The waterfall pool was deeper than it looked from the outside.
They'd waded in from the shallow edge, the water cool and clear enough to see the bottom shifting in the light filtered through the falls. The pool widened behind the curtain of falling water into something almost circular, smooth-rocked and still except for the constant fine mist that caught the afternoon light and scattered it in directions that didn't quite make sense.
Up close the waterfall sounded different than it did from the cave or the bank. Less like a sound and more like a condition. It simply was — the way air was, the way gravity was. Something you stopped hearing and started existing inside of.
They sat in water up to their chests on a shelf of submerged rock, looking out through the falls at the blurred impression of Regret Island beyond. The world through the water looked like a memory — recognizable but soft at the edges, slightly more beautiful than the real thing.
"I want to try something," Lily said.
"Worried again," Tiger said.
"Say something in your language. Whatever language you think in."
Tiger looked at her. "Why."
"Because I've never heard you speak in anything other than common and I want to know what your voice sounds like when it isn't translating."
Tiger was quiet for a moment. Then he said nothing, which meant he was considering it, which meant he might actually do it.
"You first," he said.
Lily straightened on her rock shelf. Cleared her throat.
Then opened her mouth and Kalar came out.
"Vrak dolhen ta miru — vrak dolhen —" She laughed at something in her own sentence, shook her head, kept going. "Setak bafka, hm? Hm. Holden brak ta vrak, ta setek, ta — delka." She said the last word with enormous satisfaction, like it was the exact right word and she'd been waiting years to use it in the correct context. "Delka ta holden brak."
She shifted on the rock, water moving around her, and her voice dropped slightly on the next part. Not sad. Just quieter.
"Miru. Setak vrak miru ta holden — ta Kelper, ta bafka setek—" She stopped. Laughed again, shorter this time. "Delka ta soup. Vrak soup. Hm."
Somewhere in the middle of that last sentence Tiger said, quietly, in a language nobody else in the pool knew:
Hala bafka.
Lily didn't pause. She kept going, louder now, building toward something.
"Ta miru, ta setek holden — vrak dolhen brak ta everything, hm? Everything." She said the last word in common like Kalar didn't have a big enough container for it. "Delka."
She finished with a sharp single sound — "Hk" — that was definitely punctuation and dropped back into common like she'd never left it.
Lynn sat very still in the water.
Tiger looked at the waterfall.
Lynn looked away.
"Okay," Lily said. "Translation."
She sat up straighter. Put on the voice of someone about to deliver a presentation.
"So. My home planet." She spread her hands. "Absolute chaos. Everyone's immortal, nobody's figured out what to do about it, so the two default activities are — fighting, and—" She paused diplomatically. "having sex. Because what else are you going to do when you've been alive for ten thousand years and the sun still comes up every morning whether you asked it to or not." She said this with the energy of a comedian doing a tight five. "My people are very committed to both activities. No judgment. They found something to do with the time. Respect."
Lynn was trying not to laugh. Failing.
"So I left," Lily continued. "Which took a while because leaving required not getting killed on the way out, which — again, committed people. Very dedicated. But I got out eventually. Drifted around. Ended up on Kelper-9. Level three, terrible piping, recycled air, a man selling something he called soup." She smiled — the real one, the less-teeth one. "Found Mira. Found the other five. Stayed for forty years." She looked at the waterfall. "Talked about nothing for forty years. Watched ships move through the viewport. Ate the soup. Thought maybe that was what the rest of it was going to look like."
She said the last part lightly.
It landed heavy anyway.
Tiger had listened to all of it without moving.
Lily turned to him. "Your turn."
"No."
"You said—"
"I said you first. I didn't say I'd go."
"Tiger." She pointed at him. "You sat there while I told you about my entire planet and the violence and the soup that wasn't soup. You owe me two words minimum."
"I said two words."
"In your language that none of us understood."
"That was the exercise."
"The exercise was—" Lily stopped. "What did you say?"
"When."
"In the middle of my speech. The two words. What did they mean."
Tiger considered this with the expression of someone selecting a tool from a drawer.
"I love myself," he said.
Lily stared at him.
"You said I love myself."
"Yes."
"While I was telling you about my chaotic violent home planet."
"It felt relevant."
"How is I love myself relevant to—"
"That is not exactly what he said."
The pool went very quiet.
Lynn's voice had come out small and careful and approximately three seconds too late to take back.
Tiger turned and looked at her.
Not the passive observational look. Something more direct. Something that had been waiting for a surface to land on and had just found one.
"How do you know my language," he said. Quiet. Not accusatory. The genuine question underneath the question. "Only certain people would know it by now."
Lynn looked at him.
The waterfall kept going. The mist kept catching the light. The world beyond the falls stayed soft and blurred and slightly more beautiful than real.
Lynn stood from the rock shelf.
"I'm going to find fruit," she said.
She waded to the shallow edge without looking back. Climbed out. Her footsteps faded into the waterfall's roar and then disappeared entirely.
Tiger and Lily sat in the pool.
The water was still. The light came through the falls in shifting patterns. Somewhere beyond the curtain Lynn was walking away from a question she couldn't answer.
"She knows the previous cycle," Tiger said. Flat. Factual. Like noting weather. "What I was before this one. She described it in the cave like she'd watched it happen." He looked at the waterfall. "And she doesn't ask questions. Not real ones. She confirms things she already knows."
Lily was quiet.
Tiger waited.
"I know," Lily said finally.
"Then—"
"She's not dangerous." Lily leaned back against the rock, looking up through the mist at the sky above the falls. "I'm sure she's not. There's no way she'd be an Ender." She paused. "Enders are — they're not right. In the head. Well they don't really have a head exactly but—" She waved a hand. "They're unstable. They're massive. They erase civilizations when they're bored." She shook her head. "Lynn is awkward and her jokes don't land and she named the grazers individually when she thought we weren't watching and she has strong opinions about boots." She looked at the waterfall. "She's a friend. Whatever she is she's a friend. And this is the first place since Kelper-9 that's felt like somewhere real." She closed her hand around nothing in particular. "I'm not ready to pull that thread yet."
Tiger said nothing.
He looked at the space where Lynn had been sitting.
"Okay," he said.
Lily looked at him. "Okay?"
"Okay."
She studied his face. He was watching the waterfall with his usual expression, which was no expression at all, which meant something was moving behind it that he'd decided not to bring to the surface.
"Tiger—"
"The fruit she brings back," he said quietly, "is always the ripe ones. She picks them before they turn. Every time. Without checking." He paused. "She knows this planet better than someone who arrived four days ago should."
Lily opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Looked at the waterfall.
"I know," she said. Quieter this time.
The water kept falling. The light kept shifting. Regret Island stayed warm and golden and perfect beyond the curtain, the way it always had been, the way something was making sure it stayed.
Neither of them said anything else for a long time.