Challenge #00849-B118: Tough Crowd
A species that has a language where musical vocables (La, de, dum, da etc.) are all either swearwords or very rude.
“I d-d-d-d-don’t know what happ-p-p-ened,” complained Rabbit.
“We were going so well,” said The Spine. “It doesn’t compute… it doesn’t compute…”
“…i don’t want to be mus-ic-ians an-y-more…” sulked Hatchworth.
Pete 17, urgently directing repair teams of Walter Workers, took a deep breath. “What the heck happened? Everybody loves your music…”
“I dunno,” said Rabbit. “W-w-w-one minute, I was all, ‘Attune your ears to the g-grinding gears’, and the n-n-n-next, it was a rrrr-rrr-riot.”
“They don’t like Brass Gog-gles,” said Hatchworth, huddled in a corner.
Realisation hit like a truck. “I told you not to put that in the set list,” complained Pete 17. “I told you for a very good reason. Do any of you remember what that was?”
Hatchworth put up his hand. “I know, Mis-ter Wal-ter! Pick me!”
Sigh. “Yes, Hatchy.”
“The cul-ture and lan-guage of this plan-et puts our lyr-ics in the naugh-ty box.”
“What?” said Rabbit.
“We were sing-ing rude words.”
There was a moment of relative silence. Filled by the noise of tools and urgent repairs.
Finally, there was a single summary of realisation from The Spine. “Oops.”
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Challenge #00845-B114: Hearts Wild
The adventures of an Australian in the Everfree Forest.
[AN: The pony in this story has almost nothing to do with Steve Irwin and is a parody of several nature presenters and possibly Bush Tucker Man]
The Everfree Forest. A peculiar patch of land that has never needed a pony’s help to operate. The plants grow by themselves. The clouds have seeming autonomy. It’s whispered that the animals, there, eat each other.
It’s a dangerous place. Unsafe for the incautious.
Few ponies venture into it. Fewer still enjoy their travels there.
And then there’s Heart’s Wild.
Applejack met him first. She was on her way to Zecora’s to see about some sheep medicine when an excited yellow pony burst through the underbrush. He was holding something… wriggling.
“What in the hay?” blurted Applejack.
“Have ya seen anything like this little beauty?“ the colt grinned. “Such a wonderful example of nature in action.”
The… thing… in his hoofgrip was snarling and snapping.
“Uh, if’n ya say so,” allowed Applejack. “I’m more amenable to leavin’ things like that alone.”
“Wise choice,” the pony did not stop grinning. “This little blighter’s the most venomous critter I’ve ever seen! Isn’t he lovely?”
“Uh… nope.”
“Poor little mite’s got a gimpy leg, so I’m takin’ ‘im to my reserve, up Chaos Falls way. Name’s Hearts Wild.”
“Applejack,” said Applejack.
“Aw ripper! You lot make that Zap Apple Jam. My critters go ga-ga for it.”
“Awright,” said Applejack. “Reckon ya aren’t talkin’ much proper English, right now. You get out enough?”
Hearts Wild found this uproariously funny. “Yeah, I get that a lot. I’m originally from Horsetrailya. We tend to have our own gabble.”
“Wish ya luck,” Applejack edged around him and trotted onwards towards Zecora’s. “Im a might busy, you understand.”
“Right-o,” cheered Hearts Wild. He vanished into the foliage, with the snarling of his beast as the only hint he had been there.
And since his realm of experience was wild animals, it was only a matter of time before Fluttershy found out about him.
…that pony could make the most alarming friends, bless her heart.
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Challenge #00835-B104: Close Encounters of the Blurred Kind
More encounters between the spider-people and humans, pre- or post-Amity
Ten weeks prior to Amity’s re-introduction to the Galactic Alliance…
Salvage spacers tended to have short names. Monosyllabic and easy to pronounce in an emergency. So it was with Mar and Dee. Both women had longer names, but such names were exclusively on their paperwork.
“I’ve been on this hulk before,” said Dee, pointing to a conglomerated wreck in their pathfinder screen. “There’s an enormous colony of BFS on there.”
“BFS,” repeated Mar. Knowing Dee as she did, she easily guessed the first two letters. “Big Flakkin’…?”
“Spiders. Huge. The size of dogs. Saint Bernard or bigger.”
Mar side-eyed her companion. “It’d be easier to say ‘pony’.”
“True.” Dee shrugged. “On the upside, there’s these crystals that grow in there? Twenty ounces gets us a Year, minimum. They’re super-rare in the upper gravity zones.”
“Are the spiders dangerous?”
“Uuuuuuuuhhhhhh…” the call sign of impending doom. “Dunno. Never hung around long enough to find out.“
Right. Presumed dangerous until proven otherwise. Which meant the extra electrical packs. “Any Oshits?“
“No, I’ve never seen an Oshit in there.”
“Just wondering why this hulk got labelled H’nuf’ruf, is all.”
“I looked up to see one of them crawling on me.“
“Ah.”
*
Precautions taken, they split up to find the rare crystals. Though the place was, as Dee put it, full of big flakkin’ spiders, it was astonishingly free of webs. What webs there were seemed to serve a different purpose. Mar noted that some seemed designed to corral a cloud of Fhitts into a room where flies bred on filth stuck to the walls.
Mar stared at it. That’s a farm. A low-g farm for Fhitts. Lit with the very crystals that she and Dee were looking for. Though these ones were also attached to webbing.
She turned to leave, and came face-to-palps with the farmer. Mar screamed her way into a defensive posture… only to watch in frightened confusion as the spider mimicked her with four of its legs.
It took her some hours to realise that the spider was wearing clothes. Woven spider-fibres. Made into some kind of socks, and a cloak-like arrangement over the abdomen.
But that was later. After she and a spider had freed Dee.
Mar was bouncing off the walls to get away from the farmer-spider when Dee’s call came.
“Uh. I’m experiencing some technical difficulties…”
“How big is your embuggerance?”
“Door-sized. I was going after some crystals and… the spider on the other side closed the door.”
“And…?” Mar called up the mini-map on her HUD and began bouncing in Dee’s general direction.
“I’m stuck halfway through. Every time I try to make a move, the spider lunges at me.”
“Stay still and survival breaths. On my way.”
By the time she got there, it was a Scene. Four or more spiders were clustered around the right half of Dee. Aiming to startle them away, Mar bounced towards them, arms flapping, and yelling, “YAAARRRGERRONOUTOVITYARUDDYGREATLUMPS!”
The spiders only sidled a little away. One of their number waved its front legs around in the same manner that Mar used her arms.
“That wasn’t effective,” said Dee.
“Yeah. These things don’t know how to be afraid of humans.”
“Wish I knew how to be not afraid of spiders.”
“Me too.”
Mar would not leave Dee. The spiders would not let Mar take her. There was plenty of time to analyse the situation.
The spiders wore clothes and seemed to communicate by some kind of palp semaphore. With emphasis coming from their two front limbs.
Mar tried to imitate their palp-movements with her hands.
Which got instant notice from the spiders.
It was a combination of pantomime and guesswork and charades, but understanding had a seed. The spiders also valued the delicate crystals and farmed them for light.
Having humans barge in and steal some samples was… upsetting… for the spiders.
Negotiations had to break for Mar and Dee to get more air, but they returned to H’nuf’ruf with Glim lamps and adapters. And fuel.
The old engines still worked enough to run the doors. Dee pantomimed and walked the spiders through how to use the interface to add to their environment. Showed them some basic scavenging techniques. Like, for instance, bleeding just enough air out of a hulk to not set off an alarm; then using that air to fill a nearly-vacated add-on of their own.
Knowledge was worth a fortune, if you knew where to sell it.
The spiders showed them how to farm crystals in a low-g zone. And somehow, without nearly beginning to understand each other, they began to form a trade agreement.
Help us get crystals and we help you get things you need.
It would be years before any real communication was at all possible.
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Challenge #00833-B102: …Okay?
This post:
http://azzandra.tumblr.com/post/116731684146/fleshwater-matt-the-blind-cinnamon-roll
(list of weird things humans do like losing baby teeth to grow a second set, then:
“At some point, the aliens aren’t going to know anymore when we’re actually trolling them.
Us: Under certain circumstances, humans have been known to spontaneously develop the ability to breathe fire.
Alien: yeah, okay, that fits in with the other wacky bullshit you guys can do.”)
The humans walked out of the airlock, male and female. Each carrying two human infants.
Pa’rix looked them over. “Your crew manifest says two.”
“These aren’t crew, they’re passengers. Family,” clarified the female. “Remember last time we were here? You commented on my swollen abdomen?”
Oh. Right. Reproduction. “Of course they have galactic passports.”
There was a pocket in one of the infant-carrying harnesses. The male dug out four nearly-identical documents. The only difference was the names.
Even the DNA-scan was amazingly similar.
“Someone is deceptive. These are papers for one infant.”
“They’re identical quadruplets,” the parents said in resigned unison.
“We tattooed a letter into their left wrists so everyone could distinguish them,” said the male. “I have Amy and Dee. Lynn has Bel and Cordie.”
The human named Lynn displayed a tiny wrist with an ornate letter C on the fleshy underside.
“We were lucky we were at Rest Stop when they were due. Bel got stuck and they had to give me an emergency caesarian.”
“Birth surgery,” clarified the male. His documents declared him to be Sizwe.
“How could anyone– oh. Right. You’re Deathworlders.”
“We get that a lot,” they chorused.
*
The four small humans had been upgraded to crew. One wore a shirt that read, Ask us about our cloning program.
Each filed up to Pa’rix to hand her their documents and have their markings scanned and their DNA files updated.
“I lotht a toof,” said Amy, showing Pa’rix the gap in her incisors. She seemed happy about this.
“I got a loose tooth,” said Cordie. And proceeded to show her how it wriggled.
“I’m already growing a new one,” Dee showed off a ragged line of white in the middle of a blank space of gumline.
Bel just pouted her way through.
“This is normal for you humans?”
“Yes, our children have deciduous teeth. They’ve just started growing their adult set.” Lynn handed across her papers and submitted to the scans.
Pa’rix spent a boggling hour scouring the Wikipedia Galactica for human medical information. What she got was a bizarre list of traits that spoke of millenia’s worth of multiple near-extinction events. And baffling mutations.
And it was in the resultant cloud of confusion that Pa’rix sought out the six humans for verification.
The answers to all her questions were, “Yes.”
“Some of you can bleed for five days and live?” Yes. “Some of you are born hermaphrodites?” Yes. “Some of you are born with mismatched bodies to identities?” Yes. “Some of you can survive, relatively sane, without ever mating?” Yes. “Some of you are born without limbs?” Yes. “Or organs?” Yes.
And finally, “What else are you bizarre apes capable of?”
“Well,” said Sizwe with a straight face, “some of us have been known to spontaneously breathe fire.”
“…Okay?” quavered Pa’rix. She swore nothing more would startle her for the rest of her life.
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Challenge #00832-B101: Picnic in the Park
The final holiday on Earth prompt - Author’s choice as to what the human shows their friend again, but this time everything is finally perfect.
[AN: This story happens somewhere in the middle of #00830-B099]
What bothered Rael the most about travelling the Earth with Shayde was how easily she switched languages and habits to match her environment.
For instance, as they marched steadily and almost silently through the Australian wilderness, she was singing an ancient song. Thousands of years old before she even left this planet. And she sung it in praise of, and to honour, the people who once lived here[1].
She had lived here when they lived here, and learned it from them. And she sung it as automatically as she breathed.
And there, in the middle of the scrubby bush, was a hidden spring. Like something out of a fantasy book where children discover another plane of reality. And in this sudden and unexpected pocket of lush green in the middle of dingy khaki… Rael could easily believe that he had stepped into a different universe.
Shayde grinned as she spread out a blanket. “I used tae come here wi’ all the local kids. Me standin’ oot like a sore thumb o’ course. One wee white kiddie in t’ middle of all the others. We’d go yabbie-ing a coupl’a ponds over. Swimmin’ here. The ole tree branch is gone. Long gone…” But it was almost as it was, and that was the point. So much of the cityscapes had changed. None of her former landmarks existed, any more.
But this place, barely touched by the hands of adult humans, remained.
Everything else in her pack was travelling food. “You brought me all the way here for a picnic?”
Her face twisted as she evidently struggled not to blurt out some ancient and crude Australian saying. “Aye,” she said eventually. “We can even go swimmin’.”
“We don’t have our -er- ‘togs’.”
An even wider grin. “And who’s goin’ tae see that?”
He wasn’t quite sure if she was trying to tempt him or trying to pull his leg.
But the food was excellent, and the quiet noise of nature was restful. And he could almost ignore the way Shayde seemed so comfortable with herself, even without a stitch of clothing on.
He often wondered what it was like to grow up without a constant atmosphere of self-consciousness. Or why, even here and now, he insisted on at least keeping his Skins on as he gingerly explored the water.
Shayde didn’t say a word about his choices. Just showed him how to tickle the local fish and named some of the native birds.
They
shared an impossible four hours in that little spot. Before time,
available light, and the scarcity of food demanded that they hike back.
But it had been, all in all, a surprisingly lovely day.
[1] Don’t worry. They left voluntarily to found their own planet. Nobody’s going to steal their land this time.
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Challenge #00831-B100: Fun Park a la Deathworld
Holiday prompt the third! Author’s choice what the human shows their companion, as long as it goes pear-shaped
[AN: This story precedes yesterday’s]
Deathworlder entertainments are not advised for non-Deathworlders, said the Wikipedia Galactica, only the native life forms of a Deathworld can withstand even the most allegedly gentle of their entertainment vehicles. Though the Deathworlders insist that these entertainments are safe, be advised that they are only safe for Deathworlders.
Rael could easily believe, and understand those words, now. Especially ones he looked over the tallest peaks of a ride calling itself The Bone Bruiser. And very much especially you once he saw the look on Shayde’s face. It was a decidedly unholy and Deathworlder expression of anticipatory glee.
The same look, he recalled, she got when she saw the Space Elevator.
“No. Absolutely not. No way. I am not riding that with you.“
“Come on, yer the toughest thing there is next tae me! There’s no way it could hurt you. Yer vacuum-rated, and impact-proof. Ye could take a swim in lava, parkour around asteroids, and finish it up with a dip in liquid nitrogen.”
It was times like this, Rael regretted telling her that his species’ specs were publicly available. “One: just because I can, doesn’t mean I want to. Two: I am alpha-test. I do not want to find out where my factory flaws are the painful way. Three: there’s very little that you could offer to convince me.”
She took this as a challenge. “They do deep-fried chocolate cake…”
Curse her for knowing exactly how to bribe him. “Slices or whole?”
“How aboot a slice afore, an’ a whole one after?“
*
People were staring. He couldn’t really blame them, it wasn’t every day that a cogniscent turned completely silver in front of their eyes.
The memory of the ride, and their escape haunted him in flashes of vivid detail. The moment he knew that Shayde knew he was in trouble. The way that her face dropped from enthusiastic joy too worried terror as her eyes swirled from cheerful gold to a sickly chartreuse.
Her immediate reaction was to grab him and pull them both through their own shadows.
There was a moment of absolute darkness. Absolute cold. And somehow, terrifying voices demanding that they take his place.
And then, the blistering burst of genuine sunlight. Repeated impacts against the soft, cushioning walls of the bouncy castle. And her arms, tight around him, as she wept tearful apologies into his shoulder.
It took four medtechs just to get her away from him.
You need to visit a visit to the Med Bay, but it was a close thing. Some mis-assigned instinct to regurgitate had battled furiously with his designed desire to hang on to every last calorie he got.
Thankfully, she had calmed down once they announced he would be fine.
And once the medtechs cleared away, he could see that she had fetched him a Double-Dog Dare Platter from Deep-Fried Everything. With spray cream, and spray cheese, and chocolate sprinkles.
Now, he sat quietly, clinging to his reflective blanket and picking gingerly at the feast before him. Shayde sat opposite the bench, primed and ready to dash for anything he desired. And snivelling quietly into handkerchief.
“I thought ye’d be awreet,” she repeated intermittently. “I’m sorrah. I’m reet sorrah…”
This felt worse than a trip through a wormhole. At least going through Hyperspace included the need to eat. “How silver was I?“
“Fall-blown smooth mirror.“
She was right to be terrified for him. As he recalled, the next stage up in hazard signs was complete torpor with flashing, luminous spots at regular intervals. “Next time, assuming I consent to a next time… we work our way up.”
“Babbie Funland it is, then,” she agreed. “After ye get yer calories in.”
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Challenge #00830-B099: Comfort Food
The holiday continues, introducing the friend to things like non-irradiated cheese, actual lemons, and real dumplings
It started small. Well, comparatively small. A steaming curry at a van vendor, swimming in grease and overloaded with turmeric rice.
What followed was a tour of all the places that still sold unsuitable or unexportable food. Haggis, Casu marzu, Lutefisk. Pizza cones. Powdered doughnut pancake surprise. Death By Chocolate cake.
And now it finished here.
If it wasn’t the birthplace of Unsuitable Food Eat, it was certainly its shrine. A temple of carbohydrates, sugar, theobromine, and all the toxic, acidic, enzyme and biota-loaded consumables that Earth had to offer.
For Rael, it was the closest thing his atheistic soul could equate to holy ground. And then, only because he needed calories like most other life forms needed air.
Shayde pulled a Five Year note out of her wallet and said, “Me friend, here, is goin’ tae try eatin’ yer menu.”
The Gyik behind the counter sized up Rael’s slim build and laughed. “And you, dear lady?”
“Just gi’ me a sharin’ fork. I’ll be fine.”
*
On the trip back to Amalgam Station, almost torpid with an overload of calories, he asked her. “Why did you do that?”
“Mudita,” she shrugged. “Vicarious glee.” A sigh. “It’s no’ a good holiday ‘less someone goes home happy. Good food an’ loads of it… pretty much gets you there.”
One of the more baffling human phrases crossed his mind. Those who hurt the most, heal the most. He could almost understand it. “So. You gave up on your holiday… and made it mine?”
“Aye.” Her smile came back. Cheeky and playing hide-and-seek on her face. “It was worth it.”
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Challenge #00829-B098: You Can’t Really Go Home
Well, at least the human was excited about the holiday, however ill-advised taking the trip to Earth with them was going to be…
“Thereitis, thereitis! Earth. Aw… it mostly looks the same…”
“I did tell you that it’s been five hundred years since your departure. Geographically, little has changed.”
“I’m goin’ tae stop in at Wales. Go see what’s happened tae home.”
Rael, a little more prepared, had tried to find Shayde’s ‘home’ on a map. There was no such place as Daffad Gweddyl ar Afon. And no hint that it had ever been. “I haven’t been able to find it on any map,” he warned.
“Aye, nowt’s changed there,” she giggled. “NO! They built a fookain space elevator. Ye wee ripper!”
“It’s for the tourists. COL-lander shuttles are much faster and more convenient…”
His warning went unheeded. “Aw, I gotta have a go on tha’!”
Rael sighed. At least the food was good. Putting up with Shayde in full tourist mode was going to be an absolute trial.
*
It had been a long hike, over hill and dale and one ford. When Shayde reached the top of the hill, her legs went out from under her. Rael caught up and tried to fathom why water was leaking from her eyes.
It was just an oak grove. And some ancient stone buildings well on their way to complete collapse.
Not knowing what else to do, he sat beside her. “Daffad Gweddyl?”
A faint croak of a voice. “…aye…”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have no frame of reference. No way to understand…”
Shayde got to her feet and strode towards the grove. Rael hurried to follow her, since it was his job to make sure she didn’t happen to anyone or anything.
“You’re not about to do anything… rash… are you?”
“Jus’ lookain fer a tree,” she choked out.
They all seemed alike, in this part of the grove, where the older trees grew in regimented lines. She was counting to herself and pointing at vegetation as she went. Finally, she stopped at one that seemed to be just like all the others, and threw her arms around it and sobbed like a child.
“Shayde?”
“M’ babbie brother planted this one. I saw ‘im. Tole ‘im we’d be old together ere it were grown…”
Oh. It had hit her. The sheer gap of time that she’d lost. Rael let her mourn, loaning her his closeness as the tears and the sobs crumpled her up. And then coaxing stories out of her about her adventures in this place. Which included a tour of the ruins. And a lecture to the local archaeologists about where they might find interesting things.
She was right. Almost to the millimetre. Which loaned further credence to her story.
She did come from here. And she could never go back.
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Challenge #00826-B095: One Guaranteed Angel
[AN: Love and props to tkki who does amazing art. Go follow them. Give them moneys. Also apologies if this counts as unauthorised reproduction. Image shows a humanoid figure in black with a skull for a head. Clinging to one leg of the large, black figure is the tiny white figure of a child]
Halloween.
Ghouls, gosts, and lingerie-themed outfits ruled the streets. Az had put on a cheap rubber skull mask and pulled his hood up to hide the seam. His companion for the evening was too portly for the usual array of one-size-fits-nobody rental costumes and had resigned herself to Santa.
Sort of. There was rather a lot of ill-spirited and out-of-character grumbling coming from underneath the snowy white, fake beard.
At least until they saw the kid.
She was dressed head to toe in white. She had pale skin. So pale you could see the tracery of her veins. White hair, kept short, escaped a white ribbon. Her white dress was made for summers, not October’s autumn chill.
She was so tiny.
“Santa!” She smiled.
Az kind of faded into the background as Lyn put on her jolliest “Ho Ho Ho“s for the kid. Say what you like about her vocabulary, but Lyn was an angel in disguise.
Tiny White’s name was Claire, and she wanted an angel to take her away so her mother wouldn’t put her in the box, any more. Claire went into the box every single time she got her clothes dirty.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Lyn sighed. “Santa doesn’t make angels with the elves. We’re toys only. You only get one guaranteed angel, I’m sorry.”
Az carried her home so she wouldn’t get dirt on her clothes. Poor kid. She’d been adopted by some super-famous Mommy-Dearest type who skated away from Child Services on a cloud of money, fame and privilege. She wasn’t even home.
So Az packed up Claire’s favourite things. All her clothes were white… and left a nastygram in the box.
Children are not toys. If you want Claire back, tell the world about what this box is really for.
Az
told the staff who were there that he was taking her to some party in
the town. They were so used to this nonsense that they just let it
happen.
The party of the rest of her life, by sheer comparison.
Mommy-Dearest put on a nice sob for the media. And there was a whole bunch of ruckus, trying to find Claire. You’d think an albino kid would be easy to find, wouldn’t you?
Not after Lyn and Az were done with her. They gave her colour. A little spray-tan here. A little hair dye there. A little makeup… And a lot of rough-and-ready clothes.
Claire looks and acts just like any other kid, now. They let her get dirty, and bath her at night. And her health has improved for it.
Lyn and Az got married to solve a lot of questions. Traveling on the road and some shady people producing some less-than-legal documents made certain no-one would link their Claire to the one stolen from the fame-and-fortune Mommy Dearest.
And anyway, all the fuss died down five seconds after she got herself a new accessory. A large and fluffy white rabbit. Which is much quieter and matches her decor.
People look at Az and Lyn as they walk down the streets with Claire eagerly holding their hands. Him, all over in tattoos and piercings. Her, overweight and more artistically inked.
They say, “Some people just shouldn’t ever have kids.”
They don’t know how right they are.
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Challenge #00824-B093: Living in Interesting Times
The kid of the punch-clock hero and villain couple has an interesting life.
Her parents named her Everest. Possibly out of a desire to fit in with the ridiculous names of their gated, elitist community. She shared a school with three Porsche’s, two Kilimanjaro’s, and at least five kids with way too many silent Q’s in their name.
She was waiting for the very day that she was old enough to change her name to something blandly ordinary. Like Elizabeth. Or Mary. Even Kylie would do. She spent random free moments scouring books and magazines for ordinary names.
Mabel was her current favourite. Old-timey and ready for shortening to May. You could get far with a name like May. It was like Spring. Full of optimism and the hope of new things.
All Everest was full of was rocks, snow, and dead bodies.
Her ride on the bus was less eventful than normal. Only ten pretenders attempted to suck up to her in order to get one or both of her parents’ autographs. They vanished quickly enough when they found out she charged the same rates as the fan club.
And the bullies were hardly any better. Calling her ‘stuck up’ when she turned aside the pretenders. Tripping her up or shoving her around as she trod the halls. Daring her superhero mom to come and rescue her.
It was why she ate lunch on the roof with some of the other social rejects. Her few friends. Most of them were on The Spectrum. Everest didn’t mind. The silence was companionable and the sporadic conversations more interesting than hey-can-you-get-me-your-moms-autographs.
And they all had reason to despise the mainstream.
“Aw. Look! It’s the nerd central pity party.”
O great. Quellijana. The queen of the mean girls. Everest sighed her deepest sigh and said, “Go find someone else to annoy, Kelly-anna.”
“It’s pronounced Quellijana. I can hear the difference, you ignorant racist.”
“Whut?” winced Travois. “How in the name of anything is Everest racist?”
“She keeps mispronouncing my name to fit the white oppressors? I’ll have you know I’m part Gaelic, part Viking, and part Inuit on my great-great-grandmother’s side.”
“White enough for me,” said Kilimanjaro. One of the three black kids in the entire school. His skin was so dark that it had a sheen like a peacock’s feather. He was also the resident expert on what was racist. His one trump card.
Quellijana sneered at him. “Huh. That’s reverse racism. I should report you.”
“Sooo…” said Everest. “You’re admitting that racism usually comes from you?”
“Oh go jump off the edge, Everest. Nobody really likes you.”
That was the last straw. “Fine. I will.” One step. Two steps. The third met air.
That’d show her.
She changed her mind halfway down and tensed. She didn’t want to die! Quellijana was not worth killing herself over.
The final crunch at the bottom never came. She could hear people rushing over and babbling. But it was awed babbling.
She was hovering an inch above the sculpted gravel pathway.
Oh boy.
Everest thought, Up, and slowly levitated back to where Quellijana was staring, gape-mouthed, at her new relationship with gravity. “Next time you tell someone to jump off something, Kelly-anna, make sure they won’t actually do it?”
The girl fainted.
Everest stepped calmly back onto the roof as if getting her flight powers was the most normal thing in the world. “Okay. Spuds out. Let’s see who loses and has to drag her to the nurse’s office.”
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