15. Moon and Celadon at Indigo Cloud

Celadon asked, "Did you ever remember anything else?"

Moon shrugged his spines. He said, "No, nothing," and hoped she dropped the subject.

They were sitting out on one of Indigo Cloud's larger garden platforms. It was early evening, almost time to go inside, and the colony tree's canopy was filtering the light to a deep green. Past a grove of fruit trees, the younger Arbora and warriors were loudly splashing and playing in the irrigation channels. The others had wandered off to different conversations, and Shade and Lithe were the only ones still sitting nearby. The humid air was thick with scents, filled with the buzz of insects and birdsong.

Celadon frowned, and twitched a spine to chase off a tiny, over-inquisitive flying frog. "Nothing?"

Moon sighed.  He wished people would believe him.  "Sometimes I think I remember Feather."

Celadon lowered her brows. "But not me?"

Hoping to deflect the conversation with a fight, he said, "Maybe I was trying to forget you."

Celadon gave him a shove to the shoulder, pushing him over against Shade. She added, "You know there were three others."

"I don't want to know about them," Moon said. "Not yet." Dead or missing clutchmates were a common feature in Indigo Cloud and in the older generation at Opal Night, the ones who remembered the trip from the eastern colony. Moon had missing clutchmates already, the Arbora he had been rescued with, who had died in the Tath attack with Sorrow.

Celadon glanced over his head, long enough to make him suspect she had just exchanged a look with Lithe. Celadon said, "What about Dusk?"

Shade was leaning against him, settling in like this was a story he had heard many times before but always wanted to hear again.

Moon didn't know much about the consort who had sired him, except the little that Feather had already managed to tell him. Like the fact that Dusk had always been in the nurseries playing with his clutch and the others. Somehow that thought was painful, considering what had happened to Dusk and most of those fledglings and babies who had known him.

The other thing Moon knew was that he resembled Dusk enough that Malachite had been unable to look at him at first. He said, "You don't have to tell me."

Celadon settled her spines. "I want to tell you."

Moon hesitated.  He didn't want to know more.  But part of him realized that eventually there would be questions from his own clutch, who would grow up knowing Malachite and Celadon and Shade and Lithe. At some point they were bound to wonder exactly how they had ended up with half-Fell relatives, and it would be good to have something to say about Dusk besides how he died. Good to have something to remember Dusk by other than a broken blood-stained piece of jewelry.

Celadon was watching him carefully.  When he didn't voice any objections, she said, "He came from the eastern colony of a court called Sunset Horizon. They're still here, in the far south Reaches."

Moon had to say, "I have more relatives?"

"They're part of our bloodline, yes," Celadon corrected. "Malachite went to their eastern colony with Alabaster, her sister queen. She was killed in the attack, later. Alabaster was the one who went there to court a consort, but after Alabaster and the consort met a few times, they decided it wouldn't work out. While they were there, Malachite saw Dusk."  She added, "Malachite didn't tell me any of this, it was Feather."

"Of course it was, because Malachite doesn't tell anybody anything," Moon said, and Shade elbowed him in the ribs.

Celadon continued, "Dusk didn't want Malachite at first. The others -- Alabaster, the

warriors who were there with her -- thought it was because Dusk thought he could do better. The rumors they were hearing were that Sunset Horizon thought they might send him back to one of the big courts in the Reaches. But then he ran away."

Moon sat up. "Ran away?"  The story was suddenly a lot more interesting than he had expected.

Lithe contributed, "Not really.  I always thought he was just trying to make a point."

Celadon twitched her spines in agreement.  "He had a place near the colony's gardens where he'd go to be alone, and he went there. Some of his warriors knew he was there, but they weren't talking. Malachite knew, because she followed him."

"Of course she did," Moon said. He used his elbow to deflect Shade's this time.

Celadon ignored them and continued, "He told her he didn't want a queen, any queen. So Malachite told him if he came back to Opal Night, she wouldn't bother him. He could live there for a few turns, then he could go back to his court and be a taken consort who'd been sent back by his queen, and no one would want him, and he wouldn't have to worry."

"It's a brilliant idea," Moon had to admit.

"I thought so too," Shade said.

Celadon's spines twitched in annoyance but she continued, "So that's what they did. But after he lived there two turns, he decided he liked her anyway, and they had us."

They sat there quietly for a time. Moon thought, If he had gone to the Reaches like his court wanted, he'd be alive now.  But none of them would be sitting here.

There was movement at the other end of the platform, the teachers rounding up the younger members of the court and sending them back in.