‘What’ve you got there?’ Isabel asked, entering the inner sanctum.

Tamsin had a box of fabric at her feet and a sewing kit perched on the closest shelf. She held up a small pair of trousers. ‘Sasha wore the knees out.’

‘Again?’

‘Again.’ Tamsin picked up her needle and resumed patching. ‘She’s an active kid.’

There was no argument there – of their five grandkids, Sasha was the biggest handful, always bruised or bleeding or stuck in a storage cabinet somewhere. Menace wasn’t the right word for her. She was too agreeable for that. Scamp. That fit the bill. Sasha was an absolute scamp, and though Tamsin showered all the grandkids and hex kids with equal amounts of teasing and candy, Isabel knew she had a special soft spot for the little cabinet explorer. Tamsin had never said so, but she didn’t need to. Isabel knew.

She set Tamsin’s mug of tea within easy reach, pulled up a workstool facing her, and sat. ‘You should’ve made Benjy do it. He’s started stitching, he could use the practice.’

‘Yeah, but then she’d be running around with lame practise patches.’ Tamsin spoke, as always, flat and factual, the kind of voice that hid its owner’s perpetual good humour beneath a dry disguise. ‘You get patched-up duds from me, you’re gonna look real cool.’

Isabel laughed into her tea. ‘So, tonight went well.’

‘It did.’

Tamsin said the words in a neutral tone, but there was a line between her eyes that made Isabel ask: ‘But?’

‘No buts. Tonight went well.’

‘But?’

Tamsin rolled her eyes. ‘Why are you pushing?’

‘Because I can tell.’

‘You can tell what?’

Isabel poked the spot in question. ‘You’ve got that crease.’

‘Oh, stars, you and your magical crease. I don’t have a crease.’

‘Yes, you do. You’re not the one who looks at you every day.’

Tamsin squinted at Isabel as she knotted a thread. ‘And what does the magical crease tell you?’

‘That there’s something you want to say.’

‘If I wanted to say something, I would’ve said it.’

‘Something that you’re not saying, then.’

‘You’re such a pain,’ Tamsin sighed. ‘It just . . . felt kind of . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. It was fine, you’re right.’

Isabel sipped her tea, watching, waiting.

Tamsin set down her stitching. ‘She’s condescending.’

‘You thought so?’ This came as a genuine surprise.

‘Didn’t you?’

‘No, I—’ Isabel replayed the events of the evening as quickly as she could. Ghuh’loloan had been delighted to meet the hex. She’d brought gifts and stories and a wealth of patience. Isabel had thought it a rousing success on both sides of the exchange, right up until now. ‘I had a really good time. It felt like we got things off to a great start.’

‘See, and that’s why I didn’t want to say anything. This is your work, your friend. I don’t know her like you do, and I don’t want to ruin this for you.’

‘You’re not. This is your home – our home – and if something in it bothers you, you have to say.’

‘Can I tell our neighbours to knock off their brewing experiments then? That scrub fuel they cooked up last time was awful.’

‘Tamsin.’

Tamsin picked up her tea. ‘She just came across so . . . so sugary. Everything was wonderful and fascinating and incredible.’

‘That’s just how Harmagians are. Everything’s couched in hyperbole.’

‘Yeah, but it makes it hard to trust them, y’know? If everything is wonderful and fascinating . . . I mean, everything can’t be those all the time.’

‘But it is to her. This is her . . . her passion. She’s curious. She wants to learn about us.’

‘I get that, I do. And I don’t want this to sound like a bigger deal than it is. It’s . . . I just felt like I was on display. Like some kind of exhibit she’s visiting.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I’m probably being unfair.’ She paused. ‘I know this isn’t a nice thing to admit,’ she added slowly, ‘but it’s hard to have her here saying these sugary things, poking our tech, touching our kids, and not remember how it was.’

Isabel didn’t need to ask what she meant. She remembered. She remembered being not much older than Sasha and hearing the adults in her hex talking about the growing push for GC membership. She remembered the news feeds, the public forums, the pixel posters with their catchy slogans. She remembered being a little older, when the Fleet and the Martian government were in the thick of smoothing out relations so as to join as a unified species, and everything felt like it was one spark away from a flash fire. She remembered being in her teens and watching the parliamentary hearings, listening to the galaxy’s most powerful debate whether her species had merit enough to go from tolerated refugees to equal citizens. She remembered the hopes everybody had pinned on it – Grandpa Teyo, with his medical clinic badly in need of new tech and proper vaccines, Aunt Su, with her merchant crew hungry for new trade routes. Everybody who had ever been to a spaceport and felt like they were a subcategory, a separate queue, an other. And she remembered the Harmagian delegation in those hearings, fully split on the issue of whether Humans were worth the bother, unable to vote in consensus. They hadn’t been the only species with objections, but that wasn’t the point. Every voice that got up there and spoke against Humanity stung as if the words were being said for the first time.