3
Florian sat with his hands in his lap in his mother’s library room in the family mansion. The mansion, on the planet Macalestern, an ocean planet named after the family, was built straddling the city’s living platform, with one level below the ocean’s surface.
He leaned his head on the cold glass next to him. A school of fish swam by. The gray waters were unusually murky today. Above, he could hear the pattering of rain hitting the ocean’s surface, and thunder.
He had just come from his mother’s funeral.
The whole thing was a blur, and he had been numb through it all. He’d held Tatiana’s hand through the service, and as the pastor read a prayer, he fought back tears. When it was time for the final procession, he stood over his mother’s coffin, studying every inch of her body—the blu
