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She first sees that girl, Nika Nanaura, on the fringes of a gaggle of new arrivals being shepherded by a weary-looking instructor. Nika draws Sabina’s eyes right to her– how could she not, with her striking blue highlights, the same shade as the sea under the bright noon sun.
She is Earthian. Even if Shaddiq hadn’t told Sabina of this ahead of time, it’s obvious to see. Nika lingers for just too long at the back of the group; hasn’t already latched on to someone else, some prior schoolmate or a face glimpsed at a gathering long ago; keeps her shoulders hunched and her arms tucked in tight, as if she thinks even the minuscule space she occupies is far too demanding of herself.
An elbow digs into Sabina’s side. “Hey,” Renee drawls, drawing the word out against her teeth. “Watcha lookin’ at?”
“Our new contact,” Sabina tells her. “Nanaura.”
“Oh?” Renee leans forward, hands upon her hips. “Not bad. Not my type, but I can see you and her getting along. Want me to set up an introduction? I could have some of my guys bring her over after dinner. You could get to know her. Start a collection of your own.”
“I’ve got no interest in that.” Sabina turns, cape flaring after her– all her disdain plain to see, if only there were a single one of them among Grassley besides Shaddiq who could know how to read it. "I’m concerned with more important things.”
“Whatever, suit yourself,” laughs Renee, and she takes up the very spot Sabina’s left– scoping out, no doubt, the boys.
It’s nothing of her concern, Sabina thinks, what Renee does in her spare time. So long as it causes Shaddiq no trouble and she doesn’t have to clean up the messes– what does it matter to her?
That girl– she won’t go near. She’s Shaddiq’s go-between; it’d be a conflict of interest. But, more so– Sabina has reason enough not to reach out, to draw Nika under her. She knows well enough already what it means to be taken up, to be kept– to have that hand looming over you, always ready to become a fist.
She’s hard to forget, that Nika– no, Nanaura. It’s got to be her hair. Hardly is anything so brilliantly blue. Sabina thinks of the books she’s read, those trifling pieces of trivia she’d picked up in her unending quest to learn more, and by knowing, to one day overcome. In the early days of Earth, blue was so often one of the last colors to be named. It occurs naturally, of course, but rarely– lapis and aquamarine; the occasional flower; birds’ and butterfly’s wings.
Sabina finds her head turning when she tags along with Shaddiq, sometimes– to glance at a passing glimmer of color, or the sky, or sometimes even the sprawling halls drowned in light pouring through the windows, containing nothing at all.
There are other reminders. Tools left out on benches in the common area; bandages. (She sees Nanaura with them so often, at least in the beginning.) Henao’s eyes, on a morning when Sabina hasn’t quite fully blinked the sleep from her vision. Of all things– patches, like the kind the school uses to repair old tarps that still have some use left in them. She catches Nanaura wandering around in a vest held more together by patches than seams, once, and can’t get it out of her mind.
A few weeks later, a box of mechanic’s vests labeled as Defective ends up tossed outside Earth House; which, by everyone else’s accounting, is just as well as having thrown them into the dump.
One rare morning when there’s nothing to do, Sabina takes the long route around Asticassia’s grounds. Shaddiq is off with his father, Guel won his mandatory bi-monthly duel as usual, and midterm exams were just yesterday.
So it’s as fine a day as any, Sabina decides, to go see this greenhouse that Shaddiq has talked about so often.
She finds it tucked between some trees in the center of the grass commons, the part that everyone uses a scooter to ride through because it’s so damn long. (--well, that’s as good a way as any to ensure no one unwanted wanders in.)
When she passes, Miorine is nowhere to be seen. Sabina does not stop, or even slow– just keeps walking. She’s seen what she’d come to see: glass domes, broad green leaves; shrubs everywhere, and had those been tomatoes?
And towards the back, caught just out of the corner of her eye– brilliant cerulean unfurled in petals. Tropic waters, the gleam of the sun glinting off them. Earth’s atmosphere, the haze of it laid against the backdrop of space.
Sabina turns.
She goes home.
The next week, when the usual shipment of Grassley’s supplies arrives, there’s an insignificant change. One glass vase– one white carnation.
Sabina will dye it blue herself, so that it will always be that shade she desires.
If there’s any one perk to being Shaddiq’s right hand that Sabina likes best, it has to be the private shower. Her hot water allotment is still the same as any other member of Grassley House’s, but it’s the space itself that matters, the mirror fogged through and thick with steam. By the time the room has cooled, Sabina will have made herself presentable. Until then, she sits on her wooden stool, pulling a brush through her hair with long, practiced motions.
In these moments, she finds her thoughts wandering idly. This time, she wonders– just what exactly would the hot water allotment be for all of Earth House?
A stranger surveys her from the mirror, the streak of silvered surface she’d swept her palm across enough to see herself. Hair down, still damp, body wrapped in a towel– could that girl still be called Sabina Fardin? Devoid of her bun pulled tight, the colors of Asticassia, she’s simply Sabina, the girl from Earth who rose into the stars, and without a hint of bitterness in her heart, left them behind.
(It’s a lie, that image. But you see– if she felt bitter about that, felt anything at all– then she’d still be the girl from Earth, and not KP014; Grassley House; Fardin, Sabina.)
She sits, unmoving, until the room is cold. Until her towel is drenched, and can’t take in any more water. Until the mirror is clear, crystalline– but still, Sabina does not recognize the woman in the mirror. She’s certain, if she asked, that girl wouldn’t recognize her either.
Gossip of a fight is hardly anything new. With how much information passes through Grassley House, and with so many people from the other companies in such close proximity, a brawl every now and then is almost written into the calendars.
It shouldn’t bring her to a stop, the chatter echoing out from the first-year dorms. But how could it not?
Did you hear about that fight in the quad yesterday?
Was it that ridiculous pink-haired Earthian again?
Of course it was!
Laughter– unbridled, raucous. Sabina finds the wall against her back, her breath caught in her throat. For a moment– she’s half as tall as she is now; she cowers in the shade of the brick facade with her meal, the first fresh food she’ll have had in a week, clutched tightly against her chest; the footsteps draw closer.
What were they fighting over, anyway?
Oh, some shit on the written answer portion. Her mechanic wrote some drivel about being a bridge between Earth and Space.
More laughter– Like, come on, do you think she even hears herself talking?
Sabina turns. The floor protests beneath her heels in fervent clicks. It’s a noble ideal, that one, if not a foolish one. It’s too unrealistic, and she knows this. It’s why she’s here, with Grassley, not in Earth House. But still her stomach churns with every step, bubbling with heat the likes of which Sabina thought she abandoned in the months after she first agreed to walk at Shaddiq’s side.
She reaches the main office, pushes her way to the intercom. The students there shoot her puzzled glances– but who would dare to stop her? She keys the microphone, says, in a voice more steady than she feels, “This is Sabina Fardin. We will be conducting a surprise dorm inspection in 20 minutes. All students currently on-premises will return to their rooms until the inspection is over. That is all.”
In a certain dorm some floors below, her words will have sent the room into a frenzy– clothes shoved into drawers; loose trinkets kicked behind cabinets and under beds– there won’t be room to fit in a word about Nika edgewise.
She is glad, at the very least, to hear that Nika’s found a friend with guts. That Earthian with hair billowing like cotton candy (she’d never thought someone might come along with hair more striking than Nika’s, but she was wrong)-- the one they all call Chuchu. If Nika is her mechanic, she’ll be cared for. Will stop limping through the halls– might start walking like she belongs.
(You have a right to, Nika. We both do.
–she wishes she could say it.)
Still, she cannot help but wonder– what if she’d chosen differently; what might it be like, if she’d thrown that punch instead, and let her gloves come away dyed in red?
This is how Sabina finds out: with Nika’s chin grasped carefully in one hand, poking at her split lip with the other. Her fingertips come back tinged with crimson.
She reaches over to the cupboard. Nika doesn’t look at her– doesn’t move. She keeps staring at the far wall, same as she’s done for the past ten minutes. When they’d sat, she’d caught a glimpse of Sabina’s desk– humidifier, incense, vase, flower– and quickly turned away.
It was for the better, Sabina thinks. At least that way, she could treat the bruises on that side of Nika’s face.
She runs a towel under some cool water, puts it in Nika’s hand. Still, nothing. Sabina reaches down, cradles Nika’s hands in hers, so that her fingers close in over the towel. (Tries not to think of how stiffly Nika breathes, like a scared rabbit. Like she might bolt at any moment if the door wasn’t closed, and all of Grassley and Norea awaited her outside.)
Sabina lifts their hands up to Nika’s mouth, lays the towel gently against her lip. To her relief, Nika keeps it there.
By the time Sabina’s done, the bleeding should have stopped, and perhaps her lip won’t be as swollen.
Reaching down, she lifts Nika’s leg at the calf and sets it on her lap. Again, a stutter in Nika’s breath. She remains perfectly still as Sabina brushes the dirt from her skin, the imprints of Norea’s sole already faint against blossoming blue and purple bruises.
Without once looking at Nika, Sabina grabs her glove at the fingers– hesitates– pulls it off.
The ointment smells of mint. As gently as she rubs it on, Nika can’t seem to stop jumping at her touch. (As if, at any moment, she expects Sabina might press down– hear her cry out, just because she can.)
Sabina tries to keep it clinical. Impersonal. Her face remains impassive as she sets one leg down, switches to the other. She does not let them show in her eyes, the thoughts that hung over her as she lay in bed at night, that descend upon her even now– of how Nika might shiver like this for her, so sweetly, if only in another life. Of wanting nothing more than to reach up and, with the back of her glove, brush Nika’s disheveled hair back behind her ear.
She thinks, instead, of the pink-haired Earthian girl: of Chuchu. How many demerits has she gotten now, all for fighting? She thinks of how little she sees them in the cafeteria, on those days she decides that school food is better than whatever Grassley might be cooking. (Always for chicken pot pie.)
And then, Sabina is done.
(Not quite. There are the bruises on Nika’s back, beneath her jacket– but she will not go so far. Nika can do it herself.)
Sabina reaches over– takes the towel back. A carnelian bead forms on Nika’s lip– Nika’s tongue wipes it away, and that’s it.
If only it were simpler. She thinks, fleetingly, of leaning in– of pressing her mouth to Nika’s, as if to draw out all her pain through the wound on her lip, taking it from her as one might suck out poison–
–oh, God. She’s been hanging around Shaddiq for far too long, that needlessly Romantic fool, if she’s started having thoughts like that.
And Nika still has not moved.
Sabina reaches out– places the jar of ointment in Nika’s hand– folds her fingers over it. Or I could do it for you, she wants to, but will not say. That would go too far. But is that so wrong– am I wrong?
–she lets her hands rest on Nika’s until she feels it tighten around the ointment– lingers–
Lets go.