Page 10 of Eat My Moon Dust
Ladh shushed Tahavir, grabbing my attention. I couldn’t take my eyes off Virhek, worried the newly coiled man might actually lunge at me in front of my brood, so I pushed it all down and slid back one step, glass crunching underfoot.
“Fine. Call a levicart. We’ll be waiting in the lobby.”
I reached down to gently guide the back of Ladh and Tahavir’s heads towards the door. They went without protest. It hissed open, and I reached my lower hand back towards Reha with a tight smile. “Come on, sweetheart.”
Our daughter hesitated, eyes bouncing between us.
“Maan?” she asked in a tiny voice, realizing just then that it was real. She was being set aside for a shiny new family.
Corsa smiled comfortingly at her, but the relief was evident in how wide it was, how it reached her eyes. “Go on, blossom. I’ll be alright. And you’ll grow up strong. Let’s get lunch sometime after you’re settled.”
What a crock ofsssshhit.Corsa didn’t know my address or where I was working. She’d never asked, and it was obvious she wasn’t planning to. Not that I could tell her anyway.
With that, my horror-stricken daughter clutched her middle and hurried through the door without looking back. She’d been abandoned by her mother, and she knew it.
The door hissed shut behind the children, leaving me alone in the beautiful unit with the sunrise view.
“You need to move on,” Virhek warned, emboldened by the heavy dose of aphrodisiac pumping through his lungs. “You’ve been living off her coil for years. It’s pathetic.”
I considered violence, appraising the younger, more athletic man. Virhek was well-built, the sort of sculpted shape one got from exercise, not the real world. I could best him even as starved as I was, relying solely on the strength I’d earned in the hot core of a mission control center, the knots of muscle hard-won through labor and toil. In a fight, grizzle and pain tolerance trumped training every time.
But I blinked away the fantasy of ripping off the man’ssentiand shrugged. He was just another sorry boy being taken advantage of.
“Who’s living off who? I haven’t been interested in Corsa for years,” I gruffed with a dead smile. “But my will doesn’t mean shit compared to a coil. She can pull my strings and I have to obey. The expensive oils, the boarding schools, the unit youfuckinglive in… I had to work hard all these years so she’d keep our–my–spats,” I corrected myself with a human shake of my head. I dug my bronze eyes into Virhek’s sapphire ones with conviction. “So you remember, Virhek. How grey my colors are, how foryearsI’ve prolonged her coil so I could have even just a speck of meaning in my spats’ lives. And remember that she didn’t turn me away untilyoupumped her full of pearls that stuck.”
Corsa’s beauty had completely fallen, her enormous silvery eyes transfixed and glistening with fury. Virhek wasn’t posturing anymore either, or holding her quite as tightly. Good.
“Get out,” she seethed.
“Don’t forget the levicart,” I reminded Virhek, ignoring my ex. “And congratulations on your impending fatherhood.”
With that, I stepped out into the hallway and collected my three frightened children with a heavy heart.
03
?HUNAR?
By the time Virhek had sent down all their belongings on a levicart, I’d pried open a crate right in the middle of the grand entrance. The timid doorman had bumbled anxiously as I threw down the heavy lid and climbed right in, hefting luggage inside, optimizing every nook and cranny with care.
Sir, you can’t do that here. This is a public walkway for residents. Sir, I need you to take your things outside. Do you have to make so much noise?
I’d make as much noise as I fucking wanted. Let all of Corsa’s neighbors whisper and gossip.
Their belongings shipped to the secure tarmac for screening, I took them all outside for a “nice stroll downtown.” We ate insta-cuis off the street–some universal fish pockets that smelled like warm rubber–while I searched the ancient, serpentine alleyways for the entrance to Ambassador Zufi’s office. Tahavir was bouncing back, smiling now and then, looking at tourist trinkets along the main marketway. Ladh was still wary, though his brother pulled a little bit of light and sunshine out of him. When they laughed about some quick vid on their holotabs together, my tendrils twisted up with gratitude.
But Reha… She tossed her lunch in the trash and drowned me out with music.
I ignored it. I’d already made enough of a scene for one day. I didn’t need to do it again. Let her rebel against life and loathe me for being her baan and just… get it all out.
I found the ambassador’s office after that. An ancient clay building that had been patched countless times, the variable colors of river earth and plaster peeking through where a wayward cart had bumped it during peak pedestrian hours. Rubber marks from a food delivery drone’s bumpers marred the wall in blurry streaks, as if they’d tried to scrub it away with water, then just covered it with a shoddy layer of paint. I rolled my eyes inwardly. All it needed was degreaser, but some young, dumb office assistant hadn’t thought to look that up on their holotab.
Columns had once framed the megalithic doors, but now just their capitals were left looming over the stairs, creating a shaded spot for journalists to gather likeshivies.Of course, everyone knew Zufi was the point of contact for the human colony. I should have expected that.
“Excuse us,” I gruffed. Several bystanders shuffled aside with mild curiosity. I glanced down at the bits of plaster beneath those old pillars and instinctively hovered three of my hands above my children’s heads, half-expecting them to fall, even if no one else was concerned as they ate their lunches and checked their feeds.
“May I ask why you’re stopping by the ambassador to Renata’s office?” someone asked. A snap drone turned its camera towards us, and I clenched my jaw.
“What?” Reha asked, surfacing from her sulking playlist at the name of the infamous, secretive human colony.
