Kherishdar's Exception, Episode 32: Structure, and Lack of Structure

Another day. Another Conversation. “The aunera separate into tribes based on arbitrary distinctions and then war on one another.”

We were in the garden, that day, Thirukedi sitting on a stone bench with a basket for flowers, but my arrival had interrupted His picking them. Seeing it, I said, “Shall I…”

“A few shyfaces, then, please. Tell me about these arbitrary distinctions.”

I had to go on my knees for those; shyfaces grow close to the ground. “Like fur color. Or, I guess, skin color. But not hair color. Isn’t that ridiculous? If you’re going to hate people for not sharing the same coloration, why only the skin, and not the hair? Or the eyes? Discriminating based on eye-color at least makes sense, because eyes are the most important part of the face. Skin wrinkles, darkens in the sun, grows pale without it. Skin mottles with age, or changes tone with disease. It makes absolutely no sense to me.”

“There must surely be a reason, then, daughter.”

I remembered Emma’s attempt to explain it to me. “They claim it has to do with history, and different-colored aunera coming from different cultures and then being abused by those cultures. Which is fine, except it doesn’t end with skin. They also hate one another for speaking different languages, or speaking the same language in different ways. For living on different parts of their world. For making more money, or less. For the jobs they do.” I paused. “They hate and distrust all their administrators. Their own administrator made a joke about it!”

“Do you remember it?”

Didn’t I! And the sight of Ruben Falzon’s face when he shared it. “That having never planned to be left in power over the entire human settlement, he was discomfited because he was now one of the people he was used to hating.” I paused. “I think he meant ‘hating’ as a joke.”

“And yet, the aunerai settlement is not subject to strife, is it? Does it seem unsettled to you? Poorly administrated? Violent?”

“No,” I said, drawing the word out. “And I don’t understand how.” I brought the shyfaces, little clumps of powder-purple flowers on beds of springy round leaves, also miniature. Setting them in His basket, I finished, “It should be haphazard, and yet it isn’t. And despite all their passionate desire to educate me on the importance of tribal hatreds, they themselves had no trouble with each other. Even though all their skin colors are different, and all of them speak their language with different accents, and they all seem to come from different parts of their world, and have different jobs and… honestly, Thirukedi, there’s no pattern in it that I can see.”

“Are you sure?”

Was I? I flipped my ears back. “Either these people are exemplary, or they have to work to fight their baser impulses, which are constantly suggesting that they hate one another. Maybe a little of both?”

“We would send exemplary people to worlds that might be adjacent to aunera.”

I sniffed. “All our people are exemplary, Thirukedi.”

He chuckled softly. “I don’t disagree, daughter. But I love you all, and love forgives much.”

…which made me question whether I’d ever been in love. I said, “Another set of flowers?”

“Pick what you like.”

I rose and started hunting, and I’d like to say I had some plan, some artistic sense of what shapes and colors complemented one together… but this was one aspect of my former work that had been difficult for me. My aesthetics are bodily, not visual. “I wonder if they make up these senseless divisions and assign themselves to them because they lack structure and long for it.”

“Do you think they’d agree?”

The idea made me snort. “Not in the slightest. They’d hate the idea.”

“Maybe you should ask them, then.”

Imagining the looks on their faces—particularly Laurence’s—I laughed. “Yes. I should.” I picked honeyfletch and languishes, wineflowers and sovereigns, Maiden’s Mantle and Sareshblood and better-in-teas and came back with a riotous bouquet, all enthusiasm and no harmony.  But Thirukedi accepted them with open arms, and watching His hands tenderly dispose them in the basket my heart felt fragile and strange in my chest. A child offering a wilted posie to a doting parent would have basked in their love and approval without consciousness, but I… I was no longer a child, and too aware that I was still bringing haphazard efforts to the attention of those who deserved better.

It was not proper for me to look up at His eyes, though I knew Kor did it. Kor, though, was Shame, and I was… just Haraa. Kherishdar’s newest osulkedi, and its most unsteady. But somehow, He knew my thoughts without seeing my face, and touched his fingers to my hair. “It’s well, Haraa.” A smile I heard in His voice. “So what do they think of the color of our fur? And the fact that we don’t give it so much power over us?”

“They think we’re pretty because we remind them of pets they have at home,” I said, dryly. “I think they’re disappointed we’re not more exotically patterned.” I thought about it and added, “I haven’t told them about the ribbons yet.”

“Will you?”

Would I? When the ribbons signified so much that mattered to us? Our relationships, our submission, our promises… “I absolutely have to. They’re going to hate it.”

He laughed softly. “You know them so well already?”

“In some things?” I grinned. “Well enough to share cake.”

(Yes, that is an expression.)

(Yes, we like cake.)

(Yes, I was arrogant. The world wasn’t done with me yet.)

“You’ll have to tell me what they say,” Thirukedi said. “Next time.”