Stardust

House like an engine that churns and stalls.
House with skin and hair for walls.
House the seasons singe and douse.
House that believes it is not a house.

—Ash, Tracy K Smith

     “Cass,” July said, stupidly, brokenly, her mouth full of jagged glass shards, but Cass was already on her, thin arms circling her torso, squeezing til her ribs creaked.

     The bony edge of Cass’s clavicle pressed against July’s face. She let it happen, burying herself in the endless baggy depths of Cass’s flannel overshirt. She smelled clean and cool, almost icy; a sudden wave of sense-memory washed over July, the stench of sweat and gun oil, and she almost cried at the contrast.

     “Oh, good.” Ophelia’s voice filtered through the stunned haze clouding July’s senses. “I was told some of you know her already. Never received a list, of course, but what else did I expect?”

     “I thought she was dead.” Cass’s voice was tight and trembling, caught on the bleeding edge between laughter and tears. July’s stomach turned.

     As they extricated themselves from one another, slowly and, in July’s case, feeling slightly nauseated, Cass kept hold of July’s hands, squeezing them while her teary dark gaze swept up and down, lingering when it got to July's shoulder. “You’ve been injured,” she said softly.

     “Just a scratch,” July managed, swallowing back a strangled sob. Cass was there. Cass was standing in front of her, holding her hands, staring at her like she was drinking her in—

     “I never wanted to leave you,” Cass said in a rush, tripping over her own words, “I tried, I tried to come back, but Teiddan—the police were there, and Lake—I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” Her hands traveled up July’s arms, circled her wrists briefly before releasing to trail cool fingertips along her burns, cupped her face tenderly. “You must have been through hell.”

     “It wasn’t that bad,” July said. Cass laughed; giddily, unthinkingly, July took her friend’s hands away from her cheeks and gripped them, saying “No, really, it—I was happy. Lake and I did okay.”

     “Lake?” Cass’s hands went suddenly limp.

     “Yeah, he came back for me.” July was vaguely aware the other human in the room had shifted from the couch and was now hovering in their peripheries, but she only had eyes for Cass at the moment—Cass, who had just withdrawn her hands from July’s entirely. Breathy and light-headed, she continued, “He took me to his family’s old house, we lived by this small town for a while—”

     “Lake is alive,” Cass interrupted, voice flat.

     The other person came further into July’s line of sight and gently touched Cass’s arm; it was Jasper—or, no, someone in Jasper’s body. They were wearing a floor-length skirt, and Lake had said only one of them was a girl—Rhea, that was her name.

     Cass shrugged Rhea off. “You and Lake have been alive this entire time, yes? Alive and not imprisoned? And neither of you thought to attempt to contact your devoted, grief-stricken friends?”

     July blanched.

     “It has been a year,” Cass said, iron creeping into her voice. “I thought you were dead.”

     “He—he went back to Olive’s, but he said she wasn’t there.”

     Rhea reached out, again, to touch Cass’s shoulder. “She took that job in Seattle.”

     Cass didn’t brush Rhea off this time, but she also didn’t show any signs of acknowledgment. “Truly, you must have exhausted the depths of every resource available to you. Did you even attempt to visit New York? To contact Olive at her new position? To give us one hint—one single message, that’s all it would have taken—”

     July’s chest felt funny. She could hear Ophelia shifting behind her, making a soft noise as if she was about to say something, but July felt too miserable to let anyone else interject. “Will you back off—”     

     “Back off?” Cass’s face wrung into a twisted expression of disgust. “I have grieved my best friend—my only friend—for a year.” Her voice was shaking again, straining with a different kind of tension; her face leaned in closer to July's with every word, one finger jabbing in the air for emphasis. “I took her memory and wore it like a stone around my neck—I carried the torch, and I carried it well.”

     Her lip curled—her hands lifted—and she grabbed July by the shoulders, staring into her eyes mercilessly, feral and pleading and raw. “I carried it all in her name—I bore the weight of her sacrifice—I lived for her.”

     The room was silent. July was barely even aware of the presence of other people at that point; Cass’s rage was arresting, hypnotic. She sounded like herself again, like the Cass who'd stayed up all night reading boring, thick novels to July when they were young, like the Cass who'd unleashed cold, calculating diatribes about their superiors in the privacy of their subway car, cruel tongue now turned on July.

     The silence stretched out painfully long. July could hear her heart pounding in her skull, blood thrumming and pulsing under the fragile skin of her temples. Cass's hands abruptly clenched on July's shoulders so hard, they sent spikes of pain shooting through her arms, and then she spoke up again. “And now? Now she stands in front of me, whole and well, and tells me she was gallivanting about with her new boy-toy the entire time, not a—not a single—not a whit of thought put to my grief—my agony—you had the power to stop it, July, and you—you—just—”

     Cass’s jaw clenched; there was an audible grind of her teeth, sending a sympathy pang through July’s nerves. She swallowed several times in a row, the fragile hollow of throat working as she panted. “Just please—tell me you tried. Tell me you tried to find us. Tell me you worked, you sweat and you bled and you grieved, and you failed.”

     July had nothing to say to this.

     She’d never lied to Cass. Lies of omission, sure, but she’d never made something up wholecloth—and never in response to a direct question. Lies were difficult to keep straight, and Cass was more difficult than most to lie to.

     And the truth was damning. She hadn’t wanted to think of Cass, so she didn't. Anything else would be a lie.

     July shamefacedly kept her eyes level with Cass’s chin. She couldn’t bear continuing to meet her friend's gaze, not directly. Not if she had to face the flinty, brittle pain lurking under the tiny gold flecks in her irises.

     Cass said “That’s what I thought.”

     Her hands dropped from July’s shoulders. Then, without warning, her fist struck the edge of July’s jaw—a brilliant starburst of pain bloomed behind July’s eyes as her head jerked sideways.

     That was easier to process by far.

     July threw the full force of her body weight at Cass. An elbow stabbed into her gut as she tackled her; a palpable shock went through Cass’s skinny form when they hit the floor, air whooshing out of her lungs in one sharp gasp. Faintly, behind the roar of blood rushing to her head, voices jabbered in sharp, harsh tones; July tuned them out easily, every cell in her body immediately and completely dedicated to committing acts of violence on her friend.

     They rolled on the floor, both desperately trying to use their momentum to struggle on top of one another; skin dragged against skin, fists grasping and shoving blindly, twisting and wrestling til July could barely tell who was who, where she ended and Cass began.

     On the bottom, July finally got her legs up against her chest, squeezed painfully in-between herself and Cass, and pressed her whole body into the floor for leverage. She kicked out, her bare feet forcefully shoving into Cass’s stomach—Cass dry-heaved as she fell away, scrabbling at the floor. July scrambled into a crouching position—but Cass had already re-centered and launched herself at July again.

     Her body connected violently with July’s, tackled her right back to the floor, face-down this time. July turned her face so only her cheekbone bounced off the floor, but it still hurt like a bitch—rattled her teeth and stunned her, briefly.

     “—them work it out.” Rhea’s voice was barely audible through her stupor.

     Ophelia's voice was much higher than before. “I can’t just let patients—”

     But the rest was cut off by July’s yelp of pain as Cass knelt on her back, knee pressing agonizingly into the small of her spine, one hand gripping her hair to yank her head back. July felt like she might snap in half; she gritted her teeth, digging her nails into the floor below her.

     “A year,” Cass growled, her lips right by July’s ear. “An entire year—”

     “I didn’t know,” July gasped. Her spine screamed in protest; she beat one palm against the floor uselessly. “I didn’t know where you were, I didn’t—”

     “Cass.” Rhea’s voice cut through the air like a knife through smoke. She was kneeling beside the two of them—July hadn’t even noticed her move.

     Cass’s grip on July’s hair loosened—just barely.

     “She’s probably had enough for now,” Rhea said, a quiet lilt. “Let her get back to full steam before you rip her throat out, ‘k?”

     The knee on July’s back retreated; the grip on her hair fully released. July let herself go limp on the floor for a moment, her extremities shaking and her heart racing, even as she heard Cass say, yet again, “A year.”

     “I know, babe.” Babe?! “Later, okay?”

     July dragged herself up into a squatting position, resting on her heels momentarily. She squinted up at Rhea, getting a good look at her for the first time since she’d entered the room. The body didn’t look all that different from how July remembered—their hair was a bit longer and braided into tight cornrows, but the face and build were exactly the same.

     Lake had liked Rhea. He said she “had gumption.” He’d liked everyone in their system, in one way or another.

     With effort, July rose to her feet, wincing as her joints slid against each other and her muscles stretched and complained. She started to thank Rhea, but she didn’t get more than a word out before getting interrupted.

     “Don’t.” Rhea stood by Cass, one hand on the small of Cass’s back and the other resting on her own hip. Her expression was stony. “I didn’t do that for you. We aren’t friends.”

     With that, Rhea led a mumbling, bitter-faced Cass away, back through the electronically-locked door and into the long corridor of rooms—cells, July decided—neither of them looking back at July.

     Sudden silence bore down on July, ringing in her ears. The aching in her muscles didn’t bother her nearly as much as the pit in her stomach yawning open once again.

     “I apologize,” Ophelia said stiffly. “That was… unexpected.”

     “Yeah,” July said, still staring at the closed door. Abruptly, she shook herself and shrugged, giving Ophelia a wry, twisted smirk. “It’s whatever. She’ll come around.”

     “They, actually.” Ophelia began flipping through her binder.

     “What?”

     “Hm?” Ophelia didn’t seem to be listening anymore. She kept flipping pages, her tone distant. “Oh, yes, that’s what Caspian put on their paperwork, at least.”

     “Caspian,” July repeated, rolling the syllables around in her mouth experimentally. She looked at the door again, pit in her stomach tugging at her heart in a funny, sad little way.

###

     The rest of the tour passed in a blur. July was barely present, padding behind Ophelia silently, letting the words slide over her as Ophelia blabbed about kitchen usage (blowing up the microwave was specifically forbidden, which hinted strongly at past incidents) and gym usage (July was confused by the array of workout equipment, but made a note to come back to it later, when she wasn’t so preoccupied) and requisition processes (paperwork).

     Finally, as Ophelia was about to lead her back to her cell, July said “I need air.”

     The alien cocked her head to one side, slit pupils fixed on July, unmoving. It made her skin crawl. A few awkward moments passed like this, then: “I don’t think you’ll like it outside very much.”

     “I don’t care.” July pulled at a strand of hair restlessly, wrapping it around her finger tight til the skin turned purple. “I just—Can I just sit outside while I do the paperwork?” As an afterthought, she added “Please.”

     “By definition, I suppose you can,” Ophelia said. July couldn’t make heads or tails of that, so she didn’t bother trying, just kept fidgeting with her hair until Ophelia, with a slight wiggle of her crest, turned back down the hallway and motioned for July to follow her.

     They went down the full length of the hall—July decided not to examine the cell doors too closely this time, worried about accidentally catching a glimpse of Cas again—and to the opposite door, the one Ophelia said she didn’t need to worry about til her first appointment. Whatever that meant.

     Ophelia unlocked it with her ID and they stepped through into a dimly-lit, grungy junction of several different hallways, all made from the same omnipresent brownish-gray metal, all lined with masses of pipes and wires and twisted metal constructs that July couldn’t begin to guess at the functions of. There was still no clear light source she could see; the metal glinted sickly-dull in the ambient, sourceless glow, casting strange shadows in every direction.

     Archways gaped over the halls, seemingly inviting her to step through; something about the whole scene reminded her of a mouth, or several mouths. Chilly pinpricks spread down the skin of July’s back; she swallowed, resolutely yanking her mind away from thoughts of teeth gnashing down on her head.

     Ophelia brought her down the rightmost corridor, either ignoring July’s distress or just not noticing it to begin with. They passed more heavy metal doors, interspersed with ladders set into the wall leading up into dark crawlspaces, stairs made of thick mesh grate leading down farther than July could see (even craning her neck as they walked by), more junctures, some covered in curtains of hanging wires so thick, their hallways were hidden. It all felt unnatural, off-putting, like no person would have designed a building like this—there was no rhyme or reason to the architecture that July could find, no intuitive path through its halls, just an endless maze of meaningless halls and doors.

     Throughout their entire journey, they did not encounter another living creature even once. There were no signs of life, alien or human, no matter where July looked—no voices filtering down the halls, no movement she could catch through any of the mesh floors. Apart from the repetitive clunk of Ophelia's thick-soled shoes on the floor and July's own irregular breathing, the only sound was a low, constant buzz in the background.

     Ophelia stopped in front of yet another of those heavy metal doors, entirely indistinguishable from the others to July’s eye; she tapped her ID on the box and, when it glowed green, stepped back and gestured for July to walk through.

     After all of that buildup, it was starting to seem like this wasn’t a good idea. There was nothing to be done about it, though; July was already there.

     She pressed one hand to the cool metal of the door—it flexed slightly under her palm, moving against her skin in a way that felt almost like petting a chilly, hairless animal—then she pushed it open and stepped through the doorway.

     At first, she didn’t understand what she was looking at.

     It was still dim, lit everywhere by the same sourceless, ambient light (it was becoming clear that lamps were a thing of July's past). She was on some sort of balcony, that much was clear; it was framed by a chest-high black wrought iron fence, dark spears of metal worked into curlicues. There were a couple of chairs made of the same black iron, a bit taller than she was used to, with long backs and longer legs, but entirely usable.

     As July peered over the edge of the balcony—curious but sweaty, her palms damp and shaking just a little—she saw walkways layered haphazardly over one another as far down as she could see. They were paths open to the air, little spindly figures—Dusties—moving through them like ants—and as she squinted down at the scene, she realized with a start the walkways connected buildings, metal rooftops sitting hundreds of feet below her.

     Above her, the building she was just walking through loomed oppressively, one long, thin metal tower that eventually disappeared into formless darkness. It must have been night, she thought—but no, there weren’t any stars, no moon, no clouds—it a dark deeper than the sky could be, a void in the truest sense of the word, nothingness unspooled over her head.

     Beyond the balcony was more somehow even more difficult. In every direction, rambling, ramshackle, nonsensical metal constructs stretched out endlessly into the horizon, tall buildings lined by external staircases, some of them leading to nowhere at all; buildings were connected not just by those open-air pathways, but also by long metal tunnels suspended in the air between structures. Poles and triangular frames jutted out from structures seemingly at random, draped with masses of wires hanging in dramatic arcs between pieces of architecture. The view was uninterrupted—nothing came anywhere near the height of the building she was in.

     “Yeah,” July said faintly. “I don’t like this.”

     Ophelia had already followed July onto the balcony and settled into one of the tall chairs—it fit her proportions perfectly, looking almost entirely natural with her long limbs folded over it. She blinked slowly at July, not saying anything.

     There wasn’t much going on in July’s head. On autopilot, she hoisted herself into the other chair; her feet dangled a good few inches off the floor, which made her feel vaguely like she was in a highchair. “Where are we?”

     “Medical,” Ophelia said, opening her binder once again. Before she could stop herself, July let out a pissy huff; Ophelia peered over the edge of her binder, crest idly undulating. “You wouldn’t understand anything else I said.”

     “Try me.” July tilted her head up slightly, jaw firm as she maintained eye contact with the alien, who only held it for a few seconds before returning to her papers, apparently unbothered.

     She laid the binder flat, unsnapped its three metal rings, drew a few pages out with long, thin fingers, and placed them on the circular side table that sat in-between their chairs. “We are on a ship in the fleet. This is the fleet.” She gestured out toward the scene around them with extended claws.

     July looked back out at the city—it looked like a city, it had to be a city, there were no other words she could find to describe what she was seeing. There was no way they were on a spaceship—the darkness overhead had no stars, no planets, it was emptier than any sky could be, like a hole in reality itself.

     Besides, she was pretty sure you couldn’t breathe in space.

     “But it’s…” July found herself struggling for words. Lamely, her ears burning, she finally said “Big.”

     Ophelia made a harsh, repetitive noise, her shoulders going up as she pressed both hands over her mouth; after a second, July realized she was laughing, and even more blood rushed to her face.

     “Yes.” The muscles of Ophelia's shoulders rippled as she returned to stoicism, placing her hands back in her lap primly. “it is…. Big. We are not in your plane at the moment. It may not make sense to you, at least not for a long time, but don’t trouble yourself trying to work it out. The ships take care of us, and they will take care of you, too.”

     As July tried to work through that sentence, Ophelia reached over and pushed the papers on the table toward her.

     “Please,” she said, “do your paperwork. I want to take a nap.”