“Yet you don’t want to do tea service anymore,” Mosscap said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Everything about the way you’ve conducted yourself in our travels says that. You don’t want to do it, but you feel like you should. Am I wrong?”
Dex rubbed the bridge of their nose. “No,” they said.
“When was the last time you really enjoyed tea service, Sibling Dex?”
The sun had sunk to a bare sliver above the horizon, and Dex stared at it as closely as they dared. “When you made it for me,” they said quietly. “At the hermitage. It made me feel … like I wanted to make other people feel. It felt like the reason I wanted to do this in the first place.” They clasped their hands together between their knees and focused on them. “Do you remember what you said when we were there, about how nothing needs a purpose? How all living things are allowed to just exist, and we don’t have to do more than that?”
Mosscap nodded. “I do, yes.”
Dex pressed their lips together. “That’s the heart of my faith, Mosscap. That is what I am saying to everyone who comes to my table. I say it out loud, all the fucking time. You don’t have to have a reason to be tired. You don’t have to earn rest or comfort. You’re allowed to just be. I say that wherever I go.” They threw a hand toward their wagon, its wooden sides emblazoned with the summer bear. “It’s painted on the side of my home! But I don’t feel like it’s true, for me. I feel like it’s true for everyone else but not me. I feel like I have to do more than that. Like I have a responsibility to do more than that.”
“Why?” Mosscap said.
“Because I’m good at something,” Dex said. “I’m good at something that helps other people. I worked really hard to be able to do it, and I benefited from the labor and love of others while I did so. I’m able to do what I do because everybody else built a world in which I could do it. If I just say ‘Thanks for all of that, but I’m running off to the woods now,’ how is that fair? That doesn’t sit right with me, not at all. I’d just be a leech if I did that.”
Mosscap looked confused. “What’s wrong with being a leech?”
“You know what I mean,” said Dex.
“I don’t,” said Mosscap.
Dex sighed. “A leech is a person who takes without giving back. It’s a metaphor.”
Mosscap considered that. “I don’t think it’s very kind to use an entire subclass of animal as a metaphor for behavior that you deem unseemly.”
Dex threw up their hands. “Well, we do it, all the time.”
“And it’s not even an accurate metaphor,” Mosscap went on. “You’re basing that shorthand off of the human relationship to leeches, not the entire experience of being a leech. They’re as vital a part of their ecosystem as anything else.”
“Gods around.” Dex rubbed their face with their palms.
“Would you use the term parasite in the same metaphorical manner?”
“Yes!” Dex exclaimed. “I would!”
Mosscap gave Dex a reproachful look. “All parasites have value, Sibling Dex. Not to their hosts, perhaps, but you could say the same about a predator and a prey animal. They all give back—not to the individual but to the ecosystem at large. Wasps are tremendously important pollinators. Birds and fish eat bloodsucks.”
“This is making my head hurt,” Dex said. “And also, none of this has anything to do with what I’m saying. I’m talking about the relationship between me and other people, not a fish and a bloodsuck.”
“It’s your metaphor,” Mosscap said.
“Well, I’m never going to use it again.” Dex picked up a stick and poked at the fire irritably.
Mosscap let the matter go, and it picked up a stick too. “You’re not alone in this, you know,” it said, nudging bark off of glowing wood. “‘Purpose’ is one of the most common answers I get to my question.” It lowered its gaze and sighed. “I’m beginning to worry that you were right, you know.”
“About what?”
“About my question. You said when we first met that you thought it was impossible to answer.”
“I still do,” Dex said.
Mosscap looked seriously at them. “Then why do you come with me?”
“I’m not with you for the question,” Dex scoffed.
The robot took that in as it played with the fire. “When I first volunteered to make contact, we all thought this was a very good question. We wanted to know if you’d done all right in the time since robots left your society. We knew you’d improved, certainly. You were on the brink of collapse when we left, and obviously that hadn’t happened. Your villages have a glow at night—we can see them, if we’re in the Borderlands. And the satellites, of course. Those wouldn’t stay up without your help. We knew you were still here. We knew things were better. I never saw it for myself, but I know the previous generations watched the rivers clear up. They saw the trees grow back. My kind witnessed the world heal itself, but we didn’t know how well you had healed. Nobody was sure what I’d find out here, least of all me. So, you see, it was a very sensible introductory question. What is it that you need?”