Though they weren’t. At least, Boo wasn’t. The Queleti was under full assault, in fact.

“Careful. Watch it with that one. It took a blast from my captain’s ex-girlfriend’s drone and . . . ouch. . . . I said be careful.”

Leo looked across the room at the two young Orin hanging from each of Boo’s arms like monkeys as a third grabbed fistfuls of robe to climb up his back. The children made strange snorting sounds which Leo interpreted as laughter as they dangled and swung from the Queleti’s bulging biceps. They didn’t understand his protests, of course, only interpreted his not flinging them across the room as permission to keep climbing all over him. Judging by the look on his face, Boo didn’t mind their antics as much as he made out.

Leo took another small bite of his slurk and looked around. The temperature outside continued to fall, but inside it was plenty warm. It was a full house, with Orin in every corner. As far as he could tell, several families lived here together. A fireplace was built into one wall and a dozen mats were strewn across the floor alongside stone tables. Shelves were stacked with jars and trinkets and hand tools. There were no books that Leo could see, but that didn’t mean the Orin didn’t tell stories to their children at night. No doubt tonight they would tell one about the four-armed alien who invaded their home and how all the little Orin defeated him, wrestling him to the ground, beating him into submission.

“Ow. Watch the hair.”

The children snorted, grabbing more fistfuls.

Leo couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard a group of kids laughing, alien or otherwise. Three years aboard the Beagle with Gareth as practically his only friend. And before that, in the time between the bombing and their departure, the house on Briarwood was often quiet, deserted, the backyard empty. Gareth shut in one room, Leo in another, Dad down in his study, hard at work.

Trying to find a way to change the world, he’d say.

Which one? Leo would ask.

Sometimes it felt like the Fenders had forgotten how to laugh. But not the Orin. Even after everything they’d been through. To his left, a thick-bearded elder was busy sewing patches of fabric onto a tattered blanket. To his right, another was stirring a large pot that simmered above the glowing embers of the fireplace, no doubt cooking up more slurks in case Leo finished the one he had. Sprays of blue and yellow flowers decorated the walls along with tapestries woven in bright-colored fabric. At the table, Shree and Rint sat together, deep in conversation. The sweet smell of the burning wood. The closeness of the bodies. The buzz of voices. The children playing. It amounted to something else Leo hadn’t felt in forever. Since before he even boarded the Beagle.

His eyes rested on an especially young Orin, too small to climb on the living Queleti jungle gym in the center of the room. Instead she sat in a corner gleefully working a bit of red clay, mashing it against the stone floor, occasionally tearing off a small piece and eating it. He made his way over and sat cross-legged in front of her. The Orin blinked up at him, suspicious, uncertain of this mostly hairless, clawless, pale-skinned creature.