// help // I said, shouted, screamed into the empty void of air and sky and descent, once more a tumbling seedpod caught in gravity’s embrace, unable to free myself, hoping for salvation. // help, I’m falling, please come, please help. //

// cousin. //

The voice was far away and faint, barely touching the edges of my awareness. I strained toward it, continuing to shout silently into the void. // help, I’m falling, please help me, I don’t want to die. //

// cousin, make yourself large as you can, cousin, hold fast, I come, I come. //

Make myself … I spread my arms and legs, trying to increase my surface area and resistance to the air. I continued to fall, and I couldn’t tell whether the shift in my position had done anything to change the speed of my descent. Still, a feeling of approval washed over me, wordless and concrete.

// cousin, I am coming. //

I fell.

// cousin, look to the west. //

I opened my eyes. I looked.

A creature—a person, someone who was biologically more similar to me than I was to Graham or Mandy, but it was hard to let go of a lifetime’s worth of thoughts and opinions, and everything I knew told me this was a creature, a monster, a beast—flew toward me, vast, leathery wings slapping at the sky like it flew through the sheer force of its determination. It looked like a six-limbed predatory dinosaur, complete with tufted feathers on the end of its long, whiplike tail and crowning its narrow-jawed, small-eyed head. It was a thing out of a nightmare, cutting through the air with claws extended and jaws open wide.

It was cast entirely in shades of green, in jade and emerald and tourmaline, and it was beautiful, and it was my cousin. I could tell that with a glance. We had been planted on different worlds, sprouted from different seed lines, but we were family all the same, and it was coming to save me.

// let go // hissed its voice.

Obediently, I went as limp as I could, trying to release the natural tension from my limbs. I was still falling, and my body fought against the relaxation, refusing to let go of the fear and adrenaline that was coursing through my veins. I couldn’t breathe. I was falling, and I couldn’t breathe.

// you are safe // hissed the cousin, and snatched me out of the air.

The impact was painful, even with as much care as it was taking. Its claws closed around my torso and clamped down, not hard enough to break the skin or do more than bruise me, but hard enough to yank me out of my descent. The sound of leathery wings beating became the loudest thing in the entire world. Everything seemed to snap to a painful halt, my head whipping forward until it slammed into one thick, muscular leg.