in color | Glowfic Constellation

His hair is green.

His mother was green, and in lots of places he would follow her, but Anitam is not one of those places; castes are patrilineal. He is a blue with hair inconveniently reminiscent of his dead mother, that's all. He will grow up and be a politician or a diplomat or an ambassador, like his father, like his father's second wife. His mother did embroidery, stunningly beautiful tapestries and fabric concepts and artwork that hangs in the state buildings and museums. But he's not green, and he can't follow her.

He runs away from home, of course. He would probably have done that anyway; looking back on it it feels a bit overdetermined. The hair would have been enough. Entis, his father's second wife, would have been enough. His siblings - two of them, blue in hair and ambitions and manner and talents - would have been enough. His hair is green. He runs away from home and shows up at a university in Anitam's third-largest city and sits in on classes, front row, asking questions and taking notes and turning in effortlessly brilliant problem sets.

In the third week he tells a professor, biting his lip, that he's not technically enrolled - family couldn't come up with tuition this year, and said maybe next, but he didn't want to wait - and the professor ruffles his hair (green!) and says that it's a delight to grade his work, he can keep sitting in and if he does well he'll talk with the administration at semester's end.

He excels in all five classes he sat in on. They find a scholarship. He vaguely mentions his mother's family.

He graduates with honors and co-authorship of four papers and offers from eight higher degree programs. He accepts one and publishes machine learning papers at a pace that has his advisors gently asking if he's going to burn out and he's green green green and he lives off microwave dinners and praise and envy and he marries the co-author of one of his papers about fluid dynamics and eventually someone pieces together his parentage and asks -

"Are you," he says, "suggesting that someone wrote my papers for me?"

" - I - what - no - I was at your thesis defense, no one else could possibly have -"

"Right. So then are you suggesting that the person who achieved those things wasn't even green?"

"There's no need to be confrontational. I was just - it's matrilineal lots of other places."

"Yes, it is."

And he's green green green.

Total: 6302

Posts Per Page:

‹ Previous 1 2 … 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 … 252 253 Next ›

« First ‹ Previous 146 of 253 Next › Last »

alicornucopia

"Intercaste violence." She shakes her head. "There are two other purple criminal judges who do capital crimes and not intercaste violence."

"I suppose Litif Aven is not the sort of person you can march in on and go 'what the hell'."

alicornucopia

"No. Not really."

"I love you. There are a lot of people on our side."

alicornucopia

"I love you." She sighs. She strokes their baby's blue hair.

"Maybe it's - good in a way, if it was going to happen eventually - to have it all settled before he's old enough to understand, maybe they'll handle it right and he will never ever have to even think about it -"

alicornucopia

"The thing I was hoping for was more quantity, more people who'd know some of us, who might have found out without reacting like that - it would take thousands at least for most people to know one, and more openness than is reasonable to expect most of them to take on - maybe you're right." Sigh.

"Yeah, I don't think this'll inspire any of the rest of them to openness - she trusted him -"

alicornucopia

"I have had the luxury of not mixing with an unfiltered population to the extent that I particularly feared violence from my co-workers. It's not a blue sort of behavior. If anyone had been trying to be grey that probably would have been a problem sooner."

"Yeah probably. Blues also - worry less, I think, in general - in Voa when they had that mess the blues and greens were mostly eating the contaminated food, it was the purples who were starving rather than touch it -"

alicornucopia

Nod. She pets the baby.

And he arranges a contract with Apef.

alicornucopia

Apef expenses an official looking security uniform and takes night classes and prowls around their house.

It is appreciated.

alicornucopia

Shasali leaves the baby home. She goes to Litif.

In her office. Raises an eyebrow, waves her in.

alicornucopia

"Hello. I'm a little concerned about the Ansheri case. My work can be apolitical; my presence isn't."

"Not really. What's your concern?"

alicornucopia

"I'm wondering how the judge was assigned."

"Benat is very meticulous and I trust him to handle the case with appropriate care and sensitivity, and with attention to precedent."

alicornucopia

"What precedent?"

"The case seems likely to set one." She sighs. "I would be permitting a miscarriage of justice if i handed it to a personal friend of yours not qualified to hear a murder case, you know that."

alicornucopia

"I was principally concerned about the intercaste violence specialty."

"Benat handles sensitive and difficult cases about which this office can anticipate lots of varyingly subtle emails from the politicians. That's among the things that qualifies him for this case, though of course the case is not intercaste violence."

alicornucopia