xihe: three legged crow (Default)
xihe ([personal profile] xihe) wrote2018-06-28 09:28 am

FICTION: sipara nzinga, disasterclade - tough lessons

 
SIPARA NZINGA | 14 years old / 6 sweeps


 
 

“So, like, how’d you lose your arms?”

“Sipa!” Pheres snaps.

Beside you, Iphige hasn’t so much as acknowledged the question. The four of you are sprawled out across the recreationblock, and an hour ago, you’d each been working on your own projects. But then Iphige had peeled off her arms, one arc of golden psi at a time, and started painting.

Now you’re all just watching as she works.

There’s lights still on, but her psi’s the brightest thing in the room. As bright as the sun, maybe! Watching it sure hurts like it, but you can’t tear your bulbs away. It might sting, but the way she’s pushing and tugging the paint through the air in pencil-thin rivers is too pretty to miss.

The thin plastic of her prosthetics are floating in the air above her. The paint streams wind around it, leaving streaky designs as they twine in reds and golds and indigoes, and you don’t know what she’s painting, but you don’t really care.

Not when there’s more important things to ask about!

You’ve never paid Iphige much mind: the metal circlets on her thighs and shoulders were just a thing, like Pheres’s newfound love of white claw lacquer, or ID’s jewelry. But you’d never seen them without her arms plugged in, though. They’re just metal and steel, with strands of pink-purple tucked deep within.

When the light catches just right, you can see them pulsing.

The way she’s painting is pretty. But the stuff going on inside of her arms is fascinating.

“Or, like,” you persist, leaning forward, “did you cut ‘em off?”

 

Beside you, there’s the thump of a book hitting the ground. “Sipara!” Pheres sounds two seconds from hissing, but you don’t have to pay it any mind: he hasn’t actually smacked you in ages. All he does anymore is hiss and fuss and hiss some more, like that ever does anything. “You’re being rude!”

“Let go of your pearls, pupa, it’s fine.” ID’s sprawled out in Raphae’s chair, his feet kicked up on the arms, the dumb smokestick dangling out of his mouth. You thought he was asleep! But no, he’s watching her, just like the rest of you, his face blank in that way it only gets when he’s looking at her. “We were making bets on when she’d ask, anyway.”

“I won,” Iphige says idly.

“She did! Much to my surprise. You failed me, sweetash,” he informs you sadly, and his mask breaks when he blows a cloud of smoke right at you. “You just cost me fifty caegars! Now, I know you’re broke, so let me tell you, that is some serious cash. I said you’d ask perigees ago, but no! My pupa had to go and develop tact on me.”

“I was going to!” You shoot Pheres a look, but he doesn’t even have the courtesy to look guilty! He’s just going all red and blotchy instead. “But someone –”

“Ah, miss Sfumat – you don’t have to say, you know, if you don’t like.” You sit up with a squawk of outrage, because Pheres just cut you off, but he doesn’t pay you any mind. He just rushes on, stumbling a little over his words, fervent: “I mean, miss Sfumat, if it’s something - ah - unfortunate - or painful -”

“It wasn’t painful.” The paint is still all aglow with the light of Iphige’s psionics. She doesn’t look his way. “They gave me anaesthesia first,” she continues, and Pheres falls silent.

He’s looking a little pale, so you scoot back, bump your shoulder against his. When he leans in against you, he’s stiff as a board. He always gets squeamish about everything: bruises, blood, the scrapes he used to come back after his deliveries. (But you took care of that, last time he came back from that cerulean’s hive, and he hasn’t had so much as a scuff since then.)

“Why’d they cut ‘em off, though?” you repeat to her, wrapping your arm around him. “I wanna know!”

A few minutes later, you regret asking.


Here’s what you knew:

The Imperial Education Program is a thing. (“A thing,” ID says, derisive: “- amberlove, it couldn’t hurt to be a little more specific!”) A thing that takes in psionics, and trains them, and teaches them to fly.

When you say that Riccin says it’s a good thing, ID laughs. Iphige doesn’t. She isn’t much for faces: she always just looks tired, tired, tired, like there’s a weight on her shoulders she can’t knock off, and the only thing she can ever muster up energy for is spite.

She’s not really being spiteful when she tells you the truth, though.


Here’s what you knew:

Sometimes Riccin disappears, and comes back with new ports. He walks like it hurts for a week or two, until the bruises fade away and the skin stops swelling.

Sometimes Riccin disappears, and comes back with her psionics gone. The last time, it took a month for her to get her glow back, and the first thing she did was tip an entire table over onto your head.

Sometimes Riccin disappears for awhile –

– but you never really thought about where to.


Here’s what you knew:

Riccin says that joining the IEP’s a blessing. Riccin wants you to join the bioengineering branches. Riccin wants you to be an engineer, so when they’re a helmsman, the two of you can be together forever and ever.

(“What about my clade?” you asked them once, and they’d looked at you like you’d offered them an entire lemon. “They can come too, rustboat, if you’ve gotta,” they said, reluctant, like each word was a strain: “ - like, maybe as passengers.”)


Here’s what Iphige tells you:

Being a part of the IEP fucking sucks.


Pheres is looking pale again. You’ve wound yourself around him like a meowbeast, and he’s leaned right back into you. There’s a knee digging into the flesh of your calf, fingers curved tight around your shoulder, and it’s hard to tell where one of you ends and the other begins.

But you can still tell, ‘cause he’s psi-hot. Each inch of skin feels like he’s running a fever, same as always, and normally you’d never notice –

– but this is the first time you’ve thought about what that means.

Oh, don’t look so glum, sugargrub, ID drawls. His eyes are bright through the smoke. “Are you still jealous? I’m sure we can find a rig to put you in, if we ask Raphae nicely - oh, where are you going?”

“I think,” Pheres says, primly, shrugging off your arm, “I’m going to puke.”

Even ID doesn’t want to clean that off the carpets. Everything’s silent except for the scrape of paint until Pheres disappears down the hall, and then you rockc forward, weaving your fingers into the carpet. “But that’s not gonna happen to him,” you say, and it’s not a question.

“Of course it is!” He slouches further down into the chair, kicking out his heels. “Me, him, Iphie-dear, Riccin.. why, if Raphae doesn’t behave himself, I’m sure our most beloved proctor could find a place for him to make himself useful, too. It’s how our glorious empire works, sweetheart.”

“The useful get used,” he says, chipper, “and the useless gets culled to make room for them. Which, I’ll give you, is a not-so-small possibility for your little pitybait! What does he even do, Sipa-sweetDoes he have even hobbies? Because I think I’ve missed them, apart from mooning after my matespr–”

“I’m still talking!” he squawks, flailing upright as you scramble to your feet. Pheres’s in the back bathroom, but right now, you don’t want him out of your sight.

(He’s not useless. But which is worse: useless, or rigged up like Riccin? Like Iphige?)