Touchstone 1 - Stray

brave.”
    Although that was hugely gratifying, I doubted it was true. “Blind drunk panic more like,” I said. “Don’t remember either way.”
    “What was it you said before the log cut out?” Zee asked, leaning forward to touch my leg and then stopping. Definitely orders not to touch me.
    “Is line famous poem about dying.” I repeated it in English, because it makes it slightly easier to work out a translation, then did my best to render it in Taren. “Funny thing say but fit guess. Was really drunk.”
    I must have fallen asleep then, and had uncomfortable dreams about what I’d seen in my log, and about Maze being angry, and of running and hiding from something chasing me. None of it pleasant, in other words. I keep having dreams like that. Otherwise, being in the med section is the same tedious crap that it always is. The greysuits say I have to stay here because all the bruising means I’m at risk of blood clots. I spent the first couple of days sleeping and coughing up black stuff – blood and phlegm and discarded bits of interface, apparently – and having to move about a lot because it’s good for my circulation.
    Everyone from First Squad came to visit me, as well as Zan, still looking tired, but no longer all stressed out. I asked her if she would bring me my diary, and she did, and sat and talked with me a while and was all proper and Zan-like, but just that tiny bit more human than before. I think if I’d died she would have felt responsible, because she’d ultimately given me the order to go. And maybe that she does like me, a little bit anyway.
    I’ve been doing school lessons. I don’t really feel like watching shows or the news because the news is full of the impact of shutting the Pillar down, even though it’s been kept secret. The Setari squads have been distributed over Tare because that’s the only way they can effectively patrol the near-space when they can’t use other spaces as shortcuts to get about, which means that there’s more sightings of them, and more outbreaks of Ionoth into the real world. I did that.
    I still feel pretty horrible too: tired and sore. Every time I get close to being fit, I nearly die and go back to the start again. And I look like a pirate junkie panda, with a patch and a huge ring around my uncovered eye. It was purple, but now it’s going green with hints of yellow.
    This is the longest entry I’ve made in this diary yet, and I’ve passed the halfway point. Will have to do some research on whether there’s any way I can get another one custom-made.
    Still alive.
    Monday, March 3
    Ghost
    When I woke this evening (for the second time today – I’m still doing a lot of napping) my chest felt heavy. I was half-awake noticing the weight and worrying that I was getting sicker instead of better and would be stuck in here forever. Then it filtered through to me that my chest was also purring.
    I didn’t do anything stupid like jump or shout, but I must have moved, because the purring stopped abruptly. The weight was still there, though, and I lifted a hand carefully and felt the shape of the cat I couldn’t see. The purring started again, and after a while it stopped looking like I was petting my own chest and there was the Ionoth cat.
    It was just like I remembered: dark green eyes and short, smoky fur. A half-grown cat, not creepy or scary in any way. For a little while I just let myself enjoy it, petting and playing with it, and establishing that it looked like it was a girl cat, but eventually I had to give in and be responsible.
    There’s lots of different ways you can talk to another person over the interface, most of it nothing too different to Earth’s internet. You can’t just open channels to random people, unless you have certain rights, like squad captains during mission time. Usually you can only send a channel request with a text message and it’s up to the people you want to talk with to accept or not, and for the Setari I think most normal people can’t even do that: you have to be in their ‘address book’. Or you can email, leave a voice message, or chat just by text. I’d never tried opening a channel before: I’m too aware of how overworked the Setari always seem so if I need something or have a question I send an email.
    Since, so far as I know, I’m still assigned to First Squad I sent Maze a channel request: “Is time ask?” Gods I hate my screwed-up grammar. I doubt the baby English I write in my diary