cowboy up or stay in the truck

“You upset Grandmother again,” says the voice of Vian’s memory, says the girl before her as the Renaskiĝi per kanto takes Vian’s broken hands in her own.

In the shadows of the Renaskiĝi per fajro’s private rooms, thin fingers stained with Vian’s blood flit over the newest break at the Renaskiĝi per fajro’s hands, turning the fresh seventh fracture until a hiss escapes Vian’s mouth.

“Why do you keep upsetting her?” asks the Renaskiĝi per kanto, curious brown eyes holding Vian in a way that reminds her of her youth, when she was sent to learn where their meals come from and had to cut a calf’s throat.

“I think,” Vian says slowly, if the Renaskiĝi per kanto might listen to her where the Renaskiĝi per fajro and Renaskiĝi per karno refused, “we made a mistake. I want to fix it.”

“Oh?” The Renaskiĝi per kanto looks at her, the attention of two eyes that are ten thousand, flickering over every part of Vian, meeting her eyes directly.

“The projections for our food supplies—” Vian’s heart pounds, her words picking up as the Renaskiĝi per kanto only listens, doesn’t move to break another part of her “—look wrong. The crop repopulations aren’t increasing the way the city population is set to, the cloning system can’t keep up with the necessary caloric intake. I have to check, to see if I’m right.”

She’s written the numbers and the formulas down as much as she can, as much she remembers, in-between creating and failing the cycle of meal system the Renaskiĝi per fajro requires, the attempts to be more trouble than she’s worth. But those moments are hardly on the scale she needs. And she misses her recipe books, their silver-lined memory paper holding years worth of her calculations and thoughts.

The Renaskiĝi per kanto hums in thought and it is musical—and strange paired with a face only 17, years away from reaching the age of majority—her fingers still playing over Vian’s.

“Yes, I know,” the Renaskiĝi per kanto sighs and it sounds like all the sorrow in the world.

Vian would be sorry to have upset her, would apologize if it wasn’t for the words the Renaskiĝi per kanto said. “You…know?”

The perfect bow of the Renaskiĝi per kanto’s mouth bends as she purses her lips. “Gepa and his scientists have been trying to understand it, why this appears to be the system’s limit. Grandmother says civilizations have cycles. She says this might simply mark the end of ours.”

“Renaskiĝi per kanto,” Vian says, carefully with her fingers still in the Renaskiĝi per kanto’s grasp, at the chance that she won’t be forced to let the city’s future starve, “I could help. If you tell your grandmother—” the strange word feels awful, viscous, in Vian’s mouth “—to let me go. Please, I could, we could fix this, change our supply lines if that’s what we need, there are other cities we could ask for he—”

Her words choke off as the Renaskiĝi per kanto focuses on one of Vian’s few unbroken fingers. It isn’t bent or pressed or broken, only held, but the act steals Vian’s voice away all the same. The Renaskiĝi per kanto, taller than most of the fivefold, stands over her, face placid and eyes so bright.

Nothing changes except for Vian’s breaths coming faster and harsher, an apology locked inside of her throat because she won’t apologize. She could fix this if they would just let her. Or she would spend the rest of her life trying if it would keep anyone made after her from having less to save themselves.

The Renaskiĝi per kanto nods. She wipes her bloodied fingers clean on Vian’s palms. “Not yet.”

The words aren’t the same as denying Vian outright, which is more than anyone else has done. “Plej nova menso, when?”

The Renaskiĝi per kanto bends down to press her lips against the side of Vian’s mouth, briefly, wet. Vian’s stomach turns with the brush of eyelashes against her cheek.

“Potenca renaskiĝo per kanto,” Vian says, feeling the echo of thin hands on her finger and the wetness of the kiss. The Renaskiĝi per kanto is the only one who’s listened. “The—”

“Not yet,” the Renaskiĝi per kanto repeats. “Will you misbehave again?”

Vian shakes her head, thinking of the heat of her minder’s hands holding her finger. A frown tips the Renaskiĝi per kanto’s face for a moment and then it’s gone as quickly as the Renaskiĝi per kanto pulls away.

Vian is left in the shadows of the room, watching the color of the Renaskiĝi per kanto’s skirts fade with her as she leaves. As she is allowed to leave where Vian is not.

The Renaskiĝi per kanto’s back is to Vian as she stands at one of the many doorways Vian isn’t allowed to cross and Vian still feels her eyes. “Does Grandmother send a nurse for you?”

“By the end of the day,” Vian says. Maybe the Renaskiĝi per kanto’s…affection will send one sooner, allow a nurse to set at least one of her fingers properly.

"I am well aware," Helena says while digging through the rib cage of the cadaver in front of her. "And I have told Nathaniel - on multiple occasions - that this won't change unless we adapt the inclusion criteria. We have quite a bit of pleural fluid here. Ladle, please?" Addie needs a second to process that the last part was meant for Rudolph. Helena starts ladling some thin, red fluid directly from the corpse into a measuring jug that her assistant is holding up for her. Unbothered by her task, Helena continues. "So you will have to take it up with him. Again. It's his little pet project after all."

Addie can feel the bile rising in her throat, and she pulls her eyes away from that unpleasant view, focusing on her pad instead - or at least tries to. The sloshing noise of the fluid landing in the jug isn't exactly helping. "I assume you made suggestions already on how to modify the protocol?"

"Multiple times."

A few more ladles full of liquid splash into the jug. How much of it is there? "Could you put that together for me so I can talk him into it?"

"Of course." Helena hands the ladle back to Rudolph and grabs her scalpel, cutting around inside the body. Addie tries very hard not to look too closely. "Oh, that is quite the impressive cardiomegaly."

Helena lifts the heart out of the chest cavity and holds it up with both hands, her gloves bloody up to her wrists. "Adelaide, have you ever seen something like that?"

Rudolph whistles while taking it from her. "Wow, haven't had a behemoth like that in a while."

Addie glares at them both for a second before turning her attention back to her agenda, trying to find the next open item.

"990 grams," Rudolph states after sliding the heart into a metal tray and weighing it. "Not bad."

"Well, he was a large man," Helena says, digging around inside the open body again. It takes every bit of Addie's self-control not to gag at the squelching sounds. "I suspect his liver is also in the upper percentile, weight-wise."

"You're doing this to punish me, aren't you?" Addie suddenly snaps, gripping her pad hard.

Helena raises an eyebrow. "I told you, if you insist on your little project meeting today, this is the only way. I have three more bodies waiting next door that I need to finish as soon as possible," she explains with a shrug. With an innocent smile behind her face mask, she adds, "Besides, what reason would I have to punish you?"

Addie shakes her head and chuckles. Serves her right for trying to set Helena up on a date…

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