Page 40 of Accidentally Fearless

"Mom. Jess." Rory moved toward them with the speed of someone who had been counting the days, and I knew she had been counting, because I had found her list, updated daily, on the desk in our quarters.

The three of them collided in a configuration of embraces that I did not fully understand, but I recognized the significance. There was crying. There was laughing. There was a moment where Rory's mother held her at arm's length and looked at her face and said, "You look different."

"Good different?" Rory asked, and the old uncertainty surfaced in her voice—faint, nearly healed, but present.

"Good different," her mother said. "You look like yourself."

Then they turned to me.

I had prepared for this meeting with the thoroughness I applied to military operations. I had studied human greeting customs. I had practiced my English pronunciation. I had adjusted the environmental controls in the reception area to a temperature comfortable for humans. I had, at Rory's suggestion, worn civilian clothing rather than my uniform, though Velkorin civilian clothing still looked somewhat military to human eyes.

I had not, despite all this preparation, prepared for the way Rory's mother looked at me.

She was small. She was unarmed. She was an aging human female with no combat training and no political authority. And she looked up at me—seven feet of Velkorin warrior, scales, claws, bioluminescent markings and all, and her expression was one I had seen on the faces of commanders assessing a subordinate's worthiness.

"So," she said. "You're the one who noticed my daughter wasn't eating."

I looked at Rory. Rory was hiding her smile behind her hand.

"I... yes," I said. "It seemed an important detail."

"It was." Rory's mother held out the insulated container. "Pot roast. Rory said you'd never had it. I made extra."

I accepted the container. It was warm. It smelled of cooked meat and something herbaceous that my olfactory receptors could not identify but that registered as deeply, fundamentally comforting.

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome. Now show me this coffee shop I keep hearing about."

The visit lasted four days.

In that time, I learned that Rory's mother handled the reality of an alien civilization with the pragmatic adaptability of someone who had raised two daughters alone after a difficult divorce. She asked sensible questions, accepted extraordinary answers with minimal shock, and reorganized my kitchen storage within two hours of entering our quarters, insisting the layout was "inefficient."

She was not wrong.

Jessica asked approximately four hundred questions per day, took extensive notes, and declared that she was considering a specialization in intergalactic contract law, "because clearly someone needs to proofread the Bureau's terms and conditions."

On the second night, Rory's mother sat with me on the balcony of our quarters while Rory and Jessica explored the compound with Zenir as their guide. Zenir had taken to the role of tour guide with dedication.

"You love my daughter," Rory's mother said. It wasn't a question.

"More than I have adequate language to express."

"She was invisible, you know. Before all this. She was so good at what she did, and nobody saw it."

"I see it."

"I know. That's why I'm here." She looked out over the valley—the territory we had won, the land my parents had died for, the home Rory and I were building together. "You take care of her."

"She takes care of herself. I simply ensure she remembers to eat while doing so."

Rory's mother smiled. It was Rory's smile—the real one, the one that meant she had decided you were worth her time.

"Good answer," she said.

On the fourth day, the Bureau transport arrived to take them home. There were more embraces. More tears. Rory's sister extracted a promise of monthly calls and a full tour of the honor code reform proposals. Rory's mother extracted a promise that I would transmit the pot roast recipe's results, because she wanted to know "what a Velkorin thinks of slow-cooked beef."

They left. Rory watched the transport beam until it faded, her eyes bright, her smile trembling.