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He gets a strange, sad smile. “They aren’t to be underestimated. Look, Adriana. Unless you’re their Fated Mate, they don’t give a rat’s ass for you. I want what’s best for you.”

“Always the older brother. You’ve got to realize I can take care of myself.”

He chews the tobacco leaves into a paste, his jaw working, as it always does when he’s deep in thought. “That’s true. I thought the government didn’t give a shit about us. You’ve served thepeople well. And the betrayal… they didn’t have to tell us the vote for me to know you got pushed into this. I would have resigned.”

“I didn’t have that privilege. Who would have taken my place? The current Administrators… they’re bureaucrats, not leaders. Now please, I’d like just a moment to forget all this and just enjoy being back.”

“You still know how to climb a tree, or you forget that at your desk?”

There’s a pause, because for a second, I don’t think he can be serious. We used to race up trees when we were kids. The twinkle in his eyes tells me he’s serious, and I dart to one of the rising sentinels. As my hands slide into the intricate bark patterns, it feels like I’m revisiting an old friend. A flood of childhood memories rushes through me as I hoist myself up, fingers slotting into grooves I’d forgotten but my body remembers.

Barely twenty feet off the ground, my lungs betray me. I’m breathing heavily, while Oakly laughs, looking down from ten feet up on the neighboring tree.

“And you call yourself a Virelian? For shame!” He teases me, then, defying gravity, he propels himself from his tree, soaring effortlessly through the air and latching himself above me. He presses his glove into the trunk, depositing a dollop of the sap distilled from the maplorian tree found south. The material melds to the tree, and Oakly presses his finger through it while it is still malleable, threading a rope from his cloak down towards me.

I grasp the lifeline eagerly. My arms are already burning. Twelve-year-old me would be pointing and laughing at the outworlder who gassed out barely twenty feet up. Oakly continues upwards, feeding more rope and applying sap for holds. When he gets eighty feet up, he jumps onto a huge, thick branch, and seeing I am still struggling, shakes his head.

“You ready?” He grabs the rope, grinning. I’ve never been one to back out.

“Go for it!”

“Bombs away,” he yells, as if he is 13 and not in his thirties, then jumps off the branch. His counterweight shoots me up in the air, and I hang on for dear life until I’m at the branch. He lets go of the rope and scales the tree, removing the sap holds one by one, his gloves drinking up the thick, congealed liquid hungrily and pulling it back into his uniform’s reserves. He doesn’t want to make it any easier for outsiders to make their way up into our homes.

I catch my breath as I wait for him, looking out at what we used to call “walking branches”, the massive branches that were cultivated over centuries, gently encouraged to grow to connect our living homes that extend outwards from the trees. Our architects don’t build in the conventional way. They shape the living organisms, creating homes that merge with the sentinels. I grin like a fool as I look up, to the trees with broad leaves that collect the rainwater, collecting it and rushing through the branch pipelines, our architects shaping the branches to be hollow and smooth, flowing into the homes.

Oakly stretches beside me, looking up at the foliage with boyish glee. “Now. We’ve got to get you out of that drab uniform and into something that won’t make you stick out. That’s a good start though,” he grins, pointing to my uniform where bark stained it, sap at the hem. The moment I look down, I half-expect him to playfully bop me on the nose. I'm instantly transported back in time, feeling a decade younger as I slip into a familiar role that only returning to one's childhood home can evoke.

The walking branches are flat and smooth in the center, allowing families to walk side by side, while the wood rises up on either side like protective guardrails.

Faces peek out through the organic circular windows integrated in the living homes along the walkway, curiosity lighting their eyes. Murmurs and excited whispers spread with word of my arrival—no one was expecting me back here so soon. We continue our walk, every step filled with memories, until we reach my family’s dwelling, on one of the tallest trees in the forest, the tree that always made me feel so small. One of my first memories was asking my dad if the tree would be alive when I was gone. That was the first time I really thought of death, and there was a strange reassurance when he answered that my great-great-great-grandchildren would also run their hands through the bark.

That memory gives me a jolt. Because everything here is so beautiful, but I’ve lived so little compared to the ancient sentinels…

And until now, I’d accepted that in a thousand years, they would be here, and I wouldn’t. The unnatural lifespan extension of the Bond, if I accept it, means I alone of all the faces peering out the windows will be standing in the centuries to come. Everyone I know. Everyone I love. They’ll be gone, while I live by the alien triad’s side.

A shiver passes through me, and I push off that dark thought as we stop in front of my childhood home.

Our bulbous, multi-level living structure would appear to the untrained eye as a natural extension of the tree itself. Look closer, you would see that vines coil up the sides in slight divots in the wood, molded over hundreds of years to create a pleasing, natural pattern of green. In the deep of summer, for two days only, those vines will flower, and the village will celebrate the mid-summer festival, drinking wine and staying up until the dawn in a frenzy of dance, the young men of the village performing daredevil jigs on higher and higher branches, competing to become the forest king.

Oakly wears a sly, knowing grin as he raises his hand and knocks rhythmically on the door. It’s a satisfying sound, and he’s got a secret joke, because he knows my mom and sister weren’t expecting me.

The door swings open. There stand my mom and sister. My little sister can’t hide her shock, her mouth dropping. They’d been waiting inside for the signal that the Aurelians had left the planet to come and visit me, and I can tell I’ve given them the happiest surprise of their life.

My sister, June, might be slender like a willow, but she nearly knocks me off my feet when she hugs me, barreling out of the home as Oakly steps aside to avoid her charge. “Adriana!” Her voice is imbued with pure joy. She’s dancing while hugging me, jumping from one foot to the other, and when she finally pulls away, her eyes are misty.

“Miss you, Junebug,” I reply, my own eyes mirroring her emotion.

She’s always been beautiful, but when she smiles like this, there’s no one in the entire universe who could hold a candle to her. Her dress is sunflower yellow, and I remember her telling me when I left to the Administration that she wouldn’t wear it except when I was back. Her happy dress, she called it.

My heart swells. My mother, Iris, has a quiet dignity, but she can’t contain her smile as she opens her arms. I embrace her next, taking my time to let the moment sink in, smelling the familiar scent of her natural shampoo she makes herself.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispers.

“Well, what am I, stinging nettle?” Oakly says in mock hurt, giving his best overlooked puppy dog eyes. June rolls her eyes and gives him a big hug.

“Come along in, I’ll make some tea,” says my mother. Yet her eyes find Oakly’s, her pressing glance speaking volumes.

“Dad’s grilling the royal triad. Took them for a forest stroll,” he says, waltzing into the family home.