Endosymbiosis

25. Cells

And why was he talking to me when I was just Clover?

The supervisor threw on the table papers I had never seen and I approached them as if they were bombs. The letters embedded in the paper leapt at my eyes until they became words, the curves of ink hissing like snakes I knew from ancient bites...

Her handwriting.

"Gaxy has sent them to you." He said, making me exhale dread.

"You read it?" I stammered.

"I would not waste my time with primitive languages." I was almost relieved, when he continued: "But the other humans told me what is written." What could he have discovered? "I didn't know you were the daughter of an Aulica, Clover..." He didn't discover my name, at least.

I took the letters with my trembling fingers and ran my eyes over the words, the messages deciphering into footprints where I should put my feet... And to think that, for all that time, she had been sending me directions that never arrived... Until now.

"Why didn't she give it to me before?"

"Because it wouldn't matter."

"And now does?"

"She wants to see you."

I staggered.

Something was wrong... It was like I didn't deserve that the universe could choose not to torture me for a moment... What could it want from me in return? And why now?

Maybe now she was in so much danger that she needed my help...

Or maybe I was.

"When?"

"At the end of your term." The tremulon answer, making my fists clench hidden. "Only then you will receive all the cards."

I sighed. Apparently, I wasn't going anywhere for a long, long time...

• • • ֍ • • •

After all the humans were gone from the Oasis and I'd almost forgotten what it was like to hear someone else's voice, I got tired of rereading the letters I already had. I needed new words, new crumbs, I needed to know more about the fate my mother had once wished for me... And for that I needed to read her last letters.

At some point I worked up the courage to start thinking about looking for them; and, after spending countless noxdiems analyzing my supervisor's routine, I barged into his office when I knew he wouldn't be around and searched the room. It didn't take me long to come across a lonely letter from my mother, just lying in a drawer, because my supervisor never thought I'd dare try to find it. I was to human to succeed, after all.

I read the letter before he was right.

Sorry, my dear, but I think this is my last letter.

The words rang in my head, in that voice I hadn't been able to forget.

There's nothing else I know to teach you; and there is nothing else I believe I have time to find out. I have kept these letters in a safe programmed to send them to you after my death, so, if you are reading these words, know that they are my last. But do not be sad. I've already given you all the guidance a mother can provide.

It wasn't another guidance I needed at that time... It wasn't her teachings I was crying about.

Now your success lies in what you will do with it all. You can be anything you want, my dear, if the universe gives you the way. And if it doesn't, you must take it as if it had always been yours.

As she had done.

Get where only a Gaxy could... And reach for the horizon I once dreamed of for you.

And those were her last words.

I would never see her again, as I had been promised.

So there was no longer any reason to stay.

And all I needed was another human...

• • • ֍ • • •

"She was killed by the contaminated." I muttered to the metriona, not having the courage to face him.

"No, Donecea..." The creature replied with a softness that caressed my ears... But the silence that grew in the hall smothered me, until, as if pulling a rope from my neck, he continued: "The Aulics killed her."

Just as they had tried to kill me when the Metrionas rescued us...

No.

It didn't make sense.

I couldn't be.

Or else I would be wrong.

My eyes rose to the leader of the metrionas, at the heights of his majesty. And in him I saw nothing but a sincerity as surreal as the possibility that it was all true.

I stood up slamming my hands on the table.

"Return Kadi's ship. We are leaving."

And then I walked out of the hall, as if the other side of it was the only place on that planet where oxygen still existed, but then metriona's words made me stop, accepting, albeit for a brief moment, to let me suffocate:

"I saw her death."

I turned to him. Slowly. And, with the sentence written, I fell into the grave that had been dug for me a long time ago:

"Then show me."