“I can’t believe you never did this as a kid.” Phoebe tossed a handful of sand at me, splattering it across my midsection and covering my lap. “Even I did this, and I grew up in Ohio where there’s no desert or ocean.”

We were sitting together outside in the patch of shade stretching across the ground from the hospital. She had found herself with several free hours to spare in between tending to the Novai, and, rather than holing up in my room like we normally did, I decided to take her outside for some fresh air. The start of the cool season was right around the corner, which meant we were now blessed with a day here and there in which the weather was not swelteringly hot. I was accustomed to Dhal’at and all of its extreme temperatures, but Phoebe was from a milder climate, so she was thrilled to join me outdoors without breaking into sweat within minutes.

In front of her crossed legs, she had constructed several mounds of sand she had wettened with her drinking water into a circle. Now, she was trying to level off the tops with her palm. She claimed she was making a sandcastle, but I had never seen a castle that even slightly resembled her creation. I shook my head at the unrefined bumps.

“No, I can honestly say I never made a castle of sand,” I told her with a snicker. “Though, if I am to be honest, this looks more like Finiba than a castle.”

She threw another handful of sand my way, and I leaped at her, tackling her onto her back. Her legs flailed out in front of her. “No!” she shrieked, laughing and batting at my chest. “You’re going to knock it over!”

I gnawed on her collarbone and listened to her squeal, then sat back and let her straighten up. She smoothed one of the hills her heel had dented in our brief fray. Her eyes were glittering, and her smile had not yet faded. I leaned forward over my lap to peer up at her from below, but she stubbornly avoided meeting my gaze. Scooting an inch toward her, I tried again. Still, she would not look at me as she tried to hold back the giggle I could hear building in her throat.

“If you continue to pretend I am not here, sweetness, I am going to remind you how present I truly am,” I warned.

She looked at me then, and I saw the indiscernible lift of her chin that signaled a rousing of defiance. “That’s some pretty big talk for someone who follows me around like a puppy,” she shot back teasingly.

I knew not what a puppy was, but I had started to recognize her queer human adages and let them go unquestioned as a mere figure of speech. She was quite right in her assessment of me as of late: I had spent every moment I could with her, waiting for her to complete her nursing duties with bated breath and dreading when she would have to return to them. Sometimes, I even trailed around the ward with her and helped with menial tasks like entering observations into the data bank or fetching an instrument from the laboratory. Phoebe had become the only connection to sanity I had left.

A whole week had passed since the trial, and I had not yet heard a word. I could not fathom the Elders were still in deliberations, but Venan’s case was a unique and serious one, so I had no measuring stick to compare what an appropriate stretch of time would be to wait before seeking the Council out myself and demanding answers. From dawn until dusk, and oftentimes in between, I was wrought with anxiety. My appetite had disappeared into nothingness, and the hard knot of nerves in my stomach became a permanent fixture of my anatomy. I was starting to understand why Venan had looked so deteriorated, for I could not find it within myself to eat and when Phoebe forced food upon me I only ended up feeling sick. My senses were constantly alert, my ears pricked for the sound of an arriving Elder landing on the sand, my eyes darting whenever I saw the slightest movement in my peripheral vision. Proper sleep had become an unattainable luxury rather than a necessary behavior—though, Phoebe suffered through that with me to an extent, as I habitually woke her throughout the night to bury my mouth between her thighs and conduct her symphony of moans. She was the sole distraction from my obsession about the trial, and I had become addicted to the relief she provided. The hours without her while she tended the Novai were filled with fear I did not want to confront.

“Here,” she said, reaching for my hand and plopping it on top of one of the sand humps. “Put some windows on that.”

I looked at her sardonically, tilting my head and allowing the foremost strands of my hair to slip over my face. “Am I to shape and fit shards of glass?” I smirked. “Perhaps color-coordinate the frames?”

She grabbed a fist of sand, but I raised my brow threateningly, and she reconsidered her response with a tittering shiver. “No, just draw with your finger,” she instructed. She prodded the tip of her own finger into the damp hill nearest her and made an awkwardly-shaped dent. I mimicked her movements, but I poked too deep, and a chunk of wet sand slipped down the incline to slop onto the dry sand below. She pursed her lips in consideration, and then said, “Well, we’ll just pretend that’s where the castle got hit with a cannonball or something.”

Again, I did not know what she was talking about—I had never heard of a cannonball—but I grinned at her anyway. She beamed back at me before returning to pressing window dents into the clump. So focused was she that her tongue poked out from between her teeth and her eyes were progressively getting more and more squinted until the whites were gone and I could only see lashes. I continued to look at her, watching her while she worked.

My feelings had expanded to exponential berth regarding Phoebe. I craved her as much as a dehydrated warrior craved water, never getting enough and constantly wanting more. The crevices of my mind not occupied with thoughts of Venan and the Council were suffocated by thoughts of her, and sometimes she drove my worries away and took me over entirely. I had never felt in such a way about anyone. My heart had never throbbed upon seeing vivid green orbs peering through thick black lashes before. My body had never yearned to be near someone before. It was intense, a rush of adrenaline and lust and passion and…something else I did not want to acknowledge. Love?

I did not believe I was capable of love. I had never been in it, and I knew not what it felt like, but I always thought myself too selfish an A’li-uud to experience such a thing. Seeing my mother and father together was watching a connection of spirit and soul, a beautiful sight to witness to be certain but a sharing of self I could not envision for my own life. I thought myself too independent to be so willing to turn over a part of myself to another, even if only in the metaphorical sense.

“What are you doing, making a moat?”

Phoebe’s question shoved me out of the quarters of my musing mind into the present. I realized I had been dragging my fingers through the dry sand at the base of the castle near me until a deep river had formed. I stared at my unintentional work for a second, still a bit dazed by my thoughts, then filled the gap back in.

“I thought it would make a nice accent,” I joked.

She laughed. “Maybe you should’ve been an architect instead of an IAO.”

I started to try out the word “architect” on my tongue when a telltale thump sounded near us. My entire body turned cold enough to raise my neck hairs, and I spun around. My boot accidentally smashed through the lump of wet sand I had attempted to decorate with a window, but I barely noticed. I would finally learn my brother’s fate.

But it was not Vi’den standing by the corner of the medical facility. It was Sevani.