RELEASE MYSELF FROM CONSEQUENCE

CALICO KUANFU [2571 WORDS]

SEVEN SWEEPS / FIFTEEN YEARS OLD

rickshaw ii-j, the eastern seas

[CW for implied violence / murder]

The scavengers are singing as they bring in the latest haul.

The first thing the last Calico had told you, back when you were still young enough that you were having trouble finding words and she hadn’t gotten old enough to disappear into her Ascension tests, was this:

“It’s not about how you feel, when it comes to ships,” she’d said, holding your horn so that you had to look at her. “How you feel doesn’t matter. What matters, kid, is that it gets done - because if it doesn’t, everyone else is going to suffer, and it’s not their fault. It’s yours.”

And you’d taken that lesson to heart, long after she’d left and people had started calling you the Calico instead. Some of the crews, or the smaller ships, get anxious when they look for ships. They worry over who’s on it - where they’re going - what they’re taking - they let their feelings pour out and all over their common sense, like any of that matters any. When you were young, before people realised you couldn’t be ignored, you’d had someone try to pass a ship because it looked like their quadrants.

Silly stuff! You’ve never let it affect you. And that’s why you don’t usually let yourself watch the scavengers unload the ships.

But this is the largest haul that you’ve ever managed, with enough meat to feed the Rickshaw’s lusii for perigees and perigees, and you don’t think Calico would disapprove of you watching today.

The Rickshaw is bustling with movement tonight. All across the highrises, people are spreading out across their balconies and roofs to watch, stretching across the lines to peer down at the activity. Someone’s started setting up a new bridge between buildings in the west sector, and there’s already a staircase made out of driftwood and pipes. A tinkerbull hovers near the edge of it, watching their pupa dangle from one of the poles.

When you whistle and wave, the little thing waves back, flashing nubby teeth in a smile, and starts inching their way closer to you and the pit, one hand at a time.

And on the ground, there’s a corridor forming in the crowd as the scavengers push through. The Rickshaw doesn’t have any proper roads: it’s too clustered for anything more than, well, rickshaws, and all of those are pulled to the side right now. But there’s a path to the marketpit that everyone uses, one that leads straight from the docks, and it’s the one that the scavengers always use. 

Tonight, Feiyan and Guifei are leading the way, dragging in the nets with the largest of the catch.

It thrashes as you watch. Up on the balcony from your hiveblock, you’re too far to hear, but you know Feiyan: when she tosses her horns like that, you can practically hear her hiss of outrage, and when she slams the butt of her pike into the net, Guifei bristles. You don’t need to hear her, either, to know what she’s saying. She’s always on all of you about not wasting time and setting proper examples, like she’s ten instead of eight.

But their spat only lasts a moment, and then the procession continues, with the scavengers trailing their bosses. Behind that group are your own crew, working two to three to a net. There hadn’t been enough between them and the scavengers, when you’d left the docks, to bring everything in: there’s the backup crews, laughing and jostling, and casting anxious looks up at Guifei. There’s the dockhands. There’s the first half of the guard..

.. and there’s the soft paft of dirt coming up as the pupa drops down next to you. “Hi!”

“Hi there,” you say, amused. They - he! - is barely five, you think, if that. You’ve always been bad at ages. He’s got chubby cheeks to match his lusus, a bushy plot of hair, and he’s beaming hard enough that his eyes are squashed shut.

When he opens them, you startle. He’s one of the lowbloods, with the sort of green-yellow eyes that a lot of them sport casting a faint glow on his cheeks.

Usually, those don’t come near you. But he doesn’t seem to have picked up that message, yet, because he sidles in close, loops his arm in through yours like you’re any of the other residents, and not the Calico. “I’m Chōmin!”

“Uhh.” His lusus has the right idea! They’re hovering nearby, giving you the sort of doe-eyed horror that only a tinkerbull can give. But this is fine. You don’t usually interact with the lowbloods.. but, well, just because the last Calico was prejudiced doesn’t mean you have to be. “I’m Calico,” you tell him, and Chōmin dimples up at you, pleased. “You ever seen a hunt before, pupa?”

“No!”

“Well, settle in,” you tell him, and turn him to face the pit.

On the nights when you dock up with the other Rickshaws, the central pit serves as the market. When it’s set up, you can’t even tell that it’s a pit from your hive: all you’ve ever been able to see is the sea of fabric and siding, cobbled together from everything that washes up on your shores. But tonight, it’s all clear. All the tents and stalls have been disassembled, pikes and barbs have been set up around the edges, and there’s the rest of the guard, lazing around the perimeter.

You’ll have to lecture them later! You can’t abide laziness, not when there’s a job to be done. But for right now, your lusus is climbing off of his perch overlooking the market. He’s always a little clumsy on land, but he’s careful as he steps past the barbs and slides into the foreground of the pit, where the last of the haul is being set out in front of him.

You’ve never brought in this large of a haul before! And your lusus has never sat in the pit to supervise the slaughter, not since the last Calico was here. It’s the reason everyone’s watching, as the scavengers begin to distribute throughout. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime kind of event, and you did this. You came up with the plan, and you executed it, and you’re the reason no one will have to hunt for the entire season.

You don’t watch the scavengers, usually, but this is an exception. You’re so proud that you feel like you could die of it, even if you know you shouldn’t be.

(“It doesn’t matter how you feel,” the last Calico told you, but you bet she’d never brought in a catch like this.)

The scavengers begin singing as the first net gets unhooked. The wriggler unhooks himself to lean forward, his fingers wrapping tight around the railing. “Don’t fall in,” you tease him, and he just chirps in response, like some half-baked feral.

And it’s not like he’s in your space. Your balcony slopes down towards the street and the crowds, with a little incline for your hiveblocks door, so there’s plenty of room. He can stay in his little section, and you can stay in yours, and you can both watch the show. He’s really intent on it! Every time you sneak a glance at him, he’s wide-eyed and fixated on it, nubby little fangs biting into his lip as he looks from scavenger to scavenger. You don’t remember watching your first hunt, but this is kind of cute.

The scavengers are singing one of the hunting songs. The wriggler is being cute in the corner. You don’t usually keep a lot of company up here, but you like this, you think, more than you would’ve expected.

You regret that thought when, ten minutes in, he turns and tries to bolt for the crowds.

“Hey, hey!” You catch him by the shoulder, pulling him back from the slope. If he pulls into the crowd, he’ll be crushed, probably: his lusus is one of the small ones, a little tinkerbull without a herd, and that’s no help in a forest full of legs and feet. Not when everyone’s jostling forward to see what’s happening, and be the first to claim the detritus from the hunt. “You can’t go out there, kid,” you scold. “C'mon, come stand with me.”

Under your hands, he deflates. “Um -”

“It’ll be fun!” You steer him back to the rails, then on a whim, pluck him up. His lusus lowes at you, but the pupa himself doesn’t protest as you sit him on the rail. “There,” you say, pleased. “So you can get a better view! ‘cause you’re not gonna get anything down there, sorry, except, like, folks crushing you, I guess, but you don’t want that. It’d hurt! And I bet your lusus would be, like, super upset. Oh, hey, d'you want anything? There’s some stuff your size, I bet..”

“I can get it for you!” God, he needs a bath. Maybe you’ll make Guifei take him to the sea later and dunk him. Or one of the wriggler watchers. Do you have wriggler watchers? You have no idea: the last Calico watched you, since the both of you shared a lusus, but you don’t know how it went for everyone else. You’d never thought to ask! “Anyway, uh, I don’t want you going down there, dude, you’re way too little.”

He makes a sound. “Sorry, pupa, but it’s true -”

And when you look at him, he’s crying, big goopy teal tears that streak through the dirt on his face and send dust poofing up below.

“Is this because I called you little?” you say, alarmed. “Because, uh, like, I’m sorry, maybe you aren’t that small for a lowbie –”

“I don’t like this,” he gasps out at your expression, choking over the words. He scrubs at his face, but it doesn’t do anything, not when his whole body is shaking like a windchime. “It’s - it’s -”

Over the singing of the scavengers, something keens in the pit, sharp enough to cut through the din, and his face twists like he’s going to die from it.

Oh, shit.

“Uh -” He’s already hopping down from the rail, still scrubbing at his face with those fists. His entire face’s going teal, and you’re not sure how to deal with this. You don’t deal with pupas! You definitely don’t deal with the lowbloods, and you can’t tell which is the issue, here. Guifei always says that lowbloods are weaker, so maybe it’s that.

You don’t remember much about your first scavenging, but you know you sure as fuck weren’t crying.

Still, regardless of if you did, he is! So you bend down at the knee, crooning in a way that your lusus always does when he wants your attention. Chōmin’s ears tilt up, then he looks at you, still leaking tears. His lusus lowes at you, again, then settles on the ground next to him, leaning in.

You’re not sure if that’s encouragement or a threat! But you place your hands on his shoulders instead, and try not to marvel at how much they dwarf his head. Pupas are so *small.*

“What don’t you like?” you try. You don’t know how to talk to pupas, but Anjirō is just-turned-six, and he’s always dealt better with being talked to as a person.

You’re not sure what answer you’re expecting! But it’s not for Chōmin to sniff, shake his hair, and murmur: “- they’re /culling/ them.”

“Uh. Yes. That’s, uh, sort of the point, pupa. Didn’t you know that?” He’s staring at you, wide-eyed, with those freaky eyes. You change tactics. “Where do you think we get our lususfeed from?” you try again. “Have you thought about that?”

He sniffs at you. “No,” he admits, “but - but - we eat fish! Not trolls!”

You’ve never met a pupa young enough that he actually calls them trolls. You’re taking it back: he’s not cute at all. “We aren’t lusii! And our lusii eat what we bring them,” you correct him, gently. “Um. Think of it this way. Your tinkerbull probably eats all sorts of stuff that you can’t eat, right? Like fruit and shit. Don’t shake your head, pupa. I’ve, like, totally watched the nature documentaries.” You bop him on the horn with your fist, just hard enough that he bares his teeth at you.

When you laugh at him, he scrunches up his face.. but then he laughs along, a little confused.

“Your tinkerbull eats fruit, and bugs, and hay, and stuff! And that’s, like, totally cool, that’s no big deal. But that’s not troll food,” you tell him, “that’s lusii food. And just like we can’t eat lusii food, they can’t eat, like, troll food. So we kind of have to catch ships to feed our lusii, otherwise, they’ll starve. D'you want your lusus to starve?”

“My lusus eats fruit,” Chōmin says, but he doesn’t look like he’s about to start crying again. Maybe it’s because you’re distracting him from the noises. If you could make the singers go louder, you would! Maybe you’ll tell Feiyen to have people set up speakers around the pit, next time. You bet that’d get more people in the market, too.

“And we get the fruit for your lusus from the ships, too. D'you think we have enough fruit trees on here for a bunch of lusii? No. Here, c'mere - can I pick you up again? I won’t put you on the rail.”

He stares at you, broody, then nods. You pluck him up from the ground again, settling hip on your hip as you turn away from the pit. “Look at that,” you say, pointing up at the highrises. “How many trees can you count? Can you count that high?”

“.. twenty?”

“Uh, no, more like a hundred, but that’s okay. You tried, and that’s what matters, probably. Definitely. Right?” When you nod at him, he nods back. “That’s not enough trees for even, like, a third of our lusii, not really. You need like, a million trees per animal, and we’ve only got a hundred! That’s way less than a million.”

“So we’ve got to raid ships for lusii food. Meat and fruit. You shouldn’t get upset over it. They’d do the same to us.”

When you look at him, he doesn’t look entirely convinced.

If you put him back down, he’s going to start crying again, you think. Or go into the crowd, and get crushed: everyone’s pulsing forward even as you watch, jockeying to get close enough to start stealing the detritus from the butcher’s pile. (There’s a visor that you’d wanted, and told Feixei to save for you. You hope she remembers.) But, right, he’ll get crushed, and you’d feel kind of bad, when it’s easy to make sure he doesn’t.

“.. you know, do you want to know what’ll make you feel better?” you say instead. You’d wanted to watch the scavengers, but. Well.

What it was the last Calico’d said? It doesn’t matter how you feel? That’s an important thing to remember, you guess, even when you don’t really want to. Chōmin’s a weird little lowblood, but he’s on your Rickshaw, and that means you have to take care of him, same as everyone else. “Looking at the ships! I bet you’ve never seen those before, right? Let me, like, totally spoil you: they’re really fucking cool..”