Things went hazy for a little while after that. When my vision cleared, we were flying smoothly through the sapphire sky, the cousin humming a soft, almost affectionate tune that vibrated its entire chest and throat. It sounded like a happy eagle.

// cousin // it said, joy coloring its tone. // you wake. you wake. how did you come to fall from so far? this world granted you no wings. // There was a certain quiet pity in its last statement, like it couldn’t understand how we’d managed to accomplish anything of merit without wings.

// I was on a plane // I said. Now that I knew how to reach the place in my mind that was designed for communication within my copse, it seemed easier, almost more natural than verbal communication. Part of that may have been the lack of air. I wasn’t dying, but speech required having something to make it function. With my lungs lying fallow in my chest, there wasn’t anything to make the words emerge.

// plane? //

// a machine that flies. like the ships, but designed to function within a planetary atmosphere. //

// what a clever garden this has been! // The cousin sounded both surprised and pleased, like this had been something it had never considered. // where should I release you? //

Where … // can you find the plane? //

// I can find anything, if it is in the sky. //

// can you take me to the plane, and follow until it lands? I do not want to lose track of my friends, but I do not want the people who have control of the plane to know that I survived. //

Amusement and pleasure washed over me. // a hunt! for you, small cousin, I can hunt. what are you called? //

// Stasia. //

// I am Hunter. //

For the first time, I wondered whether the strangely literal names of all the aliens I’d met so far were a function of the translation provided by the pollen. When I gave them my name, did they hear “Stasia,” or did they hear the meaning of my full, given name? Anastasia. She who will be reborn.

Maybe it was more fitting than I thought.

// how did you find me so quickly? it seems strange that you should be nearby. //

// your First asked that we watch for you, once you chose to return to the garden. I was near enough to hear your call. //

Hunter tore through the sky, powerful muscles moving it forward like a marathon runner as it sought the missing plane. It was doing this for me. It was a person, as surely as I was. Suddenly, thinking of my cousin as an “it” felt wrong.

// what are your pronouns? //

// what are pronouns? //

// um. they say what gender you are. boy or girl or both or neither. //