Chapter One
Part 2
The winds caught her face again, staying her by the barn door. She turned her back to it, which only blew her hair up over her horns and down across her face. Her father, just rounding out of Beastie's pen, couldn't help but chuckle.
"Weird weather. Little early for the summer gusts, but..." He shrugged. "They bring the smell of the bacanora wash... smokey."
Saxori spit her hair from her mouth. "I prefer the flowers in spring."
"So does your mother." He put his arm around her shoulder and the two of them walked back to the homestead. In the early morning sun, long red beams were cast over the land, bathing the white painted siding in orange. The smell of breakfast – fried eggs on a base of root vegetables and covered with shaved, fried meats. And fresh pressed mint soda.
Home
"This is nice," Saxori said. "Home."
Her father nodded, eyes fixed on the place he's called home for so, so very long. "Get in there." He patted her back as she ran into the garage. "And don't forget your slippers!" he shouted, standing in a small cloud of her dust. She found them propped up against the wall, much more neatly than she left them, and pulled them on only after instinctively tapping each hoof against the hard floor first.
Inside, Yuvari sat in front of a piping plate with a half-empty glass of mint soda, through from the look of the pitcher, that wasn't their first.
"How's Beastie?" her mother asked.
"Brushed. Happy."
"Well, then, get some grub."
Saxori sat down across from her sibling before she poured herself a drink. "So, mum was saying that the decision is coming up. Have any thoughts on it?"
Yuvari's face turned a deeper shade of red. "No. Don't want to decide."
Their mother chuckled as she brought a fresh pan of fried eggs over for Saxori to choose from. "It's a hard choice. Sax, I remember you took your sweet time with it as well. So don't go telling your sibling any different."
"Well... don't let dad go around bossing his children into becoming farm equipment."
"t-Saxori!"
"What? It's true."
"Is that why you chose to be a girl?" Yuvari asked.
"N-no... not the only reason." Saxori buried her face into her hands before she could make eye contact with either of the others.
SPOON
Wha—
Her mother knocked spoon clean of the greasy fried bits at the bottom of the pan on the flat of a plate in front of Saxori, an act that would've sent anyone else diving for cover. "t-Saxori. That wasn't very polite. The decision is a complicated time for
everyone, include the people around the decider. Yeah? Your father has had a rough time. Especially with his brother and everything. You - of all people - should know that."
"Yes, t-Seiriqine."
Her mother nodded before putting a few more scoops of hash on Saxori's plate before fixing one for their father next to a glass of pulque.
The door to the garage opened up. "What was that crash?"
Yuvari's face split into an evil grin. "Sax—"
But the busy housewife cut the child off. "Dropped a spoon."
"You?"
She walked over and the two kissed. "Yes. Me." Then she turned and shot both her children a stern glare.
Not a word, either of you.
Yes, t-Seiriqine.
Her father looked around, "Breakfast hash?"
"Just the way you like it. Less butter, more bacon fat."
He took a long hit of his pulque before reaching for the hot sauce. "Fantastic."
###
A cloud of dust about a mile away was the only sign that the bus was, in fact, coming. Saxori sat on the small bench her father had put together for her first day of school all those years ago. Meanwhile, Yuvari went about dealing with the nigh-infinite nervous energy of early teenhood in the weeks leading to the decision. They fiddled around with some rock or stick they found on the ground before suddenly turning their full anger on it and hucking it deep into the field across the road.
"I hate this."
Saxori looked up from the bench and found her sibling looking back, focus unusually tight. "What?"
"All this attention. All the kids are talking about the decision, the decision... blah blah blah. What if I don't
want to decide? What if I'm not ready?"
That was a rather big question to be asking of someone who was really only just considered an adult. She looked to the bus hoping for an out, but it was still far, far away, two or three stops down the way. "Well... um... I mean... I guess it isn't
completely permanent."
Not enough
"I don't care. I..."
"It's okay. Everyone's got to make
that choice."
"Some people have it all figured out. Like you."
Saxori let out a loud laugh. "Me? Are you kidding me?"
"Well, you know... other than being a freak."
The laugh died. "I am
not a freak."
"Sure..."
Loading ballistic formula with drag.
Calculating final distance based off of angle.
Initial velocity set above termina—
"NO!"
"W-what?"
"Nothing." Saxori muttered. "Nothing. But I'm not a freak, okay? Is mum a freak?"
"Yeah."
"a-Yuvari!"
"What? You're both freaks. You do city shit."
"
Language!"
Yuvari stuck her tongue out at her big sister. "Everyone knows it."
Uncertainty
Saxori took a deep breath. Tried to recenter her focus. "Do you want my advice or not, Yuvari?"
The younger child avoided the subject completely. "Bus is here."
Sure enough the bus was gliding over the rough dirt road no more than fifty yards away, the only anti-grav system humming hard and the forward thrusters sputtering as their reducers failed to find a stable point to shift to. And yet it would be years if not decades before it would be replaced.
The two of them grabbed their bags and their lunches and waited for the old bus to open its doors in a short little line. When the doors did open, with a rusty whine, the bus driver sat there with an already impatient look on her face, surely the work of the rowdy bunch behind her. Saxori and Yuvari got on quick and before they could even find their usual spot in seat 4L, the bus' gear sputtered to a zombie-like life and rocketed them off toward the school.
"Hey, Saxori."
Nithwure was a short, stout tiefling, with a longer-than-usual tail that she constantly stroked in her nervous energy. Her skin was yellow, unlike the usual reds or purples, and her horns relatively short, protruding from the front of her forehead only four inches or so.
Saxori sat next to her with a heavy thump and Yuvari took the aisle spot.
"Not looking forward to the faire, Niia?"
The other girl shook her head. "They're just going to tell me to be a housewife. Like everyone else."
"No..." Saxori lied.
"Big hips. Big ol' boobs. It's the same. It's always the same." Nithwure sighed. "You haven't figured out how to tell the future yet, have you?"
"No."
Yuvari snickered, but knew better than to invoke any more of the teasing from the other tieflings on the bus.
APPROACH
Saxori turned her head around just as one of worst offenders came up and sat down in the seat across from them. Despite them making eye contact, she tried to feign ignorance to his presence, looking forward again, even as his snicker grew in volume.
"How's it going, Xori? Still hanging out with this cow?"
Nithwure looked down at her hands and continued to stroke her tail, though just a little more nervously.
"I know you can hear me. You can hear everything, right? That's how this works. Get to listen to everything." A few people shuffled away, a few others moved in, encircling her, their thoughts all dark and grim, floating around her. One of the girls, the sadistic daughter of the local butcher, focused on her and her father butchering an old puller from a few months ago. The beast was broken down into its base components, some to be ground up, some to be cut up further, others to be bagged as is and sent to market for a low fee.
Saxori had to take a deep breath.
Focus.
But there was one, Saxori could never pinpoint who, who would imagine her tied down. Nude. Cut up and bruised. She knew it was one of the boys because it was clear he had never seen a woman's nudity before. It was a dark haunting, though, that followed her around most of the day.
"t-Saxori," Nithwure whispered, "you're crushing my hand."
Saxori looked down and saw that she had laced her fingers with her friend and was desperately squeezing for a sense of focus.
"Aww. Little girlfriend? You always did have a thing for fa—"
Jerk is the derivative of acceleration.
Measured in meters per second cubed.
Injury due to 'jerk' is often called 'whiplash'.
What?
REACH
The first boy grabbed for Yuvari, probably to yank them out of the way and take the closer spot to his targets, but Saxori turned around just in time to see him doing it and then a sudden force knocked the boy across his seat and up against the steel wall of the bus. His head hit with a particularly hard 'thunk'. He slid down the wall and fell into the seat in a heap, blood trickling from the back of his head.
There were a few screams, several of the tormenters scrambling to get away, but Saxori made no motion. She just locked eyes with the boy for a second.
He blinked. Probably forgetting where he even was. Before blacking out.
The bus was screeching to a halt, its thrusters suddenly set to 'reverse' in a bid to do it as quickly as possible.
Everything was happening so slowly.
The panicked faces.
The shrieks.
The pointed fingers.
All secondary details.
Deceleration protocols active.
A gentle cushion enveloped Saxori and her two seatmates, while the rest of the bus was forced to deal with the driver's decision to prioritize quick anger and punitive justice over the safety of all of the bus' occupants. When it was all said and done, children and young adults flung about the bus like dolls tossed in the air, the driver stormed back, voice echoing off the steel. "TA-SHOR-EE!"
She reached for the girl, but found herself floating two or three inches off the ground. Unable to move any closer to Saxori. Her eyes darted about, instinctively looking for the source of whatever was holding her aloft.
Saxori swallowed, let go of a breath she had been holding in for what felt like minutes now. She could
feel the driver's weight. Not in her arms or through her back and legs, but an innate feeling. It wasn't heavy or light, just there. A number. To be understood and compared, but not fussed over.
Gently she could move that mass.
Backwards. She pushed.
And the driver floated back to the front of the bus where Saxori placed her carefully back onto her feat.
Drive.
"Drive."
