Nico sliced open the sky, so thick with stars they spilled out over her head. She traced her glaive around the gibbous moon and through the constellations, from the brightest point of the scorpion tail to the nose tip of the howling jackal. Nico landed back on the ground with a shout. She lifted her leg and froze in poise, glaive held against her forearm. A cold wind blew across her heated, sweat-dampened skin.
Back in the Grankull, Nico often practiced her katas in the early morning to the sound of utter stillness before the world woke. In the Desert, however, she practiced to the loud and obnoxious sounds of Kelin and Azan having sex on the other side of the windship hull.
They were hardly ever discreet, so Nico might as well get some practice in while she was waiting them out.
Light footsteps curved around the hull. Nico settled out of her stance and planted the end of her glaive. The gibbous lit the soft roundness of Suri’s face as she came into view.
Nico asked knowingly, “Couldn’t sleep?”
Suri cringed at a particularly loud and reverent exclamation. Overhearing Kelin, you’d think Azan’s dick was some perfectly crafted gift to the world. But if it was, did it really need all that stroking?
Suri asked, wincing, “They do that every night?”
“Every. Night. I was convinced you could sleep through anything.”
Suri twiddled her fingers, embarrassed. “I only woke up because I had to pass water. Guess that’s the problem of sharing a room with two jihs most of your life. You learn to sleep through anything, and all the flames they sneak through the window.”
“You were always the good one,” Nico said. They both smiled at the inside joke. Suri’s siblings had always been the chatty bedside manner to Suri’s solitary experiments, the boisterous conversations to Suri’s whispered suggestions. Despite all the partners her siblings had brought in and out of the household while underage, Suri never said a word. Suri’s tah thought of Suri as the good one, but Nico had always known there was a quiet rebel in Suri’s bones.
Suri brushed her hair behind her ear. “Would you like a sparring partner?”
“Sure.”
Suri retrieved a spare spear from the windship and hiked up her sleep robe to tie around her thighs. Suri’s legs were long and reedy. Many of the Grankull considered persons too thin and narrow as unattractive, a clear marker of someone without a job and no rations. But Nico thought Suri beautiful, even when the spear didn’t sit as comfortably in Suri’s hands as her longbow. Suri tapped the polearm with fidgety fingers.
The wind whistled as they both dipped and circled their hands to their faces, signing “ready.” Both dropped into fighting stances.
In school, they were taught how to use the most basic weapons of the Grankull: a spear, a sword, and a bow. Suri hadn’t held a spear since those classes. Her basic forms couldn’t keep up with the fighting styles Ava-ta had drilled into Nico as a young child. But neither cared much for winning; the spar, for them both, was a means to waste time. They flowed through the motions like a duet, acting and reacting, building atop each other’s notes.
Nico made the mistake of performing a note too hard for Suri to follow. Suri’s spear rattled from her hand, knocked away by Nico’s reverse-grip thrust.
Nico shoved her polearm against Suri’s chest, pinning Suri to the hull, ending their song. Despite the light spar, Suri breathed heavily under the pole, her breath hot in the cold air. Suri licked her lips, and Nico’s eyes couldn’t help but to flick toward the motion.
Kelin and Azan had finished. The night finally quieted save for Suri and Nico’s hot puffs of breath.
Suri touched Nico’s face with long, graceful fingers, and Nico tracked their delicate touch along her cheek, tracing at the moles.
“I’ve longed to touch you for so long,” Suri whispered, so soft and so gentle. Nico couldn’t describe Suri’s expression in words, only sensations—dancing in rain, the smell of petrichor, and spring water. Had Suri been hiding all of this under her shroud all these years?
Suri leaned forward slowly, asking for permission.
Nico shouldn’t. She was the ohani. She was supposed to be a leader all others looked up to. She was supposed to wait until she was an adult.
But no one was around to know whether Nico folded to temptation this one time.
Nico surged forward and kissed Suri right this time, no holding back. Suri kissed back with equal fervor. They danced to a different song now. Nico tossed her glaive and brought her hands up to cup Suri’s roundness, holding her soft in hand, like a flower.
But a tent rat will always be a tent rat.
Suri’s voice clashed in Nico’s head.
That voice of hatred and derision wasn’t the Suri that Nico knew, but no matter how hard Nico tried to bury the words beneath soft, pretty lips and caresses in the dark, she couldn’t do it. Thrown out of the moment, Nico grew numb to Suri’s touch. It was too cold.
“Suri, stop,” Nico croaked out.
Suri pulled back and searched Nico’s face. “What’s wrong?”
Nico squeezed her eyes shut. “Why haven’t you ever said anything before? About how you feel about the Tents?”
Suri’s delicate expression retreated inwards, folding with the speed of day flowers at dusk. Suri stepped back. “You don’t want me?”
“Depends on how you answer the question.”
“I never said anything because I knew how you felt about the Tents. Maybe I never should have said anything at all, but they’re trying to kill you, Nico.”
“I’ve talked to Kelin, Suri. I don’t think he wants to kill me. We’re coming to an understanding.”
“So, he is an assassin?! I told you. I told you. We should throw him overboard right now.”
“We are not throwing anyone overboard. This is why I can’t be with you, Suri. This is the problem. I have spent my entire life watching people hate Kai for no good reason. I’ve watched people hate Zephyr for no good reason. I never thought that you . . .” Nico stumbled on her words, tears blurring. “I never thought that you could be so hateful, too. I can’t have a flame for someone like that. I can’t.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“From what? Kelin has done nothing.”
“But he will. You can’t trust any one of them.”
“No, Suri. I can’t trust you.”
Suri’s hate and prejudice had infected everything between them now, and there was no going back to the innocent children they once were. Nico had rejected flames before, but this one was certainly the hardest.
“Please,” Nico pleaded, and closed her eyes to the pool of Suri’s tears, “don’t touch me again.”
Clouds smothered the constellations and drops of rain fell from the sky, crying for her. Nico walked away into the cold biting darkness.