Faith

Four years later

“Wake up, you lazy thing!” Rylan says as he rips the curtains open, letting the sunlight spill into our bedroom.

“Lazy? If that isn’t the worst joke I’ve ever heard in my life,” I complain, pulling a pillow over my head. “Between my insatiable husband and my teething baby I don’t think I had even one hour of uninterrupted sleep last night.”

“That is true, my wife,” he says plopping down on the bed next to me. “I don’t know how Tomar and I ever got so lucky,” he tells me with a gentle tug to my hair.

I toss the pillow aside and smile up at my husband. “Thank you, a little appreciation goes a long way. Where is Tommy?” I ask, sitting up.

“You wouldn’t believe it. You know the large nut tree behind the house? Tommy climbed all the way to the top. I came in to get you so he could show his momma what a good climber he is.”

“Oh my God, Rylan. You’re such a goof. Where is he really? Taking a nap in the living room?” I ask, rolling my eyes at my comedian of a husband.

“No, I speak the truth. Listen,” he says, gesturing out the open window. On the breeze I hear my son’s giggles.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I shout, jumping out of bed and running through the open French doors which lead to the rear of our property. Luckily our closest neighbor is over three miles away, so I don’t have to worry about anyone hearing me shouting curse words. When I make it to the massive tree that shades our home I see something moving up in the canopy. Sure enough, there’s my baby, 15 feet up, in a damn tree.

“Tomar Graz Bregen, I do not care if you are half Aragrandani, you get your diapered little butt down here right now!” I shout up at him, but as advanced as my sweet son’s motor development is, he’s still just a baby. Well, a toddler now, I suppose. And even though my words are stern, he just laughs at his momma’s angry face.

Rylan joins me at the base of the tree and looks proudly up at Tommy. “Rylan, I’m about to have a damn meltdown. You get my baby out of that tree right now.”

With a gentle caress down my back and a wry smile, Rylan whistles up at Tommy and to my shock and horror Tommy lets go of the branch he was dangling from and drops through the leaves at an alarming speed. I scream out, but my baby falls deftly into his father’s arms.

“You two are trying to kill me!” I scream, clutching at my chest. But the men in my life just laugh.

“This is normal, my wife. I promise you. All Aragrandani children grow up climbing trees, they get messy, they even swim in lakes,” he says gesturing at the sparkling water a skipping stone’s throw away from our home.

“Yup, you’re definitely trying to kill me,” I tell him, pulling Tommy into my arms with a grunt. Tommy’s not quite a year and a half, but he’s already over 50 pounds. Apparently the Aragrandani don’t make small babies, which is okay with me. It just means I have that much more chubby cheek real estate to plant my kisses on.

“Don’t you scare Momma like that,” I coo into my baby’s ear as I rock him, but he just covers my mouth with his fat little fingers and laughs.

“I have an idea,” Rylan tells me as we make our way back inside. “How about we leave Tommy with his aunts this afternoon and you and I head down to the lake…”

“Oh, I like where this is going,” I tell Rylan as he sneaks up behind me to wrap the baby and me in a big hug.

“We can go to the hammock and take a nice long nap before dinner.”

“A nap, with you, in the hammock? With no 50-pound baby crawling on me?” I ask. It sounds like the best date night a mother could ask for. “But this won’t work," I lament. “We haven’t even called your sisters yet, who knows if they’ll even be free.”

“I already talked to them this morning, my love. They will be here before lunch.”

“Really? Who’s coming?” I ask, just as excited to see my sisters-in-law as I am for that nap in the hammock with my husband.

“All of them of course. One mention of their little nephew my sisters come running, you know how they are.”

“I do,” I sigh. “That’s why I love this family so much.”

“Mmmm, and we love you. Now go eat your breakfast before it gets cold. As soon as my sisters get here I am whisking you away to a shaded hammock with your name on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Later down at the lake, I take my shoes off to let the water lap at my feet. It feels so cleansing, in a deep and soulful kind of way. I always loved the lake by my grandpa’s bait shop when I was a kid, but now, as an adult and after everything life has thrown me, I appreciate this body of water behind our home in a way that is beyond words. Being here, I feel at peace.

But it isn’t just the water. It’s the feeling of safety. It’s having a home and a family. A long time ago I thought having these things again would be too frightening, that I would live in constant fear of having it all ripped away from me once more. But that hasn’t been true at all. Instead, my family gives me strength above all else.

Rylan was true to his word when we settled here on the Iredescan colony, he didn’t make a fishmonger out of me—though he still loves to joke about it. Nor did we open up a bait shop in our beautiful airy cottage on the hill. But he did find a lovely valley, with a lake in the middle, loosely surrounded by five little homesteads where his sisters and their own new and growing families now live. A dream couldn’t be more beautiful than the life we have here.

It’s a modest life, with most of what we need coming from our property. The rest we get a few miles away, down in the rustic but bustling town. That’s where most of our work is too.

Together, Rylan and I help the colony with all the tech jobs they need done. Sometimes it’s simple stuff, like mechanic work on hover carts. Other times it’s more complex infrastructure or security measures for the planet.

Working with Rylan really is a joy. The man’s an honest-to-God computer genius and he’s still trying to teach me everything he knows about all this alien technology. With each job we complete together I send up a silent prayer of thanks to my grandpa for making sure I got my education, otherwise I’d never be able to keep up.

I love my job out here and I love that it’s something I get to do it with my husband. Even when I was on Earth, the tech industry never left me with the same sense of accomplishment that I get from setting up a safety relay system in the satellites surrounding our new planet or running upgrades at the hospital in town. But the best part of our work is the respect I see Rylan getting. Whenever the planet needs his services, the governor himself contacts my husband and is never slow to sing his praises whenever Rylan pulls off some encryption miracle.

Rylan spent so long living like a second-class citizen, a struggle that I too know the pain of. But here on the colony, all are treated as equals. Well, that’s not completely true… When we first arrived with Rylan’s five unmated sisters, they were treated like queens. Males even came as far as the surrounding moons and planets in the system for a chance to flirt with the beautiful Aragrandani women. Needless to say, my sisters-in-law did not stay single long. I smile at the memories, loving my life, my family, and even our planet. I definitely took the long road getting here, but I’d take any road that led to Rylan, so I can’t say I have regrets.

Regrets, it’s another thing I think about often. If it weren’t for the loving guidance of my husband at the most difficult time in my life, I would be heavy with them. I remember being so scared when we escaped The Hunt. Terrified really. But still, we went back, inviting anyone we could find to escape with us. There was a danger in that, a vulnerability. But it was a fair trade, because that was the day I felt I was no longer a slave. I was me again. Although I only spent 10 days with Jesek Lahan, that time had changed me, scarred me. It took away pieces of who I was and I thought I might never get them back. But Rylan helped me remember who I am. He helped me find myself again.

For a long time after, I worried that someone might come looking for us. But time passed and no one ever did. Finally, I packed up that stage of my life and put it away. I’ve been able to move on.

“What would you like to do first, make love or nap?” Rylan calls to me from the hammock. I shake my head and laugh as I step into the shade under the trees along the bank. My darling husband is lazily sprawled out in the net we’ve hung between two trees, looking so comfortable I just have to join him.

“Who knew parenthood would be so tiring?” I ask, letting him wrap his arms around me as the hammock lightly rocks us. Gently, he toys with the straps to my top with his talons.

“It all comes in stages, my love. We will be tired for a long time to come. Then, when we finally feel rested again, that is when we know it is time to have another baby.”

“Whoa, not yet though!” I laugh. “Let’s at least let Tommy finish getting those terrible molars in.”

“No, not yet,” Rylan agrees. “Still, I think we should practice for when the time comes.”

“Hmm, I think I can agree to a little practice,” I agree, giggling as I climb onto my husband’s lap, and hike my long skirt up around my waist. With great love and care, he tugs my shirt over my head. Appreciation fills his eyes and he stares up at me for a long time before running his talons through my hair. “Have I told you lately how beautiful you are?” he asks. All I can do is smile, because yes, yes, he has.

“In all my days before I met you, my perfect Faith, I never dreamt I could be so happy. No, by far, this is better than any dream.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” I say, leaning down to kiss him.