Eight years before the events of Chameleon Moon, Book 1, Regan was just beginning to feel secure in his new life. He doesn't know many things for certain, even his place in Parole as it hangs in a fragile balance far above an ever-burning fire. But he has no doubts about how he feels about Rowan (who appears in the short story The Library Ghost in the collection Life Within Parole, and will again in Book 2: The Lifeline Signal). Trust and intimacy like this is hard to find, and their connection quickly becomes one of the sweetest and most reassuring parts of his strange life. So far, sexuality hasn't been part of it, not for either of them. But like many things in Parole and beyond, attraction/sexuality/sensuality are more complicated than they first appear. This is a story about an asexual couple navigating consent, sorting out sometimes-confusing layers of attraction, and discovering new things about themselves and one another - like the fact that their orientations don't entirely match up. But even if their sexualities are farther apart than they realized, it doesn't mean they have to be anything but close.