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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alicornucopia

"Oh?"

"Like, almost no one I know has a job where you'll earn more money if you work more hours. So they don't - structure policy around that, despite that being how work works for most people."

alicornucopia

"Surely some greens do? The artists aren't paid by the hour, but by the product should work out similarly -"

"If you do commissions, probably. if you release songs or auction things you introduce so much variance that - there's no no correspondence but there's much less of one. And also, as a cultural thing, 'I'm driven by my muses to work day and night' is an acceptable thing to experience but 'I need to finish three more sketches to make the next tuition payment' isn't, it's so crass, hardly counts as doing art at all." He is rolling his eyes.

alicornucopia

"Wow. Whoever you're selling the sketches to won't know the difference, will they?"

"As far as I can tell the degree to which you mythologize your abilities has no impact on the final product."

alicornucopia

"I don't watch nearly enough TV to have a good window into the cultural foibles of other castes. I meet yellows in a fair quantity, happens if you run a business with a corporate end, but..."

"We're all the actors and screenwriters, I don't know that you'd actually get much insight into other foibles that way. Makel married grey, she doesn't seem to have many complaints about her neighbors? Everyone is agreed on what is wrong with blues..."

alicornucopia

"I was assuming the actors and screenwriters did research. Maybe if I watched more TV I'd see faux purples behaving ridiculously and know it was a crock."

"Perhaps it depends on the quality of the TV show."

alicornucopia

"Probably."

"What does your older sister do?"

alicornucopia

"Doesn't. Remember when I said you could have three boxes on a form - she can't - she's not stupid. She's really - but she can't fill out even three boxes in a form, let alone enough to do - things. She can't make instant oatmeal on a bad day, too many steps. She lives with me and I have a housekeeper who fetches her things and keeps her company if neither I nor any other family are around."

Nod. "Green they push you into painting, or choir singing, if it's like that."

alicornucopia

"She plays video games and reads, on good days she gardens and sews some."

Nod. "Like meeting new people, or not really?"

alicornucopia

"She doesn't go out but she likes talking to people online and doesn't mind if I have people over, she'll say hi."

Nod. "I'd like you to meet my family. We all get dinner together every couple weeks, and now that Katin's two it's even somewhat civilized."

alicornucopia

"Katin is -"

"Makel's wife's daughter. My twin brothers are also two but they were never very noisy and now that they're going blue like Aitim are very determinedly quiet."

alicornucopia

"Is that a blue thing?"

"It's a - Aitim told them that, being sort of dubiously blues, they'll be considered blue precisely to the degree they flatter blue sensibilities about what blues are like."

alicornucopia

"...blues think they're quiet?"

"Yes! Or, dignified and mature for their age and good at respecting the wishes of the other parties in a dinner conversation, who probably don't want to arbitrate a screaming contest."

alicornucopia