Phoebe was the only walk-in I had, but I stayed until the salon closed for the night. When I made it back home, my mind was racing with what Zuran had told me. It was still wholly unbelievable to me that Venan hadn’t dated before, not even once, if not for any other reason than his extraordinary attractiveness. Then again, just because I found him attractive by my standards, it didn’t mean A’li-uud women did; maybe in his world he was considered homely. It didn’t matter either way since I knew looking at him made me tingly all over, and I didn’t care for the idea of a smattering of A’li-uud clamoring all over him anyhow, but I couldn’t shake the surprise I felt that he’d never at least ventured into the dating world once. I didn’t consider myself the kind of woman to go out with every man I felt a spark with, and the total number of relationships I’d had could have been counted on one hand, but in comparison to Venan, I felt a little too experienced.

Back inside my house, alone with no one but myself, I felt the familiar obsession beginning to fall over me again. It was frustrating, really, because while I’d always liked the idea of romance, I’d never been the type of girl to dream about my wedding day, a slew of kids and a big house in the suburbs. It wasn’t like me to be so hyperfocused on a man, and it definitely wasn’t like to me to be so hyperfocused on an alien. Yet, here I was, sitting on my couch once more with nothing on my brain but Venan.

I didn’t bother to turn on any lights. Sitting in the dark actually felt kind of cozy. I reached for the blanket draped across the davenport arm and tugged it over me, curling into the soft chenille. It was one of the items I’d insisted on bringing with me to Albaterra. Part of agreeing to leave Earth behind was giving up most personal possessions, but there had been a few I’d been unable to part with, and the blanket was one. It wasn’t an heirloom or anything, just a comfortable piece I’d had since I’d signed the lease on my first apartment five years ago, but I had a habit of clinging to it like a child hugs a teddy bear whenever I dove too deeply into my thoughts. This was one of those times.

Thinking about the blanket guided my mind to the most prized possession of all I’d taken along on my journey from Earth: my mother’s ring. I fiddled with the jewelry, twisting it and spinning it and rotating it back and forth. It hadn’t dawned on me Venan wouldn’t have seen a sapphire before until now. I remembered the sight of his fingertip pressing against the gem, relishing how closely in color his skin matched. My mom would’ve liked him for his skin alone. She had been obsessed with sapphires, or anything blue. The house we’d downsized to after Dad died had been a small Cape Cod in the gaudy mustard and burnt sienna tones of the seventies. She’d spent weeks straight redecorating that place and, by the time she’d finished, every room was a different shade of blue. I’d hated it.

“God, Mom, it’s so depressing in here,” I groaned, yanking the sheer periwinkle curtains open to allow the afternoon sunshine into the room.

“How was school?” She ignored my complaint and didn’t look at me as she asked the question. Splatters of cornflower blue paint dripped down her torn denim jeans and coated her Styx t-shirt so thoroughly she nearly blended into the wall behind her.

I watched her slip the roller into the tray, sloshing dribbles over the rim and dotting her grass-stained Skechers before I answered. “Fine,” I said noncommittally. I didn’t want to talk about school. Since Dad passed, it was unbearable, and she’d find out about my slipping grades soon enough without me telling her.

“How about giving me a hand?” she suggested, grunting slightly as she lifted herself onto her tiptoes to slide the roller up the wall to the ceiling. When she dropped down flat-footed, she finally turned toward me and jabbed the roller in my direction. Flecks of cornflower misted my tank top. “There’s another brush and tray behind you.”

“Watch it!” I barked, jumping back and glaring down at myself. My nobody-gets-me black shirt had become a preppy top with pretty blue dots. “Look what you did!”

She jammed a paint-patterned hand onto her hip and cocked her head, her raven ponytail swinging enthusiastically behind her. “I think you’re being a little over-dramatic.”

“It’s this room,” I grumbled. I shot an accusatory look at the freshly-brightened wall. “It makes me feel jaded.”

“You’re fourteen. You’re too young to be jaded,” she countered as she turned back toward her tray to dip the roller again. “Besides, blue is the perfect color. It’s calming and serene and evokes good thoughts. Plus, it’s supposedly an appetite-suppressant, so I’ll be able to stick to my diet.”

“Because you need a diet so badly,” I sarcastically commented, eyeing her slender and distinctly youthful figure. When I’d started developing a year before, I had imagined I’d be the spitting image of her. Three months into puberty, I passed her up in both chest and hips, and it became clear really quickly I wasn’t destined to be the perky cheerleader type. I’d been sickeningly envious of her form ever since.

She cast a scolding glance over her shoulder to me and said, “Don’t body-shame, Octavia. If it makes me feel good about myself to follow a healthy, sensible diet, you should be supportive of that. And you should learn to feel good about yourself too because you’re beautiful and the world would be a supremely boring place if we were all built the same.”

“Yeah, right, whatever.” In my infinite teenage wisdom, it was easy to dismiss her sage advice. “I’m going upstairs.”

“Homework before TV!” she called to my retreating back. I didn’t reply.

By the time I woke up in the morning, the only room in the house that wasn’t blue was mine.

The sapphire had grown warm to the touch from playing with it for so long, but I didn’t stop. Nothing was blue in Dhal’at, nothing except a few walls of the Elder palace and the A’li-uud who meandered the streets around them. And the sky, of course. The Albaterran sky was so vibrantly turquoise it was basically in technicolor, and it was the kind of sky that didn’t just linger overhead but actually swooped down upon everyone below and swallowed them up. I still thought Mom would’ve liked Dhal’at, though, especially Ka-lik’et. She would’ve delighted in hours spent wandering down the market walk, perusing the unusual items the merchants had for sale, and she probably would’ve found a way to paint her own little hut-house some shade of blue even if the colony didn’t allow it. She was just that sort of woman.

I glanced around the room. Though it was dark, I could imagine it clearly down to the smallest details. In my mind’s eye, I saw her Victorian-style vase atop the squat bookshelf and her mobile of sea glass dangling above the tiny dining table. A print of droplet-covered blueberries she’d bought at a flea market a decade ago hung over the curved hearth. She was everywhere in this alien house, and rightly so because she hadn’t been anywhere during her last days.

“Where are my candles?”

Her voice had become as croaky as a frog’s in my absence, and I had to strain to hear each syllable in order to understand her. “I don’t know, Mom,” I said regretfully. “I don’t think you’re allowed to have candles here.”

“What about my music box?”

I blinked. For some reason, my throat felt full, and my eyes were beginning to sting. “I don’t know, Mom,” I repeated, just as regretfully as the first time.

It hurt to admit it to myself, but I knew why I was growing tearful: because I should’ve known where her things were. I should’ve known she’d progressed so badly, that she’d lost most of her thick, dark hair except for a few stray patches and that she’d withered to a slight ninety-one pounds. I should have been there to help them sort out her room and get her accustomed to the new schedule and lift her spirits. The hospice nurses were great, phenomenal even, but they weren’t her daughter, and I should’ve left New York years ago when I first learned she had cancer.

“Bring me that.” She made the command as if she was pointing at something, but she wasn’t able to lift her arm. I followed her gaze to a small wooden box on top of the standard-issue bureau where the nurses had neatly folded her clothes for safe-keeping even though she’d never wear them again. “Bring that here.”

I did as bidden, slipping off the end of her bed and padding to the bureau to retrieve the box. I brought it back to her without asking questions, though I heard and felt something rattling inside. Her head moved like she was trying to take it from me, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t.

“Open it,” she ordered.

Again, I did as bidden. I lifted the lid off, and from within I saw a brilliant sparkle. A gasp lit on my lips. “Mom, it’s your ring!” I whispered, glancing hurriedly at the door to the hall to ensure nobody was near enough to hear me. “What are you doing with this in here? Someone could steal it!”

“Not anymore,” she contradicted. “It’s yours.”

“I can’t take this,” I murmured, lifting the ring from the box.

She narrowed her eyes. “Yes, you can,” she said sternly. “Blue is the perfect color.”

I softened. Replacing the ring back into the box and sliding the lid on top once more, I nodded gently. “Okay,” I said, my eyes burning more than ever. “I’ll take it.”

By the next morning, the beautiful blue ring was indeed mine.