Aleph was exhausted.

It had started as a short thing, she could pull double duty for the few weeks it should take to let Omega recover.

Quarti had agreed to pull double duty on the tasks that required experience in spirit watching.

Apparently she had been hit more by whatever happened near the sun but knew how to not strain herself and diagnosed Omega would be fit to take on duties again in a few weeks, a month tops.

That had seemed doable.

But Omega had apparently strained something trying to use her skill share and Quarti had told her off and then started keeping her wrapped in a batch of that pungent goop she made up with the chaff and left over of the cake making.

Then the week after that something else had happened and she was set back again.

Then Quarti had started spending all the time Omega was awake watching her and throwing spoons at her whenever she noticed that she was going to do something ‘stupid’.

There was only so long anyone could be awake at a time and yet Quarti simply cut into her own sleep in order to make sure that the watch over the soul stores did not lax. With Quarti playing babysitter for Omega and double shifts on meditative watch it left Aleph to do everything else.

She got help from Elsie and even called in Pylo to produce some milk and eggs a few times to help make up for the reduced crop productivity.

Without that she might have lost it.

She needed sleep but there was always so much to do and if she took too few breaks she would fall behind and one of the hydroponics would get a blight or there would be a clog or a leak in the feeds or something else.

Squidgiee had not been around much either! The little clerk was nice before but now she was horribly overworked and the lump was off gallivanting with some ‘vital project’.

Aleph thought that the help from Elsie would give her free time but it was shaping up that she would need something more but she hardly had the time to focus on that.

They had been bare bones with a crew of three.

Now it was effectively one and a half thanks to how much of a drain Omega was being on everyone’s attention and resources.

And Aleph knew that was unfair but it had been months of working near constantly only to pass out in random places and wake up to a whole day of maintenance that now had to be added to the list from the day before.

Wake up, work, fail to accomplish everything, pass out.

Wake up, rush herself to even greater exhaustion to get everything done, pass out.

Wake up, work, fail to accomplish everything, pass out.

Wake up with more to do, fail to accomplish everything again, pass out.

She just wanted another competent pair of hands!

She needed a break!

But if she took a break everyone would starve!

Or the plumbing would fail!

Or who knows maybe spiders would erupt from the air processor and eat them all alive?!

She was not sleeping well despite her exhaustion, she was setting shorter timers to wake her after she realized there was not enough hours.

She stopped looking out the window, all it ever showed was blackness and close in collapsing reef structure and tiny sparks of light of things living there.

She barely had time to enjoy things as it is and she felt guilty if she did not give her all every day.

It was not enough.

Not really, she could push ahead for a week tops, and then she would backslide and be on the verge of losing it all and if Quarti or Omega took up some of the slack when that happened Omega would probably backslide in her recovery again and...

And...

And there was a clerk who was not Squidgie doing maintenance on the hydroponics.

At her baffled stares the thing looked her up and down and squealed in a buzzing chirpy way that reminded her of when Squidgie was younger and not so good with speaking audibly.

After a while it turned away to the task of checking all the feed lines for blockages or leaks.

“What are you doing here?”

The clerk turned back around with a tension she had slowly learned ot realize passed for frustration in juvenile clerks.

“Isajobin missalef”

She blinked a few times and tilted her head. Squidgie had never been that bad with speaking Aorian but she could sort of muscle through to figure out what was actually said.

“I didn't hire you, I have not employed you. One adopted child is enough for me thanks.”

The clerk squirk squacked at that and then paused a moment before ‘nodding’ in that awkward way that Squidgie had grown out of...

Had it really been over a year?

Aleph’s memory was a mess.

“Isajobin ofa missquigeie Purlatempojobin”

She stared trying to parse what that could mean, head slow, she noticed two more clerks tumbling into the room and immediately going to work on several maintenance tasks. They even picked up her checklists and marked off tasks as they did them.

Only after she was at least seventy percent sure she could folow it she answered, which by that point had drawn the now almost definitely annoyed clerk back to stare at her.

“Squidgie hired you? To help? Why didin’t she come herself?”

Another seven of the clerks emerged from a cycling airlock and tugged and tumbled their way to work as if they all knew exactly where to go and what to do.

The one in front of her slapped off some that tried to work on the hydroponic lines and made chittering sounds. Sending the others off to find other tasks to do.

“Isajobin ofatempfer missquigeie. Wheelol perlatempojobin. Hirononliwhile missquigeierecoverin”

The tone was really flat, the syllables had all the wrong emphasis and lacking nuance to give her much sense of emotion but there were some fidgets among the various clerks that were close to what Aleph saw squidgie do when something was really vexing her.

Then she caught up to what was said. This time the clerk did not bother to turn around as she spoke.

“She’s recovering from what?”

The other clerks going by kind of all looked among each other then after a while the first one she talked to managed a very laboriously mimed shrug, kinda.

Okay It was an attempt at a shrug that only someone that had effectively been raising a clerk herself would even understand as a shrug.

But no explanation was given.

The teeming mass of what looked like a dozen clerks moved on ignoring her even as they set to devouring her workload of chores like maggots on a corpse.

Aleph flinched and twitched a little as she watched them work but it was not actually bad work.

She drifted back before letting the gentle cradle of free fall lull her towards calm and she passed out.