The worst thing about Cora Verrill’s office in Village 815 is everything but the office; it’s small and simple and the quality of the view is debatable depending on your preferences vis-a-vis Ultra Jungles. It’s the heat, which is not a dry heat but a very sincerely wet one; it’s the jungle sounds outside that have long since stopped being disquieting and are now merely extremely annoying; it’s feeling like you’re the only one in the village dealing with bra sweat and yes, Cora knows very well that the female Narsai’i soldiers and engineers are probably having the same problem but it’s not like she has time to go to their socials, not when she has to use the limited gate transfer windows to take vox-mediated phone calls from the sales manager in Algiers.

“Pierre,” she sighs, forehead buried in her left hand. “Pierre. Shut up. Shut up. Yes, I told you to shut up, that is what I said. I don’t have time to argue for ten minutes about the damn lobby carpets, okay? I sent you the palette selection, they either pick one of those or they respec the interior colors and add two months to the schedule or they’ll be the tackiest five-star plus on the Med coast. One of those three. Yeah, feel free to quote me. I get it, you don’t want to be the bad guy, just say the American bitch said it first. I don’t know. I don’t know, Pierre, and I don’t care, that’s your job and our expense account, just get them to pick something. Okay? Okay. Yeah, love you, darling. Bye.”

Hang up. Sigh. Understand a little more why the names on the company sign have a bar in their offices.

“Kor-ah?” Hiigra grunts, and Cora jumps a microsecond earlier than she can stop herself from being startled, a quick snap movement of her head that sees her staring at the door to the hallway - and Hiigra standing in said doorway - for an entirely too long moment. “I am sorry for the intrusion. Another difficult call?”
“It is good,” Cora barks, before remembering to add the appropriate gesture that shades “good” into “all right”. “Can I help you, Chief?”
“I just wanted to see how the work goes,” Hiigra says, his fur a calm green tinge as he steps into Cora’s office. “Can I help you?”
Cora’s smile is tired, but genuine. “It is all right,” she barks, gesture on point this time.

Pushing aside her work laptop - company 2FA token does emphatically not work with desk cogitors yet - she taps a few buttons on the projected keyboard of her Bashakra’i-supplied workstation, lighting up the dim office with holos of housing schematics and a preliminary bill of materials and labor that, like any good preliminary bill, is painfully over budget and under spec, but not so bad for a 0.3a draft of inventing a whole new style of Wherren-focused architecture.

“Ceiling is 6 percent lower,” she explains as she highlights the latest revision. “Compensate with more area. Costs 3 percent more, but better defense against…” Cora’s Whirrsign falters for a moment, so she quickly taps the rest of her sentence into the cogitator, whose pleasantly neutral female voice spits out “This design provides superior protection against category three storms.”
“And those are?” Hiigra asks.
“Big storms,” Cora says. “Strong enough to break trees.” She sighs. “It is difficult to build a house without...rules, so I try to make rules, but I don’t know the weather well enough. It is like...like trying to run before I can even crawl. It is a challenge.”
Hiigra nods. “We don't want longhouses falling over. Are there other rules?”
Cora smirks. “On Narsai’i, millions of people spent thousands of years making the rules for houses,” she says. “Many will not apply here, but there is a lot to consider. I know that the rules I set up now will be wrong.” Clearing her throat, she tries to last phrase again. “Sorry, Chief - bad without malice.”
Hiigra nods. “You are doing your best, Cora - and we are very grateful for your help.”
“I need to make sure it is wrong in a harmless way,” Cora says. She looks up at Hiigra and smiles. “And I’m very grateful for the opportunity. This is the most important thing I’ve done. It’s just...difficult. So, Chief, why did you want to see me?”
“Like I said, I wanted to see how your work goes,” Hiigra replies. “You seem to be having troubles, and I want to know what I can do to help.”
“I have everything I need,” Cora says. “But thank you for your offer, Chief.”
“Well, if there is anything I can do,” Hiigra nods, his fur ruffling a wave of green.
“Well,” Cora says, observing the color on Hiigra, “do you...like what you see, so far?”
“Yes!” Hiigra barks, green coming in more strongly. “It is...it looks Wherren. There are the long community areas, space for the whole family to be together in the private areas, and everyone feels connected to each other and the outside.” He kneels down next to Cora - which still puts him over her in her chair. “You are doing good work. I just want you to know that even if your people do not appreciate it, I do.”
“Oh,” Cora says, instinctively moving a bit away from Hiigra, personal space and all - but as he stays there and keeps talking, she inches back to her original position. “...thank you, Chief,” she says, feeling a bit of color rise into her cheeks.

This little moment is immediately interrupted by a flashing red panel on Cora’s vox - a flashing red half of the holodisplay, more accurately. Both Hiigra and Cora turn towards it at the same time, and both decipher the Imperial glyphs simultaneously. Hiigra instantly turns bright red and orange, while the blush drains from Cora’s face in a manner of seconds.

“Oh my God,” Cora whispers as her eyes mist up. “Oh my God.”

---

It’s been a long two days and Cora is staring at the holo again, the kind of stare that’s really focused somewhere past the holo and the wall behind it and really anything she could actually conceivably see; this one’s just five seconds, though, judging by the timestamp from when her eyes flick back to the corner of the holo, but it’s never just the time spent spacing out, it’s the leaning back and the sighing and the pinching the bridge of her nose. The moments where Cora Verrill cannot focus on doing her job, and those moments have been taking up far more of her time than she can spare.

Everything is stable, back home. That’s what they say when the patient’s in a coma on life support, right? Stable. It’s contained. It’s just China. “Just” fucking China. Goddamn, Cora thinks, this isn’t right. But even the best architect in the world can’t fix it, and somehow life goes on, somehow...somehow, whenever she voxes with Mom and Dad, they’re fine, and somehow that (literally) big goof Bert is fine, and everyone she knows is fine, and maybe this whole situation would be easier to deal with if she could just point to how it has hurt her, if she could say, see, this is what it did to me, this is why I feel bad.

It’s the fear. And Cora knows it’s the fear, not of what happened, but what it means can happen next, that feeling of living in a world far more dangerous than she ever knew. All the things Bert and his friends said, the threat hanging over them, Needleships taking the slow crawl through the infinite black to punish their children’s children; all of that is no longer far away, it has arrived on Narsai (even she calls it Narsai now; “Earth” is a stupid name for a planet, anyway) and she has no choice but to live in this world.

Cora sighs, opens a desk drawer. Retrieves a bottle. Brandy, about a hundred dollar bottle of it. Typically, it’s reserved for Friday 5 PM, but the last two days have knocked a significant dent in it. As the only anti-stress item located within Cora’s office, she’s turned to it a few times to try to calm her nerves, and it’s worked to an extent so far. She looks back at the holo, at version 0.5, with the curved windows that have allowed her to optimize the exterior load dispersion and shave an inch off the structural beams. The details that should have taken an afternoon have spanned the last two days, but it’s good. It’s good, and those damn intrusive thoughts of her friends and family being incinerated from orbit have decided she’s done for the day. Fuck it, she thinks, and cracks open the bottle.

No sooner has liquid hit glass than there’s a knock on Cora’s office door. “Ko-rah?” Hiigra asks from the other side. “May I come in?”
“Shit,” Cora hisses, and quickly slides the glass behind a stack of reference books. “Sure thing, Hiigra,” she calls back.
Hiigra slides the door open and takes a seat on the floor a respectful distance away. He’s trying to hide it, but violet and yellow fringe his fur. ”Are you all right, Cora?” he asks.
“Fine, Hiigra, I am fine,” Cora replies. ”Why do you ask?”
”I have smelled that bottle of alcohol you keep in your desk far more frequently over the last two days,” Hiigra says. ”I was walking past and smelled it again, and…I am concerned for you. It has been a hard two days for all of us, but it is my duty as chief to look out for those in my care - and my duty as a Wherren to look out for my friends.”
Cora sighs. Shoulders slumped, she slides the glass back out from cover. “It’s not the most healthy habit, I know, but once I have a bit of daylight in my schedule, I’m going to schedule a call with that GRHDI mental aid line.”
”And when would this clearing happen?” Hiigra asks.
“I - well, soon, I just have to -” Cora starts, but stops as Hiigra stands up and walks forward towards her.

Hiigra towers over her as he reaches past and picks the glass up from the table. He sets it down by the door before returning to the floor, this time at her side. The height difference just about cancels out, and he looks straight across into her eyes. “No work is more important than your health, Cora.” His fur ruffles into a deep violet and yellow wave. ”As your friend, you should take some time for yourself. And as your chief, I am authorizing it. The future can wait a week while you take care of yourself.” He points to the holodisplay. ”I can see your latest version has passed your simulations, and so you are at a perfect spot to take that time. I insist.”
“Hiigra, no, I…” Cora looks back at her holodisplay for a moment, trying to find the strength to protest, but instead she feels tears well up in her eyes. By the time she’s turned back around, she’s pulled herself together enough to keep from crying directly in front of Hiigra.
Hiigra puts a hand on Cora’s…well, hand and wrist. Instead of drawing away, Cora just feels the warmth of his hand burying hers. ”Believe me, I know about wanting to bury yourself in your duties to avoid pain. I was a Wherren possessed after the False Gods ambushed my people in the forest. But once the threat was over…the pain was still there.” He sighs, and the ruffle of violet returns. ”I know what you are going through, Cora. I am here for you if you want to talk, always. Take all the time you need.”
”Thank you, Chief,” Cora says. She stands up, and Hiigra does as well.
”I don’t know if you are comfortable with it,” Hiigra says, ”but would you like a hug -”
Cora immediately goes in and wraps her arms around Hiigra as best she can for a moment before letting go. “That was very inappropriate of me,” she says. ”But thank you, again, Chief.”
”Hiigra, Cora,” Hiigra replies, a bit of green finding its way in amid the violet and yellow. ”You don’t need to be formal with a friend.”