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 Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 10:46 pm
 Amut leaned back against her pillow and crunched on a wintergreen mint. It was calm now—calm and quiet. Snow was falling past the window and onto the ground outside. It was as if the world was awakened anew. Dawn was still a few hours away, but as far as Amut was concerned, it could take its time. She wanted time to process it all. She wanted time to think about it. She wanted to relax and to savor this moment, the beautiful woman curled up against her side, the way the world felt, the falling snow, the gentle sound of breathing through the room.
Amut’s ears twitched. No—there was another sound in the room, one that wasn’t breathing (at least not normal breathing). The sound was accompanied by a shaking at her side and by something wet falling on her bare shoulder. Ebene was crying! Why? Why was she upset? Oh, Nine—had Amut done something wrong? That was it, wasn’t it? She’d hurt Ebene, and now Ebene was crying, and things weren’t going to be alright, and she wouldn’t be able to savor the moment because she’d made a horrible mistake and been a humongous heel to her best friend…
The med student turned on her side and wrapped her arms around her trembling, softly sobbing roommate and pulled her close to her chest. “Ebene,” she whispered. “Ebene, what’s wrong, dear? Are you okay?”
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 10:47 pm
 Ebene felt happy. Really, actually happy. Soft skin, soft fur—a warm body and a warm heart to share it all with. How could she not be happy? She wanted to lie here forever, lie here and soak in the joy and the love—yes, the love she felt!—and never, ever let it end. She’d never known that all of this—all of it, all of the little things as well as the big things—could feel so good, even if she’d hoped that it would. And that’s when things started to crash down for her.
She’d never expected to be able to feel like this. No one had ever told her that it would feel like this—no one had told her about the butterflies, or the shy glances, or the laughter—laughter! Yes! A happy, joyous sound, and no one had told her that it would get involved? That joy would be let loose into the world? No! No, they hadn’t! They’d told her that she was a mistake, that she wasn’t supposed to exist, that she was just a raw mockery of a person. They’d told her that she was incomplete, and worst of all—worst of all—they’d told her that her emotions were wrong, forbidden, impossible! They’d told her that she’d never feel like this and that she should never want to feel like this, they’d told her oh, so many things, and she—she’d believed them! She’d believed them that because of her father’s inadequacy, that because of her other father’s pride, that she was a broken and malformed creature that should be kept away from happiness—
Ebene couldn’t answer Amut. She was crying too hard. All she could do was wrap her arms around Amut’s, locking her elbows around her roommate’s wing joints and trying to remember not to dig her claws in. She lay there for a long time, sobbing and crying and shaking and trying desperately to throw off the sadness.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 10:54 pm
Amut couldn’t stand to see her friend like this. She was so sad, and so upset—this wasn’t right! Her Ebene—er, her friend, Ebene—was calm. Sometimes she showed a lack of self-confidence. Sometimes she acted like she didn’t think she could do anything well. Sometimes she acted in ways that confused and confounded the other Hallowed, but never once had she had a total breakdown. Amut’s only comfort was that the way that Ebene clung to her clearly told her that Ebene wasn’t angry at her. Apparently, she hadn’t done anything wrong—whatever this was, it was an inner devil to exorcise, not an outer monster to fight.
In the meantime, Amut did as a good doctor did. She listened to her patient, paid attention to her breathing and the signs of stress. As a good friend, she held Ebene close and stroked her hair. She murmured soft, soothing noises and occasionally rubbed Ebene’s back, right between those double shoulder blades. The sobbing would subside eventually. In the meantime, Amut prepared herself to answer any questions in a diplomatic way—she prepped her tones and inflections like she prepped her scalpels and forceps, with crisp precision. She wanted to be prepared to help out her friend when she needed it. She wanted to be ready to help out in any way she possibly could.
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 10:56 pm
The pain in her heart slowly started to subside, and Ebene found herself relaxing again. It was a slow process, though—she’d calm down, then remember something else, some painful incident or some casual remark that cut her to the bone, and she’d recommence her crying all over again. Amut’s shoulder was soaked, as was the pillow. Ebene took a deep breath. If she was starting to care about all of that, then she was starting to come back to herself. She wanted to come back to herself. She wanted to return to normal and to stop worrying her roommate. And yet, among the mantras Amut was chanting, Ebene caught “take your time” repeated over and over again. Yes. Take her time. In her own time, Ebene would tell Amut what was wrong and why she was crying so much.
Just…how to tell her how she felt and why? How do you broach that subject with your friend, especially after a night like tonight? How could you disturb the serenity that came from…all of that by asking deep, personal questions, and spilling out all of that ugly black tar in your heart? I guess it’s too late to be asking questions like that, Ebene thought. I’ve already ruined the evening by crying so much.
Ebene took another deep breath. “Amut,” she croaked, “what was it like growing up for you, as a—as a Hallowed?”
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 10:57 pm
Not…the question that Amut had anticipated, but okay? The way that Ebene asked her told her that this was a very important question, and that she should consider it carefully. It also told her that her friend had been about to say something but thought better of it. “You mean as a mutant?” Amut said. She stared out over Ebene’s head to the other side of their dorm room. “You can say mutant around me—I don’t really care about it. It doesn’t offend me, is what I mean—I’m mutant and proud!”
It was a quote from a popular comic book. Amut smiled, then let her face return to its natural position as she considered the question. “My childhood was…pretty good, all things considered. I mean…yeah, I went through a stage of being mad at Santa Claws because he didn’t bring me a pony for Winter Solstice, but nothing…bad, y’know?”
She shifted onto her back, pulling Ebene with her. She brushed the hair out of Ebene’s third eye and looked into it. She knew now that Ebene’s eye was as good as her other eyes—she could see out of it just fine. That wasn’t totally unusual, but there were some people who didn’t have optic nerves in their supernumerary eyes, so Amut had been prepared for it to be blind. But nope! It could see…
“As for being Hallowed?” Amut took a deep breath. “Well, I guess my experience was…different than anyone else’s.” She tilted her head. “Have I told you about my parents yet, Ebene?”
Ebene shook her head. “Well,” Amut said, “I have two mothers, Typhona and Tiamat. Tiamat’s a Chimera, and she’s Hallowed. Both of her parents were Chimeras, too, and both of them were Hallowed. That’s where I get my fangy mouth from, that whole family line. Anyway, at least one of my grandparents, that is, Tiamat’s parents, had a parent from the cache. No one’s really sure, but there’s some photos in really old yearbooks that look a lot like we do, so we think that we’re descended from some cache children who awakened a stone in October. So…basically, my mother, Tiamat, wasn’t awakened in October. She’s actually a June baby. I inherited some of my hallows, my mutations or whatever, from her, and she inherited them from her parents, who were awakened in October. They met because they were Hallowed and they kind of…grew close to each other. Growing up with so many Hallowed family members was…different.”
She shook her head. “Ack, I’m forgetting my other mother! That’s Typhona, the one who isn’t a math whiz. Typhona was awakened in October, and she never really felt like she fit in. She grew up in Auster during the big sand storm, so she never really knew why she was a ‘freak’ until the sandstorm ended and she came up north. That’s where she learned where the whole Hallowed thing came from. She spent a while being really angry at all the ‘Northerners’ for ruining her childhood, because she got bullied a lot for her eyes. People just…never left her alone about them. Typhona came north and met Mama and they’ve been together ever since.”
Amut shifted again. “I guess what I’m saying is that as a kid, I was raised to think that being Hallowed wasn’t a big deal, and that worrying too much about it was a waste of time. My mothers told me that I shouldn’t care what other people think, that people would always judge the parents of a Hallowed kid without getting to know them first, because they’d always assume that a Hallowed kid came from an abusive family. I guess that’s why I don’t care what other people think of me. Because it never mattered as a kid, so…why should it matter now?”
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 10:58 pm
Ebene listened to it all and absorbed it. She knew Tiamat, sort of. Tiamat knew lots of things about math (she had some job in business—accounting, maybe? She wasn’t sure. She did know that Typhona was a lawyer, but other than that, she was just lost), so sometimes Ebene would call Tiamat up for help on math. To her surprise, her roommate’s mother had turned out to be quite sweet, and ready to help a complete stranger work through a difficult math problem. But Ebene had never seen a picture of either of Amut’s mothers. She’d never realized that they were both Hallowed as well as their daughter—she’d never considered that Amut might not have been awakened in October! Sure, October had gone by with no sign of a birthday celebration, but Ebene had just assumed that, like so many other Hallows, she might not want to discuss it. Certainly Ebene never discussed it (though having your birthday on Haunted Hallows did make it a little easier to hide).
Before she could lose the courage to speak, Ebene opened her mouth. “My parents told me that Hallowed kids should never, ever have children, because they’d all die.” She swallowed. Amut had gone stiff around her. “They told me that because I was infertile, no battery could ever help me to conceive.” Ebene clenched her fists. “They told me that love was impossible for ‘people like me,’ and they never let me watch anything with romance in it, ever. Not even cartoons or movies. If it had a romantic subplot, I couldn’t watch it. They didn’t want me ‘getting ideas,’ they said.”
Ebene’s tail was full-on lashing now and her ears were flat against her head. “My parents told me all of this, and the worst thing is, I believed them. I believed them that I was infertile, I believed them that I couldn’t feel love, and that I should suppress my—desires, and that I could only ever adopt children, never actually have them, imbue them into stones, awaken children of my own flesh and magic.”
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 10:59 pm
Amut went stiff after Ebene’s first sentence. That was not what she was expecting. It was not. Funny how Ebene could surprise her so much. She was so very good at surprising Amut.
Amut was thinking inconsequential things. Silly things. Just little…reminisces. Anything to keep her own tail from lashing and to keep her from roaring in rage. She’d known that Ebene didn’t like to talk about her family—she’d known that Ebene had a family, but only through little subtle gestures and mentions that Ebene made, the way she hesitated when she talked about some things, the things she said—and the things she hadn’t said. But this? All of this? Someone had told Ebene all of this, when she was a teenager, when she was a child? They had lied to her? Her own parents—the people who were supposed to be bolstering Ebene’s confidence, not tearing it down…
Amut had heard warnings before that as a doctor she’d run into people that would make her want to commit acts of violence. Patients that deserved jail time, or guardians who came across as abusive even if there was no court-worthy evidence of it. But she hadn’t expected to encounter it before she’d even gone into residency!
Ebene’s claws were digging into her back, probably leaving marks—or even drawing blood. Amut didn’t mention it. The pain helped distract her from her rage, and besides, considering their evening, it was easily explained away. Let Ebene vent. Let her vent her rage and her frustration and all of the loneliness of a neglected, abused child. Let her find composure on her own time—Amut could stand this, and she would stand by Ebene while she found the closure she needed.
When Ebene finally fell silent, Amut tried to think of what to say. “So, you,” she said slowly. “Your parents told you that you were…infertile and that you should asexual and aromantic, and that any feelings to the contrary were…mistaken?” She waited for Ebene to nod, then continued. “Your parents are abusive,” she said flatly. “I hope you weren’t planning to visit them for the solstice.”
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 11:00 pm
Ebene made a face. “No,” she said firmly. “I am not going back to them. Ever. I don’t even want to talk to them after everything they said—and did—to me.” She gently disentangled herself from Amut. To her shock and chagrin, she realized that her claws hadn’t been digging into her palms—they’d been digging into Amut’s wing joints. “Oh dear, oh, Amut, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—” She fell silent as her friend’s finger fell across her lips. When the finger was removed, Ebene sat up carefully, wrapping her hand gently around Amut’s hand.
“I didn’t even realize I was being abused until this year,” Ebene said. “It’s funny, isn’t it? I thought abuse was all, like, beating people and doing horrible things to them—physically, or locking them in basements or poisoning them. I didn’t realize that—that taking away their identity? That telling them that what they want to do is impossible and that any sign that they can is just false hope? I never realized all of that was abuse. I hate it, Amut—I hate it so much!” She wiped away fresh tears with her free hand. “I want to have children, Amut! I think I’ve always wanted to have children.” She squeezed her friend’s hand. “They said I was infertile, but I’m not—I found out this spring. I’m not infertile, I’m a battery, by the Nine, and that’s when I realized that everything they’d ever told me was a lie, Amut!”
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 11:04 pm
Amut didn’t want Ebene dwelling on her injury. She wanted Ebene to keep talking, to let the pain drain out like fluid from an abscess. She also wanted Ebene to talk to a therapist after all of this, but therapists didn’t work at—goodness, was it two in the morning already? Time flies, I guess.
Amut sat up with Ebene. She was glad when Ebene took her hand—it gave her something to hold onto, something to comfort with. She took Ebene’s hand with both of hers, letting Ebene hold one of them and stroking the back of Ebene’s hand with the other, the fine, velvety fur that marked the transition from furry wrist to bald hand. “I’m glad you figured out who you really are, Ebene,” she murmured. “I think you’ll make a very good mother someday. You’re very understanding, you’re attentive, you notice details—your parents were morons as well as abusive nitwits if they didn’t see all of that.”
Amut hesitated. She had an idea—something that might help Ebene. But it was sort of a delicate subject—how to broach it? “You could—if you wanted to, I mean—you could imbue a stone,” she said. “It would be tricky, since they don’t let children live in the dorms with us. So you’d have to wait to awaken them until you moved to another place, or you’d have to give them up for adoption—I don’t know what all of the options are. But, well, you’re in college now—you’re old enough to imbue a stone. Heck, you could even do a partial imbue, donate some magic!” She grinned. “You’re a battery, too, so, what about volunteering at a fertility clinic?”
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Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2017 11:06 pm
Ebene watched Amut’s hand as if mesmerized. She snapped back to attention. “Yes,” she said. “I think my parents were very poorly informed especially if they thought they could keep me down.”
The idea of imbuing a stone was intoxicating, especially for someone like Ebene. Creating life when once she’d been told she could only create death…it was…yes…she wanted to do it. But she didn’t want to halfass it. The idea of the life she’d created going out into the world, invisible, where she couldn’t see it, touch it, feel it, love it? That was as bad as being infertile. She didn’t want to just donate magic or just work at a fertility clinic! She wanted to watch a child grow, to nurture them… and yet, she couldn’t keep them here, that was true. She could wait? But she didn’t want to wait, she wanted to move now, move forward, see beautiful things, watch a child grow, watch a child become, watch a child, have a child, make a child…
“Amut,” Ebene gasped. “Would you imbue with me?” It made perfect sense to her—Amut had helped her out, helped her become what she wanted to be. She’d been Ebene’s first friend that she could be honest with, and though she hadn’t known her for long, Ebene already knew that this would be a friendship that would last a lifetime. “I don’t know what we’d do with a child, you’re right, we can’t keep children here, but I want to imbue stones with you, please!”Amut blinked. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Then she opened it again. Then—she closed it. Um…what to say…? What to say to this brilliant person, so cute and so prim? Someone she loved talking with and spending time with, who was helping her to learn how to dance? “I’d love to imbue with you,” she said slowly. “I guess you don’t want them to be adopted out, then… I could ask my parents for—”
Then the idea came to her. “Wait! Let me ask my parents. We might be able to keep our children at their house—I don’t know, they might not want children around…” She looked into Ebene’s eyes, all three of them, which were watching her with a wordless hope. “I’ll ask them,” she said, squeezing Ebene’s hand. “Let’s make this happen, Ebene.”
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