Chapter 17 – Swords and Slippers #4
There it was again, my one-time name. Grigor said it like it was an oily, greasy thing he couldn't wait to get out of his mouth.
"Why do you even care? Why do they care?" I asked, breathless. This time, it came out in English, unintentional. I slid away, put some more distance between myself and the hulking shape of Grigor's back.
Grigor carefully shut the fridge door, standing now within an arm's reach of Araxis, who had gone back to folding shredded filling inside of dumpling wrappers, his expression perfectly mild and unbothered.
Grigor leaned his back heavily against the fridge, and I knew he'd leave a streak of sweat there.
"It's not me who cares, pretty boy. I said, let him die on those sands – but anyone can choose redemption, even people like you." he said. "We're shepherds, and it's past time you returned to the flock. Where it's safe."
"So sweet," I sneered, tucking my arms across my body. "Message received. Thanks ever so much."
"Think about it," Grigor said mildly, cracking open the water and taking a long drink. "We can talk more later, when you've cleaned yourself up and closed your legs."
And then, like that, he was gone. I stood perfectly still, staring at the humid outline of his body against the metal of the fridge.
I barely registered the sounds of Araxis cooking, my mind simultaneously trying to travel at light speed as I processed all of that and refusing to focus on one coherent thought, so that it felt like I was watching the universe streak by as lines of coloured light outside a ship window.
Something brushed my hand and I jerked back, blinking rapidly to try and clear the haze of my thoughts, the frantic screaming somewhere in the depths of my body that I was in danger.
The endless, still dark of Araxis's eyes held mine, steady. He pressed a small cup into my hand. "Drink," he said, firm. He was an anchor keeping me held in place; a lighthouse to find the way back.
I obeyed, lifting the cup to my lips and taking a slow sip of the warm tea – floral and smoky, all at once. It tasted like so many nights on the creche ship, and maybe that was another tether pulling me out of my racing thoughts and toward what felt right, what felt like it fit.
"He's unpleasant," Araxis said quietly, stepping back to the stove and taking the final pot from the burner. He scooped out the contents of several vessels into little bowls arrayed like gems on the counter between us, gesturing with one utensil to the table behind me. "Sit, Sashen."
So I did. I sat and I drank my tea, and I was quiet as Araxis set the spread of food in front of me, and I was silent as he carefully selected the best morsels to put on my plate.
I wanted to tell him everything, to translate and recount every word as best I could – but would I do that after four days?
How would it look on camera? I glanced up and saw two silver orbs hovering near the ceiling.
There had only been one before. No doubt they'd been drawn by the conflict and the hope that there might be more to be said.
My throat was tight as I picked at the food before me, and while part of me could register the sweet and salt, the burst of bright acid, the warmth of fat, mostly it just tasted of ash.
"Thank you," I managed, picking away at the food.
"I'm sorry. That took… some of the wind out of my sails.
" I paused, giving my head a little shake.
"Did that make sense? I – It's been awhile since I heard my first language.
Things are a bit jumbled at the moment, so my metaphors probably don't make much sense. "
"From an age of sailing vessels, yes?" Araxis leaned forward to pour more tea for me. I cradled the delicate cup in both hands, letting the warmth seep into my fingers. "Spade is the equivalent of doldrums. I believe I understand."
He was, wasn't he? I exhaled, and looked up at Araxis again who was watching me back. "You're not though," I offered. "I like… talking to you. I just wish we'd started talking somewhere else."
His nose crinkled in amusement. "That is my fault. I wished to approach you, but I was too intimidated."
"Intimidated?" I snorted, set my cup down, and picked up my plate of food, using the narrow utensils to select green pieces of vegetable that were glossy and dark, like jewels.
He had, I realized, made all of my favourites from the ship.
I poked at a dumpling next, and sighed happily when I slid it into my mouth.
He watched, a little pleased rumble leaving his throat as I started eating with more enthusiasm. "You have a very particular presence. If you were abaya – Hm." He stopped and ate a few bites of food.
We weren't supposed to have this conversation until tomorrow. I raised my eyebrows in question, and he lifted one shoulder in an elegant half-shrug. Might as well.
We'd talked at length about how to give him an opening for this conversation. He couldn't just tell me; I had to want to know, otherwise he'd seem uncouth.
"Can I ask you something?" I said, leaning a little closer as I set my eating utensils aside. "It might be a little rude."
He blinked at me, surprised, and nodded. This wasn't one of the ways in that we'd planned. But I could go off-script. I'd been improvising for most of my life.
"Grigor was being a shit to me because, on Seraphim, the expectation is that I'm a man because of the genitals I was born with, and men are supposed to behave a certain way – which doesn't include dancing in marn dens or, you know, wearing pink slippers.
Honestly, it's basically all of me that Seraphim has a problem with.
Everything that makes me who I am. So growing up, I learned again and again that I was, on a fundamental level, broken, corrupted, disgusting.
And when it became clear to everyone else that I'm not…
what they expected, the Shepherds made my life really hard. Like – it was bad."
Araxis was very still next to me, black eyes wide as if he was trying to communicate something. But I couldn't read his mind, and at least I could give the cameras overhead something interesting to broadcast. See how Seraphim felt about that.
"There are these camps down on the colony," I said, mouth suddenly very dry.
"Kind of like, uh, maybe like detention camps?
They're mostly factories. And if you're bad, that's where you go.
They say it's for re-education, and maybe that's true.
When you weren't doing whatever bullshit chores they gave you, you were listening to scripture.
It played over the announcement system almost all of the time, even through most of the night.
" My stomach was a hard knot, twisting tighter and tighter.
I licked my lips, the food in my stomach fighting me – but I'd gone too hungry for too long to lose a battle like that.
"The point is that they wanted to change me and people like me, because who they think I should be doesn't match with… how I am."
Bring it home, Sashen, I thought desperately, even though I could almost hear the crackle of the speaker system. Even though I had to fight the urge to blink, because I knew what I'd see when my eyes flashed closed would make it hard to continue.
I cleared my throat, trying to keep myself from gasping for air, as if I'd been running. "But – But abaya don't have different sexes, right? So – how do you understand all of that? Do you have customs around gender? How do you… understand who people are?"
For a long moment, Araxis was quiet. He studied me, and worry twisted even tighter in my gut: had I gotten things wrong? Did he not mean to have this conversation now? Had I said too much? Was it all too fucking much?
Finally, he fluted out a sound, his features pinched with worry.
"It is distressing to hear that who you are was held in contempt, Sashen, and that Spade has seen it fit to continue such abuse here.
" I startled at that word – abuse – and Araxis must have seen the shock in my features, because his posture softened, just a little.
When he spoke next, his tone had gentled even more.
"You should be cherished because of who you are; you would be, among my people.
It would be different for you." And although I knew we'd planned this, the way he said it – earnest, serious, quiet – made my chest ache all the same.
"How would it be different?" I murmured, lost in his dark eyes and desperate to get even more lost, to be taken far away from the memories of Seraphim, to escape the persistent feeling that they were snapping at my heels. "Tell me, please."
"Hm, I will – but you must also continue to eat.
I have been told that no one ever cooks for you.
" He smiled at me from behind his lashes, and leaned across the table to add more dumplings to my plate while the space beneath my ribs ached with something real that I didn't quite understand.
And then, as planned, he started to quietly explain that, if I were abaya, I would be virra.
I asked about what that meant and we spoke as time slid by – easy, familiar, almost intimate.
It was another iteration of our conversation on the ship, but this time it was scripted and careful, precisely planned in order to charm our abayan audience and to make it clear why Araxis would feel compelled to get to know me, to offer an alliance.
It would explain why he might begin to feel drawn to me.
I sat, murmuring questions and listening while we drank tea and ate slowly, and it was as though I slowly drifted outside of myself.
For the first time, I realized that the entirety of this script we had put together, this play we were putting on, was meant to address the fundamental impossibility of us.
Why would Araxis care for me? Why might he fall in love with me? What might make him pause and take notice? It could only happen because I was virra.
What else did I have to offer except some fleeting brain chemicals and the promise of allure?
In this role I was playing for galactic broadcast, I could have been anyone at all.
I didn't need to be Sashen. I certainly wasn't Alikander.
I may as well have been Be'oi or Caso. Khrelen Tintissi could have played the part just as easily as I did. All that mattered was that I was virra.
And if this was the story we were selling, what truth was there at the heart of it?
If I weren't virra, would he have stopped to help me?
Would he have let me touch him, would he have held me close, would he have promised to take care of me?
And what did it mean to me that the only plausible reason he could care for me was something innate, something I hadn't earned and didn't claim and which had, by rights, marked me as sinner on Seraphim?
What was so vivid and alive in me that everyone around me could see it, and were either repulsed or entranced? What was it that stood at the very core of who I was? And was it anything at all, or just a void into which everyone could project that which they cherished or loathed the most?
Perhaps I was nothing at all, in the end.