Work Text:
“Some things could only be written in a foreign language; they are not lost in translation, but conceived by it. Foreign verbs of motion could be the only ways of transporting the ashes of familial memory. After all, a foreign language is like art—an alternative reality, a potential world.”
- Svetlana Boym, “Estrangement as a Lifestyle: Shklovsky and Brodsky”
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Information Ministry
DATE: 100th day, 1st year in the 1st indiction of the Empress of all Teixcalaan Nineteen Adze
Finally! Finally. It has taken me three-and-a-half hours to not only locate a network that will allow personal transmissions outside Teixcalaanli space, but also locate a senior level Information Ministry official to sign all the necessary documents —and here my eye cramped up like twitchy circuitry, a fucking kaleidoscopic lightshow-extravaganza in Plaza Four bright enough to be seen from Odile, from all the signing; did you know that you can sprain your inner-cornea? Did you, Mahit? Do they teach you that on Lsel Station? Tomorrow one of Petal’s ixplanatl friends is going to dilate my eye so I can avoid the Palace’s medical center and it’s entirely your fault.
Also entirely your fault is that all the proper authorization took another three hours. Why, you ask! Why!! Because there’s no Lsel Ambassador in Teixcalaan. My direct superior and several underlings got involved, we had to pluck one of you from lunch in the outskirts, also very tall, and the whole thing caused a minor political incident during one one of the most tumultuous transitions of power in recent history.
(To add the bloodiest insult, this unexpected excursion of mine won’t even make the epics! Not even granted a subplot like in Ninety Alloy's retellings, that is the dull nature of my afternoons without you bullheading your way through nascent corridors / of my garden fair / overwrought. I have a feeling this realization would offend you some too, or at least amuse you after such a long journey, so I will not erase this parenthesized addendum. Even though it’s hardly standard for so short a letter.)
(Did you know, Mahit—did you know that letters were once entirely handwritten? I find the notion quaint, like watching an eisenia fetida scoot its tiny body across a blade of grass. Nothing so small or so long a perilous journey / so perfect this millennia of mine I have wrapped up and pressed down into bed sheets, entirely for you.)
(Oh! Also! Do you like freeverse? I never did ask. I know it has turned gauche over the last few decades—here—over the past five years. Anyone can write freely, Pseudo Eight Rose famously spoke all those years ago, but to enfold a million words into one, singular perfection...nothing compares.)
How are you?
/EDIT: 100.1.1-19A, 08.28P
I’m avoiding the medical center due to the Sunlit’s acquisition of all City Medical Centers, not because of the reasons I’m certain you’re thinking! Signing yet another form with my cornea would be counterproductive.
/EDIT: 101.1.1-19A, 01.03A
I won’t presume to know the political situation on Lsel nor your own thoughts on matters here, but should you write back, I should be able to access
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Information Ministry
DATE: 110.1.1-19A
Hello, Mahit -
I sit here in the Ministry lobby at dawn, hoping your trip back to Lsel Station was restful and entirely devoid of unknown extraterrestrials. I’m going to assume that it was, least of all because Her Brilliance, Edgeshine of a Knife, Spear in the Hands of the Sun has strategically placed me in charge of monitoring all news reports from stationer space pertaining to unexplained attacks—I have the authorization and everything! No Palace employee knows the gravity of the situation beyond me and well, you. My vainglorious ambition is sated, for now.
This is not my first message, although it is the first I will send. I typed something days ago, but realized midway through constructing my encryption (decidedly not the poem of the week, I have far too many eyes glancing in my direction these these days to entrust my fellow asekretim to behave) that writing after forty-seven hours of zero sleep and three different stimulants is still a bad idea.
As for why I’m writing you: I thought, since you will return to Teixcalaan eventually—the civil war may be over in the morning announcements but in truth it has barely begun and the smartest minds in the Ministry will agree with me, though they quake over their breakfast coffee—it would be prudent of us to continue our professional relationship! I still intend to see you in my poetry circle, Mahit Dzmare. (Yskandr can come too, if that is how it works.) I will make an orator of you, yet.
Before I sign off - how is the coffee on Lsel? You indicated before that it was less than pleasant. I really haven’t been able to stomach the stuff since that dread, Brilliant day in the Information Ministry, but I hope
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Palace East
DATE: 112.1.1-19A
Ambassador Dzmare,
Her Brilliance Nineteen Adze, the Edgeshine of a Knife, has indicated to me that I ought to keep my steady, guileful gaze aimed towards the dim horizon, when hers is necessarily occupied by her own spoon. I thought this allusion very flippant, particularly in the harsh re-phrasing of Eleven Lathe’s Beguiling Horizons Verses I-IV, but she is yet encumbered by pleas of various aristocracies to join her still-tiny legion of ezuazuacatlim. I suppose this burgeoning Epoch calls for simpering in the politics, but I pledge to greet subtlety at the back entrance with a warm, firm hand.
(I think she means to make me a member. The facts, the clues are lining up. Can you imagine anything so terrifying? Beyond the approach of a dangerous alien species, which my informants say—yes I have my own flock now, exciting!— you have not yet encountered. If you feel anything for me at all, make it overwhelming sympathy.)
I hope your continued relationship with Yskandr is going as you hoped for. An inelegant hope for an ignorant plea of my own, forgive me. It is strange to think of you not in the world anymore, Mahit. I cannot visualize what you see, or imagine what you hold in your hands. I don’t even know why this notion bothers me so much, except that I have spent a lot of time wishing to know when I am not working, or even when I am, and I do not recognize the incessant nature of this wanting. Or rather, it is entirely against my nature to wish so incessantly while doing nothing about it, and the only person I would trust to do investigative brain scans would be Petal.
If your schedule permits, I would like
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Plaza One
DATE: 112.1.1-19A
Dear Mahit,
I have now attempted to write you a letter on three separate occasions. In the first, I was inconsolable; my fingers failed to find solid purchase on the holokeys, sweat laced my brow with an accusatory sheen. Really terrible idea to write anything after a meeting with Nineteen Adze—I would say it is a relief to admit my enduring fear of our (well my) Empress, Her Brilliance, the Edgeshine of a Knife, but I tell her so every time we share tea.
The second and third letters were agreeable; I wrote each in the morning with the clearest of minds. No coffee—although I have a bag of Petal’s favorite blend for when you return to us. It would be a satisfying end to that arc, to that week, to watch your muscular structure try and try to maintain a becoming expression while I nonetheless seek the points of your teeth peeking from underneath your lips.
But! Those letters are gone now. The last time I found myself in this predicament, I was writing my first oration tutor, whom I hoped could offer me some advice on an elusive university assignment. A collection of infofiche sticks later and I was no closer to my original goal. I requested to meet her and, to make this blunt (you’ll hopefully recognize these glyphs, they’re a touch more than ancient,) in writing each word to the intended recipient I was flayed alive before the first sun’s rays.
You see, I held a station up in space for her. (This is also an archaic confession of attraction, but I thought you would find it amusing, so, here you are. Cultural liaisons never rest their weary heads.) She was wry, sardonic, witty, curled her vein-lacquered hand while reciting Eleven Lathe just very so. Petal teased me sufficiently enough, don’t worry. I wanted her to see me clearly enough through my banal request to define me, but I also craved self-definition and determination, in the way of all young people. I wanted her but I had outgrown her use to me and thus, when I finally sent a letter stripped of all that intent, I found her reply sufficient but wanting. (But I finished my assignment and received top marks!)
That’s not the purpose of this letter, however. Would I want to know how you’d define me to myself? What a question! I didn’t lie when I said I would have loved to engage in certain activities had you been only another citizen at court, had I gotten to mull over what your second eye looked like under a cloudhook like in so many garbage fluff novels. I merely wish—would enjoy speaking to you again, without a civil war. Or violent, unknown aliens. (Which I assume have not found you yet—I am kept in the Loop.) No, “merely” is not the glyph I wish to invoke. I want to ask you a question and receive a sufficient answer. I want your advice on poetry we do not write together to save my Empire, but—but—However!
Oh, fuck! I’m going to delete this too, aren’t I? Fuck fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Plaza One Residential Block 5
DATE: 130.1.1-19A
Mahit—
We don’t know each other very well yet, do we? Outside of head trauma and threats of civil war. And aliens. The idea of your being an alien thrills me, but the idea of you out there, out of the world—human, dreaming, writing, reading.
You are a leaf amongst branches
I am still and cold.
If your schedule permits, I would like to continue our strange, yet rather entertaining working relationship! I hope this transmission finds you well.
Most Sincerely,
Three Seagrass
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Palace-East
DATE: 150.1.1-19A
Mahit—
It is now five months since that Dreaded Week.
First, allow me to express my gratitude that no misfortune happened upon your transport home. Secondly: I find myself curious about your thoughts regarding the week we met. The set of glyphs behind “Dreaded Week” have gravitas that resonates with my fellow asekretim—many of whom, like me, miss Twelve Azalea and would agree that is how he would call it, perhaps in informal rhyming verse—but I do not think that Dreaded would suit you.
Nor me. On my first day of the new job, my deskmate practically contorted himself around my set of screens to inquire about that dreadful week in the Information Ministry. He yammered on about a public debate between two anti-firearms lobbyists regarding the new reclassification of Information Ministry staff as military personnel—I’ll attach an article about it, I was so alarmed to hear about how little news you receive on Lsel! Anyway, this conversation gave me such an upset stomach that I took an antacid tablet and called my mother.
Do you know I have a mother? We never reached such a familiarity, nor that precious moment where any demarcations are laid bare. I do know your background—your genetic information—thanks to the Ministry, but not whether you have a Mother. Mine was an accident. She only meant to propagate—I am the only one of me that exists, which is a sign of vanity on her part. She named me Three and gave me the genetics of the finest orators, hoping against irrational deviation that I would also enjoy the practice. I have not disappointed her yet!
If we did have such familiarity, perhaps I would tell you that I went to see my mother for three days after Petal’s funeral. (Her Brilliance gave me the “shore leave” herself, how terrifying!) She fed me my favorite foods and fretted over rumors that I wrote a war poem. I do not go home often because my mother frets over my safety more than either of us enjoy.
But my only friend was dead, and my second friend—you!—left the world entirely. You will notice that the glyph I use for friend here means “beloved confidant.” One whom you can tell things to without worry for your reputation or your political standing or whatever ill-fitting secrets that make up human consciousness. Petal has held my hair back while I throw up a night’s worth of brandy and curse his own mother for creating him—who is also a Mother, but instead used her vanity to create five clonesibs despite not yet knowing how her concoction would result.
Yes, there are four other Petals out there. Yes, the moment I met one at the funeral, a Petal who also enjoys sportsball and makes stupid jokes, I burst into tears, appearing like a wet, starved bird. Again.
I know I make assumptions when I call you a friend, particularly when I find writing you a simple transmission so challenging—as decidedly complicated writing to Lsel Station turned out to be, thank you very much. But my City attacked me and you were worried for me, not my City, not whether my City meant to attack me at all.
So I cannot help it, calling you a friend. Is that selfish of me? Would you be surprised at all to learn I am selfish? So many eyes are on me, Mahit. I should be basking, I know.
On that topic, I would enjoy seeing you with my eyes again! If your schedule permits, perhaps we could
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Plaza One Residential Block Five
DATE: 150.1.1-19A
Hello, Mahit -
I hope the hands of starlight have gladly received you in an outstretched palm. It has been five months now since Her Brilliance Nineteen Adze’s Ascension. I know you receive patchwork news on Lsel Station from the Empire, perhaps now exacerbated by the presence of our new Friends—I hope you find my use of the glyph Unfortunate Acquaintance humorous at the very least!—and I thought you might appreciate an update from a familiar voice. I do hope that my next update will be in person.
Palace Court is—well, chaos. We are yet cleaning up our failed civil war; Nineteen Adze instituted a daily poetry contest around the theme of imperialism to give rallying citizens a context for their grievances. I cannot deny the moment when the sun aligns in the Directions She Chooses, to glean what She Has Illuminated for us all. Nineteen Adze will not give up this throne without a fight and she makes bloodshed glow silver in the light. Her allies are numerous. Her enemies are far worse.
Thirty Larkspur is attempting a comeback; just last night at a banquet (we have nightly banquets now, to drum up support) he requested a poem from a former One Lightning fanatic, who has since made reparations but is nevertheless openly critical of the new government. He should be dead. He is alive, and orating. His poem (I have recorded it here) mounted a just-right stir in the crowd, now devoid of purple flowers—a sprinkle of titters from diplomats and nobles who wish to see their world once again reflected back to them in consummate rendering.
Make no mistake: I am under no disillusion that such a world will exist again.
Nevertheless, Thirty Larkspur will not give up the quest to slip back into favor, though this political splash reveals he is willing to part with the chance for a silent coup. He ignores my growing presence outside the Information Ministry while Nineteen Adze keeps me close in-hand. I mention myself only because I believe she means to make me an ezuazuacat. She has but told me as such, in so many dappled words. Allusions. Teacups and gentle smiles and a fucking keypass to her office.
My vainglorious ambition aside, the idea fills me with such dread. Enough to encapsulate that Dreaded Week! As I compose this message, staring directly into the looming night out the window, my head pulses with a hot, bright static. I cannot scrub it out, you see; I only know one brain surgeon still alive whom I would let inside my frontal lobe and she is an anti-imperialist. Did you know the Science Ministry has taken personal responsibility for Yskandr’s death? I can only assume you know; Nineteen Adze tasked me with encoding that information in her latest missive to you.
I will be less opaque: Ten Pearl publicly fired another senior ixplanatl for poisoning Ambassador Aghavn over a personal quarrel. Of course, the court gossips then did the rest of the work for him.
So, yes: if I can feign a sensible reason, I avoid the Science Ministry. I cannot help but think the act of poisoning reveals Ten Pearl’s City sensibilities; plan thought, plan executed. Man Dead. A year ago, I might have debated Petal on the efficacy and efficiency of poisoning. I may have even taken the position that poison is clean and blameless and always strikes true. But my own Ministry killed Petal with a gun and that hallway floor is now sanitized every day, as City mandate requires. The City that tried to kill me once, accidentally, as you know. It may again still.
Here is where I might plead with a lover, if I had one: come home, I am afraid, I am lonely, I am exhilarated by the entire prospect and wish to have semi-public sex on my balcony to the rising fuschia sun. Instead, I talk to myself in my quarters, in the palace, in a City devoid of intention. In the Jewel of the World, all alone. I don’t even have a balcony. Your quarters did, which I was so looking forward to reading on.
(I could call my mother, but she would turn me in if she learned I helped a barbarian get illegal brain surgery by an anti-imperialist in the slums. I would expect nothing less from her. I would perhaps love her less.)
If we kiss again, I don’t want it to be a pure distraction. I want romance, Mahit. I want you to lift me up onto a counter and have your way with me—that includes touching and fucking, sure, yes, but also the full width of your smile unencumbered by the City.
When I realized showing your teeth was a smile, I longed to sleep so I could dream of it. I can see it now. I can stretch my own lips along its shape. I can
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Plaza One Residential Block Five
DATE: 161.1.1-19A
Ambassador Dzmare,
May the sunlight on faraway moons smile upon you. We have received your transmission today, declining Her Brilliance’s request for your renewed presence in court—provided we have a court to be present at beyond today. I recall Eleven Lathe’s dawning horror at the approach of her own people, her own life’s blood in Dispatches from the Numinous Frontier—the womb and crèche / all in one plasma. I never understood why Eleven Lathe then describes those Teixcalaanli ships “as tar in the vacuum’s expanse.” Now I do, I think. From the grass-covered ground, an approaching ship will always be too large.
And this ship looks like, or is, a fucking giant wheel. That much is clear from the morning news cycles on Dava Station.
Of course, I subsequently decoded your encrypted message—to Nineteen Adze, not to me. (I monitor all of Nineteen Adze’s incoming transmissions now. We read them together on her couch. Terrifying!) I looked for me in you, though, your words. I looked until my stomach burned. I still can’t drink coffee, so the burn was a surprise. Your encryption code was clever. Of course it was. And I understand, of course, how your presence on Lsel will be vital to the station’s survival.
Seeing the familiar shape of your words has emboldened me to ask if you, schedule permitting, would like to call on holo. During that Dreaded Week there was never a moment to
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Palace East
DATE: 163.1.1-19A
Hello, Mahit -
How strange it is that you might easily message us in the world, but it takes a minor political incident for me to obtain permission to message back! Although I now work in close quarters with Her Brilliance—a wonderful promotion!—there is simply no time nor reason to ask for a Personal Correspondence Permit to Stationer Space.
I set off to find someone myself - I won’t bore you with the details, although a research journey is always exciting! My point is that I seem to have acquired this Daryl Tennyr as an acquaintance. I invited him to lunch after all the hassle of signing my forms, and now we go for lunch once a week. He is ten years older than you and I have nothing in common with him whatsoever except the fact that I also know what babies on Lsel do not eat.
He also thinks poetry is stupid and useless. I suppose that should be a grating trait—and it is, I bring him a new verse every week to compensate for this chasm, hoping he’ll stop being a Tall Stationer one of these days and be my Tall Stationer. Or perhaps I am exhilarated by the very fact that his mind (and whoever he shares it with) contains Lsel Station and my mind does not—a poor imago machine you make for me, Mahit!
To rectify this situation, your schedule and alien invasions permitting, are you interested in having lunch on holo? We could have a cultural exchange, of sorts. After all, my duties as liaison only required
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Plaza One Residential Block Five
DATE: 184.1.1-19A
Mahit—
I hope you are alive. I hope I stay alive and I hope Yskandr is alive, because he is you and you are him and I woke up hungover today with the realization that I yearn for a fucking vacation. I’ve been promoted to Nineteen Adze’s assistant, I think. Assistant of Subterfuge and Knavery, my fellow asekreta deem with no shortage of snide commentary, after a line from Seventeen Chrism’ latest mystery novel. I now sleep two hours a night. I know this is an alarming way to begin correspondence after six months, but every day I receive new intel about disappearing stations and Lsel Station is so small, comparatively—in size, not small-minded—and go clammy in the hands when I realize that one day I might see it listed in sterile, grey font.
I think of Lsel Station itself, after, to quell my nerves. It always works. When I think of Lsel Station, there is nothing for me to envision except you.
Why haven’t you written yet, Mahit?
You can message me and you haven’t, which has caused me to bite my fingernails like a child and yes, call my mother to tell her I can’t concentrate on my new poetry collections because I’m having fucking girl problems!
Of course, you owe me nothing. It’s not about owe—although I owe you everything! Every scrap of life I lead now is being led by me in your debt, in the stalwart machinations of your incorruptible image; how you knelt those long, endless legs in front of the Emperor and demanded Space. Demanded to be heard and seen and loved. Demanded sovereignty for scrap metal. I loved you then, Mahit. Like a fire loves the sun when she is ten galaxies away, not the sun at all, but a myth. I would say again, that you are so like one of us. But that is not what I mean and I think you would know.
Did you know that your smile is what keeps me up some nights, when far more pressing matters (real aliens! Made out of WHEELS!) could be keeping me up instead? Or no, it’s not your wide, disarming smile, it is those muscles you pulled downward whenever I complimented you. I know you meant me not to see this reaction, but I did. I want to hear why from your perspective. If I must kneel for it, I will.
Well! It’s time for me to try sleeping. You also appear in my dreams now, when I do manage—or—some tall person stands behind me, a pace to the right, while the aliens tear a hole through the atmosphere.
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Palace East
DATE: 195.1.1-19A
Ambassador Dzmare,
Approximately six-point-three-six-six-seven months have passed since we last spoke. I hope the sun reaches you in good health at home. Although I hope our working relationship continues, I know many dire circumstances stand in the way of that possibility - or, more accurately, we may meet again under dire circumstances. Her Brilliance Nineteen Adze, the Edgeshine of a Knife, has made me the barrier between those Dire Circumstances and the rest of the City, if not the entire Empire. I’ve been craving bloodlessness—a space in my mind free of splitting, stressed out vessels. All I receive is more reports of dead colonists and Stationers.
Therefore, in this trying time with the promise of trials ahead, I offer this freeverse poem to you from Eleven Lathe’s collections, repurposed by me. I hope it will give you comfort. (I know freeverse has become gauche in the past ten years, do forgive me. Or perhaps you love freeverse! Though our piece shook the sun loose from the sky, I still know so little about your tastes.)
--
O’ Faraway Stationer [sic]
I would bring you home to my mother
In the Dress
You wear
In the hearth
You tender
In the skies you weather
Onwards, towards the
Beating heart of my City
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Plaza One Residential Block Five
DATE: 195.1.1-19A
Mahit,
It has been a while. How are you faring in these unprecedented times?
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Asekreta Three Seagrass, Palace East
DATE: 219.1.1-19A
Hello Mahit,
I hope the sun finds you green! In the process of obtaining the necessary permissions to contact you, I found a new Stationer I enjoy speaking to. Nineteen Adze approves of our visitations - we may hear more real news about attacks in Stationer Space through the desperation of its citizens’ personal communications rather than the official missives.
In any case, it has been beneficial to me too and—you know, I am very cross with you. It may have behooved you, Mahit, to mention that not everyone on Lsel Station receives an imago machine! In our first four meetings I was under the impression that Daryl is in possession of an imago and made a number of glib allusions (my other soul ignites / divinity has shown harrow might!) before he pulled his face muscles down and informed me, Her Brilliance’s Top Informant, that his imago machine application was turned down back on Lsel and, basically, thought I was dangling this memory in front of his face like fresh cod in front of a cat.
If I asked about the imago process in more depth, would you answer? In person, of course. I am not such a fool that I would ask over correspondence. Do you think
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: EZUAZUACAT Three Seagrass, Plaza One Residential Block Five
DATE: 229.1.1-19A
I’m an ezuazuacat, Mahit! It was announced on the morning newsfeeds! I saw my own face, resplendent in holographic golden hues! The Spear, Lifted Above Our Heads! Fuck! Fuck me fuck me fuck fuck fuck! I’m so FUCKING excited!!!!!!!!!!!! Are
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Ezuazuacat Three Seagrass, Palace East
DATE: 229.1.1-19A
If City news has not yet reached you—or Her Brilliance has neglected to tell you, which would be quite strange! I know you two have stayed in contact—I want you to hear it from me: your psychologists would be FIGHTING each other to study the machinations of my mind, Mahit! I have spent every fucking day in ABJECT TERROR at the prospect of becoming one of Her Brilliance’s Esteeemed Friends and now all my clothes are white and my FATHER-PROPOGATOR, whom I don’t even speak to, sent me a
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Ezuazuacat Three Seagrass, Palace East
DATE: 229.1.1-19A
Mahit, hello! It has certainly been a while. If the news hasn’t reached you already, take this holoclip as my grand entrance:
VIDEO FOOTAGE: Second Classmen Three Seagrass Honored as Fourth Member of Her Brilliance Nineteen Adze’s Ezuazuacatlim! Her primary propagator, Nine Kelp, reads Eleven Lathe’s “Procession in Violet” to commemorate the youngest ezuazuacatlim in recent history.
How are you? If you have an hour, perhaps we
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Ezuazuacat Three Seagrass, Palace East
DATE: 238.1.1-19A
Ambassador -
I have just seen the footage from Malachite Mining Station 8. I have no idea what condolences to give, only to offer my immense gratitude that Lsel was not torn apart in the aftermath. The aliens are as terrifyingly alien as we thought. Sentient wheels? I feel newly ashamed that I ever perceived you as an alien at all.
Being an ezuazuacat—how strange it was to hear you refer to me as such in your last missive to Nineteen Adze—is a bit lonely. Nineteen Adze refers to me as a Friend, although here you will see I have used the glyph for “Friend in Arms.”
There are other Ezuazuacatlim, of course, but they are all elderly and do not understand why and how I am here. I miss Petal.
/TRANSMISSION_SAVED [238.1.1-19A]
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED [248.1.1-19A]
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Ezuazuacat Three Seagrass, Palace East
DATE: 248.1.1-19A
Mahit -
The Palace now has an interim Lsel Station Ambassador, as you have learned from Her Brilliance. You will always be our primary choice, of course, but the recent insurgency acts in Belltown Six require some notion that City bureaucracy is not totally overwhelmed by the impending alien attacks.
Since Ambassador Tennyr does not require the services of a liaison, he and I meet in Plaze One on a bi-weekly basis. Five Agate has offered to assume this duty for me, but I find myself looking forward to the occasion. I bring him literature even though he maintains a stalwart distaste and he brings me reports from Stationer Space, none of them happy. To balance out the misery, I’ve asked for a recipe from Lsel Station, specifically something a baby might eat. Ambassador Tennyr laughed at the non-sequitur; he laughs with no reservations at all about who would notice and who would care.
It occurs to me he could be an insurgent, but I know
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Ezuazuacat Three Seagrass, Palace East
DATE: 251.1.1-19A
Hello, Mahit!
Today someone tried to fucking kill me! Poison flowers. I spotted them, thankfully. I’m now in Nineteen Adze’s quarters for a week. The irony doesn't escape me. In fact, I burst into a fit of giggles every time I slot it all together—clearly someone in the Palace believes you and I are still conspiring, but how, precisely, would they know if everyone involved in our escapades is dead, sacked, or Her Brilliance Herself. Oh, I can see your mind spinning a thrilling conclusion, but I can guarantee it is off-base. I think you will appreciatrigj
Fuck! Seven Scale knocks like a bull. That was my dinner. Has anyone tried to kill you again? I’ll eat their heart. It’s impossible to get any work done.
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Ezuazuacat Three Seagrass, Palace East
DATE: 268.1.1-19A
Hello Mahit -
I have no time to write—at all, ever—but I thought I might tell you about last night. I had asked our interim Lsel Ambassador for a recipe from Lsel Station, specifically something babies might eat. I thought it a fitting conclusion to our arc from that Dreadful Week. He gave me a cloudhook link to some concoction called “blueberry nutritional gruel.” I ordered the ingredients under a pen-name and retrieved them myself. For a moment it felt like escaping the Sunlit with you and Petal; how can I miss so desperately only a week in my life when it gave me such fucking profound psychological consequences!
My day beforehand was, in-fact, gruelling. Our closest outpost was attacked in the early morning and I managed evacuations from Nineteen Adze’s office while she managed the exalted duty of being the living symbol of our home, still breathing, still beating under the Sun.
Anyway. I painstakingly followed the instructions and made the gruel.
Mahit. Mahit! THAT WAS THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER PUT IN MY MOUTH. It was pasty but bone dry, crunchy I dare say and I DO dare, the dried blueberries tart to the point of explosion. I will now wonder how your infants manage to grow from the crèche into such tall, agile adults.
But I had to eat the gruel, of course. I finished every last miserable bite and nearly threw up, and then—what a surprise!—I cried. I curled into myself on my sofa and sobbed for perhaps an hour under a hand-crocheted blanket, much like an infant. After I managed to peel myself away to the washroom, my eye sockets felt like two tectonic plates I’ve pummeled together, the rest of my internal organs the resultant earthquake. Is that the point of your food? To shock babies into living?
Here is some very good news, however: only one assassination attempt this week. My mystery assailant moved on from flowers, but it’s all derivatives of the basic poisoning formula. There were three last week. You bring ill tidings, Ambassador. I’ll forgive you tomorrow—I still taste the blueberry.
Perhaps, one day, if we were to meet, you could teach me how
/TRANSMISSION_DELETED
TO: Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Ezuazuacat Three Seagrass, <Undisclosed Location>
DATE: 279.1.1-19A
Mahit -
My handwriting is awful, but I will just have to bear it and mourn my top marks in university penmanship. Nineteen Adze is using my cloudhook at this moment, to settle a dispute between a Sunlit officer and military for political reasons I just don’t care about. Let’s see if I can bring you up to speed update you without cramping my hand—I’m going to need it soon, potentially for shooting to shoot lasers at aliens. The City closed down the Palace this afternoon. Officially, due to citizen unrest—and there is unrest, we ought to be down in the bunker. I argued for it until I went hoarse, or would have gone hoarse, if Nineteen Adze hadn’t placed one of her bony hands on my shoulders to comfort me.
You once said that you always noticed when I am not okay. I wish you were here, Mahit, so you could notice again. You know, I try to focus on a problem for Nineteen Adze, on solving the Problem. I am here in the Empress’s office because I can solve Problems with a cool, discerning mind; this is why I dress in white, this is why our view of the horizon—of those malignant shapes approaching the horizon far too quickly—is so unencumbered by Palace Walls, and why we are only protected by the City herself. Instead, I still see myself falling on the pavement, skull splitting in two like a ripe melon. I am falling and this time, no one will catch me. the events from that dreadful week, playing in my head like a holofilm.
I lost contact with Ambassador Tennyr some hours ago, but not before he sent me my requested Stationer vocabulary and grammatical texts in case all comm systems do go down. I refuse to be caught off-guard.
It is so strange, Mahit, to know you are not in the world with me.
One day I want, perhaps more than anything in this particular moment, to write another poem with you. In any verse you want. Or I want, or we. Then I will tuck it away underneath a mattress we share, only to be published when our bodies die.
When the universe fades away into the dark, I want you and me to outshine the Sun.
/DOCUMENT_SCANNED [285.1.1-19A]
/DOCUMENT_SAVED [285.1.1-19A]
TO: Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station
FROM: Three Seagrass, Ezuazuacat to Empress Nineteen Adze of Teixcalaan
DATE: 287.1.1-19A
Hello, Mahit—
Forgive my waning penmanship [sic]. Your alphabetical letters are small. I hope this letter finds your line strong and plentiful in the black expanse. (Ambassador Tennyr taught me this phrase. He is from the station, Lsel Station.)
I think I understand why you did not write to me first, but I miss working with you. I would like to continue working with you. Please write back.
Please do not die.
I will see you soon in Teixcalaan.
Your friend,
Three Seagrass