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“Good morning, good morning,” someone is singing, and she snaps awake all of a sudden, pulled out of the good dream by the person who takes care of her.
“Go,” says Cam’s voice from the darkness. Nona hears the soft whir of the tape recording already. Cam must be in a hurry. Or Nona overslept.
“Can you turn off the good morning song?” Nona says helpfully.
The music stops. A tapping noise: Cam tapping the pencil, waiting in the dark.
With a sigh, Nona rattles out: “I’m in the safe water. She’s not on top of me. We’re touching stones. It’s wet. I’m wet all over. I taste… weird.”
“What do you taste?”
“Salt?” Nona tries to focus. It’s tough, because a thin slant of dirty light is coming under the shade nearby and she’s already daydreaming about the day ahead. Pyrrha promised to take Nona to the market for chores, and Nona promised to meet at least two new dogs.
“Keep going,” says Cam, scribbling and tapping the pencil two times.
“She’s yelling at me,” Nona says. “I can’t hear what she’s saying. The water’s in my ears. My head is light. I’ll float away if we let go of the stones. It tastes bad. But the water is good…” She longs to be in the water so badly, all of a sudden. “Cam, can we go to the water soon? I’ve been really good.” And it’s true. Nona, being only five months old, has been really good. She held still as a statue when Palamades braided her hair two days ago, and she hasn’t asked for anything special at all this week, except to skip lunch most days, because lunch is the worst and most boring meal ever invented.
“We can talk about it,” is Cam’s reply while writing, and Nona deflates because that usually means “no” without saying “no” right away. Pyrrha might say “maybe” which means sometimes a yes, later, if Nona is really good today, and she promised she would be.
“Anything else?” Cam prods.
“No, no,” says Nona.
The bright click of the recorder switching off propels Nona into motion. She feels like punching her way out of her nightgown, but instead she shucks it off and grabs the scratchy sand shirt and dusty cargo pants from beside the bed. Camilla gets up and shifts the shade, casting Nona’s unmade bed in low blue light. It almost stings Nona’s eyes, but she doesn’t say anything and wiggles into her shirt like a good girl.
“Don’t forget your stretches,” said Cam. She stands up and steps toward the bedroom door, which is ajar, and hovers there, letting Nona do her own thing while Cam talks. “Pyrrha has a shift this afternoon. We need to leave early, before the crowds.” Cam doesn’t say where they’re making it to, because she knows Nona would never, ever forget a trip to the market. It’s about half as exciting as a trip to the sea.
Nona bobs her head and finishes with her socks before dropping back on the bed, pleased when she bounces one time despite the hardness of the mattress. Her thighs and calves burn pleasantly when she rotates her ankles, points her toes to the ceiling, then does some bicycle kicks before sitting up to stretch her arms and fingers.
Cam puts the notes and recorder on the side table and, joy! crosses to Nona’s side, sitting down and gently lifting Nona’s right hand. She bends Nona’s fingers back as one, seeming to know just how to bend them back before the stretch hurts too bad. Enraptured, Nona wiggles her toes while Cam silently stretches Nona’s fingers; Cam nods with a small tug of a smile. Cam doesn’t smile much, and Nona admires how beautiful Cam’s face looks, like a painting of the blue sky.
“Wrists too,” says Cam, demonstrating a new stretch by clasping her own hands together like she’s praying hard, fingers overlapping in a big fist, then rolling her wrists so her hands move hypnotically back and forth.
“That looks hard,” says Nona, copying the praying gesture. She pauses for a second, because it feels nice when her palms press together, like she’s done it a thousand times. Well, Nona’s woken up with her hands like that befores. Maybe it has to do with who she is under the Nona-stuff. Pyrrha and Cam and Palamades keep trying to figure out who Nona is. Nona has no clue, but she’s having fun flopping her wrists while holding her own hands. It reminds her of last night’s dream for a second, but she doesn’t have to say so, because the recorder’s off.
“Ready?” says Cam.
“Market?” Nona asks, hopeful.
“To eat,” says Cam, which means Nona has to eat.
With a sigh, Nona nods, rolling her neck and shuffling her feet on the floor. Cam huffs through her nose, then picks up the notes and recorder.
“I love you. And Palamades. Tell him, please,” Nona adds, because in her grumpiness, she almost forgot to say it.
Cam doesn’t reply, because she doesn’t always say it back, but Pal will say it when he gets there, and that thought cheers Nona up.
After Cam leaves, Nona entertains a moment’s thought of hiding under the blankets to escape the chore of eating, but no. She’s been good, and Nona wants to go to the market and the water soon, so she has to eat and keep being good. Being five months old is hard work.
Pyrrha, as usual, is making breakfast, which is dreadful, but it’s slightly less dreadful because Pyrrha smiles her big toothy smile when Nona eats. Nona almost misses her chair because she’s watching the thin white scars on Pyrrha’s muscular arms flashing in the blue light from the window and the orange glow of the hot plate. There’s just water heating today; there’s mush in bowls already, and Nona pulls a disgusted face at the memory of the texture.
“Good morning to you too, No-No,” Pyrrha says with humor. “Left your mush cold.” She pauses with an unreadable look before continuing: “Stole a couple packets of random shit off some dickhead yesterday, made sure it’s not hard drugs, so knock yourself out.” Quirking one rakish eyebrow in Nona's direction, she suggests, “Maybe dip your finger and taste it first before you contaminate the mush. You’re eating it either way.”
Usually Pyrrha is nicer about forcing Nona to eat, so Nona feels justified in pouting a bit and waiting for the mush at the table instead of getting it herself. In a small fit of anxiety, she said “thank you, thank you,” extra when Pyrrha crosses over and sits down, then stands back up to finish making the coffee.
“Want a cup, Nums?” asks Pyrrha, and as usual, Nona says “no,” ripping open the unlabeled white packet and sticking her tongue into the exposed white powder. Grainy, melting into a thick paste.
“Milk,” Nona reports. “I think.”
“Fine to mix, then,” says Pyrrha. “Stir it up extra, you won’t like the grit. Where’s Cam?”
“Bathroom?” Nona hadn’t paid attention. She pours half the powdered milk packet into her mush and mechanically mixes it around, around, around way too many times, breaking up the tiny clumps in the thick gluey mush. The other half of the packet might be good for coffee; Nona nicely pushes it toward the center of the table.
Camilla strolls out of the bathroom with brownish-gray eyes, meaning Palamades arrived at some point. Nona perks right up.
“I told Cam to tell you I love you earlier,” Nona reports. “Did she tell you?”
“She was a bit busy,” says Palamades with a smile, very different from Cam’s quicksilver-flash, with lots more gums and a little hiding his face with Cam’s dark fringe. He comes and strokes the left side of Nona’s head, smoothing down her hair and stopping where one braid starts. “We both love you, Nona. You know that.”
“Oh, good. I thought we were all hanging out in domestic bliss because we hated each other,” Pyrrha says in a mock-deadpan, hands full with bowls of mush. She plunks them down plus two chipped mugs of coffee, taking a bracing swig from her own cup and grabbing a glass of icy water for Nona from the fridge. It’s frigid and makes Nona’s whole mouth and jaw ache, but she gulps it with relish, eyes closed in painful bliss.
Pyrrha is grinning with all her teeth when Nona puts the glass down.
“We’ll stay hydrated today, gang,” Pyrrha says, including Palamades. “Better eat that before she gets back.” There’s something off-color in Pyrrha’s expression, but Nona’s not great at reading faces. She’s still so fascinated by her own, often probing the bones beneath her skin. When Cam caught her doing that the first time in the mirror, she wrote four pages of notes. That made Nona feel cross, but today she didn’t care!
After a hundred flights of stairs ot the street, the trio walked to the dairy first thing, because often vendors would put their stock outside and take advantage of a few cold flashes, which were far and few between. Some produce got frozen, but tasted okay when it thawed. Nona couldn’t really taste the rot; it was all some kind of weird sweet to her tongue. Camilla and Palamades both commented on some “odd taste,” but Pyrrha was unfazed.
“Tasted worse,” she always said, or something like that. “Way worse. Deep-frozen forever. My other friends would enjoy frozen shit just fine. Gideon was picky, but I didn’t get his taste buds, I guess.”
Nona never asked who Gideon was, though her brain seemed to lightly glaze over when hearing those three simple syllables. Sometimes her heart would race, thumping like a living being. Which she was. She had bones and organs. That factoid regularly grossed her out.
So, the dairy, with Nona following close behind Pyrrha and in front of Camilla, both wearing sunglasses. All three of them did, except Nona also wore a veil so she could wiggle the sunglasses off her nose bridge as soon as they got anywhere indoors.
Inside the dairy shack, at once Nona is struck by the gorgeous dog curled under the vendor’s counter. It’s large, almost as long as Nona was tall, and its long fur was rich, vivid red. Nona immediately gets jealous of that. If she had that glorious coat, maybe she wouldn’t have to worry about haircuts so often. It has four legs, which is a good amount for a dog.
When the butcher approaches, the dog lets out a mournful howl at half volume. Nona understands the sound as baleful yet teasing, and the gorgeous red dog bares its two top incisors.
“Stop It,” the butcher snaps. “Be good.” He makes eye contact with Pyrrha after sparing Nona and Camilla half a glance. He’s got a thick accent, but Nona knows what he means. “What’s the budget?”
Pyrrha talks to the man, because that’s her job. Nona decides it’s much more interesting to focus on the dog. She kneels down not far from the counter. The flaps of the tablecloth separate her and the beast.
When the dog meets her eyes, its pupils dilate big and black. That makes Nona grin widely. The sound of the dog’s hairy tail whipping back and forth is so swishy and hilarious. Nona forces down a big laugh, but she giggles and offers her hand to the beast.
“Hey, little girl!” The butcher’s voice snaps even harder the second time. “You want to lose a hand?”
Nona doesn’t budge, but she does look up at the shop owner and feels a little nervous. His glare is intimidating, but Nona narrows her eyebrows and eyes right back. The man looks nervous himself for a flash of a moment.
Camilla and Pyrrha’s hands simultaneously pull Nona to her feet. The dog twitches in place a bit but doesn’t lunge, though the shop owner seems to have expected him to, because he yells “Stop It” again.
“Not a nice name for a dog,” Nona says under her breath.
Pyrrha chortles, a funny sound through her mask.
“Come on, kiddie. We’ve got places to be.” There’s a big opaque bottle in Pyrrha’s bag now, so she must have bought milk of some kind. Maybe there might be pikelets in the future. Nona liked those best with real milk and not too much sweetener, bland and fluffy and delicious.
They leave Stop It behind, while Nona makes a short mental catalogue of what to mention to Camilla. Not long ago, Nona came up with the idea of a six-month birthday party for herself. The concept felt so exciting, though she hasn’t managed to share the idea with Cam, Pal, and Pyrrha yet. It might be too much to ask, but she wants a birthday party. Not for any specific reason. Just… She’s never had a party before, and she has people who love her, and she wants to bask in the pure glow of that love, just for her and no one else, like a fat cat for a whole evening.
Pyrrha quickly ducks into two corner stores for odds and ends that Nona ignores, searching for dogs and breathing interesting smells through her mask. Despite being muted by thick fabric, Nona picks out something stale. Dust? Outside, the air is gritty enough that you want to take shallow breaths. It’s good to have a veil and mask because you can loosen them indoors. Lucky for her especially, because Nona despises the feeling of suction all around her face and gladly throws off her glasses, mask, and sandy veil whenever possible. But not outside. Pyrrha got pretty mad when she did it that one time. Other people start choking and dying outside, but Nona doesn’t. And she’s supposed to act like other people and be good, so she does and she is.
But too soon, it’s time to walk home. Pyrrha leads them through the park after Cam scouts ahead and reports, “All clear.” Nona loves the park more than almost any part of the city, because the blue glow from above emanates most clearly. In the street, buildings and bridges arch far out over and shadows and shades criss-cross all the sidewalks.
The park seems deserted except for a few small animals. Not far onto the dirt path, Nona gasps in pleasure at the odd lump of color, which coalesces into a white dog with black spots and blots. It stands about up to her waist at a distance, crouching near some massive patches of overgrown shrubs and trees.
When it meets her gaze, the dog whips around and begins to trot away, and Nona spies its ropy tail, many times thinner than Pyrrha’s arm and without the defined muscles, wagging smooth and white with black on the very double-curled tip.
Nona is struck speechless by its beauty, and the blue glow overhead pulses like a beating heart for a few moments. Happiness suffuses Nona’s chest with warm golden light, but Cam and Pyrrha exchange looks that are obvious even through sunglasses and masks, because their chins jerk suddenly toward Nona.
“What?” complains Nona. Her head tips back, sunglasses sliding, trying to squint and see the last of the black and white dog. Not to mention, it feels so nice to soak in the thick blue glow emanating from above. Sometimes it’s like the glow lives right above, just overhead, comforting and present. Like a hat with a veil over the whole city, but so much better and less headache-inducing.
“Let’s pick up the pace a bit,” says Pyrrha at half volume.
Nona doesn’t like that and decides to take it as a suggestion, but Cam nods in a curt motion and holds out her hand to Nona.
“We’ve got to move. Can you keep up?” says Camilla, which is a challenge Nona is up to only because she’s had good things to eat, and it’s only midday, so she can run for a short while without getting horrible aches and cramps.
The three of them move at a quick walk that morphs into a run near the edge of the park, and Pyrrha, fearless, forges into traffic for a moment, clearing a path for Nona and Camilla to follow at a dead sprint. Once they make it to a slightly crowded area, since the park isn’t far from a factory with workers flowing in and out, Pyrrha takes them through back alleys and long pauses in smelly trash disposal areas, where Nona covers her nose and mouth with both hands, which her caretakers make sure they’re not being followed. Camilla flits behind and Pyrrha stomps ahead, and Nona has never felt safer or happier, even though there’s a customary yucky sandstorm wind blowing through the streets, making any smells worse and grittier.
Having determined they weren’t being followed, Pyrrha leads them into the Building. As usual, the Building stands still, concrete echoing underfoot as they take the stairs up and up and up until they finally make it to the thirtieth level. Lucky for Nona, Cam produces water for them all to drink on the fifteenth floor, so despite her aching limbs, Nona feels happy, stomach sloshing like a boat on the sea.
Safe in the apartment once more, Nona sits and then flops onto the floor, catching herself with her arms and sighing with pleasure as a few bones shift and readjust.
“Hey, kiddie,” Pyrrha says in the “goodbye” tone of voice, so Nona sits up with a disgruntled feeling in her stomach. Is it almost lunchtime already? The worst meal? And then Pyrrha has to leave? That’s the worst. And Nona didn’t ask her the most important question yet!
“You have to go,” says Nona mournfully. “I know. It’s okay. But… Can we go to the water sometime soon? Please? I’ve been really good.” And she has.
“Sure thing, No-No,” says Pyrrha. “Tomorrow night. I’m in early so I’ll be out around sundown. Cam took out the lights last time, so we’ll have no problems. None at all.” It sounds like she’s trying hard to believe that. Nona doesn’t care what happens, as long as she gets to swim in the safe water, so she nods along to placate her.
“Okay.” It’s not the answer Nona wanted, but she’s used to a twinge of disappointment. Sadly, the city doesn’t revolve around Nona’s wish to go swimming, and that needs to be okay.
Camilla brings the sword from the other room while Pyrrha checks the blinds and starts making something predictably nasty for lunch. Nona is allowed to ignore the food while she has the weapon in her hands. As usual she swings it around a few times, “whatever’s natural,” while Cam sits on the side and gives her light coaching while taking notes.
But they aren’t notes. When Nona shifts her feet around, dawdling, she gets a little closer and sees Cam is actually writing a letter. Since Camilla is very nice about Nona’s many strange habits, Nona chews on her question before asking, to soften the bluntness and be polite.
“Is that for Palamades?” says Nona in a quiet tone. Pyrrha seems occupied with cooking something on the stove, breaking it into pieces with a spoon, so Nona thinks it won’t be embarrassing.
“Yes,” says Camilla. “Would you mind holding the sword? In your arms?”
Nona never tried that before. It’s hard, almost impossible to do while standing, because the sword is longer than Nona is tall, so Nona sits on the floor and lays the blade down on the floor, holding the handle with both hands before pressing it to her breastbone. In the end it’s most comfortable to lie down with the sword on her chest.
Her heart thumps, wet and louder than usual with her head at heart-level. The sword is heavy. This position feels familiar, like the praying hands. But the sword doesn’t do anything special and neither does Nona’s brain. However, she inexplicably starts to get sleepy. As a baby, Nona napped throughout the day, but since she turned three months old, Nona kept to a normal sleep schedule. So why is she tired? Maybe the excitement of meeting two dogs is too much for one Nona to handle.
“How do you feel?” says Camilla from a distance.
“Sleepy,” Nona admits. Prying open her eyelids is a chore.
“Let her sleep a bit,” says Pyrrha from a distance. “Lunch’ll be done soon. You look exhausted, Nums. A little sword nap never hurt anyone.”
It’s silent in the apartment. The Building is full of muted steps and thumps, and soft blue light pulses through the crack in the curtains. Nona’s eyes slip closed, and she slides toward sleep like she’s rolling down a steep slope.
“She looks so peaceful,” whispers Cam.
“Let her sleep,” Pyrrha whispers back, on the edge of being too quiet to hear. “When she’s like this… It’s like she’s never been hurt before in her life.”
“She hasn’t, not much,” says Cam, her words fading into a muted mumble. “I hope…”
“We hope,” says Pyrrha, almost reverent (for Pyrrha). And Nona sleeps, surrounded by love, and she feels happy, and then nothing at all for a little while.