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Solemnity breathed a sigh of relief as she approached the darkened classroom. Still empty. It was always easier to set up the activity before the kids arrived.
She stepped inside, counting out eight sheets of recycled paper and laying one in front of each chair at the U-shaped table. Footsteps echoed down the corridor outside… but just one set. Not the kids, then. The steps were quick but irregular — a syncopated gait that never quite found a rhythm, and she recognized them instantly. From her geoponics bag Sol unearthed a bundle of lavender cuttings and three nested cups.
A colorful blur at the edge of her vision sharpened into Nomi, standing just outside the hatch. “Happy Valentine’s Day! I heard there would be painting?”
“Happy Valentine’s! It’s in the cabinet,” Sol replied, gesturing up at the cabinet high on the wall and well out of reach of children’s hands. “Thanks in advance for coming. I know it seems like eight kids isn’t that many, but when paint’s involved it gets out of hand fast.”
“Thank you for inviting me!” Balancing against the counter, they stretched as high as they could and just barely snagged the paint.
Sol made a mental note of where she could hide their birthday gift next year.
“I would’ve been sad to miss this,” Nomi added.
The two had just finished selecting paint colors and setting up trays when much louder footsteps echoed down the hall, like a herd of wild beasts. “Hope you’re ready,” she warned.
Tammy peeked in from the head of the line, her initial confusion at the lights and completed setup melting into a smile when she spotted her wife. “You’re helping today? How?”
Sol remained hunched over the table, dividing the lavender into cups, until the warmth of Tammy’s hand found the small of her back. “Sure am, hydroponics can spare me for a bit.” She straightened up, brushing her hands off on her pants and pushing her hair out of her face. “Plus I wanted to deliver the flowers.”
Tammy gave her a squeeze before turning to the kids, instantly taking charge of the chaos and managing to get eight sets of eyes on her as she explained the day’s art project: thumbprint flowers arranged together in a bouquet. If there was time, they could draw stems or a vase afterwards.
As the kids were in line to wash their hands, Tammy’s eyes dropped to the lavender, the vivid silver-green stems and purple blooms standing out against the beige of the table. “How did you manage this?” she asked softly, fingertips grazing the petals. “I thought you weren’t allowed to grow ornamentals anymore…”
“Well it’s edible, technically. Still food, so still allowed.” Sol plucked a small bud and tossed it in her mouth for emphasis, noting the peppery, citrusy flavor. “And it’s easier when the head of hydroponics is your dad,” she said with a wink.
“Don’t let them see you eat it or they’ll all want to try,” Tammy whispered with a soft smile on her lips. “How long have you been planning this?”
“A while.” She drew a sprig of lavender from one of the cups and tucked it behind Tammy’s ear. “Now kindly take yourself to the other side of the room; Echinacea wants hers to be a surprise.”
“Echinacea, over here, please,” Sol called, lightly tapping the chair in front of her. They’d tried a dozen nicknames for her, but none lasted more than a few days before she once again declared she wanted to be called her whole name. She slid into the chair at full speed, thumb ready to dive into the paint. Her pinkish-purple hair was done up in a heart braid for the special occasion, tied elegantly with a white ribbon.
Tammy had loved braiding Sol’s hair too, as far back as she could remember. There were days in the creche where Tammy spent hours marveling at the strands of blue and yellow as she learned new ways to weave them together. One arrangement drew out and highlighted the yellow, another tucked it underneath and out of view. She quietly longed for her own multicolored hair to use as a canvas, but never in an envious way. Sol held onto that knowledge, offering up her own hair to weave into Tammy’s once it had grown long enough.
After a few failed attempts on their own, Cal — an experienced braider by then — offered to help. He gathered two strands of pink, one strand of blue, and tried to bring them together as the girls sat side by side. Marz criticized his handiwork and had him undo it all. Pulling up a holovid for reference, she fashioned a two-person heart braid that looped around both their scalps. Each girl carried one-half of the heart, the plaits winding together at the base of their necks until they were fully joined. From a distance, the blend of pink and blue look almost like lilac. It was a masterpiece, they all agreed; Sol declared she was never taking it out. They spent the day clumsily moving from one activity to the next, giggling and tethered to each other.
No one tried to separate them until Geranium came to take Sol home at the end of the day, and even then, both girls insisted that Tammy simply had to come along. In their minds, it was all settled: they would share a bed, share their meals, and never be apart again.
Geranium loved recounting that story at their wedding ceremony, emphasizing how they spoke with such certainty at such a young age and from that day on never seemed to waver.
Their ceremony had been small and simple — not the extravagant affair Sol knew Tammy was worthy of, the one she always dreamed about. It felt strange to celebrate while the world burned around them, but just as strange to pretend there was nothing worth celebrating. It was a gift to others, too: a light in the dark. Tonin and Geranium got to see their only children truly happy, finding partners in a difficult life, much as they had once done themselves. Plus, it gave the two a chance to rib one another about being old enough to have grandchildren.
Nomi flitted around from kid to kid, heaping praise and offering tips, Tammy focused on those furthest from Echinacea, and Sol hovered near Echinacea and the surrounding two kids.
“Mommy, you’re going to love the purple and pink flowers I made!” Echinacea yelled, holding up her paper. “Look!”
Tammy, to her credit, kept her eyes down on Cardamom’s paper with a hint of a smile forming. “Hmm… I thought it was going to be a surprise?”
“Oh! Yes — don’t look!” she scolded.
Despite a few thumbprints ending up on tables and shirts, the kids finished their bouquets and left the papers to dry. Everything would be ready to go when their parents came to get them at the end of the day. Sol and Nomi tag-teamed the cleanup.
Anne shooed Tammy away from the creche that night, insisting she spend some kid-free time with her wife. Echinacea and two-year-old Constellation would stay with Anne and a few other creche kids for a sleepover (the name Constellation had been Sol’s choice; she couldn’t explain why, but it felt right, given the circumstances of her birth on the Heliopause).
Sol felt a physical weight lifting as she and Tammy made their way to their quarters. No middle-of-the-night wakeups, no small bodies crawling into bed and taking up entirely too much space, no tiny feet in her face — it was, quite possibly, one of the best gifts she’d ever received.
Once alone in their room, Tammy pulled something from her bag: a package wrapped in burgundy cloth and tied with a white ribbon. “It’s nothing big…” she emphasized as she handed it over.
“You said we weren’t getting each other anything!” Sol sighed, though she couldn’t hide a smile as she tugged the ribbon away to reveal a delicate stack of red velvet cookies. One of the constancies of the universe was that Tammy would always find a way to make some sort of baked good for any special occasion, and would just as consistently say it was no big deal. “Thanks, Tam. You’re the best.” She pulled her in for a quick kiss on the crown of her head, her familiar scent — warm, clean, sugary — lingering in her hair. “Hey, if I put these under my pillow do you think I’ll dream about marrying you?” she mused, which earned a laugh.
In bed, she curled into Tammy’s side and draped a wiry arm over her; Tammy’s own arm immediately settled atop hers, gentle and warm. Sometimes Sol felt like she was made of nothing but hard edges due to a lifetime of physical labor and inheriting her father’s tall, lean frame. It only made her appreciate Tammy’s softness even more. Tammy’s hand slowly worked its way up her arm, nails dragging lightly against her skin until she reached her hair, fingers untangling and massaging her scalp all at once. Sol’s hair was shorter now, the mid-back lengths of her youth traded for something easier to manage with the chaos of two kids. She closed her eyes and leaned into the touch.
Usually, she was so busy with work and kids and life that the thoughts didn’t have time to creep in at night. Usually, she would just fall blissfully asleep. But nightmares still came, sometimes, of lives not lived. More deaths, attacks year after year, or lives without Tammy. She never shared the details. Tammy always reassured her when she woke with a start, rubbing her back or wiping her tears, never resenting the additional lack of sleep her visions caused. Sol offered many times to go sleep somewhere else, sometimes trying to slip out of bed unnoticed, but Tammy always hugged her tight and refused to let her go.
And sometimes there other worries that worked their way in. Not her nightmares, the shared ones that they tried to ignore and not speak of. If they got busy enough, those worries would just sink back down into the depths of their minds again and settle if nothing stirred them up again. When those got to be too much, they had to alternate. Sol got to fall apart while Tammy held it together, and then sometimes the reverse. Being a parent meant scheduling when to give in to grief. Sometimes it was agony to pretend, to keep a straight face, but other times… it helped, to tell herself it was not the time and she simply could not let it out.
She couldn’t help but keep track of the imbalance, how much more often Tammy needed to be the one to hold it together. Maybe Tammy really was built to live in space. What Sol saw as drudgery Tammy saw as predictability. As children, Tammy had always been the worrier, the one quick to tears, and Sol the strong one, the comforter. But Tammy had found reserves of strength as she grew, somewhere deep inside, in a compartment that Sol wasn’t sure she herself possessed. She felt like the frail, delicate one now, so ill-adapted to the life they lived. At some point, early in their confinement, she had confessed this to Tammy. Her response stayed with her: It’s okay, Solemnity; we’re just taking turns.
If this was how their world had to be, she was glad she was in it with Tammy.
