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In for four, hold for six, out for eight. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Mizi’s good at breathing exercises the way she’s good at anything that moves her body. Ivan’s like Sua; they can sit stock still and staring for hours if they have to. It drives Mizi crazy; she has to move or she’ll die. She’d thought Till might get it, always lashing out and rolling around, bouncing his leg along to the beat of his stylus against the desk until they’d taken even that away from him - but no. She’d seen him still as anything, shading shading shading a drawing he never lets her see. He draws it all the time. He’s drawing it now.
“Do you think he hates me?” Mizi asks when she finishes the cycle, lightheaded. She likes how floaty she feels after, like she’s put more out in the world than she’s taken in. Her eyes flicker over to the shadow by the tree on the hillside. Till’s always in places like that, not-quite out of eyeline.
“Probably,” Sua says. She says it in the same way she says she doesn’t want her dessert, really, Mizi, she couldn’t eat another bite and won’t it be a waste if Mizi doesn’t take it off her hands. Mizi doesn’t mind her lying then or now. Mizi loves every part of Sua.
“No one could hate you, Mizi,” Ivan says with his usual gorgeous smile. When did he get here? Mizi squints against the bright, artificial sun and white teeth. He could take out a classroom grinning at people like that.
“You really think so?” Mizi perks up. “I’d like to be friends.”
“I am sure he would want whatever you desire,” Ivan says smoothly. He’s always saying stuff like that, stuff that might come off flippant to someone else, but they’re not Mizi. Ivan is Mizi’s friend.
“Maybe… I don’t want him to get mad at me,” Mizi hedges. Sua snorts quietly. It’s cute.
“To be, or not to be, that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.” Ivan says, his voice taking on an unusual cadence.
“What’s that?” Mizi asks, interested.
“Homework,” Ivan reminds her.
“Classic literature, did you forget? We had to pick something for our independent project this week.” Sua touches her arm softly and Mizi flops over into Sua’s lap like she always does at the slightest invitation.
“I forgot,” Mizi agrees.
“A little on purpose, I think. It’s your worst subject,” Ivan teases.
“Sua!” The teacher is calling; they always want Sua to do things because she’s so smart. Mizi rolls onto her stomach in the grass and looks up at the sky.
“I’ll be back,” Sua says, dropping a little kiss on the top of Mizi’s head as she goes. She doesn’t say anything to Ivan, but that’s okay. Ivan’s looking away toward Till. He’ll drift off that way soon and Till will let him, they’ll sit together quietly instead of how Till gets all stiff and square whenever Mizi tries it.
“It’s not fair,” Mizi complains. “Everybody likes you. What’s your secret?”
“Doing my English homework. It’s all the rage.”
“Gah!” Mizi flops over, mortally wounded. “I’m brainless when it comes to that stuff, I can’t help it. Can’t you give me a little of your brains instead?”
“O, teach me how I should forget to think.” Ivan says, standing over her like a roof. She peers up at him.
“Is that the same as before?”
“No, the first one was Hamlet. What were you going to use?”
“Sua and I were going to do Wuthering Heights, I think.” Mizi sits up. “Should we do something else?”
“You ought to do your own work for once. It’s the last assignment, don’t you want to give it your best shot?” Ivan’s smile dips into sardonic, for a brief moment, he is not smiling at Mizi as if he likes her. He’s been making that face now and then ever since he saw the sign up sheet for the auditions.
“Okay,” Mizi says to cheer him up. “If you think it’s a good idea, sure! I’ll give it my best and I won’t even get Sua to help.”
“Try Romeo and Juliet,” he advises, back to normal again. “It’s only a quarter as long anyway.”
“My hero, my prince,” Mizi says fervently.
~~
It’s sad, she thinks, reading in fair Verona where we lay our scene. Mizi doesn’t really want to leave this beautiful place where she has been so happy. It’s lovely at home too, where Mizi can curl up in the warmth of Shine’s light, sinking into bone like a hot water bath. Those memories are full of sweetness and brightness, of the warm arms of her parents until Shine sent them off to a farm to retire. They had been getting older; her mother had arthritis in one wrist. Maybe Mizi can go for a visit once she finishes the competition.
For now she tries to hold on, seek happy nights to happy days so busy with graduation, rehearsals, and every hour second minute she can spend with Sua. Hazily she understands that Shine and Nigeh are on different worlds in different systems most of the time. Instead of just down the hall, Sua will be Somewhere Else. She can’t understand the distance any more than she can understand this silly play.
“I don’t get this,” Mizi complains during free study. She flicks her fingers across the holoscreen. “Till, do you get this?”
Till goes red all the way down the back of his neck. “Y-Yeah! Of course I do, I totally do, I uh. What is it?”
Mizi angles the screen his way, careful to keep enough distance that he doesn’t run away. Usually she misjudges.
“Oh, is this er… Shakespeare? I’m doing that too. It’s less about the words you don’t know and more like… how it sounds in the air. Kinda like music?”
“Did you pick Romeo and Juliet too?” Mizi asks, forgetting herself and leaning in close. Till backpedals like she’s on fire. Darn. He’s cute like this, though, like the little tamed squirrels they let loose in the Garden. Their little teeth looked so fierce that everyone was scared of them at first until Acorn caught one for Sua. Up close its teeth had been filed down dull and flat. Sua had made him let it go again.
“N-No! I did, ah, Titus Andronicus. It’s even shorter,” he brags, then forms an air guitar with his hands. “Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, blood and revenge are hammering in my head,” he sings in a growling voice and Mizi giggles.
“It suits you! How does it end?”
“Oh everybody dies, but they mostly had it coming,” Till says carelessly, letting his hands drop. “What’s yours? Romero something?”
“Romeo and Juliet. Same kind of thing, I think… but it’s sad. Do all of them end with everyone dying like that?” Mizi asks wistfully.
“Ivan said it’s like that. Um… tragedies everyone dies, comedies everybody gets m-m-married.” Till flips through the corner of his sketchbook nervously and it makes a soothing zrr zrr sound.
“They do get married in mine, but then they die anyway! It isn’t fair. I don’t think I could stand it.” Mizi frowns. “My only love sprung from my only hate, Too early seen unknown, and known too late!”
“Music,” Till agrees, repeating the line with a ba-bump bump of his fingers drumming against the desk. Across the room, the teacher supervising clears her throat sharply in their direction. Till just scowls but Mizi is suitably chastened when Sua jabs her sharply with a stylus one chair behind.
“The thing is,” Mizi says, lowering her voice and leaning in. Till freezes, like a one wrong move and she’ll eat him. “I don’t really understand. Love conquers all, right?”
“Huh?”
“Love wins,” Mizi says, impatient. “After you’re both in love, that’s the happy ending. The hard part is already over.”
“Not if you’re both on Alien Stage,” Till says, voice oddly flat. He leans back and doodles in the margins for the rest of the class.
~~
“Soft!” Ivan says, startling her. “What light-” here he clicks on the overhead lights, spilling a warm ambient glow through the room, “through yonder window breaks.”
“Oh, hi! It got dark,” she observes, surprised.
“It did. You’ll ruin your eyes reading like that.” He taps the corner of her glasses playfully, careful not to smudge the lenses.
“Heh.” She smiles up at him. “Guess I was thinking pretty hard.”
“Good girl, good girl,” Ivan says, patting her shoulder. “Where’s your shadow?”
“Sua? I think her Mother took her and her Sisters out for a walk.”
“How sweet. Enough about her, how far along are you? Need anything explained?” Ivan asks, slipping into the seat across from her, skimming through her notes upside down. Of course Ivan can read upside down, Ivan can do anything. His eyes flick around the room and out of the window, scanning for something. She wonders who he’s looking for.
“I don’t know, do I?” Mizi wonders. “I write and write but I’m not sure I understand it any more than when I started. I don’t even know what to ask for.”
“You must be desperate, if you were asking Till for help.”
“He said,” Mizi starts, then stops. Something tells her not to say what Till said to Ivan.
“I imagine he did,” Ivan says anyway. “He’s the type to think he’s Romeo. Crazy about a pretty face, always inches away from falling on his own sword.”
“Don’t you like Till?” Mizi asks, confused.
“I'll look to like, if looking liking move,” Ivan quips. “Anyway, Till isn’t Romeo. He’d rather die than live in exile.”
“You’d make a good Romeo,” Mizi teases. “All the girls want their very own Ivan.”
“You don’t need one of those, now do you, Juliet?” Ivan asks, leaning over to correct her spelling in two places.
“Am I Juliet?” Mizi asks, surprised.
“Of course you are,” Ivan says. “An exemplary Juliet.”
“Your charm-charm-love-love beam won’t work on me,” Mizi warns, though of course it does. He really is her favorite person here. Sua’s not just a person - she’s perfection.
“It is the east, and Mizi is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon-”
“I don’t want to kill anyone,” Mizi interrupts. “Juliet didn’t want anyone to die. I know Tybalt was being very naughty but he was still her family. Why did he act like that? Why couldn’t Romeo just be honest? It’s all headed to a happy ending and then people start to die. I don’t understand it at all, they’re in love, it should be fine.”
“And you said that to Till, did you? Or something along those lines, I suppose.”
“I did. Is he mad? Oh no, are you mad too?” Mizi tugs on Ivan’s sleeve, worried. He’s never been cross with her before.
“I’m not,” Ivan says reassuringly. “And I doubt he is either, County Paris sulking by the grave. Here, you’ve forgotten to quote this bit.” He highlights part of a paragraph.
“Why are you so nice to me?” Mizi asks, offhand.
“Because I feel like it.” Ivan stretches.
“Would you still be nice to me if you didn’t feel like it?”
“Yes,” Ivan says, standing up to push his chair in. It’s close to curfew. “I have other reasons too. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, etcetera. Neither exists in a vacuum, but both suffice to justify my efforts. It’s enough to say I’m enjoying myself as much as possible now.” He picks up her books to carry them for her without her even noticing.
“That’s so nice,” Mizi beams.
~~
When Sua comes back from her outing, she sneaks into Mizi’s room instead of going back to her own. Mizi raises her blanket to make room and they squish together on the bed. It was easier when they were younger and smaller, but this is somehow more exciting. Any movement could send one of them falling. Mizi clings tighter; if one of them falls, they both will.
Mizi listens with rapt attention as Sua tells her all about her day out. New outfits, photoshoots, a sumptuous meal at a five star resort where they let Sua eat on the floor between her Mother’s feet in the place of honor while her Sisters stayed tied out front. Sua doesn’t talk much usually; why should she have to when her big violet eyes have so much to say already? It’s special that she tells all this to Mizi whenever Mizi asks. Every word is a gift. Mizi finds herself drawn to them, looking down at Sua’s mouth. What a cute mouth.
“What a cute mouth,” Mizi says, unaccustomed to keeping any Sua thoughts to herself. “You’re so cute all over.”
“Not all over,” Sua says demurely. “That’s you, Mizi.”
“No way!” Mizi laughs. She sits up carefully and pulls off her nightdress. “Look at this bruise I got today,” she starts to say and then Sua touches her. It starts at the bruise along her ribs where she’d run smack into a pole trying to make it to music theory on time. Her fingers press into the side of it gently.
“Does that hurt?” Sua asks in a whisper. Mizi shakes her head. There’s another fading bruise further up, in the juncture between arm and shoulder, where Mizi had hit herself with a branch climbing trees and Sua touches it now. Mizi wasn’t supposed to climb trees, but the little squirrels had been harder to find recently and Mizi desperately wanted to pet one before she had to leave Garden behind. No matter how high she climbed, she couldn’t reach them.
“Here?”
“No,” Mizi says, her voice coming out croaky and strange. She feels hot even though she’s not wearing anything. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Sua’s hands gently cup Mizi’s chest. Sometimes Mizi feels restless lying in bed when she can’t sleep, the fabric of her nightdress strangely insistent against her skin. This is like that but worse - but better. Mizi’s breathing quickens.
They have kissed a hundred times before this, probably. It had been something fun to do, a bit of a trend. Mizi liked it the same way she liked giving piggy back rides or arm wrestling. She had thought it might be a good way to get closer to Till but Sua insisted it would be rude to ask him, it was a best-friends-only activity. Mizi had then thought Ivan might qualify but Sua had said no to that too. It was a Sua-and-Mizi-only activity. Mizi hadn’t understood why but Sua was cute when she asked for things like that so Mizi was happy to do as she said. Mizi would do anything for Sua.
“Kiss me?” Sua says shyly and Mizi does - her mouth, her nose, her ears, her toes, the juncture of her legs where she’s wet and soft inside. Afterward they lay together, skin to skin, and Mizi has never been happier.
“Oh let’s not sleep,” Mizi says impulsively, giving Sua a little shake when she closes her eyes. “It’s a waste. Arise, arise!”
“I’m awake, I’m awake,” Sua says, her eyes still shut. “You’ve been talking strange since you’ve been reading that play. If Ivan broke you, I’ll have to break him too.”
“I won’t break,” Mizi says solemnly. Sua opens her eyes then.
“I hope not,” she says, reaching out to touch the ends of Mizi’s long hair.
“What was your story like? For that assignment, I mean.” Mizi asks, anything to keep Sua a little longer.
“It’s a love story,” Sua says sleepily.
“Are they happy in the end?” Mizi asks, dropping a kiss on her temple.
“No,” Sua says. Mizi’s smile fades as Sua does, drifting off to sleep. After a little while, Mizi gets up and puts on her nightdress. She slips out of her room and down the corridor to outside. If the nanny-bots find her, they’ll scold her good. She slips and ducks and hides, remembering all the times she’s done this before. Once with Till, even. She’ll miss him, miss Ivan, miss Sua. Like reading the play and waiting for Sua to return, but not for hours. For days, weeks, months. Years?
Mizi could understand Juliet a little. It might be better lying in the tomb than waiting in Mantua.
Mizi makes it outside and runs for the highest hill, where a cluster of three trees made it harder to get picked up by the scanners. Ivan had taught her that, but then scared her stiff with stories about the Mizi-eater who would munch up any Mizis he found out of bed after curfew. It had scared her so bad she had nightmares for three days. Sua had been cross with him for weeks after. Mizi never had snuck out this way during the night before, as a matter of fact. Everything will be over soon, though. Mizi isn’t scared of anything.
Mizi lays down on the green, looking up at the sky between the leaves. The vast brightness of space shines through at night, clear through the dome of the artificial sky. Mizi raises her hand as though to touch one.
“When I shall die, take her and cut her into little stars,” Mizi murmurs, and then something wet and warm drips down from the trees above. It’s hard to see between the branches, dark against the brightness of the sky. Mizi sits up and looks down where it struck the center of her palm. It’s thick, and when she wipes it against her nightdress it leaves a dark stain. The air, usually cooled with the artificial scent of florals and herbs, has a metallic tang to it. In the trees above her, the leaves rustle and something makes a low long sound of mourning.
Mizi gets up. There’s no such thing as a Mizi-eater, she tells herself sternly. She puts her hand on a low hanging branch and walks her feet up the trunk. Her right foot skids a little in a wet patch but she grips even tighter, twisting her body into the climb.
It’s dark here too, so Mizi can only see darkness and movement within that darkness. A sudden brief flare of light shines from above as a meteor chooses this minute to fall into Anakt’s barrier. It burns ever so brightly, illuminating the green leaves, silvery trunk, brown fur and broken bloody bones of the squirrel mother eating her young.
~~
They take two at a time at the Garden hair salon, male and female. The bots bleach Mizi’s ends and begin feathering in the blue while next to her another painstakingly shaves the back of Ivan’s neck into sharp definition.
“Why did you tell me to read that play?” Mizi asks.
“It’s pretty,” Ivan answers. “I thought the irony would be lost on you. Did something happen?”
“I couldn’t find any squirrels,” Mizi says. “Sua should have kept that one.” A tear runs out of the corner of one eye and the bot detects her distress, gentling its movements slightly.
“Ah, but what would you feed it? The segyein didn’t know either. A silly oversight, wasn’t it? Artificial trees and grass and flowers without any pollen. They put out enough food every night for twenty squirrels, but squirrels are like people.” Ivan smiles in the mirror, checking his perfect teeth. “They breed.”
“I don’t understand,” Mizi says, impatiently flicking her tears away. She looks at her reflection, perfectly groomed and coiffed. Next to her, Ivan has also finished. He offers her his hand and she takes it. When he pulls her up to standing, she feels better on her feet.
“It’s only a story,” Ivan says kindly. “Let’s go and wait for the others, shall we?”
Sua and Till are next and while they wait, Ivan and Mizi sing. They’re just the silly little lilting songs from their first years at Garden, when they were still learning what made these sounds so different. Joyful little sounds, do re me fa so la ti do and birds birds blue birds, ghosts above those fields-
Mizi chokes a little on that last note and Ivan’s voice carries the melody for her. He holds her hand and finishes the song; in the meantime, the sun has begun to set. Eventually, Sua comes to take her away.
“Not going with your Mother today?” Mizi asks vaguely when Sua puts her to bed, her forehead all furrowed the way it does when Sua worries. Mizi reaches up to smooth it out and Sua kisses her fingers on the way back down.
“No, I want to stay with you our last night here. And Mother is busy, I think she’s looking to get a new little Sister for us. You know how she likes to keep an even number.”
Mizi frowns. “There’s eight now, though,” she says, trying to remember her math correctly.
“Are you worried about the first round? Is it nerves?” Sua asks. “I’ll be right there on stage with you so you don’t need to be afraid.”
“You will, won’t you?” Mizi says, smiling up at her. “Lie down with me?” Sua lets herself be pulled back into bed. Tomorrow they will leave the Garden for the stage hand in hand but tonight, like fire and powder, they kiss and consume.