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Red. It’s in the air around you, dust and smoke. The fake sun of this weird bright-but-buried place, daylight but not quite, makes your surroundings look as though they’ve caught fire.
It isn’t a new sight. It’s definitely not a new color. Red is everywhere in the down below places. It comes out of people. From their hearts, from their mouths, from the fires burning whatever is available in the sump. It’s usually just too dark to see it — the red.
It looks just like the stories of the Things On The Bridge that the older kids talk about like they were there. You’re pretty sure they weren’t there. They get mad when anyone says that, though. So you don’t, even if part of you wants to. Fortunately for you, even if you did, most people don’t listen to people who talk without their mouths.
She does though. She understands every word you never say.
When you fell onto her from that slippery sewer pipe she got the idea just by looking you in the eye. You thought it meant she’d go away, save herself before the mooks (you really like that word. You think if you ever did say stuff out loud “mooks” would be one of the better options) that were chasing you decided she was involved too.
But then her hood fell back. And suddenly the mooks weren’t worried about you anymore.
And then— PAFF! PAFF! PAFF!
She moved so fast you didn’t even see her gun until it was over. Your ears rang a little bit before she put your helmet back on. You didn’t care. All you could think about was blue.
There was barely any blue in the fissures. Lots of black. A little green in places where the sun sometimes reached. Pink and other big colors on the signs in the Lanes. But that far down you were lucky if your water wasn’t brown, let alone blue.
And that’s not even mentioning the sky. You’d only seen that a few times and for most of those times it was raining too. Too cloudy to see anything but gray.
No, for sure, her hair was the bluest blue thing you’d ever seen.
Blue like the ocean. You remembered hearing all about the ocean.
Mama would insist, “Bernisha, dear, most of the whole world is oceans.” She’d then look sad when your face was one of confusion. You couldn’t picture that much of anything in one place — let alone that much blue.
Mama told you about the ocean a whole bunch of times. How she wanted to see it. Touch it. Hear it. She talked about it so much before the day she didn’t come home from the mines. Told you about how it was so deep that it got darker than the sump ever could. That before the Hex-Gate thing was way up on the towers it took ships — not like the airship ships but just the regular water-type ship kind of ships — weeks to get across them. You had no idea where they were going. Mama never told you that part. And you hadn’t known enough to ask. It didn’t matter though. You’d probably never see them anyway.
Until one day you did see an ocean. You’d seen it while looking down at the statue of Big Guy in the center of the Lanes. Looking out at an ocean of blue heads staring back up at you with a hood over your face and a blue flare in your hand. A sea of faces that didn’t really believe the grumbly one-arm lady — the one who she’d made an arm for to say sorry without saying it — until suddenly they did moment they thought you were her .
Beneath all the waves and clouds across her arms and on her back, an ocean.
She’d made an ocean in the sump just by being who she was. A tidal wave of blue in gray spaces. Even if she couldn’t see that yet. With her gun and her blue hair on those posters, she’d already given you and everyone else something you never thought could exist.
Plus so much more besides. A big sister. A home that felt like a home. A hug that means you are family. So many smiles. So many awesome gadgets and stories and pets and… and you could spend hours you don’t have going over that list. Or you could do something for her in return.
Your first moments of conscious thought happen while you’re already running. Seeing her lying there, bowed but unbroken, her gun lying in the dirt. Seeing him, a mess of spears and roars and dripping a familiar red. You know no one else could get there in time. You’d begun moving without knowing.
You’re small, you know that. But you’re also fast and brave, even though you didn’t know that second part until she told you, that one time you were right before you fell asleep in the pillow fort you’d built together at home. You’ll never ever forget it. You’re pretty sure you weren’t actually brave before she showed you how to be, but that doesn’t really matter anymore.
Being brave and small means the spear-throwing people don’t even pause in their fight with her dad-thing as you run past as fast as you can, holding the blue orbs to your chest to make sure you don’t drop them. You need them.
You feel tears springing forth from your eyes with each step. For the first time you can remember you welcome them and let them fall. Because today they aren’t sad tears, they’re just the best you can do to give a bit of yourself back to the ocean.
She gave you hope. Gave everyone in the undercity hope. Enough to fill a whole ocean. She did things no one else could and then made them understand things can get better but only if you fight to make them better.
She needs you now. And he does too, the big rumbly kind-of-scary-but-sometimes-not dad-monster-thing you found with them. Plus the sister who can hit things really hard. She kind of smells like an old mop right now but you’ve never thought of a way to tell her that. You think she might laugh if you did, which is cool. And then there’s the tall lady from topside, who looked like an Enforcer but you think maybe she is helping now too? Good for her. It makes sense though, her eyes are kind of like oceans too.
You slide past your big sister under the handle of a spear-person’s blade. It’s not aimed at you but it’s still in the way. Her gun is in your hand as you roll to your feet between dad-thing’s massive legs, and you can feel — from your toes to your fingertips — that you’re right where you need to be.
The blue marbles between your fingers slot in smoothly into the chamber.
*clunk*
Two, and she sees what you’re doing. You give her a smile.
*clunk*
Three, and she’s running towards you. You point a finger-gun at her.
“Pew.”
You lean back and aim up at the fake sky. Her big sister is holding her back.
*zzZZMK*
Pulling the trigger, you say “I love you.”
*CLACK*
And you don’t need a single word.