77 - He Drag Tail Across Sand

I am starting to feel very much annoyed, Hara thought. Everyone is running around and talking at each other and keeping information from each other and Prime is taking advantage of that and might have just pounded my father into flakes of ash on the wind.  I’m not having it.  Shashi can go do her things and get her zardukar and the teachers and people saying their equivalent of ‘oh princess’ ‘oh princess’… into the dark of vacuum with that.

She was firm on her feet, even as Tizrav bounced all around her feet threatening to trip her all the way out to the ‘loggia’ as the Lainz called it.  It was really just her room… out on the end of a bridge where she could close the door and have absolutely no one bother her.  This is probably not a good idea… but I can still do this and be safe… even if I’m doing something dangerous.

She hadn’t called the Hive but an entire swarm hovered over her head as she stood on the bridge just before her loggia.  “What?”

They buzzed at her and something dropped and she put out her hands… a honeycomb smacked into her hands and clung and dripped.  She was confused but raised it to her lips and the swarm roared its approval.

The taste of the honey and the wax was like the taste of strength.  Hara sat down right in the middle of her bridge, just below the wind-walls and devoured every scrap of the bees’ gift.  It made her thirsty and the inside of her veil and her hands were now sticky from top to bottom, with tiny bits of wax in it, but she felt much more clear-headed.

As she rose to her feet, she saw the cloud of bees around the Great Hive, and the Sunrise Loggia’s balcony where half of the great swarm were guarding Homa as the new queen-in-waiting.  The other half was flying, balled in a greyish fog, around her loggia. “Why are you doing this?” She asked, finally.  “Why me?”

There was no answer, especially not out here on the bridge.  She closed her own door behind herself, and opened every window she had.  She flung her much-hated and sticky veil on the floor, pulled off her outer, honour layers, now that she was behind her own filter curtains.

She sank down onto the seat at the end of the too-soft bed, drank the water carafe dry.  One good thing about the Lainz.  They always made sure there was water. 

We Milar… we aren’t so good with it.  We have so much.  When metres of snow fall, we catch it, melt it, keep it in our mountains.  We dig holes into the ground, melt holes in the ground, mander holes in the endarkened rock.

Every drop of water that falls on Milar, we feel it is ours.  If we let it go, without even trying to stop it, every year, twice a year, we feel as if we’ve cheated ourselves.  The Lainz… feel less entitled than we do.  They are throwing themselves between the water and the evaporation.  Trying to turn themselves into human sand sheets to keep the water before it all blows away into the badlands, soaks into the sand.

I’m thinking all this because I don’t want to think that my daddy’s dead.  I don’t know that he’s dead.  I don’t want to be an orphan yet.  I’m not grown up.

The code was right there… on the other side of the veil of skin and thought.  Tizrav chattered at her.  *Come, come now. Come now.  Shashi’s sire has cubs near your boy… the machine boy… him him him…*

“Tizzy… wait.  Prime has just pounded hell out of Nadumon… they thought they were legitimate scions of Xanadu… he just killed them.”

*No no no no kill some kill some… run run run hide hide hide like prey like hunter hiding for later… Boy there there there… snort.  Sire… all Tizzy’s boys good good.*

It was like having a fist clenched around her stomach, squeezing, suddenly let go.  “All of Tizzy’s boys?”

She chattered and bounced on Hara’s lap.  *Save cub… save Hara’s machine boy… he drag tail across sand… drag drag… get free.*

Hara scrubbed her hands across her suddenly gritty eyes.  She knew… from the bees roar and from Tizrav’s chatter that she couldn’t sleep quite yet.

Tizzy seemed convinced that she could actually reach Terence somehow, and set him and the…cub… somehow.   

“So… I can let Shashi and the Lainz pull Kyrus’s tail out of the smashed spot… I need to reach Terence.”

*Machine boy, machine boy in danger. Predator stalking… predator… caught others… danger, danger to make not fly not fly not fly at all at all.  Terry flyer than Werfas boy…. But he lying in tiger jaw.  Still still still still. Not move, not stink.*

“Not stink.  That’s for sure.” She scooped up Tizzy in her arms to save her thighs from the rapid jab of bouncing ferret feet.

“We’ll help Terry get free… and the cub… Shashi’s cub?”

*Shashi sire cub… not sire… flyer flyer flyer under sand in cave hunter.  Play pretend. Play not flyer.  They flyer… save they?*

“Tizrav… I don’t understand, but I’ll try.”

The bees came in through the filter curtains so the fabric bulged and fell back, Tizrav had black and gold bees all over her fur as she danced on Hara’s middle.  *WE.  We flyer than dragon. We flyer than smashy ice.*