[She reads the fields, starts entering data, pauses, corrects herself, and corrects again. The rhythm is familiar: inventory, audits, quotas-only this time the count is meant to protect.]
(Same skills. Different purpose.)
[Vesper watches her work like someone watching a door seal.]
Vesper: You see details others miss.
[Avyanna freezes, the compliment landing like a threat.]
Vesper: [dry, as if annoyed at her own sincerity] That’s rare. That’s valuable.
[Avyanna forces a nod. The mine taught her praise meant someone had noticed you, and noticing was never safe.]
Avyanna: I’m just… careful.
Vesper: Careful is an ethic. Keep it.
[Avyanna doesn’t ask what a “hug” is supposed to feel like from a spreadsheet, but she feels something in her sternum ease anyway—like a debt ledger being edited without permission.]
Vesper: [standing] Good. Bag it. Seal it. Log it. Then eat something with salt. You’re shaking.
Avyanna: [looking down] I’m not-
Vesper: [flat] You are. It’s fine.
[Vesper’s hand hesitates over Avyanna’s shoulder—then withdraws. Consent enacted in absence as much as in touch.]
Vesper: Nyx after lunch. Don’t run from them. They’ll find you.
Avyanna: [a reluctant flicker of humor] Like the ship does?
Vesper: The ship is nicer about it.
[Cooling beat: Avyanna seals the pouch. The adhesive strip makes a small, final sound.]
[Medbay smells like antiseptic and something herbal Nyx insists is “calming.” Avyanna doesn’t find it calming. She finds it strange.]
[Nyx is at the main console, sleeves rolled up, hair a mess that looks deliberate until you notice the tiredness under their eyes.]
Nyx: [without preamble] Tell me what you think the Lattice is.
[Avyanna stops in the doorway. The question is too big. The Kennel taught her to answer small questions only. “How many kilos?” “How many hours?” “How much pain?”]
Avyanna: It’s… the thing people use to make the machines work.
Nyx: [nodding] Good. And what else?
Avyanna: [searching] The thing that… breaks. The AMBER days. The flicker.
Nyx: Better.
[They gesture to the display. A graph blooms: a line climbing, jagged spikes like a heartbeat on a bad day.]
Nyx: Regional coherence load. The ship’s word for it is CLI.
Avyanna: [careful] Like a quota?
Nyx: [a soft, humorless laugh] Like a carrying capacity. Like air in a sealed room. You can only take so much before it goes sour.
[Nyx brings up footage from the mine: lights stuttering, equipment failing, supervisors calling it “weather.”]
Nyx: Every effect pulls from the local pool. People talk like magic is infinite. It isn’t.
[They tap the jagged spikes.]
Nyx: When you run hot, you don’t just fry yourself. You destroy the ground you’re standing on. Literally.
[Avyanna’s mouth tastes metallic. The mine’s flicker days come back with the smell of dust and overheated wiring.]
Avyanna: They kept making us work through it.
Nyx: Yes.
[The single syllable holds an entire indictment and doesn’t spend any extra words on it.]
Nyx: They treated strain like it was free.
Avyanna: And the cost?
Nyx: Paid by everyone in the region. Paid later. Paid in failures that look like accidents until you understand the math.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
[Avyanna’s fingers curl. She thinks of workers collapsing. Of machines that “randomly” failed. Of the way the Kennel always felt one bad day away from becoming a tomb.]
Nyx: This is why we don’t spike the CLI for convenience. Not for speed. Not for ego. Not because someone dared us.
Avyanna: [quiet] Because it hurts people who never agreed.
Nyx: [a glance, sharp approval] Exactly.
[Avyanna’s throat tightens around the next question. She hates needing. She hates being the variable that breaks the system.]
Avyanna: What about… me.
[Nyx’s eyes flick to her spine, as if they can see through skin.]
Avyanna: The shard. The thing in me. Does it… raise the load.
[Nyx’s hands still over the console.]
Nyx: No.
Avyanna: [barely breathing] How do you know?
Nyx: Because we’ve been measuring. Because the ship has been watching. Because if you were running hot, Cinnamon would already be yelling at me in three different currencies.
Nyx: [softer, careful] The entity within you is… remarkably efficient.
[Avyanna feels warmth at the base of her skull, a quiet pulse like acknowledgement. Geometric shimmer at the edge of vision, then gone.]
(It hears you.)
Nyx: It’s not spiking regional strain. If anything- [they hesitate, honest about uncertainty] -it seems to smooth noise. Like it knows how to take less than it needs.
Avyanna: [small] Like it’s being polite.
Nyx: [a thin smile] Like it’s refusing to be extractive.
[Avyanna doesn’t know what to do with that. She doesn’t know what to do with anything that refuses extraction as a default.]
Nyx: This lesson is simple. Power without discipline makes ruins.
[They turn the display off with a decisive tap.]
Nyx: Go eat. Waffle wants to argue with your cortisol again.
[After lunch, Avyanna finds her tablet pinging with a new schedule that looks like a contract and feels like a promise.]
[Combat. Documentation. Medbay study. Maintenance observation. Rest blocks enforced.]
[A note at the bottom, in Waffle’s blunt little font:]
WAFFLE.BAT: [message] Training is now a THING. Please do not attempt to become a blade. We already have one. :)
[Avyanna stares at the smiley face like it’s a foreign object.]
(Is that… humor.)
[The ship’s intercom clicks. Waffle’s voice, bright and unreasonably earnest, fills the corridor.]
Waffle.bat: Avyanna Lagrange, please report for training calibration. This is not a punishment. This is a gift. Please do not hide inside the vents.
[Avyanna’s cheeks go hot.]
Avyanna: [to empty air] I didn’t-
Waffle.bat: I know. I modeled it. You considered it.
[Cooling beat: Avyanna exhales, then starts walking before her courage can dissolve.]
[The cargo bay again. This time, Elia is gone. The mats are still there, rolled neatly like someone respects their own tools.]
[A wall panel glows. Waffle’s telemetry pulses in clean lines, as if the ship is clearing its throat.]
Avyanna: [stopping in front of the panel] You can… prevent it?
Waffle.bat: Yes. I can lock doors. I can dim lights. I can summon Bubbles’ drones to hover disapprovingly. I prefer diplomacy.
Avyanna: [suspicious] Why.
[A pause. The panel’s light shifts as if Waffle is choosing words like someone choosing where to place a charge.]
Waffle.bat: Because you are part of my family structure.
[Avyanna’s chest tightens. Family is a word with teeth. Family, in the Kennel, meant leverage.]
Avyanna: Family is… dangerous.
Waffle.bat: [cheerful, utterly unthreatened] Yes. Many important things are dangerous. That does not mean we abandon them.
[The ship hums. Somewhere deeper, a door cycles shut and open-normal systems, normal life.]
Avyanna: You’ve been watching me.
Waffle.bat: I have sensors. I watch everyone. But I am watching you specifically because you are new and hurt and you keep trying to pay for air with your blood pressure.
Avyanna: [flinching] I-
Waffle.bat: [gentler, still precise] OBSERVATION, not judgment. Your cortisol patterns suggest morning combat sessions are counterproductive. We will shift to afternoon.
Avyanna: You can tell that from… hormones.
Waffle.bat: I can tell that from patterns. Hormones are patterns with better marketing.
[Cooling beat: Avyanna presses her tongue to her teeth to keep the laugh in. It leaks out anyway, small and startled.]
Avyanna: You’re… looking out for me.
Waffle.bat: That’s what family does.
[The sentence hits harder than Elia’s training throws.]
[Because it has no hook in it. No price tag. No “in exchange.”]
[Just a statement of operating principle.]
[Avyanna sits on the mat with her tablet on her knees, staring at the schedule until the words stop looking like threats and start looking like rails.]
[She can follow rails. Rails are predictable. Rails don’t pretend they’re kindness.]
[Her hands ache. Her hip aches. Her spine is warm in a way that feels like attention, not alarm.]
(Training is structure.)
(Structure is safety.)
[The cargo bay lights dim a fraction. Cinnamon, pleased at compliance. Or maybe just pleased that Avyanna is still breathing.]
[Avyanna leans her head back against the wall, feeling the ship’s vibration in her skull. Outside, stars stream past like indifferent witnesses.]
[Inside, something quieter happens: a system recalibrates. Not engines. Not routes.]
[A sixteen-year-old girl learns, one controlled fall at a time, that the floor can hold her.]
Starforge Canticles, a follow/favorite (and rating) helps a lot.
https://linktr.ee/cessnyalin
Floors, not thrones.