Even before Anya was born, her parents had a little black ship’s cat they’d picked up on their final tour of service together. Vanta slept in her bunk through the long nights and overheard arguments. He brought her through the divorce and into adulthood. When she finally earned her full Community membership, the hypoallergenic darling accompanied her on her mandatory tour, out to the stars.

 

That welcome-aboard mixer on the CSC Exuberant Yet Exquisite was a real experience, especially given who she learned she was going to spend the next few months with. Surrounded by regular old humans, Anya felt bad for staring at the pillar of predatory muscle filling an entire sofa all by herself: one of the Rajakhanese, white pelt adorned with natural blue swirls, hand-woven tribal scarves proudly bearing Drive Tech Third Class patches.

 

Anya felt worse for freezing a second when that soft green stare turned on her.  “Sorry,” she got out on reflex, eyes carefully fixed away from bone-cracking teeth. “I just—you’re the first sapphire I’ve met.”

 

“That’s aces,” the lady replied in a voice like a talking cello. “You’re the first one of you who apologized for doing that.”

 

Anya had to look up to read the printed name on her badge. “Yan-Lanir…Chamershejog? Am I saying that right?”

 

A very sharp, wide grin. “You’re trying!”

 

The rest of the night centered on their corner of the lounge; they had mixed quite enough already. The talk turned to gaming, as it often did once Anya got involved. The first graduating class of nonhumans usually found other things to do with their copious free time, but this recently uplifted citizen still got to experience a few highlights along the way.

 

“I remember the first screen game I ever played, still learning about those weirdo machines. You were these sand guys, and you fought with other sand guys over a beach while waves washed away the turf and smashed your dudes…what’s with that face?”

 

Anya bit back a squeal. “That was mine! I did that!” As a glorified physics test, but still!

The alien made a face that Anya would, in time, grow to recognize as happy, and then she engulfed human hands in fever-hot velvet pads, rough from work. “You! You’re a zero at pronouncing, but you’re A-1 at games, jhira.”

 

The party got a little hazy at the end; some chemicals worked perfectly well on both species. Creator and fan ended up wobbling back to Anya’s quarters to crash in peace. The moment Yan-Lanirr Chemerchejog stooped through the human-scale door, Vanta hissed and took refuge on a shelf. The towering carnivore stared in absolute focus, just long enough for the human hostess to worry a little, before she slouched closer to the kitty and grinned like a shaggy shark.

 

“The vids are major wrong,” Chemerchejog observed. “Their eyes are so much more pretty all real and in your face like this.” Then she tried to feel his fur.

 

Before the end of that tour, Vanta tolerated the sapphire enough to learn just how warm and high a perch his occasional guest made. And she came to accept being called Yan-Lan, or even Jog, especially by the woman with the cute pet and the common interests and the fun laugh.

 

~ * ~

 

Late in their third tour together, during a station stop, Anya padded in from the hallway with a bag of surplus rocks, courtesy of a friend in the Exuberant’s geology department. An interminable six-hour shift helping update the onboard printers had her ready for some percussive stress relief. “Hey Jog. What’s new?” She moved to the single piece of human furniture in the room, a child’s seat at the adults’ table.

 

The sapphire was stretched out in her giant bowl of a chair with tail across her lap, a big mug of spiked tea in hand, eyelids already drooped. Two walls were plastered with pictures from the Exuberant’s survey and charity uplift teams, and the third was playing highlights from their second-place tournament finish last week. “Absolutely nothing, my champ. I’m wondering what to watch next, but my consultant hasn’t said anything.”

 

Jog’s tail stirred. Vanta’s nose peered through its blue tuft like a hunter in tall grass. “He’s very sleepy today,” she gravely announced.

 

“No worries, I can finish the spearheads in the workshop, away from his majesty.” Anya set the rocks under Jog’s souvenir cases, secured against ship acceleration. She cast a longing look over to Vanta, but he wasn’t even bothering to jump over as usual. “These rocks are supposed to be real ace material, too, they break up shaving sharp. Can’t wait.”

 

Jog skipped the recording past one of her mistakes. “You know, for me, crafting those cutters lost the fun new shine about the third time I had to do it growing up.”

 

“That’s the difference. You had to make one. Growing up, I didn’t have to do much of anything.”

 

Jog didn’t answer. When Anya looked, over the sapphire was staring down at Vanta. The pad of her nose wrinkled. “Anya, something smells different with him. Something bad.”

 

The cat barely lifted his head to look at Anya. He made a low sound she’d never heard him make. She stood. There was a coldness inside, flattening her out. “Let’s get him to the vet, quick. Keep him warm, Jog, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

 

The sapphire set her mug aside, looking painfully sober now, ears held low. She rose and strode away with Vanta bundled close. Her tail looped around Anya’s wrist in afterthought to keep her hurrying along after.

 

The station veterinarian’s office was soft, Anya remembered later. They had antique non-printed wall hangings everywhere. There was one with a lot of geometric designs, tiered diamonds and triangles of triangles, that the label said was inspired by a tribe from Earth. It was what she was looking at when the staff asked them back to discuss the test results. She asked Jog to wait outside, in case the news wasn’t good.

 

It wasn’t.

 

The decision was very unfortunate, but it was the only one she could make. Vanta was almost thirty. That was a good life for a cat, Anya told herself as she drifted back into the lobby. Slowly, unevenly, she stepped forward to bury her face in a different comforting pelt.

 

~ * ~

 

The next day, the woman trudged into the polished enamel of the station lounge, still in the robe she’d worn to the vet office. Meeting in someone’s quarters would have been more private, but Anya couldn’t bear the thought of sitting there, reflexively expecting cuddly black fuzziness to sidle along. She didn’t really feel like working, either. She didn’t feel like much of anything.

 

She did make herself stop by the refreshments counter, which was staffed by a nervously upbeat young man. She put on a smile for him and kicked in a couple of extra points once he delivered her drinks, more slowly but much more cheerfully than the ship’s machines could have. The free coffee was mostly for fidgeting purposes; the huge mug of Rajakhanese tea threw off her whole week’s budget.

 

The cup turned and turned in Anya’s hands as she thought of the reports still waiting and the half-finished projects on her list, hoping for the same kind of distraction for her mind. It didn’t work. Too distant.

 

She caught a peripheral glimpse of yellow and heard the footsteps just before the whoosh of 250 kilos of predator settling in the space beside her. On cue, there was Jog’s familiar scent, like a slow forest brook. She was wrapped in a vivid saffron robe, hung with the equipment loops and pouches favored by felinoid hunters and human spacers alike. Anya set her drink down and gave her thick frame a quick brush-down before turning to greet the sapphire.

 

Then she got the weight of a prehensile tail longer than its owner draped across her lap. “Anya,” the furry hunter rumbled to her. “Go on, you need it.”

 

She did, and so she did, squeezing an armful of aromatic fluff like she was grounding something inside her. Eventually she made herself lift away. “…I talked to the station office. They said they’d keep him on cryo until they can get us a portable unit or something,” she said, mostly into her coffee.

 

“Very shiny of them.” Jog slurped at her huge mug with an appreciative trill.

 

“One little piece of good luck- someone’s headed straight back to my dad’s world. There’s a training ship, Gotta Wear Shades, jumping right to orbit when it leaves. We can shuttle over in about thirty hours, be at the old cabin in fifty and put Vanta to rest.”

 

Jog slumped to a mere two heads higher than the human. “Blast, Anya, what can we chill on for whole days here?”

 

“The usual games and replays, edibles, both of those together. They got a big pool, one with a wave thingy, and they allow private spacewalks here. There’s whatever a rainbow party is.” She waved in the direction of the constantly looping announcement boards. “There’s a live singing show tomorrow, we definitely want the edibles for that. I mean, it’s a Community station, Jog, we’ve been to enough to know what they got.”

 

"Or we could just sit here and bang the rocks together," Jog volunteered, "like old times."

 

Anya managed a smile. “At least we won’t have to worry about the sound bothering Vanta anymore.”

 

“At least he isn’t bothered by anything now.”

 

“He’s at rest now.” Anya felt better, somehow, putting that gloss on it.

 

Jog gave a thoughtful ruhr. “So why are the station heads giving you a cryo for him, anyway?”

 

Anya kept turning her mug. “My father won’t be home from visiting for weeks still. We can bury Vanta when we get home. Father won’t mind missing it, he was my cat.”

 

The sapphire carefully enunciated in her third language, “Bury?”

 

Anya looked up and saw flat ears and staring eyes. “Yyyeah.” Her stomach tightened. “I don’t want him cremated, by fuel or orbit. And I’m not just breaking him down with chemicals like some…Jog? Hey?”

 

The catweasel straightened, slowly, and rolled her head as if from a blow. “After everything, you just want him in the dirt. Like trash.”

 

“What are you—” A quick breath as the tower of huntress stood over her. “That’s what we do, understand? That’s the last step, now that he’s…gone.”

 

“He’s not gone. I’m sad too, but I can’t lie about him.” Each word even heavier than usual. “He’s dead, and we’re not.”

 

“Okay. Jog. What the hell is this?” She stared at the sapphire, hard. “Why today?”

 

“Because I thought you’d want him honored. Forever, as long as we both pump blood.” Jog leaned closer, almost touching. “Honored proper, you chiming with me?”

 

“No, Jog. What’s better than an honored burial with a stone and a little garden?” She didn’t know what her friend was saying. Of course she didn’t.

 

The catweasel snorted hotly. “Not rotting in the dirt or sitting there full of chems. I mean going to use. Helping the rest of his family live on, right?”

 

It took Anya a second. Then she thumped her coffee down. “Fuck!” Other station residents turned to look; Anya’s cheeks flushed in spots, Jog’s leaf-pointed ears stayed defiantly up. “You can’t,” she hissed, “really mean—”

 

“I mean remembering him, my way. Our way.” Those ears lowered in deliberate calm. “After like a thousand mornings with that little sweetheart, don’t you think I care about him?”

 

She remembered the others in time to lower her voice. “Nobody is eating him.”

 

“Look, I know how you people get about this kind of death stuff—”

 

Anya found herself pushing up to her feet too. “This is—no. You get your way on a lot, blue, but I’m not budging on this.”

 

Jog went very still, her seafoam eyes fixed on the woman before her, four-digit hands resting on the edge of the table. “I don’t want him piled under dirt like an old latrine. I love him, Anya. I know you do too, even with what you’re saying.”

 

Anya tamped down her first reaction, but still stared. “That’s how we show we love somebody. We bury them so they don’t get—” She tried to work around the word, the suddenly vivid image.

 

“Used,” Jog supplied, leaden. Her tail was jittering behind her, restrained but still apparent, as subtle as sapphires got.

 

The human glared up at this carnivore she’d spent three years with. “He was my cat. Since you loved him so much, you can attend the burial.”

 

There was a deep obvious breath and a last placative backing of the ears. “Okay. Okay.” Pulses eased. Anya started to speak, and Jog closed her eyes in catweasel humility. “Here’s my take. After the goodbye feast, we can take whatever’s left over and then—”

 

Heads turned at the sound Anya made. She flung her hand out in negation, of what, she couldn’t narrow down, and stalked from the lounge, unpursued. Chemerchejog worked at her drink in silent measured sips as it cooled, ignoring the humans around. Slowly the lounge shifted to night mode and the projected fireflies came out. Her tail twitched with the instinctive urge to snap at them.

 

~ * ~

 

That kind of shifted the tone. Anya didn’t send Jog’s account anything the rest of the night. She woke up to no new messages, then spent the rest of the day doing whatever she didn’t have to focus on much.

 

Well. They were just friends, and friends went weeks without talking to each other all the time, she’d heard. It wouldn’t be the first time they were quiet to each other. It was just setting a record, that’s all.

 

She printed out a swimsuit and sloshed against the novelty of waves, hit up the choir show in the right frame of mind, and checked out a suit to go vacuum-drifting at the end of a long safety tether, every shift rolling the universe around her in the silent black. None of it was the same.

 

~ * ~

 

The next time she saw Jog was when the catweasel was clambering into the shuttle. It was retrofitted for dual-species work, which meant the only sapphire seating was wedged in directly across from the human bench.

 

Anya looked at everything else in the compartment, studying the many translations of safety instructions, cataloging their crated personal effects next to the reassuring green light of the cryo unit.

 

The whole time, she was pretty sure, Jog’s eyes stayed fixed on her.

 

The shuttle gave a countdown before everything hummed with another engine burn, shifting her weight around in that familiar, always uncomfortable way. The gravity intensified for a second, then cut off completely. Unlike the acceleration, floating was something Anya could manage like a champ, she liked to think, as long as she got to keep the same floor and ceiling. Jog looked unbothered, as always. Maybe it was some tree-dwelling gene, Anya wondered, something they hadn’t had time to evolve out of yet. Then she wondered if that was bad of her to think.

 

The catweasel cleared her throat like a generator starting. “Shuttle’s only going to be another four hours. Better think of what to talk about soon.”

 

Anya snorted, so she supposed she couldn’t really be that mad at Jog, could she? “Sometimes you really leave me wondering what to say. But I guess it’s better than listening to engine hum.”

 

“You got no idea,” Jog sighed. “I swear you little dudes can’t hear half the machine squeaks I do.”

 

Anya half-smiled for a long beat. “Listen. I’m…sorry. For not talking,” she quickly clarified, not wanting to cede too much ground.

 

Those big eyes lidded. “That was a real wet chill, leaving me out. But I see how you see it. You really didn’t like my idea.” That hung there as the image of a funereal cookout flashed to Anya’s mind unbidden. “You sounded real hurt. That harshes me, lady. I like our times and I want you liking them.”

 

“I like them too. You’re probably my favorite part of…this ship, at least.” Jog’s leaf-pointed ears perked straight up. It made Anya feel worse, but it didn’t stop her. “But come on, jhira, you have to get why I—no, we need to do this, right?”

 

“I get he was your cat for so long. But…it’s not him anymore, Anya.” The ears wilted. “I don’t see how it matters if you’re just putting him in the ground anyway.”

 

“That’s…oh, damn, that’s not even it. You know how much this whole ceremony means to me. That’s the part that matters, as much as keeping him in one piece, oh god…” She rubbed her face, marshalling words.

 

Jog leaned forward as much as the safety harness allowed. “Why can’t you even talk about it?”

 

Anya inhaled. “Why couldn’t you see it happen? I wanted you there with me. I bet he did too. If you’re so close you want to arrange his funeral, that would’ve proved it.”

 

Jog’s tail was looped around her leg for standard safety-harnessed flight. That didn’t stop the end of it from twitching. “I was there as soon as you were ready for me. Waited for your message and everything. I stayed away for him.”

 

“I still don’t get it. He needed you.”

 

“He needed his peace. I left him to face it on his terms.” 

 

Anya shook her head. “He was all alone, Jog.”

 

“Look. The best way I can put it…” Not often Anya saw a sapphire hesitate. “They say…my clan head told me it’s probably the last thing you ever get to feel.” Those big shoulders slumped. “You shouldn’t have any distractions, you chime? You should savor it, right until the final relaxing. Last chance. Might as well.”

 

They took that in for a second together. Anya hesitated, waded out into the deeper water. “You say ‘probably’ the last? You’re not sure?”

 

Jog snorted. “Are you, Community lady? What do you think happens when you die?”

 

“I mean… nothing, I think.” Anya looked away. “You just stop. You end.”

 

“And everything about you just—stops, too? Your memories just end up exhaled and drifting out in the wind?”

 

“I don’t know. I want to believe you keep going. But I don’t know.” Anya felt herself edging back from the old dark currents. “I just want to focus on what happens to everyone else, first. Whatever happens, I’ll get to know I made the world better, even if it is the very last thing I think.”

 

“It’s all for the Community?” Very carefully said, those lovely eyes right on her.

 

“I mean, they help people. It’s not a bad idea to live for.” She thought back to some of the worst excesses covered with shaking heads in their Earth History classes. “Just living to make life better, to make it easier for people? It’s noble. It’s a purpose. People have lived for worse.”

 

Jog skewed her ears in what really struck Anya as doubt, but she nodded. “Right on, Anya. Whatever people remember in eight hundred years, do something that matters this week.”

 

“Eight hundred years is just a whole lot of weeks put together,” Anya said, and almost believed it. “And if nothing else, I know I made life easier for you and yours.”

 

Jog nodded again. “I know how you can make life easier for me, Anya.”

 

Anya groaned, looked away. “Fine. I’ll at least think about it, okay? We can talk about it when we land.”

 

“Good. That’s doing it right for us.” The sapphire relaxed, fractionally, and Anya dreaded the landing that much more.

 

Seconds rolled by and the ship accelerated almost smoothly. Something else to discuss, anything. “So…what did you bring?”

 

Jog’s tailtuft indicated her luggage. “Just a quick pack load. Home food, the swimming kit, the shooting kit, herbs, some new ceramic spear blanks. Power cells, extra camp stuff, some more stuff. You know, a few just-in-cases.”

 

Anya blinked at the thought of all that dead mass getting lugged across systems. “Jog, it’s not like Rajakhan. We’ve got printers right at home, we can make that stuff when you get there.”

 

“You can’t print out that it came from two zillion klicks away. That’s something you add yourself, something that sticks.” Jog sat up, way up. “And what about if the printers are down?”

 

Anya’s lips quirked. “If they’re down worse than I can fix, then that means we have way bigger problems to worry about than not having extra blankets.”

 

“Maybe for you guys,” the catweasel said with smug finality. “But don’t worry, I’ll never let you freeze! You’re too snazzy and with-it.”

 

Anya smiled despite herself. “Aces, blue. Aces. I’ll make sure you don’t get stuck sleeping outside when we land, either.”

 

“Oh, no frets, baby.” Her grin flashed on and back off. “There’s no human house keeping me out. You remember when I dared myself to get Hanuri’s cake right out her kitchen?”

 

It was still a boring shuttle ride from there, but it was almost like old times again. Anya needed that. The engines pitched up again, but they were used to talking over them.

 

~ * ~

 

Anya knew her sapphire manners enough not to ask Jog where she was staying. She took a rail line, a drone bus, and a long grassy path to her father’s home, her eyes tilted low to avoid the disconcerting vastness of grey sky overhead. It was a snug cabin of glass and alloy, capped and surrounded by native landscaping. She didn’t like the looks of the octopoid plant-things sprawling over their fancy gravel. Any plants outside station gardens looked a little weird to her, honestly.

 

The apple tree out back was one of the few imported organisms cleared by the local Community Board. The compact and extremely durable Star Pioneer breed took its time growing in its carefully enclosed tub of compost, but in his latest message her father had promised it would bear fruit by her next visit or two.

 

There was a smaller shed out back. Among the geothermal hardware, printer terminal, and old sports gear she hadn’t seen out in decades, she found a set of matched gardening tools. For tomorrow, of course, after she had a chance to talk with Jog.

 

She smiled when she saw the sentimental old man had dragged her gaming desk across the stars to the spare bedroom. Then she remembered all the times Vanta had napped there. Tomorrow, she told herself soberly. She had business to take care of.

 

~ * ~

 

That night, there was a scratching sound at the top of the bedroom door. Anya awoke in record time.

 

“Jog?” Tight, afraid what else the answer could be. Not that enthusiastic about being right, either.

 

“Straight on.” That was her alright. Anya groaned into her pillow, took a moment to try to rub the oil from her face and the fuzz from her mind, then mumbled the lights on and shuffled over to get the door.

 

Jog filled the frame as she stooped through, smiling sharply. The catweasel was wearing some elaborate and stealthy-looking harness, oily-dark and lumpy with mysterious tools. Blurs of color slid over it in the bedroom lights.

 

Anya stared as she retreated to the edge of the bed. “You’re dressed like you’re raiding the damn place.”

 

“I was thinking about it. But in the end, I decided to do it your way, and talk it out!” There was something in Jog’s hand. Gleaming alloy. Pistol-shaped.

 

Anya flinched. Her voice was even drier. “Jog! Jesus—put that away! Why bring that?!”

 

The pistol waggled in what struck Anya as a rather cavalier way. “Hey, I’m just saying I’m not coming here gunless, dropping orders on you like your mom or something. We’re talking, adult to adult, you chime? But—” The weapon settled on Anya’s desk with a distinct clack. “There. Unarmed.” She gave Anya a direct look. “For you.”

 

“Thanks.” It wasn’t what she wanted to say, but it’d do. She cleared her throat. “Now. Please. Why are you in my house before dawn? With guns?”

 

Chemerchejog propped a massive foot on the edge of the bed; Anya thought she heard it creak. “I came over to get our boy. Got within sight before I started thinking about how you’d feel, waking up to see him gone. What a raw scrape it’d be on you, right when you’re at your roughest. I couldn’t handle it. And then I thought, hey, I’m already here, you dig? Might as well talk it over with you proper.”

 

Deep breaths, count to eight, just like they always taught her growing up. “I…appreciate that. Raiding would not have been a great choice for you and me, whatever you feel about you and Vanta. But waiting until morning, that would’ve been an even better choice.”

 

Jog shifted, glanced past Anya to the single green light of the cryo unit. “He can wait a good while longer. Me and you can’t. I want you to be happy, but I want to be able to sleep at night, knowing I did him right.” Her claws tick on the desk, not far from the pistol. 

 

Anya deliberately turned and looked out the bedroom window, the lone scraggly tree. After a second she sat a little straighter and tried to swipe her short hair back into presentability. “Chemerchejog?”

 

Those glossy eyes stared at her, gleaming in the dark. “What’s the buzz?”

 

“You don’t want him to go to waste. I don’t want my pet on a plate. But…I think I know how we can both get what we want here.”

 

Jog’s tail brushed along Anya’s broad and unresisting shoulders. “What you want is what I need, baby. Let’s get it done right. What’s the plan?”

 

"We're going to put Vanya to rest, human-style. And then I'm going to eat him." She wondered if she should feel proud for saying it without a quaver.

 

Jog observed, fairly gently, "I don't think he needs any aging."

 

Anya rose, one hand on the radiantly warm tail to keep it in place. "No. Just…recycling. Come on out back, you should be here for this.”

 

"For this and for you. What's the plan, jhira?"

 

"My people don't eat cats, Jog. But we do eat apples."

 

~ * ~

 

Using a shovel was trickier than it looked in the how-to videos. Anya clumsily patted the layer of compost smooth again and stood back, rubbing the ache out of her hands. Rest in peat, she thought blankly.

 

The catweasel stood by silently in the weak blue dawn, still wearing her raiding gear. She could have done the work in seconds, but Anya hadn’t asked and she hadn’t offered.

 

This called for a few words, but nothing came to mind except “It’s done,” and more quietly, “Goodbye, Vanta.” Anya closed her eyes for a moment, surprised by the steadiness of her voice. “Thank you. For…being here. You didn’t have to come out this far for me.”

 

“I had to make sure you did it right.” Chemerchejog smiled at half power. “Now I just gotta see you actually eat those things when they finish growing. You humans are still getting the hang of this funeral stuff, you chime?”

 

“Right.” Anya shook her head a little. “I’m exhausted, Jog. I’m going back inside. But…you came out this far. You can hang around, okay? I’ll order breakfast for us.”

 

“Aces.” Jog bobbed her head, then looked down to Anya. “You did the right thing. I wish he knew that.”

 

Frost grew in the woman’s chest. “Wherever he is, he knows. And we know.” She wiped her palms on her pants. “Come on, let’s go in.”

 

As Jog gave an assenting rumble and padded forward, Anya wondered what would motivate her to creep into someone else’s room with a firearm. What else would encourage Chemerchejog to do this again. What she might do about Anya’s choices, and why she cared so very much about them.

 

Cats really were trouble. Good thing they were so damn cute.

 

Anya moved inside, leaving more than Vanta behind in the garden. Wondered how she would feel without Jog there for her. And how their next argument might go.

 

She followed Jog, just a little slower than she usually did. But she still followed her.

​