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The first time it happens, Ivan acts all too strange about it. During class, he doesn’t look at her, doesn’t try to hand her an extra stylus, nor does he offer to split his snack(which, begrudgingly, she does sometimes take him up on). Instead, he is wholly engrossed in their lesson, only speaking when asked to answer questions.
Naturally, Sua’s suspicions are immediately raised, given his habit of provoking her at every possible opportunity. Ivan, for the amount of displeasure Sua takes in being his seatmate, is nothing if not consistent.
By the time the class ends, Sua thinks he might not speak to her that day at all. She braces for it anyway, listening keenly as muted chatter erupts following dismissal, everyone shuffling around their belongings and making towards the door. Sua’s relieved, certain now that she’s safe from Ivan’s torment, when those off-putting crimson speckled eyes haven’t landed on her once.
She gathers her things neatly in her arms, her tablet, stylus, and the sheet music she’d be singing for tomorrow’s prayer at the altar for the Great Anakt, mind already elsewhere.
The students’ schedules had changed recently. The boys and girls now lived on entirely separate dorm floors, and they no longer had roommates. She could also no longer expect to see Mizi’s cheery smile standing waiting for her outside the classroom, either. Mizi’d been placed in the remedial class group once again, giving Sua an extra hour and a half of recreation time alone in the garden.
Sua’d always been a creature of habit, finding comfort in monotony and routine. With Mother, she knew where to look, what to say, and what to do. She would be fed a light breakfast at 09:00 and a moderate dinner at 19:00, like she had been every day before that, and was sure to be every day after that. When Mother beckoned, she answered her call. She’d, at the flick of a wrist, lay her head in Mother’s lap, and at the gurgly screech of an alien tongue she didn’t understand, straighten her posture.
Anakt Garden provided that too, in its own way. From her diaphragm came notes that earned her high marks and praise, and with her teachers, she knew simple regurgitation was the only measure of success they used. Recreation time was notable for being the only thing that made her uneasy, but she could always rely on Mizi, who, when they were younger, would usher her along to partake in flower-picking and singing with their classmates.
The last few weeks, then, when that dreaded hour and a half was filled with only the buzz of technology and the whirring of machines, in a far-off corner of the garden, had been a struggle.
Sua slots her stuff into her cubby, next to the bookmark Mizi had made for her when they’d passed their first assessments. She lets her fingers glide against it, as if to take a piece of Mizi with her. Just enough to hold her over in her absence.
“Are you hiding something in there?” Ivan asks, tapping on the locker’s metal door.
“What– No–” Sua yelps, then clears her throat, speaking quieter. “I’m not. There’s nothing in there.”
“Should I have a look then?” He presses, in that awful, curious voice he uses to instigate.
Sua slams the door shut, then tugs to ensure it’s locked. Sure, she’s perfectly allowed to have the bookmark, but she’d rather die than let Ivan be privy to its existence. She’s seen the way he steals the guitar brat’s belongings.
“Don’t you have singing lessons right now? I could report you for skipping, you know, then we’d both be in trouble.”
“Not for another five minutes.” A thin smile spreads across his face. “My instructor knows how diligent I am.”
From behind his back, he pulls out a book. It’s a flimsy paperback dark grey cover, more decrepit looking than anything in the garden’s library. “Here, I wanted to give you something.”
“Keep it, I don’t want it.” She says, about to pivot on her heels. Something must be seriously wrong with his brain.
He thrusts the book forward, practically dumping it into her hands. She catches the weighty thing, barely, and with as much force, tries to shove it back to Ivan, whose hands have already returned to their place behind his back.
“I told you, I don’t want it.”
“I’m letting you borrow it.” Ivan says, “Mizi told me that you don’t get to spend as much time together in the garden anymore. Reading always helps pass the time.”
“I have hobbies outside of hanging out with Mizi, jerk.”
“You do?”
Ivan doesn’t let her answer that one. “Well, your birthday was last month, right? Consider it a belated birthday gift.”
“Since when are you nice?” Sua bites back, out of snappy comebacks and jabs.
“Let me know how you like it, it’s a good one.”
The next thing Sua knows, Ivan has already turned on his heel, his figure growing smaller in the distance, close to the other side of the hallway.
—
Compared to its discomforts, the garden’s only saving grace is by far the artificial sunlight. It is abundantly warm, thanks to the innumerable bulbs and paneling lining every inch of the ceiling. It is a welcome relief on the eyes in contrast to the harsh, sterile LED lighting present in the rest of the facilities, from the dorms to the medical bay.
Its four walls were intended to give the illusion of a sprawling open pasture, but to Sua, they’ve only ever felt suffocating.
She’s not alone in this. Some kids have tried to throw rocks at the wall, watching as the holographic displays glitch and even occasionally freeze. The handlers monitoring them in the garden only admonish them, threaten to keep them from going “outside”, dragging them by their white linen shirts back to the dorm, treating the space as something vast, enough to drown in, a freedom to take.
The first book Ivan had lent wasn’t the first one she read, but eventually, they’d worked out a silent agreement of sorts. He bothered her less that way, reserving his questions for when he’d drill her about her opinions, on what she thought of the genre, and so on.
Books from Earth’s time are unlike anything she’s read before. There’s no shortage of characters who hunger for connection, sleuths who uncover mysteries, and heroes who battle fantastical creatures. The throughline is that they all want to submerge themselves in something bigger than themselves, to usurp the confines dealt to them by circumstance, to seek out their freedom.
Sua can hardly wrap her mind around it. If she works hard to imagine the words on the page, the fresh spring air is the scent of Mizi’s hair after a shower. The simmering crackle of a fireplace is Mizi’s laughter, her body pressed against her.
When she wonders what it must have been like to be a human on Earth, admiring the planet’s natural beauty, believed to have been created solely for humans to behold, she thinks of Mizi, who looks at Sua that same way, someone created just for her to bear witness to.
The closest Sua has gotten to freedom, then, must be Mizi.
They’re only a few years out from graduation, now, a reality that threatens to teeter the axis of Sua’s world as time lurches closer and closer to inevitability. She’ll spend countless days with Mother until then, even more before auditions for Alien Stage, entertaining the likes of her and her friends. Mother is careful not to let too many bruises bloom on her skin, ever discerning about who she allows access to her valuable possessions.
Time apart from Mizi only reminds her of this, where the ache that settles in her bones left by her absence is no different from when Mother pinches at her skin, inspecting her for imperfections and damages that may have cropped up while she’d been under the supervision of Anakt or otherwise.
So she sequesters herself beneath one of the many trees, book always in hand.
Sua thumbs through the creased and yellowed pages of the book Ivan had handed her today, hesitant to start, though curious. She stops on a page somewhere towards the novel’s beginning, and pauses to, in her mind, skim it briefly.
“My lady,” Sir Clarke said softly, bringing her hand to his lips. He kissed it softly, with a gentleness Adelia had not expected from the Baron. All of the rumors mystifying him, of the taverns he frequented and the fights he’d gotten into, seemed to vanish from her mind when met with him face to face.
She shuts the book, cheeks burning.
It was yet another book on ancient courting and mating rituals that he’d given her, like it was nothing.
Shame washes over her, as it had all the previous times, making even the brush of her own dress against her skin feel dirty, wrong.
Sua imagines going to class tomorrow, having to look Ivan in the eye when he greets her. He’ll know, he’ll know she read something she wasn’t supposed to, even though she’ll have told him she hadn’t read it. Mother will be able to tell the next time she returns home, and it’ll blossom on her skin like a bruise, the mark of sin.
She’d told him not to give her anything weird again.
With her finger still wedged between the book’s pages, Sua cracks it back open. Quickly, she finds where she left off.
Edward opened his eyes, gently allowing Adelia to rest her hand back at her side. He stood up, and she noticed first their stark difference in height, then his appearance. His cheekbones were ripe with youth, skin buttery smooth and pale. His olive eyes, however, stuck out most to her. They were not dark in color, but Adelia couldn’t help but be reminded of the vast night sky, as if they were holding a plethora of secrets within them.
Perhaps a marriage between them wouldn’t be quite so terrible after all. She may not be cursed—
“What are you reading?” Mizi asks, clumsily plopping down beside her.
“Nothing.”
Their knees clink together as Sua hides the book in the embrace of her arm, pulling tighter when Mizi draws closer.
“Oh, oh!” Mizi snaps her fingers, “Is that another one of the textbooks you guys have in the smart class?
“Yes..." Sua mumbles. The air ducts shudder, and the vibrant grass dances, prickling against her skin.
“Are you busy with it?”
“No, I’m not busy, it’s just a little homework,” Sua replies, placing the book down on the grass, within comfortable reaching distance but far away enough that she knows Mizi won’t feel compelled to fidget with it.
“Good,” Mizi says, eyes going shift and unfocused, “Can I have your help with something?”
“Oh?” Sua straightens her back against the tree, the bark abrasive through the cotton of her dress, its weighty presence unyielding.
Mizi nods, taking Sua’s monosyllabic response and applying her generous interpretation. “Can we try that kissing thing everybody’s doing? Where we both press our lips together instead of just one of us?”
Sua freezes.
“Ivan explained it to me when I asked,” Mizi tilts her head, taking Sua’s hand in her own. “He said it’s fine to do as long as it’s with someone close, and I can’t think of anyone closer to me than you.”
“I’m not sure…” she starts, hesitant. “Do you know how to do it? It looks kind of tricky.”
Mizi giggles at that. “No, it’s simple, Sua. All you have to do is press your lips together the way we always do, just at the same time.”
She brings Sua’s hand to her lips, pressing a featherlight kiss to it.
Deeper and deeper sinks the pit in her stomach, the burn of bile rising in her throat. Mizi was surely too sweet for that, too innocent, too clumsy at hiding her emotions, for Sua to guide her, blind, to partake in such iniquity. Kissing like that, didn't exclusively belong to the ancient mating ritual, but the fact that it could, that Sua had read about it, had imagined doing that with Mizi, it was-
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Sua decides, finally.
“Why not?” Mizi rubs her thumb into Sua’s skin, hands still intertwined. “Are you scared?”
Sua faces her, “No—”, then, “maybe.” A half-truth. Good enough to fool Mizi.
Their foreheads are centimeters apart, nearly brushing. Sua's pulse quickens.
Mizi’s collar is orange, she notices, bracing her hand on Mizi’s forearm.
“Should I ask Ivan if he wants to do it? We don’t have to,” Mizi offers innocently, or maybe as a challenge, even.
Sua doesn’t decide, instead choosing to surge forward. Their lips clumsily smack together. It’s brief, so brief that the only proof is the ghost of the touch.
“Still scared?”
“No,” Sua answers, taking in their surroundings, reminding herself they are as far away from their classmates as they can be.
With a hum, Mizi kisses her again. This time, she is much more eager, cradling the back of Sua’s head, her other hand tracing the shape of her waist and back through her loose dress. Sua does her best to follow her lead, separating when Mizi separates, parting her lips ever so slightly, breathing through her nose.
It is hard to think of anything other than Mizi, doing this. Not Mother, nor Alien Stage, nor even her religious studies exam.
Sua parts her lips further, letting out an embarrassing noise when one of Mizi’s teeth grazes against her lips. Mizi licks into Sua’s mouth, emboldened by Sua’s tiny whimper.
They spend what feels like hours, but is closer to a couple of minutes, doing this, clumsily feeling around for each other, clinging to the fabric of their clothes. It’s only apparent how unskilled it was when they parted, lips swollen, saliva everywhere.
“Ah– I’m sorry, Sua, I got your face all dirty,” Mizi apologizes, bringing her sleeve to Sua’s face.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind if it’s you,” Sua mumbles as Mizi cleans her face, because she doesn’t.
The shame by now has all but melted into heat pooled between her thighs, and so too has the desire to kiss Mizi until they’re both well past curfew. Reckless, but a hunger Sua felt all the same. Mizi’s spit tasted like freedom, somehow.