Free Stardawn by Phoebe North Page B

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    I think I was only shocked, that’s all, at the sight of someone tucked within the bows of my tree. My tree! How absurd. As if I could own a tree, any more than I could own anything else on this ship. I think about that sometimes, how my room has belonged to generations of children before me. How, beneath the shine of enamel paint on the doorjamb, there are height marks for boys and girls long grown or dead. Someday, that tree, my tree, will be chopped to pieces. It will become a table, a chair, a piece of paper. I wonder if the paper I write on now was once a tree—a tree that some poor girl fooled herself into believing was all her own.
    Look at that. All I’ve just written. My words get away from me once again—didn’t I tell you? But the difference is that I’m not angry this time. I’m pleased. I’m mostly very pleased.
    And it scares me, just a little bit, how pleased I am.
    Yours,
    Alyana

47th Day of Spring, 22 Years Till Landing
    Benjamin,
    I want to remember every moment, and so I’m writing it down just for you.
    I can’t pretend that tonight, I didn’t expect to see you. I’m not quite as young or as silly as either of us would like to believe. When I went to my tree after dinner and my chores and a fight with Momme, I was dressed in my favorite green dress, the one that brings out the color in my eyes.
    “Where are you going, Zibbeleh?” my father asked as I breezed down the steps, but I think he must have known. The smile curled up the corners of his lips. Momme looked up from the dishes, a knowing smirk on her mouth too. They always look like that lately, all winks and arched eyebrows when they’re not annoyed at me. I know what they must be saying when their bedroom light turns black beneath their door. A boy, a boy, a husband soon! Because I’m nearly sixteen, and that’s what the lives of girls my age are supposed to be about, isn’t it?
    It never was true before tonight.
    My heart pounded in my ears as I walked through the dome. I felt a smile spark on my mouth, then falter and die again. I knew—no, I hoped—that my words had done their work. I’ve never been so daring before, Benjamin. I’ve never been so direct. Not even with Arran Fineberg, who was sweet on me last year, who followed me after class like a lost puppy, begging to carry my books. Please, don’t be jealous. I might have been a little flattered, sure, but I never liked him, not really.
    I certainly never kissed him.
    When I reached the tree, the dome lights were already dimming. I could see the first stars burn to life above, shining steady through the glass in their nameless constellations. I fixed my hands to the branches, pulled myself up. I settled in on the widest bough, letting my head rest against the bark. I tried to look . . . I don’t know. Thoughtful, maybe. Staring up at the glass, I made myself imagine what the ship looks like on the outside. A bug, I’ve heard. But how are we to know for certain? We can’t. We have to rely on what other people tell us, our teachers and the captain and the Council. Why, it could be anything, if we open ourselves to the possibility.
    Usually that’s a thought I can lose myself inside for hours: all the possible shapes of the ship. Maybe it’s a flower. Maybe it’s a sphere. But tonight, I couldn’t imagine any possibility outside myself—and outside you . Even though my eyes were fixed upon the glass, twinkling overhead, all my attention was down at the ground, where I waited for you to darken the path beneath my feet.
    And then you did. My breath caught in my throat.
    “Hello!” you called as your brown eyes gazed up at me. And then, just like that, you put your hands on the branches and clambered up. Clumsy, your legs swinging back and forth beneath you. I think you must not have climbed many trees, Benjamin. Though I’m not sure why I would have thought otherwise. What time does a librarian have for climbing?
    I worried for a moment that my branch