A few days later, the Xeo Tarlith and her crew returned to the Glothus system. They were trying again to mine Haze’s “favorite” asteroid.

Vi decided it was time to earn her keep.

Haze took one look at her in her newly acquired getup and grinned. “How do you make a mining outfit look so sexy, my mate?”

“I wish,” Vi rejoined, giving him a quick peck on the cheek.

* * *

By the end of the day, as they clambered onto the shuttle, Vi felt as though she had been lost to time forever. It was magical to look up and around and see such an expanse of space go on forever.

As they clambered into bed that night, she was overcome again by what she'd seen. She asked Haze, “How do you bear it - so much beauty everywhere?”

He stared at her with a smile, seeming to deliberately misunderstand her words. "I don't know how I do; sometimes I'm not sure I can."

Warmth flooded Vi's heart, and a zip ran through her belly. If she wasn't mistaken, he'd just called her breathtakingly beautiful.

Haze bent down and stole a kiss. “You were made for me, woman.”

“I think I prefer the Vargys way of saying it— that way Oz says it to Molly.” She blushed slightly. Was she really asking him to call her his woman? “Is it weird to call me that?”

“Not even for a moment, mah lo ma."

She kissed him. "You're my…" she raised her hand and waved it a bit. "Ergh. Something something mah or…"

He laughed. "You realize you called me a woman, right?”

"Yeah, yeah, you know what I meant."

His voice dropped low. He said it quiet and deep, so that it rumbled deliciously in his throat. "Shah la van lo va… that's how you say it."

Her chest squeezed. The translator gave her the equivalent: This man is my man/mate.

She tried it out. "Shah la van.."

"…Lo va…" he added.

"Shah la van lo va…" she repeated.

His eyes got soft. He ran a finger across her lips. "I like to hear you say it."

She repeated it for him.

He smiled, sitting up on the edge of the bed. "Actually, I got you something…"

"Ohhh." She played it up, coming up on her knees with a squeal and clapping her hands together. "Another shiny bauble, yes?"

"Something like that."

He had this nervous little grin on his face that made excitement run through her.

He knelt to dig something out from under the bed. "I tried to fashion it the way Molly described." He laid a rather large package on the bed. “…Let me know how I did?”

She smiled at him, but looking at him made her breath catch. She felt a very real pressure come over her, like her stomach would drop and fall away, like this man was going to swallow her up.

She picked slowly at the corners, pulling away the wrappings carefully. Inside was a kind of wood structure, vaguely shaped in a way she'd never thought to see again.

"It's a… No way…" She clapped a hand over her mouth as she stared at it. He'd made her an easel.

Emotions overcame her, and a tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away quick. Painting had always been a secret little hobby, never measuring up to her family’s expectations for her.

She pulled it onto the floor to set it up.

"This might help." Haze turned the wall’s viewscreen to a setting of a soft, outdoor scenery, as though she'd set up her new easel in that perfect, soft lighting she hadn't thought possible.

"Do you like it?" he asked, looking fast from her to the easel.

She leaned against him. "It's perfect. I love it." She took a deep breath. "…I love you," she said softly, so softly she wasn't sure he could hear her.

It was one thing saying it in Vargys, like it was just words. They weren't words she said to people, even her friends, certainly not her sister, her father.

She felt like she was making a new tattoo, but over her heart, permanent and deep, forever.

She looked at the easel and saw a drawing hidden there, if she could only capture it, almost like the one she’d started on the shuttle ride back to the Xeo. No bars this time.

A cluster of stars and her Haze, swirling like a whirling dervish, moving fast toward her, that dark look in his eyes, and nothing between them but what he might say next.

"Mah lo ma…" His eyes were soft then. He moved his mouth slowly as he tried out her Earth words: "I love you." His voice caught and broke on the phrase.

But then he was kissing her and the world was dropping away, and she decided he could practice the Earth words on her later…