A tear creeps out of the corner of my eye when I feel another stabbing pain in the sensitive area right above my eyelid. Nari tells me to stop whining as she pulls another hair from its follicle. It's as if a hundred needles are pricking at my skin; my eyebrows feel like they are burning, but Nari continues her ruthless attack.
"So, Mahanya," she bluntly strikes up conversation, and, completely unprepared, my face starts to turn pink. Well, the rest of my face, seeing as the skin surrounding my eyebrows will probably be bright pink for another fifteen minutes anyways.
"What about him? Ah," I ask in-between pain inducing tweezer action.
"Are you seeing him?" Hammer to the nail, she's not even dancing around it.
"Of course not. Romantic relationships are strictly prohibited. It would put the whole mission at risk."
"So?" she insists, unsatisfied with my answer, "Do you want to be seeing him?"
"Do you promise not to tell?" she nods, and I spill all the tea, even though I was intent on keeping up my lying game, "My relationship with him is purely platonic. A girl's got needs, you know. Besides, how am I supposed to find a man when I spend all my time here?"
"You're not. We are leaving in two years, remember?" she waves the tweezer in the air above my face, deliberating on where to focus her attention, before diving back in, "Gee, who worries about relationships when we've got a historic space mission coming up around the corner."
"Don't judge me. I never got to see the world like you did. Itai is different. He's kind and funny, confident but modest. I like talking with him."
"Purely platonic, huh?" she raises an eyebrow at me and holds back with the tweezer, "Does he know that you're using him for his body?"
"It's not like that," I insist and lift my upper body supported by my elbows against the bed, "We're using each other."
"Alright," she surrenders and puts the tweezer down on the sheets, "Just don't get your feelings hurt."
"What feelings?" I ask, finally able to look at her without tears in my eyes from the pain.
"P, have you ever actually been in love?" she asks softly and pulls out a palette of nude colored matte and shiny compressed powders from the bag that she brought with her to my room. Eyeshadow, I'm guessing.
"Does my Mom count?" I look at her kiddingly, trying to laugh at the fact that I have never had romantic feelings for another person. I'll admit, my life has probably been very different from your regular mid-twenties girl.
"That's good, I guess," she starts to put the make-up on my arm in fat lines of different nude tones, and I guess it isn't eye make-up after all, "No one to leave behind."
I can tell by her face that she has already left someone, but I do not ask her about it. I can't really decide if I should, but she mostly looks like she doesn't want to talk about it. Her lips are shut tight, and she avoids eye contact, even though she seems to be deciding which color to use on my eyes. They all look the same to me, though.
She tells me that the mid-dark brown will enhance the light of my blue eyes for once, my skin being 'as pale as shimmering snowflakes', like she so kindly expresses it. I am not that pale. I have definitely seen people much paler than me. But who has time to tan, when they keep us locked up in this training facility most of the time. Tonight will be my first time off the Johnson ground in months. It'll probably do me good, I try to convince myself. The butterflies unsettle in my stomach and stir at the thought.
"Are you nervous, P?" Nari pauses the eyeshadow brush mid-air when she finds my fingers picking at my freshly painted nails.
"No," I respond a little too quickly.
YOU ARE READING
Tellus | ONC 2020
Science FictionWhen Polaris was a little girl, she watched the first space probe reach the star system of Alpha Centauri. Growing up, she dreams of one day being able to travel to its planets, unravelling its mysteries. This goal becomes her life's purpose, and ev...
