Rowena had been awake for hours. Unable to sleep, she had been sitting in her office going over paperwork since two that morning (Earth time). Going my that clock it was now seven thirty. Sorma was in the kitchen preparing the morning meal, and her son Maerk was getting ready to leave for the loccrae mines, of which he was a foreman.
As Rowena emerged from her office to go downstairs, she heard Ben's voice coming from the room she'd put him in the night before. He was dreaming.
"Get me out of here! Move! Get out! I-" This was interrupted by a cry of pain.
Scurrying into the room, Rowena saw Ben tangled up in the sheets, half-naked and soaked in sweat. The uncharacteristic beard he'd aquired covered his mouth as he whimpered in gibberish to his dream, and it gave the impression of eerie ventriloquy.
She gingerly sat on the mattress and laid her hand on his head to calm him. He shouted again, and grasped at her wrist as if making sure it was really there. She shook him. "Ben, wake up."
"Prison," he choked. "Durandal-" Another anguished yell.
Rowena grabbed his shoulders and shook him harder. "Ben, honey. Wake up, babe. You're dreaming."
He didn't respond.
She spoke a string of Italian, insisting that he wake up, in hopes that the language he grew up around would jar him back to reality.
It worked.
"Mama?" His eyelids flickered and opened, and he stared blankly at the ceiling until he eyes focused and he saw her. "Rowena."
She smiled. "Hi, babe."
"I'm starving, Ro."
"I know. I'm going downstairs right now to get your breakfast."

Sorma was busy slicing a banana-like fruit and arranging it on a tray with a colorful host of other Taerian fruits. She looked up as Rowena walked in. "Good morning."
"Good morning, Sorma. How are you?"
"Well, thank you." Sorma was aging. She had worked for the family since Zanael was a child, and it was only in the last century or so that she was beginning to show signs of her age. Even so, a human woman of forty could easily have envied Sorma's youthfulness.
"Is breakfast ready?"
"Yes. Will this be enough for the both of you?"
Rowena lifted the tray. "It'll be perfect. I ate a little earlier. Thank you, Sorma."

Ben was halfway sitting up when Rowena came back. His eyes were closed, though, and his head tilted back.
"Ben, are you awake?"
His head snapped up. "What? Oh, Rowena - Uh, yeah." He saw the tray in her hands. "Food?"
"M-hm." She set the tray on a small table near the bed and sat next to him.
"What is it?"
"Fruit. It's good for you." She took a juicy greenish cube and put it in his mouth.
He blinked, and then thoughtfully chewed the morsel. "That's good."
Rowena nodded.
Ben looked at her. "When can I go home?"
"We're going to Earth in a couple of days. I have a meeting with the Syndicate."
Nodding a little, he stared up at the ceiling and ate a few more pieces of fruit. "Do they miss me?"
"They're getting ready to lynch me if you're not back soon."
"Do they know I got back to the Marathon?"
"No. They won't until we get there."
"How are we getting there?"
She raised her eyebrows. "We're taking the Saenaron. How else would we get there?"
Ben closed his eyes again and sighed. "I'm sorry. I-"
She squeezed his hand. "I know. If you want we can have you put in stasis again for the trip."
"I dunno. How long will it take?"
"A few hours. Not too long."
A quiet moment passed. Ben stretched out of his back again and gazed at the ceiling, lost in thought. "What's this bed made of?"
"Locccrae," Rowena replied. "A type of rock."
"Rock? It's softer than a futon."
She shrugged. "I don't know. The cook's son works at the mines."
"You have a cook?"
"Uh, huh. She was a friend of my grandmother's."
Ben smiled. "I'm sleeping on a rock, and it's more comfortable than anything on Earth." He shook his head. "I've been gone too long." There was a pause. "Well, maybe not softer than you."
"I'm not all that great."
"Yeah, you are. You'll be even better today, after a year without you."
Rowena leaned down until their noses were almost touching. "Really?"
"Yup. Right after I take a shower."
Laughing, she helped him up. "Well, don't take too long, babe. I need to work today."
"Okay. When?"
"Eventually. I've got papers to read and a meeting to plan."
She led him down the hall and showed him how to work the Taerian plumming, which wasn't too different from that on Earth.
"Do you have anything I could shave with?" he asked, eyeing his unkempt face in the mirror.
"Maerk might have something. If not I've got scissors and a little razor."

While Ben showered and shaved, Rowena sat in her office to get a little bit of work done. On top of a pile she'd brought home from the office in the Srelaempt was a request from a provincial Councillor in the eastern hemisphere for humans. The doctors in the province wanted to study them. Humanely, of course. "The Syndicate's gonna love this one," she muttered to herself.
The next was a notice of a Council meeting she was expected to attend in the next month, mainly to discuss space stations and interplanetary communication. She picked up the next envelope and read the address. It was from Councillor Kiriam.

My Rowaena- I have heard of your lover on the Marathon, and I hope for your sake and his he survives. I was recently on Earth, in America, visiting some human friends (who believe I just came from Venice), and I gained the opportunity to see Rhenon. He says he is well, but wishes you would "stop in and kick it for a while." I believe he misses his mother. I apologize that my letter is so brief, but I have pressing business I must attend to before the High Council notices that I have been stalling. With Love, Your Guardian and Friend, Kiriam.

Rowena smiled at the familiar handwriting of the woman who raised her, teaching her Taerian customs and history, and to read and write the language. Kiriam and Zanael had been close friends since childhood, and Marcus Firedia begged the Councillor to care for his daughter when his wife died, quite suddenly. Kiriam hadn't been hard-pressed.
Rowena and Kiriam travelled around the world after the Roman soldier died, posing as mother and daughter, aunt and neice, friends fleeing together from some war or plague, and even sisters. Together and out of necessity they had seen the world, and had almost been killed in it several times. Kiriam had been there when Rowena had fallen in love with a Kheran warrior, and later when she bore his child, and even when the warrior had been killed and the child taken by the Kherubim. They had only been separated in the early twentieth century when the high governments of the planet and Alien Operations decreed anyone with non-human blood an urgent threat to the rest of the planet, and subsequently began a holocaust that would wipe out almost eighty percent of the non-humans there. Ironically (for Rowena at least) Alien Operations later became International-
Rowena looked up. Ben was standing in the doorway in his boxer shorts, lookin clean shaven and still a little wet from the shower. "Nice house."
She smiled. "It's a little big for my tastes."
"That's nothing new. The only place that hasn't been too big since I've known you was your place in New York."
"That was a nice place. Kiriam and I had a nice little house in Ireland once."
"How big was that?" he asked, amused.
Rowena shrugged. "Two rooms, I think. No - One room. We had a curtain up on one side for a little while."
"When was this?" Ben laughed.
"A little after the Plague, when I still had Rhenon." She stood. "Aren't you cold?"
"Once you spend so much time swimming in God knows what kind of sewage crap and running around in vaccuum on broken space ships, you don't feel cold."
"Oh." She rifled her fingers through his damp hair. "Well, you shouldn't have to worry about it for a while."