Pinpricks of Light #2
Zef’s reply was lost to the ambient noise of the kitchen as the doors shut behind Toni, and Dex propped his hands on his hips, ears tall and perky. “So was that my coming out story?”
Not caring enough to ask what he meant by that, Cya shrugged. “Maybe?”
A furrow appeared between Dex’s eyes. “Kinda wish it came with cake.”
With a groan, Cya facepalmed. “Deities have mercy.”
After they clocked out at two, Cya rode the train to Pride beside Dex, the Lupyn chatting endlessly as they did their best to ignore him. As they stepped out of Pride station, they wound their scarf around their neck to stave off the mid-April chill.
Dex headed toward the trams with a wave and a “See you in class,” while Cya turned to the temporary kiss-and-drive parking where Hemersyn’s sedan idled.
“And how is Dex?” Hemersyn asked as Cya settled in the back seat.
“I don’t know,” they said, avoiding his beady stare in the rearview mirror.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time together, but you’re not sure how he is?” the Avia pressed, and Cya curled up tighter, tail coiling beside them on the bench seat. “He seems very sweet. Always walks you to the car after your study sessions. Never forgets to greet me and ask how I am.”
Rattle clicking, they shot him a petulant frown. “Are you fishing for something specific, old man? Or has your mind finally started to go?”
With a huff, he pulled into traffic and headed toward home. “You’re rather testy today.”
“Only because you’re nosy.”
“It’s just nice, is all,” he said, dry tone warming several degrees.
“What’s nice?”
“To see you with friends again,” he replied, eyes crinkling with a soft, nearly pitying smile when Cya met them in the rearview mirror.
Something in their chest twinged, like a stitch in their breathing after they’d attempted too much exertion, and they dropped their gaze. “He’s not my friend.”
“He could be.”
“I don’t need friends,” they said, hating how childish they sounded.
A beat of silence. Then, “We all need friends, Cya.”
“Well, it sure as hell won’t be him!” The words sliced through the car, sharper and harsher than they’d intended, and they swallowed the defensive anger strangling their throat. “He’s ridiculous. We could never be friends.”
When Hemersyn replied, there was an edge of admonishment, tinged with disappointment. “Does he know that?”
“Deities below, will you just fuck off?” they muttered, and Hemersyn’s feathered crest rose in genuine offense.
The rest of the drive passed in tense silence while Cya sulked in the back, their aggravation slowly but surely morphing into guilt. As the car came to a stop in the gravel driveway, Hemersyn put it into Park, then turned in his seat to level them with a hard stare.
They froze with their hand on the door handle. “Can I help you?”
“I don’t appreciate you speaking to me like that,” he said sternly, but not unkindly. “If you feel I over-stepped, you can communicate that like an adult, but you have no right to treat me with that kind of disrespect. It’s rude and childish, and by gods, you’re better than that, Cylene.”
His use of their full name cut the deepest, and they flinched, eyes burning with the threat of imminent tears. They clamped their mouth shut, refusing to let them gather. They hadn’t cried in front of anyone in years, and they weren’t about to start now.
So they glared down at their bleached knuckles, hand cramping from the pressure they were exerting on the door handle. An apology tap-danced behind their teeth, but they couldn’t unhinge their jaw wide enough to release it without freeing the sob lodged in their throat as well.
The silence stretched uncomfortably until Cya felt they’d explode out of their scales. They didn’t move. They didn’t speak. They didn’t look away from their hand on the door.
Eventually, Hemersyn sighed, and they knew they’d disappointed him again. “Best get inside. Your parents are home.”
Without a word, they shoved the door open and unfurled from the back seat. They slammed the car door shut, fuming when the expensive safety features slowed the momentum, robbing them of the dramatic thud!
When they burst through the front doors of the house, they yelped in fright as they nearly smashed right into their mother.
“Cylene!” she shrieked, rearing back to avoid a true collision.
In an attempt to keep her flute of champagne from spilling onto her expensive, bejeweled dress, Cya’s mother tipped the glass forward and away from her.
Unfortunately, that sent the champagne splashing all over Cya’s neck and chest, between the lapels of their open coat.
The sticky liquid soaked into their clothes and trickled down their torso before it settled cold and clammy between the scales at their waist.
“Puckered shitass twatwaffle motherfucker!” Cya snarled, stamping their tail like a tantruming hatchling as they internally thanked their coworkers’ creativity when it came to colorful curses.
Their mother gasped dramatically, pressing a hand to the base of her throat. “Cylene Zoia Vysov!”
The tears they’d been fighting rose to the surface and blurred their vision as they plucked at their sodden tunic. “You spilled champagne all over me!”
“Well, it wasn’t my fault, now was it?” Swinging the champagne flute dangerously, she gestured to the front door. “You come barreling in like a bulgridge, spouting off obscenities like you’d been raised in a Sloth whorehouse.”
“I wasn’t—” Cya tried, but their mother continued before they could get more than two words out.
“What if I’d fallen and broken something? How could you live with yourself?”
“I never—” they tried again but were interrupted once more.
“Honestly, the way you carry on. It’s entirely unbecoming, especially for a young lady.” Unable to stop it, Cya rolled their eyes, and their mother’s dull brown tail rattled a warning. “Oh, don’t you roll your eyes at me! I am your mother.”
“Ladies, ladies.” The clipped bass of their father cut through the haranguing, and Cya’s already coiled muscles tensed impossibly tighter. “What in the good deities is causing such a fuss?”
“It’s your daughter and her incorrigible temper,” their mother sniffed, tipping her flute back to swallow the dregs of the champagne Cya currently wore down their front.
“Is that so?” he said dryly.
Slithering down the sweeping grand rampway, Cya’s father frowned down at them, fastening the silver cufflink of his right wrist. His suit jacket was black and perfectly tailored, ending halfway between his hip and the first joint of his emerald tail.
Gray streaked through his dark green hair at his temples and peppered his well-trimmed beard.
He was striking and regal, effortlessly imposing with his shrewd eyes and weighty presence.
Cya took after their father in looks and coloring, yet another glaring giveaway of their genetic abnormality.
As a child, their scales had been more muted, resembling other female Syplets, but during puberty, they’d brightened and deepened in hue with every shed until they glittered iridescent emerald, just like their father.
Of all the things their mother could never forgive them for, their flashy, masculine coloring was the most egregious.
No amount of deportment training, lessons in genteel propriety, or hormones disguised as vitamin supplements forced down their throat could change the glimmering green that betrayed the truth of their DNA.
None of it could make Cya a girl. Not the way their mother needed them to be, at least. It was a sin they would carry to their grave; their mother would make sure of that.
As for their father, as long as they played their part well, did as they were told, and stayed out of the way, he let them live in peace.
They were a decorative vase to showcase at dinner parties, a pretty trinket to be admired by old men dripping in cigar smoke and scotch.
Beyond that, their father had no use for them, so they were stowed away, back under dust-resistant sheets, until the next time he needed something to display.
Growing up, they’d strived for his praise and attention, the same way they’d struggled for their mother’s acceptance and love. They were past that now. In their twenty-one years of existence, they’d never been enough. What was the point in trying anymore?
And yet… and yet.
“Father, I—”
“Come, Cadynce, we don’t want to be late.” He spoke over them as if he hadn’t heard them at all, attention on his pocket watch.