table murmurs at the sight of this former Karensan soldier speaking our language.
My mother gives him a tight smile back. “You’re welcome,” she replies.
“His accent sounds funny,” Kattee’s mother says before Kattee nudges her into silence, but it’s enough to make a couple of the others at the table chuckle.
Nana Yagerri leans forward on her elbows and puckers her lips slightly at Red. “Thank you for our food,” she says for him, emphasizing the correct pronunciation.
Red tries again, getting it a little closer, but his enunciation is so exaggerated that now everyone laughs. He blinks, startled at the sound, and smiles. I nudge him teasingly under the table for it, and this time, he reaches for my hand and laces his fingers with mine. I try not to react, but heat creeps into my cheeks at the intimacy of his touch, and I realize that we’re sitting so close that my body presses slightly against his.
“I could do better than that,” Adena says with a raised eyebrow, and then goes on to completely butcher the Basean intonations. Everyone groans.
“Marans always make the r’s too heavy,” Kattee says to her. “You have to roll your tongue.”
Adena tries again, this time with different phrases that everyone throws at her and Red.
“Merry Midwinter to all.”
“To all. You say it like that and it’ll sound like you’re saying, ‘to hit a wall.’”
“Have a good night.”
“Good luck on the warfront.”
The phrases go back and forth, quicker now, and slowly, the tension at the table eases. Mr. Oyano still doesn’t look thrilled by our presence at the table, but even he grunts a few times at Red’s sillier pronunciations, shaking his head at Red’s attempt to say “This food is delicious.”
As Adena tries the same phrase, Red grins at me. I think I’m getting it, he thinks to me, and the outrageous pride in his emotions is enough to make me laugh.
A few hundred more dinners here, and you’ll be speaking fluently, I reply.
He glances at me, lips twitching with his amusement. I accept, then. A few hundred dinners here with you.
I hesitate, suddenly unsure I understand him correctly. Maybe he’ll have the chance to sit here with me, at my mother’s home, for dinner after dinner, year after year. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll get to grow older at each other’s side like this. As Shields, perhaps. Or as something more.
It’s an arrangement, I respond, unable to resist smiling back at him.
My hand is still entwined with his under the table. What a silly assumption to make, I scold myself in embarrassment, to fantasize about some distant future that might never happen, with someone I’ve only begun to know. But in his eyes, I see a hesitant mirror of my thoughts. It’s the wild hope of someone who dares to think we all might live long enough to be here again. That it’s not foolish to want.
“Your turn,” Adena says to him now, breaking the moment between us. “It’s only fair. What do you want to ask us, Red?” She’s relaxed now, her plate empty, and a glow seems to cast her dark skin in warmth. “Tell us something in Karenese.”
There’s a slight pause at the thought of hearing the Federation’s language at the table, but no one stops her. Instead, everyone leans in.
I look at Red. You don’t have to say anything, I tell him, but he shakes his head and returns Adena’s stare. Then he says something in Karenese.
Jeran clears his throat and looks quietly at Adena. “He asked why do we fight,” he says, “as Strikers. Why we risk our lives.”
The merry tone at the table turns somber at that. I wait, watching Adena’s face dance through several different emotions before she straightens to respond.
“For my brother,” she says. When silence follows, waiting for more from her, she continues, “My brother’s name was Olden, and when I was a little girl, he would tease me about my name. Adena, you see? In Maran, it means ‘the curious one.’ My mother used to say that my eyes were wide-open when I was born, hungrily drinking in the world. She said I tilted my head early on to show my interest in things, so my brother would tilt his head exaggeratedly at me all the time. It made me laugh like crazy, so I hear. I don’t remember any of it—I was so young when she died.” She shakes her head. “After she was gone, my brother started taking me to his Striker practices,