Blank Stare
In which Arisansci finds herself in a hateful new world, and struggles to find familiarity in alien faces.
Ever since they had to toss that damned fool of a botanist into rehab, Arisa has been watching her every move with a level of paranoia that would make her highly suspicious. Excepting, of course, the fact that it's very hard for more standardized species to read expressions of a nearly immobile, aquatic face, or hear tonality through the distortion of water.
But, for the only other being bred in a liquid environment, where sight is weak, sound is king, and scent something altogether different, she is an open book.
And he laughs at her, his stalked eyes limp on her bed.
Bed. She has no use for a bed. She sleeps in a bath, after all. She keeps it here for him, and because she doubts that the woman-who-would-be-king would take lightly to her throwing out the ship's property.
He watches her, with his eloquent eyes and plastic, hidden face.
"You needn't worry yourself so, deartail." He says, his elastic limbs wriggling in serpentine patterns across the mattress. "They wouldn't know if you showed them. You've proven that. And anyway, you're far too valuable. They'd be hard pressed to hand you in."
"Don't call me that." Is her only reply, cool and too delayed to make any connection in his addled mind.
She likes him, like this. Likes the way she can sense him through magics and bindings that he doesn't possess naturally. the way his body becomes her equal, and his mind so much less. Like a child. Like pet. Like something she can possess and own, rather than tenuously clutch.
Brioche would laugh at her, to see her now, so far fallen.
Save that, Brioche is dead. Or might as well be. He fell long, long before she did. Perhaps he had found a way to eke a living as well. Or perhaps he had done himself a favor and thrown himself into a fire.
The thought brought a dim humour into her heart. Fried fish.
She eyes her spine-like fingers woefully. Needle sharp, ever so dextrous. No soft flesh to cause them pain. Only the thin membrane, webbed between them, that extended down from her four-jointed arm, anchored to her slender, reptilian torso, just above the point where her body split into two long, elegant tails, each capped with a massive, fanned fin.
So far from standard. So far from normal. She couldn't even survive unassisted. Each day was a drain, and each night hardly restful. Nothing could really imitate the climate of her home, and certainly not a bathtub designed for Standard folk to clean themselves.
She doesn't belong here.
She belongs back with Alia, back home. Or with Brioche, running from their pasts together.
Instead, she has this ship, cramped and foreign, and she has Mobulanausithoe, less foreign but entirely untouchable.
She wonders, on occasion, as she watches him, whether his skin is rough, like her own, or smooth like the others'. Or tacky, like his suit.
He doesn't belong here, either. But, he can never return to his world either. And at least Arisa can rest in half comfort. But he is bound to always wear that damnable suit, lest his blood freeze in his veins.
He humms, and the noise is grating by the time it passes through the little box that lets him speak from the other side of plastic. She jumps, shedding a few precious drops of her own shielding waters.
"You're thinking too hard, Arisansci." He says, and her lips split open in a grimace that almost equates for a grin among her folk. A subtle expression, to them, and a frightening one to others. His eyestalks bob in something that almost looks like laughter, to her, though not to anyone else.
"Marissa." She says, suddenly, and she can see his confusion in the way his limbs settle their ceaseless roaming. She is upon him, in an instant, or so it must seem to him, so lost among the stars. "I am Marissa, and you are Nausith." And without waiting, without asking, she catches up one of those long tendrils of his and slits the plastic. She can feel his limb sliding down the now empty strip of plastic, as he takes cover from the sudden frigidness. Around her fingers, her water boils away, and she risks exhausting herself by replacing it so quickly. But she's still grinning that manic grin that would make any of these gas-bred fools run in terror, and he says nothing, perhaps he can't.
She uses the heat exhausting from him to burn a great strip of her fin away, leaving a gaping hole beneath her left arm, then, deftly, swiftly, tied the suit into a knot. Hardly air tight, but strong enough to hold.
The discarded membrane falls wetly to the floor, no longer maintained by her magic.
"I am Marissa, and you are Nausith." She reiterates. "And you belong to me." She knocks the tetrahedronal crystals off her bedside stand and onto the ground. "And anyone who tries to claim you from me will suffer for it."
And he doesn't know what she's doing. Because he's an idiot, and he's different, and foreign.
But not so foreign as to be frightening. Not so unfamiliar as to be untrustworthy.
And if she cannot have Brioche, and she cannot have Alia, and she cannot have home, then she can have this.
And an apprentice, well, that's almost as good as belonging.
Ever since they had to toss that damned fool of a botanist into rehab, Arisa has been watching her every move with a level of paranoia that would make her highly suspicious. Excepting, of course, the fact that it's very hard for more standardized species to read expressions of a nearly immobile, aquatic face, or hear tonality through the distortion of water.
But, for the only other being bred in a liquid environment, where sight is weak, sound is king, and scent something altogether different, she is an open book.
And he laughs at her, his stalked eyes limp on her bed.
Bed. She has no use for a bed. She sleeps in a bath, after all. She keeps it here for him, and because she doubts that the woman-who-would-be-king would take lightly to her throwing out the ship's property.
He watches her, with his eloquent eyes and plastic, hidden face.
"You needn't worry yourself so, deartail." He says, his elastic limbs wriggling in serpentine patterns across the mattress. "They wouldn't know if you showed them. You've proven that. And anyway, you're far too valuable. They'd be hard pressed to hand you in."
"Don't call me that." Is her only reply, cool and too delayed to make any connection in his addled mind.
She likes him, like this. Likes the way she can sense him through magics and bindings that he doesn't possess naturally. the way his body becomes her equal, and his mind so much less. Like a child. Like pet. Like something she can possess and own, rather than tenuously clutch.
Brioche would laugh at her, to see her now, so far fallen.
Save that, Brioche is dead. Or might as well be. He fell long, long before she did. Perhaps he had found a way to eke a living as well. Or perhaps he had done himself a favor and thrown himself into a fire.
The thought brought a dim humour into her heart. Fried fish.
She eyes her spine-like fingers woefully. Needle sharp, ever so dextrous. No soft flesh to cause them pain. Only the thin membrane, webbed between them, that extended down from her four-jointed arm, anchored to her slender, reptilian torso, just above the point where her body split into two long, elegant tails, each capped with a massive, fanned fin.
So far from standard. So far from normal. She couldn't even survive unassisted. Each day was a drain, and each night hardly restful. Nothing could really imitate the climate of her home, and certainly not a bathtub designed for Standard folk to clean themselves.
She doesn't belong here.
She belongs back with Alia, back home. Or with Brioche, running from their pasts together.
Instead, she has this ship, cramped and foreign, and she has Mobulanausithoe, less foreign but entirely untouchable.
She wonders, on occasion, as she watches him, whether his skin is rough, like her own, or smooth like the others'. Or tacky, like his suit.
He doesn't belong here, either. But, he can never return to his world either. And at least Arisa can rest in half comfort. But he is bound to always wear that damnable suit, lest his blood freeze in his veins.
He humms, and the noise is grating by the time it passes through the little box that lets him speak from the other side of plastic. She jumps, shedding a few precious drops of her own shielding waters.
"You're thinking too hard, Arisansci." He says, and her lips split open in a grimace that almost equates for a grin among her folk. A subtle expression, to them, and a frightening one to others. His eyestalks bob in something that almost looks like laughter, to her, though not to anyone else.
"Marissa." She says, suddenly, and she can see his confusion in the way his limbs settle their ceaseless roaming. She is upon him, in an instant, or so it must seem to him, so lost among the stars. "I am Marissa, and you are Nausith." And without waiting, without asking, she catches up one of those long tendrils of his and slits the plastic. She can feel his limb sliding down the now empty strip of plastic, as he takes cover from the sudden frigidness. Around her fingers, her water boils away, and she risks exhausting herself by replacing it so quickly. But she's still grinning that manic grin that would make any of these gas-bred fools run in terror, and he says nothing, perhaps he can't.
She uses the heat exhausting from him to burn a great strip of her fin away, leaving a gaping hole beneath her left arm, then, deftly, swiftly, tied the suit into a knot. Hardly air tight, but strong enough to hold.
The discarded membrane falls wetly to the floor, no longer maintained by her magic.
"I am Marissa, and you are Nausith." She reiterates. "And you belong to me." She knocks the tetrahedronal crystals off her bedside stand and onto the ground. "And anyone who tries to claim you from me will suffer for it."
And he doesn't know what she's doing. Because he's an idiot, and he's different, and foreign.
But not so foreign as to be frightening. Not so unfamiliar as to be untrustworthy.
And if she cannot have Brioche, and she cannot have Alia, and she cannot have home, then she can have this.
And an apprentice, well, that's almost as good as belonging.