Astra made her way slowly towards Emilia, her entire form screaming of a child who knew they were in trouble—except, Astra clearly wasn’t a child. If her magic had been less powerful, Emilia might have assud she was like Zach’s and his daughter: a descendant of a visitor who had been born with regular hearing and potentially the ability to speak. Astra’s magic was powerful, however, and when Emilia had heard the girl cry out for her, in those monts before she slamd into the platform, her lower body sliding under the burning liquid, it was like a piece of a puzzle sliding into place.
Sweet little Astra wasn’t quiet because that was her personality, nor because she was traumatized by what had happened in Livery. She was quiet because she couldn’t speak the local tongue because the little girl was a visitor.
A visitor with magic.
Emilia watched the little girl—could she even be considered that anymore? Her body might be that of a child, but she had to be in her mid-teens, at the least, and could be far older than that. Emilia… really hoped not. It was already going to be weird enough, reconciling the child she had been sleeping beside, showering with and taking to the bathroom with whatever—whoever—she actually was.
Realistically, she should feel betrayed, disgusted, violated. She didn’t, and when the girl finally reached her, after nearly an hour of mapping out a longer path because her small legs would never be enough for her to make the jumps Emilia had, all she was was sad and confused.
Astra scuffed a foot over the invisible platform. Emilia stared her down, pulling out mories of her own mother staring her children into submission. She wasn’t Astra’s mother, no matter how close they had grown in the last few days, but when the girl broke down in tears it just seed the normal thing to do, opening her arms for the girl to collapse into her.
“I’m sorry,” Astra sobbed into her neck. “I didn’t an to— I just—” The girl broke off into more sobs, and either she was an excellent actor, or she really was a young teenager. Still a baby, practically. Much too young to be inside this ga, even if the local children were also here and without any control over their fate as pawns of the platform and its administrator.
“Astra…” Emilia sighed, eyes locking onto a very concerned Gale and Caro, now sitting several tres from shore.
They had been told what was happening via a note from Astra because apparently she also had that gift. Neither had had much to say about her revelation that she could speak—that she had scread Emilia’s na before she began to burn—but they had accepted that she needed to go to heartcore as well—more than likely, anyways.
⸂She says she touched the heartcore in the last labyrinth, too,⸃ Gale had muttered as she read the ssage, Emilia grateful that she had left her notebook behind before she took off. It was too valuable to risk losing to the flas of the lake.
Astra had touched that heartcore as well, and while they could wait for Emilia to touch it—assuming she could walk, sothing she hadn’t risked trying as she waited for Astra. The children had decided Astra needed to co right away. Apparently, she’d already been worried she would need to touch it—that she’d have to fess up to her lie of omission once Emilia touched the heartcore and the doors still refused to open.
Far away and burnt out from her experience, Emilia had been inclined to wait.
Now, she waited again for Astra to cry herself out. Cool tears soaked the collar of her sweater, a loose pink thing that was too hot for either traversing over the lake or having a child curled into her. She wasn’t about to dislodge Astra, however. For one thing, doing so would risk tossing the girl overboard. For another, this was still Astra. Sweet little Astra, who had attached herself onto her within monts of eting. Adorable Astra, who refused to go anywhere without her.
Astra, who had word her way into Emilia’s heart, and now… now Emilia didn’t know what to think.
“Astra,” Emilia tried again when the girl’s sobs had finally shifted into sniffles. “Is that your real na?”
Astra nodded into her neck, little hands tightening into the fabric of her sweater.
“How old are you, Astra?”
The girl hesitated for so long that Emilia wasn’t sure she would—or perhaps even could—answer. Then, a soft, “Almost fifteen,” reached her ears.
It could be a lie. Astra could be a grown ass man, pretending to be a cute child for so weird, perverted reason. Emilia didn’t want to think that. Emilia wanted to believe the child she had gotten to know so well since they first t, despite their lack of actually speaking to one another—
No, that wasn’t true. Astra did speak to her in broken sign language—in her sign language—occasionally. Not often, but it was a difficult thing, to pick up a language without any understanding—understanding Emilia had taken away when V was taken away. Where previously she had been speaking and signing, there had been no need to speak without V there, and quickly her words had fallen away.
Emilia’s mind raced, spinning back through that first part of the labyrinth, before things had turned to ashes and disappearances. It wasn’t important, to know how much Astra had learned in those first few hours, but the reality that much of what the girl could sign had been spoken and signed in those first few hours…
Well, Emilia felt a little stupid for not realizing earlier that sothing was up with Astra—sothing that couldn’t just be explained away as a trauma response. A dozen little monts lined themselves up in her mind, a trail leading to Astra being a visitor.
“You’re only a little older than Gale, then,” Emilia gently teased, adding that as far as she’d seen, kids in this world matured a lot faster than kids in their own world. “I’d say you’re closer to Benny’s age, maybe even Caro’s, if we wanted a comparison of maturity.”
Astra pulled back, frowning severely at Emilia. “I am not as immature as either of them.”
“No?”
“No.”
Emilia levelled a look at her, one eyebrow cocked in silent question. Astra fidgeted, her weight shifted between Emilia’s thighs, her eyes flicking this way and that.
“I just…” the girl started to say. Her mouth opened and closed several tis in aborted attempts to find her words before finally she buried herself back into Emilia’s neck.
They sat there for a long mont, Emilia gently rubbing Astra’s back the way she had done so many tis before when the girl was sad, scared, unable to sleep. “Are you a girl?” she finally asked, since at least she was getting answers to her direct questions.
Astra pulled back again. “Would it matter?” she asked, looking genuinely confused, perhaps the clearest proof that she probably wasn’t lying: teenagers in their world often didn’t realize what pigs people could be when it ca to people they were attracted to. n—and even more so boys—were often the worst, although there had been one particularly pushy woman who had hit on both her and Nettie during the war. Then, that hitting on and simply flirting beca sothing more—sothing dangerous and threatening and just fucking creepy. Rafe, who had been unsure of where and how he fit into the war, had appeared and made them regret their decision to harass her and Nettie, then just sort of never left.
“I suppose both n and won can be creepy,” Emilia explained, wondering how to explain it to the teenager. She might have been joking around a bit when she ntioned Astra being closer to Caro and Benny in age, but it wasn’t a complete joke. Teenagers at Astra’s age, having just received their Censors and still learning how they and the world worked, were often closer in their understanding of things to the children of this world. That quickly changed, as they used their Censors to learn and explore the world, but before then…
“I know that,” Astra said, and to Emilia, it really did sound like she ant it, so she contented herself to stare the girl down, waiting for her to understand. The wait was worth it when Astra’s eyes blew wide, red spreading over her deep brown skin. “Oh…”
“Oh, indeed,” Emilia said, watching the wheels continuing to turn in the young girl’s head.
“I didn’t— I an—” Astra tried to say, stumbling over her words.
“Mn?” Emilia humd. It was a bit an to tease the girl, but considering the days of lies between them, it was at least a little deserved.
Astra released a long, high-pitched whine before burying herself once more in Emilia’s neck. “I didn’t do or think about anything like… that,” she squeaked out, so embarrassed that Emilia wondered if she’d had any sex-ed yet.
Normally, children in Baalphoria were given the basic details of such things over the course of their childhood and teens. By the ti they had their Censors installed, they usually knew everything there was to know, at least about regular, vanilla sex. Talking about sex—being able to say the words and not ‘that’—normalized sex, and sex was a completely normal part of life. At least, it was in Baalphoria.
Emilia knew of a handful of Free Colonies where sex was viewed as a much more private, if not downright sinful, act. A few of those Free Colonies had chosen to continue using Censors after the war. So had even made them a requirent—much like they were in Baalphoria—but most had made them optional. Optional or not, they allowed those people access raid platforms, although that access was limited if they weren’t physically in Baalphoria.
Flipping back through her mory—and fucking stars did Emilia miss the perfect recall of her Censor—to the rules of this raid—or more to the legal jargon that hadn’t been relevant to her—Emilia couldn’t rember seeing anything about a citizenship or locale requirent, just like there hadn’t been an age requirent. So private raids had such things, and virtually all public ones did, but it was very possible this one did not.
Emilia contemplated Astra as the girl continues mumbling into her neck about all the things she hadn’t done—apparently now that she had realized the biggest issue with how they had been behaving around each other, her mind was running her back through their life together and tagging every potentially inappropriate mont.
The girl’s language was a little odd—not so much that she would have imdiately assud she was from the Free Colonies, but enough that if she said she was, Emilia wouldn’t have thought her accent or language barrier completely gone. There had also been a number of monts over the last few days where she had done sothing odd, and Emilia had just assud it was a local custom—apparently not so much.
So, likely from the Free Colonies, then. This ti, when Emilia asked the girl outright where she was from, however, she refused to answer.
“I’m not supposed to talk about it,” was all Emilia could get out of her. She was tempted to push a bit more, but the crack in Astra’s voice told her it wouldn’t be worth it—she might get her answer, but sothing between her and the girl would shift, potentially irreparably.
That was fine, it really didn’t matter, expect to sate her own curiosity. What she did want an answer to, however, wasn’t sothing she would be so easily shaken from.
Thankfully, Astra seed to realize that as well, and while it took several long minutes for her to answer, Emilia did eventually get an answer to her question of why.
Why do this?
Why not tell ?
What was in it for you?
Was it worth it?
Are you satisfied?
She didn’t ask all those questions, of course, instead sticking to, “Astra, can you tell why you decided to pretend to be a local child? Why you— why you stuck so close to , all this ti?”
When Astra answered, it wasn’t what she had been expecting. What had she been expecting? Emilia wasn’t really sure, but it wasn’t for the girl to tell her she’d entered the raid on a whim.
“I’m young, obviously. I was told not to enter the raid. I did it anyways.” Astra shrugged, like it wasn’t a big deal, and Emilia wondered if her parents would learn their lesson from this: you don’t just tell a child not to enter a raid, you set their Censors so they can’t—not without hacking them, anyways.
“I decided to make myself a child. I—” she broke off, and after a mont of silence told Emilia that she knew why she had decided to beco a child, but didn’t want to talk about it, sothing dark and scary winding through her voice. “The Risen Guard just thought I was a lost local kid, especially since I ca in a little after the main group, and then I got away. I went through a labyrinth, another. Then I was in Livery.”
“And got caught up in the stampede.”
“Yeah. Benny ca to help , and I panicked. I didn’t want him to die trying to protect , especially since I didn’t need help. Then you picked us up.”
Emilia humd as she was given a breakdown of the girl’s ti in the raid. It was good to know, although she wondered if Astra had gotten help from anyone, especially in her trek through multiple labyrinths. Certainly, soone at so point had helped her, as soone had known her na—passed it on to their child who had passed it on to their group in the Livery Labyrinth.
It was possible she’d only gotten help in Livery, however, as the labyrinths certainly were sothing that could be done alone, from what she’d seen. Mostly, they just seed sothing difficult to find, if you didn’t know they existed—although, perhaps from the point of view of soone who raided often—and despite the newness of her Censor, Astra did admit she’d already spent a few years in-raid—they were obvious.
At the sa ti… Well, if Astra ca from a Free Colony that utilized their cores, she wouldn’t be surprised. It seed like people who knew how to use their cores were fairing far better in this raid than normal Baalphorians—although who knew! Maybe, sowhere out there, there was a group of normal Baalphorians facing the raid just fine!
Sohow, that seed unlikely.
“I…” The hesitation in the girl’s voice was back, her words coming in starts and stutters that broke Emilia’s heart, especially when the words ca together to form a story of a child who had never felt loved by her own mother.
“You treated the way I think a mother should. My own mother never treated with love. She mostly pretended she couldn’t see . I just wanted to know what it was like, to be loved and cared for like that, for once.”
Emilia pulled Astra back to her then. It would have been nice, to think the girl lying—to believe that she was just concocting a story, trying to pull on her heartstrings so she wouldn’t dump her into the lake. She didn’t think Astra was lying, and instead, all she was left with was an aching heart for a child who was unloved and had grasped onto a small thread of affection and pulled, hoping to find sothing that her life was missing, even if just briefly.
Astra sniffled into her neck, and Emilia's eyes clamped shut, her own loveless childhood shuddering through her—her own love and longing for her parents swirling within her. She had escaped that terrible, empty childhood when she was six, and even that had been too long. This girl had experienced it for more than twice that, and if she could have, Emilia would have gathered her up and hidden her away from that pain.
She couldn’t, though, not unless a thousand strings of fate wound together to let her sohow take this child away from her loveless mother—and who knew if Astra even wanted that. The girl could have siblings and friends, aunts and uncles who loved her the way every child deserved. Emilia didn’t—wouldn’t—know, not without asking questions that Astra clearly didn’t want to answer—not right now, anyways.
Outside the raid was difficult, filled with laws and treatise and howork and trauma she couldn’t escape. Outside was… complicated. Here, inside this raid, though? That was easy—it was easy to hug Astra closer and whisper into her hair that she was there, that she wasn’t going anywhere.
It was easy to sit there and let the girl break, tension she probably hadn’t known her little body was holding, over the reality that Emilia might regret her, crashing outwards in wet, heartrending sobs.
Here, it was easy. Too bad that easy would end, eventually.
User Comments
0 comments from readers