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Gig or Grand or Echo managed to turn off the electronic suppressors. Even tossed the dancing hologram towards The Doyenne. The drawing displayed perfectly, the image growing until it reached its full height of about two feet tall and a foot and half wide. The Doyenne still stepped forward, crushing the device under Independence’s heel. She had something much more important to accomplish now. She was on the cusp of turning the wheel of the world, hand over hand. She didn’t have time for the girl who ran away to be mediocre in the wilderness while she strove for perfection.
Even still shot two glass bullets through the cockpit. One, and her reflection inside the machine screamed DAMAGE CRITICAL as her own head jerked back. Two, and she witnessed herself get torn apart, melted and fragmented by the Glass she was built out of.
Through the gaping chest wound of Independence and her own blood, she saw the ugly winged short-sighted man-machine-parasite-alien-THING run towards her through the chaos erupting around them. Independence was moving without her will. When it threw its whole weight onto Even’s energy shield, it released all of her suspension locks keeping her in place, throwing her against the shattered cockpit.
Even clawed his way up through the jagged hole in Independence’s chest, his arm reaching past the smoke colored by the purple-pink glow of his wings. Her arms refused to work. She lurched forward to fucking bite him, anything, but he caught her by the throat.
But instead of snapping her neck or crushing her windpipe, he pulled her out of the hole in the cockpit, letting her fall headlong into the ground. Instead of dying in the glory of battle in the perfect embodiment of humanity, symbolically right even if history writers spun her to be the villain, she would die by bleeding out or accidentally stomped on by an ugly machine. She was too angry to scream.
–
The blackness gave way to a pinprick of light, and she realized she had been unconscious. She was cold. The tile against her cheek was slick with her blood and gritty with debris. Alekhine and her Saints had left her to die. She bit down her rage at this betrayal even as she found herself unable to lift herself off the ground. Her focus sharpened and fell upon the pinprick of light, which she had assumed was far away, but upon review, was just small and very close. The Glass studs of her tattered body suit scratched the cement floor as she swept the source of the light closer, warm yellows and pale oranges skittering up her arm to trace the angles of her face.
It was Janey’s light drawing. Independence hadn’t obliterated it when it ground it under its heel, just mangled the display until the hologram was smaller than The Doyenne’s pinky nail. She couldn’t turn her head or push it away, but she also didn’t close her eyes against its warm light.
Janey’s arm around her waist, leaning in and smiling against her neck. The Doyenne’s–Undela’s face upturned and regal, but still fond, fingers clasped together in a caricature of a waltz. The curves and angles contrasting each other, Janey’s size complimenting Undela’s compactness. As the image slowly rotated, Janey’s light skin would halo Undela’s face, throwing her in sharp relief, until it turned again so that Undela’s dark figure would contour Janey’s features.
She must have embodied that drawing. Using light as her medium wasn’t spectacular, other members of the Crown had dedicated entire academic careers to the intricate dance of 3D light painting, constructing sculptures meant to be traversed through, pieces that changed mood and form with the movement of the sun across the sky. But if The Doyenne reached far enough back, she could touch the scalding memory of Jane’s inexpert movements in her cramped dorm room, twisted and superheated by the passage of time and the pressure of suppression.
The way Jane’s hair clung to the back of her neck. The cheap box-dye bleeding blue-green swirls on her sweaty tank top. Her chubby cheeks lifting her VR drawing headset when she smiled. The scent of her shampoo and little travel sized hand sanitizers mixing with the last of the summer heat. The unmade bed Undela lounged on, supported by thin pillows and soft afghans bunched strategically to alleviate stress on her wrists.
Undela stretched, cat-like, before settling back into her nest of Janey’s clean unfolded clothes and blankets. She watched fondly as Janey carefully maneuvered around her dorm furniture obscured by her blank spatial canvas. She could have said she picked up this tired argument as a way to anchor Janey in the real world, to keep her from stubbing her toe against her desk as she twirled the digital space round and round, but if she was honest, she liked dancing through this philosophical space with her and wondered if she could catch an unguarded bit of reaction from behind the headset.
“OK, for the sake of argument–”
“Here we go again,” Janey interrupted, smiling as she swept her arm through the air to paint an invisible arc of color.
“For the sake of argument,” Undela started again, “Let’s say there was a universally understood concept of ‘what art is’...”
“Bold assumption, but continue.”
“Don't you think it'd be humanity's sole goal to reach the pinnacle? Good art?”
Janey was silent for a moment, thumbing through the options on her controller. “Who says what makes good art?”
“The best artist says what makes good art,” Undela replied immediately.
“Okay, but what if I disagree with what the best artist has to say about what makes good art?”
“Well, you can be wrong–”
“I'm just saying that perceptions about art are–”
“– Socially constructed, blah blah blah, but I know you value the same things I do, form, color, shape, texture... what if those have perfect forms, what are we doing if we aren’t trying to reach for those things?”
“You don't think that art can be more successful in one context or another? Like, if I draw a sickass bird in the middle of nowhere, does it actually make art if no one sees it? Versus if I draw a sickass bird on a shirt and a million people see it?” Janey squiggled an invisible bird in the air, facing away from Undela.
“You don't think art is more valuable when more people see it, do you? Anyway, you didn't answer my question.”
“I think good art is too subjective even if you limit its meaning to, like, The Purest Essence Of Color. Like, what good is that art to someone who's blind and has never known what color is?”
Undela rolled her eyes and shifted in the bed. “You still didn't–”
Janey held up a finger to shush her. “NOT. Finished.” She turned, mashing buttons as if to speed through saving her light sculpture for later. She relaxed as she pulled the headset off, little flyaways sticking up like antennae and making her look like a snail person or classic green cartoon alien. “Since I think perfect art in all contexts is fake, I think trying to reach for a perfect Universal art is inevitably going to fail and is therefore a waste of time. Why work all your life for one perfect piece when you can make several meaningful pieces even if they aren't perfect?” Janey leaned over the bed, threatening to flop on top of her if she didn’t move.
“Okay, but what if as an artist, I'm only making something for myself, and I get to say if it's perfect or not? The audience doesn't matter at that point.” She lifted her chin obstinately as she slid over on the bed to give Janey room to join her.
Janey busied herself with arranging the pillows and pushing her laundry aside and calculating where to put her arms. “I think the point of art–” She interrupted herself before Undela had a chance to. “I know we already said for the sake of argument that art is something definable but like, the POINT of art is that it's FOR an audience to have an effect on? And I think the artist making the art and the audience of the art can be the same body but they are embodying different roles and that makes them Different People, Experientially, stop laughing at me,”
Undela stuck out her tongue and poked at her ribs until she started giggling too. Janey rolled on top of her and squished her until they were both shrieking and laughing and tickling each other. Tickling turned to biting turned to kissing turned to finally figuring out how they fit together on the bed. After a moment of stillness, Undela said, more to herself than to Janey laying next to her,
“I still think I could get close. Make something so beautiful, beyond reproach, that anyone who sees it can get as close to my vision as possible, and make them appreciate color as a concrete thing. Or rhythm. Or shape.”
Janey smiled without opening her eyes. “I do love a shape…”
She slipped comfortably into the dip Janey was making in the mattress. It was okay that she couldn’t breathe with her face pressed against her neck. It was easy to lay perfectly still, paused in time before mistakes really mattered. She continued not to breathe even as the pinkish darkness faded into black and the cold crept in.
–
Her eyes snapped open and she gasped, back arching and clawing her nails into the mattress below her. Her head swam and she crashed back into her aching body, shaking and sweating. She wasn’t in the dorms anymore.
She was weighed down by many blankets. She grit her teeth as she felt her toes snag in what she assumed was a crochet throw. At least she still had feet. She was in a dim bedroom, packed to the brim with stuff. Light from a large window beside the bed fell across a worn out dresser overflowing with clothes. What looked like lego sets decorated the top of it, among deodorant and jewelry and cards. The beige walls were lined with shelves chock full of gunpla, ceramic tchotchkes, amateur wood carvings, gashapon toys, rocks and shells. Where the walls weren’t covered by shelves of cheap nothing objects, there were faded photo collages of people she couldn’t make out.
Canned ocean noises emanated from a cheap speaker on the nightstand beside her. Distantly, past the noise machine, she could hear clattering pans and sizzling oil. That explained the nauseating smell of frying onions that permeated the air.
Petty disgust fended off the bubble of panic she felt swelling inside her, so she continued to enumerate every nitpick about the layout and interior design. Tacky. Uninspired. Rusty dusty musty. Juvenile. Sentimental.
Looking back to the window, she noticed the purple light of the sky filtering through the transparent curtains. She pulled a corner of the curtain back from where she laid in bed, and was relieved at the vibrant purple sky. She could guess where she was in the Crown based only on the color of the glass above. The bubble of fear burst when the sky bled pink like a loaded watercolor brush onto wet paper. She tried to control her flinch by balling her fist in the fabric of the curtain and accidentally yanked the rod it was hanging on off its perch. It clattered against the window sill, bounced off her chest and onto the floor. The distant kitchen sounds paused and The Doyenne hurried to smooth her expression before the door creaked open.
The Doyenne turned to her visitor with a smile.
“Brilliant Jane.” The dehydrated rasp in her voice added to her regality despite everything.
“The one and only,” Janey said, stepping around the fallen curtain to nudge the bed away from the window with her hip. “This old thing, it falls whenever someone breathes on it too hard. Just a second.” She busied herself with finagling the curtain rod back into place and The Doyenne took a moment to size her up. She was still blonde. A surprise, considering her first response to stress was to dye her hair. Strong arms, calloused hands. No new tattoos.
“You saved me, then?”
“Sure did.” Janey quirked her mouth when she noticed her stare. She let herself get jostled as Janey pushed the bed back against the wall. She pulled something out of her pocket and set it on the bedside table without breaking eye contact. “Found you in the rubble curled around this.”
It was a carefully reconstructed holo projector. Janey turned it on for a moment, the light drawing of the two of them dancing flickering on and off. As if it could have been anything else.
The Doyenne tilted her head towards it. “It’s beautiful work.”
Janey pulled up a wicker chair and sighed as she sat down beside her. “Wasn’t enough to stop you from hitting the armageddon button,” Janey said evenly.
“Doesn’t stop it from being beautiful,” she says, reaching to trace the cracks in the projector. “You could have been there with me.”
“The point of sending it was that I couldn’t be there with you. The way you are– were.” “That’s where it failed, then. How is the viewer meant to understand that’s what you meant just from a drawing of us dancing?”
Janey made a face and leaned back in her chair. “Stop talking to me like we’re in art school. I didn’t make this for a viewer. I made this for you. This is not a conversation about art. This is about the shit you pulled and the way you overturned my entire life, again, for ideals that evaporate the second anything human gets involved. People died. Quire split into eight freaking planets! The sun is a hostile object spitting out freaks beyond nature! You sided with the thing that told everyone that no one can ever truly know anyone else and that means people shouldn’t try.” Janey glared at her, daring her to defend herself.
Eight planets was unexpected. Certainly not her fault, she thought dully. Undela held her gaze for a moment, then turned her head away on her pillow. “You chose to leave the first time. I didn’t force you.”
“You killed the King and took over the government. You didn’t even tell me you were planning something that drastic. Maybe that was even the right call. But you had to have known that I didn’t fit in the world you were building. I wasn’t in–” Undela heard her swipe at her face and quickly settle back into place. “I didn’t make art all that time with you to get closer with The Doyenne.”
Undela stayed perfectly still, watching the colors of the Twilight Mirage shift behind a crack in the curtain. Pink, then lilac, then magenta, violet, indigo. And all the muddy colors between. The second part of that sentence hung between them, unsaid.
She reached through her entire history of eloquence and impassioned speech, trying to come up with the exact thing that would get Janey to understand. Anything she came up with fell flat without the power to enforce it. She might have still considered herself The Doyenne, but she had nothing to show for it. She didn’t even know where on the eight planets of Quire the remnants of the Crown were, if there was anything left of it at all.
They both jumped and turned when a knock came at the bedroom door and a large animal man poked his head in. “Dinner’s ready. Janey, do you want to eat here?” His low voice filled the room and Undela noticed Janey’s whole body relax at the sound. The Doyenne never had time to get to know Surge. This was the first time she was in the same room with him where he filled it more than she did. She turned her face away again as the two of them chatted back and forth about dinner.
Looking around, she saw more of Janey’s influence in the room. The walls were a warm neutral peach. The mismatched furniture all had a strong geometricity to them, either in their shape or carved into them. Janey loved a shape. She assumed the lego sets and gunpla were Surge’s, but they were all lined up neatly where one could see the most interesting part of each piece from where she laid in the bed. Light from the window had stretched to hit them, and there was no layer of dust on any of the finicky pieces. Janey was always just as particular as her, in her own way.
“Miss… Apogica? Undela?” Surge said her name, a bit unsure. “Are you okay? You wanna rest more before we bring you dinner?” She turned back to him. Janey had left, and Surge was standing awkwardly, filling the entire doorway. A tear slipped off her cheek and onto the pillow. She hadn’t realized she was crying.
“I’ll come out for dinner.” She was still good at controlling the emotion in her voice.
“Oh! Okay. Well, bathroom is down the hall if you want to wash up,” He pointed left, then right. “The kitchen’s the other way. Janey said you liked stir fry, so I’m glad you’re awake!” He touched his paws together, then began backing out of the doorway, closing the door behind him. He paused again, leaning his head on the door. “Nice to finally meet you. World’s crazy right now. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need.”
“I appreciate that.” And resented it. And hated it. Surge nodded once, then closed the door behind him. Undela pulled herself up into a sitting position, whole body complaining. The room was dark as she peeled off the blankets and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. This small exertion drained her, but she was determined to demonstrate that she wouldn’t need them for long. Her hand came to rest on the holo projector. She felt for the button in the darkness and switched it on, the image of the two of them flickering and growing to about the same size as a picture frame. She watched Janey and her dance on her bedside table, arms folded around herself for a long time before getting up to follow the sound of laughter and chatter down the hall.