Stardust

     It was sure to be a good day when Aranea made a new friend. She did not make new friends very often, since she didn't get out much, and even when she did, strangers tended to avoid speaking directly to her, instead directing their questions and comments to whoever was accompanying her.

     But this day was different. This was like when Daddy took her to meet June.

     She trotted down the ship's halls a few steps behind Ophelia, one hand trailing along the warm soft-metal wall as she went. The ship purred under her touch, flexing into her palm like a cat butting its head into her. It was also in a good mood that day.

     Patient doors sat half-ajar all along the housing corridor; as the pair traipsed down the hall, voices floated out from one half-cracked door in particular. Aranea stopped dead in her tracks and closed her eyes to focus—the first voice was an icy patch in the middle of the river, one that creaked and snapped as it spread, spider-thin cracks forming over its surface even as it froze the currents around it.

     “—said that, I did not mean that you should cheat on him and break his nose.”

     “Whatever.” The second voice was July's; Aranea knew this because it sounded like the crackle of a wildfire sweeping over an open prairie, and like fresh green sprouts pushing up from beneath the ensuing layer of ash. “Why do you care, anyway? He's over it.”

     “I was forced to bear witness to your indiscretions—”

     “Ooh, poor you, having to 'bear witness'—”

     “You are being fractious.”

     “And you're being insane! I didn't come here to talk about this, I came here because I've apparently been sharing my fucking dreams—”

     “As I've said already, I appreciate the information, and I will discuss it with relevant parties as the opportunity arises.”

     July made a noise like the squeal of a boiling kettle.

     Something brushed the back of Nea's hand; begrudgingly, she half-opened her eyes to squint at Ophelia, who had backtracked and was standing by with her head tilted curiously.

     Aranea pressed a finger to her lips and clenched her lids shut again.

     “—got onto this topic anyway, but I'm sick of it.” Plumes of smoke curled off July's voice, hot and dense. “Feel free to clue me in on your genius master plan whenever you want, but until then, I'm not sharing jack shit with you—no, shut up, I'm still talking—you're icing me out and playing dumb, and I'm done with your shit.”

     The door flew open and so did Aranea's eyes. July whirled through the doorway, mouth still moving—until she saw the pair standing just outside and stopped, face falling, eyes wide, radiating heat and light out through the river in a ten-foot radius.

     “Uh. Hey,” she said.

     Where June was a blade, slicing quick-sharp through the air, soft hips and a bite that pierced skin, July was taut muscle, full lips and freckles, a visceral punch to the stomach that collided as soon as she entered the room. It was like looking at June's direct inversion; thick scar tissue instead of bubbles of blood, loamy soil mixed with ash instead of heady perfumed roses.

     Aranea was captivated.

     “—interrupting?” Ophelia was saying.

     Just as July said “No,” her conversational partner, who was hovering just over her shoulder with ice piling up in the hollows of their cheekbones, said “Yes.” The two exchanged a charged look; July glared up at the taller one, threatening to burn off her eyelashes with the heat of her gaze.

     “We can come back another time,” Ophelia said.

     “That's not true.” Aranea was indignant. She drew up one voluminous sleeve and wiggled her fingers at July in a friendly wave. “Daddy said I could take you out today.” And then, just to make sure the point got across: “Today.”

     There was a stretch of silence where July looked back-and-forth from Nea to Ophelia, her brows knitting together. Then her forehead went slack and she said, much too loudly, “Yes! Yeah. Okay, yeah. Let's go.”

     The one with the chilly voice made a sharp, aggravated noise. Their shoulders drew taut, their face pinched—and they turned their head to look at Aranea. Cold pierced her right ventricle in a clean spear; the river crackled around her head, turning slushy with ice.

     “Who are you?” they said.

     There was something moving inside them, something small and dark, something that undulated gently beneath their half-translucent surface. Several days ago, Aranea had drawn up a bucket of blood from the well and poured it into the sea, watched it billow out in blooms of black, watched the waters form a thin crust of ice over its writhing mass. Aranea did not make mistakes, but even so, she felt nauseated and uneasy.

     “I'm Nea,” she managed. Remembering her manners, she attempted a “Nicetomeetyou,” but Ophelia was already bundling them off with a host of apologies and platitudes.

###

     It was almost funny how quickly July stripped off the thin plastic poncho covering her body, sending clumps of slick slime sliding to the floor. She looked paler than earlier; there was a smudge of dark red mucus on her nose that starkly highlighted her pallor.

     Aranea very carefully drew back her hood and delicately peeled the plastic from her lace dress, avoiding wet dregs of ship matter with practiced ease. “Was that your first time in a shuttle?”

     July nodded. She was holding her poncho out at arm's length, pinched between two fingers; a Dusty wordlessly approached and retrieved the whole sopping, stinking mess to bundle it off to who-knew-where. “Thanks,” she said, which seemed rather pointless, and then she looked back at Nea and said “I didn't expect it to be so… wet?”

     “It is a ship,” Aranea chided.

     July appeared to be forming some sort of response to this, her brows furrowed again in a cartoonish expression of confusion that even Nea could read, but whatever it was, she didn't have the chance to articulate it—Ophelia came bustling out of the sliding doors behind them, handed her own sopping poncho to a worker who she had a brief, high-pitched exchange of hisses with, and began herding the human girls to the front of the shuttle station with sweeping gestures of her long, many-jointed hands.

     The station was much too large and busy for Aranea's taste. She kept her eyes firmly glued to the tacky tile floor as they crossed the room, ignoring small groups of human and lizard workers and travelers moving around them, one hand keeping hold of the tail of Ophelia's crisp blazer the whole time. July fell in lockstep beside her and nudged her with one elbow.

     “You know June, yeah?”

     Aranea didn't break her line of sight with the floor, but she hoped July saw her instinctive, massive grin, anyway. “I love her.”

     “So you're…”

     “Aranea.” She couldn't believe she had forgotten to introduce herself.

     “No, like—” But whatever it was like, it had to wait, again due to Ophelia; she'd stopped walking to have another hissing exchange with several reptilians, who dropped a couple of bags on the floor in front of the group. Ophelia said in English “July, carry this,” and hoisted the largest of the packs up and over to her; July slung it over her shoulders with ease, as if it weighed nothing at all.

     A lizard station attendant pressed a thin black mask into Aranea's hand; she looked up and said “Chhhsshh” brightly in thanks. They blinked slowly at her as she looped the mask over her ears, dull green frill rippling slightly, then they silently turned and walked away.

     “You still sound too much like you're gargling,” Ophelia said, hoisting the smaller duffel bag over one shoulder. “Now—our chauffeur is idling in the loading lane, let's move along, yes?”

     The bright blue sky gleefully stabbed Aranea's corneas the moment she stepped out the sliding glass doors of the station; she launched into her customary rush to scramble into the blessed quiet and dark of the backseat as fast as humanly possible. July, however, lingered behind, her face tilted up toward the sky and her mask dangling uselessly from one hand, until Ophelia slammed the trunk shut and called for her impatiently.

     Ophelia sat up front with the driver, behind the tinted glass divider. Once July had unstrapped her backpack and jammed it into the footwell, she scooted over to the middle seat and buckled up, leaning in so close to Aranea she could feel her breath on her cheek. It smelled a little like cheese puffs, which Nea would not have tolerated under typical circumstances.

     “So, uh,” she said in an undertone, “I meant, like… you and June… you have the same… dad?”

     Aranea perked up. “Oh! Yes, Daddy suggested I take you out today.”

     “Right,” July said. “So he… knows about me?”

     No wonder she was so confused. June hadn't told her practically anything. Aranea slid her arm through the crook of July's elbow and twined their fingers together. The water around July's head agitated gently. “Of course he does,” Nea said warmly. “We're sisters.”

     July was silent again for a bit. Her hand was stiff and tense in Nea's. Then she began to whisper, “So, when you say—”

     “You can talk normally, you know,” Aranea said. “Ophelia's my friend. And anyway, she can't hear unless you press that button.” She pointed to the call button beside the speaker on the glass divider.

     A few tiny, choppy waves rippled through the water. The next time July spoke, it was at a normal volume. “When you say we're sisters, you mean like, adopted?”

     “I guess.” Nea frowned. She jiggled the lace of the sleeve on her free hand absentmindedly, whipping it around her wrist in quick motions. “Does it matter?”

     When she glanced at July's face, it was screwed up in quiet contemplation again. “I don't know. Where are we going?”

     This was an exciting question. It made Aranea's heart do an anxious flutter and her stomach a little swoop; she giggled, giving July's hand a reassuring squeeze. “It's a surprise!”

###

     It continued to be extremely bright outside. This was less distressing on the open plains, without crowds of humans and reptilians jockeying for Aranea's attention; the sun shone in a hazy sky of vibrant azure, and in the crisp, quiet air, she was able to appreciate its warmth. Rolling hills of packed dirt and scrubby underbrush gave way to low mountains, chunky with thick boulders and slabs of rock; despite the craggy terrain, it all looked very flat to her eye, the lack of forest and relative small size of the mountains combining to reveal a strikingly distant, beautiful horizon.

     They exited the car and began unloading. Aranea kept herself wedged in the backseat, door cracked open a mere couple of inches, until Ophelia handed her a pair of bulky over-ear headphones, which she eagerly donned before climbing out. They enveloped her in blissful quiet—instantly muffling the sound of the brisk wind that ruffled her skirt and hair, the coughs of the engine as their chauffeur (who did not leave the vehicle) turned the car off, the crunch of dirt and scrub under her feet.

     She clambered up to perch on the hood of the car, swinging her feet a good foot or so above the dirt road as she watched Ophelia and July unpack.

     It was so easy to read July; even in the ways she differed from June, she was still an open book, her expressions exaggerated and simple. Ophelia had spread out a blanket on the ground and July was in the process of pulling wicked-looking black objects from the bags; Nea's neurons lit up as she watched July's face tell a story, her eyes growing wider and rounder, then crinkling up at the corners as a wide grin spread under her mask.

     She said something to Ophelia that Aranea couldn't quite make out from a distance, then she knelt on the ground and began to slide and click the objects into one another, piecing them together like a three-dimensional puzzle. July's movements were quick and practiced—too quick for Nea to follow, it was only a few seconds before she'd assembled the carefully-arranged sequence of parts on the blanket into a dangerous-looking tube contraption—then, with a few more skillful motions, she clicked the tube onto another block of black metal and plastic and sat back on her heels, still sporting that wide grin.

     The assembled rifle lay at her feet, strangely unassuming. They matched each other—a parallel Aranea felt even more strongly when July stood, feet apart, a pair of bulky headphones over her own ears, and leveled the gun at the cardboard targets Ophelia had propped upright while she was occupied. Its nasty dark angles looked softer, less unnatural, resting against her shoulder and the crooks of her taut arms.

     The first few shots made Nea jump, even through the noise-canceling headphones. But July's stance was easy and natural—even as the gun jerked in her grasp, she moved with it, all the shock absorbed by her shoulder, her cheek riding the butt.

     It didn't take long for the cracks of gunshots to become comfortably predictable. Aranea leaned back on the hood, a singed scent tickling her nose through the mask, and watched the scene dozily; July shooting from various positions, periodically reaching into her jacket to pull out oblong items that she did something very quick and complicated with involving the gun, and Ophelia sitting cross-legged dozens of yards away, her head buried in a book.

     Time passed, Nea growing drowsier and drowsier on the warm sun-baked metal of the car. Eventually, July knelt on the ground and re-disassembled the rifle with equally practiced motions, while Aranea half-watched through half-lidded eyes. The disassembly was not nearly as interesting as the initial assembly.

     When July popped back up to her feet, she yelled “Hey! Nea!”

     Nea straightened up instantly, her eyes flying all the way open. She quite liked the sound of her nickname coming from July's lips; the way she said it tasted like orange soda.

     “C'mere,” July said, the corners of her eyes crinkling up again.

     Her hands were oh-so-very quick and clever; they cut sleek, beautiful arcs through the water as Aranea approached watchfully, dipping to scoop one of two pistols off the blanket and begin dancing with it. July's ember-low voice began pointing out various components—the trigger, the safety, the magazine—but Aranea found that all flowed in through one ear and out the other, overshadowed by the rapture of watching her nimble little fingers worm their ways into every nook and cranny of the gun, ghosting teasingly over its gleaming carapace.

     Then, somehow, the pistol was in Aranea's hands and July was mere centimeters away from her body, her hands gently pulling Nea's hips into position—then adjusting her arms to extend at full length from her torso, kneeling down to pull one foot behind her by the shin. Everywhere July put her fingers, it left a little bubbly, steaming imprint in the river.

     “Confidence,” July said, like she was reminding her of something, “and also, don't shoot me, k?”

     “I'm trying,” Aranea said earnestly, and July laughed.

     BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-

     It was much too loud. The pistol bucked and shook her thin arms, jarring her wrists deep in their sockets, and Nea could feel the sound in the bones of her face. A handful of shots was all she could bear before the repetitive BLAM-BLAM-BLAM made everything much too bright and rough. The lace of her bodice itched terribly and her arms trembled; the sun speared a beam directly into her corneas and she squinted her eyes fully closed, dropping the pistol to her side.

     “Woah,” July said, moving so suddenly and dizzily that Aranea couldn't follow—but then the gun was out of her hand and there was a rough, scaly set of hands on her shoulders, guiding her back over to lean against the car.

     Noises continued around her. Aranea apologized profusely, her eyes still clenched shut. Ophelia's crisp tone replied several times with something vague and reassuring, but Nea kept apologizing—until at one point, July said “Dude. It's fine. This was fun.”

     Aranea cracked one eye open, braving the blinding gold-white afternoon sun for a moment. Through the glary haze, she made out July crouched over the largest backpack, looking at her with a concerned expression so much like June's, it made her heart skip. “I was bad at it,” she said.

     “So are most people,” July said affably. With that, she zipped up the pack, hoisted it over her shoulders, and rose to her feet; she stretched her arms out over her head, poised frozen against the hopelessly bright sky, and added “I haven't been shooting in… months? I missed it.”

     “Thank John.” Several feet away, Ophelia was folding up the blanket. She cocked her head to the left as she worked, staring impassively at July, frill flat against her skull. “It was his idea.”

     Aranea nodded eagerly, bangs bouncing against her forehead. “I wanted to take you out, but Daddy picked the place. And the date.”

     July began stretching from side-to-side, grabbing one wrist with the opposite hand and bending herself into a neat crescent moon, then performing the same stretch in the other direction. After a couple of rounds of this, she dropped her hands back to her sides, rolled her neck a couple of times, and finished the whole thing off with “… Huh.”

###

     When Aranea returned home that evening, June was already waiting for her. The instant she stepped over the threshold, June pounced and dragged her back to her bedroom, where she slammed the door shut and pushed Aranea back onto the thick duvet to straddle her lap and press heavy kisses up and down her neck.

     Aranea cooed, heat pooling in her gut.

     One tiny nip at the hollow of her throat, making Nea yelp, and then June drew back for a moment, face flushed and eyes heavy-lidded. “Did she like you?”

     “I don't know. I think so.” She'd smiled at Aranea an awful lot, and at the end of the day, they'd parted ways with a bashful little pink-cheeked “Bye” from July that made Aranea want to hold her down and dip her hands into her abdominal cavity, draw out pained little sounds. A dizzying flood of buzzing heat started at the base of Aranea's spine and ran over her whole body at the thought, briefly making her thighs tense and tremble. “She's beautiful.”

     “Right.” June's face didn't change at all, but her fingers curled against Aranea's back, gripping her spine firmly.

     And she pressed a burning-hot kiss to Aranea's mouth with startling ferocity.