Page 26 of Eat My Moon Dust
Tinsley rubbed one sock against her bare leg and grimaced, stretching the bruised skin around the lash marks my daughter had left on her face. One across her temple, and another deeper laceration on her cheek. She’d cleaned it, but her delicate skin was angry, blossoming red and a tiny bit of purple on a swollen cheekbone.
“Oh, um, I’m from a cold place, and I miss the weather,” she admitted. “Is it a drain on resources?”
It was, but not enough to be a problem. “No, it’s fine.”
“You wanna come in?”
She stepped aside, and I entered cautiously.
Then my jaw dropped, tendrils going slack. Her unit wasbeautiful.She’d painted the walls in thick bands of beige and cream so the interior glowed with a pleasantly warm light, and a deep greenberlifaux fur blanket draped across the sofa facing the wall where a large holoscreen was playing some rudimentary human animation. Decorative white and red towels hung from the cabinets, taped in place on their smooth surfaces as if there were knobs to pull. A collection of colorful plates in pink, turquoise, gold, dark blue, and dark yellow sat glimmering on the counter beside a shilpakaari pot full of utensils. It was cozy, comfortable, welcoming…
And it smelled nice. Spices and fire and citrus.
But it was also a mess. Tubs full of crinkly metal, glass orbs, and fake redaphidaplants littered the floor, stacked three high beneath the counter overhang, her stools stowed off in an unused corner of the common room. An entire bag of spray cans slouched in the hallway next to a formidable pile of plas scraps, and the coffee table was a wreck, littered with adhesives, scissors, drafting utensils, and empty cups.
“So, what are you doing here?”
Having lost myself in looking around the odd and inviting interior, I spun back around. Tinsley crossed her arms over her middle and I pulled a little aero-syringe from my pocket.
“I wanted to apologize for what Reha did. She shouldn’t have lashed out at you. Or Pom Pom. She’s that age…”
“What age?” Tinsley tilted her head with curiosity.
I cleared my throat, massaging the awkwardness out of the back of my neck. “You know, when spats start to fight over each other… getting curious about coiling.”
Her dark eyebrows rose and the tension in her shoulders eased. “Oh… you mean puberty? It’s okay. We’ve all gone through that. I was more worried about her. I don’t want her to feel too guilty for something every kid struggles with, you know?”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I held up the syringe instead. “I brought this as a peace offering. That’s what you called it before, right?”
Tinsley took the syringe, and I stuffed my lower hands in my dhoti pockets. I felt underdressed in my sleepwear, way too exposed, standing in private with a woman in her home for the first time in decades. I took a step back into the kitchen while she looked the penance over, rolling the glass vial between her delicate fingers.
“Oh! This is a medical plasma thing, right? I saw these when we were first rescued, I think.” She leaned on the counter opposite me and smiled. The wires around my ribcage eased a bit. Tinsley was a nuisance, a pest, but the world was a lot dimmer when she didn’t smile.
“A mediplasma, yeah.” I rotated the shilpakaari pot of utensils so the front of the design was facing out.
“How do you use it?”
I gestured one of my tendrils at her cheek. “Press it against your injury and hold the release.”
She turned it over in her hands again, gnawing on her lower lip. “I’ve never given myself a shot before.”
I shrugged one shoulder, leaning against her cold bay. “It doesn’t hurt. It feels like someone blowing air through a straw.”
“Are you sure? Have you done it before?”
She was obviously stalling, thinking too hard about it. I fought back a haughty twist of my tendrils. I was on hectaconorphine and had to do it four times a day at the base of my neck. Even children administered their own shots with supervision.
I held out my hand. “Come here.” She set the mediplasma in my palm–easily twice the size of hers–and stood up straight in front of me with an anxious tap of her toes against the tile. I leaned down so she could look at the vial more closely.
“See this metal plate? It’s perforated at a molecular scale. The meds,” I gestured to the blue mist stuck in the center of the vial, “are separated into their smallest components and suspended with air tension.”
“Woah,” she said, just like Tahavir often did. A smirk lifted one side of my mouth.
“The release on the top pushes all the air to the back of the syringe, forcing the meds through the metal plate. It happens so quickly that the particles perforate the skin before they can reform into a liquid or gel. Might tingle or itch but won’t even leave a mark.”
The tiny human licked her lips and nodded, staring at the vial with wide eyes. “Okay. Will you do it for me? I’ll mess up for sure.”
I looked at the ceiling, nostrils flaring with equal parts annoyance and amusement. “Sure, why not.”
