xihe | nanako, sisters

NANAKO BONJOU | 6 sweeps / 13 years old

Matron Sungazer’s a big, broad woman with shoulders as wide as the cave’s entrance, but the wriggler on her hip is all legs and gangle, with wings that trail on the ground behind them no matter how she’s bounced. Sungazer gets four, five halls before she gives up and sets her down.

The wriggler doesn’t cry this time, at least. She just blinks, solemn, and drops onto the ground just like that.

“Oh!” Sungazer huffs, frustrated. She swipes a hand across her brow, tugs on her ear. “I don’t know why they left me with her –”

Because she keeps ripping her wings, you want to say. Because you’re low, too, and someone’s gotta be stuck watching her, you want to say, but your cheek’s still stinging from the last time you sassed her. Even though it’s not sass! It’s true. Sungazer’s nearer to olive than you or Pepper, for all that she’s gotten her fancy matron robes and her fancy matron title, and it’s not like they’d waste a proper matron on Pepper.

Wings or no, she’s still cuspy, and she’s still a wriggler. You’ve heard the matrons chattering. If she wants to live, she’ll have to learn how to keep them off the ground herself. There’s no point in coddling her, just because she was too silly to get a lusus big enough to help her out proper.

(Your beetlemom’s hiding in your hair right now, murmuring words of encouragement. She’s bigger than the dove pecking at Pepper’s back, trying to get her to lift her wings proper, but not by much.)

“This is unfair. I’m not supposed to be here to a grub sitter -”

(You’re not supposed to use your psionics. No one likes when you use your psionics.)

(But Pepper’s wings keep dragging, so it’s not like you have a choice.)

Pepper doesn’t so much as squeak when you pick her up. You don’t have a hip to fit her on, but she wraps her arms around your neck neat as a clingbeast, tucks the bony part of her chin right into the flesh of your shoulder, and it works, even if the world’s gotta go red, red, red just for you to keep her up.

Pepper doesn’t squeak, and neither does Sungazer, either: her cheeks just flush olive when you look at her, blinking behind the haze of your psi. She opens her mouth like she’s gonna say something.

Then she clicks it shut, turns on her heel and starts walking, instead.

(It’s six more halls until you reach the schoolcreche, and can drop Pepper off. But you don’t have to set her down, not even once.)