First: curiosity,
my charming companion
from a world far distant.
Second: alarm, for this
scientist studies me.
Such attention is strange;
Does this being allot
the same meanings as I
to scent, to touch, to breath,
to my regalia’s
bloom so out of season? -
I might wilt, self-conscious! -
Until, with season’s change,
Third: an ache. Once she leaves,
I will long for her gaze.
The lights of Aroha’s farewell party sparkled ahead in the ceremonial arboretum, blazing rivals to the unfamiliar stars above. She packed away her frown, replaced it with the smile everyone would expect. Was this not a night of celebration? The hard work had been done: the fruits of her botanical research were all packed away and loaded into the ship sent to pick her up from Veridia and yet, she wondered with no small thrill of guilt, if she might not take a small cutting for herself.
She crossed under the archway into the arboretum, greeted by Veridian applause: a rough and rhythmic rustle of their leafy limbs, just louder than a breeze through the boughs. Even without the chemical, muscular stirrings of a heart, it would seem her hosts also appreciated the bittersweetness of this departure.
The first to wish her well was the Spring Archdeacon. He extended his hoary, branched hands towards her, bedecked with lichens like rings. They were so touchy, these Veridians. Aroha was grateful for that. Her curiosity to touch them might have otherwise led to an interplanetary faux pas early on in her twelve-month deployment on this planet.
‘So sad to see you leave, Doctor Pearl. May you go well and use what you have gained on Veridia to the benefit of those suffering across the stars.’
His fleshy face, the texture and top-scruff of an almost-ready corn ear, split into a wide smile above the barky ruff of his neckless trunk.
‘Thank you, Archdeacon. You and yours have shown me the utmost kindness and understanding.’
There were many more petalled and barked faces waiting in a queue to see her: the Autumnal Archdeacon, out of season and full of sombre prayers for her safe travels, jarring against the jolly pinks of his bushy, flowering head; the chosen representative of the Superfungus, always a different toadstool of a face, but eerily familiar with her through the hivemind; the Winter Maiden, encumbered and out of sorts with the ripe growth of spring and summer's cusp.
Aroha had expected, arriving the year previous, to be greeted with suspicion in her role as medical researcher, a fleshy creature intruding into a world of sentient plants—especially since her purpose was to take from them in order to cure the ails of faunal species. But the Veridians had been most generous. One precious being amongst them had devoted herself to guiding Aroha every day: a personal translator, diplomat, concierge and a ready explorer like herself. Many of Aroha’s discoveries had come at the recommendation of Liliflora, the Summer Maiden of Veridia.
Aroha smiled through the dome above at the barely visible stars, enamoured by the wonder of life. All these planets strung like beads across the neck of the universe, and one had only to step to the next to find cures, miracles, love...
Her eyes strayed—could not help but to stray—to the face she most longed to behold. The Summer Maiden smiled from a distance, beneath joining boughs of two unmoving trees each in full verdant regalia. Her dress, swirling up and around her deceptively humanoid form, gave the impression of hundreds of white rose petals sewn together without a single visible stitch. The blue of her skin belied a silver undertone, as if she were about to bloom and reveal lighter petals hidden beneath the translucent cobalt and cyan. Her hair glowed under the twin beams of Veridia's moons, as white as Earth's sole satellite. Liliflora acknowledged Aroha with a deepening of her smile, before turning back to the guests beside her.
Aroha's heartbeat rose to a viscous thudding in her throat. Pining was the last thing she needed tonight. She refused to conclude her sweet assignment on Veridia like this. As the year had gone by, and the changing seasons did nothing to diminish the attentiveness and kindness of her companion, she had found herself burning with a question, but unsure of how to broach it with one so different, so alien.
She had to tell her. Nothing would come of it, she was sure. But if it did, could perhaps Aroha be Liliflora’s guide to the stars, as she had been her guide to Veridia?
When at last Aroha reached the Summer Maiden's side, the Veridian held out her hands in eager warmth. Those slim, pale arms shot through with streaks of minty green, terminating in the softest, lightest hands—it was all Aroha could do to just receive those petal-like, seemingly hollow fingers in her too-thick hands and not crush them.
‘Aroha.’
‘Liliflora.’
Did she feel the same sorrow? How must it feel, for a heartless being? Which parts were stirred—breathlessness, tearfulness? Would any part ache or would she instead bow and wither, lose some of that vibrancy, if the sun of Aroha's presence were gone?
The thought was too horrifying. Aroha forbade it. Liliflora should not feel such a heartbreak, should never experience such a diminishment of her glory.
‘Thank you for your constant companionship. I couldn't have made so many discoveries without you.’ She wanted to say more. So much more.
Liliflora’s fingers caressed Aroha’s palms. ‘The cerulean vines are blooming tonight, as if they knew this was their last chance to see you. Will you slip away from your own party to see them?’
The delight was almost too much to bear. Aroha nodded, her hands frozen flat, letting Liliflora slip her delicate fingers around one hand. She led Aroha deeper into the arboretum, towards the exit closest to the heated conservatory, where the equatorial plants rioted in their lusty, thriving fullness. Alone with Liliflora, the rare sight of the cerulean vine in its annual bloom, Aroha could not decide which of the two she was most excited by.
The former, definitely. Could it be that Liliflora felt the same and sought solitude with Aroha for a confession of feelings heretofore unspoken?
A brief chill of night air outside the warm confines of the arboretum buffeted them, then they were engulfed in the tropical heat of the conservatory. By the door, fleshy pods hung from a stout, gnarled tree with broad, hairy leaves. The pods were brown, but in a month or so they would ripen to a sunset-red fruit with succulent flesh that melted on the tongue. Aroha remembered the taste from ten months prior, would never in her life forget that confronting tang running past her tongue to tingle even in her fingers and toes. Deeper within, proud, lily-like flowers as large as human heads opened wide to reveal their rude colouration: pinks, purples, oranges vibrant in the half-darkness, violent colour shooting straight past the eye to a deeper sense within.
At the heart of the conservatory, the cerulean vines glowed, as was their nightly custom. Bioluminescent sap pumped throughout the tangled climber hanging from the retaining wall and weaving through the lattice. While just a day before tendrils of soft new growth had appeared with a taunting promise of blooms Aroha should never get to see, tonight the shoots were tipped with tiny flowers with hearts like stars. From ten steps away, her eyes flooded with memory’s sting. The obscured view took her back to her tūrangawaewae, to her youth, to the night when she'd seen the glowworms in a coastal cave with her siblings and cousins, the roar of the nearby sea like walking blind into a lion's mouth.
How strange to be thinking of home again. She so rarely did, with all the mysteries of the galaxy waiting to be discovered.
Smeared by her burgeoning tears, the pinpricks of the flowers blurred together into a rough simulacrum of the Milky Way. Coming closer, she beheld the petals of soft, striated white, cupped around the glowing pollen centre, bouncing the light wider—each a miniature reflective lamp.
In that moment, it occurred to her: she would likely never see this sight again.
Before Aroha even knew she was crying, Liliflora's hand snaked up to her cheek. Her petal-like fingers wicked away the tear that had fallen, leaving not a trace.
‘Oh, I apologise. I should ask first before stealing your moisture.’
Aroha laughed and turned away. ‘They're called tears. And humans can't use them once expelled. So, you're welcome to the extra moisture.’
‘Does it have a meaning?’
Liliflora's face, luminescent in the dim light from the vines, bore her usual stamp of curiosity about humans. Aroha had become so fond of that expression over the months. The idea of never catching that tilt of her head again threatened to bring fresh tears.
‘An overwhelm of emotion, usually. In this case, I feel wistful. The vines are beautiful in full bloom and I have only tonight to see them.’
‘Do you wish me to fetch your recorder?’
‘No, no. Memory is enough.’
‘You are not in distress?’
Aroha could not give voice to an answer. But her heart cried out: Oh, yes, unbearably so. Perhaps Liliflora did understand.
‘My Lady Liliflora?’
The dry, deep tones of the Autumnal Archdeacon broke the spell. Aroha blinked back her tears.
‘Doctor Pearl. Won't you please return to the party? The speeches are about to commence.’
‘Of course, Venerable Archdeacon.’
Aroha hung her head with shame at the interruption. Liliflora tucked her arm through Aroha's, giving her a guilty smile and shrug. The soft touch of her petals sent Aroha’s heart into a canter.
‘I wish he had not discovered us,’ Aroha murmured.
‘Why is that?’
‘Isn’t tonight the one night those flowers can be pollinated? Without that, they would surely die out. I would have liked to see what happens.’
A shadow passed over Liliflora’s face and in it, her smile fled. When the light arrived again, she was smiling once more. It all happened so fast that Aroha wasn’t sure whether she’d imagined it.
‘It shall happen. There’s nothing so remarkable about it.’
Liliflora tilted her head, eyes glancing away. ‘Here we are.’
In the arboretum once again, Aroha plastered on a smile and held back her regret about not having had the time to express her true feelings. The speeches were all for her and while the general feel of them sunk in—gratitude, hope for the future, pride and joy for the great alliance between worlds co-operating in the otherwise treacherous unknown of the universe—her eyes lingered on Liliflora's profile, where she stood a few steps away on the arboretum's rotunda. The Summer Maiden shone brighter than everything around her, as if to sear herself into Aroha's memory as one last parting gift. She caught Aroha looking and smiled back, holding her gaze without question. Aroha dared to hope she, too, might be drinking in the last sight of her. Hopefully it was a dashing one in her navy-blue formal uniform with gold epaulets, her thick red-brown hair tied neatly back.
With the Archdeacons having spoken, the Winter and Summer Maidens lead the assembly in a song to farewell Aroha. Veridian voices could not sustain melody in the same way faunal vocal cords could. Instead, their songs were rhythmic and chanted; where human voices would resonate with melodies and harmonies, the Veridian voices layered whispers over creaks and over strains, like a forest whipped into a frenzy by the wind.
Aroha stood still against the rush of sound and uncanny memory. For all that it was alien to her, there was too much that was familiar. Songs after speeches—the chant that built and stirred the blood was a mōteatea from another world. The last she had heard was at her own farewell from Earth.
It was all she could do to stand upright throughout and keep the tears from falling.
And then the speeches and songs were over. Breathless, Aroha found herself thrust amongst a towering crowd of congratulatory faces, branched and floral hands reaching out. Foremost amongst them was the Winter Maiden. The distant, formal Maiden bowed her head.
‘May the stellar winds speed you to where your work is needed most, Doctor Pearl.’
She took Aroha’s hand to clasp it, the many small buds flourishing there and everywhere across her skin digging softly into Aroha’s palm. Up this close, the Winter Maiden's chin was marked with dark veins under her pale silvery skin. Aroha started at the memory that dredged up; of home, of moko kauae on her mother's chin, of the design growing more complex with lines of age over time. How strange a sight here, so far from home.
She had left Earth without attaining her tā moko. Out of all things possible in the wide and wonderful galaxy, getting her own moko kauae was something she could do nowhere but Earth—nowhere but home, specifically.
That was the third time tonight she had thought about home. The sting of that warred with the other pull on her heart—Liliflora, here, one final night.
As she looked around, the need to see the Summer Maiden became more urgent. Between shoulders, before the whole crowd moved and cut off her view, Aroha saw Liliflora look over her shoulder, then slip away between two conifers towards the conservatory.
‘Please excuse me.’
The crowd parted for Aroha, a moment before she resorted to begging for release. She kept her pace even and unrushed until she was certain none could see her anymore, and then slipped through that same needled portal.
Was she supposed to follow? Liliflora had not invited her this time. The surreptitious way she’d left the arboretum gave Aroha pause—for all of a second. There was no world in which she didn’t walk in.
She entered the cover of the hanging pods by the entrance of the conservatory, then padded towards the cerulean vines, determined this time to ask the Summer Maiden to come away with her across the stars.
Liliflora was there, before the vines. Aroha stopped amongst the vibrant lilies. The Summer Maiden held her arms aloft. For a long moment, she was still. Then her hands shifted, unfolded, redoubled into open flowers, their rich saffron pollen spilling forth a scent so strong it drifted even to Aroha’s hiding place; a scent of night-blooming flowers, a hint of cinnamon and citrus. Liliflora held her unleashed hands up to the smaller flowers of the vines. The cupped bells of her hands embraced each tiny glow and gave a minute twist, exchanging the pollen at their centres.
Aroha held her breath as she committed the tender smile on Liliflora's face to memory. There was no taking the Summer Maiden from Veridia. She was too vital to her world. The mystery was solved: the sole pollinator of the annual blooms was Liliflora herself.
Stifling a chuckle that might have been a sob, Aroha slipped back into the shadow of the hanging pods. She’d been a fool to even think about the possibility. After all, what senses a human might use to love could not be the same for a Veridian. She should have known this, as a biologist. A heartbeat meant nothing to Liliflora, a rush of breath was just a small gust and a tear a mere curiosity.
The annual duty of the Summer Maiden—never explained, finally witnessed—was its own labour of love. Aroha averted her eyes as a sigh slipped from Liliflora's lips. Shame burnt in her for stealing this sacred sight, even more so for thinking she could have stolen Liliflora away.
No, she must leave and Liliflora must stay. Some things could be taken away, shared, exchanged. She had exchanged rongoā Māori for rongoā whetū here and other worlds before this. But some things in this universe were so specific to their place, to take them away was to lose too much of what they were.
Hers was a love to take back to the stars, impossible to requite.
Liliflora still swam before her eyes, an indistinct blur amongst the grounded stars, destined to grow more indistinct with time and distance.
Aroha felt instead a different longing, one she had too often ignored in the face of the whole wide universe and all its wonders drawing her ever away. Tūrangawaewae, mōteatea, moko kauae—these were signs she could no longer ignore; messages from within, messages from across a galaxy.
It was time to go home.
I cannot offer First;
empty words, branches that
may bear no fruit, or turn
sour. Second: keep silent,
and work towards my aims,
giving nothing away.
Third: pretend not to hear
the rain—and Fourth, pray; may
my secret hope come true:
that, my duty discharged,
the next flower bloomed takes
my place in the pageant;
Then, may I leave; then, may
I be the scientist;
then, may I gaze at her.
Glossary:
moko kauae - traditional chin tattoo worn by Māori women, signifying connection to family, leadership and geneology
mōteatea - a chanted lament or song of sadness, loss and grief
rongoā Māori - traditional Māori healing, including herbal remedies, physical therapies and spiritual healing
tā moko - Māori tattooing
tūrangawaewae - a place to stand, a place of connection and birthright
whetū - stars