Our Existence Is Scandal

✦17✦

A S T R A

When I woke up Sol was sitting at the edge of the bed, right by my feet. She was slumped over, soft snores coming out of her mouth and I wondered why she wasn't in the sheets next to me until I saw what she held in her hands.

Memories of last night clouded my mind, all fast and covered in glitter as if I was watching them on a screen instead of having lived through them.

My arm felt a lot better now that it had been wrapped a lot more carefully and it felt like I could now focus on other things than the subtle throbbing it brought me. Sitting up, I shuffled closer to Sol before looking over her shoulder to see she had her thumb jammed in between the pages of a book.

I crossed myself over to grab my glasses on my nightstand and slid them up my nose but when I turned back my eyes met pools of milk. She blinked at me, her eyes drooped with exhaustion but open nonetheless.

"Good morning?"

Her eyes stayed on me, intense, unwavering, and unblinking. She didn't reply to my greeting, her lips didn't move from being pressed together. Her fingers moved to shut the book, the sharp sound filling our otherwise empty silence. Faster than I could blink she threw the book in my chest, I barely managed to catch it before it hit the floor.

"You wanna tell me," I adjusted the glasses on my nose, narrowing my eyes at the strange drawings scribbled in the book "What the attitude is about?"

"Where did you get that?"

I thumbed through the pages "Kofi's desk, thought it'd have something that could help us," I told her honestly, "I assume that by your reaction, you read it?"

Her eyes hardened "Your humans, are fucking disgusting."

I closed the book, running my thumb on the cover "Did you read all of it?" I asked, "Did he say anything about why they-

"Did you know when Martian women are impregnated against their will their body not only rejects the child but expels their reproductive organs outside of their body and the pressure of doing so puts so much stress on the body that it causes complete organ failure and makes them go into shock, effectively killing them and the child?"

I swallowed "I did not know that."

"Do you wanna know how I do?" The vein on the side of her head pulsed "Better question, do you wanna know how they found out?"

"Sol-" I tried moving closer to her but she raised her hand stopping me.

"Did you know that removing wings from a Martian is similar to severing part of one's spine, making them stuck in a paralyzed state unable to move the rest of their body from the neck down?"

She gestured to me to hand her the book and I did, she flicked through it before stopping at a page and showing it to me. It was a sketch of the Martian wings, or rather an x-ray of their bodies, showing how the bones lined up with each other.