He gave her as searching a stare as he could without calling attention to the exchange. Then his taut lips relaxed into a brief smile. She resumed her seat and took another bog pear from the bowl as if her treatment had been no more than a simple pain block.
`Yes, friend, much better. Thank you, he said and finished eating his own pear.
`Lionasha, it’s just the lighter stuff for the evening pushes, isn’t it?’ Laria said and managed a very convincing yawn. `Won’t be that much to do when it cools down.
`Right-o, Lionasha said.
`I want to check that ping I heard before I get my nap,’ Vanteer said, moving towards the stairs that led to the Tower’s machine level.
And that was how Clarf Tower managed to deceive Kincaid until the worst of both the physical and mental fatigue began to heal.
When Rojer’s profound emotional trauma began to ease, Isthia advised that he be allowed to enrol in an engineering programme which he had been so keenly interested in prior to the tragedy. He must learn to shift his concentration from his loss. She offered her beloved cottage, not so isolated any more as Deneb City was spreading ever closer to her lakeside retreat, and flattened arguments that too much solitude for the grieving boy might have an adverse effect.
And you think that one or another of us won’t be subtly aware of his state of mind at all times, Damia? Isthia had snorted with disdain. We are always but a thought away, yours, mine, Afra’s Jells, added Earth Prime.
The cottage worked for you and Afra, didn’t it? Isthia went on, ignoring her son’s interruption. We all know he needs to grieve. let him. right now companionship is not on his agenda. In fact, it would only serve to remind him of his loss. We’ve done as much metamorphically as we can. Now he needs to be diverted and, if its engineering that he has a passion for, let `s fan those flames and put his mind to work.
Damia and Afra drew Xexo into the discussion and the Aurigae T-8
had no hesitation in supporting Isthia’s suggestion. Rojer had a natural engineering bent and it was right that he get his qualifications. There were other engineering candidates on Deneb, so he could have as much, or as little, social intercourse as he wished.
After all, how many Towers were there for Primes to run? Xexo went further and, after a long and useful discussion with Commander Metrios of the Genessee, developed a curriculum meticulously tailored to beguile young T-1 Rojer Lyon into studying himself out of grief After a desultory and half-hearted start, Rojer began to respond to the cleverly devised study programme and to spend hours on the terminal, competing with himself on Engineering Teach. His progress was duly noted. If Xexo grinned fatuously as he tended the generators at Aurigae Tower and adopted a smug smile whenever Rojer was mentioned, no-one contested him when he’d allude to Rojer’s progress as one of his own better `engineering’ accomplishments.
Occasionally, his uncle Jeran, Deneb’s Prime, called Rojer to assist in the Tower, `to keep his hand in’ There he met cousins with varying degrees of Talent who were also pressed into service. Though he had never much liked his cousin Rhodri, he found himself drawn to the youngest of the Eagles, the shy and self-effacing Asia, who was also in the engineering programme.
He was constantly receiving invitations from the cluster of relatives, Eagles, Ravens, Sparrows, but he rejected all, with the excuse that he had to study, keep up the garden and keep down the fish population in the lake. At first he had railed at what he considered their tactless disregard of his loss. Except for Asia whose deep blue-grey eyes always saddened whenever he caught her looking at him in the monthly tutorial sessions. But that attitude was difficult to maintain when, empathic as he was, he sensed a supportive presence when the black moments descended on him.
Never the same person, and never an intrusive one, but someone there when something sharpened the pain of his loss. Damia was most often there or his father: once it was his grandmother, several times Elizara, particularly at the beginning, but mostly his grandmother Isthia or his aunt Besseva supplied the solace. Once he was sure it was Asia who reached him one very black night but then definitely the presence was his grandmother. He could not avoid knowing how deeply they were willing to share his pain, his sense of loss – especially when their thoughts became inadvertently specific in their own personal experiences with loss and grief While he was left to himself to heal, he was never truly alone and that, all by itself was the greatest balm.