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.

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touchme

This would probably involve a boy. Katin does not like boys, who are dumb.

There's adoption. Or sometimes girls get older and find they like boys after all. Not always but sometimes.

touchme

"Mama did that happen to you."

"Yes it did. Spring I turned four suddenly boys were not dumb and girls were very interesting too."

"Harrumph," says Katin.

"I could try to have a small discreet wedding but I also could sell the pictures for a million ni and we might need the money later, do you think Tapa even has good pictures of you -"

touchme

"Military ID photo, hospital ID photo... neither's very good. Family photos are all on the same site I look at to see my brother and sister though."

"Let me talk to Aitim."

"Do a lot of people know she's a Tapai immigrant, does that have to be part of the backstory -"

touchme

"People who know me personally know that but I think my accent's pretty good and I don't look really classically Tapai or anything."

" - grey Anitami father, grey Tapai mother, raised you in Tapa because their credits were more affordable that year, mother died before you were one in a training accident, five years ago you found out you had a claim to Anitami citizenship and went for it because sex work was grey here, Katin - who should probably have a different official name - was born here, father's name not listed father's caste listed orange?"

touchme

"...I avoid talking about my parents much so probably even people who know me won't know my mother's alive... do I need a different name too? Peka's not uncommon but not really common either -"

"It's not incriminating but if there's someone who worked on the case who hears 'immigrant from Tapa named Peka' - maybe your legal name is something else but you needn't change what you go by, just what's on the marriage certificate."

"You can forge the documentation for the rest of that?"

"Not on my own without bringing anyone else in but there are people I can bring in as part of, like, a reconstruction of several thousand birth and death records from one of the provinces that was late to digitize, give them paper to turn into electronic records, nothing about her in particular. How were you planning to do this without me?"

"I didn't originally realize there was much to hide and was planning to just fix her immigration status when we got married."

touchme

"I can be named Soata and Katin can be - Alin, that'd explain why she was called something else if I'd had trouble with Ls at first but wanted to name her something Anitami."

"I can get that all documented."

And he doctors a few pages of paper records, swaps them out, hires a team to digitize them, lets Makel and Peka know when Soata and her daughter Alin have legal identities (and miscellaneous other electronic evidence of having existed for the tabloids to dig up).

And Makel lets the tightly-kept secret of who he's going to marry leak for an outrageous sum of money towards the private island. Releases some songs they sang together and some tasteful engagement pictures in which Peka's face is at least partially obscured (by kissing him, by a fall of white hair, by her exuberant adorable orange daughter...)

touchme

Katin is delighted to photobomb.

The tabloids speculate about Alin's father and take the 'Makel Alasi: falling for a girl he hired' angle and note that green/grey's among the rarest intermarriages and mostly leave it at that. Senel filters messages from angry people Makel has never met who apparently thought he'd marry them.

touchme

"I like how nobody's guessing that I sleep with you for free and it's a cover for music money."

Kiss kiss kiss.

"The media take on my personal life has always been weirdly terrible. Lot of people who think it'd be more - honorable? Less suspicious? More mature? - to pick up a different four-year-old every concert and who wants to write scolding pieces about how it's exploitative to not do that."

touchme

"Exploitative not to, really?"

"Because they're not doing it for a living - 'what kind of person would rather have sex with someone who's doing it to pay the bills' - I'm sure if I were doing something different there'd be complaints about that too."

touchme

"I'm sure some people get into sex work just 'cause but I imagine you in particular have an understanding of how a thing can pay bills and also be fun!"