#dassi

Brett Naucke - Cumulative Index

Dassi

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There’s a frantic knocking on the door and Hadassah opens it. 

“Someone’s after me.” Dassi recognizes Laurel, an English student who always has the most beautiful words. Now, her words are stilted, tripping over themselves. “One of the Gentry–Forgot my ring and salt, I’m dizzy, can’t think straight–”

Dassi ushers her in. “Come on.” She closes the heavy door behind her and shoots the iron bolt home, but it almost doesn’t matter. There’s not a single member of the fair folk of Elsewhere University who would come in here.

Laurel’s nose wrinkles as she takes a deep breath; it’s a common expression for those who don’t come to the machine shop often. But to Dassi, the smell of iron and oil is home. 

Various students glance up as Laurel comes in; a few are working on projects at various hulking machines, but some are just camping out until the glamour clears from their eyes. Jack, the machinist, looks up and grins. “Another one? There’s hot chocolate in the back room. Milk in the fridge, too.”

Dassi and Laurel walk past the machines and Laurel looks around a little sadly. “I bet you barely see the Gentry at all.”

Dassi shrugs. “I mean, we do, just at much more of a distance than most of you.”

“I’m sorry.”

Dassi frowns. “I don’t think there’s anything to be sorry for. It doesn’t always seem like the best thing, to interact with them like that. I mean, look at the way you came in today.”

Laurel has a dreamlike, faraway gaze. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it’s worth it, to see and interact with those incredible beings. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

The back room has several students lounging on couches and chatting. Laurel immediately sees one of her friends–Tony forgets his protective items too often; he’s in here at least once a week–and goes to hang out with him, visibly relaxing. Dassi heads back out to the main floor of the machine shop. It had become a place of refuge for so many students trying to escape temporary attentions from the fair folk that there were more non-engineers than engineers in here right now. 

Ahmed almost immediately jumps in front of her. “Dassi, check it out!” He’s holding that little piece of iron that had been giving them so much trouble over the past week. “I really, really think this will fit.”

Dassi laughs and grabs it. “Yeah, but you said that every time we tried to work on it. Look, if it doesn’t work this time, maybe we should try adjusting the housing instead.”

“Yeah, yeah. But seriously, Dassi, I have a good feeling about this!” Ahmed’s hair and clothes sparkle faintly with iron filings caught there, and there’s a small burn from a soldering iron healing on his thumb. 

Dassi glances down at herself. There’s a huge oil stain on one leg of her jeans, and her fingertips are stained green by the copper wires she’d been wrestling with earlier. Engineering leaves so many little physical marks.

She and Ahmed walk over to the workbench and she inhales the scent of solder smoke, oil, iron…she spends so much time here that the smell comes back to her dorm room with her and settles in a little deeper every night. There’s no smell that speaks so strongly of peace and security as this one.

She and Ahmed bend to their work and she sees that his eyes are sparkling with the same excitement she feels, brighter than pure copper. The feeling she gets when one of her creations works–there’s nothing that compares. It doesn’t matter that she can’t interact with the fair folk. She can protect her classmates from them, and that’s enough. And the discovery, the knowledge, the ability to create; it’s more than enough. She wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Gonna call this one: Stage Fright and a Macaw because Ravi is literally like, “Knock that shit off!” She’s a velcro bird meaning whatever attention I have to give needs to be on her.

But shyeah, I’m learning Better Man by Pearl Jam and also fighting for my life in this video. Between Ravi and carpal tunnel, practicing has been difficult. Not to mention recording myself stresses me the fuck out and the loudness of this house is unbearable and doesn’t exactly make for a quality recording.

You can really see how swollen my index finger is here - hormonal macaws’ll do that to ya.

Dassi the Ibanez guitar and I thank you for watching and please forgive me for fucking up every chance I got - I swear, I am better when I’m alone in my room and not putting the pressure of recording myself playing and posting it on myself.