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Over the years, she’s come to terms with the fact that she simply doesn’t have the fine motor control it takes to braid her own hair like Sasha did. These days, she settles for a single large braid - two, sometimes, if she feels like putting in the effort.
Even then, as soon as she puts her hands behind her head, they feel divorced from the rest of her and altogether odd. She’s puppeteering them, almost; it is not unlike moving the hands of a corpse.
“For fuck’s sake,” she says.
“Fira, language.” To his credit, Arno sounds only mildly scandalised. Between her and Sasha, he’s got used to worse by now. “Do you want a hand?”
“Maybe,” she admits, grudgingly, and lets her hair fall down in a heap of curls. “Just don’t tug it too hard.”
It still hurts a little, but she can feel how gentle he’s trying to be, his flesh fingers whisper-soft against her scalp. She can suffer through a few plucked hairs.
Even though he does it mostly one-handed, using his prosthetic as a combination ribbon stand and tension clip, he does a more impressive job than she ever could.
“Someone left a copy of Geber’s Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support handbook on my desk yesterday,” she says. In the mirror, she can see his eyebrows rise a little, even as his gaze is still trained on his handiwork.
“What, in Rannarootsi?”
“In Estlish.” The book was a glossy red, appetising like a slice of lingonberry cake. When she leafed through the large colour-illustrated pages, they almost seemed still warm from the printing press. Pricey and much-coveted, the translation was, if anything, rarer than the original. She would’ve been lucky to get a second-hand black and white reprint.
“Do you think someone’s flirting with you?” Arno’s voice sounds like he’s smiling.
Flirting. Yes. That could be it. It’s not a nice idea, and it sours the sweetness in her mouth a little. Should she have taken the book home? Accepting the gift, even implicitly, could encourage more. That lingonberry cake might well be poisoned.
She shoots Arno an anxious glance. “Do you think someone’s flirting with me?”
“I’m, ah, hardly the person to ask.” He clears his throat. The broad satin ribbon makes a slight hissing sound as he ties the last bow and steps back a little.
He’s a funny man, Arno. And she does love him a little.
“Well, I don’t know, either. Between the two of us, I figured you’d at least have more life experience.”
He spreads his hands disarmingly. “Sorry, Estherke. Ask your brother.” But he must sense her discomfort, because he frowns as she turns to face him, his flesh hand worrying at the collar of his shirt. “You’re unhappy about this, aren’t you?”
She nods emphatically. “The book is amazing. But I don’t want to - I don’t want someone to be in love with me. You know.”
It’s probably Meelis Salupere, the kid from the parasitology faculty. More’s the pity. She really does enjoy his ramblings about the life cycles of Leishmania. There are not many fellow students whose company she likes, and losing Meelis carries a particular sting.
“Hm.” There’s an oddly clouded look in Arno’s eyes, for a moment, before he shakes it off. “I suppose I do, at that.”
“I knew you’d understand.” Esther fastens the buttons of her rowan-red gloves and presses one gloved finger against his cheek, in place of a kiss. It’s a childhood habit - a remnant of the days when she wanted to offer some token of affection and could not.
“I used to think it was just me, you know,” he calls after her as she’s almost out of the house.
“That sounds statistically improbable,” she responds. She hears his dry, quiet laughter as she closes the door.
She loves him a little. A little a lot.
Come to think of it, Meelis isn’t entirely unlike him. He and Arno both have this breathless awe at the world, this desire to poke and prod and forget to track the passage of time. They both stare at little natural wonders - one at bones, the other at protozoa - like pilgrims at the walls of ancient temples.
They’re both kind.
Maybe it won’t be so bad, turning Meelis down. Maybe he won’t hate her for it.
She makes her way through a lime tree alley leading to the campus grounds. All around her, large honey-yellow leaves shine in the cool autumn light. A couple of crows turn to look at her with their beady eyes, clearly thinking their own secret crow thoughts.
Meelis is leaning against the rough brick corner of the Biochemistry building. The half-moon glasses sitting on the tip of his nose are a blind white in the sun. As Esther walks closer, she can see the large green stitches on the shoulder of his felt coat where the seam tore and was sewn closed.
The quality of the stitches tugs at her heartstrings a little. Arno would never let her or Sasha leave the house with their clothes so inexpertly mended. And there’s also the fact that they literally just did Basic Surgical Skills and yet Meelis, if anything, has somehow gotten worse at sewing.
“Estherke!” Meelis beams as he spots her approaching, hurriedly standing up straighter and adjusting his coat sleeves.
She does so like it when he calls her that. She used to associate the endearment with Arno, but once she learned Estlish, it turned out that she is Estherke to everyone in this land. It came to mean friendship, acceptance.
“Hey, Mel,” she says, casually. She still cringes inwardly at her newfound awareness of what else such affectionate terms might mean, coming from him.
“Listen,” he says, and immediately blushes crimson. “I wanted to explain myself, after yesterday.”
Here it comes. Even if he doesn’t hate her after this-
“The book I left you on advancements in cardiovascular life support. I knew it would be a welcome gift, but it didn’t occur to me until after I left that it could also be, ah, misinterpreted. You know - with me being a man and you being a woman…”
Meelis is so red at this point that she is, frankly, beginning to worry about his own cardiovascular health.
“Misinterpreted?” she repeats, uncertainly.
“Yeah. I mean - I mean romantically. Like I’m hitting on you, you know. A relative of mine works at the Reval Printing House, and I - I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”
She feels something warm blossom within her. She never thought she could be this happy at a simple admission - or rather, non-admission - of feelings; and yet there’s a whole new, delightful lightness in her heart.
“You’ve no idea how much this means to me,” she says. “And the book! Of course I love the book.”
There’s relief in Meelis’ eyes, too, and the beginnings of a smile. “So we’re all good, then?”
She spins around. “All good, indeed! Oh, Meelis, I could just kiss you.”
“Please don’t,” he says, with mock horror, and she bursts out laughing at the belated realisation of her own ineptitude.
Arno will love hearing about this when she gets home.