​     Despite the pace of eating, talking, and movement, a steady breeze kept the interior comfortable. A powerful air current provided a pulsating suction and release to disposal holes embedded in the table supports. The openings ingested any food scraps, and household waste served to them. As a side benefit, they pulled air from outside. The Eloi mindset spent no time on figuring how things worked. Knowing nothing of mechanical air blowers, the vestiges of my once all-consuming curiosity and analysis attributed the vacuum to collective Morlock breathing.
     As I approached, vague concern for the breed mother’s rejection of Lero welled from inside, one of many sentiments dramatically sharper and changed since my flower bloomed. Being abandoned for another seemed like a severe emotional injury. I silently promised myself to avoid the topic. Preparing to settle in, I immediately recognized the overreach. While chatting merrily, Lero scanned the nearer tables for new opportunities. I had to remind myself that short memory, besides deadening the effects of Harvest Night experiences, allowed us to take rejection well.
     The yamot tumbled from my arms to the tabletop, and I sat.
     Relieved of the weight as well as worries for Lero, I idly surveyed the gathering. The children and toddlers had moved outside. On the lawn in front of the hall’s portal, an impromptu game of tag broke out among the adolescents while the breed mother hurried her charges along, offering promises of finding a new crop of pero blossoms to pick.
     My gaze stopped at the sight of two empty spaces. Yesterday morning, an elder breed mother and an adolescent male had filled the vacancies. A new and more intense feeling filled my chest–a deep emptiness. Because no words for grief existed in the Eloi language, I couldn’t precisely describe the internal turmoil. For us, emotions fit into a single word, darro or inside life. I felt fleeting gratitude for being at the beginning of my breeding seasons and low on the Taking priority.
     Lero’s eyes followed the direction of my stare.
     “What?” he asked.
     “The Morlocks took Limpro and Gizza.”
     Around the table, faces twisted in grimaces. No one appreciated a reminder of those taken, especially when accompanied by implications of an unhappy outcome. Slip-ups like this partly explained why I spent so much time as an outsider.
     Attempting to keep the peace, Lero reached for a yamot and broke off the stem. “Remember, they’re in a better place.”
     I didn’t take the hint to leave well enough alone. “Then, why do they never return?”
    “Weena, why can’t you accept things as they are? Look at Gereena.” Lero pointed out a young breed mother a few tables over. Her hair, a shade of yellow like the fine sand at the shoreline of the eddy pools, sparkled in the filtered sunlight as she and two other breed mothers chatted. “Her baby was taken the first Harvest Night, and she accepts it.”
Though only three days in the past, Lero’s feat of remembrance reminded me of our similarities. The others at the table, having forgotten the incident, observed in uncomfortable confusion.