Corn for Lessons
Is it strange that I just feel hollow?
I have the Ring’s consent to use this magic, but I don’t want to.
It feels like a betrayal. Was I there for her?
Or just to touch upon something I found more beautiful?
I guess it can feel like the Ring’s opinion hardly matters when it’s only this very worldly woman who talks back to me, never the Ring.
“Hey, Catarina.” Piero walks in front of me, the first time he’s been back since he crashed on the desk.
“Oh, hi, Piero.”
“I was wondering if Vincenza was doing okay.” His face tenses into a difficult smile.
Bad timing.
I guess I can also try a difficult smile back. “She’s fine, but she’s staying in her office today.”
“Not even for me,” he hums while laying a hand on his chest.
“Especially, I think.”
“Could I at least ask what’s wrong? I haven’t seen her in a week.”
“Well, she was fine most of the week. You just—You just came in on the day she wasn’t.”
He grinds his voice into a sigh. “Can you make sure she gets out? Send her to a movie or something?”
“Uh, will do! Mister Piero.”
I feel a little better as his smile turns genuine.
“Have a good day, Catarina.”
“Will do!” I walk away to the hallway door, unlocking it.
“Wait, are you going to ask her right now about the movie?”
“...Yeah?”
“What the fuck. How come I don’t get to—I’m her brother!” He storms off in a mess of cursing and mumbling that I find humorous enough to laugh at. “Tell her to go fuck herself when she feels better.”
“Of course, Mister!”
I knock and patiently wait by Vincenza’s office door.
“Yes, Catarina?” She opens it, clear glasses standing on the bridge of her nose, eyes shining through them.
“You wear glasses?”
“Not typically. These are just transition lenses, no prescription.” She pushes her glasses up. “I don’t own sunglasses.”
“Oh. Uh… Piero came by. He wanted me to ask you to go to the movies.”
She narrows her eyes. “Why?”
“He wanted you to get out of the parlour. It could… They have food there! Snacks! We could… have some?”
“Now, which of you two invented the idea I would go with you?”
“Oh, uh… me. I guess. Sorry. I just—Sorry.” Ah, fuck. It sounded like I wanted a date.
“I like that addition. Eighteen hundred, we finish a quick lesson on calculus, and you can say you’ve earned the break.”
“Thanks, Mistress. Will your eyes be fine by then?”
“Hopefully. The lenses won’t work at night.” She takes them off. “Tell me if you need anything, Catarina.”
I nod and—Wait. “Piero also said you should fuck yourself to feel better!”
“What?”
“Hm? Uh, he was mad at you for seeing me and not him. So… go fuck yourself? From him! N-not me!”
She brings her hand to her mouth while a smile forms. “Mmhm.”
Did I say something wrong? I feel too awkward to ask and just go back to the desk.
Is she snickering back there?
I jump back into the car, searching the glove compartment for scissors to cut the tags off these blankets. They’re black, soft—and warm when three of them are layered on top of each other.
Vincenza doesn’t waste time getting us back en route to the theater, engine still hot after my quick trip to the corner store. “No snacks?”
I shrug. “None of the candy seemed appealing.”
“In what way?”
“I never liked sweets. Especially chocolate. Hate it.” I shake my head and hold back my tongue, as though I might accidentally taste it on the air. “It has such a nasty aftertaste.”
“You poor thing.”
I stare up at her. Her voice is perhaps softer, but still very straight and stable in its pitch. I can’t tell if she’s making a joke.
Her eyes, finally dim again, catch mine. She just smirks at me. The gall!
I… I like it.
Not the time. I shouldn’t be letting my feelings push into romanticizing this. She’s recovering from actual grief, not making herself the target of my advances.
But… the matron’s works always play back. Back and back. And, they’re so obviously true. Of course the Great Ring planned everything. Of course it planned out the best possible world. So of course everything that happens is making that best possible world.
Yet, it feels dramatically wrong to ever apply. Why couldn’t the Ring plan out a world that didn’t need premature death? Maybe it could’ve planned out a world without death for anyone? If I were the Ring, I’d give everyone the gift of necromancy and immortality, no strings, no—
I bite my lip before more blasphemy crawls out of my head. I love the Ring. It’s infinite in a way I can’t understand. I couldn’t replace it.
The music from the radio stops.
“Two tickets. Which…” Vincenza turns away from the sales booth to me. “They have a romance and a horror. Which one?”
“Is the romance straight?”
“Mmm… two men.”
Eh. I can read a romance with two men, but they’re always so visually uninteresting in movies. “Horror.”
She hands over a couple crescents. “The Silent Factory.”
“Here you go, Ma’am.” The clerk hands over two thin pieces of paper and a menu. “That’s just the one on the left.”
“Thank you.” Vincenza tosses me the menu and drives forward. “You can look at it.”
Popcorn, pizza by the slice, cheesy tortilla chips, and… other stuff. I don’t really feel like checking; I’m just vaguely aware that I’m not able to get myself to try any exotic foods, like ‘potato fries.’ Very strange.
I put down the menu. “Do they deliver the food to us?”
She parks us next to a post. “Luckily. I hate being forced to get out and walk while other people are driving in. What are you getting?”
“Well, I, uh, liked to get cheesy tortilla chips… Could we maybe split a slice of pizza?”
She leans over to scrutinize my menu. “‘Cheese flavored…’ Would you mind if the pizza wasn’t authentic in its topping?”
“Cheese flavored? Is that cheaper?”
She looks back at the item’s listing. “Slightly.”
“Oh—uh, you can get the cheaper option for both, then. I don’t want…” to burden her.
“Okay. I’ll ask them to give us thin slices.” She reaches out the window to pick a speaker off the post, clicking a button in the side.
Seconds pass before a crackly voice says, “hello, spot seventeen-D. I’m free to take your order.”
“Salted popcorn with extra butter flavoring and nutritional yeast, cheese-like tortilla chips, the single slice of cheese flavored pizza cut in two, and crushed red pepper flakes.” She pauses. “And a cherry seltzer.”
“Wait, make it two!”
She smiles. “Sorry, two cherry seltzers.”
The speaker confirms our order and clicks off.
“I’ve never seen you drink seltzer,” Vincenza comments as she puts back the speaker.
“Never had it. But, it’s water, right? And it can’t… I won’t taste it if it tastes bad, right?”
“It tastes like something. You’ll find yourself missing the ability to experience a taste… hence the crushed red peppers; spice is technically distinct from taste. You’ll enjoy it, possibly.”
Maybe.
I lean back into my seat and stare at the screen. The projectors play a news reel involving a murder investigation for someone in Kolienet. He… might’ve been killed by his daughters? There’s no audio; it’s hard to tell.
I turn my head sideways, seeing other cars drive in with smoke blooming from their windows. Beyond them, children laugh on a playground while ignoring the educational flicks.
I turn my head the other way as a potent smell of cannabis wafts through the window.
Vincenza lays her hand on the edge of my blanket stack. “You wouldn’t mind sharing, would you? It’s cold and—Oh, I need to get windows for this thing.”
“Yeah,” I laugh.
I pull my legs up onto the seat and get close enough to her to share.
She briefly grabs my shoulder, only briefly. “Was your magic enjoyable today?”
I slip my head to her shoulder, stirring my tongue for anything to answer. “I felt bad using it.”
“What? You did nothing wrong to earn it.” She swallows. “You should prioritize getting a stable patron, but these little moments are fair for your exploitation when they appear.”
“Moments? Do you expect these to occur more?”
“No. But my expectations rarely fit for you. How do I know this won’t be enough?” She brushes my hair with her fingers, slowly pulling together a ponytail. “You’re shockingly well able to be influenced by necromancy and pull out my connection to the Ring.”
“Vincenza, can I ask you something I asked the matron?”
“I won’t be as well able to answer as her, but you can ask.”
“Why are only some of us Ringborn?”
Her brushing turns to a circular scalp massage—which I expect is more for her than me.
“When I was young, we were always told that the world was made for Ringborn. We were told that the Ring made a holy people, and it made mindless servants. ‘Consorts aren’t truly sapient,’ they said.
‘No more than a goat or a pig fakes pain can a consort fake intelligence.’ I was always reminded that I was of poor blood, mixed with consorts, and I would never be as close to the Ring as those who descend only from its chosen.
“I hated their explanation.”
I whisper, “then—then what is it? If that’s not it—“
That can’t be it. The matron said nothing close to that. I’m not—I am sapient! I clearly am! I don’t overthink so much just to be nothing!
She shudders, carefully grazing her massaging fingers lower to my cheeks.
“I don’t know, Catarina. Worrying over why this is the world the Great Ring chose for us can drive you mad.
Just… accept what there is, and try to be happy.
The Ring won’t object to that.” Her fingers freeze just under my jaw. “You can start by enjoying these.”
She accepts our meal from a server, forcing me to sit up and hold it in my lap—with the popcorn to my right.
Oh, now this can give me just the fleeting semblance of hunger. I greedily take a handful of chips and inhale them along with their… dubiously cheese-like topping. I lack the taste to tell if it’s different from cheese cheese, but I’m staying mildly suspicious.
I crunch a single cheeseless chip to test how attuned my taste is. Tastes like so nothing, so… poor.
“When do we get audio?” I ask.
“When I remember to tune our radio.” Vincenza wipes her butter stained hands on a rag before dialing it in.
Hm. Now the news reel is discussing some succubi scandal in Delavi.
I’m not paying attention though. This is a drive-in; the projector’s just there to entertain the stars while I stay focused on expensive and cheaply made food.
Lucia likes to tell me about her dates to this place, and…
I tell myself to ignore that. Not a date.
We can’t have those. The Ring may not forbid it, but her happiness does.
The movie starts, finally, and my mouth’s already coated in pizza grease as half the snacks are gone. The seltzer helps to clear my mouth, from the grease and the heat from the pepper flakes, though the only hint of a taste I get off it is ‘bad.’
Every time a scare catches my throat, I feel a shame bubble inside me that this fucking movie is actually getting me. The scary factory movie! Ugh. I’m glad it’s not Lucia next to me to judge, just Vincenza.
She doesn’t think to insult me, just pull me closer and closer until she has an arm around my chest and I’m leaning on hers, seeking for any source of heat. I blink once… blink twice… and…
I blink my eyes open, feeling my back land onto a soft bed and Vincenza’s arms leaving me.
“Do you want the light off?” She hovers her hand over the light switch.
“Huh?” I roll my head into a pillow. “...Yes?”
“Goodnight, Catarina.” She clicks it off and leaves.
“Good—goodnight, Vincenza.”