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Your mind is a hive. It’s a nest of wasps. Of bees. Of hornets. Of vipers and snakes and everything goes too slow… Too fast. Too slow, too fast. Hissing, buzzing, static, noise, and silence. Your mind is a kicked hive with the angry wasps, bees, hornets, vipers, snakes. They stir quickly and violently, beating themselves against the inside walls of your think pan and your eyelids and your sanity and your self.
It always happens suddenly. One moment your mind is the fractured plane, an echo of itself. Its functions are wrong and algorithms run like a three legged bark beast. A fumbling bark beast, lost and stumbling on fragile legs, high on soporifics. For a moment you think yourself whole and then you click, you click, YOU CLICK, CLICK, CLICK. There’s a chink, there’s a break, there’s a splinter and nothing is working how it should. Down is blue, up is five, and reason is a pit. You say things, shout things, say things. Words flood from your mouth like honey colored blood all that time ago. Sweeps and sweeps and sweeps and—CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.
No one understands how to handle the clicks, the clicks, the CLICKS. When you click they look at you like an animal. As if Mituna is gone and instead a hoof beast is in your think pan, destroying everything in its path. But it’s not a hoof beast. It’s wasps and bees and hornets and vipers and snakes and CLICK, CLICK, CLICKS. The clicks set them off, set them buzzing and hissing and spitting and biting. They make your words turn to twitches and ticks and shouts and incoherence. They beat against your skull and your eyes and sometimes it feels like the only thing that keeps them in is the visor of your helmet.
Kurloz understands. Usually he is absent. Ever since his accident—not yours, his before the clicks—he is more distant. He still cares, still listens, still helps you soothe the hives and nests and vipers and bees. He was there when the honey colored blood poured from your mouth and your eyes and the scars on your face were fresh and oozing. He still hasn’t told anyone what happened and you’re in no hurry to tell. But sometimes he misses the clicks, the clicks, the click, CLICK, CLICKS. When he’s there, the clicks are oft missing. The wrinkles that aren’t wrinkles but fractures and fissures and cliffs are bridged. Your think pan still runs like a three legged bark beast but it is no longer clumsy and fragile with legs of glass. The soporifics have worn off and the bark beast is only a bit unstable and no longer the click, click, click. But he is often not there and so there is no one who can bridge the breaks.
Everyone else is scared of the clicks. The way they happen without warning, how there’s no signs. They’re almost as frightening to them as they are to you. The clicks blindside them and take them by surprise. But they sucker punch you, knock you down, beat you and leave you quaking in aftershocks. No one understands the click, click, clicks from little Mituna’s head.
But that’s not right. Latula understands better than you do. She wasn’t there when your think pan was flooded with pain and your eyes were blinded by the flowing honey blood. You haven’t told her but you always apologize, always sorry for the clicks, the clicks, THE CLICKS. Tulip is almost always there for the clicks, when the vipers and the hornets beat against your eyes and bite and sting at your sanity. You see the way her brow furrows and her eyes become sad whenever you apologize. She’s given up telling you, “It’s okay ‘Tuna babe.” Instead she lets you apologize and instead of saying anything, she takes off your helmet and brushes the hair away from your eyes so she can see them and the scars and the sadness in her eyes is lost to you when you see the love in her smile.
With Latula the clicks don’t hit so hard. They still blindside you and knock you down, but they don’t leave you reeling quite as hard or as long. She’s mastered the dance, mastered dodging the click, click, clicks. She knows reacting too soon or too strongly will make the clicks, the clicks, the CLICKS. Hit harder and then you get mad at the clicks but take it out on her. And when it’s over you apologize and it all happens the same way it always does. But whenever she acts too fast and you take it out on her, whenever you try to say you’re sorry, she says it first. It’s not fair to her, not fair to you, not fair to anyone. But especially not to her.
Acclimation had been difficult for her and frustrating for you. She had to get used to the clicks and learn how to work them. She had to learn everything and at first it felt less like you were matesprits and more like she was auspisticing between you and the clicks. It made you mad as she loved you the same but she walked on eggshells, fearful of the click, click, clicks.
But Latula knows you, feels you, loves you. She learned fast and then the auspisticism was gone and you felt properly flushed again. Nothing went back to the way it had been, nothing would be the way it had been. Not with the wasps and bees and hornets and vipers and snakes and—CLICKS. It was better and it was worse. She learned to take care of you, how to snap your helmet just so, how to zip your bodysuit, and how to touch you again.
She learned how to react when you would wake in the middle of the night in a fit. Smashing out of the recuperacoon, drenched in sopor slime that couldn’t keep you calm long enough to sleep a whole night or day or sweep or moment. Latula learned how to hold you and calm you and pet you and whisper to you until your hyperventilation subdued into trembling breaths and your twitches and the SCREAMING CLICK, CLICK, CLICKS ironed out to a smoother plane.
She learned how to brush away your bangs and kiss your forehead while you still trembled and quaked in the aftermath of the most recent fracture. You would hiss and curse and she would smile and touch you gently and help you undress. She learned to steady you as she helped you into the ablution trap to wash the slime from your unsteady frame. She would take off her glasses and would undress as well, following you into the ablution trap, settling with you. She learned how to bathe you without making you feel pitiable but you would still apologize and she would still hush you with a smile and a kiss and a touch.
And as she would work her fingers through your hair and rinse it clean you would mumble and curse and at first you would spew angry words directed at your other friends. Never Tulip or your moirail, but everyone else. But soon your words would turn right around and you were shouting your anger at yourself and your self-loathing came out like a severed artery and it was one of the times when you could feel a CLICK, CLICK, CLICK coming and so could she. So she would kiss you hard and then the CLICKS would stop, as if someone had stopped a gun from firing and instead you couldn’t focus on your self-loathing because your fractured mind of wasps and bees and hornets and vipers and snakes and three legged soporific addled bark beasts was focused for once. On her and her lips and her touch.
And she learned how to calm you and soothe you and while Kurloz could bridge the gulches and valleys and ravines and fractures, he couldn’t soothe the aftermath the way Latula did. With Kurloz you were lucid, with Latula you were fractured and whole.