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What was it like on Earth, Miorine couldn’t help but wonder, when the sunlight starts to fade and the moon and stars shine in their wake. After all, it was Asticassia that was a mimicry of Earth, not the other way around. What’s special about it, then? Perhaps the fading warmth of the setting sun would feel different on her skin, that no projection of man-made lights would ever capture the acrylic colors of a setting sun over golden fields.
Miorine had once given up her dream of seeing it, of living it. Or rather, decided to put a pin in it. For what, the sake of her company? If she lied to herself; if she followed her usual methods of convincing herself that there was a second truth, of course that would be her answer. But there was the real truth buried in the fiction: She did it for her pride. She did it to impress her father. Most of all, she did it for her groom.
That was why she returned to musing that dream, one that seemed ages old from the sheer number of events that have since transpired. The last thing she was concerned about was the success of this god-forsaken company. She made the effort to busy herself with mindless tasks to dawn that front, but, in truth, she needed the tasks and the dream to distract her from what was to come.
So much for that effort, for the very thing she wanted to avoid thinking of appeared, a small and timid smile on her face.
“Oh! I’m sorry. Am I distracting you from your work?” Despite how ‘late’ it was (according to the screens in the sky), Suletta was still in her holder uniform. Not hearing a reply, she began to pivot on her heel. “If you’re busy, I can come back later.”
“ Wait –” Too desperate.
Suletta paused, slowly turning to face her again.
Miorine straightened her posture and fixed her hanging jaw. “It’s nothing too pressing. Did you need something?”
Suletta wrung her fingers together. “Uhm– not really. I was just thinking that it was getting late, and I wanted to make sure you didn’t need help with anything.”
It was just like her to ask. Even with the tension between them, she still wanted to be of help. But, why did it sting this time? Why did Suletta’s offer crawl up her spine and dry out her mouth?
Suletta’s expectant yet patient gaze gave Miorine the answer.
She wasn’t one to break a promise. She always so desperately wanted to hold her end of a negotiation, and never wanted to let anyone down. Suletta Mercury, even in her timid and kind nature, hardly ever backs down from fulfilling the expectations set before her.
But, after tonight, she would have to, and it was Miorine that made her promise to stay by her side. It was Miorine that would force her to fail.
Miorine sighed. “No, it’s fine. I was just finishing up.” She powered down her notebook and the assortment of tablets and computers arranged across the desk, then rising from her seat. The chair slid across the floor of the large open room, sending chilling echoes throughout the warehouse-like building. The two of them flinched, seeking the stairwell to make sure that the echo didn’t stir any members of the Earth House awake. Luckily, no one seemed to be disturbed.
“You’re right; it’s late. I should walk back.”
“Can I walk you there?” The question spilled awkwardly out of Suletta’s mouth, betraying that her interest was also for her sake and not just Miorine’s. She wanted to be of help, wanted to be good company, and it threatened to cling to Miorine’s heart and anchor it to the bottom of her stomach.
She wanted to exclaim a ‘yes’ with a similar urgency. But of course, she played it differently. “If it pleases you,” she said with a shrug. Her heels clicked against the floor as she started toward the exit.
“Sure.” There was disappointment there. Miorine could hear and feel it in Suletta’s reply. Suletta had hoped for something more eager from her bride.
And yet, she still insisted on walking Miorine ‘home,’ trailing behind her.
Where did that kindness come from, Miorine wondered. She lacked Prospera’s serpentine cunning. Even in her mistakes, there were no poor intentions. Miorine had once loved that about her. Hell, she still does, but it now proved to be a nuisance, a bane because of the dramatic irony that Suletta wouldn’t expect.
For her sake, Miorine would have to shatter her heart, to do the best she could to make sure that none of that warmth would be reserved for her.
That sweet, soft voice pulled her from that spiral as it has again and again. “Ms. Miorine, uhm…” Suletta began to shuffle a bit more in every step. “I’m sorry for–”
“Don’t apologize, Suletta,” and spare my heart from the ache, she wanted to say. “We’ve had the discussion once already.” She didn’t stop moving, didn’t turn to look, but Miorine could picture Suletta’s lowering head and fidgeting hands.
“Right. Sorry.”
The walk was quiet, too quiet, and it was different than it had been before. It wasn’t the comfortable silence that they shared when doing mundane tasks together, nor the comforting sound of synching breaths as Miorine once calmed herself in Suletta’s arms. It was a cold, chilling noiselessness.
So when they had arrived at Miorine’s make-shift dorm. They both shuffled around the entrance, neither of them daring to move or speak. That was until Suletta exhaled, long and slow. The sound of it was that of an estranged exhaustion, a tension from her lungs from holding it in.
“So…” Suletta dug her boot into the paved path. “I’ll see you in the morning, then, Ms. Miorine?”
Miorine grit her teeth. She couldn’t avoid thinking about it for long, because now the beast of confrontation was on her heels, bearing its teeth with a threatening growl.
“Actually,” Miorine dared not to turn her gaze away from the doorway. “It’s quite late, and I’d rather you not walk back alone, given the recent aggression toward Earth house,” she lied too easily. “If you’d like to stay tonight, you’re welcome to.”
One last night. A final night as bride and groom.
“If that’s alright, I’d like that,” Suletta admitted with an apparent relief in her voice. She shouldn’t be relieved, but she didn’t know.
She didn’t know that, come morning, she would lose a duel against Guel Jetturk. That Miorine would steal her family from her and feed her to the wolves. At least the wolves would spare her. Knowing Suletta, she had the strength to push through. It’s possible she’d be bruised, heartbroken, but at least that warmth would remain.
They didn’t spend the night often. At least, not as often as it would be assumed for a bride and groom, but they had done it enough times that there was a slight routine. Miorne slipped into her nightclothes next to her bed, and Suletta stripped down to the orange underclothes she wore beneath her uniform, having been unprepared to stay the night.
Miorine sat at the edge of the bed, feet planted on the cold floor until she heard Suletta make her way toward her.
“May I come in?”
“Yes.”
Miorine rolled onto the mattress, shifting onto her side to face the wall. The mattress fell beside her with Suletta’s weight. The first time they did this, a time before Suletta had joined the Earth House, it was an awkward, tight fit, with Suletta being so much taller than her. But now she didn’t mind the contact, enjoyed it even.
What a surprise it was to still feel so cold in that moment, to still feel so frigid when she felt the warm breath against her neck when Suletta whispered, “Goodnight.”
Her anxieties and doubts were to blame. They were poisonous, snuffing out the sanity from the rest of her body.
It was only when Miorine could hear the slow, steady breaths and could feel the slight rise and fall of the bedding that she dared turn to see Suletta.
She rolled onto her back, angling her head to the side to study the parts of her that she could make out with the artificial light of the garden beds that leaked in from the entrance.
It was ironic, in a sense. Miorine was once unsure that the artificial blue glow hardly sufficed for the nurture that the sun provided to budding life. But, in the calm night, in this quiet moment of her office, Miorine found that she was proven wrong by Suletta Mercury once again. The way the arctic hue reflected off of the side of her face, the way Miorine envied how it got to kiss her nose and temple proved that it could support life after all.
But not the life and well-being of that cursed organ in her chest. Not when she realized just how deep that envy, that unabashed jealousy ran. As she studied her in her peaceful, innocent slumber, her breath grew ragged and rough from the realization of what she could no longer deny.
Of course, of fucking course Suletta had to instill that thought in her head. She hadn’t finished the thought, but they both knew what she meant. “Once you turn seventeen, we–” can get married. “I’ll think about it,” Miorine had told her. She said such a thing like she had never thought about it before, like she didn’t want it more than Suletta could ever know.
And, come morning, she would have to lie through her teeth and say she never wanted it. To say that all Suletta ever was to Miorine was a shield from her father. Not a brilliant light, not a crutch, not a rock, not a home, not anything else she actually was, but a damn shield.
Within a day, she would have to throw all of that away. Miorine would have to do it in such a way that Suletta would know not to detect a problem, to not see any signs of manipulation or tension between her and Lady Prospera.
In her guilt, she finally allowed questions to fester in her mind. She deserved it for what she was going to do, for how she would break her heart.
The cycle to madness had started with the one question: What would come after Suletta Mercury? Miorine would marry someone who also loved Suletta. It would be less of a marriage, and more of a compromise between two people that wanted to protect her. A political marriage of sorts.
That was the logical answer. That was the simple answer, a truth she could pick apart within the grand unknown.
Her mind began to betray her, and it begged her to whisper the questions out loud so that Suletta could provide a strange wisdom, but she dared not to risk her wake. So she let them play in her head.
Will you find someone better than me? Someone you deserve? Someone who won’t shelter the truth from you?
Knots upon knots twisted in her stomach with the thought of Suletta sleeping in the same bed as someone else, the thought of someone looking at her the same way Miorine was looking at her now.
Will you come looking for me? Will you venture to break my heart in the same way I will rip yours out? Will I see your desperate messages and have to force myself to ignore them?
Her spine went rigid at the thought that, someday, all Miorine would have left of Suletta would be the memories of the warmth she had once shown her and the strength she had given her. And that stupid GUND-ARM inc. promotional video.
Miorine grit her teeth at the next betrayal of her spiraling mind:
Would you have truly stayed by my side forever like I asked? Or would you tire of me? Or would you never tire of me because you have come to love me as I have loved you?
Curses, Miorine loved her. She loved her enough to let go of that selfish request to keep her within arms reach. She loved her enough to rehearse how she would harden her face while she watches Suletta’s heart shatter. How twisted was she to call that of all things love?
Especially because she knew it in other ways, other places. She felt it in the moments she caught herself admiring Suletta’s determination. She knew it every time Suletta’s awkward mannerisms and piss-poor attempts at jokes would actually amuse her. She knew it every time she faced tribulation, and reminded herself to move forward and gain two. She could feel it as she felt that pride stir in her chest when she realized that Suletta brought about a glue between members of the Earth House. She felt it, even now, as she was musing all of the things she would dearly miss and kiss goodbye.
In the cycle of tortuous questions, there was an answer to one she had asked herself before: How is it that a mere projection of the sun was sufficient to everyone that wandered the grounds and the halls of Asticassia? The truth is, it isn’t. Miorine had just stopped longing for the warmth of the sun on another planet, and she had stopped desiring it because the very girl before her was sufficient.
Miorine swallowed the tightness in her throat.
Will you forgive me someday, Suletta? Will you carry pieces of me like I will forever carry pieces of you? Will there still be a part of you that will always love me as I will always love you? Am I selfish and egotistical to think such a thing? That you love me now, and will love me then? Is ‘precious to you’ as far as it goes?
Miorine jumped when Suletta stirred, fearing that she might have slipped and voiced her long list of confessional questions.
“Is everything alright?” Suletta asked with a hoarseness only apparent in her drowsy state.
Miorine only lie there, frozen in place.
Suletta seemed to study her face for a minute, her own tired features contorting in confusion when she noticed how troubled Miorine must have looked. “Are you having trouble sleeping?”
Miorine gave a small nod. It was true, in a sense.
Suletta hummed in contemplation, and sheepishly folded in on herself for a moment. Then, in a bold and sudden move, she draped her arm across Miorine’s waist.
Her muscles went tense in response to Miorine’s sudden rigidness. “Sorry,” She began to retract her hand. “Is that alright?”
Miorine caught it, her hand wrapping around Suletta’s wrist, seeking to preserve what would be taken from her after a final night. “Yes,” she said, sliding her thumb upward to link their finger’s together.
Suletta’s agape mouth morphed into a bright smile, seen even in the darkness of the room. She settled back into her place next to Miorine, her relaxed form nearly swallowing the other whole.
While it haunted her that she knew that she would have to untangle herself in the morning, that she would never make a routine of it like she once wanted to, Miorine allowed herself to cling to Suletta as she seemed to make a habit of.
She tilted her head to the side so that her cheek rested against red hair. I'm sorry, she thought to herself while closing her eyes.
Was it a comfort or torture to allow herself to drift to sleep dreaming of what their future could have been, of what it could still be in another life?
Perhaps they’d start by going to Mercury. They’d develop medicine and technology with the help of their sponsors and make the environment more suitable. Miorine would see the joy, the radiant smile of Suletta when she opens her school. And she’d complain every time Suletta would get a note or drawing from a student because she wouldn’t have the heart to get rid of a single one, and they would move around too often to find a place for all of them, and she would ridicule her for how much space they took up in suitcases and storage.
They could retire on Earth. With her, Miorine knew she could wait that long. They could try to grow her mother’s tomatoes in the ever-changing climate of Earth. And Miorine would complain and reminisce about the days where she could control the climate, but Suletta would argue that it would give them something to look forward to every summer.
In another life, Miorine assured herself, this moment would be repeated night after night. These musings, these dreams for the future. Morning after morning, she would have to pry herself out from under Suletta’s splayed limbs, and the pair would face the day knowing they’d come home to one another.
In another life, Miorine would list the things she loved about Suletta out loud. She’d swallow her own hubris to do so.
In another life.
That would have to be enough.