Better to Light a Candle: Val's Thoughts

Better to Light a Candle:  Val's Thoughts

"Sir, the second dreadnought is lining up to fire from the port!"
"Five dropships have been launched from the enemy carrier, sir!"
"Sir, we've lost our last Thunderhawk!"
"Sir, if red section takes another hit it's gonna fall off!"
"Tha engines canna' take much morra' this, cap'n!"

It's not looking good.  The holographic display shows six different enemy vessels, each at least as well-armed as my now-crippled Conestoga.  If those dropships can make it past the point-defense cannons then it'll mean fighting in the corridors.  A singular FREIA warhead could take out half of the opposing fleet, but not without severe casualties to the civilians in the city beneath.  All I need is-

"Dammit, Val, you're supposed to be paying attention to me!"  When the hells did Lythalia get on my ship?
"Sergeant, get this woman off my bridge!"
"Sir!"

I tip my commissarial cap to a properly heroic angle and readjust my longcoat.  Very well, I have no choice but to-
A weight falls onto my back, knocking me off balance.  "Va~l, I can think of something much more fun to do than this silly wargame of yours."  A pair of hands slip around my shoulders toward the first button on my longcoat.
"Sergeant, what did I tell you?"
"Sir!"  The weight gets peeled off of me with a cry of complaint.  "Wait, you aren't supposed to be doing this!  Let me go!  I'm supposed to be the admiral!  He's supposed to be forced to follow my orders!"

Right.  Now then, "Lieutenant Chevsky, bring us about.  Aim for the center dreadnought."  I hit the intercom, "Flight sergeant, bring the last Thunderhawk online.  Don't worry about getting a pilot."
I turn, coat billowing in a sudden and sourceless wind.

"It's time to bring the fight to the K'ill'Threx."

---

It's been three months, denied all comfort in the fiery heat.  Three months eking out what water could be found from the sparse life of the desert.  Three months, alone.
"Val, this is boring.  Why not go somewhere nice and soft," she leans against my side, pressing my arm into her cleavage.  "Somewhere with a nice, big, bed, and satin sheets, and billowy curtains?"  I try to ignore the weight; there's no telling if the Old Man of the Mountain will find out about the army movements in time if I don't deliver the reports by hand.

"We'll be passing through the shattered fields soon.  There the sun has so heated the sands that the dunes have turned to blackened shards of glass."
"Why in the hells would you want to go there?"  She stares at me in a mixture of horror and incredulity.
"It is my mission."

I'm caught off guard by the sudden twist as she spins me around by my arm.  "No!  This isn't where we're supposed to be!"  She closes her eyes and places her fingers to her temples as she chants "We are in a kasbah.  We are in a kasbah!  We! Are in! a Kasbah!"

"I'm sorry, Sister, but I have to do this.  The lives of thousands may depend upon the delivery of this scroll."
I turn around and walk off, ignoring the wail of frustration.

The sands burns my feet, and the sun burns my eyes.

---

"Hey."  Safi's poking my cheek.  I groan irritably in response.  "Interesting dreams?"
"Mrmm, no."  I don't have any dreams.  Or at least, none that I've remembered.
"You were thrashing around in your sleep."
"I probably dreamt I was attacked by a giant worm."
I get a weak, limp punch to the shoulder.

I stretch my neck enough to see over a hill of scales.  "Hey, it's almost time for breakfast."
She tightens her grip and groans, "Mmmm, not yet."
Well, fair enough.  I can't say I really want to get up yet, either.  Whoever said that sleeping on a Lamia was like laying on the cool side of a pillow all the time?  It's not.  Pillows don't randomly massage your shoulders while you sleep.

When I finally head out into the hall I walk past Sister's room right as she opens the door.  She looks like she hasn't been getting any sleep lately.  Her eyes are bloodshot and shadowed.  "Mornin'," I offer.  She glares at me for a moment before closing the door again.  I guess she's still mad about that thing with her abbess.

---

"Man, fuck that bitch."

Well that came out of nowhere.  I'm just sitting on the bench, giving my legs some downtime before I head back onto the field.  I didn't even see Luke come up to me.  "Wait, what?"
"Tish, man.  I heard about what she did.  I also heard some guy carrying a huge fuckin' flail knocked her out cold."
"Yeah, I've sorta been waiting for her to show back up."
"Word is, she's not coming back for a while.  Shouldn't've let her get back up at all, if you ask me."
I stare at him, trying to figure out if he meant what I think he meant.  Judging by how he's just bitterly staring at the field, I think he did.

"Dude, that's a little cold for some stupid-"
"Did you hear what she did to that third-year a few months ago?"  He's staring at me, now.  Straight into my eyes.
I shake my head.
"Same thing she threatened to do to you, but she didn't stick it back in his mouth."  He makes a looping gesture downward, then jams a finger back up.

Damn.

"Yeah, man, that bitch is fucking crazy.  Be better for everyone if she just disappeared.  But then, that's probably true for all Manticores."
I'd say that he's wrong, but I don't know if I can.  I'd call him out for racism regardless, if I wasn't there a year ago when he got his first girlfriend.

They were pretty cute together.  I'd never seen either of them blush before, considering how serious they both generally are, but when they were together they practically couldn't stop.  Dude was smiling all the damn time, at least when it started.  He'd started dating a human girl, something which the entire mamono population thought was "a waste," considering that he's fit and fairly good looking (no alp).  What started out as a rumor eventually snowballed.  "She's so ugly!"  "She can't please a guy, she's human!"  "She's not good enough for him."

Then the death threats came in.  He broke up with her almost immediately.  Word is that they'd been friends since they were both nine, and that the breakup was just to protect her.  Since then I don't think he's spoken a single word to any mamono.  He just passes them by, or glares at them if they keep trying.  He hasn't dated since, either.  He didn't change much around his friends, but he'd always been pretty severe.  I wonder if he'll eventually change, or if this is just how he is now.

I wondered about trying to get him to clear everything out and get some help, but then, I don't know if I'd do anything different if I were him.

---

I got another email from that curse victim support group asking me to come to the next meeting.  Into the trash with you, little email.  Mom thought it would be a good thing to try some years ago.  I remember when I walked into that room.  I remember the people.  A guy who could only eat through a tube.  A Holstaurus who could only speak in moo's.  A man who could never stop walking.  They told their stories - those who could, anyway - and I listened.

The woman who sat next to me was a Kikimora.  She'd been cursed to see blood, everywhere, all the time.  It rained from the skies, dripped from her clothes, and oozed out of the walking corpses that she saw people as.  She described herself as "one of the lucky ones" though, because treatment worked for her.  A poultice from some sort of sage root every morning lets her see past the illusion when she concentrates on doing so.  She'd even started dating a guy.  Everyone clapped, she sat back down, and then it was my turn.

Mom tried to get me to stand up and tell them my story, but I wasn't going to.  What would I say?  "Hello, my name's Val, and I have to carry around a light all the time.  Please, hold back the tears of sympathy."

No, I'm not going to go back there.

I click open a new tab and check out a news blog I visit.  Apparently a new species of butterfly mamono was discovered on a coastal island.  The researchers who found it thought that it was just a variation on Mothmen until one of them stuck a proboscis-like tongue down a tech specialist's urethra.

Huh.  According to one of the scientists, they're assuming that going straight for the source eliminates a lot of unnecessary energy expenditure.  It's a good thing that most mamono didn't evolve into their current state; they might all have different means of getting spirit energy.

In the next section the current regulations for the Feral intervention service are under fire again.  This time the pro-mamono party is arguing about the current treatment of Mantises.  Requiring identification is, they feel, discrimination.  The problem is that young Mantises usually reject society and just disappear into the woods until they come of age.  So if you meet a lone Mantis on the road somewhere, you really have no idea whether she's married or you're about to be jumped.

I lean back in my chair.  On one hand, it really is discrimination, and it feels wrong on principle.  On the other, this is also done for their own protection.  Even if we simply accepted that every now and then young men are going to get raped by random, socially disinclined Mantises - which we aren't - then we still have them to consider.  If they find and rape a guy who already has a girl in mind, or who simply outright rejects her, the girl'll be heartbroken and disappear back into the woods, never to be seen again.  This is as much for their protection as it is for the men.

But how do you argue that?  No one will accept an argument based on the claim that a fair portion of individuals in a species are incapable of making rational decisions for themselves.  Especially not when the majority of them we see are perfectly well adjusted members of society.

In the end, if we change the policy we're just going to have more young mamono lost to us.  We know that most heartbroken mamono don't seek out new husbands.  Certain mamono are especially prone to this; I remember reading about a Neuronago who found out her husband died in a car accident and simply laid down and died.  Getting rid of the current policy could end their entire species after long enough.

The next story is about Ushi-Oni populations.  They were rare to begin with, but it seems that with modern defenses against Ferals that they're going to end up extinct soon.  They're the one species that has never entered into the feral reintegration services.  Well, the only sapient one, anyway.  Devilbugs haven't either, but they're not capable of intelligent thought.

The only real proposal to keep the Ushi-Oni species around is for men to volunteer to become their husbands.  I know about this because some assholes online have started making jokes about people they don't like.  "Hey, you should totally join the Save The Ushi-Oni Society."  Making the eventual death of a species into a roundabout way of telling someone to go get raped.

It makes me sick.

I turn off my computer and slump back onto my bed.  I wonder if they're actually going to consider that proposal.  It's the only way to keep the species going.  But then there's a question about whether or not it should continue.  This project would have to keep going forever.  There would never be a time when it would be finished.

And that's ignoring the question of whether or not they really ought to continue.  They're a horribly violent and destructive race.  It's not even a question of individual difference; if there was a quiet, pleasant one then she'd be freely able to take the reintegration and join society.  I'm not saying I'm happy that they're going to disappear - no one is - I just can't say that the world will be worse off for their absence.

Hells, this is a depressing train of thought.  I wonder if this is the same thing that the old crusaders went through when they were exterminating the Matango.  Probably not, considering that they didn't think that mamono were real people.  And here we are, possibly on the verge of losing another race, even though we do think of them as thinking, feeling beings.  The circumstances are different, of course.  The reasons are different.  We're not wiping them out, just watching them die.  Another forty-or-so years and the last of them will cease being fertile, and the world will be a little bit better for everyone else.

---

"Hey, you have a little, uh," I motion to wipe around my nose.  Tera looks up and takes a claw to her nose, scooping off a small dollop of ice cream from her nose.  Now only the entirety of the rest of her face is covered with it.  I give her a little thumbs up.  She smiles, then dives back into the bowl.

A lot of people think that Wyrms aren't smart enough to be tool users.  Those people can die in a fire.  The fact of the matter is that steel is so comparatively weak next to their claws that it takes fine motor control and constant concentration for them to use small utensils without damaging them.  A similar difference keeps them from handling most anything electronic or especially plastic.  Tera's probably getting old enough that we'll be able to get her some titanium kitchenware soon.

"Hey, you have a little," I motion again.  She scrapes off the peanut butter.

"Hey Shiny?"
"Yeah?"
"What does 'inscsemination' mean?"
I taste iron in my mouth.  The world goes very quiet and very still.  "Where'd you hear a word like that, Tera?"
"An older birdie at scschool taught me!  She scsaid it wascs funny when I scsaid it!"
Someone didn't get the memo, and I know exactly who it is.  "I think you're funnier when you stick to jokes, Tera.  Like the one with the chicken."

I finish up my ice cream with one hand, the other furiously slamming down keys on my phone under the table.

Unknown Sender > HELLO, CASSIE ENNELMAN.  FROM NOW ON THE WYRM IS OFF-LIMITS.  IF YOU SPEAK TO HER AGAIN I WILL FIND YOU, AND I WILL KILL YOU.  I WILL RIP OFF YOUR WINGS, BREAK YOUR FUCKING CHICKENLEGS, AND I WILL COOK YOU AND EAT YOU LIKE A KURISUMAS FUCKING TURKEY.

No one corrupts my Tera.

---

greenmachine > hey
greenmachine > did u hear
greenmachine > ?
shackleborn > what?
greenmachine > rumor is u beat tish halftodeath cause she offered u a tj
shackleborn > wow
shackleborn > thats the closest ive ever seen a rumor come to the truth
greenmachine > u think ur done gettin offers?
shackleborn > im a single guy in a >60% mamono school
shackleborn > no
shackleborn > no i dont
greenmachine > stop bein single then
greenmachine > pick a girl already
greenmachine > ur such a fgt holy shit
shackleborn > all aboard the alp train toot toot
shackleborn > its so sparkly and it has a rainbow instead of a track
shackleborn > pulling into bunghole station.  population: dudes
greenmachine > so what did u want anyway
greenmachine > ?
shackleborn > have you heard about the problem with the ushi-oni population?
greenmachine > ...
greenmachine > hey
greenmachine > are you going to go save the uhsionis?
shackleborn > no
shackleborn > i just thought it was interesting
greenmachine > who thought it was interesting
greenmachine > u val or u li'l val?
shackleborn > gah
shackleborn > fine ill let you go back to resting
*shackleborn puts on a pair of shades
shackleborn > in peace
greenmachine > no pls dont
shackleborn > hey you urned it
greenmachine > agh that hurt
shackleborn > hey why are you treating this so gravely
greenmachine > 3wbhgpaiq3h8og345riy8q345rg543qm;dfsarsa;ordsaksdrki;rsadik;
shackleborn > if you keep shouting like this youll start coffin up a storm
greenmachine > ur a monster
shackleborn > just let me know when it starts to get tomb much
*greenmachine has logged off (exit message: i hate u so much right now)