read suspicion in those eyes. "No one has called Humans Terrans in a long time, Trance. You said you knew Earth. Is that why you care so much? Most people don't give a damn about a backwater slave planet."

She took a shaky breath and let it out, her heart speeding up, unexpected nervousness building. What did she fear?

"I didn't tell you my twin's name the other night. It is Sol," she said, "And his wife, his beloved, called herself Gaia, though sometimes she preferred Terra."

He took a step back, recoiling, his face reminding her of the first time he'd seen her the day she'd traded places with herself—the moment he pulled a gun on her. A weight formed in her stomach, dragging her down towards the deck. Her lips parted and closed, not sure what to say.

An instant later his expression softened with a flash of guilt. Her hurt must have been visible on the surface.

"So, um, your brother is the Avatar of Earth's sun and you call yourselves the Gemini twins?" he asked, stepping towards her again, a wry smile forming, teasing her in an attempt to break up the tension. Typical Harper. She laughed, more from relief than amusement.

"Yes. Sol thought it would be fun to take a name from Earth's mythology. Earth's cultures fascinate him. You two would probably have a lot to talk about. Though, I doubt he finds our name quite so amusing now." The Gemini twins, one a God, the other mortal and doomed to die. Only, Pollux had been granted immortality so Castor would not lose him. Hers had been taken away.

She fought a sudden and desperate urge to reach out to her brother, to see if he could still hear her across vast distances as he had when they were younger and defying the Nebula and its insistence on conformity simply because they could. She missed him. Needed him.

No! The Nebula will kill him if they find out.

Instead, she returned her attention to Harper, who now just looked tired, overwhelmed, and overwrought.

"Tell me what you are thinking?" she asked. Did she reveal too much to him too soon?

"Why does it feel like everything is connected? You, me, your brother, Earth, the Abyss? All of it. Andromeda and the Magog, the Restored Commonwealth, Tarn Vedra, The Nebula? I feel like a fly stuck in a giant spiderweb with no choice in what happens and no way out."

Me too, she thought. Instead of speaking her mind, which would not be productive for either of them, she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him to a grate in the back of the room where a dark-leafed ivy with flowers the color and shape of a flame climbed. She dropped his hand and stretched hers out to the plant, caressing a smooth leaf.

"The Universe is a lot like this ivy. It all starts with a single event, a single life, or a single choice. A seed planted in the soil. It breaks through, clinging to the grate, branching out in search of light." She traced a single stem with her finger, following it up the grate until she reached a place where another crossed over it. "Every decision, every life, every event causes more and more branch-offs until they come together. Lives and destinies become intertwined, sometimes very closely. In the end, everything is connected by a single seed."

She looked to Harper to see if he was following. He stared at the place where her hand rested. She pulled away from the grate and slid into her hammock again, exhausted.

"So we have no choice, it's all destiny?" Harper asked, taking a seat in the other hammock. She shook her head.

"It's all about the choices we make and our intentions. Some help the ivy to flourish, other condemn it to die. All we can do is make the best choices possible and realize that they will branch out and affect far more than we can ever imagine."

"Will finding my people help the vine, or will it kill it? Is it important?" he asked.

"That is not something we can know. It could change the Universe. It could just change you. Perhaps finding the Terrans won't help at all. It might be that it is the journey that makes a difference, not the result. It could hurt things in the end. But, isn't it worth the risk?" She gave him a small smile. Harper returned it with a small true smile of his own.

"You sound like Trance again."

She shrugged and shook her head though she didn't let her smile fall. "I don't think I ever knew who Trance Gemini was, but I am learning every day."

"So, what is this vine's name?" he asked. She looked back at the grate and then to Harper once again.

"This one doesn't have a name yet. What do you think we should call it?"

He sat in pensive silence for a few moments and then said, "Fate. I think we should call it Fate."