VARIOUS META BULLSHIT

Main blog is activatingAggro! This is for meta, story notes, and general frippery. THIS BLOG IS 18+ ONLY.

[fleetbound]

serendipitous crackships

Nana<3<Rmeros:

Rmeros has the highly critical approach to life that Nanako needs to tighten her shit up and realise that drifting through life isn't healthy or acceptable to her! He has values that match up pretty closely to hers, in terms of the overall - his priorities were himself and Loxias, hers are Vadaya/Pepper - but they diverge enough on major issues that they're not always entirely on the same page, and they’d have enough mutual respect to think they could change the others minds.

They probably couldn’t! There’d be an irrevocable difference in the way they think, along with basic morals, that’d kind of keep them apart.. but that’d probably be the fuel for their pitch relationship, tbh.

The fact that Rmeros’s intellectual is a big need for her pitch romances, because Nanako’s core issue with others is that she very, very rarely respects them - she likes plenty of people, but she holds herself apart and above. People trying to compete with her on her major points of pride will always fail, because Nanako’s confidence issues encompass very set things, such as her perceived intelligence. Rmeros’s brilliant in a way she can’t match, which earns him a great deal of respect, and would have her pushing herself to improve in the rest of her life, to prove, yes, he may be better than her in this, but she’s better than him in that, and that makes them equals.

Nana<>/<3<Loxias:

Nana’s quadrants, ultimately, need to be focused on facing her issues and bettering herself for her to be interested - and as a result, her paleroms would ideally lean black, because Nana doesn’t actually need kindness or indulgence in this quadrant. She needs someone willing to call her out on her shit.

Loxias is everything that Nana doesn't want to be, and they functionally mirror each other all the same - both are content to just drift through life without ever actually doing anything, both are the same age, both are stuck in environments that they're okay with, but don't actually make them happy (and make them somewhat unhappy). The difference is that Nanako, if she sees her reflection, will be like "well, fuck, I don't want to be like this - and she shouldn't, either." She’d want to fix herself, and she’d want to fix Loxias with her.

Which would work well with Loxias, because Loxias doesn't want to shape up. Loxias wants to be in a fucking stupor for the rest of her life until she dies, and she doesn't have to deal with anything else. But with that said..

Loxias prizes connections, Loxias is sharp-tongued, Loxias can see all of the possible trajectories of the relationships that Nanako prizes so much and shapes her life around, and she can see the way that it mirrors what she did with Rmeros, which resulted in Loxias’s current decade of malaise. And she hates it, and she resents it, and that clusterfuck of agitation would be enough to yank her out of her discontent.

Because she can literally see all the ways those relationships - and trying to form her life around them - could go wrong, through Nana's own actions. And she's got no issue, when Nana's digging at her to get her shit together, starting to dig at Nanako to fix her shit. Does it make her happy to put Vadaya on a pedestal? Because here's all the ways that treating him like that could ruin their sibling-happiness forever. Does it make her happy to reject everyone around her? Here's all the ways that's going to make her miserable in the long run.

Mutual fixing through looking at each other, and saying “oh, no, fuck that,” basically.

Melete<>Kua

This ship is.. basically self-evident!

Kua's kind when he wants to be, he's patient, he's very chill, he doesn't take offense. He wouldn’t be very bothered by Melete’s sensory disdain, or towards her stranger quirks: he’d be willing to point out, yeah, she’d be obviously happier if she stopped doing this, because then she’d get reaction that, but he wouldn’t press her to do it. She’s weird. Everyone’s weird. If it’s not detrimental to the community, who cares?

This is kind of what Melete needs, in terms of a moirallegience. Some of her sensory disorder is self-wrought, and needs adjusted - but when she is already working through the important shit, quirks like “she only eats oatmeal” kind of just need to be accepted. And on Kua’s end of things.. Kua lies, a lot, to himself and to others, and he enjoys taking on responsibilities wherever he can find them. He’s paternalistic. It is a flaw.

And Melete would be a great deal more hands-on than Ognais in dissuading it, reigning him in, and encouraging him to be less of an asshole. He doesn’t need to care about anyone lower than jade, but it’d be kinder of him if he would just pretend, because actions matter more than words. Leaning on a translation worm is a crutch, and he needs to learn at least a few sentences of English to be functional, because reason X, Y, Z. Melete’s less tolerant of quirks in others, but Kua doesn’t need people to tolerate his quirks, he needs to grow tf out of them.

[fleetbound]

three times things were discussed (and one time things were not)

2225 words

DIMASQA, LOXIAS/RMEROS

“You’re going to die if you do this,” you tell him, and Rmeros sits up.

“Have the odds changed?”

He needs to shave his hair down again. His curls sit in limp strands around his face, the weight of the length already pulling them into disheartened esses. It doesn’t suit the roundness of his cheeks: on other trolls, it’d make them look young, but when he looks at you, eyes still half-clouded with sleep, it just makes him look tired.

“No,” you admit. It’s a fifty five percent chance of success. Sometimes you bleed, and you see Rmeros drowning, with water filling his lungs, or blood clouding his mouth. Sometimes you bleed, and he’s curled against you, younger, brighter, safe for another few sweeps. The face changes. The troll doesn’t.

“Then I’ll die if I don’t,” he says now, reaching out to place a hand on your knee. He’s got big hands, with knuckles that protrude. Right now, they’re dark. In two sweeps, they’ll be pale, and small, with knobby knuckles laid bare by the tides of the sea. You can see it now, when your eyes unfocus.

Looking into the future is like staring into the sun. No matter how hard you blink, the after-images stay with you.

Your matesprit clears his throat. When you look up, his eyes are sunken in and empty, dark as the hair framing his face. But then you blink, and they’re just white, and soft with an affection he rarely shows.

“Death comes to us all.” He thinks he’s so practical. He sounds so practical, like he’s the one that sees lives overlaid like the cells of a picture splayed. Like he’s the one that’s seen all the ways that he could die, and has been working for the  “Unless we stop it. Isn’t that our duty, Loxias, to fight against it?” He reaches up, dragging a thumb across your cheek. “As trolls?”

“Isn’t it your duty,” you ask him, waspish, “to stay alive for me?”

“I’m trying.” He pulls you over, folding you against him. You let him. “Fifty five percent chance,” he murmurs. “All I can do is fucking try.”

TEMASEK, RAPHAE/RICCIN

“Raphae,” you say, staring at the portrait, “why you so weird, lah?”

“Standard, Riccin! Before Chiloa hears, and washes your mouth out with soap.”

It’s not often you hang out in Raphae’s hive. Ico’s your auspistice, sure, and Sipara’s your kismesis, and they all live together - but he’s just weird, that’s the thing. So’s Ico! You and Sipa figure that’s why they got together, ages and ages back, or at least, that’s what you figure. Sipa doesn’t like to speculate on anything interesting, even though you’re his auspistices, and it’s your job.

Sipa’s just the worst, that’s all. That’s why you hate her.

But Raphae’s a different kind of weird than Ico. Ico’s got meowbeast ears sometimes, like he’s still seven, and he wears so much red, he looks like somebody trying to cosplay. It’s, like, his aesthetic! It’s weird, but it makes sense, sort of, when all the other dancers are covered in glitter and paint. They’re all brawling to stand out, make themselves too garish for the Messiah’s to ever pay them much mind, so somebody else can burn under their gaze. Everyone’s gonna go to the miracle planet eventually, but ain’t no reason it’s gotta be right now.

Raphae.. there’s no reason for his shit, you think. He’s got hair just as long as yours, almost, that he keeps in a sort of bun that’s always got fly-aways, like he’s too cheap for butter, but he ain’t. He wears jackets with patches on the elbows, like he can’t afford nothing better, but you’ve been out shopping with him: he puts the patches on when there’s not even a hole to cover up, just like he wants to pretend.

And his shoes have scuffs, the sort that always get Chiloa tugging your ears over keeping your shit nice.

It’s not an aesthetic, you think, ‘cause those have reasons. It’s just strange, like the cholerbear in the bathroom. You’d tapped its head once to get soap, but you hadn’t thought..

“Raphaeee,” you whine, in proper talk this time: “- why are you so weird? Your bear’s puking on me!”

There’s a perfunctory knock on the door. Then he pokes his head into the bathroom. “Well, yeah,” he says, amused. “You tapped its head. It’s got to have soap come out somewhere.”

“Sipara’s bathroom’s gotta spout.”

“Sipara’s bathroom has a Tweetie Pie tweetbeast from the depot with a spout in its head, kid.” He sighs heavily, letting his shoulders roll in. Then he places a hand over his eyes. “We,” he says, with great pain, like even the thought of it’s a chain around his neck, “do not talk about Sipara’s bathroom.”

When he peeks at you through his fingers, after, you laugh. Then he grins at you, bright as the moonlight, pleased as punch. Raphae’s always easy to please, when you ain’t breakin’ his shit, or wearing his clothes. You don’t know why Ico’s always having such fucking problems.

“Besides!” Raphae just wants folks to like him, and listen, even when he’s being queer. “You should like it. Cholerbears are sacred to clowns, in some areas. They teach them to balance balls on their nose as a prayer to the Messiahs. And they feed them glitter milk, so they can read fortunes in the way that the glitter falls afterwards. You could even say this little thing -” He steps in, plucking up the soap dispensor: “- this little thing is practically sacred.”

You squint at him. But Raphae’s got a poker face to beat even Sunyah’s, and he doesn’t so much as crack. “You’re lying,” you accuse him, but it’s hesitant. He doesn’t like religion, but he does know an awful lot.

And he doesn’t give in. He just grins at you, all teeth. “What is Chiloa teaching you?” he asks with a click of his tongue. “Don’t worry, kid. Lying is a sin.”

II-J, KUANFU/OGNAIS

“Don’t you ever get tired of hearing thoughts?” you ask Ognais, climbing out of the water. The sea’s colder than it usually is tonight, even with the sun cresting on the horizon, and the material of your wetsuit is to keep the moisture out, not the chill. It permeates the fabric, leaving goosebumps pricked across your skin. If you stand here long enough, it’ll sink through your hide and into your bones. You don’t have blubber, the way that a seadweller does. You’re only navy.

Even Ognais is true indigo, built broader and taller than you’ve ever a hope of reaching, and she doesn’t have blubber. It comes with the gene package that includes gills, if you remember your schoolfeeds right. The same proteins that deactivate the Johnston organ are the ones that simulate the growth of proper blubber to insulate the bones, deep and buoyant enough to make the weight on you look like tissue paper. Even skinny seadwellers have it. You slept with a violet, once, that was so thin you could count her bones, and even then, her skin hadn’t folded the way land-dwellers did. There were no wrinkles. It just dimpled, and it shifted, but it was too thick to really bend -

“Just dents. Calm, brother,” Ognais says, laying her heavy palm on your face. A callus catches on your cheek. As soon as the thought hits, she’s already shifting, smoothing her thumb across it as an apology. "Nah. Come natural. Why care?"

“Lots of reasons -” The air’s too much. Your lungs seize when you breathe in, hard enough that you’re coughing before you realise it. Ognais is already wrapping an arm around your shoulder, pulling you in close. She’s colder than you, usually, technically. Right now, she’s warm as an ox, and the heat of her feels like it’s cutting right through. “Lots of reasons,” you say again, but your throat’s too dry to keep going. You shouldn’t have --

“Nah,” she agrees, steering you up the path, away from the docks. “Should’ve gone come morning. But swam tonight.” The kraken’s get you’d hauled in is still on the metal jut, but it’s fine: with Ognais here, no one’ll bother with you, and already behind you, there’s the cut of knives being unsheathed. “And ainokea. Why kea about breathin’? Same think as thinkin’. Don't botha -”

“- me, yeah, but I don't have to think about it,” you point out. It's hard to focus on just her! It always is, when you're home. You know you can trust Wintae to do her job, as lead of the scavenger’s dawn shift. But the sound of the knives working through rubber sounds all wrong. She might be using a butchers knife, instead of a granton. It's a minor mistake, but she is young. “I'm not listening to -”

“- errybody around, ‘cept you are, brother. Listenin’ to entire Rickshaw. Head goin’ ‘n’ goin’, always.” She's steering you steadily up towards your hive, not slowing enough to so much as let you falter. You should be grateful! Part of you is, even as you're still wavering on going back. “Same as --”

“- you,” you admit. She unlocks your door, sidling you inside, and before you can decide otherwise, she's clicking the lock shut. The hive is sickly warm, after the chill of the sea. You're not sure who's moving your feet, exactly, when you collapse onto a chair. You're not sure you care.

Ognais laughs. “Okay,” you correct yourself, wry, “I don't. And.. alright! I hear you, I hear you. I just worry, that's all.”

“Worry so much. Less about me,” she advises you, turning towards the fridge, “and more ‘bout chill, yeah? And fish blubber dent, brother. Not fold. Dent.”

GHOULISAR, ID/VADAYA

The best thing about Vadaya is that he doesn't ask questions; when you drift up behind him, sling your arms around his shoulders, and tell him to take off his shirt, he actually acquises.

The fact you nuzzle your face into his neck is leading to the wrong idea, undoubtedly, but that's your problem for later. He did what you said! That warrants a reward. But your problem right now, however, is --

You don't like ports. You don't like them at all. No level of dislike, though, can hide the fact your kismesis is covered in them.

His shirt pulls up like a curtain. Black on black on black, as far as the eye can see: his skin’s paled some under the seasons dimmed lights, but it's still a match for the biotechnology arching between his shoulderblades, curving up his nape. It's shiny, with skin so smooth that it catches every refraction. It slopes down easily on the edges, flowing into his skin so easily that you can't see the seam.

If you touched it, you could feel it.

Under it, his back is carefully, meticulously straight, in the way he always gets when he's uncomfortable. It's a better view! One that makes the bile in your throat almost tolerable enough to swallow.

Vadaya doesn't have rejection scars. Vadaya has the sort of technology built for him, made from his own flesh and knitted into it. It's not that different, you think, and when you place a palm to his spine, close enough that you can feel the chill of his augmentative device above you. You hadn’t been bothered by ports, back before you’d gotten them.

But this isn’t mechanics and gear, carved into his body. It’s something grown into him, as much a part of him as his spine, or his fins, or the half-colour of his eyes. The Scimitar gear is a part of him, unlike any helm, because he’s not one. It’s just another abnormality, one that doesn’t have to be different.

If you touched it, the skin would be smooth. It’d fold under your fronds, and it’d beat with the same pulse you can see bobbing in his throat, the longer that your fingers trace lines into his spine. It’s just a part of him, like anything else. You could prove it to yourself, you think, if you just reached up and touched it.

It's only when he inhales that you realise your fingers have curled in instead. You don't have claws! Just nails, blunted and dull. So there's no scratches, no marks, for all that you yank your hand back reflexively. It’s just Vadaya, being Vadaya.

When you look at the biotech, the red lights off the ports wink, and you just --

You don’t like ports. You don’t like ports at all, no matter how different, but at least you make yourself look at them, winking, before you tear your gaze away.

Vadaya’s still stiff in front of you, poor thing, confused as an acolyte on their way to Carnival. He doesn’t know what to do with you, when you go and get strange. He never does, does he? So you swat him on the ass, just to give him something to think about.

It doesn't do anything for his nerves, you think, but the way he jolts certainly makes you feel better.

“Relax,” you drawl, like your mouth isn’t as dry as Jejunus’s depths. “I was checking for scars! My goodness gracious, you've sure cleaned up after your molt, hmm? What a shame. You ought to go out, get some new ones. They used to make you look awfully rugged, y’know..”

[fleetbound]

Testing out sprite pics so far.

[fleetnpcs]

WIP height/build references for the side-cast.

Melete (5′10″), Kuanfu (6′4″), Nanako (5′6″), Oglian (~8′0″).

Still to do: Hap Ret (5′10″ - triangle? we’ll see!), Liyiji (5′10″ - brick shithouse), Myrrha (5′8″ - rectangle), Marduk (5′6″ - round), Sappho (6′4″ - hourglass), Pheres (5′2″ - hourglass), Sipara (5′0″ - pear), Riccin (7′2″, triangle), ID (5′8″, pear).

[fleetbound]

sipa&romance

Mostly thinking out loud, because I think I’ve finally figured this out.

Sipara’s whole deal with romance is primarily just that.. she’s only interested in two types of troll, pretty much ever, and that’s “individuals who are more of a mess than she is, who are aggressive, older and are someone that, through helping, she can have a sense of control over, without challenging that”, and “more laidback, emotional individuals that’re calmer, less aggressive, and more managable than she is, and who will keep a handle on her.”

Hadean and ID are the prior! Pheres, Laledy, Hap Ret, and Riccin have all been the latter. When Riccin spiked up in aggression abruptly, and proved something that Sipara felt she had to keep in control, Sipara hardcore lost all interest. When ID started putting her in a position where she felt that she needed to control him, and she realised she could not - she began getting resentful and losing interest.

With Pheres, she started lashing out more aggressively whenever he veered towards the first archetype, and their relationship has always been the most stable when he’s in the latter - hence their toxic lying habit.

Sipara’s not into challenges! She’s not into struggling, or being high-key in her romance, unless she’s actively getting paid on screen for it. Romance is not something she wants to put effort into, nor is it something she will put effort into, not without getting hideously resentful and bailing in.. sort-of short order.

[fleetbound]

character notes + trajectories

I have no fucking idea where I’m going with my characters lately, so time for a trajectory map, I guess!

SIPARA:

- she has been firmly redirected towards immortality-through-rainbowdrinker-worms!

- she does not like fuchsias. she’s terrified of muireach - she’s spooked by gwydyn - she’s okay with hap, up until she remembers he has fins, then she gets leery. but sipara tries to control things that she’s afraid of. how is she trying to handle this?

- similarly: id’s entire life scares the shit out of her, and she’s actively resenting her auspisticism with him, but staying as his auspistice gives her the feeling that she has a measure of control. how’s that working out for her? how’s she feel about hap’s joking that ID is having him play ash-for-hire?

- pheres/riccin are settling into being fairly amiable hate-friends. sipara is still a toxic mess of asbestos rotting riccin’s lungs. sipara is spooked, has had her entire life disrupted recently, has pheres keeping her at arm’s length, and is half convinced that none of her friends or quads trust her. if she reaches back out to riccin, how’s that going to go for her?

PHERES:

- he’s taking hormone blockers, essentially, to try and stop his adult molt. what this is doing is largely just slowing it.

- he’s largely accepting of the fact he’s a cusp at this point! the key thing here is that this is the first time that Pheres is 90% comfortable with who he is, it’s just that the remaining 10% is huge, because this 10% could get him killed.

- how does he deal with this? what are his responses? the answer probably depends heavily on Kit, but if he does sprout gills, options are..

he starts arranging things to get them sewn up by sipara

he disappears into the ocean, lbr here, and deals with this in the mature, adult fashion of “fuck everyone, I’m hiding”.

- if he actually does think he’s starting to molt, he’s going to bolt, end up in some backwater corner of the planet and then wail. a lot. like a cat stuck in a tree and unable to figure out how you actually get down. because BEING ALONE IN THE BOONDOCKS IS WHAT HE THOUGHT HE WANTED, BUT IN REALITY -- =:(

RICCIN:

- one day, they will return from the war, and stop being borderline unusable qnq

- key to them and nana is probably just puzzle out how to highlight the most interesting parts of their charas.

ID:

plot points to hit are:

- sipara/id: this has veered towards unhealthy, sipara’s resentful, id is largely oblivious, because he just wants to stamp “MINE” on her forehead, ala ullane, and he’s not particularly fussed over the quadrant.

- dancing is getting less interesting for him, in the face of politics. ID likes attention, he likes violence, he likes being the best at what he does. how’s this work out for him? he can be manipulative and charismatic when he wants to, he just literally never bothers - what would give him the motivation to actually want to bother?

- shore up ullane/id interactions! or: something to emphasize the fact ullane is perpetually super high priority. AWFUL YELLOW COUSINS. probs id’s healthiest relationship?

Possibly way to link these together:

- Hap finds out via Sipara that he’s short-lived, freaks the fuck out. Gets more ambitious towards office shit! This sparks off ID’s competitive spirit, Pheres is less-than-pleased when it spills onto the Scimitar, ID potentially calls Pheres out on being a cusp, Pheres freaks out at Riccin, who freaks out at him, ends up talking to Nanako..

.. and might swing Riccin into lunatics, and link Nana/Riccin together for prosleytisism?

MAYBE.

[fleetbound]

HEMOSWAP AU: RAMPAGING RUSTS

12660 words - cw: mentions of drug use

Tradition said that all maroons and browns were raised in the royal creches, cloistered away from all save their lusii and their clutchmates, but when you were three sweeps, an entire twelve perigees from your emergence, the guards had taken you away, and brought you before the God-Queen of Alternia herself.

In the creches, everything had been golds and whites, draped from the ceilings and in the fabrics they’d wrapped you in. There were suns on your skirts, and bones embroidered onto the hems of your sleeves, so they’d clinked with every step, and each of you crechelings could hear one another coming, even minutes away. Everything had smelled like sunlight and warmth and the bitter-salt sting of pupas, the sweat and the feathers and the dust of them all, cloistered together in those hallowed halls.

Out in the rest of the palace, no one wore bones. There’s no other pupas out and about, no matter how much you crane your neck, and there’s no feathers, or dust, or fur on the ground: the floors of the hall are barren, stripped clean by plum-cheeked servants who work as you watch, and there’s no pupas. The only trolls are the ones who go by are gold-clad legs, too tall to see their faces, no matter how you crane your neck as they sweep by.

The throne room here swirled with tinted smoke, the smell of chamomile and cinnamon so heavy that you could taste it in the back of your throat, sticking to your lungs with every breath out. There was no white. Everything here was red, red, red, from the carpet catching underfoot, to the drapery encasing the throne, to the smooth leather sticking to the damp skin of your shoulder.

“It’ll be fine, pupadear,” your favourite guard had murmured in your ear, sticky sweet. Then he’d pushed you forward, staggering, to climb the steps of the throne, where Her Imperial Luminosity awaited. She was a column of silk at the top of it all, a pillar of red that scarcely moved as you watched.

You missed the white.

As you climb, each step is tall as your waist. Each step is perfectly polished, with a surface that catches the flickering lights of the braziers nearby. Each step is mottled pink, paler than the skin of an eggshell, and striped with colour as flushed as the Empress’s blood. It gets flushed with yours, too, when your palm skitters on an edge, slits right open and spills, vibrant, across the stone - but when you collapse back onto your rump with a wail, the guards behind you drum the butts of their halberds to the ground in disapproval.

It’s the same sound you’d get, when you gave a wrong answer in the schoolfeeds. It’s a sign to keep climbing, take this as the trial it is - because it is, isn’t it? It’s a match to your tests. You’re supposed to give the answers they want, when they want it, and not cry just because the screen’s gone blurry.

But your schoolfeeds are wind-swept with fresh air through the windows, and the scent of bread within them. It’s easy to stay calm there. You’ve never cut yourself during one of those! And you’d certainly never choked on the fucking air there, which’s the only reason you’re not squalling: you can’t get enough in your mouth to build up a proper wail without choking, not even when you bury your face in your knees.

There’s the clink of metal next to your face. The rod of a halberd’s close enough to lean against: when you sniffle, petulant, it brushes the tip of your nose. A cool hand drops on your neck, and then your favourite guard leans down in a rustle of silk. “D’you need me to carry you?” he murmurs. “Because I can, twinkletoes, but -” His claws drum against the fabric of your sherwani. “D’you really want to look like a pupa in front of us all? An even bigger one?”

“I am a pupa,” you sniff. “My fronds hurt.”

“A lot more than your fronds are going to hurt if you don’t hustle.” Something hits the ground next to you, a sharp clatter against the stone. You hiss, jerking back - then Ico drops the halberd’s butt to the ground again, harder this time. “‘fraid I can’t actually carry you,” he admits, watching you through his lashes. His eyes are white, at least, white and yellow all the way through. “C’mon, sweetheart, ‘afore they think I ought to cull you after all -”

And you don’t want to deal with the warning implicit, so you start climbing instead, your mouth clasped sulkily to your palm.

By the time you reach the top, you’re sweating with the effort of it all. The room is swimming orange, from the smoke and your own frustration. You want to go hive. You don’t want to be here anymore, not that you ever did, but the column of red is in front of you. And when you glance back, there’s so many steps that you’d have to go down.

So you approach it instead, and when you’re finally in front of it, orange beading on your forehead, an arm scrubbing peevishly at your eyes - then it opens, and the Empress says:

“Oh.”

Under all the veils, she’s pretty. Prettier than your proctor, prettier than the statues. She’s so soft, in the way only the highest of bloods ever get, with fat, rounded cheeks that’re flush with her blood, and skin that hangs delicately from her chin and her arms. She’s got big, doe-like eyes, and two sets of horns, more brilliantly curved than any you’ve ever seen. (Yours are stumpy. The thought’s never struck you before, but standing here, in front of her - how could it not?) The top set is curved like the maker’s lyre. The bottom.. they’re just like the handmaiden’s on the side, but bigger, and painted white and with swirling runes. At first you think they must be painted. Then she tilts her head, and the firelight catches on them.

They’re etchings. Etchings filled with gold, writing out the sort of stories you could read, you think, if she ever held still long enough.

‘cause she’s not holding still. She’s leaning forward, her hands braced on her knees. Her hair falls in a ripple over her shoulder, in a waft of vanilla that’s almost refreshing, compared to all the spices. “May I?” she asks, polite, holding out a hand - and it takes you a moment to realise what it means.

That she’s asking you.

You nod, stiff. When she smiles, the expression captures her whole wide face, from the scrunch of her nose to the dimples in her cheeks. She looks a little like you, you think. When you’re older, you want to look a lot like her. But it’s strange to think she’s looking back at you as she places her thumb gently on your chin, cups her fingers under it to turn your head one way and then another.

“Oh.” Her teeth are stained black this close, like all of the proctors. But unlike them, her fangs are gold - and her tongue is red as the rest of the room, bright like she’s swallowed the sun and it’s trying to escape, one sliver at a time. “You look just like the both of us, don’t you.” And you don’t know what that means, but maybe you don’t need to, because she sounds so pleased. “What’s your name, child?”

“Sipara Nzinga,” you say, and her expression shifts.

“Of course you are! That was a silly question. But I’m a silly troll, sometimes, so you’ll just have to forgive me my fancies. Well, then. Do you know what the two most important traits are, Nzinga?” And the way she says your name is so strange, in a way you don’t understand. But then the moment passes.

“It’s being kind,” she says, gentle, “and it’s being loyal. Because, you know, when you’ve nothing else, those are the things that matter, and those are the things that’ll pull you through. Anyone can be cruel. It’s easy, being cruel, but to be kind.. that takes strength. It takes character. And what is loyalty, but kindness to the ones that matter the most?”

“Do you think you can manage that?”

You’ve taken so many tests, since they first pulled you into the royal creche. You know, by now, what the answers are supposed to be - so you nod, brisk, and then, as an afterthought, dip into an awkward bob of a curtsy.

“Good,” she says, pleased, and she taps two fingers against your cheek. “The best of my courtiers always can.”

You were assigned to Pheres Dysseu that same night.

    First-hand accounts state that in the aftermath of the Virtuous Empyreals’ Ascension, the Empire was left in chaos. Initial heresayers held that the Demoness was a false god, and the link to the Sun was political maneuvering, borne without basis for the gain of the Empyreal alone. Others claimed that, although the Handmaiden was real, the Empyreals’ position as her avatar was fake. She had never manifested before. Why, they argued, would she appear now?

    The Empyreal faced these accusations with what would come to be known as her usual grace. She said to the nonbelievers: every word out of my mouth is the truth, and every word out of my mouth is a promise. I am the Handmaiden. I am the Demoness. I am the Sun, given form, and I can no more lie than I can snuff out the light that preserves us.

She said to the nonbelievers: what is the Sun, but death rising? Its rays poisons us. Its face blinds us. To live in its shadow kills us, but without it, we will wither, and we will die all the sooner. It gives as it takes, and as the Handmaiden ushers us into life, the Demoness carries us from it.

    She carried the suns heat in her veins, and she carried the suns light in her eyes, and with these, she had ripped the shadows of the deep from the Empire’s very roots. The Empyreal, made in the Demoness’s image, carved from the Sun’s own body, had appeared to shine light on the structure that had borne us, and burn away the rot of its foundation.

    And from the ashes, she said, we would all be borne anew.

--- GUILTY UR-NAMMU

SCHOLAR OF THE FIFTH CENTURY

TWO HUNDRED SWEEPS AFTER THE DEATH OF THE IMPERIOUS CONDESCENSION

The problem with loyalty, as it turns out, is that it never goes to quite the right person.

It takes you three nights, and one haul into his bubblebath,  to realise that Pheres Dysseu is nothing short of a hazard to the Empire, to her Empyreal, and to everyone around him.

It takes you three sweeps to decide you’ll cull every single troll in the world to keep him safe anyway.

It’s near-noon, and the sun is a burning ball of hatred up high in the sky. Even under your umbrella, with protection slathered on your husk and the tree canopy extending what feels like miles above you, you’re still sweating like a dog. But this is the problem with visiting colonies like Leafchute. They’re not civilized, like the rest of the Empire. They’re fucking space hicks, content to pretend their tree bridges and root homes count as a society. And while you’re here, you just have to deal with it.

(And of course, of all the planets your people could have chosen in this awful backwater nook of the universe, they always pick the ones with the same kind of sun as back home.)

At least there’s a breeze. But it’s hard to feel like it’s any consolation when it sets the leaves to rustling above you. Everything’s like glass here, from the leaves, to the grass that crunches underfoot, to the dirt that’s currently trying to bore several large holes into your wastechutes. The sound should be soothing! It sounds like something’s getting shattered, over and over again, and it’s ruining your nerves.

The fact Pheres still hasn’t emerged from the river isn’t helping anything, either.

“If he’s not out in, like, five minutes,” you hiss at Riccin, waspish, “you’re going to get in there and fetch him.”

“Fuck off, I ain’t gonna.” Riccin’s not bothered. Riccin’s never bothered, for all that she’s supposed to be his bodyguard, real and proper: she’s so not bothered that she’s got an entire fucking magazine draped over her face, and some jade feeding her grapes right out of his palm.

So you snatch the magazine right off of her face, rolling it up and smacking her in the forehead with it. The jade scatters with a laugh. “Not a conversation, Kayata!” you bark, loud enough to be heard over her hissing. “We have a job to do here, dude, and just ‘cause you want to see how much of your fucking skin’s gonna peel the fuck off out here doesn’t mean ---”

“Excuse me? Oh, little rust,” she purrs, “you forget your fucking place --”

She sits up, looming over you like a bad omen. Another troll would’ve shut the fuck up, probably. Riccin’s always trying to push, push, push, see if one night, you’ll give. Just because you’re a flatscan and she’s an imperial fucking yellow, high enough that her blood’s catty-corners with yours. She thinks that means something. She thinks that just because she’s got sparks snapping off her eyes, it means a single goddamn thing.

She’s wrong, and she has been since the first time she saw you and tried to step the fuck up. There’s ozone burning at the back of your snout. All around you, the locals are wilting, stepping back, their ears pinned and eyes wide. Leafchute has their own mothergrub, and their own culture borne of it: they’re tree hugging greens, the lot of ‘em, too soft to ever leave the planet, and every show of spark terrifies them like you’re setting a torch to their trees. Riccin’s been having a ball, tossing their horns and watching them scatter.

You’ll be fucked if she thinks she can do it with you. And that’s just not how the two of you’s relationship goes. You snatch hold of her braid, yanking hard, and the mechanics on your arms whirr, the oil chugging as the gears activate. She hisses, but when the force increases, she bends. And then you smack the false tine of your golden horns right into hers, hard enough that the sound rings through the trees.

“I have forgotten jack and shit, Kayata. I’m your superior officer, baby, and d’you know what that means?” You lean in. “That means if I say go into the water, you’re already in it.”

Riccin sneers at you, then sticks out her tongue.

“And if you don’t keep that in your mouth, I’m going to bite it off.”

“Is that supposed to be a threat,” she calls over your shoulder, as you turn and flounce towards the water, “or is that a bribe, little rust?”

Your kismesis should be the worst person you know, you sulk, but it’s hard for her to hit that goal when Pheres is still under the waves. It takes another five minutes before he finally emerges, rosy-cheeked and pleased, the skin along his nose and shoulders rippled with colour. There’s a laugh on his lips, and you could hate him for it. Minthe had once sank into the water, centuries ago, and they hadn’t come out after.

The thought haunts you, but it’s never bothered Pheres. He certainly isn’t bothered right now. His hair’s plastered flat to his head and face in strands that stick as he tries to peel them off, but he doesn’t need to see to get back to shore, the ponce. “Pheres!” you wail, and sure enough, he just turns, and starts paddling your way.

You meet him at the shoreline. He’s soaked through to the bone, but he’s hot as a brand, the same as always. When you hook your arm around his waist to haul him up all the way, his gills flutter against your arm, pulsing as they push out the last of the water. “Thank you,” he chirrs at you, pleased, but then he’s wriggling away, spinning to face the waiting crowd.

Standing like this, shirtless, boney, his curls flat and water dripping off of him, he doesn’t look like a heir. But the horns are unmistakable, painted the same white and gold as Medeia’s, and when he pushes the last strands of his hair off of his face - opens his eyes -

- they blaze with the same white fire as the sun high above. “Good afternoon, everyone!” he calls out, his voice crisp and cheerful as he clasps his hands in front of him. “I hope you enjoyed the show! Ah, I certainly did.” He beams at the trolls watching him, all of their gazes rapt. “Congratulations! This has to be some of the best water I’ve ever encountered, I think, and.. heavens, I’ve swam all over the place by now, I think. If this is what mangrove filtration is.. I’ll have to inform the Empyreal that it’s simply smashing. This is far better than the reports said.”

“She’s going to be more than impressed. She’s going to be ecstatic. Ah, who’s in charge of this project? I want to get a name -”

They’re all watching him, rapt, like they’ll die if they look away.

But he’s used to it. Pheres laughs, bright and fond, his teeth biting into his lip. “Ah,” he says, sheepish, “I’m dreadfully sorry, that was presumptive of me, wasn’t it..? That isn’t the way you ask. You! Miss! Up near the front, with the lovely horns..”

The girl steps forward hesitantly, and Pheres flounces forward, takes her hand between his. The light catches on his wrist, the scars ground into them, but she doesn’t seem to notice as he presses his lips to her knuckles. You can’t hear the words he murmurs. You don’t need to.

You know Pheres, and surely enough, a moment later, her face floods green. She laughs. The hunch in her shoulders drop.. and then she turns around, back to the crowd, and calls out something in the clicks that pass off as a language here.

The rest of the ceremony is a blur. Because that’s what this is. It’s a ceremony, just another performance of the hundreds you’ve pulled off this past sweep.

Pheres is the youngest descendant of Her Virtuous Empyrean, and one of the two living Excellencies. He represents justice, and unification, and the judgement of the stars themselves, because his very hatching - only a handful of centuries after the demise of Minthe - was noteworthy, even before he’d finally climbed out of his pupa cocoon with long, frilled gills dragging down his sides. The Empyrean calls him a sign of grace, a way for all trolls to know that the Suns reach extends to everyone, no matter how deep they roam.

Pheres is the way she’ll bring the light of the Sun to the darkest edges of the sea, and his tour is her way of reminding every colony - every troll within her Empire - that her word is the truth, and his very existence is a promise of that.

And he was made for the position, you think. By the time he peels away from the jades, cheeks flushed and beaming, you know it’ll be the same as it has been on every other colony. Trolls love him, in a way they wouldn’t if he was just another troll. If Pheres was a troll, he’d be a poor one. But he’s not. He’s the manifestation of the Empyreal’s will, the spirit of the Sun on Alternia, and so they just take him as he is.

You just take him as he is. He’s pleased as punch as he drifts back to you, linking his arm through yours. His skin sticks to yours, chafing as you walk, but he just laughs. “I think that went well,” he says, and you puff your cheeks at him in response.

“I thought you drowned.”

“If I could drown, Sipa,” he says, “Rmeros would’ve offed me sweeps ago, don’t you think?”

It’s true enough. Rmeros.. he’s never liked his signmate, for all that the three of you try to pretend otherwise. And you understand why! You’re not stupid, and if you’d been Rmeros’s companion, instead of useless, drowsy Loxias.. well, things would be different, that’s all. Pheres’s a threat, for all that no one would ever accept a ruler with gills along his sides. He’s a threat, because as long as the Empyreal has him, she doesn’t necessarily need Rmeros.

After all, once Rmeros had hatched, she hadn’t needed Minthe.

“Pheres.” Your job is to keep him safe, and part of that means watching his mouth, since he’s never apt to. You might be on Leafchute, far from any of the Empyreal’s cameras, but you’re never far from her agents. You hate Riccin. Pheres adores her.

But she knows the meaning of loyalty, the same as you, and you’ve never quite trusted it.

The two of you glance towards her as one, but she’s back to flirting with the jadeblood who’d been feeding her. She’d got an arm braced on the tree above his head, her braid dangling in front of his face, and as you watch, she takes the excuse to reach out, brush her knuckles against the fine arch of his cheekbone.

“My apologies,” Pheres murmurs. “But I think she’s a little preoccupied. Do you suppose she’ll be back in tonight..?” Jadebloods are rare on Alternia, and the ones that stay on planet tend to be traditionalists. The Empyreal trusts they’d never act out. Isn’t trust the basis of her empire? But you never have, and so you’ve always steered Pheres away from all of them, save the most mealy-mouthed of expatriots like here.

And that means Riccin’s rarely seen them, either. “No way in hell,” you tell him. “Riccin’s gonna be knee-deep in jade slurry for the rest of the week, dude, we’re gonna be lucky to see ‘er at breakfast.”

Pheres titters. “That is vulgar. But, ah, for the best, I suppose. We don’t need any tales slipping back to the Empyreal. Because, ah, speaking of my glorious signmate..”

He leans in, nuzzling his head into the crook of your neck. Some people think that the two of you are flush. Riccin does, for all that they spend as many afternoons in Pheres’s rooms as yours, and they ought to know the idea of either of you swinging into any quadrant would make you both hurl. Everyone should know! But they don’t, somehow.

Whatever. The two of you are just.. something else, something that surpasses quadrants, or names, or anyone’s understanding except each other’s. Pheres is yours, and he has been since the first time Medeia spoke to you. She asked you to give him your loyalty.

You’ve given him everything, since the first time you’ve met him, and he’s done the same.

“He’s not the one that we need to worry about.” His mouth’s close enough to brush your skin. “The Empyreal is saying she’ll be back at the end of the sweep. So when she arrives home, we’ll finally have to” His breath catches. “.. talk about Minthe.”

    When we look back, in the oncoming centuries, we should ask: why did this happen, and how? How did one maroon take over an empire? The Condescension’s reign lasted for nearly as long as our species has lived. A thousand attempts have been made to topple it. How did this one succeed?

    The answer, of course, is social engineering. The Condescension managed her Empire through propaganda and social mores. She built a framework in which questioning her was unthinkable, and in which leaning in would gain the most rewards, and then she extended it to every element of her citizen’s lives. Perhaps this is the way through which all empires are formed. The records are too old, and have been lost for too long, for us to know. When all of our foreknowledge comes from the mouth of the elders, distorted through oral tradition, how can we ever know for sure?

    What we know is that religion formed an important part of the Empire in the past, and that through religion, the Empyreal sealed her control over our entire galaxy.

[...]

The issue of descendants was confronted by the First Scorch of the Open Sky in the fifth century after the Empyreal’s Rule, to help solidify and answer questions after the hatching of the first descendant, Minthe. The people were in chaos. The Empyreal was a God, and although the old faiths had long been eliminated among the younger castes, the coldbloods still remembered the foundations of their former religions.

The Messiahs had never spawned descendants. The Moongods had never deigned to walk the planet. The Servants were spirits, and the Ancestors were dead, and none had ever tried to claim their offspring wandered the planes, free of the divinity that was their hatchright. Even the gods of the darkest depths did not meddle in this manner, seeding their flesh into our eggs, and their genes into our lives.

To reproduce was to admit a connection to the world, and to bind yourself to it. The divine were above that, and it was through this that they gained the right to rule.

The Empyreal disagreed.

The Chant of the Sun establishes the facts of our reality. A descendant is simply a part of their ancestor reborn, and their life is a chance at redemption for the crimes of the past. Trolls of the same bloodline are but fragments of the same soul, scourged by the flames of death until purified of their regrets, their traumas, their pains.

The Empyreal is not a troll. Her soul is the sun itself, too strong for just one shell. When it grows too strong, it splits, as not to shred the first of its shells. The Descendants of the Empyreal, named in the Chant as her Excellencies, are not true descendants: they are simply aspects of the whole, split among different bodies.

The First Excellency Minthe is the first Descendant of the Empyreal, and is nothing more than an extension of the Empyreal herself. Although this philosophy was introduced in the Chant of the Sun, the Empire did not understand the full implications for several more centuries, until the Betrayer, the False Sun, rose up against the Empyreal.

He killed her, in front of her descendants and the Empire, in a mirror of how the Condescension had died nearly a millenia ago.

    And in that moment, the true nature of her Excellencies was revealed.

--- HA’AEHO WILCOX

SOCIOLOGICAL SCHOLAR

1000 SWEEPS AFTER THE ASCENSION OF THE EMPYREAL.

“I just need a file,” you whine. “Ullane, please!”

“Am busy, miss Nzinga.” Ullane’s walking fast enough that you have to trot to keep up with her, the heel of her shoes echoing sharply through the white halls. It’s amazing what sort of respect she elicits. She’s not the highest troll in the hospital by far: there’s a troll you’d passed by with a symbol that almost matched yours in warmth, and almost all of the doctors are yellow here. Nah, Ullane’s clawed her way all the way up to the top through merit, mostly, and the fact she’ll give hornrot to anyone that tries to step in her way.

Or trod on her heels, so you’re careful not to trot too quickly. The ceramic horns on your headband are fake, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have real ones tucked behind ‘em.

“I know you’re busy, but -” Hospitals make your horns buzz just to be in them. The constant presence of psionics is so strong in here, it feels like an ache, and you kind of love it. All around you, everything is constantly in motion, almost like you’re in space, except infinitely more efficient. Doctors and patients and items wheel through the air above you, so well coordinated that there’s no risk of collision. Two construct makers create a bed as you walk by, one working on the frame while the other attaches glowing red wheels, and a healer soothes their patient while they work, her glowing hands pressed to the nape of his neck. The walls glow with tech. The air glows with aura. Your horns ache, and your ears are so full of chatter, you almost get distracted off of Ullane.

You love hospitals.

If you weren’t stuck with Pheres all the time, sometimes you think you would’ve been a doctor - but you’re a flatscan, and that means no one wants you doing anything important. If you hadn’t been stuck with Pheres, they would’ve kept you in the fucking creches for the rest of your life, tucked away like a wriggler.

Or else they would’ve made you into a second Matari, simpering and swinging her way through life, yanking on the line of people’s expectations just so she could strangle them with it later. You get why she acts the way she does. It’s funny, and it’s charming, and it’s not like she’s ever had any other options. Flatscans are like maroons: too close to the Sun’s favour to cull, but too delicate to risk them roaming far. Pheres is the only reason you’re free to do what you want.

The Empyreal had asked you for your loyalty, that night when you’d first met her, and you’d learned quickly that it means stepping outside of your role in life. It’s just a shame that, for you, that’s meant violence, and not working here, under Ullane, saving fucking lives and shaping the future.

At least you’re still shaping the future.

“Ullane! Ullane, please, c’mon, babe.” You can’t touch her! Gods, you’re tempted to, but you can’t, because for all that she likes you, Ullane’s bite has always been worse than her bark. She doesn’t believe in holding back when she wants to make a point. And right now, her shoulders are tense, and her mouth’s a thin slash. You’re already teetering on the edge of her patience.

You can’t afford to push her! But at the same time --

“I don’t need you to look,” you wheedle, speeding up so that you fall in step next to her. “Please? I’ll look myself, babe. I just need your permission, because these are files in, like, your basement. They’re your jurisdiction.”

Ullane’s tail lashes, hard enough to catch you in the leg. “You have the Third Excellency’s passcode,” she says, flat. “Cannot use that? Why?”

“Because --”

Pheres hadn’t needed to say more than the name Minthe. The Empyreal had died. The Betrayer had come to her on the day of her Ascension, with the sun high in the sky, to ask a favour of her. He had laid his horns down, bared the nape of his neck to her as he’d kissed the hems of her robes. He’d performed every rite, as was his right, and when she’d lifted his chin to see her - when she’d asked him what he’d wanted, her wrists bare, her thumb on her his cheek - he’d asked for her life.

And he’d taken it, as the moon had passed in front of the sun overhead. You suppose he’d planned it that way, just for the fucking theatrics of the moment. There was something about his psionics that had never been seen before, and, afterwards, would never be seen again. The Betrayer - the Beheader, as he’d been known, back when he was the Empyreal’s executioner and her confidante - was a construct maker, one of the finest in the Empire for the fact his creations would last for sweeps without fail. It was a unique skill, one that took power, but with the sun’s light blazing from his third horn, and the sun’s white carved into his very skin, no one had ever thought to ask where he’d gotten that power.

It had been a mistake. The Betrayer was a leech, the first of his kind. He drained the life from those he touched, and as he took the light from the Empyreal’s eyes, it spooled into his own. His constructs were made from souls. He’d make an axe from the sun’s light, once she’d fallen, and he’d turned to face the Two Excellencies. Rmeros had been a pupa, back then. He’d cowered behind his throne --

-- but Minthe had stood up, and they’d spoken with Medeia’s voice, and they’d fought the Beheader with her weapons.

The history books say that Minthe didn’t die that night. How could they? Minthe is Medeia, for all of the Excellencies are but aspects of the Empyreal. You’d memorised the Chant as a pupa. You know the rules of the thing. When Medeia takes the body of her descendants, it doesn’t kill them, it just absorbs them, because they’ve always been the same.

Except that doesn’t hold, when you grew up watching Pheres and Rmeros fight every time they’re in the same room. They’re not the same, as anyone with eyes could see, and neither of them are anything like the Empyreal, and you don’t think Minthe was, either. They’d been serious, in all of the pictures and the videos before Medeia had died. They’d been her guard in action and in appearance, with a mouthful of knives and a tongue sharp enough to pass as one.

The Empyreal and her descendants black their fangs every night, all the better to blunt them. Minthe had been a different sort of creature than their ancestor, up until they were not.

You won’t let that happen to Pheres.

“-- because it’s for Pheres,” you say, owlish, “but he can’t know. Please, Ullane.”

It takes two more hours of whittling, but she gives you the code, finally, after a great deal of hassle.

The library filing system is massive. Ullane is head over the top facility on Alternia, and one of the oldest still left standing on the planet. Rumours say that this is the place where The Empyreal had her ports removed, back in the first century of her rule. You know that’s a lie, but only because Pheres had whispered to you, once, that as a pupa, he’d seen her back, still bristling with wires. No, she’d kept it for another reason, and you only hope that Ullane isn’t aware of it.

You don’t wear your sign. It’s nowhere in your files, stripped bare from the records in Medeia’s spite, and you’re not supposed to know you even have one. As companions to the Excellencies, you and Loxias wear the Cuckoo sign. It’s the only one you’re supposed to ever need. But you’ve always loathed other people’s secrets, and you’ve always wondered about the queer way that Medeia watches you, sometimes.

So you’d pried. And that’s why, when the symbol of the Phoenix begins appearing in the mosaic of the walls as you descend into the basement, it feels like home.

This had been your ancestor’s hospital, back before the Empyreal’s rise. It was the place that Medeia had worked, during that first, fatal rebellion, long before she was the Empyreal, and it was the place that your ancestor had betrayed her.

It was the place your ancestor died. It’s also the place that your face and your bloodchrome should allow you full access to the files, once you get past the first locks. You’d needed Ullane’s key to get in. You’re trusting that your genetics will allow you to purge the system afterwards, because if anyone finds out what you’re looking for..

.. well. Pheres dying will be the least of your worries.

Ullane’s key lets you in. The doors of the library vault slide open with a hiss and a pop. The air within smells almost painfully crisp, in the way that stagnant vaults get: you don’t suppose anyone’s been down here in ages, and when you run your finger across a shelf, it comes away with dust.

There’s no visible cameras, when you glance around at the ceiling. But you know that doesn’t mean much. So you lock the door behind you promptly, then you walk over to the nearest control panel, hooking your nails into the corner and tugging.

Age has sealed it into place. It doesn’t move until you roll your shoulders, and the mechanical gauntlets on your arms click to life. The technology’s old here, you’re relieved to see, old enough that it’s a audiovisual flat curled into a vat on the inside, breathing softly amidst the nutrience gel. That’s good. The Empyreal loathes biotechnology. All but the farthest reaches of the Empire have been stripped of it, and the fact there’s some hidden away here, in the one place she does her best to ignore..

.. it’s a good sign, that’s all. Maybe you don’t even have to cover your tracks. You’re starting to think that she wouldn’t look here, even if there was an axe to her neck.

But you hold your breath as you press your palm to the bioreader all the same. If this doesn’t work, it’ll set off alarms. If it doesn’t work, you’re going to be culled, at best, if the Empyreal doesn’t just husk out your body and burn your soul herself. And then there’ll be no one left to protect Pheres, and the only one who’ll care when he falls is his little cerulean.

Like that’ll do him any good.

The screen quivers. But the alarms don’t go off. The light flickers green, and the jar unseals with a hiss, the worm within stirring. It smells like poison when you screw it open, but it settles neatly over your face. You’d practiced at hive long before you’d come up with this plan, just to make sure you didn’t panic, but there’s still that flash of fear as the flatworm settles into place. The belly splits. Carbon rods slide up your nostrils, your mouth - breathing syringes, you remind yourself, to ensure you won’t asphyxiate, and the vocal command, to navigate -

- and then the flatworm ripples as it finally finds your horns. There’s a pressure in your head, unfamiliar, but you’ve read enough books to know what it is. The worms were engineered off of a cerulean technomancer’s genome, in the handful of decades before the Tyrian Empire fell. These were made for trolls of any caste to interface with easily, but back then, warmbloods were raised to fall to psychics easily. The Empyreal changed that. All of your exercises in the royal creche have primed your pan to resist, so this hurts, as the worm sloughs past your resistances. It feels like needles in your eyes, digging in one painful inch at a time.

But then something pops. The pain alleviates as spots dance in front of your vision. Then they brighten, merge.. and you’re staring at a screen, projected against the back of your lids.

HELLO, DAEDAL NZINGA.

LAST LOGIN: -1938.46 SWEEPS AGO.

PLEASE ENTER COMMAND.

AVAILABLE DIRECTORIES ARE…

You get to work.

        > BLOODLINES, DAUTHS

    The Dauths bloodline is maroon, hemochrome #8b0000, and listed as EXTINCT. Last known member was Haziin Dauths, adult title THE BEHEADER.

> BLOODLINE PROFILES - MEMBER PROFILES - PSIONIC BREAKDOWN - LINKED BLOODLINES - DESCENDED BLOODLINES

    -- anaxilausAnnexed [AA] is now trolling iDo [ID]! --

AA: u said u had deets forn me

ID: Oh, sugarpod, don'tcha just know you're gilling my heart when you hit me up like this? / (•ㅅ•)＼

ID: You need to try betta, sweetheart, or else I'll need a sturgeon~

AA: urn fishpuns suck

AA: arne u still wearning fake fins

ID: Don't be fishcious~ I know I'm fintastic, and that's just awfully hard to resist, but my goodness gracious, I just don't think we're in the right square to go talkin' about what I'm wearing.

ID: Unless you're trying to vacillate? (=ＴェＴ=) In which case: oh, no.

ID: Maybe I need to call us in a third leaf, here~ Get some kelp~! (^=˃ᆺ˂)

AA: soz

AA: would rnip off yrn bulge and feed it 2 you beforne i flipped

ID: Heavens, that's just not very warm of you, now, is it? (,,^・⋏・^,,)

AA: rnly

AA: thought we werne B O T H playin' waderns tonight

AA: >:P

AA: you have the deets

AA: orn n

ID: Of course I do. Try to have some patience, sweetheart. (=｀ω´=)

ID: One illegal ɹǝpɐǝɥǝq git, right here and in the wild.

ID: Don'tcha think a fellow would cover that sort of thing up?

AA: loool. why? me, u, 'n' meddypoo arne the only ones who knows it's a thing.

ID: Really!

ID:

ID: Really?

AA: always rnemembern to tip and thank urn censornarchivists beforne u go, dude.

AA: bc who knew? who needs mindfuckerny when uve got gaslighting instead? >:}

You fucking hate honeydens so much.

You’re a flatscan. They do jack and shit for you, on any level, except probably give you cancer - but psionics are practically fucking addicted to the thought of lung damage, brought on by the Empyreal’s ongoing bulgetucking over everything hookah-related. At least the Empire doesn’t allow legal dens to sell or produce the sort of mind honey that causes burn out, and this one is clearly cut with tobacco, the heavy scent of coffee seeded through it. There’ll be no bleeding on the floor here, and no scorchmarks on the sofas.

No, folks’ll just be tipsy.

Of course this is where you’d find Hadean fucking Photon.

It’s a pretty place, at least! It’s high-ceilinged in the way that all places that cater to warmbloods tend to be, with thick, wooden rafters more than capable of supporting a few trolls laced through the top. There’s lanterns hanging from the top, high enough that they’re blurs in the darkness, and candles on every table, carefully pinned into place, and guards lingering every ten feet or so, their eyes half-shut as they lean against the walls. You recognise the amplifying bracelets looped loosely around their horns and wrists, and the set of the stones in them.

Glitch’s honeydens are some of the most expensive in the Empire. You dropped three hundred caegars just to get in the door, even before the drink fee, but it makes sense: the ground’s covered in lush carpets and pillows, soft enough that you could practically sink into them, and each table is practically full of trolls. The amount of money she must spend on security alone - to make sure nothing ignites, to make sure no one fights - is more than enough to warrant the fees.

And the amount that her honey goes for. It’s a good thing you keep most of your money in paper, because you’re going to be burning through a good quarter of it tonight, even if things go fast.

And they might just go fast, because you spot Hadean right at the back, lounging on a table like he’s already half-asleep.

He stirs when you slide into the seat across from him. He looks just like the picture! Long-limbed, long-faced: he’s all points, from his elbows to his nose, but at least he’s got some weight covering the roughest edges. Muscle, too, for all that it’s lean.

He’s got long horns with thick tines, lacking any of the nicks that you’re used to. They’re polished. They’re heavy. If it weren’t for the glowing third hanging between them, he’d look like any other cast-off from the royal creches, especially when he sighs and sits up, one elbow pushing on the table while he sloppily holds up his head. “You,” he says, raking his eyes up and down, “are way too young for me. Sorry, kiddo, call me back in.. what’re you, six? Six sweeps. And when you’ve got another six inches on you, too.”

You’ve dealt with lost eggs before! There were three in the palace alone, back when Pheres was younger. Apollo Harley had had the good grace to cocoon directly in the sewers, and she’d been found at around five, when she’d fled from the seadwellers who’d raised her. She had spent most of the time you’d known her chasing the both of you out of her rooms, and now led the Imperial Comballet. Nikola Gemynd, your agemate, had been found at four sweeps, sleeping in a gutter. He’d been apprenticed under the communications master, and ran a show every night over podcasts. Orivar Tyrgan, the only other gilled maroon, had been hauled in kicking and screaming at six sweeps, more than half feral, and they’d never been able to civilize her.

That was the case with some eggs. They didn’t know what the fuck was best for them, and if the Empyreal couldn’t have them leashed, she wouldn’t have them at all. And isn’t that what Hadean is? Sure, he’s crecheraised, from top to bottom, but he’s still lost, because he doesn’t know what he is. No one does, and you don’t know how everyone’s missed it for so long, because looking at him..

He looks like more of a god than Medeia.

You don’t know why she hadn’t culled his ancestor the first time she’d laid eyes on him.

Or, when the waiter drops a drink on the table and just so happens to brush his hand against Hadean’s as he steps away, you do know. But you’re pretty fucking appalled. When you’d found out that the Beheader had descendants, you’d expected something.. you don’t know. Amazing! Someone majestic, straight out of the books, who’d split Medeia’s throat with his own horns, and spare you the trouble of watching your boy die.

The only thing that Hadean looks capable of splitting is his fucking shirt, since it’s unbuttoned down to his navel.

You’ll make this work, though. You have to! And when he reaches for his glass, you swipe it first, holding it just out of reach. “So not interested, loser, chill your jets and call me when you can figure out what a button is. You’re Hadean Photon, right?”

“Don’t blackmail me for my fucking drink, you heartless wench,” he complains. “Are you with the paparazzi?

“Fess up, or I’m going to drink your drink.”

“So this is blackmail. Wow.” You’ve dealt with a lot of lost eggs. You’ve dealt with a lot of maroons, period, and you’ve hated ninety nine percent of them. They’re all so spoiled. At least the brownbloods, like Matari, have some bite. Hadean doesn’t even have a bark.

How are you supposed to get him to kill the Empyreal? He looks like he can’t even manage to kill himself, and not for lack of trying.

“I see how it is,” he says, mournful, but finally, he sits up.  “I’m just going to be fucking pestered to death by a shortstack who’s too cheap to buy her own drinks. If I order a new one, what, are you going to steal that, too? Is this a pale gambit?” He presses a hand to his heart. “Oh, miss Tinnie -”

How are you supposed to get him to do anything, when you really just want to throttle him?

“Just -” You drag your hands through your hair, your breath coming out as one long hiss. You don’t know how to do this. You’ve never had to play social games - why bother? You’ve had your machines, and your biotech, hidden away where the Empyreal wouldn’t smash them, and you’ve had Pheres. You never needed to figure out how to navigate this sort of mess.

You’d never thought that, when it came time to scalp her next body, Medeia would ever size up the mutant over fucking Rmeros in his prime.

“I just need to talk to you, fucker,” you say, and you’re going to hit him, because you almost sound plainative.

"What, are you someone's auspistice? Because if so -" He leans back in his chair, hooking his arms up above his head. "It didn't happen," he drawls, "and if it did, it wasn't that bad! And if it was, well, it's not a big deal. And if it is, then, it's not my fault, I usually check for rings, and shouldn't that count for something?"

You're going to strangle him, you decide. Fuck saving Pheres. Fuck killing Medeia. You're going to strangle Hadean Dauths right here and now, and it'll ruin everything, and it'll be worth it.

"And if it doesn't, that sounds like your problem, not mine."

Who could blame you? But at least this dries up the orange that’s trying to flood your eyes. Right! You don’t know what you’re doing here. This is different from working on machines, or genomes, or scrapping in the yards. But you could. This doesn’t have to be a social game.

How many times have you raked horns with Riccin, with Rmeros, with every troll who thinks that you being a flatscan means a single fucking thing? All throughout your life, trolls have always thought that, just because you don’t have a spark, they get to hold conversations.

You’re brown. They’re lucky you’re letting them hold their fucking breathes, and maroon or not, that’s just what you have to remember here. Hadean’s just like Riccin, and the rest of the royal creche. The fact Pheres could die if you don’t get him into line doesn’t mean a single thing.

"I'm not anyone's auspistice," you huff. "Holy shit, you're a fucking mess, didja know that? 'cause - holy sunfucker, dude, are you drunk?”

"Sunfucker? Please. We already covered that you're way too young for me~" A beat. “If I say yes,” he asks, curious, “will you give me back my drink?”

“No.” You flounce up in one swift motion, and just as quickly, you dump his drink on the carpet. Hadean squawks, shooting up like you personally shot him - then he squawks again when you’re in his space, too quick to react, and you’re grabbing him by the shoulder. The gears of your arms shriek as you haul him out of his seat, but he doesn’t resist so much as he just goes limp in protest.

“Help!” he calls out. “I’m being kidnapped by an oompa-loompa!”

One of the bouncers looks up.

“We’re going to the backroom I paid for,” you hiss at Hadean, “and we are going to talk. If you make one gross fucking joke, I will break off your horns and knit your mouth shut with your own pencil-bulge, and if you listen without me murdering you, I will buy you enough drinks for the rest of the day. How’s that?”

The bouncer is still looking at the two of you, contemplative. Does this look pitch? God, it probably looks pitch, and the thought does nothing to sweeten your mood. Hadean squints at you, contemplative, then he squawks again - what was his lusus, a sow? - when you shake him. “Hurry up!”

“Fine,” he snaps, and it’s the first sign of actual aggression you’ve seen from him. He half shoves you away, climbing to his feet, and he makes a show of straightening up his jacket. Like his shirt isn’t open. “Keep your hands to yourself, pipsqueak, before you get fucking dirt on me.”

It absolutely does look pitch, and your ears are pinned back to your shoulders as you lead the way to the back.

By the time you finish checking the room for bugs, Hadean’s half-sprawled across the wooden table, watching you with all of the sullen spite of a wriggler who’s had his SoftHands taken away. You’d dug up a picture of the Beheader from Daedal’s files, back at the hospital. He hadn’t looked like this boneless, lanky mass in front of you. He’d looked like the sort of troll who could kill a god, and then he had been.

A small, hysterical part of your pan keens that Pheres is going to die, and all this is going to do is guarantee you’ll die with him.

But you can’t listen to that. Failing isn’t an option, and that’s the only thing you have to remember. “Alright! You’re Hadean Photon,” you announce, but you’re scarcely a moment in before he’s interrupting -

“You hope.”

“No,” you snap. You’re pacing, and maybe you shouldn’t, but - nah, maybe you should. You have to treat him like Riccin. He’s about as inconsequential as Riccin. “I do not. I wish you were, like, legits anybody else, so I could cull you, wrap this, and consider this fucking done, time to find the actual real deal. Unfortunately: no! I’m stuck here, with your candy ass, because you’re Hadean Photon, and neither of us can fucking change it. And shut up, and don’t interrupt me. You’re Hadean Photon - except, like, you’re not. You just think you are.”

“Your name isn’t Hadean Photon, which’s, like, a phony-ass fake bloodline that doesn’t even go back to a real troll.” You’d spent three hours down there, rooting back as far as you could, and you’d kept swinging back to it. The registries claimed it was a related line, but it was just a false lead. The sort of thing that only held up until somebody with access to every file in the system sat down, and started peeling it all back, one file at a time. “Like, iunno how the fuck you never noticed, but, uh, your supposed ancestor has a completely different blood chrome?”

“Wow, is the brownblood being hemoist? So she was a little warmer,” he says, dismissive. He’s resumed slouching on the table. He looks like all of his bones have melted out of his fucking body. “That doesn’t mean anything -”

“Nettle Photon was brown, fucker!”

“So she was a lot warmer.” He shrugs. “It happens!” He pauses. “It does happen, right?”

You’ve been pacing. Now you stalk over and grab him by the braid, giving it a yank. “Do you have a pan in here?” you demand. “Or, like, did you boil it away with booze and coraldust back when you were still seven? Important question, dude, I just kind of want to fucking know, for, like, reasons!”

He squints at you through his open eye. “Careful, my braid’s sticky.”

You drop his braid. It clings to your hand for one, breath-takingly horrible second, then it drops. “Why is it sticky?” you demand.

“I’m not going to tell you that,” he says, patient. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

The room’s soundproof. It’s alright if you shriek, though it gets strangled down.

Not enough, though, because Hadean perks up at the sound. “Did you just peep?” he says, curious. “Seriously? Oh, chill out, you look like you’re going to burst something.” He takes his braid back with a yank, resettling it onto his shoulder, and actually sits up. It’s hard to tell where he’s looking, when his eyes are pure maroon, but you think he’s watching you side long. “Who’s my ancestor, then?”

“Haviin Dauths. The Beheader. Used to be the Empyrean’s executioner, back in the day, but…” There’s almost no pictures of the Beheader left. Medeia had burned him from history after the death of Minthe, as best as she could. But Ullane’s hospital collected information from everywhere. And Medeia was so determined to ignore the past, she hadn’t thought to purge those particular archives.

Or maybe she just hadn’t been able to bring herself to destroying her matesprit’s last work. You don’t know, and you don’t care, but it’d let you find the picture you slide onto the table. It’s of Haziin smiling at the camera, standing next to the Empyreal. They looked old, for maroons. They looked like friends, almost.

Hadean looks at both of them for one long moment. Then he shrugs. “I don’t see the resemblance,” he says, glib, and slides the picture back to you.

When you snatch his braid again, at least he has the courtesy to squawk.

“Yeah, that’s ‘cause he’s actually hot. Don’t worry~, you’ll, like, maybe get there somenight? But that’s Haziin. That’s you, back in the night. But, like, you’re not gonna know that name. Because it got purged.” His eyebrows go up. He blinks at you, and part of you trills, because you’ve got him hooked. Purging is for dissidents. Maroons don’t get their lines written out of the books, or their signs erased: for all that they’re common, they’re too valuable for that. It just doesn’t happen.

“We don’t purge maroons,” he says now. “Pull the other leg, shortstack.”

If curiousity is how you’ll get him in, then you can work with that. “We don’t purge maroons usually,” you shoot back. “But they don’t usually fuck up this badly. ‘cause, like, your ancestor had two titles. They called him the Beheader, back when, like, people could actually stand his fucking face. And then they started calling him the Betrayer, after he died.”

“The Betrayer,” he says, and he looks at the picture again. You all learned the story in the schoolfeeds. It’s a part of the Chants. It’s a part of every wriggler’s telly show, some black-shrouded antagonist out to ruin the world.

But right here, right now, the two of you might be some of the only people on the planet who’ve ever seen his face.

He’s smiling, in the picture. He’s got an arm around Medeia, and the glow of his horn is a perfect match to the glow of her eyes.

“You already killed God once,” you tell Hadean. “I’m here, ‘cause you need to do it again.”

    --- anaxilausAnnexed [AA] is now trolling indulgingDelights [ID]! --

AA: is this urn handle

AA: is this rnly

AA: rnly

AA: RN L Y

AA: urn handle

ID: yes. =:)

   --- anaxilausAnnexed [AA] is now trolling indulgingDelights [ID]! --

AA: arne u doing urn psi exerncises

AA: bc its imporntant dude

ID: i made a prosthetic nookworm.

ID: it undulates when you look at it.

ID: and this girl tied a knife to it.

AA:

ID: does that count? =:)

AA: no!!!

AA:

AA: pp

    --- indulgingDelights [ID] is now trolling anaxilausAnnexed [AA]! --

ID: so what.

ID: does this mean i’m a lowminded murderer?

ID: just because some fucker forgot to spill his pail before he - l - went and killed someone a few millenia ago?

ID: because just saying, this doesn’t seem fair.

AA: join the club

AA: sornrny bb

AA: sometimes life just isn’t

    --- anaxilausAnnexed [AA] is now trolling indulgingDelights [ID]! --

AA: it is 3pm

AA: i have been thrnowing rnocks @ urn window forn five mins

AA: rn u srnsly still asleep

AA:

AA: gj

AA: now urn pillow is wet  A N D   outside

    --- indulgingDelights [ID] is now trolling anaxilausAnnexed [AA]! --

ID: what’s your address.

The most aggravating thing about Pheres actually going off and getting a matesprit is that you don’t spend many nights at his hive anymore.

Oh, you’ve got a suite of rooms attached to his in the palace. You could sleep over there, without sleeping in his bed, and if you did - well, if you were there, he’d make room in his recuperacoon. It’s not like you loathe Meukit, either. She makes him perfectly happy, and she’s fine to share. You’re just not keen to sleep in a space where Pheres’s been fucking, when push comes to shove, and you’ve never been especially keen on sleeping alone.

You don’t like Riccin sleeping over at your place, either. The two of you are pitches, but she’s too touchy, and she can’t fit into your recuperacoon, anyway. She always wants to sleep on your bed. And then she’ll kick you until you fall off of it, every time she falls asleep, which wouldn’t be tolerable even if she did it on purpose.

So you’ve just been compromising! Pheres sleeps over with Meukit, and you..

You’re just not sleeping.

It’s fine. That’s the only good point of coffee, as far as you’re concerned, because the taste certainly fucking isn’t doing anything for you. It keeps you up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and it means that when people come pounding at your door in the middle of the day, you’re more than awake to receive them.

Your hive’s smaller than most greenbloods. You rented it under a teal’s name, just to have a place close enough to the docks that it wasn’t under the Empyreal’s watchful eyes, and you only go here hemoanon. So you’ve got a hand on your gun as you head down the stairs, and you press your palm to the security system to activate the cameras. It’s not one of the wader gangs, though, looking to press for money, or someone begging.

It’s Hadean, the ends of his hair burnt and soot smeared across his skin. He’d had the foresight to pull on a cloak and hood, one that covers his free-form horn, but his eyes are glowing, bright enough to see even through the film of daylight polluting your camera.

And he’s swaying.

You snatch open the door, and you don’t wait for him to react before you’re hauling him inside. Your hip hits the door, smacking it shut, then -

Hadean’s laughing, wide enough that he’s flashing teeth. “Can’t keep your hands off of me, huh?” he teases, but there’s a rasp to his words. His jacket’s hot as a torch from the sunlight, hot enough to burn when the zipper catches your skin, and you’re swearing as you tug him towards the kitchen. He’s so much bigger than you. You don’t have on your proper mechanical gauntlets at this stage of the night, not when you’re supposed to be home alone. All you’ve got on is the bioware you’ve been trying to build, piece-by-piece from the books you’ve retrieved, and all it does is bypass the nerve damage.

It doesn’t do anything to help when Hadean can’t manage to support his own weight. He tilts on you, hard enough that you stagger. “Sorry,” he says, almost a keen, and he grabs you, steadies himself right before the both of you hit the floor. “Sorry, sorry -”

This close, he doesn’t smell like alcohol. He just smells like smoke, and blood, and the ozone stench of psionics overworking. When you wrestle him into the chair, finally, he collapses like he can’t hold himself up. When he looks up at you, the haze over his eyes is pale, almost enough for you see the outline of his pupils.

When you look up, his horn’s almost free of psi entirely.

Your mouth’s dry as you reach up and press your palm to his head. “Hads,” you snap. “Hads, what the fuck, what did you do?” His skin is cold. He’s a maroon: there’s no way in hell that his skin should be cold.

But you don’t have time to think much about it, because you’ve barely touched him when he’s flinching back. “No, no, no,” he barks, jolting like you slapped him. His knees hit the table. The entire thing rocks as you jolt back, half-sprawling on it to keep it from flipping. “Don’t touch me!”

“I’m not touching you!”

“Well - don’t! You can’t.” He presses his palms to his eyes, hard enough that the skin blanches around them. “Don’t touch me,” he repeats, softer this time, and if he wasn’t so cold, you’d think he was running a fever. This can’t be an overdose. You’d stayed up all day after you’d discovered who Hadean was, and the sort of shit he did, researching all the ways to tell.

You don’t know what’s wrong with him, except something clearly is.

So you head to the sink instead, grabbing a cup and filling it with the hottest water your tap will manage. The water’s foggy. It’s always foggy, but a little lime won’t kill him, and when you slide the glass onto the table in front of him, you’re careful to keep your hands away. “I won’t touch you. Calm down, Dromeo, no pale-ro. But, like, here - drink this.”

He doesn’t touch the water. “Technically, this is your fault,” he snuffles, peering down his nose at you. You can’t tell if the rheumyness of his eyes is from his psi coming back, or tears. He just doesn’t seem like the sort of guy that would cry! But he didn’t seem like the sort that would let himself get this fucked up, either. “If you hadn’t told me about my ancestry, I wouldn’t have been so upset that I missed the ring on her finger,” he complains. “So, honestly? Technically, this all your fault. Good going, Sips.”

You consider the glass on the table, then you dump it on his head.

“You’re the worst,” you tell him as he squalls. “And if you come in here, stickying up my table again with your gross, unwashed bod, I’ll skip the fucking glass and just hit you with the hose. Didja wake me up just because someone’s matesprit walked in? Like, seriously? It’s high noon, motherfucker, some of us actually sleep.”

“You weren’t sleeping, bulgemunch.” He pushes his bangs out of his face with a low hiss, blinking the water off of his lashes. Did it sober him up? Maybe a little. “You don’t sleep at this time of day.”

“And how d’you know that?” you jeer. “What, are you breaking into my room to watch me sleep? ‘cause - creepy!”

“Because - because you’re too high to sleep dry. Your hair’s got zero sopor in it, and - shit, your icon’s always active in the middle of the day.” When you squint at him, he actually curls his lip at you. His fangs are sharper than yours, and stark white. Most maroons tint them black, to match Medeia’s, or they at least blunt them. “I’m not stupid,” he says, peevish. His voice is all jittery, still, like he can’t keep it still, pitching up and down like there’s something wrong with him. “I pay attention.”

He’s sick, somehow, but he’s still aware enough to admit he pays attention. Nobody else’s gone and noticed any of that, except Pheres. Not even Riccin. The idea that Hadean has is.. strange, and you shove that thought, and the feeling it elicits, into the back of your pan. It’s not worth dealing with right now, not when he’s making your entire kitchen smell like soot.

“Whatever. Look, what d’you want? ‘cause I know it’s not just to, like, squat on my floor, you’ve got a credit chip. And, like, beeteedubs, I am so not good at playing second in a duel, just sayin’.”

“It’s a - no.” He shakes his head. “I don’t feel like it,” he says. “I’m not saying.”

You squint at him. “You’re not - you don’t get to not say, you look like shit, dude.”

“I’m not saying,” he repeats. He reaches out towards the glass, but his hands are shaking: it doesn’t want to sit steady, no matter how hard he grips it. “I’ll - look, I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

With the way he looks, he might not be alive tomorrow. Hadean’s a key part of your plan! That’s the reason you’re so concerned, you think, because - if he took something, and he dies, that’d be on him. You’re not a mediculler. You’re not even his age. You can’t be expected to know what the fuck to do with him. “I’m calling Ullane,” you decide abruptly. “She’s a doctor, dude. She’s gonna figure this out, okay?”

He opens his mouth to say something, but then the door rattles.

“Goddamnit,” you huff, but you’re relieved. It’s a good excuse to leave! And Hadean’s just slinking down at the table, his head ducked, as you flounce over to the door. There’s someone you don’t recognise outside. You debate for a moment, if you want to open it - they’re cold, sure, their colour blurred enough under the light’s rays that you can’t tell if they’re jade or teal.

It’s the sort of thing that makes a big difference. Jades are okay, if not decent. Teals are just fucking glorified bluebloods -

- and then the door kicks open, and the jadeblood shoves past you with barely a passing glance. He’s huge, in the way only lowbloods ever seem to get. You hit the wall with a thump, the snarl in your throat dying as soon as the air gets ripped from it. “Sorry about that, love,” the jade calls over his shoulder, distracted, “but I’m here for your mate -”

“- aha! There you are, you fucking wanker!”

After this, you swear, you’re never going to take off your prosthetics again. Scrambling to your feet, you kick the door shut as you race into the kitchen. There’s a taser by the lightswitch, one of the many emergency precautions you’ve hid around the hive: when you thump your fist into the wall, the panel pops open, and the taser falls neatly into your hand.

Just in time. Because the jade’s snatched Hadean up by the collar of his shirt, dragging him from the chair as easily as a sack of potatoes. “You fucked my sprite, then burned down my hive,” he says. “I could’ve forgiven the first! You got a little roughed up, but fair’s fair, innit? But you burned down my hive, you goddamn bastard, and that - that’s going a little far.”

You aim the taser, right at the base of his skull. Your finger is on the trigger when Hadean wraps his hands around the jade’s neck instead.

He grabs him, and the jadeblood goes limp. Hadean collapses back into the chair, but the jade comes with him.

It could almost be an embrace. The jade falls against Hadean unsteadily, his eyes fluttering shut. An arm lifts, like he’s going to try to push him away - but it just settles on his shoulder instead, limp, close enough that it could pass as an affectionate stroke. The jadeblood’s breath slows.

Then, as you watch, it stops.

The room is brightening steadily with each passing second, from the glow in Hadean’s eyes and the flare of his horn. It’s bright enough that you can’t see for a moment, bright enough to leave spots dancing in front of your vision. But then it dulls. When Hadean looks at you, his eyes are maroon again, flooded all the way through.

And his face.. he looks confused as he takes in your expression, then the body in his arms. He looks at it like he can’t remember what happened. Then his eyes widen, and his face blanches. He shoves it away even as he staggers back, springing up from the chair in one motion.

“What the fuck,” he breathes. “What the fuck?”

“Hads,” you say, “what the fuck happened?”

He blinks at you. His eyes are wild, but there’s colour back in his face, and his psionics are steady again in a way they weren’t before. More than steady. He’s actively glowing.

“I told you! I told you, he - I didn’t notice the ring. Her ring. So we fucked, and he came back, and turns out nookmunch here didn’t appreciate that, for some reason, so he tried to kill me. He choked me out, and.. well! Guess it just didn’t take.” There’s no bruises around Hadean’s neck. You’ve seen people choked before: you’ve done it yourself, for all that it’s an intimate, messy kind of violence, too personal for you to appreciate, but there’s no bruises on him at all, and his eyes are wild. “It didn’t take,” he repeats, breathless. “I’m alive. And I just - I just ---”

You realise, suddenly, you hadn’t quite thought this through.

Hadean laughs, and it’s an awful, broken sound. “I died. And now I’m alive, and I just ate him,” he says, dragging a hand down his face, and his voice is so much steadier than it was a few minutes ago. That’s the worst part of it all, you think, is that he sounds so much better. “I just fucking ate him like some kind of feral sewer-rat. Holy shit.”

Oh. And now he’s actually crying.

Scratch that: he’s sobbing, big, coughing hacks that wouldn’t ever be read in a novel, never mind seen on the fucking television. Your ears are pinned straight back, but it doesn’t do anything to distill the sound. It’s - this would be bad enough if Hadean was the sort of troll that cried on the regular, because you’ve never been able to deal well with that. You don’t know how to.

But Hadean isn’t. He’s a maroon, and he’s a ponce, and a spoiled, coddled brat of a troll, and - you’ve never seen him so much as genuinely angry, before, and everyone’s supposed to get mad sometimes. He just treats everything with the same idle contempt, no matter the situation, and in the two perigees you’ve known him, you’ve never managed to drag anything out stronger than discomfort or curiousity. He doesn’t do strong emotions.

Except, apparently, he does, because each sound out of his chest sounds like he’s going to fucking die.

You shouldn’t touch him. You really, really shouldn’t touch him, not when there’s a jade still cooling on the floor, and his horn is bright with life-force. The two of you aren’t pals, not really. You’re barely even allies. But you hauled him into this mess. You dragged him out of his coddled little cage of lies, and..

If you hadn’t told him, this would’ve happened, anyway. Eventually.

But you did tell him, and it happened now, and when every sob sounds like he’s breaking, the least you can do is try to hold together the cracks.

“Hads. Haaads. Look at me, okay?” You step over the body, kicking it back as you settle in next to him. Hadean’s tall enough that you don’t even have to kneel on the floor to be level, the way you might’ve with Pheres: him sitting, you standing, you’re at the perfect height to reach out and set your hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t!”  He hisses at you, reflexive, and tries to jerk away.

You don’t let him. You tighten your grip on his shoulder, and you snarl right back, loud enough that it startles him to stillness. Your teeth aren’t sharp, but your tusks are longer than most highbloods would dare to keep them. “You’re not going to hurt me,” you snap, with a great deal more confidence than you feel. “So stoppit. And look at me! It’s okay. It’s okay, and you’re okay, and we’re going to figure this out.”

“It’s not okay.” His voice’s rasping. “And I don’t want to hurt you, but that doesn’t mean - I just ate someone! I didn’t fucking mean to, I just - did!”

“So make sure you’re trying harder with me,” you say, brisk. It’s not how it works. You know it’s not how it works, and so does he, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is getting him to stop sobbing, before he breaks his heart and yours. “You’re not a feral, fucker. You’re not a lowblood. We’re going to figure this out, and you’re not going to hurt me, and you’re not going to hurt anyone else that you don’t want to. Okay?”

“Hold still,” you tell him, and before he can flinch, you place your palm on his cheek.

His skin is rough. He obviously doesn’t exfoliate, or moisturise, and the thought’s so silly that you want to laugh. But how are you supposed to laugh, when you might die? Because Hadean’s staring at you, his expression unreadable, and you don’t feel anything, but.. you don’t think the jade did, either. All you can do is stand here, with your hand on his skin, and wait.

Thirty seconds pass. Nothing happens, and you let out your breath all at once. “There,” you say, voice rough. You lift your palm, then ruffle his hair, because you don’t know what else to do. He’s staring at you. “You didn’t kill me, dude. You’re not feral. Okay?”

“.. okay,” he says.

“We’ve got it under control,” you promise him. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it all under control.”

[fleetbound]

BIRDS AND LIONS [SIPARA POV] - 20k

This got deleted off of tumblr ages and ages ago, so reposting. |D

You can’t picture it. You might as well picture having fins. But Pheres apparently can. “So he doesn’t need our hivestem. He’s got his own, and it’s lovely,” he says for you, when you don’t answer. He’s been wringing out his hair, but now he pauses. “And.. he said I can come see it soon. If I want to.”

It’s rare for you to be gobstopped! But the words just won’t come. Your pan is like a leaky sieve, ‘except instead of draining out thoughts, it’s not even letting them in. Everytime a word appears, it pours out just as quick, ‘til the only thing that’s left is a sickly kinda unease.

But he’s watching you side-long, waiting for a reply.

“.. but you aren’t,” is what you finally manage to say. It comes out as a squeak. Worse yet, it comes out as a question, and all you want to do is rip out your voicebox and start over. “Right?”

0. COIN | 7 years old / 3.27 sweeps

"Catch!"

The caegar is dusty and green with age and rust, but it still cuts a nice figure as it twirls in the air high above. The green light catches on each rivet and groove, pink shadows deepening each curve, every place it bows out until it looks like something special: some kind of a gem, maybe, sparkling in the night air.

It isn't! It's just something you found in one of the journals and spit and polished until all the dirt had come off. Too old for the Imperial symbol to have been carved onto it! Too old for it to be of any more use than the wooden coins in the boxed games. But as far as you're concerned, that just makes it all the better.

After all, wood rots! And you'd never get away with playing river games with a real coin.

The moons are in your eyes at this angle. Everything's green and pink moonspots and the purple sky above, and between those three, the caegar blends right in. You catch a glint of it. You snatch for it! And you miss.

Instead of landing neatly in your palm, the coin smacks into the water with an audible pop near your face, and you jolt back, spluttering with outrage.

From the shore, Sipara whoops.

It’s the start of the wet season, and even though the moons are high on the sky, the air is still heavy with a heat crisp enough to taste. It won’t stay hot and humid like this for very long. Soon enough, the rains will come proper, and you won’t be coming outdoors for a dozen caegars, never mind this silly little half-penny. But that’s nearly a perigee away, practically forever, and until then, you and Sipa are determined to take advantage of the heat.

“Way to go!” she jeers. No matter how much you beg, she refuses to ever get so much as her walkstubs wet. You even tried bribing her once, but she'd just stolen the apple you’d offered and eaten it anyway. And the only time you actually hauled her in, she’d bit you so hard that you’d had to get bandages from Whydah.

(They'd sucked their fangs at you when they'd seen the bloody weals, and then wrapped the bandages so tight you couldn't feel your fronds for nights.)

But every time you head off to the river, Sipara’s always a step behind, trailing you like the world’s most dreadful shadow. She claims it’s ‘cause she’s waiting for you to drown, so she can take all your stuff and pawn it at the market, but she hangs around even when the river’s way too low for you to do much more than wade. You think she’s jealous!

Which is silly, because you keep offering to teach her to swim. She's the one that always refuses. But then again, Sipara is silly. “You’re supposed to catch it, doofus!” she yodels at you now, hands on her hip. She’s leaning in close to the river, near enough that you can see her reflection on the water below.  “Not let it fall!”

You puff out your cheeks at her, pressing your palms to your face and wiping away the water. As much as you can manage, at least: staying in place like this is hard! Your head keeps bobbing down, trying to dunk you in the water 'til even your top half's completely submerged. If you stop thinking for half a moment, you'll be pulled under.

Sipara’d scream if you were. She looks stressed enough just standing by the shore, like she thinks the water’s going to reach up and drag her under. You're not sure what she's so afraid of.

“Hard to catch it when you’re awful at throwing,” you call back. "Where did it go, Sisi? Did it even land in here?"

Tilting your head down, you make a show of squinting down into the briny water, but you're really watching her through your lashes. She leans down, big hands tight on her bendsockets. Her mouth is thin. "'course it landed," she snaps. You can't see her eyes like this, but you know they must be all thin and unhappy. You can't see her face, either, with all her hair falling down around her like a curtain, not anywhere but in the water, where it's too blurry to see what look she's making.

Too blurry to tell her feelings, maybe, but just clear enough to aim. You let the silence sit just long enough for her to stew in it. She can't stand quiet, not really.  And then, right when she's opening her mouth to say something else, you slap both hands into the water.

All that happens is she catches a mouthful of water, but the way she jolts, you'd think you hit her.

Sipara jerks back so quickly that her feet slip in the mud, and no amount of arm-flailing can keep her upright. She hits the clay soil with an audible plop, hair poofing up around her, her eyes saucer-wide in her face. Almost as big as her mouth, which's already twisting open as she sucks in a breath.

You dive just as she lets off the first ear-piercing shriek of rage.

Underwater, you can't hear it. (Underwater, she can't hear you, which's good, 'cause you're laughing.) The water is high and the river's murky with silt and dirt, but ducking under's comfotable, even when the current's jerking you every which way. That's alright. You just have to go with it, and you let it tug you along a few feet, staring down at the bottom.

The water would've tugged the coin a long a little farther than it ought. But luckily, just along, and not out. This close to the shore, the ground's near enough that you can feel it, brushing along the bottom of your psionics. And it's close enough that the light of your aura cuts through the gloom as easy as clay. There's still black on either side of you, tugging at the corners of your  vision where the light doesn't shine, but that's alright. You can see straight ahead, and that's all you need.

Because right below you is the gleam of the coin, hiding in the silt on the bottom.

When you grab it, it's heads.

1. RMEROS | 4.15 SWEEPS / 8 YEARS OLD

Pheres's moirail's got the biggest head you've ever seen. He's the biggest troll you've ever seen, really, if you count in his horns. And you sorta have to: they're huge and curly and ridiculous, curling all the way over his head and past his back, like he's some sort of wooly hairbeast.

"Rack like that," you'd heard Khirba murmur to Whydah that first night, after the sun'd gone down and everyone had come streaming out into the courtyard, jostling past and floating up over each other to try and see: "- rack like that it, doesn't really matter his personality, does it?"

It's no wonder he's got a big head, when everyone won't stop talking about him.

Especially Pheres.

"Sto~oppit," you wail, clapping your mitts over your soundflaps. He just laughs at you, showing off his teeth in that dumb grin that always makes you want to smack him silly. "I don't care!"

"Don't be such a brat, Sipa!" He's bustling around your hiveblock, rattling the dishes, hopping up on his toes to reach the shelves where you keep the sugar so bugs won't get in. The tea's on the hotplate, just barely starting up the whine that means it's about ready. "If you'd stop being such a runny-faced wiggler, you'd like him, I promise! He's so smart."

"Almost as smart as you," he adds, peeking back at you with a quick smile, and you let go of your ears.

"Almost as smart?"

"Almost!" The kettle whistles. He drops the mugs on the counter, sloshing the tea haphazardly in. Usually, your lusus would complain about how much's slopping everywhere, but your pops is up in the rafters, sleeping again. He's been doing that a lot ever since you got big enough to feed yourself. "I mean, he doesn't make stuff like you, but he knows all sorts of things!"

"What good's about knowing things?" You nudge him away from the kettle, taking over before it all ends up on the floor. Pheres's got tiny bird hands, barely big enough to fit your pop in 'em. Yours are bigger, and if you're careful, you can just about keep the kettle steady.

"Rmeros says all the goods in knowing things. You can't get nothing done if you don't," he says, shovelling sugar into your cup. When he sees you looking, he dimples at you. "Sugar to make you sweeter!"

You make a gesture that is not very sweet at all, and he laughs, passing you the mug. It's warm in your hands. You blow on it, but he's already sipping at his like the heat doesn't bug him any. (It's not fair! He can drink it straight outta the pot without complaining, but your mouth starts peeling just at the smell of it.) "You're going to meet him tomorrow," Pheres says, and it's not a question. "You'll like him!"

Gingerly, you take a sip of your tea, and you get a mouthful of salt.

He stops laughing when you dump the cup on his lap.

***

"This is Sipa," Pheres says a few hours later, his voice only a little muzzy.

Points to him! If he wasn't all ruddy, you'd barely knew you broke his nose at all.

"You met her before." He's watching the two of you, bright-eyed but wary, like you're stray meowbeasts about to scrap. Maybe he isn't wrong! Rmeros is big, sure, but it's one thing to know that and a whole 'nother to see it up close and personal. He's as big as a lusus, towering over you. Big enough to be someone's dad, and the fact he's got his van behind him doesn't make him seem any smaller.

It makes you feel small. It makes you want to rip him apart until he feels the same.

"I remember her," he says, eyeing you, and maybe he doesn't see you're two seconds from scratching off his face, 'cause he bends knee to you 'til his face's even with yours. Your fronds curl into fists. He doesn't notice that, either. "Hello there. You're Sipara, aren't you?"

You nod, stilted. His lips curl up, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

Rmeros doesn't have much to say after that. He leans back on the steps of his van, his back to the door, and he plays around on his fancy husktop. It's got to be nicer than anything any of you lot have: as the older kids pass by, you can see them eyeing it, but he doesn't pay them any mind.

You wouldn't think he was paying you and Pheres any mind, either, but you can feel him watching. It's weird. You don't know why, but then again, you've never met anyone from outside of the hivestem. Maybe they all sit there and watch like the slitherbeasts in the foliage, waiting to try and snatch your pops right outta the air.

He's not looking at you, but it's still like you can feel his attention. You manage to forget Rmeros is there anyway. It's easy when he's so quiet, and what starts off as a discussion with Pheres turns into a lecture turns into a discussion of everyone else. And just like it always does, it turns into an argument.

The two of you fight, even when you're agreeing. It's been this way since you were itsy bitsy and you first got stuck in the hole between your walls. (The both of you were perfectly agreed on how much you wanted to get out of the wall. The trouble came in that neither of you could stop hissing long enough to manage it.) "Simoom's terrible," Pheres says, in that hushed, rapid-fire way of his, "but you can't cull him, Sipa, that's silly. You're being silly. Again!"

"He's not that big!"

"It doesn't matter when he can lift you up with his brain!" He frowns at you. "You're going to start something and get hit, and you'll deserve it." He's always on about that. It's just a matter of consequences, he says, like that's anything but an excuse for the bigger kids to rough you up. "Even if you smacked him on the pan with a rock, he's still bigger --"

You whirl on your heel, flinging your hands out. "Pheres! You nerd!" He doesn't jolt back quick enough to avoid you grabbing his face. Your palms squish into his cheeks. "That's brilliant," you crow. "If I hit his horns enough times, he won't be able to do nothing at all! Walk, spark, nothin'!"

A white-hot spark lands on your skin. You let go with a yowl, and as soon as you do, he's dancing back. "Yeah," he says, confused but pleased despite the side-eye he's giving you. White's still dancing across his horns and shoulders like a brazen warning. You stick your hand in your mouth, sucking on the warm spot. "Ah. I.. am brilliant?"

Rmeros laughs.

Pheres jumps in a crackle of psi. When you stumble back, blinking againsnt the light, Pheres's right behind you, and the both of you end up sprawled out on the ground. "Get off," Pheres yelps, shoving at you. "You're smothering me!" Both of you forgot Rmeros was there: he's quiet as a fucking meowbeast, that's what he is, leaning forward with his chin on his hand and his elbow braced on his husktop. His eyes are twinkling over the top of his glasses.

Not like Pheres when he gets pleased, all sparks and a light that makes your eyes water. But like he's amused.

Like he thinks the two of you are a joke.

"You two really are pupas, aren't you?"

When you give Alsike this look, she threatens to backhand you. Rmeros just laughs again, eyes squinching shut in a way that doesn't happen when he smiles.

Pheres bats away your hand as soon as you offer it, scrambling to his feet and sidling away. You huff, squaring your shoulders. It's not that your feelings are hurt! It's just that he's dumb."Well, if you're so smart," you burst out, "what would you do?"

"Befriend him," Rmeros says promptly, and it's your turn to laugh. His smile shifts a little at that, turns to a shape you can't quite identify.

"What's your name, again?" he asks.

"Nzinga," you say, and his smile fades.

2. ADVICE | 4.58 SWEEPS / 9 YEARS OLD

Everyone calls you Nzi, except for Pheres.

It's always been Sipara with him. He says that's how you introduced yourself, back when you first met, but you have your doubts: the only thing you remember from back then is knowing he was there, right on the other side of the thin plaster wall, and knowing that you hated it.

It was your hive! It was your hive and your home and it was bad enough there were trolls on every end of you, breathing through the walls, breathing above and below you. But then you realised there wasn't even a proper wall between the two of your hives, just something you could punch right through, and it'd been terrible. If it wasn't a wall, then it was your space. If it was your space, then he shouldn't have been there.

You bit him, the first time you'd met, just for the fact he was there and you didn't want him to be. You don't think you introduced yourself at all! Least, not before he'd wrestled you into the coon and half drowned you in it. Your lusus had shrieked and shrieked 'til you'd given in, and that'd been the first and last time those two had ever agreed on nothing.

But it doesn't matter, 'cause when someone calls your name, you always know it's Pheres. No matter how funny it sounds.

"Sipara!"

He's doing his silly skip-hop again. Some of the floaters do a little skip-kick to launch themselves into the air, and he's copied - except instead of floating up at the tip of his jump, he flickers and crackles, and when his feet hit the ground, he's two, three feet ahead. He might've been the way back at the hivestem starting off, but it only takes him a minute to reach you like this.

His face's still red and his breath all funny like he's been running. "Sipa," he says again, unsteadily. "Oh my god, why are you in a tree?"

You kick your legs down off of your branch. "'cause I'm getting apples, duh!"

He's on the other side of the fence, but Pheres is a brat: he doesn't even have to scramble, he just makes that little noise that means you ought to close your ganderbulbs, and then jumps right over it.

When you open your eyes, he's right below the tree, staring up. "Khirba said Simoom'll dock our horns if we get caught stealing." But he's already unwrapping the scarf around his torso, and holding it up like a basket.

There's a game to finding apples worth stealing. This early in the season, half of 'em are still green and barely worth the picking. The other half are all ripe, but the orchardkeepers like to tuck those branches away, keep em hidden. They're little flashes of yellow in all the green, and you have to dig to find them.

"Simoom's a stupid fart and I'll bite him if he tries." The apples you're throwing down are mealy and small, but it's food. Pheres doesn't care, past that.

But he didn't just turn up for food. "'Sides, why're you worrying? He's not gonna do anything to you," you call, sour, "since he's,  like, over the moon for your dumb moirail."

"Why're you even here? Thought you'd be reading your dumb books."

"I'm allowed to go out," he says, taking a bite of one of the apples. "I'm not stuck learning all the time."

"Just whenever I'm supposed to see you," you complain.

He opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it.

".. I wanted to say you should be nicer to him," he finally says, all stiff and prim. "He thinks you're a brat. And you are!"

"Says the boy stealing all my apples!"

"I've only eaten one! And I'm holding them, so it's not stealing." He spits out an appleseed on the ground, then crunches through the core. "It's just a tax."

"That's dumb, and so's you." You shift. "I'm not gonna be nicer to him. He's awful."

"Well, you're awful, so the two of you should get along just fine."

You throw an apple right at his face for that.

There aren't that many apples. The grafters are too clever for that: they know people like to steal, and they don't like to make it profitable. So you have to climb all over the tree, stretching out your legs and arms far as they'll go as you pull and tug the branches. It's tiring!

But it's fun, too, and it's worth it for the way that Pheres is all but bouncing with excitement as his scarf starts to sag with the weight of it. Pheres has been hiding away in Rmeros's van for most of the hours of each night, coming in to visit you in breaks and right before he goes to sleep, like you're just something to keep him busy when his moirail isn't around. Like you're an afterthought.

But out here, you're his only thought. His big white eyes are watching your every move, and even if he's all salty over it, he's hanging off your every word. It's just like the way things used to be,  when it was just you and him and your lusus and no one else in the world who gave the slightest damn about either of you.

"The guards, " he says, and goes still.

'cause no matter how it feels, of course there's still other folks here. Simoom assigns people to walk the orchards just to crack filchers like you. Last time Majlis had caught you, she'd given you four lashes, while your pops practically burned Pheres for holding him back.

It's been perigees, but your back still aches at the thought. You hush.

It seems as if they might pass you right by. The orchards are big, and there aren't that many kids that wanna do field duty, not when they could be having fun out playing at guards or making things. There's only four kids at it any one night, and they like to split into two, the better to patrol. These two could be on their way home. They could be wrapping up for the night.

They're lingering at a tree three rows down, though, writing down where a fruit got bit straight in half by some echoing squeakbeast, and they're gonna be heading your way soon.

You're motioning for Pheres to scatter before you even look up. "You gotta go," you murmur, but he's taking, too: "- no, no, you have to go!"

"If you get switched again, then your lusus is gonna burn them, and Majlis'll have her mum eat him!" Now that they're studying the next tree, you can see the three pronged points of Majlis's horns. Ugh.

"If they catch you, Simoom's gonna kick your butt!"

"What's that matter? He does it anyway." Pheres huffs, looks away. His shoulders are up, but when he peeks back at the duo and catches a glimpse of your face, he blanches.

"No, no, I'll be fine," he says, quick as anything.  "He won't do anything! Like you said, ah, he likes Rmeros, and Rmeros already got onto Khirba for smacking me, so he isn't going to do anything but bark. I'll be fine, so just - oh, just hurry up!"

You slide more than climb down the tree, the jagged bark dragging at your palms and feet. But your skin's rougher than some dumb tree, and you don't feel nothing, not even when you finally slip to the ground.

Pheres's tying the scarf around your neck before your feet hit the dirt, the edges tucked so the apples are nestled close. He looks ridiculous without his wraps, all skin and bones and stubby little slashes of gray that barely count as grub scars. He must've been the tubbiest pupa.

He gives your ear a sharp tug. "You're thinking something awful," he informs you. "Stop! And go!"

"If she tries to smack you -"

"Sipa! "

"If she tries to smack you," you say, insistent, "tell her I'll snatch her horns off!"

"You're not even half her size," Pheres says. "You will not. Shoo! Go!"

He's smiling, so you go.

3. SMILE | 4.66 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

The worst thing about Rmeros, you decide, is that he's always smiling. When he's coming back from hunting, or teaching Pheres, or even talking to Simoom, he always looks amused, with his eyes all squinted and his seedflap curled up, like he's getting some joke no one else is hearing.

He even smiles at you. You hate it.

Pheres's not big on touching you unless the two of you're fighting: he's always leaning and sidling and shoving you, complaining that you're gonna knock him down until you get fed up and actually do. But he's sitting all prim and neat by Rmeros's feet, head leaned back so his horns are braced against his knee, and you hate that too.

Pheres wants you to be friends, though, and so it doesn't matter how much the sight of Rmeros makes your belly churn, or makes your mouth go dry and flinty. You've gotta play nice. That's the only reason why you're standing in his van, breathing in this stuffy-ass air that smells like mold and dust, and the only reason why you don't growl when he smiles at you, all flap and no bulbs.

He's got a wreath of herbs hanging from his hand, and a lizard in the other. It's dead, but it's not burned: your dad hasn't hunted for you for the last three perigees, so it's still all red, fresh, not bad in the slightest. There's even still blood dripping from it, the cherry red of the sorta critters that're okay to kill.

"It's very nice," Rmeros says, the skin of his nose all scrunched.

He's holding the lizard out like he's afraid of it. With each little plip-plop of the blood hitting the ground, his eyes go thinner.

"Congratulations on your.. hunt." If he got any more careful, his voice'd be wearing gloves.

"You couldn't have bled it first?" Pheres asks. A splash of blood had landed on his foot first thing, and he's been curled up tight ever since, face wrinkled like he bit into mold.

"Why would I do that? Dummy. I'm gonna make pudding out of it."

"For you guys," you add, fluttering your eyelashes, and Pheres perks right up.

You knew that'd win him over. He's always hungry, for all that he pretends he's not: your pops doesn't bring back enough food for the both of you, and he throws a fit if he thinks you're sharing too much. And you've always been able to get more from the communal pot, on account of the fact your lusus'll burn anyone that tries to stop you, but Pheres --

-- well, he just eats when people give him things, for the most part.

"Well." Rmeros gives the lizard a perfunctory shake, and then jerks his chin at you. It's a sharp little jerk! It's something that'd be more at home on Simoom's knife-edge of a face than his plump one. "Thank you for showing us before you began. Pheres. Take it back to her, will you?"

Pheres unfurls in a tangle of limbs, his head tilting up even as he pushes himself off the ground. He's in such a hurry he even forgets the desk behind him. The thwack of his horns hitting the wood's loud enough that you flinch, your noisechutes pinning back, but though his face goes red, he doesn't pause.

And he only just barely makes a face when he takes the lizard. "Here, Sipa," he says. He isn't nearly as good as hiding his voice. It's gone all sour and terse, and you can practically hear him vibrating with the urge to drop it every time the blood drips.

When he holds the lizard out to you, you shake your head. "Put it on the table," you demand, and he's eager enough to let go that he doesn't even question you. Eager enough for that, and, well -- he always likes free food.

You push past Rmeros, your soundflaps up high. He's just staring. Good! If Pheres wants you to be nice, you'll do it -- but you'll do it your way, so that everyone can see. If Rmeros wants to gawk at how nice you're being, well, good.

"Go wash your hands, dude, you're being gross." The trick to bullying Pheres, you've found out, is just ordering him to do what he wants to do 'til he thinks everything you say's gotta be like that. Alsike says it's on account of the fact he's a creature of habit.

Whydah says he's just biddable, and they don't say it even half as fond. "And get me a pot," you add. "A pot, and a - a -"

"A knife! I don't think we have cardamom, Sipa." He steps daintily around the blood you're tracking, reaches under the counter to pull out a drawer you didn't even know was there. "Good! Cardamom's gross," you say, wrinkling your nose.

He places the pot on the stove, then starts rummaging through a different drawer that's filled with little vials. (What does anyone even need that many vials for?) "Well, it doesn't matter if you like it. We have to have cardamom." He's so confident, like he's ever cooked a single thing in his whole life. "And the ginger! Rmeros, do you have any ginger? Well, I guess we'll find it later. Ah, you've never made pudding, right? First, we start with the flour --"

"We," Rmeros says flatly, "aren't doing anything. Pheres, what in heaven's sake are you doing? Put that down."

You'd found a knife all hidden away in a block of wood. Pheres's stilled in the corner of your eye, too far to see his expression, but near enough you can see his face go even brickier.

Whydah's right. He is biddable.

Well, you aren't! The first swoop of the knife takes off the head, easy as anything for all that the blade skids on the counter. (It leaves a scratch in the wood. Who makes counters out of wood?) Pheres jumps at the clang as it strikes the counter. Worse yet, he trills at you, with a quick, furtive step forward. You don't pay him any mind.

You aren't a wriggler to be minded. And you're not doing anything wrong.

You're lifting your arm for the second swing when something closes around your wrist.

Rmeros's hand is hot, hot, hot, hotter than Pheres's skin, hotter than even the stuffy air in the van. And his grip is tight. When you try to wrench free, you can't get so much as a wriggle off. "Hey," you protest, twisting. "Let go!"

He takes the knife with his other hand and places it gingerly on the counter. He isn't even half as gentle with you. His grip on your wrist is starting to hurt! You can practically feel your bones creaking, and shifting, like they might just up and break, and all he's doing is holding still.

"That's enough of this," he says. It'd be better if he was flat, or annoyed, or anything, but he's just.. talking, bland and brisk, like Pheres isn't wide-eyed and terrorstruck behind him. "If you want to make a mess of a kitchen, do it in your own damn hive. I'm told you have one? Somewhere?"

"And no, Pheres, I do not have ginger. Or cardamom. Honestly."

"Leggo! I'm not making a mess!" You're going shrill. Your wrist hurts, and he's not letting go, no matter how much you thrash. "I'm making pudding, so let GO of me, that's, like, like, what people do --"

"It's true," Pheres interjects, so quiet you can barely hear him. "It's.. she's trying to be nice."

"Bringing dead vermin into my hive and tracking blood across my floor is nice? You people have such unusual standards." Now he's gone flat. "If the two of you want to create a mess, then you can do it in her space, on your own time."

"Not in mine." He pauses, glances at Pheres. "Ours," he amends, and oh! His voice is so, soflat, flatter than the racks they stretch the skins out on, but Pheres brightens like that little aside's a kindness.

Like Rmeros doesn't have you by the fucking wrist.

That's fine. If Rmeros won't let go, and Pheres's turned traitor, you'll just help yourself. So you pin your noiseflaps, tensing your entire body, and then you lunge up, sinking your teeth into his arm.

The scream is gratifying. You've wanted to do this since the first time his rotten ping woke you up in the middle of the day. It's been a long time coming! The scream is gratifying, but the way the world goes white when his free hand slams into your central struts is not. He lets go of your wrist and you let go of his arm at the same time, and momentum sends you skidding over into the desk. The edge digs into your side, hard as any knife, an unfortunate match to the way your poor struts are throbbing.

Your mouth is full of iron. When you spit on the ground, it's brick red.

Pheres's looking between the two of you, wide-eyed, like he can't figure out which one he wants to help. Rmeros's arm is bleeding and his face is pale like a mask, his hands curled in tight. And you're hissing like your broken teakettle, horns down in case he decides to try and hit you again.

(Try. Let him try! You'll rip him apart.)

"I told you to let go," you snap, soundchutes still down, your chest a white-hot pain. "I told you --"

"Pheres," Rmeros says. There's a shake to his voice, just the barest hint of a quaver. It takes you a moment to realise it's a warning rasp. "Get her the fuck out of here."

He doesn't need to be told twice. Pheres's grabbing hold of your arm before you can even process it, tugging you along, careful to keep him between you and Rmeros. It's only when you're nearly at the door that he stops, looks back. You can't see his face, with him blocking you like this. (Like he could stop you, if you wanted to take another bite out of his dumb moirail.)

You don't need to see his face, though, when you can hear his voice.

"Ah. Rmeros! Are you sure -- do you want me to get you a bandage? Some wraps? Alsike has lots," he says, worried. "They're free!"

"What I want," his moirail says, flat, "is the both of you out of here  before I cull you."

4. MOVING ON OUT | 4.68 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

"Ghosts aren't real, Sipa," Pheres says, like you're simple. "When a troll dies, they're dead."

The smile he's got plastered on is as fake as the yellow of Myljis's symbol - everyone knows she's practically orange, no matter how much lemon she slathers on her skin.

Tonight, you managed to catch him just as he was leaving the river. That's all he ever is anymore: he crawls in the 'coon after you go to sleep and he wakes up before you do, and if he's not at Rmeros's hive, he's off in the damn water. His braids are still wet. He stinks of salt.

"They are! Whydah says --" you protest, but he cuts you off with a laugh.

"Since when have you believed what Whydah says?"

Since he stopped being around, you're tempted to say. But then he'll just get mad, and it's not nearly as fun as it used to be to wind him up now. Used to be that you could say the right thing, he'd take a swing at you, and that'd be it. You'd be on the ground, practically scrapping for your life!

Or at least, so he wouldn't ground your face in the ground and lecture you on being civilized.

Now-a-days, he just skips straight to the lecture, and if you pop him, he just gets mad. He shouted at you last time 'til you cried, and he's never done that, not even when you cracked his horn once when you were both little.

So you don't say anything. You just curl your lip at him, and he huffs right back at you, almost like he used to. "Whydah's superstitious and silly," he says, with a quick, nervous glance around to make sure they can't hear. They like to pop out of all the dark corners when you're least expecting it. "There aren't any ghosts in the river! I've been all over it, and I've never seen anything down there, except bones and kelp and clutter."

"There aren't even any fish! How's a ghost going to survive down there, if there're no fish?"

"It's a ghost, stupid. Why's it need fish?"

"Well -"

"Rmeros says," you drone with him, but while he goes red, he doesn't stop talking. "Ghosts are a silly thing for a person to believe in. Once you're dead, you're dead, and that's that."

There's something hesitant in that, though. It takes you a moment, then you whistle, impressed. "He'd better not let Alsike hear that."

Ancestor worship is big in your hivestem. All the older kids do it, even Simoom, though he grumbles something fierce about wasting good woolbeasts by burning it all up. "'cause he can't be a part of the stem if he doesn't believe." You don't, but that's just because ancestors are silly. Who cares what a couple of dead fogeys think? It's not 'cause you think they're not real, like some of the trolls.

Whydah doesn't think they're real, and that's why they spend most of their time out hunting. Everyone gets nasty mean when you don't fit into the flock.

Maybe Pheres's remembering that, because he's quiet even longer this time, like he's turning over the words in his head. "Alsike already knows," he finally says, careful like each sound's glass.

"And she didn't kick 'em out?" You let your flaps pin down in disbelief, and his face goes bricky. "I don't believe it," you announce. "You're fibbing!"

"I'm not," he protests.

"If she knew, she wouldn't let him be a part of the hivestem."

"Maybe he doesn't want to be a part of the hivestem, Sipara."

It's your turn to go quiet.

Pheres lifts his chin. "It's not like this is a big hivestem," he says, and if each word's glass, now he's talkin' like he's afraid he'll break them. "His is better! He's from Dimašqa, did you know? He said his hivestem is bigger than our entire plot, and it's one of the smaller ones. And no one even has to work there, not unless they want to."

"Can you imagine that?"

You try to picture a hivestem bigger than yours. How tall would that be? A dozen stories, reaching up into the sky - it'd be like the orchard, maybe, but with hives on every end, trolls blocks on each spreading branch.

You can't picture it. You might as well picture having fins. But Pheres apparently can. "So he doesn't need our hivestem. He's got his own, and it's lovely," he says for you, when you don't answer. He's been wringing out his hair, but now he pauses. "And.. he said I can come see it soon. If I want to."

It's rare for you to be gobstopped! But the words just won't come. Your pan is like a leaky sieve, 'except instead of draining out thoughts, it's not even letting them in. Everytime a word appears, it pours out just as quick, 'til the only thing that's left is a sickly kinda unease.

But he's watching you side-long, waiting for a reply.

".. but you aren't," is what you finally manage to say. It comes out as a squeak. Worse yet, it comes out as a question, and all you want to do is rip out your voicebox and start over. "Right?"

"Ah." He lets go of his hair. It's still dripping on the sand behind him as he folds his arms, wrapping them around himself. "Not right now!" He starts to laugh, then stops, wrinkles his nose. "Ah. That'd be silly. The rains are about to come, and then we won't be able to drive very much at all. But.. in a few perigees, maybe."

"When it's dry."

Everything about you right now is treacherous. If you could fight your body, you would! But your soundchutes are pinned flat and your bulbs are wide and the air's going wavy like the sun's about to come up. It isn't. It's just tears, staining everything a rheumy red, and that's even worse.

Pheres's gone pale and wide-eyed. He isn't smiling anymore.

"Oh," he says, distressed: "- oh, oh no, don't get upset! Why are you upset?"

If you say anything, you'll cry. So you clamp your fangs shut tight, but Pheres keeps talking. "Do you want to come?" His eyes are getting wet. He always gets upset when you get upset, and sometimes it's fun to use that, but right now, you don't want to cry. You just want to shut up and wait to calm down, but --

"You can come, too! I promise, I promise, Sisi, don't cry --"

-- he's going to make you talk.

"No, I can't!" You are blubbering. There's thick orange drops rolling down your face and clouding your vision and even swiping at your bulbs with your hands doesn't stop the tears. And Pheres's just staring. "You're going to go and leave me and I can't come, because -- because he hates me!"

"I won't leave you!" Pheres steps forward, but he stops when you hiss. You don't want him near you, not when his hands are twitching like he wants to touch you. Pheres doesn't like being touched, not 'less you're fighting, and you don't want to fight him right now. "I won't leave you, and - and you're being silly. He doesn't hate you at all," he says, soft, like you both know it's a lie.

5. KNIVES | 4.70 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

Everyone in the hivestem colony hates Rmeros, and that's just the truth.

Alsike thinks he’s weird. “You don’t get pale for a pupa,” she said to you one night when you’d been helping her cook one of the big kills. “Everything’s supposed to be even, Nzi-fizzy. Can’t be even if one of you’s about to get on a ship and the other’s barely out of the caverns.”Hamsin agrees with whatever Alsike says. Whydah doesn’t like him, though they’ve never said why, on account of the fact they barely say anything.

The only people that like him are Simoom, who’s a rotten old ponce with a rotten old crush, and Pheres. And Pheres doesn’t count. Pheres would like a daywalker, if it paid attention to him!

But even though everyone hates Rmeros, you’re the only one willing to do anything about it. Which is fine, ‘cause if Pheres ditching you’s taught you anything, it’s that you’re pretty great at working alone.

("I won't leave you," he'd said all prettily, and then he'd packed up his things and moved into Rmeros's van. You hope he gets to that stupid city and the hivestem's are all dead.)

Maybe you always had Pheres at your back before, trailing you like a dumb, gangly shadow whenever you needed to teach someone a lesson. (For stealing his shit, for making fun of your dad, for trying to sass you - there's always a reason to rough someone up.) But it wasn't like he was ever much help in a fight, 'cept for getting in your way if he felt you were getting too rough. He never really helped.

So it's not like you're working alone at all, really, 'cause what's changed?

Except that usually, you use this knife on animals, not tires.

Who knew that rubber was so thick? You're having to saw through it, and even that's barely scratching the surface. All it's doing is making your arms ache. And your soundchute's ache, too. The noise's so loud, you don't even notice when the van door pops open.

".. what're you doing?" Pheres's scrubbing at his face like he's trying not to fall asleep, eyes half-lidded, but you can hear the sound of snoring drifting out of the lookout, clear as anything. No way that big of a sound could have ever come from your reedy little hivemate: it's gotta be Rmeros. And if he's asleep, why isn't Pheres?

Because his hands are wrapped tight around a steaming mug, and it smells like the stuff the older kids drink. The stuff Khirba smacks you, when you try to steal a sip.

"Is that coffee?" you demand, but he's canting his head to the side, eyes narrowed to slits.

"Is that a knife?"

"I asked you first!" You shove it behind your back, putting on your most quarrelsome face. "You're not supposed to be drinking that!"

"I've got a lot of work to do. And no, you're not supposed to drink it. Your custodian doesn't care what I do." He's oozing along the side of the cart, forcing you to take a step back, pivot to keep him facing your front. And then he sparks,  just the once, and he's behind you, grasping your wrist.

"You do have a knife!" he hisses, outraged.

He doesn't keep your wrist. He's all bones, and while he's fast, he's never had the weight or strength or will to keep you: you twist free in a second, snarling loud enough to make him startle back.

There's fury churning in your gut, eating away at your tongue. You're doing this for him! You're doing this for him, and all he's doing is looking like you've messed up. His hands are clenched at his sides, and he's gone all sour and pinched. "Sipara, what is wrong with you-"

"Pheres." The snoring hasn't broken, but that's Rmeros's voice, not sleepy in the slightest. Pheres startles again, and your ears pin back. When you look at each other, it's hard to remember that you were just angry. You don't want Rmeros to come outside, you with a knife in your hand and rips in his tires.

Your wrist aches.

".. nothing," Pheres calls back. He's wide-eyed, but his voice barely squeaks at all. Maybe he doesn't want him to come out, either. "It was just a squeakbeast! I'll get rid of it."

He takes hold of your arm, tugs. You let your feet drag, but you let him pull you along when he hisses,  "Come on!"

He leads you away from the van in quick, hurried steps. The coffee keeps sloshing into your hands, but neither of you says a word until the van is behind you, and you're safely in the shadow of the walls. There's holes in it where the stones have fallen out, and he curls up in one, knees drawn up right against the curve of the bedrock.

"Where's your custodian?" he asks. When you just stare, he fixes it, peevish: "- your pops! Your bird! Where's he at?"

"Sleeping, duh. Same as always." He's been trying to stay awake more again, ever since Rmeros came, but he's no good for it. "Why?"

"'cause he's supposed to be stopping you! That's his job."

"What d'you know about his job? You don't have a lusus," you say, baffled, and you're gonna say more, but Pheres wilts.

It's baffling. That's the sort of thing that's never bothered him before. You're not being cruel: it's just a fact, like how you haven't any horns to speak of. He's not supposed to get thin-lipped and unhappy over it.

"I do have a lusus," he says, curling up tighter. He's so put off he doesn't even complain when you settle down near him, back againsnt the wall. "It's not my fault he's dead!"

He takes a sip of the coffee. "It's not my fault he's dead," he repeats, quieter this time and peevish.

He's never ever been salty about this.

You've seen his weird, dead dad. You live with him! It's impossible not to have seen him: Pheres used to keep it sitting on the edge of the coon til your thrashing tipped it in one night, and now he just keeps it around the nutritionblock. He moves it, sometimes, but it's the same way he likes to shuffle around everything. It's not like he actually ever cared about it.

"Um." You don't know how to deal with him when he's like this. A few perigees ago, you'd have started a fight, 'cause after that first slap, he doesn't have room for anything other than getting mad. But he won't fight back if you hit him anymore, and you don't think you could say anything mean enough to get him spitting right now.

The way he's acting right now, he'd just cry.

Or he'd leave.

You scoot down and lean in against him. Normally, he'd bolt away at this point, or kick up a fuss, or smack you 'til you moved. But he just exhales, loud and heavy like he's pushing all the air outta his lungs. Emboldened, you butt your head against his arms til he lets you rest your cheek againsnt his knee. "You're gonna get hair in my coffee," he grumps, but it's halfhearted. ".. and I'm still mad at you."

There's a hundred things you could say! But you swallow 'em all, because fighting right now seems like an awful idea. Saying anything at all seems dumb, so you just curl in tighter against him, shouldering your way closer 'til he's dropped his knees enough you can slide an arm around them.

Alsike will cuddle with you sometimes. Khirba, if he's in a good mood. But Pheres never, everlets you touch him like this.

"If you want a lusus," you say, meek, "you can have mine."

That gets a laugh from him. Everything feels soft and strange right now, but the sound warms you. Pheres might be being strange, but his laugh's still the same, all sharp and mean. "I don't want yours!" he huffs. "Yours is horrid."

"Yeah, well.. why not just carry yours, then?"

".. what, under my arm?"

"In a bag!" He's dropped his knees. It's a tight fit, but you climb all the way into his lap, writhing around until your face is looking at his, and your hair is getting caught on the stones. "Like, Alsike's got lots and lots with broken bits, and all she ever does is make stuff, and she likes you, so - so you could ask her! I bet she'd make one just for you!"

It's a brilliant idea. All of your ideas are, of course, but this one is especially perfect, because Pheres's brightening, one watt at a time.

"It'd look silly," he protests, but it's half-hearted.

"You look silly! With those big dumb horns -"

"Rmeros says they're dignified!"

"That's only 'cause his are worse." You grab one curly horn and give it a yank. He's not moving. He's not smacking you. He's letting you sit on him and you don't even have to hit him and it feels like your entire body's full of butterflies and bubbles all frothing to get out. "I bet if you went and hid with Simoom's fluffbeasts, he wouldn't even notice you were there, that's how silly these are! And - and - and if you made your hair all big, instead of lank,  he wouldn't be able to tell the difference, even if you went up and bit him -"

"I'm not going to do that!" He jerks his head hard, twisting his horn free with a huff, and the bubbles pop all at once.

"I'd rather go gargle in the river," he complains. But he doesn't push you out of his lap. He doesn't push you off at all.

6. THICKER THAN WATER | 4.74 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

Pheres is at the river. He’s never at your hivestem anymore, or at the hiveblock - he doesn’t even come home to get his share of the rations you collect every week, because Rmeros thinks the food here is disgusting. He likes his coffee that he gets all the way from Dimasqa, and food that he bought in a different district entirely.

“A more civilized district,” Pheres had whispered to you in Rmeros’s snooty voice, back when making fun of him was a thing your hivemate would still do. Now he gets mad and pinched if you talk bad about him at all, and the last time you made a joke about lamwas, he didn’t speak to you for a week.

But even though he never comes home, you always know where he is, because Pheres is always at the river.

Every time you see him on the shore, it makes you want to snatch him up. Make him move! He’s so little, and the river’s so big, full of ghosts and the bones of dead kids ready to pull him in. When you were a pupa, you’d stand right here and holler and fuss until he got away from it, and you’d cry every time his head bobbed under the water. You knew he’d pop back out.

Pheres is one of the only kids that goes down to the river, him and Whydah, and it’s practically a part of 'em. If you bled Pheres, sometimes you think all that’d pour out is water and the red-pink mud. But that doesn't mean you have to like it.

He isn’t in the river tonight.

“Sipara,” he says, prim and strict, like he’s the voice from the schoolfeed. His feet are dangling in the water, kicking up silt and dust. If it was any other river, there’d be crocs nibbling at his walkstubs right now, but nothing in this water’s alive anymore. Sweeps and sweeps ago, some wader dumped salt in the water until everything shrivelled up and died, and it’s been that way ever since. Pheres told you that, and Whydah told him, so you know it’s gotta be true: Whydah never lies, not ever, not even when they should.

(It’s why they don’t go down to the river anymore. No point in it, they’d told you, the one time you’d asked: they’d dredged out all the stuff worth taking back when they were your age, all the trinkets left on the bones that could be sold and the horns hanging loose on their beds that could be carved into arrowheads or jewelry or caps.)

But dead or not, though, you don’t like to get near the water. You dawdle a good few feet behind him instead, feet scuffing at the dirt, like you’re just bored and not spooked at all. “What’re you doing?” you demand, petulant. “You haven’t been hive in, like, days.”

“Bennui misses you,” you add, and he laughs.

“You’re not supposed to fib. That’s rude.” He pats the ground next to him, soft at first, then insistent.

You don’t move. He’s been ignoring you! He doesn’t get to play at this now, like everything’s fine. His hands still, and then he folds them in his lap, prim as if he’d never done that in the first place.

For a second, you almost think he slouches in on himself, but nah. Pheres sits like he’s got a tree growing up his spine, just like his dumb moirail.

“I’ve been busy. Rmeros’s teaching me how to copy.” The mud squelches between your toes as you slink closer. “It takes forever,” he adds, glancing back at you. “He wants it all by hand. He says that’s the proper way of doing it.”

“Copy what?” You've only been in Rmeros's hive a handful of times, and never after you brought in the lizard. This is the first time you kinda regret it. You hate not knowing things. It's a personal affront, which's one of Pheres's stodgy words.

“Books! You saw them the first time, remember? He gets them and he writes them down and then he sells them. It's prestigious," he says, preening, probably as much over the word as Rmeros's silly books.

(Selling books. Who'd even buy them?)

"You don’t need to sleep over there for that."

“I can’t work around you,” he objects, squinching his face up at you. “You’d dump something on the books!”

You wrinkle your nose. “Would not!”

“You would too! Even if it wasn’t on purpose. I’ve seen your manuals.” There isn’t nothing you can say to that. You dug out all the tech books from the hive ibrary, soon as you cracked open your first grub and realised you didn’t know anything of what you were looking at. They’d been nice enough when you started, but. Well.

If you’re not spilling tea, or dropping food, then Bennui’s fighting the pages in protest to the pictures. That’s not your fault, though, but you know Pheres figures it is, so you pooch out your lip, for all he can’t see it.

But maybe he knows you’re doing it anyhow, because he laughs. “And, ah, he’s been teaching me other stuff, too! Like..”

He bites his lip, turns his head just enough to peer back at you. It’s tilted to the side, so his braids are trying their best to slip out of the twine he’s wrapped 'em in. It’s the look he uses on Alsike when he’s trying to get her to braid some of her bright yarn into his hair. “Come here, and I’ll show you!”

Reluctantly, you tromp over, stopping a breath behind him.

He makes a show of it, to lure you in closer: he lifts up his hand, shoulders angled so you just barely can’t see, and when you shuffle a little closer, he wraps his fronds in closed. He doesn’t move 'em until you’re at his side.

And then he turns to face you, each frond  curling open one at a time, slow as the water in the riverbed. He's chewing on his lip, and he keeps peeking up at you, furtive little glances like he's tryin' to figure out what you're thinking.  Then he opens it all the way, all at once.

There’s a light in the center of his palm, dim but flickering. For a moment, it brightens as he breathes in, steadies himself - and then you make a noise, delighted, and it dissolves.

“He’s teaching you to make lights,” you say, awed. Your eyes are stinging a little. It made your scalp crawl, the sight of it: white as bone, as bright and garish as if he’d held the sun in his hand. The sort of thing you’re only supposed to see if you’re dead.

It wasn’t pretty, not precisely, but there’s something tight in your chest that makes you want to see it again.

When you look up from his hand, he’s bleeding.

Only for a moment, then he takes in your wide eyes and starts scrubbing at his snout. His eyes are bright, almost as bright as the globe in his hand, and it’s a stark difference to the ruddy stain on his face. “So I don’t need a torch when I'm working,” he says, proud, like he ain’t bothered at all. “I’m not very good at it yet - or, ah, holding it, haha - but Rmeros is amazing at it.”

“Rmeros can do lights! Dozen of them! Practically millions.” He’s got to be fibbing, but he sounds as proud as a fang-billed abirdination right now. (Used to be that he sounded that way talking about you. The tightness in your cavity's got a different source, now.) “And he says I’ll be able to do it like that, too, if I just keep practicing –”

“I don’t think anyone else starts bleeding over practice,” you say, flat, and his eyes dim.

“Well! Maybe nobody else is practicing the right way.” He lifts his chin, daring you to challenge him, but you don’t take it. Maybe once, it would’ve been an invitation to a real argument! A real scuffle! But nowadays, you argue too much, Pheres just leaves. “Rmeros says it happens to everyone, when they work hard. You just have to -” He waves his hand. “- push through it, 'til it sorts itself out.”

That’s dumb, you want to say. But you swallow the words, and you just flop down right next to him instead, shoving him with your shoulder. He goes tense, but all you do next is drop your head onto his shoulder, nestling it againsnt the curve of his horn.

(Once, you could’ve just slid your head right up againsnt his neck if he'd ever held still long enough to let you, but all his horns have been doing is growing, growing, growing, the past few sweeps. Like all the inches that ought’ve gone to his legs are going straight to his rack instead.)

“I’m tired of talking about your dumb moirail,” you announce. “What’re you even doing out here?”

You can feel the rise and fall of his chest. You can feel the way he’s staying stiff as a board, like he expects you to haul off and smack him. You think he might shrug you off, he’s staying so tightly wound, but all he does is sigh. “I’m thinking. Or trying.”

“About what?” you persist.

He doesn’t answer for the longest time. It’s just your breath, his and the sound of the river lapping at the shore, with the occasional splash of his feet kicking in it.

“.. Rmeros believes in ancestors,” is what he finally says, grumpily. “If you laugh, I’ll push you in the river.”

“I’ll drag you with me!” You bury your face in his shoulder, and then in your hands on top of it.

“You’re laughing!”

“I’m not,” you squeak, finally breaking for air. Your shoulders are still hitching. “I’m not, I promise! Don’t you shove me in there! Holy smokes. Like - like -”

Your voice is still hitching. He takes pity on you. “In all of them,” he says, pained. “In old ones. In new ones. In his own personal one. I didn’t know those were a thing. Did you?”

“No! How come you know they’re real?”

There’s another long pause, but this time, you think he’s doing it on purpose, 'cause he’s watching you side-long, and there’s something a little sly in his voice when he speaks up next. “'cause he told me,” he says, lowering his voice like it’s a secret. “I asked, and he told me all about them.”

“D'you know, he thinks everyone’s got their own personal ancestor?  Not like the shared ones. Ones just for us. All of us! Even me.” There’s pride there, begrudging but still clear. You’ve seen the way Pheres looks at Rmeros, like his signmate’s a promise of something he’ll grow into. It makes sense he’d like the idea of his own personal ghost.

“So, what, why doesn’t he burn stuff for 'em?” Alsike had been sour on Rmeros right from the start, but him refusing to join in the burning had set her feathers all up. All the older kids participate! It’s a part of what makes you all a hive, and not just a cluster of kids all jostling for space.

“He said that’s just superstitious nonsense.” Pheres rattles off the word with ease, like it ain’t longer than any good word should be, and he pays no mind to the way you grimace. “He thinks it’s just a thing that shows how you’re gonna be.”

“It’s all in the blood. He's got it, and I've got it, and our ancestors had it, too, and that's why we're all the same.” And he doesn’t sound shamed about the pride in that, not at all. “Or, ah. That’s what he says!”

“So what about me? Do I have one?"

He’s slouched forward, gradually, unbending like he ain’t even noticed. Relaxed against you like the two of you are friends, and like you’re not just another person he’s been ignoring. (Another person he thinks he needs to fight.)

But now he stiffens. “What about you?”

“What about my ancestor, you danderfluff?” you demand, nudging him. You don’t know why he’s gone all uncomfotrable on you again, but it’s frustrating, after you just spent all this time getting him to loosen up. “You got one! Do I got one?”

“Um.”

He’s so bad at lying. “Well? Did you ask him? You asked him, right?”

“.. yes?” He exhales slowly. He isn’t looking at you: he’s staring at the water, and his feet have gone still. “I asked him about yours. Because if I have one, and he has one, then you ought to have one, too. It.. ah, it wouldn’t be right, otherwise.”

“So what he’d say?” You shouldn’t be pushing, maybe. Every bit of him’s screaming you ought to not ask, but if he won’t come out and say it, you won’t pay it any mind.  If it’s your ancestor, then it’s yours to know.

“.. he said blood’s like water,” Pheres says, miserable, “and that means sometimes, it’s just bad.”

7. GUIDANCE | 4.78 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

“He thinks I’m dirty,” you wail, burrowing your face in Alsike’s lusus. “And so does Pheres!”

Simoom’s lusus might be the prettiest, but Alsike’s hoofed hopbeastmom is basically just perfect: she lets you scoop her up with no more protest than a sleepy blink.

“I hate him,” you tell her, burrowing your face in her headfluff. All around you, the tanning pits stinks of acid and burnt flesh, but Alsike takes good care of her mum, brushes her out and washes her every day. She smells like the same oil Alsike uses when she braids hair, familiar enough to make you ache. “But if I cull him, Pheres’ll cull me. I don’t know what to do!”

She bleats at you. You shake her. “I can’t do that!”

"Can’t do what, sugargrub?”

Alsike is stripping off her leather gloves and shrugging off her apron. She’s not the head tanner, but she’s in line for it: everyone knows that when Cendol gets conscripted, she’ll take over the tanning pits and be in charge of everyone that works in 'em.

Right now, though, she’s just another tanner, and that means she can take the time to talk to you and Pheres, when you dare to come near. The pits stink. You’re going to smell like this for whole nights.

“I need to talk to you,” you blurt out, spinning to face her. Alsike’s lusus snuggles closer to you, rumbling away in that weird way that means she’s happy.

It’s a good thing your pops is asleep at the hive, or else he’d get jealous.

“You do, Nzi? You sure? 'cause I thought for certain you were here to talk to Simoom.” Alsike’s smiling, fond as a lusus, and this is why you don’t like her. Pheres is over the moon for the way she dotes on him, but that’s just him being Pheres: he’s perfectly content being someone’s pet, if they give him a pretty enough bow.

“No!” You don’t hiss at her, because Alsike isn’t like Whydah. To be fair, she isn’t like Majlis, either. She won’t switch you, but a smack isn’t much better. “I don’t wanna joke! This is important!”

“Oh, well, if it’s important…” But she’s eyeing you like she’s taking you seriously, at least, even if it does take her forever to put away her things.

Alsike’s a flatscan like you, and the hivestem isn’t built for the likes of either of you. Soon as he got big enough to realise what yellow meant, Simoom offered her a hiveblock down in the basement, where it’s cooler, and easier to get down to. But she'd said no. Her hiveblock’s all the way up on the third floor, halfway up the stem, and she liked it just fine, for all that getting up there’s a matter of climbing up ropes, down the ladders, jogging across the roofs and across the hand-holds. Alsike takes her mum after the first climb, but you’re still sticky with sweat by the time you make it up to her hiveblock.

Alsike’s hiveblock’s like you and Pheres’s, save there’s no hole in the wall to your little closet of a block. She’s got the same hammocks near the window, the same sliver of counter and cupboards, a 'coon in one corner and a door to an ablution in the other. If it weren’t for the fact her roof’s so much lower, and there’s so much junk on the ground, you might’ve thought she’d taken you back to your hive.

But there’s so much junk. You step on a bag of chips, and it crinkles. “You’re gonna get bugs,” you announce unhappily, dragging yourself into the hammock.

“You wanna clean, Nzi?” She’s bringing over two glasses of water, and she sets it carefully in your hands. “'cause in that case, I’ll get you a bag. But I thought you wanted to talk.”

Pheres is Alsike's troll. When he was little, she offered to take charge of 'em, make sure his hair didn’t end up full of nits and he wasn’t hauling disease back to the hive. She even used to bring him food, 'fore you got old enough to hunt for you and him and he got clever enough to filch without getting caught.

He adores her. But you don’t like her, not at all, and the stickiness of your distaste is making your speechfrond feel like stone.

But you gotta talk. Alsike’s piling with Simoom, and Simoom’s in charge of everything. When he hollers, folks listen - and if anyone can knock Rmeros out of your hivestem, it’s him.

So you talk.

“- and he wants to put me in a bag, and drown me in the river!”

At some point, you put down your glass all carefully in the hammock, and then you’d started pacing. It makes it easier to talk, somehow, get out all of this frustration and anger, 'cause you certainly can’t take it out on Alsike. Still, you wish you could! Your chin’s tucked down and your horns are up, and if you thought she wouldn’t smack you silly for it, you’d be scratching them on the wall just to get the itch out of them.

“He’s not going to drown you, pupa,” Alsike says, soothing, and you whirl on your heel to hiss at her.

“Duh! I’d, like, rip him in half if he tried!”

Alsike’s mouth goes pinched like she’s trying not to laugh. Slap or no, you give her the nastiest look you can muster. “And I don’t care if he wants to,” you snap. “He’s awful and I hate him and I wish he’d try! But he keeps telling Dys things, and - and -”

You don’t cry. You fell head-first out of one of the orchard-trees once when Alsike had passed under and startled you, and you’d gashed your forehead right open in the process. You’d bled and bled, and Pheres had screamed like you were going to die, and it’d felt like it. But you didn’t cry!

You aren’t going to cry now, no matter how much your eyes are stinging. “He’s gonna make him hate me,” you say, or you try. It comes out as a wail, and you grab hold of your hair, pulling it hard in front of your face.

You’re not going to cry. If you say it enough times, you won’t.

“Oh, pupa.” Alsike’s being gentle, and if you hate Rmeros, right now, you hate her too. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

“No! It’s -” She thinks you’re being a wriggler. She thinks you’re being a dumb, jealous pupa, and maybe you are, but that isn’t what’s important right now, is it? So you take a breath, scrubbing at your face with your headfluff, and if the world’s a little orange when you open your eyes, you’re just gonna ignore it.

“He’s telling Dys things! And they’re all wrong. And he keeps getting different, in - in a really bad way. He’s unhappy.” She isn’t looking anything but sympathetic. Alsike helped him when he was little and small and alone, and you thought she’d help him now, but he’s not any of that anymore, is he?

He’s not even her pet anymore. He's Rmeros’s, and his dumb moirail hasn’t even brought out a bow.

“His face bleeds whenever he uses his sparks,” you say, desperate, and finally, she looks concerned.

“Every time?”

“Every time! And he thinks it’s normal!”

She goes quiet at that. It’s suddenly hard to breathe, because her brow’s gone all furrowed, and she’s biting her lip like she’s thinking. Simoom’s the only one who can tell Rmeros to get out, but he loves Rmeros, and he hates Pheres. If he thought Rmeros would strip him down and sell him for parts, he'd probably give him  an entire hivestem suite.

But if Alsike asks - if Alsike says something to him -

“Nzi, dear,” she says, “have you tried speaking to him? They’re signmates. Maybe it is normal for their psionics. I’ve seen stranger things…”

Your face must fall. “They’re moirails. They know best. But don’t worry, sugargrub,” she says, gentle as anything. “I’ll speak to Dys for you.”

8. KNOWLEDGE | 4.98 SWEEPS / 10 YEARS OLD

If the sun doesn’t kill you, Rmeros’s stupid lusus will.

Every time she exhales, moisture beads on your throatstem, and her head bobs, making her feelstrands skitter across her skin.

Every time you inhale, you get the stench of rotting meat, heavy enough that you can taste it.

You’ve seen the smaller lusii before play with the mice and birds in the court. They’ll pin them and bite them and break their wings, and when they start to get bored, they’ll let them go free.

And then they’ll eat them.

Well, she’s got you on the ground, her mitts digging into the meat of your rotationropes, and you think she’s past the point of playing.

When the door of the motorcart creaks open, you don’t even bother looking. It’s probably just Rmeros again, back to gloat or whatever the fuck he does. He’d seen you outside the van, with his mum’s teeth on your shoulder like a warning and the rock on the ground, and he’d fucking laughed - and then just went inside, like that’s okay.

You’re part of a hivestem! No one lets their lusii attack each other, because that’s the rules.

No eating the lusii: no eating their fucking kids.

(But Rmeros isn’t a part of the hivestem, is he? He’s always made sure of that.)

But the footsteps are all wrong for Rmeros: he’s big and he walks like it, with galloping steps that send dirt flying, but this is all pitter-patter in comparison. And maybe the roarbeast notices, because she pauses from where she’s nuzzling at your throat, her lip curled enough that you can feel the press of her fangs.

(You’d just wanted to put a rock through his window. His mum wasn’t supposed to be here! His mum is never here.)

Her ears flick once, twice - then they snap back as a dark hand cracks her straight across the head.

“What,” Pheres hisses, “do you think you're doing? Get off of her!”

You can see dusty feet out of the corner of your eye, but you can’t see him proper. You don’t need to: you can hear the impact of him hitting her again, the sharp crack of a hand hitting fur.

When she growls - a deep, rumbling sound that makes her entire body shake, and her claws sink into your skin - he snarls right back. If you tilt your head, you can just barely see him, throwing one twiggy shoulder into hers like it’ll do anything but give her an ache.

“Move, you stupid cat!”

It takes you a moment to realise she actually is. There’s pain shooting up your legs as her tail lashes against them, but more important is the way she sinks into your shoulders - and then the weight evaporates all at once as she bounds over and off of you.

You’re scrambling up and backwards as soon as you can. Your body is screaming like someone’s driving iron into their poor hoofbeasts heels, but you can breathe, and Pheres is right there, fussing.

Rmeros’s mum is sitting only a few feet off, watching both of you with slit eyes and a curled lip, but he isn’t paying her any mind. “Sipa! Sipa sipa sisi - are you okay? Did she hurt you?” he’s saying instead, hands flitting across your face, tilting it up and to the side, checking your neck -

- brushing against the browning skin of your shoulders  -

There’s snarling. It only when Pheres jerks back, his eyes bright with alarm, that you realise it’s coming from you.

You’ve bit him before. There’s ragged white lines on his arms where you’ve sunk your teeth in and held, scrabbled and scratched until there was red in your mouth or until a fist hit your horns, or a foot landed in your gut. You see him remembering that in the wideness of his bulbs, in the way that they flick down towards your teeth, but you can’t stop growling, because everything hurts.

Then he hisses at you. “Stop it,” he snaps, sliding in close, knocking one bony shoulder under your arm. He’s emanating that familiar warmth, and it’s painful and soothing all at once. “I know it hurts, Sisi, but you’re not going to bite me, so just calm down.”

There’s needles in your shoulders, sparks of pain climbing down your arms like bugs under your skin. Pheres is moving, and you can’t seem to remember to walk with him, so he’s mostly just dragging you, his mouth a thin slash.

You’re still growling.

But you don’t bite him.

The sky is purple by the time the two of you finally make it back to the hivestem.

“I didn’t think you were gonna come,” you say later. There’s bandages around your shoulders, wrapped triple tight and slathered in all the sterilisation fluid that Pheres could find. You’re lying in the recuperacoon, your chin resting on the edge, and sopor and exhaustion’s making you sleepy: it’s hard to talk, but you make yourself form the words anyway.

Pheres is curled up by your coon, his knees all tucked in and wrapped up in that way that means he’s thinking. When you speak, though, he jerks like you hit him, all hurt and indignation. “Of course I’d come!”

He’s barely spoken to you in nights. You let the silence sit, watching him drowsily, and you can see when that thought hits him: his face reddens and his shoulders go up.

Your tastefrond’s heavy with the words that could turn that embarrassment into his familiar, spitting rage. It’d be so easy! And you’ve always liked Pheres best when he’s forgotten to be all stiff and proper, and he’s just being him.

(You always thought he liked himself best when he was like that, too, until Rmeros came.)

But right now, the thought of him being upset just seems dumb and boring, like some wriggler’s game you’ve outgrown. It hasn't been fun for perigees.

“You’re usually, like, sleepin’ by now,” you say, when the silence gets too much. “Like, you’re always sleeping.”

“Rmeros says -” He pauses, unhappy. If he had normal soundflaps, instead of the round little nubs you can barely even see, they’d be flat. “I decided sleep is a waste of time,” he settles on instead, and that’s so stupid.

Pheres is so stupid. The rush of warmth that thought brings is weird, too.

You laugh, and for a moment, he looks indignant, then it smoothes out. “Don’t be a brat,” he sniffs. “Think about all the stuff you could do if you weren’t sleeping all the time.” He’s scrubbing at his arm, and then he abruptly adds: “.. Rmeros needs to control his mother.”

He unfurls, kicking his legs out in front of them, and then he stands up, gingerly as if the name alone’s brought his stupid moirail into the room. He dusts off the front of his shirt like there’s dirt there, but there isn’t: there isn’t anything, except the oil streaks left from his braids. He’d already tied them in a day-knot.

So much for not sleeping. Pfff.

“Yeah, well, your moirail sucks.” It’s hard to feel het up when you’re in the sopor: it feels like the attack was perigees ago, not just, like, two hours. “If she’d eaten me –”

“She wouldn’t have eaten you!”

You blink at him, and the angry red of his blush deepens to something bricky. He folds his arms, like he’s trying to reign back in the outburst. “I wouldn’t have let her,” he says thinly.

“But if she had -”

“- if she had eaten you, then I - I would have told Alsike,” he says, lifting his chin. “And she would’ve taken care of it.” You both know what that means, for all that no one’s ever broke the rules while you’ve lived here. Simoom's the overseer, and Alsike's his moirail, and that means certain duties fall to her.

And Rmeros isn't a part of the hivestem. He can't be exiled. Which only leaves..

"Liar," you say drowsily. All you want to do is duck down low in the sopor and go to sleep. The warmth's getting to you.

Pheres’s voice has gone from thin to out-and-out reedy. “I don’t care about him as much I care about you, because - because I know you.”

You’re not feeling so drowsy now.

He looks at you sidelong through his eyelashes, like he does whenever he’s nervous. For a moment, there’s eye contact - then he breaks it, his gaze skittering up to your hair.

“I know you,” he repeats, and your breath catches.

“I know you better than anyone else, and you know me, and.. that means something, doesn’t it?”

It feels like there’s flutterbugs in your digestionsack. You tilt your head to the side, letting your cheek squish flat against the recuperacoon’s edge, but it doesn’t take the feeling away: it just intensifies, like all the bugs are dancing a jig. And maybe he’s feeling that way, too, because he’s still talking, the words getting faster and faster, until he’s bubbling away like that river he likes so much.

(You do know him.)

"And even if we haven’t talked all perigee - even if I never, ever saw you again, or if I leave, or even if you go off and get ruddy with some highblood and leave –”

You stick out your tongue, gagging, and he grimaces right back at you, laughing a little despite himself. “Even then,” he says doggedly, “I’ll still know you, and you know me, better than anyone else ever, and that’s more important than moirails, or quadrants, or - or -” He flounders, and his little bubbling ends weak. “He’s got to control his mother. It’s not right.”

“C'mere,” you say.

He shuffles in closer to the recuperacoon, and you kick in the sopor until you’re straight again on the edge. Leaning forward, you press your forehead against his, and he doesn’t move, even though this’s usually the point you’d bite him. It's hitting you he's kind of sad-looking, all gaunt cheeks and sad eyes.

How come you’ve never noticed that before?

“You’re mine,” you say, testing it out, and he doesn’t object: he just breathes out. “And I’m yours. And we’re both okay. So, like, chillax. Okay?”

Pheres doesn’t say anything: he just he huffs, pulling back. And then: “Stop hogging the ‘coon,” he says, wrinkling his nose, and scrambles in.

9. KISS | 5.08 SWEEPS / 11 YEARS OLD

Pheres spends the next week back in the hivestem, and it's just like old times. Except nicer, in a way, 'cause the two of you aren't always scrapping. Used to be you'd never even thought that was a problem. If anyone'd ever say the sight of Pheres wouldn't make you want to bite him, you'd have laughed 'til you were sick.

But you haven't wanted to smack him in ages, and before you went to sleep last night, you'd reached over and pressed your lips to his cheek.

He'd blinked at you, already half-asleep, almost all the glow gone from his eyes. He always looks moon-eyed when you catch 'em like this: all big gray blotches around little black dots, 'cause his eyes are so used to the light, they never go properly big. "'sat for?" he'd said, sleepy.

But pleased.

"Iunno. just 'cause," you'd said back, nuzzling your head into the curve of his neck. The two of you've always shared a 'coon. When he curls his arm around you sleepily, it feels like the past few months never happened at all.

You fall asleep like that.

When you wake up, Pheres is gone.

He's not in the respiteblock, he's not in the kitchen, and by the time you notice the floor's all sleek and shiny, yours are the only green tracks on it. He must've got up early to mop it, but it's weird. Usually, he waits until you're up.

The only time he didn't was when he'd left to stay with Rmeros, and he didn't come back.

You're in a frothing fury by the time you make it down the ropes and to the ground-floor of the hivestem. It's still early enough in the evening that the sky's bright and no one's really out yet: there's the sound of voices coming over from the fields, where they like to start early, 'fore the ground gets too hard from the chill, but that's all.

You know he isn't down there, so you don't even bother to stop. You do stop by the tanning pits, just in case he's waiting for Alsike. You could forgive that! But he isn't. He's not even in the courtyard, though you even go as far as to check under the stairs. He used to slip under there, back before his horns grew in and he started getting stuck.

He isn't there either, stuck or otherwise.

Majlis waves down at you as you slip out the gates, just to be a prat, but you don't have time to fight with her right now. Or anyone else! If Pheres is off with Rmeros again, then that's - you'll have to -

("- that's more important than moirails, or quadrants -")

- he's not, you decide, so it doesn't matter.

You check anyway.

The van's empty when you get near it, but you don't get too close: your ears are up and pricked for any sound, and you're tense as a wire. The bruises from his rotten lusus haven't faded yet. They're still aching as you try your best to see if the vans lights are on. It's hard to tell through the tinted solar windows, but there's no light shining out of the look-out.

And Rmeros's lusus is nowhere to be seen.

"Pheres," you call out, but there's no answer.

You move on.

***

That first night after he'd met Rmeros, Pheres had been so pleased. He'd barely been able to sleep, even after you'd dragged him into the 'coon.

"He's so dignified," he'd said, delighted and fit to burst from pride. Rmeros spoke Standard like a troll from the vids, smooth and rolling and deep, like he was talking straight from his digestion sack. "D'you think I'll sound like that? When I'm his age?"

It'd taken dunking him head-first to make him finally calm down.

With all the fuss Pheres paid him, you'd recognise Rmeros's voice in a crowd. But you don't have to: the only sound is the rushing of the water nearby, and the awful, gargled-rocks sound of Standard.

And the buzz of psionics.

It's just a bother at first, but by the time you get close enough to see the figures by the shoreline, it hurts. It's like being right next to a rumblecart when it starts, or like when the bees got loose from Khirba's apiaries: you can feel the vibration of power going all the way from your horns to the rest of you, buzzing through your nails, setting your teeth to edge.

When you crest the hill and can finally see down the shoreline, Pheres is there. And so is Rmeros.

Every time you see Rmeros, you're reminded how big he is. It's never been quite as clear as right now. The hand holding up Pheres's chin is the size of his head. The thumb keeping him in place's as big as his nose. Rmeros himself's like a bird in the sky, and Pheres's his shadow: so much smaller than anything ever ought to be.

For the first time, maybe, you don't think you can fight him. You're big, sure, but there's big and then there's massive, and Rmeros is huge. He wouldn't have to grab you to hurt you. He could just swing. You can't fight him, but there's no way you can leave the two of them, because you've never seen Pheres's eyes this bright. It hurts to look at him: it makes your horns buzz and your eyes water, like you're staring at a lightbulb. Like you're staring at the sun.

That's not right. Most of the kids in the 'stem are sparkplugs, but there's only one time they ever get like this, where the air's so thick with psi, you could reach out and bite it. And that's when they're scrapping. Not the little kid shows, either, but the shit like the time Simoom'd caught his kismesis making time with Cendol.

But all they're doing is sitting there.

"Pheres," you call, and he doesn't look up. If he and Rmeros were normal trolls, maybe one of 'em'd have flicked an flap, or tilted it. You don't even get so much as a wiggle from their flat, round noisechutes. It's like they can't hear you at all.

Rmeros's eyes are bright, too, and as you creep closer, the buzzing only gets worse.

You can feel it in your claws. You can feel it in your fangs, practically taste the vibrations on your tongue. It's like holding tar in your seedflap, heavy and thick and sticky. Like something that'll suffocate you if you stay near for too long.

Maybe this is how they practice.

(Maybe this is why Pheres keeps bleeding, because you know plenty of psionics, and none of 'em have ever shed so much as a drop of blood.)

So much of your pan's saying you ought to go, go, go. Just leave! If you interrupt, Pheres'll be furious. (If you interrupt, Rmeros will cull you this time, and save his mum the trouble.) Alsike said that moirail's know best.

... but Pheres said you know him, better than a moirail, better than any quadrant, and the thought sticks more than any tar.

You know him, and you know this can't be good.

Only a meter away, the roar of the water's near deafening. You approach it slowly, carefully, weighing out each step as you creep around them and towards the shore. You had the first big rain of the season a few nights ago, water enough that the river poured up the bank. The water's gone down. The debris it left behind hasn't.

There's rocks the size of your fist, rounded and tumbled smooth by their journey through the water. You pick one that fits neatly into the palm of your hand. When you curl your fingers, they fit neatly over the top.

Then you whirl around and you throw it.

You're scamping away  even before the rock leaves your hand, chin tucked, horns down defensively. Your hair is falling in your face. You can't see between the black waves and the white glare of their psionics, but you don't need to: you hear the thunk of impact, a crack that makes your stomach heave with sympathy. And then you hear Rmeros snarl.

You grab up another rock. When you look up, the light's have dimmed. It isn't pleasant, not precisely, but it's not painful to look towards them. And Rmeros's standing up. There's a crack in his top horn, sluggishly leaking red down his forehead. He's sluggish, like he isn't quite there.

It doesn't stop him from noticing you. The fact your rumblereeds are rattling so hard you're shaking makes you hard to ignore.

"Nzinga's," he says, slow and displeased, like it's the worst kinda marvel. "Why is it always a fucking Nzinga?"

Perigees and perigees ago, Pheres said you ought to hit Simoom so he couldn't use his psionics. And so you threw so that Rmeros can't, either.

You're not expecting that he doesn't even try.

He's bigger than you, and he's got a longer reach. Two steps closes the distance between you, before you even have a chance to respond. Then he hits you. Rmeros's hand's nearly as big as your head. It catches you right across the face, nails tearing. If you'd stayed stiff, it would've taken your head clean off.

You go limp instead, and it sends you flying.

The ground's hard when you hit it. It's hard and it hurts, but you're still alive, so you scramble to your feet, pumpbiscuit racing. (The world feels kind of lopsided. He hits like a goddamn tree.) Rmeros's gaining again, quick as anything, looking properly peeved for the first time you've known him.

You throw the second rock.

When you were a baby, Bennui had brought you a knife from the hivestem's stores. It'd been dull and old and rusty, and hunting had been horrible. He'd go out, find you something, and burn it. Then he'd leave it for you to finish off.

Killing something with a blunt blade is torture.

By the time you were old enough to be allowed into the stores yourself, you'd learned about the power of a stone. Every bodies nothing but skin and giblets and the pieces holding them together. Throw a rock just right, hit those spots, and things just fall apart.

It works well on rabbits and deer, and it turns out it's true for trolls, too.

Rmeros doesn't crumple so much as he staggers. One knee hits the ground with a thunk. Then the next. Then his palms, but you're not paying attention to that. There's more rocks near you.

Once, you'd figured you'd rip him apart. But right now, you just want him down. And once he is, you'll -- you'll --

-- you'll figure it out, because behind him, Pheres is wailing.

You sprint over, veering wide around Rmeros. (He's making sounds, too, gross keening pity noises. The second rock was much pointier than the first.)

When you see Pheres, your pumpbiscuit nearly stops. He's all curled up just like his signmate, knees tucked in, hands cradling his face. He's wailing high and throaty like he's the one hurt.

"Pheres," you say. Your knees hit the ground. You turn him over, prying his fingers away from his face, but there's no blood from his forehead: just some steadily dripping from his snout, but that's no reason for him to be wailing. His eyes are still bright. Too bright, and it hurts to look at them. So you don't. You reach down instead, mopping away the blood on his face and scrubbing it off on your breeches. "Pher, Pher, why - shh. Shoosh!"

He doesn't shoosh. And you don't know what else to do, so you pap him.

"You're fine. Shoooosh. You're fine. I promise!" You keep sneaking glances over your shoulder, but Rmeros isn't moving. He's gone still, though he's still making those noises. (This is the point you'd cull a rabbit, but you left your knife at home, and your pan's still scrambling for a different solution.) Pheres, on the other hand, is finally quieting.

His eyes are dimming, so you keep petting his face. The skin of your fronds is catching on his skin, and you're leaving trails of mud, but you don't care. Maybe he doesn't either, because his breath hitches, and then he stops wailing, the sound dying off with a sickly little sob.

"Pher --?"

"He was in my brain," he says, hitching over the words, and you make a decision.

***

You make Pheres help. You don't regret that.

Rmeros's not dead, when you push him into the water.

You don't regret that, either.

What you do regret is that Pheres keeps crying.

And what you do regret is that neither of you thinks to check the van, and see where Rmeros's mother is, before it's too late.

10. SCRATCH | 5.3 SWEEPS / 11 YEARS OLD

She doesn't kill you, but you don't realise it for weeks.

The first few nights, it's just pain, pain, pain, and Pheres's worried eyes above you. He cries on you once, sad and squelchy and making all sorts of horrible noises, like his airsacs are straight up gonna fall out and burst, but you can't keep your eyes open to tell him to calm down. You can't even get words out of your soundchute: your wordmuscle is thick and heavy in your seedflap, and it feels like there's wool on your face, keeping all your sounds in.

But you try anyway. The hours blur together. The van's hot, too hot, and you can't seem to sleep, but all you do is sleep: you take a breath and blink, and the sun's shining down from the look-out in murky rays, where it was all gloom a moment afore.

One day, you blink, and when you open your eyes, you're feeling better.

Pheres is asleep right up against you, his face buried in the crook of your neck, arms wrapped tight around you like you're his lusus. Compared to the heat you've been feeling, had crawling under your skin like the worst kinda worm, he's been cold - but now, he's sweat-hot, fever-hot, and the sticky damp of his skin's too much to deal with. "Move," you whine, and you try to shove him. You're not in the 'coon, for some reason.

Your arm is all numb, like you slept wrong, so you use the other.

The instant your palm touches 'em, he's on his feet and skittering away, even before his eyes are all the way open. He's too tired to even spark at you: he just curls his lip, shoulders up and eyes slit, afore he realises it's you.

And then his eyes pop open all at once.

He does cry on you, this time, and it's gross, but you let him.

Pheres wants to curl up right against you, bony points digging into all of your fleshy ones, but you whine and whine 'til he settles on the ground below the platform instead. He rests his chin on the edge of the soft bit, and peering up at you with that big ol' scentnozzle, he looks like a barkbeast from the vids, all sad-eyed and hopeful.

"How are you feeling?"

"Good," you say, 'cause what else can you say, when he's looking at you like that? You hurt all over, like you've been in a fight. (And you were: with the lusus, then with the fever. You've seen the ways kid thrashed back at the hivestem, like sommat was beating 'em black and blue.)

He brightens. "Oh, good," he says, fervent, like someone's taken a weight off of his back. His eyes are red, red, red, rimmed with his blood along the bottoms and with the little blotches of burst veins in 'em. If he's been sleeping much, then you're mad as a tower of bees. "I'm so glad! I'm so, so, so glad - I tried all the medicine in his cabinets, but I couldn't find none - any, I couldn't find any that'd work right, all the labels were saying things that weren't right at all, so I had to go get a mediculler, and d'you know, d'you know these hivestems are too small for a mediculler?"

"Too small! They just -" He's straightened up, and his hands are flitting in the nervous little gestures he does. But now he clasps them together, wringing them in a way that's gotta hurt. "They don't take care of people if they get hurt," he says unhappily. "If they think they're unsalvagable. So I had to drive all day to get to one that did."

"But she fixed me," you say, reaching out. Your arm's still asleep! No matter how much you jerk it, it doesn't want to move, or do nothin' but tingle, so you harrumph, shift your whole body over so you can swat his hands apart. "So, like, it's cool."

He's not wringing his hands. He ought to look calmer. But he's going pale, pale as the tile under him at your words. "She.. mostly fixed you," he says, hesitant, and something in your gut drops. "She got the fever down! And she pulled the infection out. She had psionics, you know, the healing sort, so she could just -" He spins his hand in a quick, jerking motion, that you have no idea what it could even mean. "She said there ain't nothing else - there wasn't anything else she could do, past that. I'm sorry."

"What're you sorry for?" The room's spinning all around you, but you're still struggling to sit up, because something's wrong. Pheres's gone from looking nearly calm to on the verge of tears again, his lips pinched tight like that might stop him from bawling. "What's - oh, goddamnit. Why's it still asleep?"

You can shrug your shoulder. That's not asleep, and awkwardly, trying your best to keep your arm out of the way, you sit up. "You let me lie on it all day, or what?" you grump at him. "I can't feel a damn thing in this stupid hunk of meat --"

"She tried to fix it. She did her best," he says, unhappily, and tells you the truth.

You don't break anything.

Later, you'll be very proud of that.

***

"It's a good thing we left, huh? 'cause I wouldn't have been able to climb shit. I might've fallen and breaken my damn neck."

"Language," Pheres murmurs.

It's been a whole perigee since your fever died down, and you learned about your arm. Pheres hasn't let you leave the cart since then.

He hasn't let you drive, either, so all you do is sit righ tyour nose pressed up againsnt the viewing panes, watching the desert pass you by. You've been driving for days and days now Not on the main road, where people are always looking askance at your big ol' rattle-truck, but on the smaller ones that wind through the plains and the trees and skirt right along the shadow of Kuikiro's treeline. Pheres figures it's safer, farther away from anyone else.

The two of you don't talk about your hivestem, or Rmeros, or anything much at all. Pheres is too flip: he snaps at you, then jokes, and all of his jokes fall flat. He gets uncomfortable when you get too energetic, and he cries when you're tired, like you're only half a second from dying on him again.

It's a miserable ride, and worse is the fact he's keeping you penned in like a brooding cluckbeast.

He drops the basket on the table. There's eggs, the crisp, transluscent white that probably means they came from someone's lusus. The end of a bread loaf. Fruit, and...

There's blood on Pheres's lip. "It's nothing," he says when he sees you looking. "Don't worry. I got some food, didn't I?"

"I told you to get meat," you huff, looking away. If you ask how he got banged up, he'll just play it off. If he'd let you out of the cart, you wouldn't let anyone rough him up, 'cause if you're not allowed to, why the hell's anyone else?

And you're his moirail. You told him you were his moirail, all the way back, when his face was ruddy and before Rmeros's mum came out, and you hadn't lied. Keeping him from getting roughed up is supposed to be your job.

But he won't let you do it. He won't let you out, and you've run your voice raspy with the asking.

"Meat's expensive, Sipa." The two of you've shoved as many as the books as could fit down in the storage hutch, but there's still trays of 'em on the counters, on the table. He has to push them to the side to start unpacking the food. "We don't need it. I got nuts, see?"

"You don't need it, because you're not broken." You can't see his face, but his ears go red, and he droops a little againsnt the table.

You're not being kind, but you know by now he won't say nothing. And you're not being fair, but by now, you just don't care. (Fair isn't a thing, not when you're the one who got ruint.) "But whatevs," you say, bouncing to your feet. Bennui stirs on top of the recuperacoon, where he's been sleeping. Because there's no time for sulking, not when an opportunity just struck you.

"Me and Pops can hunt us up something, and it won't cost nothing at all!"

"You can't do that." Pheres looks back at you, frowning.

"Why? We're out in the woods! I'm not gonna trot off into the jungle, you big baby," you say, grabbing hold of one of the long-sleeved shirts. You'd long cut off the legs on your pants, on account of the fact it's so hot, but sleeves'll give you some protection, if something goes after your arms. "Don't worry! I'll get something good, too."

"You like hopbeast, yeah? Can't, like, make it fancy like Alsike did, but I bet I can find one out there --"

When you turn, Pheres is standing in the doorway, his face pale. "You can't go outside, Sipa," he says again, sharp and slow like you're simple. "It's not safe."

You stare at him. His face's going more ruddy, and he looks down and away. "Why wouldn't it be safe?" you ask, squinting at him. He's skirted around the question, when you threw it at him in the past. Danced and played with it, like not sayin' it changes anything at all.

He opens his mouth.

("Because it's dangerous," he said last time, like you didn't get mauled in this damn cart.)

"Because you're injured," he says now, waspish, spitting it out all at once. "You're injured and people'll take advantage of that. Look, if you want meat so badly, why don't you have Bennui get it? He's already getting up!"

Your pops is. You hear the rustle of feathers behind you, the slinking-shuffling move that means he's getting up, and then the flap of wings. Pheres's got one of the windows cracked, just wide enough for your pops to slip out, but not big enough for anything to get in. It creaks now. If you looked, you'd probably see your lusus slinking his feathery butt out.

You don't look.

"I'm perfectly fine," you snap, scowling at Pheres. Your arm aches, but no, it doesn't: it's just your pan, saying it ought to ache, 'cause you can't really feel nothing in it.

"You are not." He lifts his chin. "Don't be silly. Here, I got you something, too." He digs around in the basket. You hadn't taken a good look inside. There's just food, and what d'you care about food?

But he shifts the eggs and the loaf, the fruit, and he pulls out a larva, small and fat and glistening with something wet. It blinks its many eyes at you and yawns, showing off a tooth-lined seedflap. "It's old tech," he says doubtfully, "but she said you might be able to program it to do something interesting --"

He's holding it out to you, and you slap it out of his hands.

Pheres jerks back, eyes wide, his horns hitting the cabinet with a thump hard enough to shake the books. He drops the grub. There's a snap as it hits the ground, a high-pitched squeal, and then it races off -- somewhere.

You're not looking at it. You're watching Pheres, who's got his horns down like he wants to fight, but who's damn near cowering. It's stupid. He's stupid, and awful, and --

"Well!" He looks down at the piles of things where it might've hidden, and his voice's brittle. "There just went twenty caegars."

"I don't want your stupid grub," you snap. "What's that supposed to mean? People'll take advantage?"

He doesn't say anything. There's something hot and unpleasant churning in your gut. He's right, something in the back of your pan keens, he's right and you're cullbait and if you leave, someone'll knock your head clean off just for the audacity of existing --

-- but the rest of your pan's just frothing, furious at the indignity of this, because he might be right, but he's wrong, too. "I can defend myself! And I'd defend you too, bulgemunch, if you'd let me! I never got knocked around afore, and I won't get knocked around now, and - and - if someone tries to take a go, then I'll cull 'em! Like I culled him!"

Pheres's not saying anything at all.

"Say something," you demand, but he's just watching you, horns down, mouth set. The skin under his eyes is bunching, the tension in his shoulders is growing. If it was anyone else, you'd say he was going to take a swing at you. But this is Pheres.

He doesn't hit with his hands anymore.

"Because you did such a fine job defending yourself," he says thinly.

"What would you do if someone went after you? Throw a rock at them, Sipara? Bite them?" The words are spilling out like rocks, like he can't keep them in, and each stings. The way he's saying them stings. "We're not in the desert anymore! And - and what we did wasn't culling. You can't cull your -"

"- your quadrants," he spits out, his eyes bright. "It's called murder. And that's what people'll do to you, if you go outside! You're not big! You're not tough, you're not - not anything, except worthless cullbait."

You can't breathe.

You take a step forward, and he flinches, starts to step back before he realises the cabinet's right behind him. But then he recovers: squares his shoulders, sticks out his chin. "Take it back," you demand, your voice quavering, and just as quick, he says: "No."

"I'm not worthless!"

"Saying that doesn't make it true. We're rust, and we're pupas, and we're worthless," he says, stretching out the word. "The only thing we're good for is feeding to people's lusus. And I can run, if someone tries to nab me. What about you?"

"What're you going to do, if you can't even lift your arm?"

"You're wrong." He thinks he knows you, but every words proving that he's wrong, wrong, wrong. He doesn't know you at all, not a thing, because you're not -- you killed someone for him. For both of you. You didn't do that for nothing.

But just because he doesn't know you doesn't mean you don't know him. Your pumpbiscuit's racing. Your mouth's dry. Each exhale feels like it hurts, like you're pushing all the air out of your lungs and it ain't never going to come back, but your words come out clear. "You're being stupid," you snap, because he might know how to hurt you with his words, but you know how to make him bleed. "That's all you are: do you even think anything in there? Or is it all fluff? 'cause I can't tell if it's you or Rmeros talkin' right now."

The name drops like a stone in the water. Pheres flinches like you just hit him, his eyes wide, and for a second you think he's going to cry about it. What he does instead is hiss at you, his face twisted, sparks cracking off of his horns. "Everything I do doesn't go back to him! I'm not - I'm -"

"Dunno why I culled him," you say, "if you ain't even gonna try to be your own person."

He tackles you.

You hit the ground with an oomph, but he's skinny, and only getting skinnier since the two of you bolted. "I have thoughts," he reeds, "thoughts and opinions and they're mine!"

"You don't know that!"

He goes for your face. You grab his wrists, one in each hand, and he hisses at you, trying to wrench them free. His eyes brighten. There's a spray of sparks, but they're dim, and he's cringing, shaking his head like he's trying to dislodge them before they're even half-formed. "I do!"

"You don't! You don't even know how to think! Alsike says, Rmeros says - you didn't even know how to think before he came, and now you're just some shitty copy --"

There's a blinding pain in your eye. You yowl, jerking away, but you don't get free. He's got those skinny knob knees dugging into your side, locked in as tight as a door, and no matter how much you kick, he hangs on.

He doesn't pop you again. "You were going to die. If I hadn't gotten someone, you would've died. You were so close," he rasps. "I had to stay up all day to make sure you stayed cold! And - did you know, the mediculler wanted to cull you. She said it wasn't worth the money to save you."

"Shut up --"

He leans in. "She said it'd be a mercy," he says, soft, his knees digging in, and for all that he's smaller, you can't knock him off. "- and if I gave the slightest fig, I'd let her."

"I told her I'd fry her if she tried! She had a knife and she was yellow and I told her that anyway, but - but if you think I'm so awful - if everything I say is just terrible - then I should've let her!"

You slap him, hard. When your claws drag at his skin, you hook them in. You rip.

Pheres screams.

It's the worst sound you've ever heard, and there's warmth on your fingers, and an elbow to your face - your gut - everywhere he can hit, tiny hands flailing. (But you don't stop. You grit your teeth and you curl your fingers in tighter, because he hurt you and that's not fair, it's not fair at all--)

You can't see anything at all, he's sparking so hard, and you feel that more than see it, each pinprick of pain as they hit your skin. He's kicking back and you're kicking back, and - and -

- suddenly he's off of you, and your back is hitting the wall, hard.

The room is spinning. There's lights in your eyes, and you hear more than see Pheres bolt for the door.

When you look down, there's blood on your hands.

***

A few hours later, your eye is a mottled, ugly brown, and it's swollen tight as a door. You can’t see shit. You don’t want to, either, not when it’s still throbbing like.. well, like someone popped you in the face.

When Bennui got back in, hauling a pair of burnt-black mice, he'd taken one look at you and puffed up, furious. You’d almost felt better, ‘til he’d dived down at you and taken a whack.

There's blood in your mouth from where he caught you with his wings, but there's no more painpills in the counter. When you’d went for the fridge, Bennui'd had a go at you again, pecking and smacking until you’d retreated back to the front. 'Tough it out,' he'd said, with his birdy little eyes and angry mantling: '- you deserve a little discomfort!'

When the door creaks open, you're feeling rotten. Your face hurts. Bennui’s hiding on top of the fridge, guarding his mice like they’re the world’s greatest prize and giving you the cold shoulder. (Least he’s stopped lecturing you. But being ignored, as it turns out, isn’t much better.) And you don’t want to see Pheres. You don’t want to see anyone else in the whole, entire world.

But you can’t exactly lock him out of his own hive, no matter how rotten you feel.

‘specially because when he comes into the back, he doesn't look like he's feeling much better.

He's fixed up his face as best as he could, but there's no fixing the bloody furrows you left. You can see the path of your claws, where some hit his snout and stopped, where the rest curved under and up towards the rest of him. The skin's peeled back where it's the deepest, but the entire thing is angry and red and weeping.

He looks like he's been, too.

For a moment, both of you just stare.

“.. I wasn’t expecting you to still be here,” he says, brittle.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," you blurt out, stepping forward.

Maybe that wasn't the right thing to say, because his face goes tight. But he doesn’t leave, and you take that as encouragement. His eye on that side's half squinched shut, like it hurts to keep it open, but you didn't think you knicked it. Did you? You're leaning forward to see, pusher in your mouth -

- and he's skittering back, hissing loud enough that it makes you flinch.

"I'm sorry!"

"You don't get to hit me," he says all at once, stumbling over the words. "I hit you, but I didn't hurt you. And - and it's not right for you to hit me, when all I've been trying to do is help you. I didn't have to! I didn't, I didn't, I'm already a horrible moirail and no one would've said anythingif I hadn't, but I did, because you deserve to be helped, and - and -"

"I don't deserve to be hit!"

"I'm sorry," you squeak. His back is to the door. You take a step back, putting more distance between the two of you. Your arm feels like a dead-weight, dragging you down. There's red rolling down Pheres's face, either blood or tears or both, and your vision's going cloudy with orange.

"I'm an ass. I'm awful, I'm sorry, I'm really, really, really sorry, and -- Bennui bit me over it." Laughing from nerves is Pheres's thing, but maybe it's catchin', because you're laughing and hiccuping all at once. "He bit me 'cause I hit you and I know that means I fucked up! I'm really, really sorry, dude. You didn't deserve it. I'm just awful."

He's supposed to say you aren't. The two of you've seen moirails in the hivestem before. You both know how the script goes.

He squares his shoulders instead, wiping at his face with the back of his hand. ".. you are," he says, petulant. His face is all runny still, the sealed scratches re-opened by all his hissing, but he’s not cringing quite as much anymore. That’s something, right?

“You are awful. But –“ He takes a breath. “I guess we both are. We’ll just have to – have to –“

“Work on it,” you say, hopeful. (Working means he won’t go. Working on it means he won’t leave.)

“No more hitting,” he says, and you’re nodding, before the words are even all the way out of his mouth.

11. COIN | 5.8 SWEEPS / 12 YEARS OLD

"Betcha five dollars I can beat you up!"

You're up on top of the bannister of the staircase. The moons are high in the sky, and this is the only place in Temasek you can probably see 'em: everywhere else, it's all skyscrapers and hivestems and the terraces between 'em, but you're in the central court. Far enough from the docks that there's no finny faces, but near enough that everything's nice and wide and spaced out. Lowbloods don't mind the clusters, but you're learning highbloods act like they've got a stitch in their britches if they so much as have to see another fellow walking nearby.

But it works out! There's no building for twenty, thirty feet in any which way, just stone tiles and the raised patio of the courtyard proper, and there's plenty of folks milling around in every direction. Folks who keep lookin' at you.

A mossblood makes eye contact. You beam, showing off all of your teeth. "Hey, lady," you sing, "wanna take a bet?"

She looks at your bandaged arm, at your scruffed up clothes. At your pops, sitting on the bannister next to you like he ain't got a care in the world. She's not much older than you! A sweep, maybe, which's just about perfect. That means five caegars is enough for her to consider it, and not enough to be salty if she loses.

(You lost a tooth, last bloke who tried to get pissy with you after he lost. A clout to his horns dealt with that.)

Her friend laughs, nudges her. "Do it," she urges. "Or are you scared about some one-armed pupa, lah?"

That's all greenie needs.

Fighting's easy, even one-armed. You're a big kid! A tumble sends her flailing to the ground, and then you grab her by the wrists, twist 'em up above her head. She tries to bite you. You headbutt her right in the nose, then you do it again 'til she yowls empress.

Her friend's laughing still as she gets up. Greenie's face is all green and nasty, like she wants to hit you proper. But she flips you a coin all the same.

A dark hand snatches it out of the air before you can.

Pheres's balancing on the slanted arm of the staircase, stepping down as carelessly as a meowbeast. (He won't fall. He never, ever falls. His psionics are good for that, at least!) "Five dollars?" he asks, clicking his tongue.

The mossblood's out of hearing, but that doesn't stop him from checking, glancing after her with a quick, furtive smile. "What a cheapskate," he says, once she’s certain she’s gone. “She’s bigger. She ought’ve bet ten.”

"Well, why don't you tell her that?'

Pheres doesn't bother with rude words. He just makes a gesture with his fronds that shows you what he thinks of that idea. And when you laugh, he rocks back on his heels, flashing his teeth like he did something clever.

"Maybe five dollars isn’t much to you, mister fancy pants," you announce: "- but some o' us are poor as fuck. Five dollars is like, a fortune.” You bounce forward. He shimmies back. One step for every step. “Five dollars is like, like --"

Pheres beams at you, clasping his hands behind him. "Two plates of tau huay?" he offers, fronds wrapped tight. He can't think you've forgotten he's got your caegar.

(Both of your caegar, technically: everything the two of you bring in is split. His book money, your fight money. Ain't no point in keeping it separate when everything you've got is shared.)

"Two plates of tau huay and an entire mug of tea. That I earned, so give it!” You sidle around him, but he turns with you, laughing. Pheres's still tinier than you, all bird bones and pointy limbs, but age is doing weird things to the angles of his face. Before, he was pointy and moon-eyed, with cheeks you could put your palms in, and a nose that a lusus wouldn't love. But now he's growing into both of 'em, and there's flesh to the curves of his face, and he's almost pretty. Especially when he's pleased.

Not that you'll ever tell 'em that. He'll get a big head, and between that and his horns, his neck'd snap right in half.

“You're thinking something dreadful again, aren't you? No, don't argue, I can tell. It's all, you know --" He presses his palms to the sides of his face, angling his fingers down in a crude imitation of your soundflaps. "Well, think about this. I could stand to eat an entire two plates,” he says, thoughtful. "Everyone says I'm too skinny. In fact, I really think I need to! D'you think they'll trade the tea for coffee, if I ask nicely?"

“You can’t even eat half a plate, dude, don’t play. If you tried to eat two, you’d – you’d explode!" You fling out your hand to demonstrate, sidling another step in closer. His eyes are so busy tracking your fronds, he doesn't even notice. "It’d be gross. There’d be guts, and organs, and, like, folks crying every which way, on account of the fact they’re all smothered in nasty giblets --”

“That’s not scientifically plausible,” he mocks. “That doesn’t even happen in films!”

“Sure it does! I’ve seen zeds blow up all the time in your silly daywalker kissing flicks --"

"I'll give you the caegar if you'll shut up," he says, and he flips the coin right over your head.

You whirl around, lunging after it with your good hand.

When you grab it, it's heads.

[fleetbound]

Triangulating faces is weird and hard, so saving this for my reference: examples of the sort of features that my characters are meant to have.

Pheres’s is always a touch iffy, because he’s stretched the fuck out, but whatcha gonna do, there aren’t really borzoi models out there.

[fleetbound]

INKTOBER ROUNDUP

I did Inktober, so here’s my round-up of drabbles from then. HOLLA.

Word-count: 50,081.

1. POWER (Pheres Dysseu, 1,401 words)

Pheres butts heads with ID at 16.

2. NOISE (Riccin / ID / Sipara, 1,254 words)

ID makes a pillowfort for his auspistices, and realises Riccin is going deaf.

3. RELAX (ID, 2,007 words)

12 year old ID decides to pursue comballet as his ambition.

4. DEFIANCE (Riccin/Pheres, 9,686 words)

Riccin attends a cuddleparty, and Pheres guides them through how to have a proper pile.

5. UNDERWATER (Pheres Dysseu, 1,690 words)

Pheres nearly drowns, and wrestles an octopus.

6. SHY (MELETE ETHERI, 1,402 words)

Melete attends a Torrent meeting, and people fail to make her socialise.

8. BLOOD (Riccin Kayata, 890 words)

New to the program, Riccin learns to wear indigo.

9. MYSTERIOUS (Pheres Dysseu, 1,181 words)

The start of Pheres’s crush on Raphae.

10. COMFORT (ID, 1,460 words)

ID takes care of a sick Vadaya. (PAIRED FIC TO REBA’S #COMFORT)

11. JOURNEY (Sipara/Pheres, 1,045 words)

Pheres pays an impromptu visit to his moirail.

12. FALL (Pheres Dysseu, 2,217 words)

CW: age gap, slutshaming

Pheres deals with the rumour-mill.

13. SILENCE (Kindra/Riccin, 1,196 words)

Kindra comforts Riccin in an unorthodox way.

14. MONSTER (ID, 6,561 words)

CW: NSFW

Hap Ret convinces ID that seadwellers are wild.

15. MESSAGE (ID, 893 words)

CW: NSFW

ID messages Hap Ret the next day, irate.

16. GIFT (Calico Kuanfu, 1,396 words)

Kua fucking hates Standard.

17. DEATH (Sipara Nzinga, 1,078 words)

CW: GORE, PARASITES

Sipara gets stopped by a rainbow-drinker. She is thoroughly disinterested.

18. EXPOSED (Calico Kuanfu, 2.937 words)

CW: BODY HORROR

Kuanfu deals with another Rickshaw’s engine problems.

19. FREEDOM (Nanako Bonjou, 1,029 words)

Nanako bonds with her new lusii.

20. SHIP (Iconic Conetl, 1,904 words)

CW: BODY HORROR

ID gets a ship.

21. SWORD (Pheres Dysseu, 2,019 words)

Pheres visits Sipara and Hadean on Nott Terminal.

22. WISHES (Riccin Kayata, 2,641 words)

Riccin paints up Pheres, and has some unfortunate realisations with regards to the IEP’s dehumanisation of their members along the way.

23. WARMTH (Pheres Dysseu, 4,194 words)

Pheres visits Hadean and Sipara, jokes ensue.

[fleetbound]

FURTHER CHEWING BETWEEN JOB APPS.

The narratives I want to write:

Relationship drama that spurs character development, basically? Characters learning new things about themselves, whether they like it or not, and doing so through the context of others.

PHYSICAL DRAMA. I miss paraaa, but I keep chewing on the types I want, and it’s all action or horror at this point, haha. Or action-horror, tbh. Eldritch abominations, or delves into places that characters should not delve, or really physical threads - all of my favorite threads (Imnots, Epiphany, Kit-falling-off-cliff, Riccin/Berryl) have been ones that involve so much fucking movement.

Politics! Hemodiscourse is old hat, how do highbloods get fucked over by the system, too. How are things different in different regions? Why do these things happen, and how do characters react in their absence?

So the best characters to explore these, in the context of my own cast, are probably - and which can be crossposted between Fleetbound / BWIC / FLARPing accordingly, to ensure I’m not just pigeonholing myself away from actual roleplay in favour of chasing my own tail ---

Some Torrent Saboteur is running a social experiment in their downtime, and part of it is checking in on the dietary habits of Rickshaw residents - so they fill several ships full of troll and lusii disease carriers and send them out into the Eastern Sea, tracking where they go and which places get sick. Kua’s rickshaw gets hideously, contagiously sick, causing him to aggressively spiral over several posts - and then Melete, aghast, decides to go and try to fix it.

Riccin’s got a fuchsia admirer who keeps requesting them as an escort on her outings, so they keep asking about heiress politics. Sipara is less than pleased.

Sipara starts trying to bother Riccin again, in Pheres’s absence - and Riccin, who’s eyeing up the IEP’s exit door, allows it to happen. Melete takes Riccin’s formal inquiry to the IPC and trashes it, but starts staging a low-key intervention with Liyiji - both on Sipara’s interactions with Riccin, but also on trying to figure out wtf is going on with Riccin’s life. Cue three socially awkward neets of varying stripes trying to figure out how to manage a raging extrovert determined to share their rum butter with the world.

The only thing I want out of ID is him to get smacked down more, tbh, and more opportunity to discuss his relationships / life / get called out explicitly on the fact he needs more fucking hobbies. He needs someone or something to take a hammer to the fact he should be moving on up, and pure platonic jealousy could do that, tbh.

Pheres is set and cozy, I’m perfectly chill just letting him react to other people’s shit.

[fleetbound]

character trajectories & plans

[fleetbound]

“ID needs more hobbies,” I said, and then Reba separately suggested he get a marshall’s cockatoo, and it all spiraled from there.

[fleetbound]

>safe to shore: sipara nzinga meta

And here, it’s time for everyone’s favorite post-plot aftermath: META.

The overall problem with Sipara Nzinga, as a person, is that she’s low empathy, and she’s low interest. Sibling dynamics are the big theme in my fantroll cast - Nanako and Vadaya, Weeds and Riccin being two major examples - and Sipara’s not exempt from that. Her relationship with ID is supposed to be a large mirror to Pheres’s relationship with Rmeros! Rmeros defined who Pheres would be from childhood. ID has defined Sipara similarly, and the largest problem with this is that, as a person, Sipara largely just doesn’t care.

And her lack of care about most things reflects in the way she deals and interacts with others. Sipara’s brusque and disinterested, for the most part, and when she isn’t, it’s almost always because she’s figuring out a way to make the encounter work for her. From ID, she learned that people can and should be used to further herself - but unlike ID, she doesn’t have the excuse of this being a trauma reaction, or a coping mechanism. Sipara just uses people, because she’s practical enough to see any tool at rest as an opportunity wasted.

So the point of this plot was to have that bite her on the ass! Sipara doesn’t get to barrel through it the way that she wishes she could. When she tries to fall back on letting someone else lead, it bites her in the ass - she’s recognised. When she tries to bully her way through things, making it very clear from the get-go how few shits she gives through insulting Merlon, it actively sets people against her.

Her intimidation bluff against Gwydyn works, but only momentarily. Sipara is used to being able to bluff, bully and intimidate her way to the top of any social foodchain, through manipulation or outright aggression. She can’t physically harm them. Their interest in her is purely platonic, and paternalistic - the only thing that keeps her from getting spaced is the one thing she can’t control, which is her moral convictions. When push comes to shove, she’s not able to actually retrieve Mah Jie permanently: she has to barter, she has to convince them, and it’s a delaying tactic moreso than it is an actual victory.

This is a situation where she doesn’t get to win, and where all the ways that she’s failed have been spelled out explicitly to her. Even attempting her usual go-to of hitting on Hap Ret doesn’t work, because she gets to realise: oh, she actually hates this, to a degree that she can’t functionally ignore.

And Pheres’s final pesterlog with her is meant to be the nail in the coffin. Sipara likes to ignore things she doesn’t know how to fix, or that make her excessively uncomfortable. It’s her go-to means of dealing with things! (”Dealing”.) But ignoring Pheres’s issues finally bites her in the ass, in the form of Pheres deciding to semi-permanently ghost on her - and while it hasn’t sunk in entirely, just yet, how many things she’s fucked up, and how many things she has to fix, in the next few weeks, it will.

Sipara can’t bully her way through life! She can’t just prioritise her handful of people, and fuck over everyone else, and expect them to thank her for it as all the pieces fall into place. She’s now been put in a position where she has to explicitly acknowledge that, with consequences that she can’t actually afford to ignore, and it’ll be interesting to see how she recalibrates herself around them.

[fleetbound]

carry our bodies safe to shore

SUMMARY: After a fuchsia convinces Mah Jie to accompany him to the far reaches of space, Sipara gets sent to retrieve her. But what starts as a rescue mission ends up turning into more of a mess than anyone anticipated.

A/N: And here’s my first major plot post in four years, holy shiiit. Last time I tried to do this was >PHERES: ABSCOND, and I made myself follow the same principles with this, tbh: just make a rough outline, close your eyes, and fucking write, because Sipara’s needed to be stuck in a jar and shaken roughly for ages.

This story is rough, rough, rough all the way down. It’s also got the trademark “Mar shifting certain decisions as they write” first-draft madness, so feel free to wait a year or so and re-read it when I inevitably suck up my editing ennui and rewrite / tighten it all up, and fix all the minor discrepancies littered throughout. The merit of writing by yourself: you can just roll with it and trust you’ll fix things later on.

The cost of writing with yourself: you will just roll with it and trust you’ll fix things later on, possibly in two years. Oops!

I’m mostly just shoving this up for folks to have a rough idea of wtf her latest threads are referencing, so: under the cut, 15k or so of Sipara’s rollicking adventure through HMS Glory.

THE WEEK BEFORE

PRIVATE: Pheres contacts Sipara.

DAY ONE

BWIC: Sipara leaves for the station.

NETWORK: Radiostar leaves a message detailing the mission to the masses.

PRIVATE: Merlon contacts Sipara about rooming together.

PRIVATE: Hap Ret tells Sipara to calm down, and they discuss Sherlock.

PRIVATE: Sipara contacts Radiostar.

PROSE: Sipara and Hap Ret watch Sherlock.

PRIVATE: Pheres contacts Sipara to check in.

DAY TWO

NETWORK: Dorset demands to know why the water is pink.

NETWORK: Sipara tries to discover who’s in charge, and meets Gwydyn.

PRIVATE: Hadean checks in on Sipara.

DAY THREE

BWIC: Pheres tries to find molting pills for “Sipara”, and is confronted by Matari.

BWIC: Matari attempts to confront Sipara over her callousness.

BWIC: ... resulting in Sipara freaking out at Hadean.

DAY FOUR

PRIVATE: Sipara attempts to apologise for ripping out Gwydyn’s throat.

PRIVATE: Sipara panics quietly at Hadean over how to deal with Gwydyn.

PROSE: Sipara and Gwydyn talk business.

BWIC: Hadean worries at ID.

DAY FIVE

BWIC: ID yowls at Hadean.

DAY SIX

PROSE: Sipara and Gwydyn butt heads.

PROSE: Sipara tries to fall back into old ways with Hap Ret, leading to an awkward discussion.

PRIVATE: Pheres confronts Sipara, and vice versa, with less than ideal results.

DAY SEVEN

PROSE: Sipara strikes a deal with Gwydyn.

PRIVATE: Sipara talks to Hadean, and heads on home.

[fleetbound]

Quick hue reference for the maroon and cusps of Fleetlounge.

[fleetbound]

All the NPCs from this plot I’m doing, now in neat cards describing their deets - Mah Jie and Sipara don’t get ones, because they’ve been around for like, two years now.

Base used here by maladoodles @ deviantart!