prompt: Write a story in which the first and last words are the same.
available at Reedsy
Patience. That’s one thing I’ve never been accused of possessing in any quantity. Makes my choice of career a little odd, but helping people solve their problems makes me feel better. Maybe it’s just a way to ignore my own.
After starting from the bottom as a junior assistant in the Ambassador’s office, I’d made it all the way to the Ambassador’s right hand woman, Senior Chief Aide. From there, it was a small step to go to work for myself.
These days, I’m known as a troubleshooter, broker, agent or, if they’re being blunt, a fixer. The name fits, so I don’t care. You have a problem, I help you fix it. Whether it’s organizing a party for a bunch of dignitaries from hundreds of light-years distant, clearing up that little vacation indiscretion or arming and outfitting an off-the-books special forces op, I’m your gal.
This job, though, has me wondering if I should’ve turned it down. It was Ambassador Odobwe that hired me, though. After working with him for a dozen years, I trusted him and jumped at the opportunity to do a job for him — after I got past the shock that he would even need a fixer.
Turned out, his need for my services was entirely around protecting a visiting alien under the guise of showing her around and offering a place to stay. With the same skill that Oumar Odobwe could sell tap shoes to a snake, he had convinced her that it was a way to help immerse her in human culture during the short time she’d be at the Coalition of Human Planets Embassy.
The “Chip” — CHPE — was, like all the Galactic Union embassies, an entire city on one of the artificial planets placed around a main sequence star just at the inner edge of the Scutum-Centaurus arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The planet had about half the gravity of Earth, and at sea level had about the same amount of atmospheric oxygen as Denver or Johannesburg. It took a little getting used to, but having artificial gravity in our homes and offices made things more comfortable for humans.
“What is she?” I asked.
“Colomoran,” Oumar said. “Colloquially known as—”
“Fluffy,” I interrupted. “Not part of the GU, yet, right?”
“Correct.”
I checked the arrivals board to see what time her shuttle was arriving. “Are the lizards going to let the fluffys join — or are they still trying to block them?”
“The Manorians are still blocking their application.” Oumar sighed. “They’ve taken over one of the Colomoran colonies. It looks like they’re trying to find a reason to get the GU to join their war against them.”
“So,” I asked, “what’s so special about the fluffy that’s coming today?”
“She’s the third in line for the ascendancy. Her mother is the current Ascendent, and her mother’s twin is second.”
“Target for kidnapping, then.”
Oumar nodded his head. “Both for political and monetary reasons.”
“I just now figured out what you meant when you said ‘Patience’ when I asked her name. You weren’t admonishing me like the old days. The fluffys are all named the noun forms of adjectives. Her name is Patience.”
Oumar laughed. “I knew you’d get there eventually. Her shuttle is landing now, she’ll be her in a minute. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her via subspace chat. I think you’ll get along well.”
She looked like something out of a children’s cartoon. Standing just 125 centimeters tall, with a soft, downy fur in bright green and blue, she had large, yellow eyes and a short muzzle with floppy ears. The fur atop her head had been styled into a large puff, and the fur on her ears was puffed out as well, making her look a bit like a poodle.
“Oumar!” she squeaked, bounding across the terminal, her ears flopping as she ran. She didn’t stop until she was directly in front of the ambassador, then her head leaned back as she raised her gaze to meet his. “I knew you were tall, but wow!”
She might have been royalty, but she didn’t show any of the entitled brat I’d expected to see. “Oh! You must be Sylvia! It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She gave a little bow, then jumped back with a start. “Oops! I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. My name is Patience.”
I gave her a slight bow. “Pleased to meet you, Patience.” I spotted the green stripe on her shuttle ticket that meant her luggage would be brought out to her. “Shall we get something to drink while we wait for them to bring your luggage?”
She looked around the terminal. “Do we have to wait? Can I just go get it myself? I’m not feeble, you know.”
Oumar laughed. “I need to get back to work. I’ll see you for our meeting tomorrow afternoon. Until then, Syl will see to your needs.”
“Thank you, Oumar.” Patience gave him another bow before turning back to me. “They haven’t brought my luggage yet, I’m going to get it myself. Where?”
I led her to the luggage carousel and found a porter looking for her bag. I showed him her ticket and told him not to worry about it. She squeezed her way next to the wall where the bags were coming out on the belt and kept peering into the hole, looking for her luggage.
When it came out, she’d pulled it off the belt and was making a beeline for the exit before I caught up to her. “What’s the rush?”
“There’s so much to see, I don’t want to waste any time,” she said.
“You’re here for eight days, I’ll help you make the most of them.”
We dropped her luggage in my apartment and her constant carrying on about foods she wanted to try led us to brunch at a diner. I picked a spot near the emergency exit in the back where I could keep an eye on both it and the main entrance.
After a big meal where she easily ate twice as much as I can, we caught the ground shuttle to the museum. Probably not my best decision, but she was insistent. Of all places in the Chip, the museum was second only to the shopping center for non-human traffic.
Tentacles, feathers, scales, fur, you name it, there was a creature in the museum that fit the description. Patience didn’t seem to be bothered by the presence of the majority of them, including the group of lizards — Manorians — I steered us away from. When a small group of fluffys entered, looking like a rainbow of bright colored fur, she grabbed my arm and asked to leave in a hurry.
Not certain as to what spooked her, I led her out a side entrance and into a nearby park where we had visibility and multiple escape routes. Once she’d calmed down, I asked her why she was scared of the fluffys.
Her energy seemed to drain all at once. “I know Oumar has me staying with you to protect me,” she said, “but he’s worried about the wrong thing. It’s not the lizards I need protection from.”
“What do you mean?”
“My sister, Acceptance, has already made one attempt on my life. She’s not happy that I was chosen before her for ascendency.” Patience sat on the bench, waited for me to sit next to her, and leaned against me. “My father was trying to deal with her while I was on ‘diplomatic missions’ but she’s fled the planet.”
“What does your sister look like?” I asked.
She looked at me like I’d sprouted a second head. “She looks like me, of course.”
“How would I know that? You all have different colors of fur and different patterns—”
“Almost all of us are identical twins,” she said. “About three percent are singles, and half a percent are triplets or quadruplets.”
“Your poor mothers.”
“What? Oh, no. Our mother lays a single egg, and the zygote inside splits … usually.”
“So, your mother, who became the Ascendent, and her sister both hatched from the same egg at the same time?” I asked, then felt stupid for asking.
“Obvious,” she said.
“I mean, how do you choose who’s first in line?”
“The same way the names are chosen; the name sorting order. The first to take a step after hatching gets the first name, the other gets the second.” Patience sniffed. “Our names, like most, rhyme in our language, and sorted into alphabetical order, my name comes first.”
“Your aunt doesn’t seem to mind not being the Ascendent. At least, not that I’ve heard of.”
“My translator does not know that word. My what?”
“Aunt. Your mother’s sister.”
“Ah, we say second mother.”
“Right. I’ll file that away in my memory.”
“She doesn’t crave it for the same reason I don’t.” Patience seemed to stare off into the distance. “The Ascendent is outfitted with cybernetics, and her mind is directly connected to the world computer. What you do with AI, we do with organics, with the Ascendent as the arbiter of decisions and advocate for the will of the people.”
“Organics?” I asked. “Are there other fluffys … uh, Colomorans … connected to this world computer?”
“Fluffy is fine, slick-skin,” she said with a waggle of her tongue. “Others connected? Tens of thousands. For those who choose it, it confers a great honor on them and their family.”
“Can they change their mind later? Disconnect?”
She flipped her ears back and forth. “No. Once connected, the only way to disconnect is brain disease or death. Since Mother ascended, I haven’t been able to speak to her about anything. There’s too much noise from the computer in her head to focus on anything else.”
“I’m sorry.” I put my arm around the little creature and gave a light squeeze. “And I’m sorry your sister is a … well, not a nice person.”
“Thank you.”
“Is there anything I can help you with before your meeting with the ambassador tomorrow?” I asked.
“Just be there, I guess. I’m meeting with the lizards — that’s what you call them, right? — to beg forgiveness and sue for peace.”
“Beg forgiveness? I thought they were the aggressors.”
“So we all thought, until Father uncovered my sister’s plot. The initial attack wasn’t Manorian soldiers, they were mercenaries hired by Acceptance to kill her way to the ascendency.”
I was taken aback by that. “That means, from their point of view, your people declared war out of thin air and began attacking.”
“It does.” She looked up at me with those large eyes. “I have to make it to that meeting tomorrow. I have the proof of my sister’s treason, and the terms of surrender authorized by the Ascendent.”
“You’ll make it, all right.” I looked down into those eyes and felt the incredible weight that had been placed on her slight shoulders.
After a couple hours rest, no doubt to digest that huge meal, she was back to her nearly frenetic self. While Patience didn’t exactly match her name, she did try mine.
After the initial meeting with the lizards, an emergency convention of the GU was called for the following day. I flew with Patience and Oumar to the meeting on the second planet from the star. Patience got up in front of the entire Galactic Council to repeat the entire apology and surrender to the lizards.
She laid out the plot, how her own sister was the culprit, and offered the reparations her mother had approved. The meeting adjourned for two hours while the Coalition played arbiter between her and the lizards.
When the GU reconvened, the matter was settled. The lizards were appeased, the fluffys didn’t have to give up quite as much as they feared, and the block to their entrance to the GU was lifted. In light of those developments, Patience updated the duration of her stay from days to indefinitely.
While the fluffys built their own embassy city, she stayed with me, until long after it was completed. It was the capture of her sister on a lizard world that finally allowed her the peace to live among her own people.
I still took jobs for others and was often busy, but we always found time for each other. Until last week.
We got word that her mother was ill, and she left for home. The official story is that her aunt — second mother — would ascend in four days’ time. At that point, she would be the first and last in line for ascendency until her own egg hatched. I didn’t even hear who the father might be. She wasn’t coming back, I knew.
I took a break from work and arranged passage to Colomor. Even when she wasn’t living with me, she’d been taking up space in my life … in the best possible way. Now, the world seemed a little emptier. Besides, I needed to find out who the father of her children was, because if he hurt her….
For once, I agreed with Oumar’s constant comments about what my life needed. For once, I felt like I needed it too. Patience.
