Stardust

I know that I'm more than this body, more than this consciousness. A part of me swims in the stream. But in truth, I'm standing on the shore. The current never takes me downstream.

—Battlestar Galactica (2003)

When a house is both hungry and awake, every room becomes a mouth.

—Anatomy, kittyhorrorshow

     June sat at her bedroom vanity, staring at her reflection. The soft glow of burnt-orange LEDs lining the mirror flattered her face. Her hands were folded in her lap. They trembled.

     She was the most important girl in the universe, and today was the most important day of her life so far.

     Balling up her fists, she took a deep breath in through her nose and slowly exhaled, then let the muscles of her fingers unclench one-by-one. Tremors temporarily suppressed, she picked up the broad-backed boar bristle brush laid out on her vanity and began sectioning off long strips of waist-length hair, methodically running the brush through til her locks were smooth and shiny.

     Daddy had been very accommodating of her requests, once she figured out the right way to frame them. It was lucky their goals mostly aligned.

     June put the brush down and eyed the variety of makeup products spread out over the marbled vanity countertop, some neatly stacked in clear plastic organizers, others spread out haphazardly over the surface where she’d left them in various fits of laziness. Cleaning was a boring and pointless chore; the maids would reorganize everything when they came at the end of the month, anyway.

     She picked up a fat brush with a thick crystal handle and began applying pale foundation powder to her face, leaning in toward the mirror to get a better look at her pores.

     It felt surreal, after all this time. She’d been daydreaming about this day for years, technically even before Nea latched onto her like an adorable barnacle, but it was always a theoretical kind of daydream. The kind of thing she’d picture to get herself to fall asleep at night, or script out to pass the time in the shower. It had never felt real before.

     June swept lines of rosy pink blush over the apples of her cheeks and blended them out, then sat back and eyed her lipstick display critically. Bright red was a bit flashy on her full lips, but that had never stopped her before—sometimes, when Daddy brought the girls to a society event, he'd give her a judgmental quirk of the eyebrows and she'd run off to scrub the offending pigment off her mouth and replace it with a neutral beige, but Daddy was the only person she'd debase herself for. Besides, July wouldn't care about propriety.

     She popped the wand out of a tube of crimson liquid lipstick and began applying it carefully to her upper lip, skin pulled tight against her teeth for accuracy’s sake.

     Her hand shook ever-so-slightly as she worked. June squeezed the edge of the countertop with her free hand briefly, hard enough to hurt her knuckles.

     It wasn’t like she was nervous. The worst that could happen was July was angry and confused, and honestly, that had been her sister’s default emotional state since childhood. June could handle her.

     She put the lipstick away and blotted her lips with a tissue. One coal-black eye sparkled in the periphery of her reflection; she pictured it painted with sparkly neutral pigment and lined in a careful, precise cats-eye—after all, she wasn’t leaving the ship, she didn’t have to hide—but something pulled her hand to the sunglasses folded up on the counter, anyway.

     June perched them on her nose and adjusted the collar of her shirt, pulling it out further over her sweater to expose the hollow of her throat and the smallest slice of collarbone. She blew a kiss at her reflection before standing up.

     It was the most important day of her life. She would never be ready.

###

     It irritated her to admit, but “blinking” was a catchy name for the kind of spatial folding June did. This admission irritated her primarily because she hated giving patients credit for anything, seeing as most of them were idiots, and even the intelligent ones were still stumbling around in the dark compared to her, but no other terms managed to stick in her brain.

     Blinking came to June so easily, she sometimes had to catch herself in public before she disappeared in front of an unsuspecting passerby. It was even easier in the fleet; several times over the last year, June had found herself in a different section of the ship entirely before she’d even consciously registered a desire to go there. Daddy was endlessly proud of her talents, of course.

     When June blinked over to medical, she managed to land directly in July’s room—and not only was she goddamn proud of the precision involved in that, she also appreciated avoiding Ophelia and her endless sign-in sheets and obnoxious lines of questioning. It wasn’t strictly above-board for her to circumvent procedure like this, but who cared about that?

     The patients’ rooms were nothing special—nothing like the Marcus suite, obviously—just small rooms with padded floors, pale walls, and adjoining closets and single-shower bathrooms. They all contained the same thin iron bedframes topped with cushy mattresses; June found July unceremoniously sprawled out on hers, tangled and matted hair covering her face, a loud snore drifting from her half-open mouth.

     June’s breath came short and fast. She knelt by the bed, one hand hovering just over the skin of July’s arm, close enough to feel the warmth of her flesh, close enough to ever-so-slightly tingle as her arm hairs brushed up against her palm.

     She couldn’t bring herself to close the gap.

     July looked old. Throughout their adolescence, June had seen her sister in the Dreaming almost every day, but it never really hit like it did right then—physically sitting in front of her, basking in the earthy smell of dried sweat mixed with a stranger's laundry detergent, cataloging every single detail of her skin.

     Her hair was just past shoulder-length, a bit longer than when they were kids, but still nowhere near June’s. Even slack with sleep, her arms were thick and firm with muscle, peppered with shoulder-freckles and lightly tanned—of course, she’d been aboveground for a year by then. Burn scars crept up one of her arms, marring those freckles beyond all recognition where they licked up her shoulder and collarbone; June’s heart crawled into her mouth and bled for her at the sight. She shouldn’t have had to recover from injuries like that alone, stuck in some backwoods cabin with stolen medication.

     Despite that, she looked healthy. Untidy, scarred, a bruise blooming under her jaw—but well-fed and muscular, thick curves and round cheeks. A knot of tension in June's shoulders unwound.

     With a sudden surge of courage, June let her hand fall and circled July’s wrist with her fingers, gently rubbing her thumb along her tender pulse point.

     It felt warm, electric, right. July was finally where she belonged, and the thought sent indecipherable, animal feelings rushing through June’s skin, starting at their point of contact and sweeping outward through her whole body. She fought the urge to collapse over July’s sleeping body—to gather her sister into her arms and squeeze til both their bones creaked and cracked and they collapsed, dissolved into each other, til who consumed and who did the consuming was nothing but a question of semantics.

     July stirred. Her lips parted and she made a low, wet snuffling noise in the back of her throat. As her eyelashes slowly fluttered, all the blood in June’s body rushed to her head, heart pumping double-time to keep up.

     “Good morning,” June managed, clutching July’s wrist embarrassingly tight.

     July squinted at her, eyes still practically shut—

     —and then shut them again, not saying a word.

     The ghost of anxiety tugged at the back of June’s mind. She ignored it, bringing her other hand around to gently smooth snarls of hair back from July's face. “It’s me,” she cooed, low and breathy, “it’s June, sweetheart. I’m here.”

     There was still no response. Heart wildly slamming itself against the bars of her ribcage, June gently tapped her palm against the side of July’s face, first very lightly, then slightly harder. July continued to not react, even as June began to tap more insistently, pace and vehemence increasing—until finally, abruptly, violently, July swatted her hand away and rolled to face the opposite direction.

     The back of July’s head was even more matted and tangled, if possible. June sat back on her heels, staring at it blankly. Her heart continued to race. Her vision narrowed til all she could see was July’s stupid, miserable form huddled on the mattress.

     Something deep and primal in her brain took over; it shoved her emotions out ahead of her thoughts, sent the inside of her skull spinning around.

     The first thing that fell out of her mouth was “What the fuck.”

     It was a short, flat statement. Her voice didn't so much as waver.

     “Leave me alone.” July’s voice was muffled, but her exasperation was clear.

     “What?” June couldn’t help it; she laughed, humorlessly. “Is that all you have to say? Leave you alone?” She reached out, grabbed July’s shoulder with both hands, and hauled her limp body back to face June; her sister's eyes were still shut, her traitorous limbs flopping around in uncooperative defiance. “Fucking hell, at least look at me when I’m talking to you.”

     July deigned to squint at her again, jaw set grimly beneath slivers of green. “The sunglasses are a new one.”

     “No, they’re not,” June snapped, “not that you’d know.” Rage surged up and coursed through June’s head, smothering any lingering scraps of anxiety with its hot, red ferocity.

     She’d expected confusion, anger, tears. She’d expected hostility and aggression, the lashing out of a shelter dog waking up in its new home, anxious and primed for violence; she could understand that, she’d prepared for it. But this—this was like July didn’t even care she was there.

     June never expected that.

     Head hot and giddy, she whipped her aviators off and grabbed July’s cheeks between thumb and forefinger, forcing her sister to look directly at her. June leaned in til their foreheads were almost touching, breathing ragged and all her muscles trembling—tiny, tense tremors.

     She stared into July’s glassy eyes for what felt like minutes, unbroken.

     “Is this how you want it to be?” she finally said, voice shaking, feral. “Years later, and you’ve still just gotta get one last jab in? One last knife in my gut? Abandoning me wasn’t enough—you have to prove you don’t give a shit.”

     July continued to be unresponsive. Something shifted in her eyes, though—she couldn’t hide a slight wet sheen as it rose up over their glazed surface, the slightest flutter of her lashes, the tiniest tremble of her lower lip.

     Good.

     June squeezed her cheeks cruelly. “You never gave a shit. Left me on the street to die, and now look at you.”

     “Please,” July whispered, raw and cracked, but June’s vision was still tunneled in around July’s face, blacking out everything but those eyes—those wide, wet eyes, like looking in a mirror ten years ago—the rapidly-increasing rate of her breathing shot adrenaline through June’s veins, made her stomach do dizzy, heedless backflips.

     “Fine,” June spat. Literally; a fleck of saliva flew from her lips and hit July’s face, making her flinch. It was a beautiful moment.

     June released her sister's cheeks and stood up, popping her sunglasses back on her nose.

     “If that’s what you want, fine.” Trembles broke through her flat affect, a catch on “fine,” a slight waver on “want.” June had to leave. “Stay here.”

     She looked down, taking in the image—July sprawled out beneath her, tears starting to well up at the corners of her dead eyes, lips trembling and silent, a disheveled, pathetic wreck of a girl—and then she blinked away.

###

     You needed relief, the pent-up, wretched, furious girl-thing that you were, and when you needed relief, you went to the garden and called for your ward.

     While you called yourself the most important girl in the universe, simultaneously, you knew the girl you were sworn to protect had claim to the title. Not that you knew why; for all your well-earned narcissism, all your achievements, you were still a child, gathering the shards of your egg-shell around you like a shroud and gluing them over your eyes. All the same, you knew she was precious, that she needed protection, and your tender little heart ached with the weight of it.

     She always came when you called.

     This time was no different; Aranea was already waiting for you in the garden when you arrived, full skirts spilling over the stone bench she perched on, neck heavy with black jewels that led your hungry gaze down the sharp V of her lacy neckline to the gentle swell of her tiny breasts.

     You didn’t need to speak; she already heard all about your unfortunate encounter with your other sister, long before either of you retired to bed. She saw you gawking and smiled gently, one hand extended with a limp wrist, and purred, voice languid and dark, “On your knees, pet.”

     And for all your bluster and narcissism, child, you would always drop to your knees for her, your mind sliding into blissful blankness as her nails scraped your scalp. It was its own form of selfishness—the only thing that calmed your roiling blood, the only thing that could cull your feverish rage, was to let Aranea do as she wanted with your body.

     You took the blows, the cuts, the cram of her cock in your mouth, her hand pressed against the back of your head til you struggled and gasped for breath, and it carved out an eye in the hurricane of your mind.

     At the end of it, you let yourself fall limp in the hot dirt, thorny tendrils of rosebushes wrapped around your body, pricking gently at your skin. Your head felt cool and empty, more lucid than you had been in days. Your chest heaved and shone with sweat. Aranea’s voice swam in and out of the edges of your hearing; she sang softly and idly, something low and sweet and simple.

     She loved you. You knew this, and you knew she would do anything for you just as you would do anything for her.

     It should have been enough for you—and yet, you still felt the rejection of your other sister like a hole in your gut, aching and primal and deep.

     Aranea’s fingers combed through your hair as she lay beside you on the ground, mindless of the thorns pushing into her paper-white skin, bright beads of red blood welling up in stark contrast. You wanted to lick them. You did, salt and iron sharp against your tongue.

     She kissed your forehead sweetly and said “We’ll make her see. Don’t worry.”