io9 is proud to present fiction from Lightspeed Magazine. Once a month, we feature a story from Lightspeed’s current issue. This month’s selection is “It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand” by Lowry Poletti; this is part one of two—look for part two next week. Enjoy!
“It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand” by Lowry Poletti
On Miphre, a planet hardly larger than a moon, jagged mountaintops stab above the cloud cover and harbor small ecosystems in the palms of their hands: rock eels and ribbon mosses and seabirds with rodents clutched to their breasts, each one nestled between those stony fingers.
“The perfect nesting spot for gastor,” the captain of The Cyclops Cradles Her Sheep said when they arrived on board a few hours ago. “It’s basically a buffet for them.”
Sun tilted her head to the side. “Gastor don’t nest.”
“I’m sorry?” The captain’s reply was concurrent with a pointed look from Dossa Nirav, Sun’s mentor.
“They’re ovoviviparous.” She paused and reluctantly added, “They retain their eggs until they hatch internally. Then they come planet-side to refill their crops after the birth. They don’t make nests.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not.”
Now Sun watches the clouds with a mug of Earl Gray cupped in both hands. The observation deck features a 270-degree domed window and a metal floor so reflective that she feels like she’s standing on the same sky floating above her.
“You didn’t have to correct him, Sundimnya,” Dossa whispers to her, facing away so it doesn’t seem as though his student needs a talking-to. She wonders if he knows that he has whipped cream in his beard.
“I didn’t?”
“It was a great compliment that we were invited for the capture, you know. Most pilots never see this.”
She shrugs. “I could have just watched the recording after.”
She does want to be here, but it’s worth it to see the look on Dossa’s face: the raised eyebrows and wide eyes, the barely audible sigh.
In the flat expanse of the clouds, there is a stirring. She squints.
“When is the flock supposed to arrive?”
“They estimated half an hour.”
She leans into him, points to a stirring in the clouds. “Do you think so?”
She feels the pang in her chest, and she bets Dossa does, too. After working with her bird for years, the wonder has never left. If anything, it has grown. Sun isn’t the superstitious type, but she has spent so long memorizing everything about the gastor, from the feeling of her bird’s skin against hers to the rhythm of its breathing to the cadence of its locomotion. The crew of the Cyclops doesn’t see the held-breath silence of the sky preceding the arrival of a flock. If she said a word, they could call it prescience.
She hooks her arm into the crook of Dossa’s.
