#v4.

Biztos bennünk van ez a gyarmatosító mentalítás (vágod Csótány - You kno what I mean - Upper Hungary - Felvidék), de szeretném, ha ez megszünne, és Tesók lennénk.

Určite máme túto koloniálnu mentalitu (vystrihli ste Csótány - Viete, čo tým myslím - Horné Uhorsko - Felvidék), ale chcel by som, aby to skončilo a boli by sme Bratia. (You know csótány it is just Google translate.

THE YEARS BEFORE THE SKIES BEGAN TO SPLIT,     before the blight,  when life was,  if not peaceful,  then at least mundane,  were by far her most miserable.     she’d escaped demise and remained permanently altered in the wake of it,  and each new village she visited  —  to quell sicknesses no common potions could mend  —  refused to let her forget about it.

it was easy to feel unsightly in the face of so many eyes.     to feel ashamed that it bothered her so much considering she was alive where so many of her peers had perished.     she was meant to die then,  in that overgrown forest among the too-tall trees,  and for years,  she carried that reminder in every single scar her then newly awakened magic couldn’t erase,  no matter how many healing spells she learned.     

no matter how desperately she begged in the late hours of the night,  sat at the foot of the filled bathtub,  repulsed by the stretches of ink-marred skin she was forced to run her sponge across,  her vanity wasn’t something the mercurial spirit upholding her body cared to cultivate.

mituna reminds himself that this isn’t a feelings jam.

it’s kind of hard to have a feelings jam tucked away in an alley that’s peppered with still-drying white paint, after all. the smell makes his head hurt if he thinks about it too long -- thick and sour and compressing. his art (though it might be generous to call it that) sits underneath three thick coats of the stuff, all its bright colours muted and muffled under the sterile brightness of it. it’d been funny, at the time, spraying nonsensical messages somewhere quiet like this, somewhere it wouldn’t really make a scene. the other yellows had laughed along with him, snorting cackles and giving him ideas. he realises now that it had only ever been a game to most of them, a way to relax and hit back after a long day of exhaustion and light.

light in the literal sense, blinding and technicolour, but also light like the smile the receptionist gives them as they file in uniform lines into their work halls. mituna looks over his shoulder, as though he can see the building from here (he can’t. they’re too far away, too shrouded by the towering indigo hives either side of them). kankri must be talking about work. the thought makes him frown, his whole face twisting into a deep crease, all the way down to his chin. he’s not like kankri. he can’t keep his confusion or impatience or anger out of his expression.

“WHY??” is the first thing he asks, as he plucks at the lanyard around his neck. the laminated picture of him spins on its chord, and he does not read the information written in neat print that is not his own next to it, because he doesn’t need to (CAPTOR, mituna  (♊︎) . her imperial condescension's troupe 2241. there’s a little box beneath his name that doesn’t have a checkmark. he thinks it’s supposed to indicate that he wasn’t culled). 

he doesn’t think he has it so bad. mituna thinks about his lusus first, the sincere and unsure way in which it combs his hair. biclops can never get through the parts near his ears without pulling on his head, but he doesn’t complain. then he thinks about kankri’s curls and how hard they must be to brush through and then he’s thinking about not complaining, about both of them keeping their mouths shut. he puts the lanyard in between his teeth and bites down on it, his teeth finding the familiar grooves in the barkbeast-eared plastic. “BECAU5E I WORK?? EVERYONE WORK5.” not everyone. not really. but kankri knows what he means. 

sometimes, if he isn’t paying attention, the feeling of the warm-wet harness curls around his wrists and chest when he isn’t even wearing it. sometimes, they take it off of him and he falls to his knees without anything to hold him up. the first time, he’d been afraid that the others would make fun of him, and they did, but they also picked him up from underneath his arms and held him steady as they walked him out. he does it for others, now, younger trolls that fall because they’re too tired not to. he watches electricity fizzle in their eyes as they twitch and fret in his grip but they’re smiling, dazed and dreamlike. they’re --

“WE’RE HELPING.” 

there’s pride in all of them, mituna thinks. even the yellows that complain about sore joints and splitting headaches, even the yellows that fall and don’t move and get carried out by the violetbloods instead. the seven and eight sweep olds puff out their chests and say that they’re the useful blood caste, the group that keep beforus afloat. what would the planet do without them? they challenge, grins gaudy and sick. mituna doesn’t know.

he does know that he likes kankri. he likes how kankri is so sincere about everything and never looks at him in that overblown display of confidence. kankri has this way of making mituna think that his questions aren’t necessarily stupid, but important. kankri is different, and different isn’t bad, not when it agrees to meet him on a sideroad too close to its house to be genuinely comfortable or genuinely freeing. 

“I DONTT TTHINK ITT5 TTHATT BAD. MAYBE ITT5 JU5TT BECAU5E YOU HAVENTT 5EEN ITT!! ITT CAN BEE FUN, 5OMETTIME5.”

sometimes, like when mituna had sparked so intensely that he had overridden the main power outlets in the building and they all had to go home early so an indigo could fix it. one of his friends, an older troll with two missing eyes had hefted him up on their shoulders and he’d laughed himself dizzy with the thrill. sometimes, like when he’d collapsed at the end of the day and hit his head on the floor. one of the violets came towards him, fins pinned back and stride determined, until the yellow being freed next to him stood over his body and told them that he was still breathing, that he’d be fine eventually. 

the idea that working isn’t normal is a scary one. mituna never did like being frightened. 

you are hanging off of his shoulders, chittering endlessly with energy and elation. all around you, other yellowbloods clutch each other by the backs of their necks, their elbows, their waists, and hug and clap and knock their foreheads together like they’ve never been touched before. it’s so easy to be caught up on this kind of electricity when it’s tangible -- some of the younger workers are setting off sparks with each gleeful call, fireworks caught in their mouths. underneath your excitement there’s a penetrating exhaustion, but beneath that is something all the more delicate -- hope and belief that you are setting slowly to kankri’s tune.