SIPARA NZINGA & PHERES DYSSEU | eight sweeps

“My  back hurts,” he complains one day. He’s built a nest of blankets and  covers, and is now sprawled across Sipara’s concuscpecient couch while  she works on the floor next to it, husktop in her lap. He’s supposed to  be sleeping, but.

She isn’t paying attention. He reaches out and tugs on a curl. “Sipa~,” he whines.

She  turns her head, and he yanks his fingers away just before her teeth   clamp down. Sipara is the worst. “Take off the shirt, then,” she says   irritably. “Iunno why you even got it on still, jfc. I promise I won’t   cull you.”

Pheres huffs. “Like you could!” Still, she has a   point. His undershirt is hardly tight enough to be actively detrimental to his health, but… it’d be very nice to take it off. Let his skin   breathe.

He hooks his thumbs into the bottom, and pulls.

> VITILIGO

The shirt comes off easily enough. The shirts for hiding, not compression.

The  skin underneath is mottled with colour: not just the uniform dusky gray  of his hands and face, but lighter shades of pinkish red, where the  pigment has worn away, and rose gray where it’s in the process. Looking  at it makes his skin itch, and his hands curl.

It’s spread, since the last time he checked.

He wants to scratch it off, dig his claws in and rip until it all looks uniform under the rosewood of his blood. He used to do that as a grub, when the first translucent spot appeared: pick and dig and scratch, because the dark weal of scar tissue is ugly, but the piebald marks will get him culled.

He places a hand on his side, and Sipara clears her throat.

“Nice spots, dude,” she jeers, and he drops the shirt on her head instead. 

> SPHERES

The shirt is a struggle to get off.

The  bottom wants to roll, for one, and the top wants to cling. Every time he  tugs one way, the fabric wants to go the other, and when he finally  gets it over his head, it’s to be greeted by the sound of fabric  ripping.

“You broke the strap,” Sipara says, ever helpful.

He  makes a face at her. It’s nice to be uncompressed, and he takes a deep  breath, just for the novelty of it. After days in the undershirt, it almost hurts, but the feeling of his lungs expanding and detracting, unrestricted, is more than worth it.

The way that his spheres shake with the motion is a little disconcerting, though.

Pheres flops back down on the bed, and he’s promptly reminded why he wears the undershirt: he has to shift positions and figure out a new way to lay, because it seems like his rumblespheres are constantly in the way. Getting resettled takes a moment.

He’ll have to figure out a way to fix the strap before he leaves Sipara’s hive. He already has enough trouble with his horns: he doesn’t need a third rack always getting in the way, too. 

> SCARS

He pulls the shirt over his horns, balls it up, and tosses it to the corner.

He  isn’t planning on looking down: the scars haven’t changed in sweeps, and he’s worked hard to keep it that way. But curiosity gets the best of him, as it always does. The little nicks from knives and claws across   his collar and chest, the rippled flesh where a blueblood stabbed him on  his breastbone, the bite from Rmeros’s lusus… there isn’t much skin left unmarked, and he can feel bile rising in his gorge as he looks at it.

(Each one is proof of some mistake, writ large on his flesh, and he hates it, but what he hates more is the impression it gives. His torso is a mottled weal of scar tissue and damage. It’s not the skin of a docile book-keeper: it’s the skin of some sort of thug.)

“Hey, dude, stop eyefucking yourself,” Sipara says, and when he looks up, she raises an eyebrow and sneers. “My dads got better scars than that shit.”

“Hell, I bet your dad has better scars than that shit, and he’s dead.”

He huffs, flings himself back down on the bed, and bundles himself in one of the blankets, until there’s no skin showing at all, just fabric. It helps, a little. “Oh, shut up.” 

> GILLS

He  outgrew this shirt two sweeps ago, and wrestling out of it is a chore.  When he finally gets it over a shoulder, it gets stuck to a horn: when  he wrests that free, it clings around his face like a eggshroud, and  Sipara has to get up and pull it free.

He was hoping to avoid her, but now that she’s up, there’s no point in objecting  as Sipara performs her usual survey. She runs her fingers along his sides,  prying gently at the closed operculum and peering at the maroon gills  underneath. For once, she’s careful of her claws.

“Deep breath,” she orders, and Pheres obliges, dragging  in air through his lungs and forcing it slowly out of his protesting  gills. He doesn’t look down as she works, but keeps his eyes focused on  the cracks in the ceiling.

(Mutants deserve to be culled. But  he’s not a mutant: just a cusp, Sipara says, like her, like Myrrha, like Rmeros  and every other member of their line.)

(Of course, none of them have gills, not even Rmeros. He checked.)

“You need to use these more. Like, shit’ll starts rotting if you don’t  -”

“Use  them where?” he asks, incredulous. “In the river? Shall I remind you   that the last time I tried that, we had to cull someone?”

She   paps him in the face, her claws little pinpricks of pain as they drag on the skin. “No, dumbass,”  she says, patient: “In my tub. Come on, I’ll get my husktop and you can  like, blow bubbles or whatever. You need to get some water through  those fuckers, ‘cause if they start crumbling off, I’m not cleaning it  up…" 

>NOTHING

He doesn’t get much farther then rolling the bottom of his shirt before he gives up.

Logically  speaking, cloth is no protection. There’s nothing the opaque shirt does  to benefit him: it won’t stop knives, claws,  or even sharp words. But  the constant pressure against his skin feels like it could,  and he finds the idea of stripping and leaving nothing between his  thoracic struts and the rest of the world thoroughly unappealing.

Even if he’s only lounging around with his moirail.

"No,” he says, flicking one of her oversized ears, “I think I’d rather just complain.” 
 

>AFTER

SIPARA NZINGA | 15 years old / 6.92 sweeps

Sipara’s sprawled out across the floor of your cart, her head nestled into the bony curve of your lap. She’s gone and ruined her headfluff again since the last time you’ve seen her, combed and pressed and perm until it flows thin and straight through your fingers, and you don’t have the slightest idea how you can fix this sort of damage.

If she’d stay with you long enough, then you could deep-condition it. Give it a protein treatment, see how it responds. Trim the ends, maybe –

But she won’t, anymore than you’ll stay with her. Being near Sipara means dealing with ID, and being near you means dealing with Malaya and the rest of the troupe. Better to just sneak moments like this when you can then to deal with the stress of clashing with each other’s quadrants.

(Friends. Whatever the troupe is to you.)

So for now, you’ll have to content yourself with merely combing her headfluff. Your fronds are working their way through, and it’s much more difficult than normal: it’s matted in the normal tangle that she lets it fall into, but there’s scratches in there, too, and blood, slick as oil under your fingertips.

When you inspect your clawtips, you discover it’s blue.

She’s half-dozing under your attentions, rumbling away like a purrbeast. You flick a horn to get her attention, your digestion sack coiling with distress. “Sisi,” you murmur, “what have you been up to?”

She opens one orange-streaked eye and shifts until she can peek at you through the frizz. “Dude.” Her face is drowsy with sleep, and her words are slurred with amusement. You pap her just on instinct, and she laughs, nuzzles her face into the palm of your hand. “You don’t even want to know.”

How Sipara spends her nights is a mystery to you: she does her fights, but you know there’s other things, too, things that require new hives each perigee and act as a constant depletion of your bank account. She dismisses it as part of her prosthetics business, and you’ve never pressed further.

With blue on your fingers and scratches on her face, you remember why.

(“You don’t want to know,” she says, but you know what she means: she doesn’t want to tell you.)

(That’s fine. There’s things you don’t tell her, either.)

She butts her head against you, already asleep again and still purring away steadily. Quietly, so you don’t wake her, you go back to her hair.

BIRDS AND LIONS [PHERES POV] - 10k

“I..” He hates when you stall like this, so you clear your throat, bounce over to the other side of the table like it was intentional. “Right,” you say, going up on your toes so that you can peer at the plate, and you’re watching him through your eyelashes. His face is soft again, his eyes half-lidded as he focuses on the food, and that’s a relief: he’s a little scary when he’s mad.

(You’re being silly. No one’s scared of their moirail!)

“It’s alright. You’re a pupa. You’ll learn.” He looks at you and smiles, exasperated and thin but still fond. The ball of tension in your thoracic cage unwinds, just a little. “We just have to make sure it’s the right things, that’s all.“
 

4.15 SWEEPS | 9 YEARS OLD

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He never did. Your father had let you do as you wished, and taken in everything you did with pride. On your thirteenth birthday, you lost two fingers to a gharial, and the most he’d said, when wrapping you up, was you’d have to learn to be careful.

On your sixteenth birthday, you stole one of your aunts ship, and you took to the seas.

On your nineteenth birthday, you got married to the woman you’ve spent the last two years trying to kill.

Your father never tried to dampen your spirits, but sometimes, you wish he had.

The first wedding lasts three weeks, and you hate every minute of it.

“I’ve seen the way you look at her, you know,” Pheres tells you, digging the comb into your curls. “If you can’t stand her, why did you go and marry her?”

He tugs. You whine, and he just hums in response, separating out the next chunk of curls with a ruthless efficiency. Your hair’s too short for braids: has been, ever since that first raid where one of the sailors had grabbed you by them and yanked. But that doesn’t stop Pheres from trying.

“Because I had to.”

"Did you impregnate her, Sipara? That seems a little implausible,” he says, curious, “but I suppose, if this is a case of you protecting Lady Ryalis’s dignity, I can understand. Of course, you could’ve just asked me to do it. I like her well enough. The court would think it plausible. Or Riccin. Heaven only knows they’ve got enough bastards running around already –”

“No!” you squall, furious at the images that brings to mind. (You and Quanin - Pheres and Quanin - Riccin and Quanin - each one is just worse than the last.) “Go to hell!”

He laughs, taps the hard metal of the comb against your tender scalp. "She’s not kin. She’s not even your friend. Whatever could have you so obliged to endure this suffering?”

You don’t have an answer.

Here’s what you know about Quanin Ryalis, privateer, the rightful heir of the Fenêtre à Mer:

She’s older than you. 

("Old enough to be going blind,” you’d crowed, the first time she’d shot at you and the bullet had swung wide.)

She’s a better fencer than you.

(She cornered you once in the belly of a steamer you’d captured, when your crew were fighting with her people high above, and you’d thought to sneak away with the captain’s lockbox. The first sweep of her saber had knocked the claymore out of your hands. The second had cut right through the skin of your face. If it hadn’t been for the intervention of your officer, the third would’ve gone straight through your heart.)

She’s awful, and dreadful, and one day, you’re going to see her strung her up from the rigging in your steamer –

– but like hell if you’re going to let Lantis fucking Ryalis do it for you.

“You might as well kill me,” is the first thing she says when your crew brings her to you.

Chasing down Ryalis had started off as a convenience: her boat was so much larger, and the targets she took were so much better. Easier to swing in when she was neck-deep in the raid and steal the best of treasures out from under her, then risk your crew trying to take a war galleon by yourself.

But it’d turned into a sport in itself: seeing how close you could get, how much you could steal, how narrow of an escape you could make before that saber of hers caught flesh instead of cloth.

(Seeing how red her face could get from the sheer rage of seeing you where she least expected it.)

It’d turned into a game, but you’d never thought of what would happen when you won.

“Don’t be a sore loser, Q,” you sing, scrubbing at your face. There’s blood in your mouth and on your teeth, because she actually went and punched you in those last few, hectic minutes. You’d be more impressed if she wasn’t wearing fucking rings. “I’m not going to kill you. How stupid do you think I bloody am?”

“No, we’re going to ransom you.” You clap your hands together, bouncing up onto the tips of your boots. “No warrant can be issued for a ransom,” you crow. “So long as your family pays, it’s perfectly legal under the Queen’s law - it’s not even a ransom, really, it’s just a sort of finder’s fee -”

“My family isn’t going to pay.”

She looks dour. She isn’t joking, not at all, and just that quick, your elation’s trickling out like gold at a brothel. This isn’t going the way you planned! She was supposed to be witty, furious, practically frothing around each barbed comment, not - not –

- defeated.

It’s not fun if she’s given up.

“Of course they’re going to pay.” You’re not smiling anymore. “Your father is one of the richest men –”

“No. I am one of the richest women in the court, and that is through my mother’s line.” There’s that familiar, infuriating flicker of pride. She lifts her chin, stubborn, staring down at you from that sloped nose like she doesn’t have a gun to her back.

And then the light dies. “Or I was,” she says, “until that bastard stole it.”

Your family is very close-knit. There’s five different lines in it, and a sprawling tangle of bloodlines and relations too thickly woven for you to ever break through. Everyone older than you is an aunt, and everyone younger is a cousin. Blood doesn’t matter, and neither does the name; what matters is that they’re kin, and that’s freed you from disaster more times than you’d ever admit.

You forget every family isn’t like that.

“And you can get it back if you get married,” you say, dubious, and she grimaces.

Your crew’s collected in a circle around the two of you. (Her crew is down below, bound in the cells ‘til you reach a port to drop them.) Someone’s brought out the wine they found in Quanin’s private stores, and the lot of you have been taking turns passing it around.

It says something, maybe, that this time, she doesn’t protest when someone holds it to her lips.

“Archaic law,” she says when she’s taken her swig, and it’s been passed to the next. “My mother was a strong believer in the  ways of the old ones, and Lantis found a justice who supported him.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“That’s because you’re a savage and a simpleton. One cannot flout the old ways. It isn’t done.”

The first wedding is for your family, to soothe their nerves. Petitioning the queen for the right to marry in court is a process that takes months: there are papers to be signed, justices to be met. The proper courting rituals to meet, to prove this isn’t some marriage of convenience.

(When Quanin tells you this, you laugh in her face.)

But your family isn’t of the court, for all that they’re trying: you’re a brood of diplomats and ambassadors and merchants, and there’s different standards to meet there, to gain their approval for the official court registrars.

(Quanin charms your father, who is elated. She charms Pheres, who is distraught and amused in turn, and accuses you of all sorts of terrible plans afflicted on an innocent woman. She does not charm Daedal, who pulls you aside to ask you what you’re thinking, but it’s worth it for the look on Quanin’s face when your grandmother turns on her about her intentions.)

The second wedding is for the court, and the justice, and for her family, to prove your legality.

You still hate every minute of it, but it’s worth it, afterwards, for the duel -

- and to see Quanin with her sword at her cousins neck, her signet bright on her hand.

After the wedding, your rooms have been merged. As separate households in the courts, you’d been given your own suites, but a couple only needs one.

(When you’d slunk back to your rooms just to check, you’d found Pheres had already seized it. “I left you a bed,” he’d said mildly, when you’d protested. “It’s over by the cloak rack. Do you really want to sleep in here?”)

All of your things were there, neatly sorted out by some earnest maid, and so you’d collapsed on the bed, still bedecked in the frills the ceremony had demanded. “You can sleep on the rug,” you tell her.

She rolls her eyes. You take that as agreement.

(”It’s alright if you hate her, but, Sipa, dear…”)

She’s brushing out her hair at the vanity. In the low lights of the fireplace, it looks lovely. She looks lovely.

But not in the way you’d always thought someone you just married should. There’s nothing warm about it. You’ve spent all day staring at her face, pretending that the two of you share something earnest, something real, but –

“Sipara,” she says, looking back at you.

– all you want to do when you see that aristocratic face is to break it.

(”You’d best make sure she feels the same.”)

“If I see that wretched contraption near my ship again, I will shoot a hole through the hull properly this time, ceremony or no,” she tells you, and you laugh.

“I’m keeping the bed.” You kick off your shoes, just for the way she grimaces when they hit the wall. “But Pheres made up a cot for you in his closet, if the rug’s too hard.”

SIPARA NZINGA | 8.3 SWEEPS / 18 YEARS OLD

off the western coast of hamavet, the farthest continent

(6,161 words)

There’s bubbles still in your flaps when the gate opens, and you can finally step out.

The first hall that Wilcox leads you down is surreal! It’s not so much a building, as it is a dome: the walls are curved high above you, high enough that her horns aren’t even scraping the ceiling, and they’re glass all the way through. You can see the water outside, sloshing against the glass, and the fish trudging through it. (Floating? Swimming?) There’s goosebumps pricking on your skin from the air down here, but when you place your hand against the glass, it’s even colder.

“Come along now, miss,” Wilcox says, and you startle, turn on your heel to follow.

When ID had told you that he had a proposition for you, you hadn’t quite trusted him! You and him.. well, you’re complicated, right now, that’s the problem. He lied to you. He lied to you, and abandoned you, and he didn’t care enough to fix it, not for an entire half-sweep. And what’s an apology to fucking that? You’d cried over him, for fuck’s sake, and you’d made Pheres deal with it, for perigees and perigees.

.. but a half-sweep isn’t too long, when the two of you’ll live for at least three dozen of ‘em. That’s what he keeps reminding you, each time you start to snarl. And how’re you supposed to stay mad, when he gives you opportunities like this? Proposition, he said, but this’s a fucking favour, more like. “There’s a fuschia looking for geneticists, my little hellion,” he’d told you, all coy over the husktop, just this side of cloying, “and she’s under the Queenpin’s thumb, so I could get you in. It’s research, ashmote, and more technology than you’ve ever seen in one place. Isn’t this the sort of thing you do?”

You’d been a little suspicious, but how were you supposed to say no to that? Research! Actual research, in a field where they needed you, and where you could work with people for the first time - properly, without having to hide what you know, or how you learned it. You don’t know much about ID’s boss, but you know plenty about his business. And what’s one gray-eyed pupa’s education source, when everyone here was probably illegal as fuck?

Illegal, or fuschia.

He hadn’t mentioned Wilcox was so tall, though. Or that she was quite this fuschia.

“This is the main lab,” she tells you now, peering back over her shoulder. You don’t like looking at her, much! ID loves seadwellers, but you’ve always been with Pheres: there’s something about the way their skin moves that makes your skin crawl. It’s too dull in spots where it ought to be bright! The fat’s too thick, in all the places it shouldn’t be at all. And when she smiles at you, it wrinkles her cheeks, and right under her eyes, and nowhere else.

Her pink eyes.

“I think you’ll like it. I enjoyed the work that, ah, monseiur Comedy sent our way. You work on helminths?”

She’s really, really tall.

“I read your papers,” she prompts.

“Yeah -” There’s an octopus on the wall, watching you through the glass as you walk through the next hall. There’s seadwellers everywhere, clustered together at the tables, and.. there’s only ten or so, scattered throughout the room, but this is more than you’ve ever seen in one place before. You draw your arms in closer, and if you’re half-cuddling your bag, fuck anyone that’d look twice. “Um. Wait, nah, girl, soz. I work with, like, ectoparasites! Annelids, mostly. My base stock was, like, nereididae, originally, but I bred 'em to be calcified, and —”

BT: <))) I told Wilcox I don’t need help > So she sent you anyway <

BT: <))) Charming > She’s wasting everyone’s time <

AA: loool.

AA: mb you don’t need help, bb. mb you need   G U I D A N C E. >;}

BT: <))) HA >

BT: <))) Of course > Why wouldn’t I need help from a hemoanon <

BT: <))) Sweeps of education > But all of that blunts in the face of .

BT: <))) What > Bootleg schoolfeeds? <

AA: bb, pls.

AA: it’s stolen orn fucking bust.

BT: <))) Of course > What was I thinking? <

BT: <))) Empress fucking forbid it’s not illegal <

BT: <))) Because the rest of this isn’t bad enough <

BT: <))) I’m in the lab > If you fuck up my prototype <

BT: <))) I’m feeding you to it >

“And who,” she drawls, peering at you over her nose, “are you?”

Rostik Taalik is a lot of things. She’s the only other landdweller here, for starters, even with the fins behind her ears. She’s the only person your size, with barely four inches on you. She’s one of the only folks your age, and she’s got the longest eyelashes you’ve ever seen on a troll.

And all of that means she’s your designated lab partner for the night, as you decided when you walked in. Unfortunately, as it turns out, she’s also a huge bulge munch.

“Fuuhao,” you drawl right back, spite so thick that it feels like it ought to catch on your tongue. Your eyes are gray and your horns are capped for the night, the blunted edges of the round-end chafing at your skull each time you move, but you’re not a lowblood, right now, and you’re not going to let some upstart indigo start acting like she’s got anything above you. “We spoke online, nookmunch. Now, scoot over, I’m sitting down here.”

“Wilcox said you’re working on pupation. And I’m supposed to help out.” The device she’s been staring at is big enough that it takes up a whole corner of the room. It looks sort of like a recuperacoon, if someone made a coon out of sopor: it’s ridged like one, with the gentle fall and rise of any healthy device, but the sides are slick with slime that seeps out of it with every passing second, sliding towards the vents on the ground with the careless viscosity of pudding.

When you touch it, the slime clings in strings to your palm when you tug it away.

“Brilliant,” Taalik says from behind you, dry. “Should I wait while you lick it?”

“Nah, dude, hard pass on that shit.” You wipe off your hand on your pants, then turn to face her.

She’s got purple all the way through her eyes already, and more jewelry in her face than you’d see in a tongue. She’s playing with the ring in her lip as she watches you, eyes half-lidded, and thank god she’s one of those folks who can’t hide shit: her ears are round, her face is finned, but she’s low enough that she doesn’t make your skin crawl, like the fish, and her contempt’s clear.

You might be in gray, but you know that look. She’s already making up her mind on what caste you are, and how she feels about that.

Well, fuck her. She wants to make decisions? So are you.

“So, like, lemme see if I’ve got this straight. You want to, like -” You wish you had gum to chew! But your fangs are too sharp for that shit: the last time you’d stolen a pack from Laledy and tried it, you’d half slit your tongue. So you settle for shoving your thumbs into your pants, horns down just to show her how much you don’t fucking care. “Start a second pupation, yeah? Crack us open, scrape out the bits, and start it over. But slight problem there, dude. You gonna breed up new new imaginal discs? 'cause we’re kinda all out.”

“And if you don’t have those -”

She clicks her tongue at you, then flips her braids over her shoulder. “Congratulations. You’ve read a book.” She curls her lip at you, all contempt, and.. you should be focusing on that, but her lipliner’s tighter than you’ve ever managed. You’re not sure if you’re impressed, or if you hate it. “But obviously not enough, because you’re still behind. We can insert that shit with viral carriers, dumbass. Set it up however they want. Venomsacks, broader shoulders, a bigger rack, different chrome - it’s all in the research notes. Or did Wilcox not share that?”

“I’ve read the book, dude.” You should pop her, honestly! Establish dominance the old-fashioned way: flip the laptop, that coffee, and the table right onto her lap, and see if she’s still going to sass you after that. But you don’t want to start a fight in the middle of the lab on your third night here. “But never mind all of the spy shit.”

(The spy shit. You can’t believe you’re in coon with a bunch of seadweller fucking rebels.. and this girl.)

“What about the disks for the rest of you? How the fuck are you gonna keep the bits that you want coming back properly?”

“Never mind. Did Wilcox send you to waste my time?” She looks like a land-dweller, but when she blinks at you, languid, it’s like watching one of the fish. The way she does it is all fucking wrong. “Because,” she says, flat, turning her attention back to her husktop, “that’s shit we’ve already got covered. When you enter the cocoon, it’ll pick up on your pre-coded disks.”

“You mean the ones that melted in the second instar?” you mock, flipping your ears forward, and she looks back up.

AA: tweet tweet, mothernfuckern.

AA: do i gotta lay out, like, birndseed to get you to come out? bc if so: n/n/n, soz, am not doing it.

AA: you get shitty old brneadcrnumbs like evernyone else, and you will fucking like it.

LB: how could I refuse with that kind of an offering

LB: what’s going on?

AA: ty, ty. i knew you’d fucking love it.

AA: i’m tlking to ppl who arne kind of yrn ppl. i mean, not rnly, they'rne all fucking fish? but they'rne   Y RN   P E O P L E   kind of ppl.

AA: so i was wonderning if you can gimme any deets?

AA: and i’ll give you deets back, ofc. >:}

LB: you’ll have to give deets to get deets tbh

LB: my kind of fish people doesn’t give me a lot to work with

AA: jfc, dude.

AA: 'kay, bettern way of putting it. >:}

AA: have you hearnd anything abt a nearn-tyrnian doing, like, rnesearnch? igenetics rnesearnch?

LB: hmm

LB: I think I know who you’re talking about

LB: been tapping up pre-ascension scientists for something or other right?

AA: lol, y.

LB: what do you need on her?

AA: uhhh. idk, dude, yrn the infotrnoll.

AA: how about..

AA: how likely is she gonna trny to shove me in a cocoon? >:}

AA: is that a thing that, like, ppl arne sayin’?

LB: she’s tapping you?

AA; lmfao, n.

AA: she tapped me like, a week ago.

LB:

LB: and you’re asking me this now

AA: looool.

AA: yeah, well, bettern now than nevern, rnight?

AA: she’s a fish, i ain’t exactly, like, supern wornrnied, herne. so chillll. i’ve filleted bettern folks than hern. >:}

AA: and i got info forn you in exchange, so, like, don’t  F U S S.

AA: how would you feel if you could just totes change yrn face?

LB: ok well I haven’t heard of anyone getting ganked and so far everyone I know of has responded to quads

LB: but also no one has left

LB: does Hadean even know where you are

AA: 'kay, cool.

AA: that’s abt all i need to know, lmao. like, i’m prnetty surne nobodies bailed, bc this is fucking wicked?

AA: but y, wanted to check. >:}

AA: and ofc he doesssssss.

AA: wtf kinda q is that?

LB: idk he seems like he’d be a little freaked out about you doing shit on a seadweller’s turf

LB: it’s a little different than taking a fish down in the ring

LB: do you have an escape plan?

AA: loool.

AA: he prnobs is, lbrn.

AA: but w/e, he trnusts me to handle my shit, and i trnust him to handle his.

LB: what will you do if things go bad?

AA: dude, i’m yrn doctorn, yrn not mine. dnw abt it, 'kay?

AA: but fwiw, i totes have a rnoute alrneady planned.

AA: and if anything goes 2spoopy4me, i will pop down a vent, get out into the shipbay, and follow the sewage outlet all the way back up top.

AA: nbddd. evernyone else herne is like, fucking six footerns, and it’s a squeeze forn   M E.

LB: i might not be your doctor but this isn’t medical. you did say that she was more my people

LB: and maybe delete your actual plan. are you sure things are encrypted on your end of things

AA: y, y. i’m just sayin’ i know what i’m doing, losern. >:}

AA: and ofccccc.

AA: this entirne convo’s deleting off my end aftern this shuts, dnw.

LB: what sort of stuff is she working on anyway?

AA: evernybody herne’s into genetics. and fixing shit.

AA: like, she gave us a full hourn long goddamn lecturne on abt how grn8 it would be if we could just F I X ppl, instead of culling them.

LB: is there one big project you’re working on or a bunch of smaller ones

AA: bunch of tiny ones. but they all feed into one big one.

AA: even tho idk if ppl arne rnealising that yet, lmao.

AA: wtfevernnn, waderns arne fucking dumb. >:}

LB: is everyone else there a seadweller?

LB: also do you know what the big project is yet

AA: y, me and m arne the only airnsacks.

AA: and y. loool.

AA:

AA: how would you feel if you could just totes change yrn face?

AA: it’s that. >:}

LB: oh huh

LB: definitely useful

LB: literally no way the empire would like that

LB: also whose m

AA: the othern airnsack herne, brnah.

AA: so therne’s yrn info. tyvm forn yrns, yrn aid has been apprneciated.

AA: we cool?

LB: yeah sure

LB: be safe

AA: loool. you too.

AA: don’t get locked in any morne basements, bb.

You’ll give props where props are due. When you hit Taalik, she barely flinches. She just pauses, rubbing her jaw like she’s more shocked than anything else, and watches you.

It takes a moment to swallow the snarl trying to rip all the way out of your throat. But you manage to keep it down to nothing more than a rattle. “I’d, like, say now you apologise,” you sniff, “but obvs your lusus didn’t raise you properly, so what-the-fuck-ever.”

“And what,” she says, her fingers still resting on the pale spot on her jaw, “am I apologising for?”

If you’d had more time, you should’ve gone for her nose.

(But it’s a cute nose. You don’t want to break it, mostly, not until she starts talking.)

“We’ll just pay off the lowbloods,” you mock, “and get them to test it. Like - are you for real? You’re just going to pluck some poor kids off the street, and turn them into - like - fucking labrats?”

“Would you rather we didn’t pay them?” She finally lets go of her jaw, and part of you wants to bolt back when she steps in. She’s indigo. Even if she wasn’t high enough to make your skin crawl, there’s something uncanny about her, and the way she moves. The way she smiles, on the rare occasions you’ve wrestled one out of her.

(Dry, mean, at everyone else’s expense - but still a smile.)

Taalik’s the best out of everyone in this lab. She’s the only other landdweller, and when you’re surrounded by gills.. well, that’s worth more than just chrome, isn’t it? But you’ve watched when her sleeves slide up, taken in the tight coils of her arms when she’s getting annoyed enough to start snatching things.  She might be the only one you want to deal with..

But that doesn’t mean you want her in your space. She’s still indigo, and you’re pretty sure she could make a fair try at ripping you in two.

.. but that doesn’t mean you’ll flinch, either, as she steps in close. “No, I want you to be decent,” you snap, tossing your curls, and you let your shoulder clip her as you stride past. There’s a whuff of something that might be a laugh behind you, but you’re going to fucking ignore that. “C’mon. If we’re gonna start planning for test subjects, anyway, dude, we ought to do it right. Pay some olives - if we want this to work on everyone, we might as well start with the median, anyway..”

AA: pheeeeeern.

AA: wtf do you do when someone’s rneally, rneally cute.

AA: but also, like, yrn prnetty surne they'rne legit 100% chaotic evil.

RS: / mmm / my assumption / personally / has always been to pile them /

RS: / but i think hadean might have some objections to that /

AA: hey!

AA: fuck off, i’m chaotic neutrnal at best, tyvm.

At the end of the second week, everything goes to fucking hell.

Pulling an all-day work session had been kind of dumb. If Hadean was here, he would’ve hauled you forcibly to your 'coon after the first six hours - but he isn’t here, and you’ve got to take advantage of that. When Taalik had drifted off to sleep, you’d kept working with half a mind of impressing her.

Or, no - not impressing her. Proving her right! She’s been leaning on you more and more over the last two weeks, and last night, she’d asked you if you knew how to set up a time-released enzyme package.

By the time you’d found out you didn’t, it was too late to ask for help, and the only thing that mattered was fucking doing it. If the sun was up by the time you managed, who cared? You’d done it.

And now you were going to haul back coffee and waffles before she woke up, so you could hold it over her in the best kind of way.

Or, at least, that was the plan. There’s voices drifting out of the cafeteria when you come up near, which’s unusual enough to make you pause.

“I still think this is unneccessary,” Wilcox says, and there’s something strange enough about her voice that you stop mid-step. The hall’s empty, but the door to the cafeteria’s open, as always. And it doesn’t sound like it’s full. “You’re not really allowed to be in here, you know?”

There ought to be the clank of forks and plates by this point. Or at least the rip of the nasty protein bars that half of the fish down here eat. Instead, when you flip your ears forward..

Under the whispers, someone’s crying.

“Don’t worry!” someone else says, and it’s a new voice that you haven’t heard before. Temasekian, part of your pan pings, helpful, but that’s strange: everyone here’s further north than that, and you’re the last person that Wilcox hauled in. The gates, as she told the lot of you, had closed, and her party had been assembled. Every project had a team. All you had to do now was make them work. “Warrants procured, lah. Nothing illegal here!” A beat. “Hope there’s nothing illegal,” they - she - teases, and there’s amusement soaking her words like salt. “Right, yeah?”

“I don’t think you’ll believe me if I say no.”

“Probably not~!” There’s a thump. You should turn and bolt. You should be burrowing deep into the vents now, and heading straight for the dockyard. You should be doing a lot of things, but it feels like your feet are lead.

Not quite lead. You can take a step forward, silent as a mouse, and when you do, around the doorframe, Wilcox comes into view. There’s a girl standing in front of her, her hair shining as bright as bone in the dim of the room. Her horns are long enough that they’re framing Wilcox’s neck, for all that her head’s ducked down. If she moved too suddenly, or turned her head, they could slice right into the skin, easy as butter.

Maybe that’s why Wilcox has her fins pinned back, for the first time you’ve seen her. “There’s really no need for that,” Wilcox tries again, brisk, as the girl steps away. The lighting in the cafeteria is poor, as always: it’s been a joke for longer than you’ve been here that it ought to be replaced, but half of the seadwellers were born in the depths, and they’d objected. (You don’t know why you’re thinking of this now. You don’t know why you’re still standing here.)

The lighting is poor, but when Wilcox shifts, it hits her wrists, and the cuffs shine red.

Farther out of sight, there’s a shuffle of feet. Then a thud, and a shriek.

The girl pivots to look. You sink into the shadows, your pumpbiscuit racing, but her eyes slide right past you, off into a distance you can’t see. “Hey!” she says, and at the same time, Wilcox surges forward, fins flaring out.

Then someone wails. You recognise her voice: Hoshio, you think, the one with the fins shaped like the summer sun. “Wrong answer,” someone else says, light. Their voice’s deeper than the white-haired girls. “Sorry, sweetheart! Want to try again?”

“Hdijah!” the girl snaps. “Be nice! Royalty!”

You turn on your heel, and bolt.

Taalik’s awake when you slide the door open. (Slide, not slam: if everyone’s in the cafeteria, well, the two of you’ve been overlooked. No point in drawing attention in, now.) She’s half-sprawled over your desk, shoulders slouched, her braids half-out of the twist she’d pulled them into.

“What’s going on?” she asks, barely looking up. She’s got such a long neck! Every time you look at it, you think she ought to have gills there, but the skin’s smooth as the skin of her hands.

“Imps.”

“Really. Did Falric finally succeed in summoning demons? Or did you just get into the mind honey?” She drags her finger across the screen. The video scrolls forward. The girl is saying something peppily about mascara, and eyeliner, and the best way to repel an auspistice with both –

So you slap your palm down in the center of it, and Taalik jerks her head up so quickly, you think she’s going to bite you. If it was anyone else, she’d have hissed at you. As is, she just stares, eyelashes fanning over her eyes, like she thinks that makes her look unimpressed. 
“I should break your hand for that,” she says, but she doesn’t so much as move. “What, Fuuhao?”

“Imperials,” you say, slowly, “are in the facility, and they arrested Wilcox, and they snapped Hoshio’s arm. Like, she doesn’t fucking have one, anymore. So what d'you think they’re gonna do to me and you?”

She considers you for a moment. Then she sighs, pushes back her chair in a scrape of metal on metal. “Well. You better go, then. Like hell they’ll do anything to me.” She’s so brisk. “But you?” Side-long, she looks at you. “No point in hanging around.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve got dirt in your veins, dumbass. Are we really going to argue about that?” She’s bustling along, even as you’re sidling back towards the bathroom. There’s a vent you’d scoped out there, the first night. It’s just big enough for you to fit into, if you duck your horns, and you’d spent an hour each night since then tracking it to the shipyard, and counting how many steps it takes. You hadn’t had the opportunity to try it, yet, but. It can’t be too hard. You know you’ll fit.

It just won’t be pleasant, but when you think of going back into the hallway -

You won’t. Better the vents.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m leaving,” you say instead, cracking the door.

She’s shoving things into the bag, but she looks up. The look isn’t quite a smile! It’s more.. a curl of her lips, all dry and brittle, like that’s the only way she knows how to. “Try not to die.”

That’s about as friendly as you’re going to get, you think.

The scramble through the vents is about as cramped as you expect. But if you keep your horns down, at least, they don’t scrape, and there’s enough clunks and sighs of machinery that no one thinks to look up.

AA: ico.

AA: are you here?

AA: because i kind of 

AA: aw, shit.

AA: everything’s kind of fucked up right now, and i really, really could use some help.

You’re halfway across the shipbay when the door crashes open, and the girl saunters in.

(Not the girl. Nanako Bonjou, ID had told you, words rattling across the front of your screen so quickly that you’d barely had time to read them. Twelve sweeps, oliveblood with strong telekinesis, IPC –

Where’s the rest of her battery, sweetheart? Because fuck her, you’re going to have to worry about the rest of that, and at least some of them ought to be sick –)

“Où es-tu?” Nanako calls out. “Où es-tu, ma petit souris? Montre-toi! Montre-toi, où que tu sois!”

The ground is dry under foot, and you’ve had sweeps of practice. The first thing you’d done, back in the room, was strip off your boots: now you’re down to socks, and when you launch yourself across the pavement, it’s as silent as you can manage. Her ears are flat, inflexible little things! She can’t hear you, if you try hard enough.

If you can keep your pumpbiscuit from giving you away. It’s pounding like a drum, so loud that you can barely here her off in the distance. All you want to do is get to the sewage outlet, but that’s out in the open, right where she can see it. Right now, she doesn’t know you’re here.

So you dive underneath one of the ships, instead, wriggling and kicking. The metal scrapes at your skin, and you have to slow down so that it doesn’t tear. What if they spot the blood, and try to catalogue it? What if your name comes up? You’ve never paid that much attention to science. You don’t know what they could do with a piece of hair, or a scrape of skin, or blood –

Fear is hard. You’ve never been one to be afraid of anything, not really, and if you hadn’t spent so much time calming Pheres down, you’re not sure you’d recognise the way your hands are going clammy, or the tightness in your chest. But this girl could kill you.

This girl will kill you, if she can. Taalik’s an indigo. The rest of the scientists are all violets -

- and her partner had still snapped Hoshio’s arm like it was so much tinder.

What’s a neck, compared to that?

“Sounis,” Nanako sings, and you can see her boots as they step by. You don’t breathe. Your phone is on silent, but you don’t dare to check it: ID’s advice had been for you to get the fuck out, and not wait for him to do something to help you.

(”You’ve gone and buried yourself under a ton of saltwater, darling,” he’d said, distressed: “I’m going to try, but I just don’t know what you want me to do, here!”)

(Like he hadn’t been the one to tell you about this.)

(It’s not fair to cling to his coat-tails: you’re not seven anymore, and he’s not your quadrant. But part of you’s resentful all the same.)

THat’s fine, though. You’ll make it be fine. You haven’t relied on ID in a half-sweep: you don’t need him now, not when it’s just you and a single girl in the bay. You’ll fight her yourself, if you need to, and with that thought, you slink out from under the ship enough to look.

When you peer out, she’s standing in front of the sewer outlet, just waiting.

That’s fine.

You don’t know much about ships. But you know enough to recognise a HMS Starbruiser when you see it, after all the nights Riccin spent trying to explain them to you. “They’re the fucking best,” she’d told you, practically curling in on herself from enthusiasm, “and they’re pure magnesium, girl, that’s the best part about it. Pure fucking - you can’t get better than that, in terms of weight, in terms of goddamn quality.” They were so expensive that the two of you’d barely been able to understand the price, back when she’d finally gone and found a listing online. And then, barely a perigee later, they’d all been recalled.

Except this one, apparently. There’s a fuel line, right above your head, brushing against your ears. When you sidle back and give it a yank, just hard enough for your prosthetic to stir, the line gives.

Another yank, and it gives.

The spray of gas hitting the ground sounds like thunder in the silence of the hall. She must hear it. She has to. So you’re sidling back before it’s even hit the ground, and as soon as you’re back on your feet, you lean forward and give the back of the ship a shove. The fangs of your prosthetic biting in stings, more than it should after two weeks of healing. You can almost feel the siphon of blood as it pulls in -

- but it’s worth it, because a moment later, when you shove the ship again, the brake snaps somewhere underneath it. It lurches forward, uneasily at first, but with the minor slope of the ground rapidly giving it momentum. You’ve only got a second to fumble your lighter out of your pocket. A flick of the switch, then you toss it over your shoulder, hands shaking.

You don’t stay to watch. You’re already bolting when there’s a sizzle behind you, and then, a scarce second later, you feel the heat as the fuel line catches fire.

It’s when the ship’s hull catches fire that you hear it, though: the crackle of metal catching flame, and the shriek of the bolts, already beginning to protest under the new heat. Ducking behind a new ship, there’s a shriek and crumple of metal behind you, loud enough that it makes your soundflaps pin.

But you have to keep moving. There’s another ship that you give a shove, hard enough that it leaves you shaking, but it’s sliding right towards the flaming mess in the center. The air’s full of smoke already, black and billowing up at your feet, not at all deterred by the shriek of the sprinklers above flicking on. The smoke tickles at your lungs. It burns at your throat, and pulling your shirt over your nose doesn’t do anything to stop it. Pulling up the hood of your jacket helps a little, but not much.

It’s fine, you remind yourself. You’re not going to be here long, and the fish inside the labs -

- well, if they’re still alive, you hope you didn’t just blow up their ship.

(You hope Taalik’ll be fine. “Try not to die,” she’d told you, and you didn’t even think to say anything back.)

There’s crates along the side of the shipbay. You duck into those, and now.. all you have to do is wait. So you count to sixty, hidden neatly behind the cargo, and try to breathe in through your mouth. The girl will have bolted for the ships. IPC agent, ID had said, and an expensive model like a Starbruiser - well, it’s got to have been hers, doesn’t it?

And even if it isn’t, there’s six tons of water above you, and more below. A single crack in the frame of this place will drown the lot of you, from the fuschia on down. She’s a telekinetic. She’s probably securing a net over the flames even right now, siphoning out the oxygen and snuffing them before anything can blow.

It’s been sixty seconds. She has to. And in the meanwhile, the smoke’s burning all the way through your lungs, and you know the sort of damage that does. The sort of shit you’re probably breathing in.

(You didn’t get away from the explosion as quickly as you should’ve, you think. Your flaps hurt. Your bulbs hurt. Your body hurts, in a way you can’t tell if it’s from blood loss, or the explosion, and that’s doing nothing to stop the frantic patter of your heart.)

She’s going to be at the ship, and you have to go, you have to go now. So you take a shaky breath, you duck out of your hiding place, and you make for the sewage outlet.

She’s not there. It’s clear, and there’s a weight off your shoulders. The air is full of smoke, and your body aches, and she’s going to kill you if she finds you, but - she didn’t. She isn’t going to. And you’re half-way into the pipe when something snatches you by the back of the neck, and hauls you out.

There’s a burn on her cheek, shining a sickly green in the light. Her eyes are red, red as the cuffs around Wilcox’s wrist, and you’re twisting to swing a fist right in her face before you’ve even processed who you’re looking at.

It’s like punching a wall. You shriek, pulling away from her, curling your arm in on yourself, and she just sighs, shaking her head. There’s a thousand warning notes flashing in front of your eyes, wailing about damage, and the fangs of your prosthetic are sinking in, tighter and tighter, to try and fix it.

“Merci, ma sounis,” she scolds you. There’s soot on her nose. The edges of her hairs are burned black, frayed in the dark. “Hadn’t run, wouldn’t have chased, yeah? But you ran! And you broke things. Friend built ship! What supposed to say? Rebel blew it up? Shame on you.”

You want to say something witty. All that comes out is a snarl, instead, but all of your thrashing isn’t doing anything to free you: it’s like being held by iron, and the only result you get is an exasperated cluck. “Aah. How old you? Seven? Wilcox all wrong, wrong, wrong, shouldn’t be done. Should’ve known better. Bad enough, pulling guppies in.”

“Can no do nothing about guppies. But mice?” She shakes her head, sending the white locks flying. “Sorry,” she says, and maybe it’s even real. You don’t care. There’s brown crowding your eyes, blocked only by the way you keep blinking, and you - you don’t even know why you’re bothering, honestly. She’s going to cull you, and you don’t know what you’re going to do, and you didn’t tell Hadean, and you didn’t tell Pheres, and -

“Sorry,” she says again, and draws her hand back again. This time, you can’t exactly stop her, not with your prosthetic shattered. All you can do is thrash, but a heel to the gut doesn’t do anything - your leg bounces off of her psi like armor, and her grip is iron. Your hood falls back. All you can do is pin your ears back, and hiss.

(You’re going to die, and nobody is ever going to know.)

But when your hood falls, her face blanches. “Poivre?” she breathes, and then she takes a step back. A moment later, she seems to realise you’re still in her hand: she drops your collar, as quick as she’d snatched you up, and when you land on your feet, already staggering back, she doesn’t try to follow you.Her face’s as pale as her hair.  Only for a moment, though, and then there’s green flooding her cheeks, all at once. Her hand falls.

Your pumpbiscuit is pounding like a drum, too loud for you to make out more than the shapes of the words that she’s saying.But there’s a hand on her mouth, and when your hiss fades into a cough, wet and raspy even past the thump of your blood, just like that, something in her crumples.She doesn’t turn away from you. She just takes a step back, and then another, her eyes taking you in like she’s seeing you for the first time.

You’re missing something, here. You should figure it out - but all you can think about is the outlet, right behind her. When you take a shaky step towards it, one hand on your throat, she doesn’t move. And even the second doesn’t illict a reaction.

So you dive into the pipe, instead, and run.

central continent - alternia

p. while driving or in/around a car.

Hadean doesn’t snore.

He barely breathes when he’s asleep, and it’s fucking weird; you keep looking over just to make sure his chest is still rising, but there’s not so much as a goddamn whistle to let you know he’s there. If you didn’t look, he might as well not be there.

You don’t like that thought. Hadean wanders off all the time, sure, but you’ve adjusted to driving time being you and him. It’s been, what, actual factual perigees since you rented this van and started traveling with him? Used to be you’d turn off your phone and refuse to chatter to anybody when you were driving! It was just you, and the road, and whatever godawful tunes came onto the radio that you could holler along to.

But now you’re sitting here, checking every five seconds just to make sure Hadean’s breathing, because now silence is weird. You’ve gotten used to him chattering constantly! Or the click of him fucking around with his phone, or talking to other folks, or something.

There’s plenty of room on the side of the road to pull over, and it’s all country as far as the eye can see. So you pull over, turning off the car, and curl up in your seat. The silence is weird, but everything feels weird right now, and there’s one way to fix that. Hadean’s sleeping. Well! So can you.

At least until he gets up.

“’kay, but, if you don’t want ‘em thinking you’re a floozy, why do you act like one?”

Sipara’s hanging upside down over the side of her reclination platform, ears nearly brushing against the floor and holding her phone straight up above her. When she sees you looking at her in the mirror, she blows a raspberry.

“Just sayin’,” she sings.

“I don’t act like a floozy.”

“Ha! You do. You’re always going out! And then, like, every time I call, you’re like, oh! Oh, I can’t talk, I might wake up this stupid-ass wader –”

Sipara likes to paint her face up like a clown for the ring. It’s not something you’ve ever tried: paint is for highbloods, and you’ve gotten enough sour remarks over your wardrobe to try and add to it. But kohl isn’t paint. It’s just lines around your eyes. It’s barely accessorizing at all.

And it’s usually easier then this. Right now, you can’t even manage a straight line.

“That never happened,” you snap. “And don’t call them waders, Sipara, honestly. I’ve gone out twice this perigee. that’s not - it’s acceptable to socialise.”

“Hah! Well, shit. Is that what we’re callin’ it? Socialising? ‘cause, like, I always thought that was talkin’. During the night. With your trousers on. But, like, whatevs!”

You put down the kohl. “Nah, but, like, seriously. You’re all like, oh no, they called me names, but – if you don’t want ‘em talking, then why do you do it?”

“Pheres? Phereees,” she whines, rolling onto her stomach, “are you ignoring me?”

“.. no, of course not.”

“Now you’re getting sulky at me. Unfair! I’m not sayin’ anything wrong. I mean, duh,folks shouldn’t be callin’ you names. D’you want me to hit them?” She sits up, pushing her hair back. Her lip juts out. “Because you never let me,” she says, her ears pulling back. “But I would! Then they’d stop.”

“You shouldn’t have to hit them.” You take a deep breath, then turn in the chair to face her. It’s easier, maybe, to face her and talk. She always finds it easier, at least - and sure enough, as soon as you make eye contact, she loses some of the tension in her shoulders. “I’m not doing anything that Malaya and Khaneh aren’t. And they don’t get attention. No one’s ever -”

The words stick. You want to curl into a ball, draw your knees up to your chest, but you don’t: you exhale, and smooth down your hair instead. Re-arrange the folds of your shirt. There are things that you can tell Sipara! There are things you cannot, because you know your moirail, and you know her reactions. Where would the two of you be if she got someone’s blood on her hands?

She’d be in trouble, and ID would cull you for being the cause of it.

“They don’t get comments,” you murmur instead. And, oh, now you do sound sulky.

“’cause they’re blue.” Sipara tilts her head at you, squinting. “Duh. And they’ve got, like, swords, and money, and they don’t just pail anyone that’s nice to ‘em. Like, okay, so you wanna be a floozy. Whatever. Why not, like, at least stick to yellows?”

And she’s still talking, but you’re trying to reign your temper in. Getting mad at Sipara never does much. The two of you can’t afford to scrap like children, not when she’s got several inches and more stones on you. And what’s the point off anger otherwise? It just sits and festers. It doesn’t get resolved.

“Sipara,” you say sharply, and she pauses. “You keep saying that. And it is - it isunnecessary and unkind, but are you saying that you and Riccin will never - you andBoopis -”

“Yeah, like, once. What’s that got to do with anything?” A beat. “And I’m not being unkind!”

“Yes, well, you don’t see me calling you a floozy -”

“Like, ‘kay, maybe I might pail a quadrant, fucker,” she snaps, “’cause she wanted to! Not every stranger on the street!”

“That isn’t what I’m doing!”

“‘course it is! If you’ve only known ‘em for a day, dude, that’s, like, the definition of a stranger. D'you know what could happen?” She leans forward, scowling. “They could chop you up and cut you into pieces and -”

“- feed me to their lusus,” you repeat, flat. “Don’t be absurd. I’m not going to their hives. D'you think I’m simple?”

“D'you think they can’t just bring their lususes with 'em?” she fires back. “And fuck off, dude, you bring 'em back to Malaya’s hive. Like that’s any safer! What’s he gonna do, some blueblood decides to off you? Stab them? Well, big whoop, motherfucker, they’re missin’, like, an arm afore someone steps in and flips shit ash, and you’re still dead.”

“If you’re just, like, so-ooo desperate to get laid -” She wrinkles her nose and blehs at you, just to make it clear what she thinks of that. “- then just go get a fucking quad. And then nobody can call you shit at all, 'cause you’re doing it proper. That’s what you’re all about, isn’t it? Bein’, like, the sorta rusty they find on the vids, and not some rustbucket?”

It turns out looking at her isn’t making this any easier at all.

“Heavens. I spend a perigee away, and I forget what a refreshing viewpoint you have.” Keep it brisk. “And so unique! Tell me, Sipa, where am I going to find quadrants? Who would you recommend? Because, in my experience, most people don’t want to quadrant up with people who.. well. With my assignment expectations.”

She squints at you. “Pheres -”

“People who are going to end up in a rig,” you say, bright and helpful. Your claws are working holes into the fabric of your pants. You can feel the threads shredding under them. For heaven’s sake, they’re probably getting stuck in your lacquer. “They find something about that unappealing.“

“I’m sure I don’t know why.”

“Pheres -”

“Now!” Can you pour any more brightness into your voice? Any more enthusiasm?Maybe not: if you try, it’ll just go brittle and hard, and Sipara’s voice is already cracking. If you looked at her, her ears would be back, and her eyes would be wide, rimming with tears -

- and you can’t deal with that. It’s not fair that she gets to say whatever she wants, and when you try - when you say anything - she goes and gets upset with you. “I have to go and do some things.”

“Things, Sipara,” you add, and oh, you can’t help the edge. But your kohl is on, finally, two neat swoops that almost look adequate, and.. you’ll just get Malaya to fix it, when you head over to his hive. It’ll be fine. You can stand it for the length of the drive. “Before you ask: not people. So if you’ll excuse me -”

“Pheres!”

“Good light.”

SIPARA NZINGA | 6 sweeps / 13 years old

OA: oKAY, BULGEFACE, THAT’S ENOUGH WITH THE SHIT-TALK. WE GOTTA FOCUs.

OA: tHE HELL ARE WE GETTING ICO FOR HIS HATCHDAy?

AA: lololololol no stfu

AA: y wld i shrne

AA: so i can do the wrnk and u can take crndt

AA: l m a o   n

AA: g fck yrnslf

OA: oKAY, ONe:

OA: i WASN’T ASKING YOU TO SHARE, YOU NUBBY-HORNED LITTLE MOGGy.

OA: tWO: MORE LIKE I DO THE WORK AND YOU TAKE THE CREDIT. AIN’T NO MIRTH TO BE FOUND IN GIVING A FUCKER A DEAD BIRD. THAT’S A REAL shit GIFt.

AA: stfu he liked it

OA: hE SAID YOU WERE A FERAL MEOWBEAST AND HE WAS GOING TO ABANDON YOU IN A GUTTER, SO YOU COULD JOIN YOUR COHORt.

AA: y y y

AA: but ddnt so he liked it

OA: >:o|

OA: lIKE I WAS ALL UP AND SAYING, I AM NOT asking ABOUT BUYING A GIFT, I AM stating THAT WE ARE BUYING A GIFT FOR HIM TOGETHER. ON ACCOUNT OF THE FACT WE’RE ALL QUADS AND THAT’S WHAT WE’RE SUPPOSED TO Do.

OA: yOU CAN BUY HIM SOME JUNK YOURSELF, IF YOU WANT TO. OR GO KILL ANOTHER BIRD. I DON’T CARE WHAT SWILL YOU CALL YOURSELF WRAPPING IN A BOW AND PASSING OFF AS A gift.

OA: eVEN THOUGh.

OA: iT’S GONNA LOOK ALL KINDS OF AWFUL SITTING NEXT TO MINe.

OA: jUST SAYIn’. :o)

AA: lol

AA: gtfo

activatingAggro has left the chat!

obstructedAntiquity is now messaging activatingAggro!

OA: mESSIAHS, GIRL, DON’T BE SUCH A CHUCKLEHEAd.

OA: cOME ON. ME AND ICO BOUGHT YOU A GIFT ON YOUR HATCHDAy.

OA: a REAL GODDAMN GIFT, NONE OF THIS DEAD ANIMAL SHIt.

OA: iT’S FAIR TURN ABOUT THAT WE GET OFF OUR ASSES AND DO HIM SOMETHING PROPER IN RETURn.

OA: aND WE GOTTA DO IT TOGETHER, DUMBASS, OR HE WON’T THINK WE CARe.

AA: so

OA: sO USE THAT LEAKY BUCKET YOU CALL A PAN, GIRL. IF WE DON’T CARE, WHY BE IN A QUAD? WHY TALK TO US AT ALL? HE’S PALLING IT UP WITH FISH AND PRIESTS, NZINGA. HE ISN’T EXACTLY NIPPING AT THE BIT TO KEEP UP WITH DRUDGES LIKE Us.

OA: tHIS QUAD AIN’T JUST ‘CAUSE HE LIKES OUR FACE. HE’S DOING US A MOTHERFUCKING FAVOr.

OA: wE GOTTA GET HIM SOMETHING NICE, OR ELSE HE MIGHT RECONSIDER It.

OA: dUh.

Every time you turn around, Riccin keeps getting taller. It’s not fair.

Course, this time, it’s ‘cause she’s wearing heels.

“Dude, take those off,” you hiss, ears pinning flat. “You look stupid! He’s gonna laugh at us! And what about the egg?” The two of you spent all day yesterday at a hatchery, trying to pick the best egg for him to get. ID likes birds! He practically collects ‘em, dead or alive, and some fancy broodhen that’ll grow up to make even more birds seems like the sorta thing he’d like. The one you got’s pink, just like his psionics, and it’s strapped to Riccin’s back in a pouch to keep it safe and out of the way.

Or it’d keep it safe, if she weren’t in fucking heels. Riccin can’t walk in heels! She’s practically trailing psi with each wobbly step, her eyes brighter than they ever really ought to be, and even if they weren’t, though, you’d still know she was cheating to stay upright. She’s been shooting up faster than she can get used to: the past perigee, she put on four whole inches, and she’s barely been able to run without misjudging it in her trainers.

When she sees you looking, she sticks out her tongue. It’s distracted! After only a split second, she’s back to staring at the ground. “Fuck off!”

You’re getting a crick in your neck looking up. This has to be an extra five, six inches to a troll that doesn’t need any, so now that you’ve asked nicely, you do the only thing you can do:

You kick her right in the ankle, egg be damned.

All of her psionics are focused on keeping the shoes steady on the ground. She’s not expecting an attack higher up! Her heel twists in the shoe, and it’s amazing how quick the psionics sizzle out, electric blue dissipating so fast it leaves dark streaks in your eyes. She doesn’t fall. It’s a shame! But her eyes go narrow and her ears pin back and she growls at you, deep and throaty like a congested grub.

“I am going to pull off those wretched nubs you call horns and use ‘em as a mortar.”

“Dude, you can’t even catch me,” you snipe, and take a step back.

She takes the challenge, just like you knew she would! She takes a step forward. With her face all done up in the half-paint she’s taken to wearing, she looks almost like an acolyte. Almost like she should be intimidating.

She isn’t, though, 'cause she’s Riccin: big-horned and clumsy and with spots on her face that she thinks paint’ll cover up. What’s the worse she can do? Hit you? There’s nothing impressive about that!

So you laugh at her instead, and her next step is too wide. Her foot slips in the shoe. She goes toppling head-first towards the ground. Her arms fling out. Her growls turned screechy with rage, and it’s great: she’s floundering, trying to twist as not to land wrong, but she’s too caught up to remember she can catch herself with her psionics.

When you step forward, she lands in your arms with a plompf, heavy enough that you stagger. Not from the weight! Just from the size of her. She’s big, but she only weighs about the same as ID, 'cause everyone you know’s just a sack of bones.

“Shit, gi~irl,” you sing, “if you wanted me to hold you, you could’ve, like, just asked.”

Her face is the most godawful shade of yellow. She snarls at you, trying to wriggle half-heartedly free. The elbow to your gut barely hurts at all, and you wrap your arms around her, burrowing your face in her headfluff. “I’m going to bite off your face,” Riccin threatens, but if she wanted loose, it’d be easy as shoving you her with psionics.

All she does instead is flail until you finally lose your balance. You topple, shrieking, but the gravel that digs into your skin when you hit the ground’s nothing compared to the thump when she lands on top of you.

There’s pointy limbs digging into your spleen. You whine, ears going back, but you’re opening your mouth to complain when something sticky starts leaking on your knees.

“Riccin, you idiot! The egg!”

ID squints at the two of you.

“You got me.. a decorative egg-shell,” he says, carefully, like the time he tried to copy your southern common: like the words don’t quite fit proper in his mouth, but he’s too nice to just spit them out. “Well, isn’t hat just the sweetest thing anyone’s ever fetched me.”

“I like the spots. Almost my shade of yellow, even! And the glow. Did you stick a light-grub in here?” he says, dubious, and shakes it, pressing his ear against it to hear. “Oh! No! It’s plastic. Isn’t that just quaint?”

“It’s for luck, lah!” Riccin says, ears pricked up and forward. Then she seems to realise she’s being excitable, and she jerks her chin up, peering down her nose instead. “Which is good,” she adds. “For a person like you. For your performances, yeah?”

“Are you saying I’m bad at my job, my little lemonhead?” He laughs, raising his eyebrows, and shoves the egg under one arm so he can press a hand to his cheek: “- because that’s just plum mean to insinuate on a fellow’s very own wiggling day!”

Riccin doesn’t really beam anymore. All she ever does is her sideways grin, where the entertainment’s creepin’ up and she doesn’t really want to show it. “I ain’t saying you’re bad,” she says, “but brother, you could use some luck. I mean, just sayin’, all things considerin’ –”

“You don’t need luck! You’re great, Riccin’s just bein’ a bulgemunch. ‘cause, like, we got you a hen,” you chirp, “but we broke it and then Jahhiz told us we’re not allowed near it again, and he took it, so we got you a lucky egg, instead, ‘cause, like, did you know it cost like, twenty caegars? Each? That’s a lot! And I was like, no, fuck that, I’m not gonna drop another twenty on Ico, that’s dumb, let’s get the fake egg, that’s, like, ten –”

“Stop talking!” Riccin shrieks, and shoves you. With a squall of outrage, you shove her back, and a moment later, the both of you are on the ground, hissing like meowbeasts.

SIPARA NZINGA: 16 years old / 7 sweeps 
PHERES DYSSEU: 17 years old / 7 sweeps

You’ve never been good at a proper pirouette. ID’s boxed your ears and pulled them so long they ought to be twice the length by now. You can go en pointe, sure, but the proper twirl is hard: you’re good at balance, yeah, but not finesse.

All the more reason to practice, ID always tells you, and that’s why you’re spinning.

And why your boy is supposed to be helping. Instead, his nose is buried in his phone, and he doesn’t look up until you twirl, half-laughing, into his lap.

“Pheres,” you sing, writhing so you can look up at him, “fairest! Furry, furry Pherēs!“

“Sipara -”

“You’re ignoring me!” You’ve got two inches on him, and a hundred pounds: no matter how you squirm, no matter how you writhe, you can’t quite find a spot that doesn’t end with knees digging into your glutes, the hard line of bone carving canals into your skin. He’s not a comfortable kind of seat. “And you asked to see,” you whine, resting your head on his shoulder. “Fuck’s sake, what’s your problem?”

But for all that he’s too bony to abide, when he puffs and finally sets his phone down on the ground, wraps his arms around you instead - it’s worth it. “I’m sorry,” he says, sorry as fuck, adding a little trill of apology to the end just to make sure you know. “I’ve just, mm, been thinking.”

“You shouldn’t do that, bro. It’s dangerous.”

“I’ve been thinking,” he says again, stubborn, “and - oh. This is going to sound silly.”

“You’re always silly.” This close, he almost smells like ID, all smoke and cloves, faint enough that it makes you want to sneeze. Sometimes the two of you break into his and Raphae’s rooms, to borrow their things: you’ve got pots and pots of shit you’ve nicked from Raphae’s stage kit, but you hadn’t expected Pheres would go and borrow cologne.“Don’t worry,” you add, butting your head against his cheek. Gentle, gentle - “- just spit it out!”

He takes a deep breath, and then blurts out: “Do you think I’m a good person?”

Oh.

What sort of question is that? You settle your head on his shoulder, resting your forehead against the curve of his throat, so you can feel it jumping with each beat. He’s not phrasing it like a joke, but it’s gotta be. Pheres doesn’t do low confidence. It’s not, like, his thing.

“.. well, not if you’re nicking things,” you tease, because it’s gotta be a joke.

And sure enough, after a beat, he laughs.

The first time you think about it, it’s easy to dismiss! You shake it off like the sun on your back and you move on. But just like a burn, what you always think is gonna heal just fucking festers, instead. The thought keeps coming back! It seeps into your pan and scalds the edges, leaving every last goddamn thought peeling away until there’s nothing but nerves and that stupid goddamn realisation left. It’s like your common senses sloughed off like dead skin. Every time you deal with Laledy, you think you’ve gotten over it.

Every time you deal with this fucking mossblood, you realise you haven’t. Lal’s been yammering for eight, ten minutes now, and you’ve been stuck watching that shit-eating grin for the last five.

(It’s not fair. There’s rules to the people you like, and you stick to them: big horns, pretty mugs, warm blood and girls. Laledy fits absolutely none of that, even if you kind of want to sit on his chest and count his eyelashes.)

(You’re pretty sure he wears mascara. You’re pretty sure he wears lip-gloss, and the realisation makes you want to puff out your cheeks with rage. It’s not fair! None of this is fucking fair.)

“Alternia to Earth, pal!” Laledy chirps, leaning forward on the table, and finally, you remember to look up. He’s got his lenses on, but just like your dumb moirail, it doesn’t hide shit when you know what you’re looking for. “For reals, what’s your dealio? Got spinach in my teeth? ‘cause thanks a bunch for telling me, insteada just starin’ like a proper weirdo!”

“Fuck off. I was trying to figure out how you got your teeth so nubby. You, like, break ‘em off in the creche, or something?”

“Nah, broke ‘em off tryin’ to chew rocks, get my face half as rough as yours.”

You kiss your teeth at him on reflex, but some stupid part of you shrills: he’s paying attention to your face! And knowing he can’t even see your goddamn face isn’t doing shit to stop the smug warmth.

He might not be able to see your face, but he can hear your contempt, and his grin widens. He starts to open his mouth, and you know how’ll this go. The conversation’ll drift! He’s probs about to say somethin’ about parasites, or zombies, or the latest shit he’s heard about, and.. you don’t want the conversation to drift, not just yet. An idea’s resting at the corner of your eye, and you’re starting to get a feel for what you’re thinking.

(This is a stupid idea.)

“Nah, but, like, for reals, doesn’t it bug you?” you blurt out, just as he opens his mouth, and you can’t help it: you bounce a little in your seat at the incredulous tilt to his mouth.

“Uh -”

(This is such a stupid idea, but you’re going to have fun.)

“Your teeth being so nubby, dumbass! Like - no, shut up, I’m talkin’! - like, they’re like pebbles. Rocks! Really fuckin’ dull rocks. And, like, 'kay, I can see why you’d keep 'em there for, like, red. Be the pity-bait, babe,” you sing, “ain’t like you’re not fuckin’ built for it. But it’s gotta be a drag for the rest of the quads! I mean, what’s your pitch-mate gonna say 'bout that?”

A beat. You inhale sharply, ears pricking straight up, and - yeah, you’re being as dramatic as fucking Riccin right now, but it’s so worth it for the way that Laledy perks up across from you. He plays into your shit so well! You love it, even as he quirks an eyebrow at you, because even as the silence drags, you know he’s not going to be able to resist that line.

“Pal, I’ll have you know my pitch-mates totes love it,” he drawls, sure enough, and you can’t help it: you laugh, pleased, even as he eyes you. “All of 'em! Like, the entire corral of peeps I’ve got waitin’. Some folks say you ain’t gotta keep 'em all hangin’ like that, but, way I see it, waste not, want not, yeah? You know how it is!”

“Oh, totes. You start off with one fucker flirtin’ blackways and then, like, suddenlyeveryone’s all up on your bulge.” Laledy’s got making fun of you down to an art: even the way he nods his head is mocking, mouth twisted to the side. “But,” you sing, “you wouldn’t know about that, would you?”

He stops nodding.

“I mean, like, dude, let’s be real here, you’ve never even been kissed.”

He sticks his tongue at you, then taps a finger against his cheek. “Are you saying you don’t figure this face’s perfectably kissable?” he simpers. “Because I’d tell you all about it, pal, but 'fraid I just ain’t keen on, like, kissing and telling. But, like, beeteedubs, I’m totes a better kisser than you. On account'a the fact I don’t, like, go bitin’ off people’s bits!”

“Soz not soz, that’s how the cool kids do it. Stop bullshitting! You haven’t kissed nobody,” you accuse him. “Not even one person! You’re too fuckin’ scared.”

You lean forward all at once, palms thumping the surface of the table. He jolts. You beam at him, wide enough to show off all of your teeth, and - okay, okay, you’re ruining the plan, you’re moving too fast, but your pumpbiscuit’s racing like you’re six and new to the ring again. There’s laughter at the back of your throat! There’s nerves at the back of your teeth. But you don’t let either out. “And if you aren’t,” you demand, a laugh catching at your words, because oh god, this is stupid, this is so fucking stupid – “Then prove it!”

For a second, you think he’s actually going to. He actually frowns at you, the skin of his nose wrinkling, and he leans in. Kissing isn’t your thing, not really! It’s boring. It’s a waste of time. But it’s a sign someone likes you, too, and that’s why your heart does an unsteady little skip when he gets close enough you can start counting inches.

And then, at the last possible moment, he fucking falters. “Uh. Can I – wait, fuck, like, look –”

This close, the lenses don’t do shit to hide his eyes. They’re big and clouded and anxious. If he were anyone else, maybe you’d feel bad, but this close, you can count his lashes.

And, yeah, he’s wearing mascara. And eyeliner, the stupid nookmunch. You’d feel betrayed, if you weren’t so delighted.

“Knew it! You’re such a fuckin’ chicken,” you huff, but you don’t pull back. His eyes aren’t quite so wide, anymore, but those big, stupid ears of his are pulling right down and back. “God, how’re you gonna, like, survive anythin’, if you can’t even ki– mmph!”

(Apparently, he has been kissed before.)

(But no one ever taught him you don’t kiss with your goddamn fangs.)