I find it interesting that even though loneliness is a throughline between Plume and Lotus, they experience almost opposite forms of it.
Lotus' is the emptiness that comes with a lack of identity. Plume's is the awakening of a self in a space already filled with someone else.
But⦠the commandant never said that. Their last words when Lucia died in their arms are "...But why? Why do you have to leave me first?"
That question comes from someone who never planned to outlive her, whose quiet, pathetic hope was to die before witnessing that moment.
i will be quite annoyed if ishmaelβs coating is a wedding themed because there are a billion more interesting coating concepts for an extraterrestrial creature like her other than marriage