early edition

"Did you ever have a term marker, Cap'n?"

She tries to come up with a new neat question every day. Fishing is good for companionable silence, but it can also be good for thinking; they've reasoned out that it's no sense keeping all your worries to yourself, if you're just going to walk away from the shore with your shoulders slumping back down again.

Triton stays his rod with a single finger as he thinks. "Must not have, seein' as I'm all long in the face."

"You don't remember?" Fiona's rod jumps.

"'Course I don't. Ain't much I do remember, little one."

And if he were a colony soldier, they'd all turn on him in an instant, for being inefficient and unuseful. But he isn't only a resource hog. Not only.

"Our Flame Clocks are gone, but our term markers remain. It hasn't been quite long enough for me to tell if it's changed, but considering how they're rushing on about Mio..."

"I dunno...I dunno how it'll all unfurl. I can't know the future any better'n I know the past."

"But will I ever look old, like you?"

Does my cradle-born body even have the capacity, to age?

"Even if so," Triton says dolefully, "I won't be around to see it. I can promise ye that much."

"No sense in having a Homecoming for you, huh? Since you're already right there."

They're all so used to their companions dying. It hurts, but it doesn't surprise. Even though soldiers don't correlate visible aging to the nearness of death, they measure time by their expectations. Going soon? I suppose so.

"They call them funerals, in the City."

A nice offshore location, for the old man to situate. (Like a retirement community.)

"Can I count on ye to be there, at mine?"

What else are friends for? Holding hands, singing songs.

"Of course, Cap'n. I'll be right there with you."