Sister Cities

Part 98: Vi

Could you teach me how to walk in the moonlight?

Or show me how to bury these old knives?

I'd like to get them out of my hands

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 "I've got something cool to show you when we get in."

Powder waggles her fingers at the manor guards, bounding up the front staircase ahead of me. "Bring it."

Caitlyn sent an invite home with Ekko, apparently anxious to fortify my tolerance for her house before my time away can fade it. Powder agreed to tag along. We both have an overnight bag and uncertain expectations— going through the front door into the foyer instead of through Caitlyn's window feels wrong, partly because it's new, and partly because it makes coming over seem like a big deal. I'm not sure how it manages to be a big deal, considering I've lived here already, but that's how it is.

"Caitlyn is working in her room," Aluya says, straightening Powder's messily-discarded sneakers. "She says you can join her or entertain yourselves until she's done. You missed dinner, but there's a charcuterie board in the kitchen if you find yourselves peckish."

I don't know what a "charcuterie board" is, but I thank her as if I do and bring Powder around to the ornate doors of the library, the left one propped open with a wedge of geode.

"Look. You've never seen anything like this." I pull her into the sprawling room and watch a delayed but heartfelt imitation of awe cross her face.

"Whoa!" she says.

"Right— you've seen everything from the pipes, haven't you?"

"The whole castle, ten times over. Sorry."

I lead her farther in, toward one of the shelves and the mobile ladder. "Have you explored yet?"

"I'd be dead meat if I touched this stuff."

I roll the ladder in front of her. "Caitlyn said to tell you you can touch anything as long as you don't draw on it."

Powder lights up for real at that. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. Just hide if her mom comes in."

With a second's pause, a bounce on her toes, and a too-loud whoop, she jumps onto the ladder and shoves off a shelf to send it rattling down the track. I head automatically for the sitting area, but reroute to the filing cabinet where Caitlyn got paper and a pen to draw my Punnett squares. Even knowing it's allowed, and even not having ever cared about what's allowed, I'm hesitant opening the drawers— when she first brought me here during the ball, I felt like I was stomping across sugar glass, and that hasn't completely gone away. Old sump-rat hostility is what gets my hands on a feather-tipped pen and a crisp sheet of personalized Kiramman stationery to take to the table.

It hasn't been that long since the last time I drew, if you're counting chalk on ragged stone and fingertip trails through dust and soot. Or unsanitary tattoos on glowering inmates' arms. But the last time I did a real ink drawing was before Stillwater: probably in my bunk in the Last Drop's basement, using crinkled paper Ekko and Powder had already drawn and erased a pencil blueprint on and one of the pens that were always collecting under the couch. The tools in front of me feel foreign now.

Powder keeps going with her ladder ride, holding on one-handed, her free arm and her braid flung out into the air. She catches my eye and waves. I pick up the pen.

The first thing I sketch in the corner of the paper is the links of her braid. Just to remember what the motions feel like. The second thing I do is try to mark down the shape of her eyes. She's not a great reference right now, swinging around like that, but I'm not drawing her. I'm drawing Mom.