Thank you to everyone still reading. I hope you're enjoying.
8.
Home
At the feel of sodden sheets cold beneath her thighs, Amayel awakes. She has wet the cot again, and urine drips down her hamstrings and the backs of her knees. If she does not clean this mess up before too long, her bunkmates will discover her deed and take it upon themselves to urinate on her possessions as they did last time she proved incontinent in her sleep, ruining the first edition print copy of the second issue of Grek Pak's Storm solo series. She'd purchased it for Selik on the camp's field trip to the Terran lunar colony, happening upon it at a 'flea market.'
Amayel's eyes creak open and flick toward the window, where she sees—not fog, as she would expect on Omega C-2—but stars, actual stars, bright and luminous and plainly visible. Their position relational to her suggests that she's on New Vulcan. She wonders whether or not she's asleep, if the view is a trick of her unconscious. No matter. How wondrous it is to see stars again, even if only in a dream. Does there exist anything more beautiful than hydrogens colliding so they might radiate trillions of photons of light across the galaxy as matter converts to energy?
E=mc2. Discovered by Honoured Lady Evekh on Vulcan, Albert Einstein on Terra, Sil glausch Grug on Tellar Prime.
Faced with the night sky's overwhelming magnificence, Amayel must consider how poorly her name suits her. She shares little in common with khio'ri-lar, stars.
Va'amaun yel, her samekh had named her. Mimicking a sun. False.
Stars do not urinate on themselves in their sleep.
Amayel blinks her eyes several times, attempting to wake herself up more fully. She catches the chemical tang of steroids as her senses sharpen, as well as the saltiness of evaporated tears, the sweet fragrance of coconut oil, mango butter, cactus leaf syrup. Those scents belong uniquely to Selik, and upon smelling them, Amayel remembers that she is no longer on Omega C-2, but at home in her own bed. The dull throbbing she suddenly feels in her arm is not from the healed fractures, as she first thought, but from her sister's weight on top the limb. It is a gratifying realisation.
"Ko-kai?" Amayel asks through the bond. "I have done that foolish thing I do and soiled the sheets."
Selik sleeps too deeply to register the mental nudge.
Amayel's eyes begin to adjust to the lack of light and she takes in her surroundings. Across from her is her sister's oxygen tent, abandoned, the blankets bunched up. Sometime in the night, Selik must have left it to join her twin in their shared cot.
Dry heat wraps around Amayel like a network of copper wires, all sparking blue fire, electricity, so different than Omega C-2, which had felt like the inside of a mouth. Wet, foggy, sticky.
"Ko-kai?" Amayel asks again, and she feels her sister rising to consciousness, less from Amayel's call and more from the scent of urine and the feel of liquid against her thighs.
Amayel attempts to dislodge Selik from her arm, somewhat successfully, but her sister rolls back on immediately.
"What is that cold spot on my thigh?"asks Selik telepathically.
"Sorry," Amayel responds.
"It is nothing," says Selik through the link as she makes the final rise to complete consciousness. When her eyes flash open, she makes the hand sign for sister—not the official sign, but the one they made up to address each other when they were but still-toddling babies. Left hand drawn into a fist, to represent a heart, right hand clasped around one side of the fist. Other half of my heart.
"You have finally returned. I would not wish for you to leave me again for so long, ko-kai," signs Selik, though their proximity makes it unnecessary for her to speak in such terms.
"I would not wish it either," says Amayel through the mind-link. She cannot sign properly, as her sister still lies on one of her hands.
"Your arm is hurt; therefore my arm is hurt," says Selik, referring not to the numbness brought on by Selik's weight, but to the fractures. "I sense now what happened as we touch, but I could not feel you while you were away. You hid from me. Like a Romulan warbird with its cloaking device on. Or, perhaps, mort aptly, like the x-mutant Cipher. Her powers included full spectrum invisibility," Selik says using a combination of signs and mind-images. Amayel sees an issue of a comic called Young X-Men and a graphic depiction of a young human girl with brown skin and locked hair.
"I shielded myself because I did not wish you to feel what I felt."
"You are illogical, ko-kai," says Selik.
"No more illogical than one who runs away into the desert alone with only Xerxes as company," Amayel says, as she recalls the details of the past evening: arriving back to the compound and waking up in Honoured Great-Grandmother's arms, Komekh demanding to hold her, pressing a cheek to Komekh's chest, breathing in Komekh's smell, feeling the long strands of Komekh'shair, wondering where is Samekh? Where is Selik?
Amayel had opened her mind to retrieve the answers to her questions, a bevy of thoughts, experiences, and emotions rushing her as she did. Her kinsmen thought so loudly. So did everyone.
Amayel felt so glad for her deafness because she did not believe she could take the noise of the world in addition to the noise of people's thoughts, which she frequently heard though she tried not to—not just from her family, but from strangers. No touch required.
Selik calls her T'Kehr X.
Professor X.
Mama'd felt violent rage when T'Pau shared the circumstances surrounding Amayel's injury and sudden departure from camp. Honoured Great-grandmother felt cool, calculated hatred.
T'Pau's attendants felt a varying mixture of intense loyalty, weariness, apprehension, worry, anger, concern. Concern for Amayel. Concern for Honoured Great-grandmother. Concern for Komekh. Concern for Samekh. Concern for Selik.
One of them still mourned for her bonded, who perished during Va'Pak, and despite the years that had passed, that weighed foremost in her mind.
Another wished to prepare Selik's treatment, but would wait for T'Pau's command to do so.
One of the body guards was in telepathic contact with S'harien, to whom he was secretly bonded. S'harien had located Selik and Samekh, who were both stable.
Through the thoughts and emotions of everyone in the room, Amayel pieced the night's events together before Mama'd carried her to her chambers, laid her onto the mattress, pressed a line of kisses up and down her fractured arm.
"I am not ready for sleep," Amayel had signed.
"It's very late, little one," Mama signed back. Amayel tried to get a better sense of her mother's thoughts, and she reached out so they could touch hands.
Nosey girl, Mama said in her mind.
I am simply desirous of closeness, Amayel replied.
I missed you, too, little one, but now you've got to rest up, and recover. Tomorrow we'll talk, okay?
Talk? Amayel asked. Mama always spoke so vaguely.
About camp, said Mama, and brushed strands of wavy hair behind her ear, the scent of shampoo wafting into Amayel's nose.
Mama understood the extent of Amayel's psychic skill more than anyone else, even more than Honoured Great-Grandmother. She could feel Amayel's telepathy vicariously. She discussed it sometimes in whispers to Samekh, and though he agreed, he did not feel it the way Mama did.
Amayel thinks she's inherited her skill from Mama. The way Komekh sees the world, through radio and other electromagnetic waves, it is like that with Amayel. Like there is a layer of the world she can sense that no one else can. It is intuitive, something felt and experienced like the Universal Gravitational Constant.
"You did quite a thing, didn't you?" Mama asked in signs, the slender bones of her fingers jutting the air, her face a map of meaning. "Not only did you have your mental shields up, but you made it look as if they weren't there at all, sending us waves of false happy feelings."
She sounded neither disappointed nor upset when she discussed what Amayel did.
"Your mind is your own, Yel, but it is my job and your father's job to protect you. How can we do that if you deceive us in such a way?"
Amayel fiddled with a loose thread on the quilt covering her cot. "I prefer not to be a bother. I know there is much on yours and Samekh's mind. I am physically healthy, therefore I am fine."
Mama took both of Amayel's hands, folded them between her palms and squeezed hard, so hard. "Sweetie, what happened to you is not fine, so you get that ridiculous notion out of your head right this instant. You deserve respect. You deserve acceptance. Anything less than that, you have every right to make the biggest fuss, and if you don't do it, I'll do it for you."
Mama's breathing was not so good but she attempted to hide it. Focusing on Amayel seemed to help.
Will Selik have to go to hospital? Amayel asked with the touch of her hands.
No. Father reassured me she is recovered enough to stay the night here.
Would it be possible to set up her breathing chamber in here rather than in yours and Samekh's room like you usually do?
Mama nodded. I can do that.
I know that there is much afoot, but will you stay with me here until I fall asleep?
Mama nodded again, sung a lullaby in Swahili that made Amayel think of summer and elephants and grey mountains and long-bearded farmers. She could not hear it per se, but she felt it through her mother's touch, could vaguely pick out tones here and there, distant and as far away as stars themselves. Mama was truly a khio'ri, a yel. Not like Amayel. With that thought, she'd fallen asleep.
Then she urinated and awoke. Now here she is.
"Let us clean up this mess," says Selik, scooting around the damp spot on the cot.
The two of them swing their legs over their twin-sized cot, feet landing onto the rug that covers the stone floor, hand-spun and hand-woven by Bibi, mama's mother, Grandma, who lives much too far away. The pieces of her located about their chambers in the form of books she'd gifted them and art she made helps soothe some of the ache of her absence. Amayel scrapes the bottoms of her bare feet over the coarse cotton of the weaving.
Selik pulls the sheet off of the mattress and drops it into a pile on the floor. "Take these to the chute, T'Kehr X," she says. Not out loud. Only in her mind. Of course, Amayel understands anyway.
Selik sprays the synthetic mattress cover with disinfectant spray as Amayel tip-toes into the corridor with the bundle of soiled bed clothes. After dropping them off into the chute, Amayel scurries to the living area, the lights low but not completely off. Hidden in the passageway, she sees parents on the sofa, asleep. It is comforting to see them entwined in such away, Mama half on top Samekh, his arm wrapped around her, one of her legs thrown over his.
Selik can sense their thoughts quite strongly, though she tries to shut them out. Part of her misses the distance of Omega C-2, where it was much easier to find quiet in her own mind.
Samekh thinks of Mama.
Mama thinks of Samekh.
Samekh is also scared, deeply scared, of something Amayel could not identify. It had to do with Mama. He held it away and tucked it into himself. It was too tangled a web for Amayel to untangle.
Mama, for now, felt mostly relief. Her dreams were quiet and undisturbing. She was happy to be held by Samekh. She was happy to know her Selik had been returned to her. Happy about amayel.
Underneath the contented feelings are some tinges of unrest. Anger, hurt, shame.
The emotions are enough to make Amayel's eyes want to water, so she attempts to shield herself.
Amayel tip-toes to the kitchen, opens the fridge unit, and takes out the glass pitcher of sweet melon milk, pours it into two small glasses for she and Selik.
A little bit of the drink spills over the top of the glass as she walks, dripping onto her fingers and the floor. By the time she returns to her bed chambers, there is a fresh fitted sheet on the cot, the lantern is on, and Selik has a pile of comics on the bed.
"Hurry, ko-kai, here are the issues you missed whilst you were away."
"We must clean ourselves first."
They head outside, go the water pump and fill the bucket with water from the well.
Selik pours washing powder into the bucket, stirs it with her fingers.
The stars light their movements.
They each grab a cloth and scrub themselves clean. There is fresh laundry hanging on the line. They each grab one of their komekh's shirts and put them on.
They are quiet like mice when they re-enter their home.
"Quick, quick!" signs Selik, when she sees Samekh stir slightly on the couch, his hand spread on Mama's back. Amayel is not worried. She jogs only to keep up with Selik, the both of them leaving trails of water on the floor.
They sit cross-legged on the floor next to each other and flip through comics, play with their PADDs. Every twenty minutes, one of them feels moved to sign or send a message through the bond.
It is after some time that Amayel is able to say what she wishes to say.
"You nearly died."
Selik continues to play with her X-Men figurines for several seconds, saying nothing.
Then:
"I could feel my katra slipping away, yet here I am. The last that I remember is not being able to breathe, then feeling Samekh in my mind, warm like a desert wind, warm like Mama."
Amayel stands and goes to their shelf, removes a small wooden box and brings it back to the floor where she and her sister sit. Inside is a photograph of Mama and Samekh. Mama is largely pregnant in the image. She sits on Samekh's lap. She is laughing. Father is—not laughing, but his nose is against her cheek quite intimately. Amayel stole the photograph from the family album. She traces her pointer over their faces as she speaks with Selik.
"According to Honoured Great-Grandmother's thoughts, he had to do such extensive work to revive you that he nearly wore his body into starvation." The comment is only half-meant as a chastisement.
"I know," says Selik, and even without the aid of tone, Amayel can certainly perceive the indignation in the thought. "I could feel him knitting my lungs together. One day I will be as strong as him. I will be able to heal myself like that." She plays with her 'action figures', though less enthusiastically then before. After two minutes and twelve seconds, she asks, "Do you think Samekh will be very angry at me?"
"I cannot predict one way or the other," signs Amayel, replacing the photograph into the box.
"Do you think he will hate me even more after this?" Selik asks.
"That would imply he hates you even a small amount now, which I do not believe is the case." Amayel takes a swallow of melon milk.
"Tell me about ith'du," Selik says. Her own beverage is gone, so when Amayel finishes her sip, she takes from her glass.
"Camp did not meet my expectations."
Amayel recounts the last week of camp with images.
"I think that it would not be difficult for me to locate and destroy them. I am not Storm, but I am very strong and I have been practising fighting with mama. I know how to stick fight. We have choreographed many 'dances' and am confident I am unbeatable. Do you wish to see?"
"I do wish to, but it would not be logical given your present lung capacity," says Amayel.
So Selik reaches out her hand to Amayel's cheek, seeking permission, and Amayel nods.
Amayel's mind fills with images of Selik and Mama's practise sessions: the images, the smells, even the sounds. Clapping and beating drums. Selik's 'dance'—the patterning of movements, kicking, swinging, turning, spinning, her body fluid but precise, as Mama taught her.
Selik learned to fight first. She'd walked in on mother practising. She said she thought Mama was Storm for a said she wanted to look like that, too.
And so their training began.
Amayel enjoyed learning martial arts, too, especially the styles that Mama taught, because it was a way for her to enjoy a kind of music. She could feel the vibrations from the heavy, loud drumming and clapping, banging sticks.
Of course, they learned a variety of V'tosh wehk-pukan-ar, as well.
Mostly in school, during their Physical Training (P.T.).
A'sum'i, characterised by leaping kicks and acrobatic movements.
Kali-k'hy, characterised by wrestling and grappling, low to the ground, floor movements.
Ke-tarya, an Ancient art with precise, difficult to perform movements that required intense flexibility, muscle control, and psychic strength.
Suus mahna, which was purely defensive, involving side jumps and low centre of gravity.
Amayel had only done the basics that were required to excel in school, but Selik took private lessons in the various forms and even competed in tournaments, a champion in her age category.
Mother called her kidege, bird, because of the way she could move, or duma, cheetah, for her speed and grace.
Samekh called her: Markau Svai fi'arev. Flower blossom floating on the desert wind.
Frequently, they trained together, Spock and Selik, Spock spending hours with Selik until she mastered a particular skillt, refusing to move forward until she executed the move perfectly.
Amayel would peak through the front door as they worked outside.
But Selik's skill truly flourished during the dance.
Selik withdraws her hand once she finishes showing Amayel the newest fight choreography.
"I have missed much," signs Amayel.
"Yes."
They go to the kitchen and retrieve more drink, toast to Surak and T'Vet and Ororo Munroe and to good health and the prosperity of the clan.
They click their glasses together and drink the creamy, sweet, opaque juice of the spiked melons that grew on their property. It reminds Amayel of the strange Terran fruit 'coconut' and the beverage made from the flesh and juice, but much sweeter and intensely spicy, like fresh 'ginger'
"Do you think in a fight of Mama vs. Storm, that Storm would win?" Amayel asks.
"Of course not," says Selik. "It would be very close, though. Storm would put up a very nice fight."
"Indeed," says Amayel.
"How about a fight between Samekh and the Wolverine?" asks Selik.
"I do not have your expertise on the mythology of the characters to be able to answer that," Amayel signs.
They discuss X-Men. They discuss carnivorous plants. They discuss building a metal detector to find ore. Once they have discussed all of these very important topics, Amayel brings up something else that has been on her mind.
"Do you know what divorce is?"
"P'pil'lai?" asks Selik.
"Yes. It is a piece of paper that unbonds two people."
"Unbonds? I do not understand," Selik signs.
"It is a severing in the mind, I believe."
"The mind split in half? Like dying?" asks Selik.
"I suppose," Amayel says, though she does not know for sure.
"How can a paper do such a thing? Is it technologically advanced paper? Does the paper emit an electromagnetic field that alters the chemical makeup of the brain?" Selik signs rapidly, her brow scrunched as she tries to work it out.
"It simply says it and makes it so. Like a law. My acquaintances at the camp said that Samekh and Mama would be getting p'pil'lai, that sending a child to camp is always the first sign."
"Conjecture," says Selik.
"That is what I first thought, then they listed several pieces of evidence that made me pause to reconsider. Mama and Samekh are not frequently in the same room. They say only what is necessary to each other. There is no short talk between them," Amayel signs, going through the list of items in her head. There are more, but those are the major areas of concern.
"So Mama and Samekh will die?" asks Selik.
Then Amayel 'hears' Samekh coming down the corridor, through Selik's ears.
As the footsteps approach they rush to bed, cutting off the lantern, their glasses of half-drunk melon milk still on the floor, the comics still about.
Selik puts her fingers to her lips, saying, quiet.
Amayel is quite tempted to roll her eyes but does not. Like, as if.
"Kofu-lar?"
They pretend to sleep.
Samekh turns their lantern back on.
"Good morning," he says.
Indeed, there is light coming through the window, Amayel notices.
She tries to stay facing away from Samekh, to bundle her head into Selik's side, but she cannot resist the urge to run to her Samekh and jump into his arms and squeeze her arms around his neck and her legs around his middle and lay her head against his chest, and it is her plan in that moment to never let him go.
"It is gratifying to see you," says Samekh. "Your absence was felt."
He kisses the tip of her ear.
"I thought of you daily," Amayel says with her fingers, pressing them into the back of her Samekh's neck. "You smell like lemon rind and wet clay. It is a most pleasing smell."
Samekh begins to rock as he holds her, and she yawns. "Is your arm healed, pi'masuk'veh?"
Little Giant.
She does not know why he calls her this but it is not upsetting to hear.
"It is healed, Samekh."
"And yet it should not have happened at all."
He sways back in forth with her, hums from deep in his stomach and chest so she can feel the vibrations of sound, and their closeness imparts the melody and lyrics into her head.
Sandau tu, pi'khio'ri, fi'ir'zehl
Hizhuk u'belaar sov-masu, fusik nu'ri yel
Sandau tu, pi'khio'ri, abru'feh,
Katan ha'ge t'du karil-shraun shi-tor seveh
Vi'le-esh-tor du kan-pi'gel
Shok-tor du rala t'kurshel
heh han t'i'dek
Yem-tor du heh yem-tan-tor du
Rikanashik solektra u'
Komekh kan t'ish-veh
Sandau tu, pi'khio'ri, fi'ir'zehl
Hizhuk u'belaar sov-masu, fusik nu'ri yel
(You appear, little star, on the horizon,
Quiet as a summer rain, shy, young sun.
You appear, little star, over the mountain peak,
Your light bringing prosperity to this winter-worn place.
You inspire the baby shooting plant.
You kiss the wings of birds
and the noses of animals.
You nourish and you feed
The barren land as
The mother her child.
You appear, little star, on the horizon,
Quiet as a summer rain, shy, young sun.)
Before she realises it she is being laid into her cot next to Selik. Her mind is far away. She is half asleep.
"Selik, you must return to your oxygen tent now," he says.
"But Samekh I wish to sleep in my own bed with Amayel. It is my bed is it not?" says Selik.
"As is the bed in the oxygen tent. You must heal, my daughter. You must."
Samekh reaches out his arms. "May I pick you up and hold you?" he asks her.
Selik says nothing, her lips pouted out, her face stern and her eye brows knit together. Then she reaches out for Samekh. He cradles her in his arms like a baby, the hinge of her knees hanging over one arm, the back of her head against the opposite shoulder.
He carries her to her tent but does not immediately put her down. With her still resting in his arms, he kisses her nose, then each of her cheeks. He lays her down onto the cot, pulls the blankets up over her shoulders. "You are cherished and adored by this-one," he says, before stepping out of the tent, re-starting the oxygen-concentrator.
Amayel feels the tears that will not fall from his eyes hot on her own face when he steps out the room. She feels Selik dream of lightning and father's hand re-starting her heart like a defibrillator. She feels the desert just next to her, just outside the window. She is home.
The lullaby is to the tune of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It's grammatically correct, I think! It took forever...Why do I spend time on such foolish things? I can't sing at all, but I made a recording of it so you might hear it. Apologies for my voice. If you go to schn-tgai-uhura dot tumblr it's the top post and you can hear it.
Comments always cherished. I hope you're enjoying the story.