Archive of Our Own

It was just another night in the midst of the year of nobody she really thought about all that much in particular, somewhere along the line between the beginning and the end, when Pyrrha did something Pyrrha sometimes did, and walked back through the door to their flat smelling quite strongly of liquor.

It had been a tough day. The trouble began when Nona managed to come up with a brand new reason why she couldn’t possibly be expected to eat eggs that morning, one which Camilla had staunchly rejected out of hand. (“You just have to accept that I know more about this than you do,” Cam said, as patiently as was possible by that point in the argument, “and that, for multiple reasons, there is absolutely no way the store accidentally sold us dog eggs by mistake.”) Even with Pyrrha acting as a conflict mediator, they were unable to resolve their disagreement about the biological origin of the eggs in question before the front door suddenly blasted open, and half a dozen BOE agents swarmed the apartment. 

It turned out that they were not there, as Nona had secretly hoped, so that Crown could miraculously appear and take Nona’s side in the egg argument, and pretty soon all three of them had been dragged away in cuffs, with half the morning gone before they were cut loose again somewhere near the city center. Pyrrha ended up late for work, Nona was very late for school, and Cam didn't even have enough time to get the groceries. Instead, she had to go get them after she'd picked Nona back up from school that afternoon. And by that late in the day many of the shelves were empty, with most of the quality goods totally out of stock. 

Then the trip home with their grocery bags saw them caught in the midst of gunfire twice, though fortunately their only casualty was a carton of newly purchased eggs. They had cracked open to a man when Cam slotted into cover with just a bit too much speed during the second exchange of fire, jostling the lot just beyond their capacity to be jostled. When the firefight was over and the loss of the eggs revealed, Nona was immediately devastated. Not because they could no longer be eaten, of course, but because despite what Camilla had said that morning, Nona still wasn't completely sure they hadn't contained all the ingredients she needed to hatch her very own litter of puppies.

All in all, Camilla had been run-down by the time she and Nona carried their meagre, slightly-damaged grocery haul up all thirty flights of stairs back to their floor of the Building, and she promptly swapped with Palamedes the second their front door –still splintery around the edges from being kicked in by several large men earlier that morning– was closed behind her. As a result, it was Palamedes running Nona through a later-than-usual session with the bones who was there to greet Pyrrha when the older woman appeared in the doorway, whistling a tune as she came. At the sound, he looked up from the worn collection of metacarpals spread out on the floor between Nona and himself, and a second later Camilla’s lips thinned as he frowned.

“Really, Pyrrha?” he asked, in Cam’s most annoyed voice.

Pyrrha blinked, then winked, then grinned roguishly down in his direction. “Really, Sextus.” She closed the door behind her and sauntered over to the sofa, collapsing into it with enough force to squeeze a piteous, whining squeak out through its innards of overworked springs. Almost immediately, she broke out into a bawdy drinking song. From her spot cross-legged on the floor, Nona beamed; she loved Pyrrha’s songs almost as much as Palamedes hated them. (Palamedes always insisted their opposing opinions on Pyrrha's songs stemmed from their similarly inverse ability to actually understand the meaning of the lyrics, but still. Nona was a firm believer that you didn't necessarily have to understand something to find it in your heart to love it.)

Palamedes scooped the scattered bones –already utterly forgotten by Nona– up off the floor and pocketed them. “You know...” he began, surprising no one by complaining almost at once, “when one gets only a brief handful of minutes to exist each day, it ought to be a punishable offense that anyone should so forcibly inflict this vulgar and debased nonsense upon their ears for those precious scant few moments.”

Pyrrha broke off her song mid-verse to shoot Pal a look. “You deserve My Most Beauteous Melodies for that alone,” she said, spreading her music across her alliteration. “Simply for referring to yourself as ‘one’ unironically.” But when the frown on Camilla’s face did not abate, Pyrrha relented. “Relax, Professor Sextus,” she said, reaching into the inner depths of her coat and producing with a twirl a long, dark bottle from a hidden pocket. “This time I brought enough to share with the class.”

At first Nona was sure Palamedes would refuse the offer outright. After all, neither he nor Camilla had ever taken Pyrrha up on any of her offered shots of the clear grain alcohol she kept in the kitchen. This time, however, Pal’s gaze lingered for a long moment on the dark red liquid still spiraling around inside the proffered bottle.

“Is that real?” he asked. “Where did you find wine?”

“Maybe I picked it up from the vineyard down the block as I strolled home from work. Or maybe I nicked it off Commander Crown Him with a Frankly Absurd Number of Crowns Why Don’t You, during this morning's little impromptu forced briefing. Or maybe I just now, this very evening, scored particularly big dividends with my unique brand of card sharking, and bought a bottle for the two of you as a present.” Nona knew without being told that 'the two of you' in this case did not refer to herself and Palamedes, but rather it referred to Palamedes and Camilla. This did not dismay her overmuch however, as she had already tasted small amounts of some of Pyrrha's other alcohols and come to a final decision that the entire genre of beverages was entirely unpalatable to her.

Pyrrha, still talking, lowered her voice. “Or maybe I killed a man for it.”

At this mention of murder, Nona’s eyes went wide. Wide enough in fact to draw Pyrrha’s attention away from her current preoccupation with taunting Palamedes. “Oh, don’t you worry, kiddo,” she said quickly, waving one large hand dismissively in Nona’s direction. “I didn’t really kill anyone. Mommy and Daddy are just fighting.”

“We’re not,” Palamedes insisted. “We’re not either of those, AND we’re not fighting.”

Nona, who in the last sixty seconds had found herself bored with bones, giddy with song, scandalized by the suggestion of murder, and finally concerned about the idea of infighting developing between her loved ones, ended up settling on a feeling of deeply vague apprehension, experienced down in her gut as a form of indigestion. She looked unhappily back and forth between Pyrrha’s somewhat drunken grin and Palamedes' unconvincing show of forcing Camilla’s face into an expression of nonchalant reassurance.

“Better drink, so she knows we’ve made up,” Pyrrha mumbled out of the corner of her mouth, reaching over to elbow Palamedes in Cam’s ribs. She shook the bottle at him again, hard enough to produce a wet, sloshing sound from the liquid inside. Palamedes turned his reassuring gaze away from Nona for just long enough to glance at the bottle, and for a split second Nona saw Cam’s hand shoot up a fraction of an inch before just as quickly returning to her side.

“Cam’s body is a temple,” intoned Palamedes reverently. “I won’t sully it with base boozes.”

“BOOO.” Pyrrha shook her head with dispirited violence, and then pulled the cork out of the bottle with her teeth, spat it all the way across the room, and took a long swig. “Base boozes!” she grumbled, once she had drained several mouthfuls. “Well that's me thanked, isn't it.” After a moment, she narrowed her eyes darkly. “I guess if you won’t drink with me, I’ll just have to return to my lovely song. And since you interrupted me, now I’ve gotta start all over!” And then Pyrrha filled her lungs with air, and began to bellow once again:

“There once was a cav from Kentucky...”

The return of Pyrrha's song immediately improved Nona's mood, even as it soured Palamedes'. “I don’t need this,” he muttered under his breath, before mouthing a small, silent apology to his cavalier. And then suddenly, Camilla was clapping her hands over her ears.

“Update!” she called, over the sound of Pyrrha singing about a necromancer who was –Nona giggled– “quite sucky.”

“We’re singing,” Nona informed her helpfully, through hiccups of laughter. Nona was also clapping along in time with what must have been a close approximation of the beat. 

“I can hear that,” Camilla acknowledged, standing up and walking over to Pyrrha on the couch. In a single, fluid motion, she snagged the bottle from Pyrrha’s outstretched hand, stopping the other woman mid-lyric. She looked down at her. “You bring further alcohols into our home?”

“For you!” Pyrrha said happily.

Cam’s eyebrows rose in a way usually reserved for disapproval, but she gazed at the liquor in her hand with the same look Palamedes had given the bottle earlier.

“Wine,” was all she said, after a long moment had passed.

“Not the equal of the vintages you’re used to on the Sixth, I’m sure. But it might serve.” Pyrrha squinted a little more closely in Cam's direction. “Honestly, you look like you need it.”

For once, Camilla couldn’t seem to make up her mind. She bounced lightly back and forth on the balls of her feet, holding onto the bottle for such a long time that Pyrrha eventually swiped it back. Though, as she did so, Nona noticed Cam’s fingers linger on the glass for just an instant of resistance before letting go.

“I’ll tell you what,” Pyrrha said loudly. She flexed showily. “I’ll arm wrestle you for it.”

In under a second, Camilla’s eyes had flicked between one of Pyrrha’s biceps and one of her own, before returning to Pyrrha’s shit-eating grin. “That’s hardly fair, considering.”

“And yet.” Pyrrha pointed up into Cam’s face. “You’re considering it.”

“I’m not.”

“C'mon, Cam." Pyrrha stopped pointing at Cam's face and instead pointed at the bicep she had eyed only a moment earlier. "I know we both like a little bi' on bi'."

"We really don't."

“I’ll let you use both hands.”

“No.”

“And your legs.”

“...What?”

“And Nona can help.”

“And Nona can help!” Nona cried happily, throwing her hands into the air.

Camilla glanced back and forth between their two smiling faces, one mocking and one sincere. Finally, she glanced at the wine bottle.

“Fine.”

When Pyrrha said “oh, exxxcellent,” the long, low warmth of her voice rumbled up from somewhere deep inside her chest, and for a moment Nona thought she felt the room get slightly hotter, though the sweltering sun of the afternoon had set hours ago.

“Come on,” said Cam curtly, grabbing Pyrrha's shoulder and hauling her up off the couch. The trio moved to the kitchen, and Camilla and Pyrrha sat opposite one another across the tiny wooden table. Slowly, elbows resting on the tabletop before them, they reached out towards each other. Camilla flexed the fingers on her right hand –out, in, and out again– one final time, before all four of them were enveloped in the softball-sized grip of Pyrrha’s fist. Nona thought that Cam had been right; it did look hardly fair.

“Nona can help!” she remembered suddenly, reaching out and grabbing onto their two entwined hands. 

Camilla smiled a thin and apologetic smile in Nona’s direction. “Nona can officiate.” 

Immediately, Nona liked that word. It sounded important. “What?”

“It means Cam wants all the glory for herself,” Pyrrha insisted.

“It means,” Camilla insisted more insistently, “that you get to be in charge.”

“Oh! Ohhh!” Nona was momentarily too excited to form words.

“You tell us when to start, and then let go of our hands. And make sure that no one cheats.”

Nona nodded vigorously.

“Now, you have to be real careful, Nona-Palona,” Pyrrha said, lowering her voice and leaning in conspiratorially. She inclined her head in Camilla’s direction. “This one definitely cheats.”

Nona was dumbfounded by this accusation. The thought that Camilla, the original font of all truth and wisdom in her world, might be capable of duplicitous trickery shocked her to her very core. Across the tiny table, Cam said nothing.

“It’s true,” Pyrrha continued. “Every test she takes she’s got Palamedes whispering in her ear, feeding her all the right answers.”

“You of all people know that isn’t how it works,” Cam said under her breath. Then she made a face. “And when was the last time I even took a standardized test?”

“Oh please, you and Pal probably do them together for fun.” Pyrrha made a face of her own. “That’s like getting to second base on the Sixth, isn’t it?”

For an instant, Nona thought she saw the corners of Camilla’s mouth twitch upwards.

“Maybe so.”

Then there was a moment of silence, as the two competitors sized each other up, during which Nona simply focused on the intensely warm feeling of their hands beneath hers. She could feel the pressure changing as they each alternated tightening and relaxing their grip on one another in anticipation.

“I did say you could use both hands,” Pyrrha reminded Camilla quietly.

“Said I could use my legs too.” There was a muffled thump from beneath the table, as Cam kicked at one of Pyrrha’s shins.

“What did I just say about cheatin’,” Pyrrha muttered, all the weariness of the world in her voice. “Of all the no-good, low-down, dirty-rotten...”

“START!” Nona yelled, releasing their hands from her grasp even as Pyrrha was still engaged in grousing.

Nona had nursed the tiniest hope in her borrowed heart of hearts that maybe, just maybe, this time she might have been able to catch the two of them off their guard for once. But even before she had begun pronouncing the second ‘T’ in ‘start,’ Camilla was already moving. Her left hand rocketed up to join her right, even as her body was shifting to one side, her legs rising to plant themselves firmly against the kitchen wall. With a grunt, she kicked off with both feet, hinging all the momentum and muscle of her entire body against Pyrrha’s right arm pinned firmly between both her hands. 

Pyrrha yawned. After a second, she reached up with her off hand to cover her mouth politely. All the while her right arm remained firmly upright, like a pillar rising in perfect verticality from the kitchen table.

For her troubles, Cam had ended up slumped almost horizontal in her seat, legs tangled up together between herself and the wall, with her arm now gripping Pyrrha’s at an odd angle while she fought to sit up and right herself. With exaggerated ease, Pyrrha smoothly lowered their conjoined fists to the table. Cam couldn't quite suppress her small moan of discomfort and dejection as her final efforts to keep her arm in the air were proven utterly fruitless.

“Match to the Second,” Nona called, surprising them both. Cam was gingerly cradling her defeated arm against her chest, but Nona was sure she saw it twitch almost imperceptibly, as if longing to take a note.

“Where did you learn that?” Pyrrha asked her gently.

“From Crown,” Nona supplied, thinking it was obvious. Then she repeated the phrase, this time lifting Pyrrha’s right arm triumphantly into the air as she did so. With her free hand, Pyrrha grabbed the bottle off the counter and slid it across the table.

“And to the loser, go the spoils,” she said to Camilla. “Drink up.” And after a second: “You might even like it.”

Cam took one last look at Pyrrha across from her, and one last look at the bottle, then grabbed it off the table and pressed the neck to her lips. She took a long swallow, then grimaced. “Vile,” she said, and took another swallow.

Eventually she stood up from the kitchen table to grab two scuffed glasses from a cabinet. She filled both of them generously while Nona took her vacated seat, still grasping greedily at Pyrrha’s rough right hand. “Me next, me next,” she insisted loudly.

“Oh? You gonna take me down, Li’l Bits?”

“Yeah, so you better watch out!” Nona grinned, and without even waiting for anyone to say start, she began wriggling her arm against Pyrrha’s, without much success. 

“I’m watching out alright,” Pyrrha said reassuringly, over the sound of Nona’s grunts of exertion. With the hand not grasped firmly within Nona’s shaking palms, she gratefully accepted an offered glass from Camilla, downing about half of it in a single gulp. Leaning against the cabinet beside her, Camilla sipped from her own glass more slowly. 

“You were right,” she allowed quietly. “About the wine.” Pyrrha looked up at her with a smug satisfaction, until Cam elaborated: “It is... not the equal of a Sixth vintage.”

Pyrrha scowled. “If you don’t want it I’ll take it back.” As her left hand was still filled by her own glass of wine, she made a swipe for Camilla’s glass with her right hand instead, which Nona was still holding onto quite firmly. The result of this sequence of events was such that Nona became lifted up bodily out of her seat, still clinging to Pyrrha’s arm and squealing with mirth, to come swinging violently towards Camilla, who stepped back lightly out of danger. Her wine glass remaining safely out of reach, she took another sip from it and watched as Pyrrha shifted purposes in an instant, continuing to swing a laughing Nona around and around the room in a widening ark. Finally, she carried Nona back out into the living room, before collapsing them both into a heap on the sofa –there was an even louder whining squeak– and slamming her hand down on the cushions, with Nona’s hand on top.

“You win,” Pyrrha said, shaking her head. “I am defeated.” Some part of Nona suspected she might have been allowed to win, but upon reflection, it didn't seem to feel like a very important part.

“Match to the Nin-” Camilla began, before turning slightly pink and jamming her mouth shut. She looked quickly down at the glass in her hand and then just as quickly set it down on the window sill, far out of reach.

“The Nona!” Pyrrha supplied, and the sudden chill in the room ebbed palpably.

“Match to the Nona,” Nona agreed, raising her hands into the air. Pyrrha raised her glass as well, and then she gave Cam a raised-eyebrows look, causing Camilla to walk over and reclaim her glass from the sill before raising it as well. They both drank a toast to the well-fought match.

“Defeated by the Mighty Nons,” Pyrrha said again, when she’d emptied her glass and set it aside. She looked down at her spent arm. “What if it falls off?” she asked, suddenly despondent.

“Oh no, will it?” Nona asked, once again clutching fast to Pyrrha’s now utterly precarious arm.

“No,” said Pyrrha, laughing. “Don’t worry, any damage you caused won’t be permanent.” Nona was duly reassured, and for a few seconds all three of them were silent. In the quiet, Nona fancied that she could almost see the alcohol percolating behind Pyrrha’s eyes. She heard Pyrrha mutter something that sounded like "arm wrestling..." under her breath, and then suddenly the older woman laughed again. “Hey, you two-” Pyrrha broke off to stifle yet another drunken laugh. “-you two wanna see something... permanent?”

Before either of them could respond, she shook Nona off her arm and held it out for their inspection, pointing to a gnarled spot of raised scar tissue on the edge of her elbow that looked, for all the world, like just another bit of gnarled scar tissue among the multitude of gnarled scar tissue that adorned her entire body.

“Gideon and I,” she began, and Nona felt a slight hitch in her breast; Pyrrha rarely spoke about the person who’d used her body before she did.

“Well, the two of us were fighting,” Pyrrha went on. “...Over a girl.”

“Wait. Is this a Nona story?” Camilla asked, eyeing Nona meaningfully even as the younger girl was saying, “I wanna hear!” 

“There’s a little violence,” Pyrrha allowed, “but nothing too salacious.” 

Cam seemed mollified by this answer, even as Nona was trying out the word ‘salacious,’ rolling it around in her mouth a few times to figure out the flavor. “Salacious,” she said to herself, and then: “Salayshous.” She sounded it out six or seven more times before Pyrrha managed to continue.

“Anyway we were fighting, and we decided we’d arm wrestle for it. (“Her,” Cam muttered, sotto voce. "For her.") We were in low orbit at the time, one of the House colonies, and this was back before grav magic was standard across the entire fleet, so we were just kind of... floating there. It’s balls hard to do a proper arm wrestle in zero-gee, but we weren’t about to let that stop us.” She paused her story, remembering. “I think we were pretty drunk.”

“I cannot even imagine,” said Cam.

“So we were going at it, just floating around and yanking on each other’s arms and kind of bouncing off the bulkheads from time to time, when suddenly Gideon gets this look in his eye. All’s fair in love and war, he says, and I swear, that orbit must have been pretty damn low, low enough for him to still pull some real juice from somewhere, 'cause very next thing he's set up this sweet little thanergetic barrier right in the middle of his palm. Which, of course, just starts forcin’ all the thalergy right outta my God damned hand.”

Camilla made an involuntary noise, something Palamedes would have called a grunt with attitude. Nona could tell just from the look on her face what she thought of an adept doing something like that to their cavalier. Pyrrha could see it too.

“Hey,” she said defensively. “We were just kind of Like That back then. It wasn’t even that big of a deal.” Somehow this feeble explanation failed to make any noticeable change in Cam's disposition. She still looked like she thought it was quite a huge deal indeed, and it seemed as though Pyrrha couldn't muster up much more of a defense. “I mean,” Pyrrha went on, haltingly, “I guess, in the moment, it did feel like kind of a big deal.” She coughed, thinking. “Anyway. The thalergy is going from my hand, right? Nails falling off, fingers shriveling up, bone peeking through, the usual. But no way in hell am I letting go and losing. To him? Nah. So before he can get my hand down to nothing but dust, I whip out my dirk with my off hand and just bury that thing right into his elbow, all the way up to the hilt.” She pointed to the gnarled spot of scar tissue on her arm again. “Right here. Just sent the thing all the way home. Sent it packing.”

Cam blinked, then put her nearly finished glass of wine aside and pulled one of her myriad notepads out from a pocket. Speaking as she scribbled, she hastily muttered, “Warden... I would... never... stab you... in the... elbow.” She stopped for a moment, then added: “Or anywhere... else.” Then she sharply underlined what she’d written two or three times, and circled some part of it for added emphasis, before pocketing the pad once again.

“So. Yeah.” Pyrrha shrugged. “One little twist and POP! That's the elbow off.” Nona's eyes were big as the dinner plates she always refused to eat off of, the ones patterned with tiny flowers she didn't recognize, but from the look on Pyrrha's face she might have been talking about the weather. “Still though, by that time he'd shredded his way through every tendon in my hand, so I couldn't exactly keep ahold of his any longer either. I think we ended up calling it a draw. Don't remember what happened with the girl.” Pyrrha chuckled darkly. “You'll never see me arm wrestle a necro again.” Then she ran a thumb over the scar on her elbow, almost affectionately.

“Gideon healed my hand pretty much immediately, of course,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “His own arm too. We landed a shuttle down on solid ground so he could do them both up properly. He left the scar though, on his arm. Gideon always left his scars. Thought they made him look cool.” She grinned sadly. “They never did though. That was always the difference between him and me.” She sat on the couch and flexed for the pair of them. “I make this look good.”

They all stared, a little sadly and a little appreciatively and a little horrified, at Pyrrha in her old, dead necromancer’s scarred and muscled body, the site and source of so much myriadic violence. Then Nona pointed to another nodule of scar tissue further up Pyrrha’s arm. “What about this one?”

Even drunk, Pyrrha Dve didn’t miss a beat. “A seagull attacked me.”

Nona laughed. “No!”

“It was, like, a big seagull.” Pyrrha held her hands up a couple feet apart to indicate bigness. 

Nona giggled again, and then moved further down Pyrrha's arm, finally landing on a scar that wrapped around Pyrrha’s little finger. “And this one?”

“Accident with the kitchen knife.”

“You should take care,” Camilla commented, refilling her glass as she spoke.

“Bite me, Camilla.”

Camilla took a sip. “Not sure you have the space left for another scar.”

Nona, meanwhile, was pointing to a mark on Pyrrha’s neck, this one peeking out from beneath the collar of her sleeveless top. “What about this one?”

“Speak of the devil,” said Pyrrha cheerily. “That one's from Cam biting me.”

Camilla frowned, but apparently she had nothing to say to this. Instead she took another sip, glowering in silence at Pyrrha over the top of her glass.

So far, all of Pyrrha's answers had been completely satisfactory to Nona, even though she knew they were all lies. The gulls that gathered down by some of the docks could be ferocious, and she’d never once seen Pyrrha practicing proper knife safety while preparing any of their meals. AND she knew that Pyrrha was forever behaving in ways that made Camilla look like she was about to gnash her teeth, even though Camilla never did, of course. But it wasn’t a complete stretch of Nona’s imagination to conceive of Cam snapping sometime when she herself wasn’t around to see it. 

After a minute, Nona went back to probing Pyrrha’s body for interesting scars, but she quickly noticed a look on the older woman’s face that said she was about to try pressing her luck.

“Say No-No, why don’t you ask Camilla to have a look at her scars?”

Nona found that she was deeply invested in the idea of examining Camilla's scars, but across from them, Camilla only lapsed further into her impenetrable silence. Nona noted though that at some point the glower on her face seemed to have been replaced by something more smooth and contemplative.

“I’ll save you the trouble, sweetie,” Pyrrha went on, putting a large hand on Nona’s shoulder before the younger girl could act. “She doesn’t have any.”

“What, none?” Nona asked.

“None, None,” Pyrrha confirmed, patting Nona on the head. “You know Pal would never let anything blemish his favorite, darling cavalier.”

Nona supposed that sounded right, but while she was in the middle of her supposing, Cam finally spoke up. “I do have a scar,” she said. For a moment, it seemed as if she wasn’t going to elaborate. She’d nearly finished her second glass of wine by this time, and her cheeks were a little flushed.

Then all at once, she stood up, fumbling with the hem of her shirt. A second later she got it untucked, and pulled it up to reveal a thin strip of skin around her midriff. Nona was pretty sure she could make out the outline of an entire ab, and thought briefly about going to lie down. Next to the ab, however, was a small, fine line, which Cam pointed to with a finger.

“Appendectomy,” she said. “The Warden performed it himself. We were thirteen.”

“Wow,” deadpanned Pyrrha after a moment. “Thirteen, huh? Bully for Palamedes.” She gazed at the scar appreciatively. “Guess I was wrong. But you know, Pal can’t really have been the greatest teen surgeon there ever was if he couldn't even fix the scar, now could he?”

Camilla was quiet for a while. “I asked him not to.” She ran her fingers over the small line on her stomach, unbearably affectionate. “Thought he should be proud of doing such a good job. I wanted to keep it, so we'd remember...” She stared at the tiny line. “A souvenir.”

At this point, Camilla’s cheeks were more than flushed, and she definitely looked to be on the verge of something, when Nona suddenly decided that Cam didn’t need to be crossing any verges. She surprised them all -even herself- when she opened her mouth to speak. “I got that beat,” she said, pointing to the small incision on Camilla’s stomach. She blinked, and then repeated herself. “I got that beat.” The other two looked at her. Pyrrha’s brown eyes were wide, and Cam’s grey eyes still a little red, but her brows were narrowed. 

“But you... you don’t have any- you can’t have any-” Cam started to say, even as Pyrrha was swatting at her shoulder with a hand and shushing her into silence. 

“Shhh, just let her have a go.”

Suddenly nervous with so much adult attention directed her way, Nona steeled herself and committed to the bit. Afternoons spent practicing, vying with Honesty and Born in the Morning and Beautiful Ruby for Hot Sauce's elusive amusement, swirled around inside her head. Quickly, before she lost her nerve, she reached up and put two fingers into the collar of her t-shirt, tugging it down in the direction of her navel. Almost instantly, Camilla’s cheeks flushed even further, just as Pyrrha was saying “Ohhh-kay!” and blinking several times in rapid succession. Before either of them could object, Nona took a deep breath, and pointed with her other hand to an unblemished spot on the left side of her chest, just below the thin rise of her clavicle.

“Noodle didn’t want to go for a walk with me today.” She paused for effect. “Broke my heart.”

For a moment there was nothing but complete silence, in which Pyrrha only continued to blink and Camilla looked as though she wanted to take down about an entire ream of notes. But then Cam’s lips split into that beautiful, rare smile that Nona loved so well, before splitting ever further, eventually parting entirely so that a sound more magnificent even than Pyrrha’s singing could emerge, a laughter too pure for imagining. And then Pyrrha herself was pounding a fist against the arm of the sofa beside her, roaring. Soon enough she had scooped Nona up into her arms, before spinning her around and around once again.

Nona felt giddy, light-headed, reverent and irreverent all at once, even as deep inside she let out a sigh of relief. She’d told the joke. She’d passed the test. She could diminish, and go into the tomb, and remain Nona. Around her, the world winked and twirled and spun, and for a little while Nona was too euphoric to perceive anything at all. But when she reemerged on the other side, she found herself sitting back on the couch again between Pyrrha and Camilla, with each of their shoulders resting lightly against her own. Cam was on her left, lapsed back into another of her usual and predictable contemplative silences. But on Nona's right, Pyrrha had begun, quietly at first but slowly increasing in volume, to hum another of her familiar songs.

Camilla’s contented silence was broken by a groan that was also part grunt. “Must we?” she asked, in the exact moment when Pyrrha’s humming began shifting into actual lyrics.

“  Y e s  ,” Pyrrha sang, somehow stretching the one syllable word into an entire line of song. She stood up off the couch and grabbed Nona by both hands, leading her up onto her feet as well. Then she leaned down and made the open and hopeful face that meant she wanted Nona to sing along with her. But Nona, usually a wiz with language, always somehow had trouble remembering any of the words. Tonight though, she was feeling good enough to be hopeful that maybe the words might just come out anyway. So after only a moment’s hesitation, Nona tried her best at singing along with Pyrrha. It was instantly apparent to everyone in the room that the only sounds she could make were a series of nonsense words that were sometimes in the right key and sometimes not, but Pyrrha was smiling at her like she was getting everything right, so Nona kept it up until the verse was over.

“Excellent, Small Cam!” Pyrrha said, using Nona's favorite nickname as she pulled Nona’s hand up above her head and gave her a twirl. Then she turned and pointed to Cam at her spot on the sofa. “And now, Big Camilla!” But Big Camilla was slinking away towards the door to the bedroom. Pyrrha barked after her. “Hey. Where do you think you’re going?”

Big Camilla made a small face. “I don’t sing.”

“Sure you do, everybody sings.” Pyrrha raised an eyebrow, then asked: “What, don’t they have karaoke on the Sixth?” But a second later, before Cam could respond, Pyrrha startled Nona by suddenly clapping her hands together very loudly. “No, scratch that. I KNOW you have karaoke on the Sixth, because Cassy was a nut about it.” Pyrrha messed up her face and snapped her fingers a few times: “Always wanted to do, ummmm, what was it? Kiss From a Rose? With Shodash, yeah...”

“That was a long time ago,” Cam said, in an effort to get Pyrrha to stop talking.

“Yeah, but you DO have it on your little planet, I know you do. And don’t you tell me some shit like ‘cavaliers don’t sing karaoke.’ Because I’m a cavalier, Hect, and I sing some motherfucking karaoke.”

Cam put a hand on her hip. “Well, I didn’t see you pull a working karaoke machine off the last Edenite shuttle we raided, so unless I’m very much mistaken what you’re proposing is a lot less karaoke and a lot more me singing alone with no back-up in front of a child and a... a....”

Pyrrha blinked electrically as Cam continued waffling in her general direction. “Oh yeah?” She was suddenly looking at Cam with a curiosity that seemed almost dangerous. “A child and a what?” When Camilla failed to respond, she asked again. “Just what were you about to say?”

“I don’t know!” Cam admitted, frowning. “You’ve got me waylaid at a somewhat difficult spot.” She sighed as loud as Cam ever sighed, and rocked back from one foot to the other. “What do you want me to say? You want me to put my hand on the opposite escalator railing and say, What Are We? when our fingers brush together as we pass each other? C’mon, Dve, you don’t believe in fairy stories.”

Pyrrha blinked again, and then she snorted. A second later, Nona was shocked to see Camilla actually blushing. She slowly walked back into the living room to stand by Pyrrha. “I... wasn’t going to say anything bad,” Cam said, looking up into Pyrrha’s eyes. “You know that.”

For just an instant Pyrrha made a face like she was in agony, and Nona actually saw her arms jerk involuntarily towards Camilla, almost like she wanted to put them around her. She immediately checked the motion at the door though, so the two women just ended up standing awkwardly next to one another for a few long seconds.

“I know that,” Pyrrha agreed finally. “Of course I do. It’s just... reflex.” She rubbed at the back of her gnarled neck with an equally gnarled hand. “Ten thousand years... You know the kinds of names people can come up with for you when they have ten thousand years to just sit around thinking them up?” After a second: “Don't answer that.” She let out a long sigh, in a way that wanted badly for a cloud of cheap cigarette smoke. “I guess when someone ends up pulling real deep for a descriptive sobriquet, I tend to assume they’re just getting extra creative and trying to come up with a particularly lethal one.”

“Like... toiletslurper,” Nona said, eyes closed, nodding sagely. Born in the Morning had spent three whole days coming up with that one, before using it on Honesty, who had promptly died.

Pyrrha stared at Nona again, then laughed in a way that made Nona worried she might throw up. Cam only turned around, but Nona did see her hand go to her face in a manner similar to how one might try to stifle a noise from their mouth. Like a laugh, or a series of giggles maybe. When they’d both recomposed themselves, Cam turned back to Pyrrha again. 

“You really gonna make me sing?”

“Darling,” said Pyrrha, “we both know I've never been capable of making you do anything. That said-” She looked uncharacteristically chagrined. “We are seemingly doing some sort of, like,” –an EXplosive sigh– “family bonding-type deal here.”

“Oh,” said Cam. “Oh... Oh n... nooooo.”

“Afraid so.”

“Pyrrha, don’t make the subtext text.”

“Then don’t make me make it, Camilla.”

Cam scuffed the floor with the toe of her boot. “The Warden and I used to sing sometimes,” she said quietly, a simple admission that nevertheless kicked Nona’s imagination into overdrive. “But, no offense, I don’t really want to sing you that song.” ("None taken," said Pyrrha, who looked as though she'd rather give her worst enemies another ten thousand years to perfect their insults than admit exactly what kind of songs she and Gideon used to sing to one another.) “And I don’t just have, well...” Cam broke off for a minute, then glanced right at Nona, who blushed, having been caught staring. Camilla just tilted her head and smiled at her though, which only made Nona blush the harder.

Camilla turned back to Pyrrha. “Okay. I’ll sing something. But you can’t expect karaoke-style songs if you’re not going to fork over for an actual machine. Common sense, that. Really.”

“Fair.” Then Pyrrha held out her hands at her sides and inclined her head, backing away from Cam and towards Nona on the couch, in order to properly cede Camilla the floor. Cam rolled her eyes at this reverential display, then took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, probably so that she wouldn’t have to look at Pyrrha and Nona as both of them watched her. And then, Camilla Hect began to sing.

Her song was soft, the lyrics sweet, the tune almost overly simple. And after only a few notes, something unexpected happened to Nona, when a buried memory was all of a sudden unlocked inside her mind. Not an important memory, from either of the two people she might be –the kind which would have sent Camilla or Palamedes both running for the nearest notepad to being furiously taking notes– but one of her own. A memory from when she had been fresh and new, the day she had met Camilla. The day that she had been born.

At first Nona resisted the sensation of remembering, filled up as she was with a childlike wonder upon hearing Camilla sing, eager to remain in the moment. But the memory drew her down upon herself with an opaque and obscuring darkness, as she experienced something that was more feeling than conscious recollection. She felt nothing so much as an infinitely remote coldness, a somehow palpable lack of solidity around her, like an absence of the familiar knowledge and warmth of dirt, and minerals, and solid earth beneath her body. And as Camilla’s quiet song went on, the melody pressed the key further into the lock inside her head, and more and more of the memory began blossoming around her. 

The space she was in was white, the air around her thin and artificial. The walls and ceiling reminded her of a Blood of Eden compound, contiguous and uniform, and inescapable. She was lying flat on a hard surface, covered by a thin blanket and an even thinner medical shift. Faces she hadn’t yet recognized as human made noises she hadn’t yet recognized as language at and around her, as she struggled to know what she was, and what it meant. 

Then, out of the bright, impenetrable light, a new person-thing entered the periphery of her perception. Like all the other person-things, this one was indistinguishable at first. It stood there, remote even in its new and sudden closeness. It made the same incomprehensible noises, only quieter than most. Then it slowly approached even further, until it was close enough to reach out and touch her.

She had not, at that time, been anywhere near even basic levels of competency with any of the five senses she had so recently been saddled with. But of the five of them that she was aware of, touch was the sense she was most rapidly becoming accustomed to. She knew the sharp poke of a needle in her arm, or the dull prod of a thermometer under her tongue, or the brush of a hand on hers as her IV was adjusted. She knew the rough closeness of two hands –sometimes more– all around her as she was lifted bodily from one space to another. She knew the cold, inorganic sterility of the hard surface beneath her. Really, how many more kinds of touch could there be?

The new person-thing touched their hand to hers, in much the same way as one of the others might have done, but instead of lingering there only a second, the hand stayed, and after a few seconds, it squeezed. The person-thing made more noises at her, its face changing as it did so, but she could only blink slowly in response. Then it made more noises around her, and a few moments later the other person-things went away, and then finally the bright, impenetrable light receded. 

In the new and wonderful darkness, nothing but the feeling of the squeezing on her hand remained. After a moment, the feeling vanished from her hand, and was replaced for just an instant by a squeezing all around her, a gentle, warm pressing-in against the sides of her shoulders and across her back and all along her chest. A fringe of something wonderfully soft brushed against her cheek. A breath tickled in her ear. And then the squeezing was gone, and she was alone in the darkness. 

But before she could become afraid, from very close by, the quiet, unknown noises of the nearby person returned. But this time they were utterly unlike any other noises she had ever heard before. While still incomprehensible individually, she somehow didn’t need to know what each individual noise meant to understand the much more important whole, which was that together they sounded soft and sweet, and that for the first time since she’d been born, she felt safe, and whole, and looked after. 

That night, her first night, she laid there in the dark and listened to that soft, lovely sound until she finally fell asleep for the very first time. And now, here in the living room with Pyrrha and Camilla, Nona was hearing that sound once again.

Camilla’s lullaby only lasted a minute or so. Pyrrha listened the whole time in a respectful silence, while Nona spent the majority of the song standing awkwardly next to her, vividly recalling her infancy. When Camilla was done, she lapsed back into her silence, and slowly opened her eyes. Her small smile was somewhat awkward. 

“I haven’t sung that in a while,” she said. “Might be a little rusty.”

“Nah.” Pyrrha nodded. “It was alright.”

Nona felt affected, and thought for a moment about telling Cam what she’d remembered. But really, the memory hadn’t belonged to either of the two people she might be; Cam probably wouldn’t even be all that interested. So: “It was a good song,” is what she said instead.

“Thanks,” Camilla allowed. She looked at Nona for a little bit longer. Then she blinked, and stretched her arms up above her head, and started walking around the room.

Pyrrha sighed. “All that fuss, and then it’s over.” She watched for a moment as Camilla was pacing back and forth. “Bet you feel silly now, putting up such a fight.”

Cam stopped to look back at her. “That’s the difference between us, Dve. I never feel silly about fighting.”

“How appropriate, then, that I fight like a clown.”

Nona giggled, and Cam made a face, and then there was an unnatural pause in the flow of the conversation, like all three of them were waiting on someone. That happened a lot in their household, the feeling that someone was always missing.

“We oughta get Palamedes to sing a song,” said Pyrrha eventually. “It’d only be fair.” Nona thought this was a mean thing to say in front of Camilla, who wouldn’t be able to hear it. Pyrrha clearly thought so too, because she shot an apologetic look in Cam’s direction. “Sorry,” she added. “I’d offer to record it for you on that tape deck of yours, but it’d just sound like you singing, wouldn’t it.”

But far from looking offended or dismayed, Camilla’s face had changed into something so drastically new that it looked as if she were someone Nona had never met before. She glanced, somewhat wildly, from Pyrrha to Nona and back again, then without a word she bolted and disappeared back into the bedroom. When she emerged, she was holding the tape recorder in a white knuckle grip.

“Would you do that?” she asked Pyrrha, though Nona thought that Camilla didn’t really seem to be asking Pyrrha at all. It seemed more like she was speaking more to the universe at large. “Would you record him, if I asked you to? If I got him to come out and sing?”

All at once, it suddenly came to Nona why Camilla’s face and tone of voice were so unfamiliar to her. It was because up until that point, in all her life Nona had never once seen Camilla Hect make a selfish request before. Unlike everything else that Nona had ever seen Camilla do, the request she was making right now wasn’t something that would directly benefit Nona, or Pyrrha, or even Palamedes. Just by the strange, new expression on her face, Nona could tell implicitly that Camilla was making this request solely for her own personal benefit. And as she began to fully understand for the first time the weight of this fact, Nona realized all over again that she loved Camilla more than she could say, and knew that there was no way she would not do this for her.

“It would be my honor,” Nona said. This was something she’d heard Crown say once, in a voice utterly bereft of sincerity but with body language that all but screamed it, when The Captain had asked her if she would go get her a glass of water. 

Nona gingerly took the recorder out of Camilla’s hands. After only a second, Pyrrha reached down from behind her and scooped it up into her own, much larger hands. “You don’t know the buttons,” she said, an argument with which Nona could unfortunately not even begin to compete.

“Fine,” said Nona. “That's fine.” And then: “This is fine.”

Camilla looked like she was formulating several weeks worth of plans inside her head all at once. She started pacing around the room again, silent on the balls of her feet, and all the while her hands were shuffling slightly in place, taking the tiny ghosts of notes on the open air in front of her.

Finally she said, “okay, right,” and nodded, before stopping in front of the pair of them.

“Are you sure about this?” Pyrrha asked, eyebrows pulled together in confusion. Nona thought this was a rather pointless question to ask, considering who she was asking it to, but Pyrrha asked anyway. She held up the recorder. “I mean, won’t it just sound like you?”

“That’s not important,” said Camilla quickly. And then, shockingly: “Please, Pyrrha.”

This got Pyrrha in line immediately. “Yeah, alright, no problem. Just checking.”

“So we just record him singing?” Nona asked, looking for clarification. She wanted very badly to get this right.

“Yep,” said Camilla.

Pyrrha asked, “any particular song?”

“No, he’ll know.”

“And if he doesn’t feel... in the most musical of moods?”

“Just explain to him, it’s karaoke night, whatever. Call it a team building exercise. Just tell him to do it. He’ll do it.”

“He wasn’t exactly in the best mood when he left.”

“He’ll do it,” Camilla repeated. She pulled a notepad out of her pocket and scribbled something quick –only six or seven strokes of her little gray pencil– onto the corner of a page, then ripped that corner off and scrunched it up tight inside her fist. She took a deep breath.

“Okay.”

“No, wait!” She lunged back over to the table and downed the last two fingers of wine left at the bottom of her glass. “Okay.”

And then Palamedes was standing in the room with them. Almost immediately, he dropped the now empty glass onto the carpet and stumbled forward, bracing himself against the wall.

“Oh wow,” he said, arm still gripping firmly to the wall to steady Camilla’s unusually unsteady body. “You actually got her to drink it.” He sounded incredulous.

Pyrrha stepped up beside him, scoffing. “What, like it’s hard?”

Palamedes turned to face her, now leaning Camilla’s whole body against the wall for added stability. “Camilla's only consumed alcohol on three occasions I'm aware of, so I would consider your accomplishment here tonight one of rather significant difficulty.” He was rubbing at his right arm, the same way that Camilla had done right after she and Pyrrha had arm wrestled. “Hey, why does Cam’s arm hurt?”

“She banged it on a door frame. Listen-” Pyrrha leaned in close. “She wants you to sing her a song, Sixth.”

This got Palamedes attention. He reached up and scrabbled his fingers against Camilla's face, groping futilely for glasses to straighten, before giving it up as a bad job and simply blinking several times in Pyrrha’s direction.

“She does?”

“She does.”

Palamedes looked thoughtful for a moment, until suddenly his expression contorted into a stunningly accurate interpretation of Camilla’s most stubborn expression. “You, Pyrrha Dve,” he said, pointing Cam’s finger rudely right into Pyrrha’s face, “are a crook and a louse, a charlatan and a swindler, a rogue and a scoundrel. I posit that you would not be above tricking me into singing a song in Camilla’s voice just because she had already refused outright to do it for you previously.”

His accusation sent Pyrrha's eyes wide. “Sextus, you damn, smart fool,” she said, gripping him by Cam’s shoulders and giving him a rough shake. “Of course I would do that!” She reached up and grabbed onto the hand attached to the finger Palamedes was still pointing at her face. With tender but implacable strength, she peeled back the rest of the fingers, pulling them apart to reveal the note Camilla had balled up so tight inside her fist. It fell out, and Pyrrha caught it before it hit the ground. Then she offered it to Palamedes. “But I’m not tricking you this time.”

Palamedes blinked, then slowly uncrumpled the tiny note. Nona, five months, had never fucking learned how to read, but even she thought that he stared at the note for a lot longer than was warranted by whatever small amount of writing Camilla had written there. 

“Oh,” he finally said. “Alright then.”

Pyrrha offered up the tape recorder. “She said you’d know the song.” Then, while Palamedes busied himself rewinding and checking the tape, she turned towards Nona forlornly. “What did I just tell Cam about name calling...” she muttered, shaking her head. “A crook AND a louse? That’s the thing I’m sensitive about.” She sighed, and then turned back to Palamedes again. “You didn’t need to make it personal.”

“I’m sorry, Pyrrha dear, but you are a charlatan.” When Pyrrha continued to frown, he added hastily: “And of course, we love you for it. Your charlatations put food on our table.”

“Damn right they do. Don’t you forget it.”

For a moment, Palamedes stood awkwardly in silence, holding the tape recorder in one hand. “Are you two... going to stay?” he asked eventually.

“It’s karaoke night,” Nona replied helpfully. 

Palamedes looked unconvinced, and after a minute even began shooing the two of them out of the room with his hands, one of which still held the tape recorder.

“Oh, give me that,” said Pyrrha suddenly, snatching it out of his grip. Before anyone could stop her, she jammed down the red plastic button on the side with an audible clack. “Alright, Radio New Rho!” she began, holding the recorder up to her mouth and speaking into it directly. “This next one goes out to all the lovely ladies out there. Coming up, we’re gonna hear another certified classic from my good friend, Palamedes! And then right after that, we have a brand new single by my good pal, Friendamedes!”

“Oh shove off, Dve!” Palamedes lurched in Pyrrha’s direction and snatched the tape recorder back. And then, without even breaking stride, he broke out into song, Cam's voice calling out the words with a simple melody and practiced familiarity:

“Six is for truth over solace in lies,

and knowledge is truth, the ultimate prize!

So study your books, and open your eyes,

and learn to find truth in its every guise!”

Nona quickly decided it was kind of a silly sort of song, only a little more complicated than the songs the teachers sometimes tried to get the tinies to sing during slow mornings at school. She tried her best not to be disappointed, but found herself wanting. And as Palamedes began the second verse, she heard Pyrrha mutter beside her, quiet enough so that the tape recorder wouldn’t pick up her words, “...should have known it would be some Sixth song, about working hard, preserving, and staying up late way past your bedtime to get some extra studying in.”

Still, despite criticism from literally everyone, Palamedes knocked out the final three verses in rapid succession. Then, when he was done, he quickly pressed Cam’s lips to the plastic recorder in what was unmistakably an audible kiss, and whispered: “now wake up, scholar.” Then he depressed the red button again, and it snapped – clack – back into place.

Only then did he finally glance back at the other two watching him.

“What?”

Pyrrha closed the distance between the two of them again. “Sextus,” she said, politely. “What the hell was that?”

Palamedes’ nervous look didn’t suit Camilla’s face at all. Nona thought it ought not to be allowed. “You didn’t recognize it?” he asked earnestly. But then, before Pyrrha could even shake her head, he laughed, as if just realizing he’d told a very funny joke. “Oh! But of course you haven’t heard The Sixctures. Sorry.” He explained quickly. “Some of the more... zealous Sixth instructors, they teach it to new initiates. On the day they start their first module.”

“And you’re sure that nerd national anthem is what Camilla wanted to hear? So desperately?”

“Well, of course. It’s the only song we ever used to sing to each other.” And then, as if the tone of Pyrrha’s comment had reached his brain about three to four extra seconds after the actual words: “Pyrrha Dve, don’t presume to second guess my knowledge of my cavalier.”

Pyrrha blinked. “Then that’s really the song though? Actually???”

Palamedes put Cam’s hands on Cam’s hips. “I’m sorry if you were expecting something else, but I don’t know what to tell you. That’s our song.”

Pyrrha shook her head, exhaling explosively. “Well, I suppose, as long as Cam’s happy.”

“Hey,” said Palamedes, “don't steal my line.” He handed the recorder back to Pyrrha, even though he didn’t really have to, now that Nona considered it. Still somewhat unsteady on his feet, he walked over to the table in the center of the room and picked up the wine bottle. 

“Pyrrha, I have to ask. Where did you get the wine?”

“I bought it for you and Cam, jackass,” she replied, sounding honestly offended. “We all had a shit morning, but then I absolutely killed at cards tonight, and Doc at the bar had a spare bottle of something that looked like it was made with actual grapes, so. I figured Camilla might need it, after this morning with Crown.”

“Aw,” said Palamedes. “You care about her. About us.”

“What? No I don’t. I’m a big mean scary L-word, and I hate you.” With real force, she suddenly jabbed him quite rudely in the chest with a finger. “Of course I care about you.”

Nona could tell that Palamedes, uncharacteristically, didn't know what to say, so in the end he simply said: “I'll drink to that." He brought the bottle to Cam’s lips and took the smallest of sips, looking contemplative. After swirling the wine around Cam’s mouth, he swallowed and said, “not quite an equal to the vintages of the Sixth. But it’ll serve.” 

Pyrrha’s whole entire face opened up. “That’s what I’ve been sayin’!”

Palamedes stayed for a few more minutes, chatting for a bit longer with Pyrrha before playing a quick game of Guess the Word with Nona. She was utterly charmed to find that, with just a little bit of wine in Cam's stomach, the game became about eighteen times easier. Tonight all the words were just things Palamedes could see around him in the apartment, instead of like usual, where just about every other word was some kind of esoteric concept or principle.

“It's got....... legs,” he said, blinking vaguely in the direction of the coffee table.

Nona asked, “is the word... table?”

“It is!" Palamedes reached down and ruffled her hair affectionately. “Very Good Nona.” The praise washed over her in waves.

Pyrrha coughed loudly. “When we played this last week, you had me and Nona both trying to guess Universal Entropy,” she complained.

“Okay but that one's easy,” Palamedes insisted, grinning crookedly. He spread Cam's hands in the air, gesturing wildly in all directions. “It's all around us!”

“So you kept saying.”

From Cam's wrist, still attached to the hand Palamedes was waving absentmindedly in the air, the watch's timer suddenly beeped noisily. For a second, all three of them blinked, staring at it in silence. Finally, Palamedes silenced it with a push of a small button. Then he turned to stare at the tape recorder still clutched in Pyrrha’s hand.

“Maybe-” he started, then stopped. Then started again. “Maybe don’t let her listen to it... too much.”

“I’ll take care of our girl,” Pyrrha promised him, and then all at once, their girl was standing right there in the room with them.

“Up-” she stared, before being interrupted as a small hiccup escaped her lips. “... Update?”

"Hey Cam," said Pyrrha slowly, holding up the recorder for Camilla's inspection. "Check out Palamedes new mixtape. I think it's what all Nona's little school friends would call... fire."

Almost immediately, Cam snatched the tape recorder from Pyrrha’s grasp and clacked down the play button.

“I’ve still got the wet socks,” Nona’s sleepy voice explained, out of the recorder’s speakers. “They're good even though wet socks are never good, Cam. The dream doesn’t make any sense at all, and-”

Cam jammed the rewind button down with her thumb. Last-week Nona’s voice disappeared into the sound of tape spooling backwards through the little machine. All three of them stood around, waiting and not quite looking at each other, until finally Cam pressed the play button again, and Pyrrha’s prerecorded voice said jovially: “-right after that, we have a brand new single by my good pal, Friendamedes!”

Cam shot Pyrrha a momentary dirty look for the poor attempt at humor, even as the prerecorded Palamedes was using her voice to tell Dve to “shove off.” And then, only a second later, the recording of Palamedes began to sing. 

“Oh,” was all Cam said at first, cradling the recorder up against her ear. Then she let out a ragged breath. “It’s him.” She pressed the speaker flush with the side of her head, and under her breath, Nona heard the tiniest whisper. 

“It’s you.”

Pyrrha’s eyes crinkled sympathetically, but she couldn’t help her mouth crooking into a frown. “But I was right, the recording just sounds like you're singing.”

“It’s the pronunciation, the intonation. It’s the vowels,” Cam explained quietly, still listening, speaking almost more to herself than to Pyrrha. “You can hear him in the vowels. He would always hold them for just an extra second, whenever we would sing it at each other after-” Suddenly she laughed aloud, a smile tugging at her lips. “Oh, Warden,” she said, in the tones of someone having the same argument for the thousandth time. “There’s only two syllables in ‘every’.”

Camilla continued listening, eyes closed, breathing deep. But Nona was confused about something. “What’s a vowel?” she asked Pyrrha curiously.

Pyrrha drew her eyes off Cam and back towards Nona before answering her question. “It’s a kind of letter, kiddo, it makes a certain sound.”

“Oh,” Nona said simply, as if she understood.

“Yeah,” Pyrrha agreed. “That’s one.” She reached down and scooped up Nona in her arms, and began walking them out of the room, clearly eager to give Cam some privacy. “There’s also A, E, I -” she paused and pointed to herself with a finger, before flipping her hand around and poking Nona right in the nose- “and U!”

“Me?” giggled Nona incredulously.

“You!” Pyrrha repeated, spinning her around.

Nona wriggled out of Pyrrha’s arms, and before she could be stopped, ran back to tell Camilla. “Cam, Cam, Pyrrha says I’m a vowel!” 

But Camilla was nowhere to be seen. After a second of curious searching, Nona found that the bathroom was closed up tight, with no light coming out from under the crack beneath the door, and only the occasional clack of the recorder and the soft sounds of music drifting out to be heard.

​​After a second Pyrrha walked up from behind to stand beside her, and as the two of them stood outside the bathroom and listened to the muffled sound of the recording emerging out from below the bottom of the door, for a moment Nona thought she could almost see an actual Small Cam, huddled in a single tiny sleeping alcove on the far and distant Sixth. She looked just like Cam did now, only smaller, and squashed beside her in the tiny bed was a boy who, because Nona had never actually seen him, always appeared in all of Nona’s imaginings looking quite a lot like just another small Camilla with glasses. In their matching grey pajamas, the two young scholars were yawning in the dead of night, eyelids drooping, books propped open in front of their small noses. But every time one of them started to actually doze off, the other would begin singing a familiar song at them, and the sleeper would have to wake up to join in on the duet, or risk losing a point in the forever competition that was their lifelong friendship. And when the tiny, bespectacled Camilla in her imaginings sang his vowels for just that single extra second, Nona found she wanted to weep.

Eventually, from beside her, Pyrrha reached down and patted Nona on the back. “C’mon, love,” she said gently. “Let’s... let’s pick up.” They each took a deep breath, and then set about getting to it. Pyrrha collected up the two empty wine glasses from the living room and walked to the kitchen to quickly wash them in the sink. Nona, following behind her like a duck, entered the kitchen as well, and noticed that she must have kicked her chair over as Pyrrha lifted her into the air earlier that evening, because the chair was lying on its side on the floor. Wanting to be helpful, she decided to stay behind rather than follow Pyrrha back out into the living room, and wrestled it back up onto four legs. Then, when she was done, she slid its seat back in under the table for good measure. 

She was standing there, admiring all her hard work, when she suddenly heard a strangled half-shout of “PLE-?” from the other room. Nona hurried through the kitchen door to find Pyrrha, clutching the tiny scrap of paper that Camilla had scrunched up in her fist for Palamedes, and that he had subsequently dropped, forgotten during his song. After another second of staring down at it, Nona watched Pyrrha scrunched it up in her fist as well, shaking her head. 

“But that’s just so pathetic,” she muttered to herself, dropping the balled note into a waste bin in the corner.

Eventually, Pyrrha decided they needed to go in and rescue Cam. It wouldn’t be good for her posture, sleeping in the bathtub, Pyrrha explained.

“But the value of a locked door!” Nona wailed quietly, regurgitating verbatim some of the very first lessons she’d learned from Cam in the beginning of their time together. “The implicit understanding of the purpose to being separated on one of two opposite sides!”

“There is value-” Pyrrha muttered, as she prepared to vault the door off its hinges, “-in camaraderie. And an implicit understanding that friends don’t let friends get sadness kinks in their dumb necks from going to sleep depressed in a bathtub.”

With only the tiniest grunt, she lifted the cheaply-made door right out of its flimsily locked frame. From her spot inside the tub, Camilla gave a wail of indignation. “Pyrrha!” she cried aloud, even as Pyrrha was setting down the door and striding into the room. “What the hell are you-”

In a single, swift motion, Pyrrha scooped Cam right out of the bathtub and draped her over a well-muscled shoulder. Camilla looked so surprised that she didn’t even bother to struggle, but after a moment she narrowed her eyes.

“Reprisals,” she said, promising. “Vengeances, comma bloody.”

"Oh yes, I fully expect five to ten business days of stony silences and grumpy looks.”

“Expect knives.”

Pyrrha carried Cam over into the bedroom and tossed her on the bed. Then she held out a hand expectantly. Camilla stared at it angrily, before finally offering up the tape recorder most unhappily. 

"I'll hold on to this," Pyrrha said, before shushing Camilla's arguments with a finger and a look. "I'll trade in town tomorrow for a spare tape, so you don't have to record over this one." Camilla's frown vanished as her eyebrows raised in surprise.

"Don't think I don't understand what this means to you," Pyrrha added, holding the tape recorder out between them. "Just don't start listening to it all the time. Moping doesn't become you, Hect."

Camilla sighed. "And whatever does?" she replied, shaking her head. "Well, will you be heading out?"

"Nah," Pyrrha said, grinning. "Think I'll stay in here tonight. Make sure you don't try sneaking off to the tub."

"You're insufferable."

"Oh, I think you'll suffer me yet."

When Cam and Nona shared the bed, it was never less than cozy. But sandwiched under the blankets between Pyrrha and Camilla, Nona thought she was as warm as she'd ever been. 

The next morning, Palamedes had to record his transcription of Nona's dream fragments entirely by hand. And he was not at all happy about it.