We sat in comfortable silence for a moment, watching Shady attempt to roast a marshmallow with her long, black claw. She kept setting them on fire and eating them anyway while North attempted to teach her proper technique. The Marshal stole my tablet and was browsing Geddit alien invasion story subs, giggling to herself.

  "You know… I really… like you, Ashy," Nexxali put the tablet down, sliding super close and looking into my eyes. "And not just because of you running me over and collaring me. You're... different."

  "Different how?"

  "You see us as people. Not tools or assets. People." She flexed her gloved fingers, making claws appear and vanish. "Do you know how rare that is? Everyone up there on that damned fleet sees each other as resources first, individuals never. But you just gave the guns tea. Guns! It’s like… you're teaching everyone to be human." She knowingly eyed the vampire girls.

  "Everyone deserves to be more than their assigned function," I said. “Who do you want to be?”

  "I want to be…" she considered, golden eyes reflecting the firelight. "More than a Marshal Commandant who cleans up messes. I… Back on Desolada, before the blood contract, before the fleet... I used to play music."

  "Desolada?"

  "My homeworld. A desert savanna of endless red grass, deserts and twin suns. The nights were rare and so quiet you could hear the wind singing across the dunes from miles away." Her voice grew distant. "I haven't thought about it in decades.”

  “Why not?”

  “I ordered myself not to think about it,” she said. “It was distracting me…”

  “How are you thinking about it now then?” I wondered.

  “The catnip,” she shrugged. “It’s wobbling my mind sideways, decaying my own Charmchains. Plus your linear Aether. All this wobbleness… I think I am getting you.”

  “Are you?”

  “Uh-huh,” she nodded at Shady. “You’re… the way you are because she chose you.”

  “Xandy chooses best choices.” Shady commented wisely, licking her fingers and resuming igniting marshmallows.

  “A very talented Frontenachii claimed your younger self and that bond... it protected you. Made you more than human,” Nexxali rambled.

  “What am I, if not human?” I asked.

  “Extra-human,” Nexxali guessed. “Like human to the power of human. A tree of human-ness. One I'd like to rest under.”

  “You’re high,” I chortled.

  “Maybe I am,” she shrugged. “Or maybe, this non-magical grass is activating parts of my brain that I locked up a long, long time ago… so as not to cry about everything I’ve lost.”

  “Not lost, found,” Shady patted the serval. “I found a kitty-me. Unexpected soft!”

  “Found, yes,” Nexxali said, gold-eyes gliding from me to Shady, to North to Galateya. “None of this is possible.”

  “What do you mean?” I wondered. “How isn’t us chilling by this fire pit possible?”

  “There are things that the Wendigo Omnids fear,” Nexxali whispered. “System Wizards. Weavers of narratives. Modders of reality.”

  “Pretty sure none of us is a System Wizard,” I said.

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” the serval expressed, looking at the constellations igniting across the night sky. “I’m saying that… all of us, meeting each other on this linear Earth is mathematically impossible.”

  “Why?” North asked.

  “Mothman gates open doors to doomed worlds,” Nexxali revealed. “This is not a doomed world. It’s full of life and pasta and… friendship. Nobody here is dying horribly from Celestorms.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” I wondered.

  “I dunno what kind of a thing it is,” the cat girl pursed her lips. “It’s a frustrating and scary thing. I’ve read a report from the Datamancer Arch-Coven. This Earth is outside of the finite boundary curve. There’s no Wormwood Star here. None of us should have gotten here and yet we all did. System Wizards are scary because they make you question the nature of reality…” she shuddered. “Are we mere characters, trapped within the improbable parameters of their reality-modding narrative, or do we actually have free will?”

  “Is probably my fault,” Shady commented. “I was here first… I think.”

  “You think?” I asked pointedly.

  “Maybe,” she shrugged. “I… I don’t know how I got here. I don’t remember things right.”

  I looked at her, but she didn’t say anything else.

  “Want to play some… music?” I asked Nexxali.

  She nodded.

  I stood up. "Wait here."

  I went inside and grabbed my old acoustic guitar from the closet, returning to the fire pit. “Think you can use this?”

  "That's… a guitar," she reached out tentatively. "Yes. We had similar instruments on Desolada, made from monster parts. May I?"

  I handed it to her. She cradled it like something precious, adjusting her grip to accommodate her larger hands. Her claws found the frets.

  "It's been so long," she smiled, strumming experimentally. The sound was slightly off, but she quickly adjusted the tuning knobs. "The strings are different. Tad softer. Steel wire instead of sinew."

  “Sinew? That's... kind of metal." South commented.

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  Nexxali smiled softly. "Everything on Desolada tried to kill you. We made tools from whatever we murdered."

  She played a few chords. The tune was utterly alien and beautiful, featuring odd intervals entwined with cat-noises and humming. The firelight caught her face as she concentrated, and for a moment I saw not the Marshal Commandant but the person she might have been long ago.

  "On Desolada, we sang to keep the sand spirits calm, to keep the Celestorms from waking up the worst kinds of demons buried in the depths of the world," she said, fingers moving across the strings. "Music was... it was sacred. Then the Frontenachii came and offered me the stars, offering us salvation from the doom our Seers saw in our future.”

  She looked around the fire at the group. Shady stopped destroying marshmallows to watch. Even Galateya and the vampire sisters seemed transfixed.

  "Hrmmm. I want to play something relevant, but I don't know any Earth songs," Nexxali said.

  "Make one up," I suggested. "Sing about whatever you want. Whatever you're feeling."

  "I haven't sang in public in so long," she murmured. "After the blood contract, there wasn’t a point. No one wants to hear their cleanup specialist sing."

  "I do," I said.

  “We all do!” Shady bobbed.

  The others voiced their agreement.

  Nexxali looked at everyone, smiled and then began to strum. Her voice echoed across the garden, filled with soft, playful and… silly undertones.

  "

  This just might be the catnip talking,

  But your pasta comes in wheels with spokes!

  Where does wiggle food need to be rolling?

  Are these... transportation jokes?"

  The guitar accompanied her marvelously, entwining with each verse.

  "You've got spirals, tubes, and bow-ties fancy,

  Little shells like... from the beach,

  Angels' hair so thin and dancy—

  What crimes are you trying to teach?"

  Her voice grew stronger, more confident, and I could feel the subtle, increasing pull of her Charmchain. Instead of clawing at my mind, it felt caressing, warm and inviting. Drawing me gently deeper into the absurdity of her pasta song.

  "Meow, miaow, pass the rotini,

  Watch it spin around my claw,

  Is it magic? Is it meanie?

  No! But it's the best damned thing that I ever saw!"

  Shady was bouncing excitedly, the vampires were staring in amazement. Galeteya had her eyes closed, a smile gracing her lips.

  Nexxali continued, her whole body moving with the music:

  "I came to conquer, make you bow and crawl,

  My voice could shatter any will,

  But you just fed me catnip leaves so small,

  And suddenly I couldn't kill!"

  She looked directly at me for the next verse:

  "I should end you, that's my training,

  Clean up messes, make them disappear,

  But here I am, contemplating

  Why you're not petting me behind my ear!

  Maybe it's the way you take my breath away,

  Even though I tried to have your brains blown,

  Or how you drove me over, reverse, forward, play!

  Violence is the love language that you've shown!"

  I rolled my eyes at her. She hummed as she strummed.

  “You fed me wagon wheels for dinner,

  I thought they'd roll right off my plate,

  But they stayed still... I'm not a winner

  At understanding pasta fate!

  Why are your noodles alphabet letters?

  Do they spell out secret codes?

  Each shape just makes my brain feel wetter,

  Like I'm licking psychic toads!"

  Her claws struck the strings.

  “Easy Mac! For stupid people!

  But I ate three boxes whole,

  Now I worship at the steeple

  Of the Church of Pasta Bowl.

  You say 'it's just shapes of wheat'

  But I know there's more at play,

  Why else would you run me over

  Then collar me the very same day?

  Maybe conquest isn't power,

  Maybe glory isn't fame,

  Maybe it's this very hour,

  Singing of shapes without a name!”

  Shady sang along with the "Meow, miaow" parts, in Nexxali’s stolen voice with tremendous enthusiasm.

  Nexxali finished with a flourish:

  "I'm supposed to be commanding,

  But I'd rather sit here nomming carbs,

  Your pasta's given an understanding—

  Of love that tastes better than the stars!"

  The last chord hung in the air. Then Shady erupted in applause, followed by everyone else.

  "MUSIC binding CIRCLE!" Shady declared. "Cat makes excellent sounds! Do more!"

  Nexxali's ears flattened with embarrassment. "It's just a silly song about pasta."

  "It's perfect," I said. “Best damn song I ever heard, mainly because it was so personal.”

  "That was..." Galateya started, then stopped, scales shimmering with radiant rainbows.

  "That was you," I said to Nexxali. "The real you."

  She set the guitar down and leaned against my shoulder, her larger frame making me feel protected rather than protective. "I forgot what it felt like. To just... create something. Not for a mission or an order… but ‘cause I felt like it."

  "You're really good," Piotr yelled from where he sat with his prad girls. "Like, professionally good. That melody was great!"

  "On Desolada, I would have become a song-keeper," she said. "Someone who preserved the old melodies, taught them to the cubs. Instead, I became..." she gestured at herself.

  "You became someone who survived," I said. "And now you get to become something more."

  “Something different!” Shady interjected. "One pasta shape at a time!"

  "You know, when I first landed on this planet, I thought humans were going to be easy to control. Simple. Primitive."

  "And?"

  "Now I think you might be the most dangerous species we've ever encountered. Not because of your weapons or no-mag technology, but because..." she paused, searching for words. "Because you make us want to be more than we are. So much more."

  "Play another song?" North asked. "Something from your world?"

  Nexxali picked up the guitar again, and as her claws found the strings, she began to play a melody that sounded like wind over sand. She sang of Celestorms rolling over endless savanna bringing monstrous abominations into existence, of home and heartbreak and hope all at once. Of life and death entwined in a cycle beneath the fire of twin suns.

  We sat around the fire until late into the night, alien and human and everything in between, united by music and marshmallows and the simple act of choosing to be more than what we were made to be.

  Everyone began dispersing to their claimed rooms as the fire died down to glowing embers. I walked upstairs with Shady, her hand wrapped possessively around mine. Nexxali followed us, her golden eyes tracking our movements. She paused at my bedroom door, ears twitching as she looked down the hallway, apparently waiting to see if anyone else would join us.

  When no one appeared, she slipped inside and closed the door with a decisive click.

  "So," she said, tapping her hexasuit collar. “Let's get down to… pancake business.”

  She tapped the front of her hexasuit.

  The black material liquified and flowed off her body, condensing into a single thick hexagon that she set on the dresser. She stood there in her natural fur, ginger and black stripes catching the moonlight from the window, completely unashamed of her curves.

  "Pancake business?" I asked, staring at her naked body.

  Nexxali moved her hands slowly down her sides, biting her lower lip. "I think you know what kind. The stuff your people write about on that silly Geddit forum."