This Is Love

His name is Jemadar Abrastin, and he loves her. 


She knows he loves her because he can't stand being apart from her, not even for a little while, not even while she takes her classes at Urbald University.  He's not a student there but he comes with her anyway, sits up the back of the hall so they're together, every minute of every day. That's what love is, wanting to be with someone every single second.


That's what love is in the holos. 


Her name is Valhiri Akell. She is eighteen years old, a pre-med student with the shaman's mark curving over the top of her right foot and down to the arch, and she loves him. 


She knows she loves him because when he comes home after another fruitless day searching for work, downcast and sullen, she can't concentrate on the assignments on her desk or the dinner on the stove until she's managed to lift the frown from his face.  It weighs on him, the fact that he's not able to bring any money into the house, no matter how many times she tells him it doesn't matter, her scholarship is almost enough to pay the bills.  She's there for him. Finding ways to make him feel better becomes the most important thing in her life. That's what love is, when someone else's happiness is more important that your own.


That's what love is in the holos.


She's been Hiri since the day she was born, to her family. The first time he called her Val she corrected him. He said that nobody knew her as well as he did, and he could tell her name was Val. It's her special name, that only he uses, like she's a different person with him than anyone she's ever been before. It's romantic.


He's very romantic.  He wants to protect her.  He doesn't like it when she wears skirts that are too short, tops too low cut. You should have seen the way those guys were looking at you, he tells her. Dressed like that, you're telling the whole world you're available. 


She picks pants and loose, baggy tops, instead. It's romantic, knowing that no-one but him knows about the curves underneath the folds of fabric.  She's his, his only. That's what love is, when your body belongs to only one person, even to look at. 


That's what love is in the holos.


He hates it when people try to come between them. Her classmates, her family: he says they're always trying to interfere. It's better that she doesn't see them, certainly not without him there to make sure they don't try meddling. 


She misses sitting in the back row of the holotheatre with her sisters, the three of them giggling as bad actors pretend to be frightened of computer-generated monsters, but it's important to him that he knows he can trust her not to do something when he's told her not to, so she doesn't sneak off to meet them even when she could.  


He wants them to be together, even if her friends and family disapprove. That's what love is, isn't it? Defying everyone in order to be together.


That's what love is in the holos.


He worries that she'll leave him for someone better-looking, more educated, employed.  She tells him over and over again that she'll never leave him. He doesn't believe her. If you leave me, Val, if you ever leave me, I'll kill myself, you know I will, don't you?


One of her tutors puts in an application for her to a college on Pator, as a surprise.  It's a good scholarship, better than the one she has here, and it'll take her all the way through medical school, unlike her pre-med bursary at Urbald. She's still wondering how to persuade him to move with her when he finds the letter of offer tucked away in the back of her desk drawer.


I knew you were going to leave me! I knew I couldn't trust you!


She doesn't see the blow coming.  While she's still lying on the floor trying to work out what happened through the ringing in her ears, he slams into the bathroom and locks the door.  She can hear him through the door, swearing he's going to take every one of the pills in the bathroom cabinet. She begs and pleads and promises that she isn't going to leave him through the closed door for two hours. At last he says that if she can prove it he'll unlock the door. Feverishly, she scrawls a letter turning the scholarship down and pushes it under the door. 


He's sorry, extravagantly so, when he opens the door and sees her eye swollen nearly shut. It's because I love you so much, Val. The idea of losing you makes me crazy.


He posts the letter for her the next day.


She understands that it's hard for him to trust her after that, and so when he tells her that she has to give him her papers, her ID, her keys and her bankchip, she does. He gives her enough money from her scholarship to buy groceries, so long as she gives him the change and the receipts when she gets home. He buys her tokens for the shuttlebus so she can get to class, and gives her one on those rare mornings he can't come with her to the university.  If he's late meeting her afterwards she waits outside the library at the university, in the spot he's picked, careful not to speak to anyone in case he arrives and thinks she's flirting. 


He wants her, all for himself, forever. That's what love is, isn't it? Getting jealous when you even think the person you love is too close to someone else. 


That's what love is in the holos.


She keeps making mistakes. Sometimes she's not sure what they are, even afterwards, only that she did something wrong and he couldn't help getting angry. He never means it. He's always sorry. It's just that he loves her so much, he can't help it.


He always promises it will never happen again. She always forgives him. That's what love is, isn't it? Unconditional. 


That's how love is in the holos. 


One night she dreams that she is walking.  There's nothing around her but an endless plain of long grass, rippling away to the horizon in every direction. 


There are no landmarks, but she knows exactly where she is. 


She is on the first day of the three-day walk that will take her to the furthest of all the dancing grounds. The pack on her back holds enough food and water for the trip. She will sleep on the ground beneath all the stars in the Cluster at night, and walk all day, until she gets there. 


Hiri laughs aloud in her dream. A bubble of happiness fills her at the anticipation of the long hours of walking ahead, the dry rations for every meal, the blisters on her feet and the aching exhaustion she will feel by the time she arrives. She tilts back her head and looks up at the cloudless sky and for a moment feels dizzy and weightless, as if gravity has lost its grip on her and she is soaring up into the endless blue above her. 


Then she loses her balance and falls.


She lands, not among the tall, tufted grass, but in her own bed.  Jemadar is breathing beside her in the dark. Her mouth is dry, but he doesn't like having glasses of water by the bed and she can't be sure that slipping out of bed to go to the kitchen won't wake him. She chews the inside of her cheek to start a little saliva, enough to fool her body into thinking she's no longer thirsty.


In the dark, she hears a voice, a woman's voice, clear and soft as the wind rushing over the grass, a voice she has never heard before.


This is not love.


Her first thought is that the voice is too loud, loud enough to wake Jemadar.  She holds her breath, waiting, her heart hammering in her chest.  


He doesn't stir. 


The room is dark, and close, but she can feel the sun on her face and the great vaulting arc of the sky above her, the wide empty plain of the grassland and the breeze whispering against her skin.


Hiri, says the voice, a voice she has never heard, a voice she recognises, after a moment, as her own. Hiri.


This is not love.