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It’s really easy to hold onto anger. Trust him, Devo knows anger well. It’s a tangible feeling, something he can grab and feel. It can be consuming, in some ways relieving, but it can also be biased. Something Devo has not learned is that anger is a secondary emotion, it springs from another feeling, until the original incentive is long forgotten. And while this can do something to assuage the original pain, it does not help you overcome it.
It’s all that I am , he said to Guidance. Resentment .
Anger is a secondary emotion, and more than anything, Devo is hurt. He feels betrayed and forsesaken, and anger is a much simpler emotion to feel. Hurt doesn’t burn the same way anger does, betryal doesn’t crush the same way resentment does. He can control anger, he can use it.
However, no matter how much you hide, the hurt doesn’t go away.
_
The Coriolis is quiet, well, as quiet as a ship can be. Urchin is crawling in the walls, Zoox is restless, walking up and down the halls, Amber is rummaging, keeping her many hands busy. As for Devo, well, he doesn’t know what to do. Agency is a weird feeling, he’s come to realize, and he isn’t sure what to do with it. He spends a lot of time mapping out where they travel, trying to make some sense out of the Ethersea that they travel in. There’s so much they don’t know about. So much he doesn’t know about.
“Whatcha workin’ on, champ?” A sudden voice sounds from behind him, undoubtedly Amber.
He turns, and realizing that he had been staring down for quite sometime without really seeing anything, pauses. He blinks a couple times, taking in all four of Amber’s crossed arms. “Well I was trying to map where we have been, but…” he trails off.
She laughs, “That is a moot point, lemme tell ya. We tried to do that and it never worked.”
Then he thinks about it, really thinks about it. Amber was on the surface, way before this, she has seen things he has never gotten to see, will never see. Living in the Parish never told him much about the surface, it wasn’t really what they were about, the opposite actually. He has never felt grass or breathed fresh air after rain, and something about this frustrates him. For the billionth time today he suddenly feels very, very young.
She comes to sit by him, not in the captain’s seat, but a helmsman table next to him. “Not that it isn’t worth doin’ though. I respect the effort,” she pats him on the back and smiles.
Devo takes a minute, like he so often has been doing, and asks “Amber, what were you doing when you were my age?”
Amber hums and nods, “You’re what? Nineteen, twenty? Well, I-”
“Twenty-three,” he interrupts.
She nods, “Tell ya what, that makes no difference, see I was doing the same thing for many years. I suppose in my twenties I was, well I guess I was killin’ blink sharks.” She gives him a sly grin, “You saw the board.”
He smiles with her, though not particularly because he’s happy. “But, but what was it like, Amber? The sun and the trees?”
“Well hell, I dunno how to describe that to ya.”
He deflates a little, returning to his map, drawing over lines he’s already done.
“I’ll tell ya somethin’ though,” she says as she picks his pen up midstroke. “It don’t matter any, because how would you describe the Ethersea? I’m sure it’s damn better than how I would describe it.”
To Devo the Ethersea was all he had ever known. It was everything, it was like asking someone what it was like to see. You can’t, not really.
Amber continues, “Y’see? I can hear that wheel in your head rollin’, but just because you’re young doesn’t mean you’re blind. You know stuff I’ll never know, and I know things you won’t know.”
“That is life, I suppose,” Devo says.
Amber squeezes his shoulder, “Yeah, that’s life.”
_
Orlean says something under his breath, and suddenly, he’s back.
Like no time has passed, he’s being scolded for objecting to scripture. It’s just that- it just doesn’t make sense . He doesn’t get it and part of him doesn’t want to, but he still feels so small. He should get this, but it isn’t right, and yet it must be.
He’s grown the last couple months, he’s almost taller than Orlean, but he still feels like a child. He’s overly aware of how his pants are too short around his ankles, the way he holds himself drawn in, and he is so young .
“Wait, hold on,” Orlean’s voice is sharp. “Don’t interrupt me.”
He won’t, he won’t interrupt him. He’ll be quiet, he’ll do what he’s supposed to. Yet for some reason he can feel hot tears behind his eyes, and he doesn’t know why it’s so frustrating. Why life is so frustrating, why he is so young and incapable.
They let him go, and with it, so does Devo. He withdrawals for a few hours from the others. There isn’t much to do on a ship when you’re piloting it except think. So he does, but he doesn’t get answers, he just gets more hurt. The more hurt he feels, the more anger. He feels his face heat and he’s staring up now, trying anything to stop what he’s feeling. To just not cry like a kid.
He feels a warm palm on his upper back, and he knows its Amber, and then he is crying. Hot and fast tears are going down his face, and it’s so frustrating. It’s a wet anger, the kind that says he feels too much, and he can’t keep it in any longer.
“Hey now, it’s okay to cry. You know I cry all the time. That horse magazine? Made me bawl like a baby, so many cute pictures.” She’s rambling now, keeping her palm on his back and speaking nonsense. It makes him laugh a little, but more than anything it makes him feel, well he feels tired.
And though he hates feeling so small, he realizes that he does want to be young. Desperately, and the unfairness of it all hits him like a wave. He wants to shove his face into Amber’ shoulder, anyone’s shoulder, and cry until he can’t anymore.
Until then he sits at the front of the ship, next to Amber, listening to the water and to Urchin in the walls, to Zoox walking the halls.