She wakes up in the morning and nothing's quite right.
The room doesn't smell right, the blankets don't feel right, it's not dark enough, and she's much too warm.
After a moment she remembers that she's gone home. That she's at her parents' house in Butte, Montana, the United States, Earth. 3343A Orchid Street, the door on the left. She's too warm because she put on the nightgown her mother had laid out last night. She's too warm because the blankets are too heavy. She's too warm because the house, itself, is too warm. It is an unseasonably cold September and the heat is on.
She gets up. The little clock shaped like a small green lizard with a purple flower on its back claims that it is 07:00. She went to bed, exhausted, at 23:00 (local time, of course) last night, two hours after her parents picked her up from the airport.
At 07:00 she would have expected the room to be fully light, but then again she would have expected to be waking up about 05:30, when it would have been fully dark. She supposes that a full eight hours of sleep is not an unreasonable luxury, especially after having been awake for twenty hours, especially while on leave.
She stumbles on her way to the door, still unfamiliar with gravity that isn't generated. The door handle is familiar/unfamiliar, and she is disoriented by the view of the hallway. Her parents didn't think to show her where the bathroom was, but it doesn't matter, because she remembered. She remembers, and goes to use the facilities. The bathroom looks entirely unfamiliar, but she isn't sure whether that's from some change or from six years and nine months of bathrooms where the pipes weren't even concealed by walls or cabinets.
She puts her nightgown back on after she has showered, and goes back to her room to get dressed. There are blue jeans and sweaters and sweatshirts and long-sleeved t-shirts, but she puts on the formal uniform that she had worn from the Battle School to the shuttleport to the airport to the airport to the house instead.
Then she walks to the kitchen. The sky is bright outside the big window over the sink, and the room is illuminated by the rising sun. She doesn't know when sunrise was, but it couldn't have been more than an hour ago at most.
There is orange juice in the refrigerator and glasses in the cupboard at the end of the counter nearest the dining room, and she carefully pours herself a glass. She is surprised by the taste, and then surprised at being surprised. The reconstituted-from-a-powder orange juice was sweeter than this. More sugary, she decides. Not like something out of a real orange. Apparently orange trees weren't successful in artificial gravity, or perhaps merely too expensive.
Her father comes into the kitchen in a dark red sweatshirt and a pair of jeans faded to a pale blue-grey. Almost the colors of Leopard Army, she thinks, and then laughs.
"Good morning to you too," her father says.
"I was thinking about school," she replies, still amused. "Did I wake you up?"
He shakes his head. "I get up about now and go for a run. Would you like to join me?"
He looks at her clothing, and she looks at her clothing, and then she says, "I would, yes, let me go change."
The jeans are almost - no, the jeans are indeed too tight, but she'll cope. They are a satisfyingly dark blue, at least, and make up for the fact that the sweatshirt (too big, just slightly too big) she finds is neither bright blue nor white but black, like her boots. Ferret or Griffin. The coat that her father holds out to her is sky-blue, the coat she was given at the shuttleport, and for a moment she wonders if this means she's in Launch again, reverse-Launch, and she can't help but laugh again.
"I'm sorry, I was used to wearing the same colors every day," she explains.
Her father smiles. "You look good. Healthy. Happy?"
"I'm healthy. I'm happy," she says, and finds to her surprise that the second sentence isn't as much of a lie as she expected it to be.
There is frost on the ground outside, and her breath mists in the air. She expects to be able to keep up with her father, but she's not - she knows she can run faster than this, but the ground slopes away from her even when it's flat and the gravity pulls in unexpected ways. (Force equals the gravitational constant multiplied by the first mass multiplied by the second mass quantity divided by the square of the distance separating them, and it is not amplified, not dampened, not an artificial force exerted by the spin of the station amplified by whatever mechanism dampens the force in the battlerooms.) He is patient and does not comment, merely slowing his pace to hers.
When they return, her mother is awake and eating breakfast - waffles and sausage links and coffee. "What would you like for breakfast, Marian?" her mother asks her, and the question is paralyzing. She has not chosen what she would eat in six years and nine months. She did not choose what she would eat most days of the week in the six and a half years before that.
Her father rescues her. "Would you like some sausage and oatmeal? That's what I'm making."
"That would be great, Father," she says, unsettled, and sits at the table, still in her coat.
"Is the house too cold?" her mother asks her, worried, and she remembers.
"No, no!" she assures her, and gets up to hang her coat next to her father's, then stands in the kitchen and watches as he unwraps each serving of oatmeal and adds water, then puts them in the heater with the packages of sausage links.
She is afraid for a moment that her father will apologize for not cooking breakfast from scratch. He had done that on the first Sunday of every month, when they had gotten home from Mass. He does not apologize, but shoos her back to the table. "I'll bring these out. Do you want sugar in your oatmeal?"
Did she want sugar in her oatmeal? She had put a single spoonful of brown sugar in it when she was a launchie, but had eventually stopped doing so, mimicking the older soldiers. She finally decides, "No, thank you," and then sits at the table.
Her father brings the oatmeal out in the little bowl in which it had been packaged, but the sausages on a little plate with some slices of pickle. Marian had loved pickles and has not had them in six years and nine months, but before she samples them, she bows her head, silently. BlessusoLord
Her mother leaves for work, and her father explains that he has taken the day off but that her mother will be home tomorrow. She nods and finishes her breakfast, and then bows her head. WethanktheeLord
She is home.