"I think he mentioned it at some point. She's a missing person?" 

"Yeah. She disappeared when I was 12. And - obviously, losing her was horrible for all of us, but - it was the uncertainty, the not knowing what or why, that -" 

She chokes up a bit, then catches herself. "...I dunno. I miss him so much, but - often I feel like not knowing is the worst part of this, too, when -"

Oh no he hates this. Why is this student having feelings at him and making him think about his feelings. Help. 

Hey, no fair, why is the new transfer hogging the hot TA just because she has a tragic backstory? This other girl will interrupt to ask a question about the homework, you know, what they're supposed to be talking about. 

Aaaand during the interruption her brain comes back online. 

Ami???? Hello???? You are fucking stupid???? Why did she say all that what the shit that was so dumb and counterproductive she might have ruined everything aaaaaaAAAA
 

She waits until the other girl is done, and then says  "...I'm so sorry, I really didn't mean to spring that all on you, that was really rude of me. Can we - pretend none that happened and just -" she holds up her assignment in chagrin.

"Of course. So, which problem were you struggling with...?" 

They can both be Incredibly Normal And Mentally Healthy People for the remainder of the tutoring session. 

So Normal! So Mentally Healthy!

(He's an excellent tutor. She thanks him heartily, when they're done, and manages to flee the scene gracefully.)

Kani's fathers bought her a brand-new hoverscoot for her birthday a few months ago, to replace Bippy, her worn-down 'scoot she'd grown up riding. Bippy had been a bit of a Frankenstein-case; built and repaired using parts from the two they'd had as kids. It made funny noises, was almost as heavy an 8-year-old Kana was, and couldn't really handle the inclines and drops well enough for the trails down into the Canyon that the family spent almost every weekend exploring, in those days. When they got to the cliffside, Papa would have to hitch Bippy to his 'scoot while Dad strapped Kani into his, and she wouldn't get to drive again until they were safely on the floor.

Bippy 2 (Kani hasn't had the heart to give it a fresh name - everything she can think of is just a painful reminder), is fancy. It's silent, fast, waterproof and river-safe, and most impressively, it folds up into a safety hoverpack (not the kind that flies, you need a very special license for those, but ones that hikers, climbers, and cavers use to make it all-but-impossible to fall. It's the thing she'd wanted more than anything, 2 years ago, before Papa had gently told her that it wasn't the kind of present they could really afford to get her, not on their Park Ranger salaries.

When she remembers that conversation, she starts crying out of guilt, but Papa pulls her into a tight hug as Dad explains that all 5 of her grandparents and some family friends all chipped in to pay for it, and that they love her and they want her to be okay. (The closest they've seen her she's seemed to okay, since March, was when she came home past midnight after riding Bippy the 1st - she'd speak in full sentences, and even sometimes volunteer information without being asked!)

She'd clung to him and sobbed, feeling - a complicated mixture of pain and guilt and hope and love that was so much better than the dull stabbing griefgriefguiltemptygrief. 

She'd expected Bippy 2 to have a pretty substantial learning curve, but it turned out that the fancy new glove-based control system was exactly as intuitive as Magini had claimed it was, when she'd infodumped about it to Kani and Th 2 years ago. (Magini's uncle is rich, and so when she visits her cousins, she gets to play with some really crazy stuff. Kani had been jealous of that, back when she had more feelings.)

She goes out most nights, now. With her music in her ears, the wind rippling across her skin, the walls of the Canyon on each side of her, and the stars above, she can feel at peace, for minutes or even hours at a time.  

Tonight, she's taking her first trip upriver in years, marveling at how nice Bippy 2 is. Bippy the 1st could handle water travel, of course, every 'scoot built in the last 100 years could, but it was heavy enough that banking at all would risk destabilizing, and the gyrosafeties would lock up in response, keeping her perfectly vertical and painfully slow.

With a practiced slide of her flighthand, Kani tilts almost horizontal, reaching down with her free arm and skimming the surface of the water. From somewhere deep within herself, she feels a tiny spark of delight.

Tonight, she feels drawn to explore...that way. She's never been up there before.

(...mostly, admittedly, because that particular side canyon isn't actually part of the Grand Canyon National Park.)

The gestalt entity that is Kani-and-Bippy 2 has no concept of National Park boundaries, only the ground and the wind and the stark night sky, which looks so pretty in that direction. 

It leads, and she follows. 

The water beneath her throws back shattered moonlight as it ripples, dancing over rocks and rapids. A boat would never make it along here, even going downriver instead of up, but Kani is on a hoverscoot and doesn't have to care about things like riverbeds or gravity. 

She follows the canyon upriver, winding back and forth, to the base of a majestic waterfall several stories high. At the bottom, the water crashes down into a spreading pool, the canyon widening to accommodate it, before journeying onwards to become the river she's been following. The darker patches of shadow along the canyon walls, around the edges of the pool, might be the mouths of caves. 

It feels like the sort of place that's never been touched by human hands, the river left alone to carve away a path through the rock for hundreds or even thousands of years. 

She slows down and then stops entirely when she reaches the edge of the plunge basin, staring up in awe. It's... beautiful.   

After a while, tears begin to run down her face. She - hasn't done any nature photography, since March, because - she'd always send them to Thrana first, and she won't ever ever ever get to do that again. But - something about seeing this makes her realize that - 

Thrana would be heartbroken, if they knew that Kani had stopped doing something she loved, because of her. And - so would Kani, actually. That's - that's no way to remember her best friend.

Ami is up late doing homework with Magini when the other girl gets a message on her phone and then - starts crying? 

"What happened?" she asks gently.

"Kani - she - " but she's crying too hard to talk, actually, and is just going to show Ami her phone.

It's a breathtaking picture of a massive waterfall, and the text "wanted to show u this. i think she would have loved it ;-;"

Oh! It's good crying. 

She smiles gently, gives Magini a tissue and then a big hug. (She - mostly avoids thinking about all the photos Matty used to send her and Kes, in the groupchat she hasn't let herself look at in almost a year now, but her eyes water a bit anyways.)

"Let's stop here for the night, okay? We can work on this before class tomorrow - you should go message her."

They really would have, yeah. 

...She told me once she thought you took some of the best nature photos she'd ever seen, you know.

...thank you. It means a lot to me ;-;

The latest news, according to the few online subcommunities she trusts enough to spend time checking these days, is that the Garrison is hiring linguists, in surprising (which is to say, externally noticable) numbers. Some people are quietly pointing out that the number of things a space agency might want linguists for are... limited.

The thing the regulars she likes are talking about is signal analysis. (And the implications of that, less than a year after a lost spaceship under deeply suspicious circumstances...)

This is important. This is related. This is what they've been covering up. She's sure of it.

If they're analyzing signals... she needs to know more. And -

...well, she's made a friend with some seriously impressive hardware skills, who regularly does maintenance work in the communications array for extra credit... 

She meets up with Magini that night. Finds a quiet place, and explains what she thinks is happening (though not why she cares) and asks the younger girl if this something she wants to look into with her. 

Holy shit Ami thinks the Garrison is GETTING ALIEN SIGNALS??

... she's less excited about what Ami is asking of her, but Magini can sense a bit of the quiet desperation in her friend's voice, and - 

and Ami has been a really good friend, actually. She reminds Magini to eat, listens when she needs someone to talk to, and helps her stay on track with her homework and scheduling, even for the classes they don't share. And though Ami says it's fine and that Magini's tutoring and homework help more than makes up for it... 

She feels like she owes Ami. She wants to help.

So she brings her friend back to her room, where she rummages around until she finds an old pair of light-up earrings she had tucked away. 

She excitedly explains that while the lights are burnt out and the batteries are dead, the paired short-range wireless chips to keep them in sync still work great, which is why she kept them around. She can pull them out, and with a bit of easy tinkering... 

Oh. Magini is a genius! This is going to work.

Ami is a good ADHD project aid  - she holds things, takes notes, keeps track of odds and ends and trains of thought. 

Before long, they've built a tiny chip Magini can stick into the relay circuit she's repairing in a few days, and a paired chip in her phone that will grab a burst of it when she walks by. 

Keith's hoverbike is sleek, red, and fast, and it's by far the nicest thing he owns. Shiro bought it as a run-down, rusty old thing the summer after Keith's first year at the Garrison, and the two of them spent the whole summer break cleaning and restoring it. Shiro asked him what colour they should paint it and let him pick the brightest, boldest red they could find, and Keith was still blindsided when October rolled around and the bike turned out to be his 16th birthday present. 

This summer, with no other demands on his time, he's been taking his bike out into the desert whenever it has enough battery to spare, and driving until he has to head home and charge it up again from the solar panels. If he closes his eyes, sometimes he can almost pretend Shiro is out there with him, challenging him to another race. 

It's getting harder to pretend.