They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
"I don't like it either. And this is -" he presses a button and the screen flickers to life - "called a television, people with things to say - stories to tell or true things - can use a special thing to send from their -" he waves his pocket everything - "out to the whole world and then we can all scroll through the ones that are available - this is how you scroll - and learn about them. The ones you can watch from here are ones that lots of people like, if someone just starts one and talks about their cat and no one watches it then you need a pocket everything to find it and watch it."
All of the news channels have variously sharp footage of the aliens and yellow-haired newscasters excitedly speculating! This channel has dancing. This one has singing. This one is about the aliens too. This one has some sport played with rackets. This one has a very pretty purple-haired woman sobbing heartbroken on the floor of her apartment while snowflakes drift in through the window. "That's one of the ones that is telling a story, not real," he says.
He leaves and goes across the hall and improves on the notes he was taking and corrects the pronunciation of the blues who were valiantly trying to keep up with the conversation in the car. Someone with purple hair brings them food.
"You should talk more."
"I'm shy."
"It's - even more important than I would've thought, that they understand you're a person."
"I can try."
"When will you be able to do that again -"
"Another day or two."
"If anyone at any point in a conversation with either of them says 'reds aren't really people' or anything analogous I will have them shot."
"They're not starting with preconceptions or anything."
"I know. They've been very nice."
"Are you sure you're the only one -"
"I'm not sure. But I never heard of another Penumbra."
"- which is sort of good and sort of bad." Sigh.
" - so it might be only her for the worlds."
"We can probably trade for it, they're - twitchy but they're not - if they were convinced we're trustworthy -"
"Maulabel's not blue, she said, she might just be twitchy because she's out of her depth."
"It wouldn't be impossible to do it with a regular Shine and a Shadow -"
"You told me it shouldn't be impossible for me to steer a regular shadow-walk."
"...it wasn't."
"Yeah, but still. You're probably it until a few more generations of magic study have gone by."
"Mm."
"Sorry. If you'd rather find somewhere that doesn't want it this desperately I guess we can but they're being very nice about it."
"We are not trying to forcibly stop them we have no idea what else they can do."
"If they're leaving anyway -"
"They might come back. We are not trying to stop them."
"No one's voted for you, Neli -"
"And that's not the capacity in which I'm here. We are not trying to forcibly stop them from leaving if they decide to leave."
"I'll stop translating if you're difficult."
"What does Aitim have on you -"
" - he's his father, remember, it's that stupid fucking thing -"
" - wait, really?"
"I might want to go suddenly."
"Okay. Please don't strand me."
"I won't."
"And then when you feel safe we'll figure out what's next."
"Yeah."
"We could at least have greys on standby, make the call based on the circumstances instead of making it in advance by not even being prepared -."
"No."
"I'm going over your head on this one, I'm going to ask if we can have a team."
Sigh.
"And if you neglect to translate plans to leave that's treason, Kisantami."