On the Heights (Finale)

The other thing no one tells you about space is how incredible it is.

It’s more vast than we humans can ever know. More dangerous than we can understand. More mysterious that we can imagine.

Also… there are some wonderful things that come from space.

* * *

“You’re wearing your hair differently,” I said to Nelle when I reached the bottom of the lodge stairs the next morning.

“I know. I like high ponytails. They make me feel powerful.”

“Do you need to feel powerful today?”

“Today is the day we find out if my hypothesis comes true.”

I remembered our conversation in the hallway back before I’d suggested joining Nelle on this trip, the way she’d hinted that she suspected their turbine model would outperform the industrial ones that surrounded us. However, I also remembered one of the few details I’d been able to follow during our warp-speed introduction yesterday.

“I thought Dr. Kamrin said it’d take several days to get sufficient comparative results,” I said.

Nelle scowled at me and spun on a heel toward the door.

“So you were listening yesterday after all.”

“Hey!” I protested as I followed her out into the morning wind and sun. “Just because I was sleepy doesn’t mean I was neglecting my duties.”

“Whatever you say, honorary member.”

“If you’re displeased with my performance, president, I’m willing to take direction.”

“In that case, walk faster. I’m hungry.”

“I’m glad to see you’ve taken my advice on caring for yourself,” I said, trotting to catch up with her.

“I seem to remember your advice was related to sleep, not nutrition. You need to stick to a research subject.”

Unbidden, or inspired by the fresh air, something bold activated in my brain.

“I am sticking to a subject,” I said. “My favorite one.”

“And what’s that? Self care?”

“You.”

Nelle froze mid-step, but I kept walking. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face as I marched toward the cafeteria.

Now that was smooth. Even Elliso would be proud of a set up like that.

After enduring Nelle’s various provocations, it felt good to finally get a bit of petty revenge.

Happily, my victory didn’t last long.

I say happily, because, if I was honest with myself, the thing I really enjoyed—more than getting one over on Nelle—was the way neither of us ever really lost when it came to the other. Together, we were our own two-body problem, everything we’d ever shared the common center about which we orbited.

Also, the moment was kind of cinematic.

“Hey.”

I’d made it probably ten steps before Nelle’s voice came chasing after me. I pivoted, half-ready to dodge some kind of physical assault, but the attack that came my way… well, I couldn’t have avoided it even if I’d been an ace mecha pilot.

The wind gusted as I turned, and before my eyes I saw Nelle, one hand high behind her head and pulling the tie out of her ponytail. Through the whipping white strands of my own hair, I watched the wind catch the tumultuous blue, blowing it across a face with cheeks still holding an extra dose of red. Her long navy jacket, unbuttoned over her dark jeans and professionally trim blouse, rippled in picturesque parallel.

As a counterattack, I had to admit it was pretty effective. But I wasn’t going to give up so easily.

“Did you mess up your powerful ponytail just to get back at me?”

“Do you feel appropriately chastised for playing with my heart like that?”

“Don’t answer a question with a question.”

“I’d like to be answering a statement with a statement, but you keep making me wait.”

The wind died down, and I used a wrist to push my bangs up and out of my eyes. Across the gravel, Nelle was doing the same, blue running through her fingers as she held it above her forehead.

We stood, mirror images of each other, until, like always, we began to laugh—at each other and at ourselves.

“Someone’s impatient,” I said when our laughter died down and we resumed the walk towards breakfast.

“I have a lot of exciting data to look forward to today,” she said, bumping me with her shoulder. “And you’re a distraction.”

“I tried like three times to get it over with on the GPSS.”

“I know.”

“It wasn’t my fault. The universe kept getting in my way.”

“Oh, it was the universe that stopped you in the observation zone?”

Unfortunately, she had me with that one.

After we ate with Dr. Kamrin, we made our way back to the installation site. Nelle did the honors, making the final connection between the turbine and the wind farm’s grid. I sat on a bench nearby as she and the director disappeared into the monitoring room, staring out to the ocean and the waves tumbling below the ever-active air.

An hour or two later, I stuck my head into the monitoring room. Nelle sat in rapt stillness, gaze fixed on grids and numbers representing the culmination of her efforts to be something other than the role that had defined her whole life.

In a way, I supposed I was getting ready to do the same—to step out of the role of ambassador and do something just for me.

For the two of us.

“How’s it looking?” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Doesn’t mean anything yet,” Nelle answered, not looking away from the screen. “But it’s within our hypothesized range so far.”

I started to pull my hand back, but one of Nelle’s came up to hold it in my place. Where her fingers touched my knuckles, my skin buzzed with light.

“I want to watch until lunch,” she said, voice quiet with focus.

“Do you want me to stay?”

She didn’t say anything, but the slight bob of her head was enough to keep me there until Dr. Kamrin returned with word that lunch was almost over.

After eating, we emerged from the farm’s main building into a sun-bright afternoon. Above us, a few sparse clouds soared across the sky. In the wind, just as active as it had been when we’d first arrived, Nelle’s re-done ponytail swayed. She inhaled deeply, stretching her arms upwards.

“Ready to walk?”

“Are you going to make it worth my time?” she said, coming out of her stretch. “Or should I just go back to the monitoring room?”

“At the worst, you should get some good observational data out of it.”

“And at the best?”

“I don’t know if me saying something I should have said days ago counts as the best,” I said, stopping before the sign Dr. Kamrin had told us to look for. On it, a map displayed the network of dirt maintenance roads winding through the hills and turbines. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

“Heh.” Her hand slipped into mine as we stepped onto the road. “I’m looking forward to it.”

We climbed the gently sloping hills, the tall green grass on either side of the flattened dirt sometimes high enough to block our view of the sea. Here and there, we stopped to crane our heads up at the massive white blades rotating, losing ourselves for minutes in the meditative repeating motion.

Somewhere along the ridge of one of the hills, I looked down from a turbine to see Nelle staring at me. Her bangs drifted over her forehead, eyes the same color as the brightest greens of the grass that rustled around us. I caught my breath, tasting the clearness of the air, before she spoke.

“Can I ask you something, Annin?”

“Yeah?”

“Why’d you stop yourself that night?”

I sighed, recalling the way I’d yelled the same question over and over at myself the morning after.

“It was two things,” I started, the relief of finally saying it out loud pushing me onward. “One, I was moving too fast for myself. I was looking at you and suddenly I understood it. That, you know… for such a long time I’d… but then I didn’t have the words. So I tried to kiss you.”

I shook my head against the memory and turned my face toward the ocean and the far-distant horizon. Suddenly, I realized how far we’d come up the gradual inclines of the hills. My stomach began to twist. I took a step back, then another, until I was a full pace into grass that came up my waist.

No! Not now! Not when I’m finally going to–

“Keep going,” Nelle said. When I looked at her, her eyes were alight with sunshine. “Just look at me.”

The clench of fear faded, and in its place something warmer rose.

“The other thing,” I said ruefully. “Was a bad habit. I used to think it was selfish to say I wanted you to myself. That I had to keep you as the princess who saved the universe, and not just yourself. Even though that’s not what either of us want.”

Around us, the wind kicked up. I watched the way it blew her hair back from her face, putting every fine contour on display.

“And now?” she said.

“Now, I don’t think that.”

“Then say it,” she whispered. “Say it, Annin.”

As my lips parted to speak, it was as if I became aware of the entire world at once and yet also only her. The grass and the sky and the clouds and the massive machines, emerald and azure and white. The soil underfoot, the fluttering air, and the unending blackness of space beyond.

And, in the middle of it all, Nelle.

If anyone had been nearby, they wouldn’t have heard the three words I said over the flurry of wind.

But Nelle did.

And I heard what she said, too.

This time, when I leaned in to kiss her, she didn’t stop me. She just lifted herself on her toes, putting her hands on my shoulders as my arms went around her waist, and kissed me back.

I lost track of how long we stayed like that, time speeding by on the wind or standing still like the turbines above. I measured change not in seconds, but in the way our lips went from gentle to hard against each others’, in her hands moving from my shoulders to the back of my head, in the way our gasps came harder in between the short intolerable periods when we parted. My neck began to ache from her pulling me toward her, but when she pulled back too soon I leaned further down to kiss the side of her neck and felt her fingers knot in my hair.

“Annin–!”

Then her weight pulled me down as she sank onto her heels. On my hands and knees, I leaned forward to kiss her again.

When we pulled away this time, I leaned my forehead against hers and closed my eyes. We sat there, breathing, the grass whispering around us.

“… was it worth your time?”

Nelle’s forehead pushed gently into mine in answer.

“It’s hard to gather good observational data when you’re kissing me like that.”

“Do you want me to apologize?”

“It depends,” she leaned away, and I opened my eyes to see something besides her vivid pupils for the first time in minutes. Her cheeks were as pink as mine felt hot. "What kind of apology are you offering?”

“This kind.”

As euphoric as kissing Nelle was, the apology I wanted to give her was something more familiar.

I sat next to her, not caring if the trampled grass stained my pants, and lifted my arm to reach over her back. She leaned into me, head coming to rest against my chest.

“I accept your apology,” she murmured. “And I’m feeling generous right now, so I’ll even count it double.”

“Double?”

“For making me wait.”

“Cool.”

“That’s not a very satisfying response.”

I tightened my arm around her.

“I’ll continue my apology then.”

“Why don’t you mix it up? Otherwise, I might think you don’t really mean it.”

“Fine.”

I brought my opposite hand up, tilting her chin up on top of my curled fingers.

“You know,” she said, her lips an inch away from mine. “You really do have the moves of an 1800s playboy.”

“Shut up,” I said, and kissed her again.

“By the way,” Nelle said. “Dr. Kamrin offered us something special later today.”

“Yeah? What?”

We were sitting next to each other on a bench a little further up the hill, shoulder to shoulder. Nelle had been leaning against me, but she pushed away as she spoke.

“A rare opportunity. Something truly incredible.”

“You’re making me think I’m not going to like this.”

“Even if she offered to let us go up one of the turbines on a maintenance check? Both of us?”

“Up one of those?” I said, pointing at the nearest turbine. “No, thank you. I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’m afraid of heights.”

“Are you sure you want to tell her that?” 

Nelle sprang to her feet, a smile spreading wide on her face. Backgrounded by the windswept grass and the sea beyond, I thought it was the prettiest sight I’d ever seen.

Or, it would have been if she wasn’t, for some reason, trying to bait me into going up a hundred-meter-plus wind turbine tower.

“Yes,” I said. “I am sure.”

“I could come up with an excuse for you so you don’t have to say you’re afraid of heights.”

She looked positively gleeful at the prospect.

Ah. So that’s what this is about.

“You know,” I said, unable to keep my own smile contained. “Now that we’re together, officially, you don’t have to come up with excuses to protect me anymore. I’m not going anywhere.”

I stood and walked up to her.

“Just come back in one piece.”

“Hmm…” she hummed, walking past me the way we’d come. “I guess I can promise that. And you know what I say.”

A gust drowned out what she said next, but I didn’t need to hear to know.

“A princess never forgets her promises.”

I began to follow her down the hill, turning those words over in my mind—words that, for me, now held a meaning closer to the ones we’d exchanged earlier.

“I love you.”

It was nice to know that, despite my fear of heights, the princess who had come from space still loved me.