Epilogue: Mayi
Mayi and Melkei welcomed their first child, a perpetually curious pink-haired girl they named after a missing grandparent, in the crush of the great immigration. They weren’t the first to leave-conscientious mild springers in the tertiary sector, they took incentives to stay and help with the processing of new arrivals, repairing the sequelae of violence and neglect and teaching them the language(s) and culture of their new home. She loved the rainforest. But it was the last place on Amenta to be settled for a reason. And eventually, the pain of being separated from her family became too much, and her child was missing departed friends, and it was time to join them.
They all lived. The only reason Mayi’s mother didn’t die on the job is because that would have been traumatizing for her students. Her cousin once-removed and his siblings (all of them red-haired, adding to everyone’s confusion) mostly stayed in aquaculture, and even more of them stayed in food. The Oyand Shrimp grew into a tense and serious-minded young woman, who worked as a project manager for a major construction management company, while her brother continually struggled with the after-effects of trauma.
Mayi lived a long life surrounded by family and community. She worked in the government as a translator and wrote music for local games and community theatre productions and mentored younger artists in her free time. There were sorrows, of course, illnesses of body and mind, rivalries and dramas, and the hazards that came from living in a civilization with shallow roots (which the people of Miovay always thought they were the best prepared for), but in the end, she judged her life as having been rich and satisfying. Her own kids grew up and worked in a selection of jobs that only made sense on Miovay, and married into families who had come from a half-dozen different countries, and had their own ups and downs and children.
When Mayi was fifteen, a friend asked her to provide music for a short segment for Learning Together, a locally produced educational show. The segment, which involved the singer counting from one to ten in Miovay’s major languages while a kaleidoscope of fruit (count the fruit!) was cut into dancing pieces (count the pieces!) and assembled into fruit cups hopping along with the beat (count the cups!) with syrup poured on top (count again!). Of everything she ever wrote, it reached the biggest audience and was the best-remembered.
She was cool with it.
