 
## Starstuff

### Kaylim

### Copyright 2013 Kaylim

### Smashwords Edition

### Visit my website at <http://www.kaylimwrites.com/>

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## Table of Contents

### Start of "Starstuff"

### Endnotes

In the remote villages, nearly swallowed up by dark brown sand and isolation, the women tell stories. The stories of the stars Ajita knows best. Rasjaurom, the mighty bear of the night, had been a renowned hunter. In his younger years he bounded across the dark depths of the sky and gobbled up all other creatures in his wake. Rasjaurom eventually became so fattened on the carcasses of his prey that he decided to find a safe place to rest. He found a small blue and brown planet and to this day stalks across its sky, a lumbering creature that chases off other hunters like the giant scorpion...but because he is so full, he no longer feeds. People in the village often wonder when the bear will hunt again. Ajita wonders what is inside of the bear and thinks of ways to release the thousands of ancient creatures that must be in the hunter's belly.

Ajita's life is slick and sand-free; the cold tang of metal lives in the back of her throat. She attends School in a large building where she also sleeps and eats. Education, she hears people call it. She doesn't understand the meaning of the word.

She never goes outside, but she can see it through windows in the Observation Hall. The world is constantly covered in grey clouds and she wonders if the villages have the sun in the faraway desert. Her skin is the color of the village sand, but she can only see dirt and clay from the Observation Hall. She has never touched the ground near School, but she thinks it's probably not as soft as sand.

Students rarely go to the Observation Hall; most of their time is spent in Lessons. Tutoring time is when Ajita struggles most. Her fingers have become adept at tapping over consoles and electronic learning systems, but she has not become as adept at answering questions.

"Instructor, I do not know the answer," she says.

She could not even understand the question. The language that comes out of Instructor's mouth is difficult to comprehend. The Instructor dismisses her and her wrist tag lights up as she walks through the halls. She has worn the wrist tag for as long as she can remember. It is made of grey metal and encloses tightly upon her wrist; it has no clasps and no looseness to it. Its red flashing light always distracts her. She had asked, once, what it was; "Roll Call" an Instructor had answered back.

She stands in a long line of grey uniforms as Instructors watch them with flinty faces. When it is her turn at the food dispenser her tag flashes once and out drops a tube and a packet. She consumes the tube filled with gel and the packet which consists of a hard square object. The Diet has always been her least favorite part of School, perhaps because her tongue has vague memories of other substances: thick, fluffy, golden brown crumbles that melted in her mouth and curved red, juicy slices that caused her tongue to burn.

Tasks are completed after Lessons. Ajita sees others working with bits of wire or tapping numbers into screens, checking lists of long things called calculations. Ajita's experiences with those sorts of things are limited. She had failed many of the Placement Assessment and had stood in front of three Instructors, all of them looking at each other and not saying a word. After that she was put into the Physical Training Center.

Little bots buff the floor of the main equipment and training room, and she goes to the room where the scanners rest. It is her job to shine and disinfect the tiny, round scanners using patches and sanitizing solution. The scanners have red eyes that blink as they look at people's bodies and deliver streams of information to Instructors. Ajita and her classmates had once trained quite often; the little scanners had run their eyes over them as they ran and jumped.

They train less and less nowadays.

The scanner room is quiet as usual, the door immediately blinking out of existence when she steps up to it, and then reappearing after she goes inside. There are twelve scanners in all, and they can float and change direction without noise. They always sit quietly in their stations whenever Ajita comes to clean them, but she is afraid that one day she will find them swarming through the air, red eyes staring at her, watching every move.

She takes her small tray filled with supplies and begins to clean the delicate machines, touching them gently so that they don't awaken. The scanners gleam as usual. They never seem to actually get dirty.

Except for today.

Her hand freezes over scanner two. A giant mark spreads across its sleeping eye and she stares at it for a few moments, wondering how it got there. Reaching for the container of sanitizing liquid, she studies the smudge: it's large and gray in color with many thin, curvaceous lines. She's sure she hasn't seen anything like it before but it seems familiar—

SPLASH.

She jumps. The container bounces across the floor, spouting cleaning fluid, and then hits the wall on the opposite side of the room. The sound echoes.

She looks around. No Instructor comes striding in, no scuttle bot races through the door, and her tag doesn't flash. The white liquid spreads out and hits her feet. Carefully, she jumps over the puddle. She wrings the plait in her long dark hair as she surveys the mess. The fluid has stopped spreading, and it sits there, rippling, as if to mock her.

Leaning down, she reaches out with a finger and taps the puddle. Deep ripples shiver over its surface. Balancing her finger against the edge of the spill, she outlines its shape, the solution cool and gentle against her fingertips. A large part of the puddle has branched out and she leans closer until her nose almost touches it. The smell is strong and clean. She swirls the liquid around and makes several other small branches, a hazy memory of the stars guiding her fingers.

Click. Clack.

Ajita yanks her head back, but cannot stand up fast enough. An Instructor already stands in the doorway. Ajita remains on the floor, painfully aware that she has no way to excuse this. The Instructor surveys the mess, a small frown forming on her brow. She folds her hands behind her black uniform – no, blue uniform. A blue training suit. This isn't an Instructor.

Ajita forces herself to speak up in a small voice, "Are you supposed to be using the training facilities?"

After she cleans the scanners, no one ever uses the training facilities until the next day.

"Yes," the newcomer nods, blonde curls dangling in her eyes.

She's frail in form, with white skin and yellow springy curls that frame her face. The rest of her hair is pulled back into a short ponytail, high on her head.

She takes a step into the room, "Student, what is your Numerical Designation?"

"Ajita," she answers.

"That is not a Numerical Designation."

"No, it is what I call myself."

"Everyone is given a Numerical Designation."

"Yes, but I call myself Ajita."

The intruder merely cocks her head to the side, as if considering it. She takes another couple steps closer and studies the puddle like it is a specimen in the science labs. Ajita blushes guiltily; messes aren't common at School. The last time Ajita had seen one was when she was little and had wet the bed after a dream. Only Ajita seems to create messes, though the dreams no longer bother her.

Click. Clack. Click. Clack. The blonde paces around the puddle, around Ajita's form, and stops right behind her. Ajita's shoulders twitch.

"You are manipulating the shape of the spill with your finger. Why?"

Ajita tilts her head back, blinking rapidly in the bright light, to glance at the intruder.

"It does not seem to serve a purpose. It does not help clean the mess, contain it, or return it to the bottle."

Ajita gestures to the floor, "Here."

The other woman slowly raises an eyebrow. Ajita waves her down again and then there is the rustle of fabric and the intruder smoothly slips into a kneeling position beside her.

With her index finger Ajita begins to round out the braches she made, "I am creating a star pattern."

"A star pattern...do you mean a star chart?"

Ajita shrugs, not answering yes or no.

"That is not a star chart. Star charts are accurate representations of the way the stars are dispersed throughout the known Universe."

Ajita can't figure out how to respond. She has seen star charts only a few times before, when the Students occasionally had an astronomy Lesson. She had never truly understood them.

"Where are the individual stars and their Numerical Designations? Where is the grid?"

"This is a different star chart."

"Clearly. But why the difference? Its purpose I cannot discern."

"The shape it makes resembles the forms one can visualize out of stars. This is the Great Bear Rasjaurom."

"Bears do not exist in the sky," she says, shaking her head.

"Not real bears," Ajita answers.

They turn slowly to look at each other.

The reflections of the ceiling lights create patterns in the stranger's blue eyes. Her iris is bright, like lightning, contained by a dark blue limbal ring.

"No of course not," the blonde says, her eyes narrowing, "how do you know of these shapes in the sky? The world is always in covered in clouds. How have you seen the stars?"

Ajita closes her eyes and just for a moment, she sees a small hamlet of clay houses and a sky that glitters when the sun goes to rest.

"The bear is not yet finished," Ajita says instead, "when I complete it, maybe then you will recognize it."

She smoothes out the muzzle, giving him the strength of jaw to crush a thousand foes, and then she rounds out his tail before giving the bear paws that suit the ferocity of a hunter. After she finishes her sweeping gestures, the smell strong upon her fingers, she leans back and wipes her brow with the back of her wrist. The stranger beside her hasn't moved in the slightest.

"I see it now. It resembles the likeness of a bear, a shaded outline. I still do not understand how you find shapes of bears in the stars. The stars form no patterns, and there is no purpose to creating one with sanitizing solution."

"I had spilled it by accident."

The stranger stands up and so Ajita does as well, and abruptly realizes that the stranger, though frail-looking, is taller than her.

"I will send a bot to clean it up then."

Of course. She should have thought to summon one of the bots.

"You are dismissed."

"I have to finish cleaning the scanners. It is my Task."

The other woman nods sharply and leaves. Ajita steps around Rasjaurom, a mighty misty figure prowling the floor. She does not feel so afraid to handle the scanners with Rasjaurom in the room; she's not even afraid of the one with the smudge. She picks up scanner two and turns it over in her palm. The lines are still there, spreading out over the surface of the eye like...she glances down at Rasjaurom quickly. Like ripples.

Gently, she presses her thumb to the smudge on the eye. Removing her hand, she stares at the new lines crisscrossing over the old ones.

The door makes a tiny metallic clink that signifies a person is entering, and she holds still as she hears the Click. Clack. Click. of the stranger's shoes. _Vrrrmmmm_. A bot, with its low dark hum, follows her in. Ajita can feel its vibrations in her feet.

_Thunk._ A new bottle of cleaner appears by her elbow. There's a soft touch, fleeting, as the stranger's arm gently brushes against hers. Turning her head, she catches the gaze of the blue-eyed woman before she turns away. While her hands automatically prepare the patch with the cleaning fluid, Ajita watches the blonde as she inspects one of the scanners.

"You are wearing a blue uniform," Ajita says, "What are you, if not an Instructor?"

The blonde drops the scanner back into place with a heavy clunk, "I was under the impression that Students are supposed to be seen and not heard."

"How are Students supposed to learn if they do not ask questions?"

"They observe."

Ajita scoffs and the blonde goes back to fiddling with the scanners. Ajita, with a rough motion, wipes the patch across the scanner's eye, removing the smudges. She cleans the rest of the scanners in silence and as she moves to each scanner, the blonde moves as well, so that they are always equidistant from each other, even when Ajita tries to close the gap by moving faster.

When she is done she collects her things and nods respectfully to the blonde, who spares her a glance.

Ajita sticks her tongue in her cheek for a second and then says, "Try not to destroy the scanners. I just cleaned them."

The blonde whips around with both eyebrows raised and Ajita can't help but feel her face flame.

"Do you talk to your Instructors in this manner?" the blonde asks, cocking a hip against the counter.

Ajita chokes on her reply, feeling her blush stretch all the way down her neck. The blonde makes a dismissive gesture before turning away and activating a scanner. She watches the other woman for a moment, the scanner twirling around her, and then steps out the door.

Most Students sleep on their stomachs, laying with heads turned to the door, unmoving in their grey stretchy sleepwear. After the lights go out, Ajita turns and goes to sleep on her back so that she faces the ceiling. Beyond the ceiling lay the stormy clouds, and beyond the clouds...are the twinkling stars. She has a top bunk and has always had one, since the Students never change bunks. She's slept in the same room and same bed for years.

The bunk room is huge, a long rectangular structure that contains every Student in Ajita's class. The atmosphere is never unpleasant; it is as unchanging and consistent as the rest of the climate in School. Sometimes, because of her dreams, Ajita will feel very cold or wake up in a sweat. She has only her sleepwear to shield her from dreams, as their beds are bare and very flat.

It is always quiet at bedtime; her classmates settle down and fall asleep, their breathing the only disturbance. When Ajita finally closes her eyes, she slips into dreams. They come in flashes, fast and blurred, screams in different languages sliding through her subconscious. Beings with obscure faces and limbs hiss at her, and at first scared her. But that is how she learned what to call herself.

When she was young _Ajita_ is what the brown people would tell her. Their almond eyes were like her own and they whispered to her stories of huts huddled in dark sands and the stories of the bright stars in the sky.

Nowadays other people, people who do not look like her, visit her dreams. They talk to her in languages she can never remember upon waking, and show her places that linger behind her eyelids for days. And in the few moments between waking and sleeping, she can hear their rattling breaths uttering hushed chants and prayers of the dead.

Ajita keeps her dreams to herself; she has no one to tell them to anyway. At the start of the day, when the bell rings and the Instructor comes to watch them get out of bed, she stands in line just as quietly as the others, and never asks any of her classmates if they too have dreams.

The next morning is no different; the tag on her wrist flashes as she gets out of bed and steps up to the dispenser, where a fresh uniform is given to her. She changes next to her bed, placing her sleepwear in a dispenser on her way out, and gives a respectful nod to the Instructor.

Ajita waits in line and once all of her classmates have joined her, the Instructor walks them to the food dispensers. Then they break up into pods and go to their Lessons. Ajita's pod works on the kiosk most days, where they sit down in front of a large screen that feeds material to them. There is always an Introduction first, and then they are quizzed on the concepts from the Introduction in the Exam portion of the Lesson.

The other Students work quickly, and once they are done they sit and stare at their screens, waiting for Ajita to finish. She always finishes last and is always placed at the end of the long row of Students. She struggles to formulate answers as the Instructor paces up and down the aisle, waiting for her as well. She is having a hard time giving an answer, trying to explain the concept behind the equation xk+1 = fr(xk).

Suddenly, the footsteps cease and she feels a presence by her side. Cringing slightly, she looks up at the Instructor who stands behind her. His face is impassive, a blank stretch of white, and he gestures for her to stand. She eases out of her chair, painfully aware of the empty answer space on the kiosk, but he doesn't look at her screen.

"Follow me," is all he says.

Holding her hands tightly behind her back she follows him through the grey corridors of School, silently passing through doors, her tag flashing every time she does so. They encounter no other Instructors or Students, until they eventually leave the grey corridors behind and enter ones that are blue. Voices mutter from behind invisible rooms, and shadows of people cross in distant halls. She has never been down this way before.

Finally the Instructor stops at a wall; a section of it disappears and they step through the doorway. The room they enter smells like the fluid Ajita uses to clean the scanners; it is a square room with a science kiosk in the middle.

"Ah," says the occupant of the room as she steps around the kiosk, "sit please."

Ajita looks behind her, but the Instructor has already left. Turning back, she sees a very familiar face with blue eyes. She walks to the other woman's side, sitting down next to her.

The blonde nods encouragingly and then, with a pointer, opens up a screen on the kiosk.

"Here," she says, "we have star charts."

A dimensional screen pops up and revolves in front of them, a dark blur filled with a skeleton array of white dots, each dot labeled with a Numerical Designation and a list of spectral characteristics. The star chart is more detailed and advanced than the kind she had studied in Lessons, but it looks nothing like the stars Ajita sees in her dreams. The blonde takes the pointer and clicks a star, and then rotates the screen to show Ajita different perspectives.

"I want you to show me where you saw that bear," the woman says, "and then I want you to tell me how you came to know of bears."

Ajita's mouth falls open, but as usual no words came out. Flashes appear before her eyes, streaks of long green grass and a massive brown hulk in the background, prowling between dark trees. She shakes her head, clearing the image, and reaches for the pointer. The blonde relinquishes it, and with a trembling touch, Ajita clicks a star.

She zooms in and out, attempting to find the closest thing to a dark-brown-sand-and-village view that she can. But from where she can see the stars in her dreams, she can see perceive no depth; the stars are always laid out on a flat plane. This star chart is not flat and none of the stars seem to line up into the well-known patterns.

Eventually her hand stills, and the fake stars stare at her like the blank answer screen on the Lesson kiosk.

Soft skin slides across hers and she looks into the stranger's eyes, made bright with the fake light from the star chart. The stars flicker in her eyes, little white dots that skitter across an expanse of blue. Slowly, the blonde eases the pointer from her hand. Ajita cannot hold her gaze.

"Bears," the blonde starts, "do not exist here and they are not covered in the biology Lessons. How do you know of them?"

Ajita licks her lips, tasting the Diet packet from earlier. She plays with the end of the plait in her hair and out of the corner of her eye she sees the star chart disappear as the blonde fiddles with options.

Grrrrrr...chills streak down Ajita's arms as a strange, grumbled sound emits from the kiosk. It grows louder and Ajita shies away, the noise intimidating and unfamiliar. The other woman reaches forward and stops the sound.

"That is the sound of a bear," she says.

Ajita swallows and nods, the low gravelly noise replaying in her ears again and again.

"Where can one find bears, if not here?"

Yallie gives her an odd look, "Nowhere."

"But...they must exist somewhere, if we have their sound."

"They lived a long time ago."

"They do not exist now?"

"No."

Ajita gulps and looks down at her fingers. The blonde sighs and sets down the pointer, sitting back in her seat as they linger in silence. Ajita looks askance at the other woman, her blonde curls dangling around her nose, and something about them makes her want to tighten the curls around her finger.

"I do not yet know what you are called," Ajita says, watching the curls sway as the blonde looks up at her.

"My Numerical Designation is 1821108."

Ajita nods, conversation drying up as quickly as it had sprouted.

The blonde scoffs, stretching out her legs, "And your Designation is 1618033."

"But I am called Ajita."

"Why?"

"It is what I call myself."

"But what is Ajita? It is not a Designation."

Ajita thinks back to her dream, sees the shape of the word on the brown people's lips, "It is my name."

"A name is?"

"Like the creature we just listened to. It has a name."

"'Bear' is not its name. 'Bear' is a labeling, an identifier used in old, colloquial language. The creature has a Designation now: 2118191131101518."

"No, its name is not bear. Its name is Rasjaurom, hunter and protector."

The blonde opens her mouth, closes it, and then scoots closer, "How does one have a name? I do not understand the significance. With Designations, it is easy and simple. Organized. Names do not seem to follow a pattern or have a purpose."

"I can give you a name," Ajita says, voice tinged with the surprise of her abrupt idea.

The blonde gives her another raised eyebrow, but her gaze does not shift away. Remembering the stars floating across the blonde's eyes, the way they shined against her pupils, a word pops into Ajita's head, familiar as if she is drawing it from a dream.

"Wuji," she suggests.

"No."

Ajita rubs her lips together, as if tasting a name, trying it out before saying it. Something else is forming in her mind: a unique creation.

"Yallie?"

The blonde pauses and then nods, a fast and succinct gesture, "Yes."

The corner of Ajita's lips curves.

After their session, Ajita is led by an Instructor back to the grey corridors, where it is time for her to do her Task. The scanners sleep peacefully in their stations, appearing to be flawless even before she cleans them. She inspects scanner two extra carefully, but the smudge is completely gone, leaving nothing but a gleaming surface. When she is finished cleaning, she steps up against the wall near the door. She flattens herself against the wall, eyes trained on the entryway until, in a blink of an eye, the door vanishes. At the threshold...stands Yallie.

She walks in without noticing Ajita, goes to one of the stations, and starts up a scanner. It is only when she turns around to leave that she spots her.

Yallie stops abruptly, the scanner slowing to a halt by her head. Ajita swallows before lifting herself off of the wall and stepping closer. Yallie's mouth tightens.

"I thought you were finished cleaning," she says.

"Why do you come to the Center after it is closed?"

A muscle twitches in Yallie's cheek, and the scanner gently bumps into her head, "The Center is never closed to Trainees."

"Is that what you are? A Trainee?"

The little scanner begins to buzz, as they often do when left for too long in the air without instructions.

"Is that what you become once you graduate from being a Student?" Ajita asks.

Yallie snatches the scanner out of the air, abruptly silencing it, "I have work to do. If you've finished your Tasks, you should leave."

"Will I be seeing you again?"

Yallie stalks past her, and Ajita spins around to follow at her heels as she goes to the main training room. She snaps open a wall panel and begins to key in different instructions, which Ajita knows brings out various machines and exercise environments.

"Why did you want to see me today?" Ajita asks as she tries to catch the blonde's eyes.

Yallie's hand falls from the panel. She turns around and leans against the wall. "Do you usually draw with your cleaning supplies?"

"Draw?"

"Yes. I did some more research; it took a while to find a word to describe your behavior."

Ajita falls back against the wall as well and studies Yallie's profile.

"What is the definition of the word?"

"To draw is to produce a likeness of something; the drawing apparently doesn't have to accurately represent the subject you are drawing."

"Because it is impossible to draw real life with perfect accuracy?"

Yallie shrugs one shoulder, "Possibly."

"Puzzling."

"Most," Yallie flicks her gaze towards her, "why is it that you draw, if you cannot capture reality perfectly and precisely?"

"The shape of the spill already resembled a bear. I decided to complete it."

"It was the shape then that convinced you to transform it? To perfect an imperfection?"

Ajita frowns at the floor, "I could just see it being a bear in my head."

"Why a bear?"

Ajita crosses her arms over her chest, "For a Trainee you sure ask a lot of questions."

"It is my job," Yallie slides closer, "did you know that there used to be many types of drawings? Some of them were called art."

"What's that?"

"Art is something created with one's imagination that typically takes a visual form."

"So I imagined a bear in my head and drew one," Ajita shrugs in acceptance.

"No one else draws."

Ajita doesn't know how to respond so she shies away. She is used to being different, used to not being able to answer questions, but it is beginning to get tiring.

Yallie suddenly steps in front of her, and Ajita dares to look in her eyes.

"What made you decide to draw?"

She thinks back to the stars, shining in the darkness of her dreams, and the stories from times and worlds unknown to her, from people she has never met and never will. She thinks of the stars dancing across the blue of Yallie's eyes.

"Do you like the stars?" Ajita asks.

Yallie blinks and rocks back on her feet, "They are there. Is there a reason to like them or not?"

"The stars make me want to draw."

The blonde stops rocking, "All right."

"All right?" Ajita mocks, "That's it? Aren't you going to ask how celestial bodies have control over my physical actions?"

Crinkles appear at the corner of Yallie's eyes, a sort of expression none of the Instructors or Students ever wear. Ajita finds herself mirroring it, her lips beginning to curve. Yallie steps closer so that their noses nearly touch. Ajita's head hits against the wall, her heart thumping at the unfamiliar closeness.

"There was another word I came across in my research."

She has never been so close to another person before. Yallie's pupil flexes, appearing as an inky dot in a sea of blue. Ajita's face is reflected back to her on the surface of Yallie's eyes.

"What word was that?" Ajita asks quietly, trying not to exhale.

"Inspiration."

Yallie reaches up, hits a panel button, and the door behind Ajita suddenly opens. She stumbles back and Yallie, with raised eyebrows, shuts the door in her face.

At night she sees the brown people again, but this time they are not in the village. They walk in crowds amongst tall buildings, many of which are colorful and crumbling. Wires loop from tall poles and connect to various structures. The air is grey, but the sun still shines through, and the people greet one another as the day begins. The women wear sparkling clothes that she knows are scarves and skirts, though she has never worn them herself. Moving carts with black wheels and mirrors emit smoke and loud noises. They honk like the elegant swan in the stars.

Her view shifts, revealing tiny alleyways and thin lines that hold wet clothes, and then there are mountains, arid landscapes that make her shiver. On these high plateaus are nine buildings with walls of mud. And inside one of these temples...violent colors and gentle figures shine on every surface, intricate detail in gold and red. They are guarded over by a tall figure made of hardened sand, with a headdress that crowns him.

Seven bright lights begin to shine on the figure, and the rest of the room dims, leaving behind the bright lights to glow like stars in the sky. The stars hum, resembling a deep chant of an old language. _The stars are like sages_ , and then the hum turns into a growl, a mighty roar. The seven stars of Rasjaurom pulse brightly, before extinguishing.

She awakes to the darkness of the bunk room, cold.

The next day, after Lessons, she finishes her Task slower than usual, dallying with each scanner; she waits and waits as long as she dares, with one eye on the door. She waits until she is sure an Instructor will come by to find her, but when the door opens, it reveals a blue uniform. Her posture relaxes as Yallie enters, the Trainee's expression turning distinctly sour.

"You are not yet finished with your Task?" she asks.

"The scanners were especially dirty today."

Yallie's expression doesn't shift.

Ajita shrugs and begins to clean scanner seven.

"Either that or you are especially slow today."

Ajita raises scanner eight and inspects it, "No, they are very dirty."

"Is that so?"

"Well, someone keeps using them after hours."

Yallie has no response to that. Ajita hums to herself as she moves onto scanner nine.

"What is that noise you are making?"

Ajita stops, "The hum?"

"What is a hum?"

"It is a noise you make with your mouth."

"That much is obvious; what is its purpose?"

Ajita shrugs because she really doesn't know; she only learned of humming last night, "Something else for you to research, I suppose."

Yallie's heels snap against the floor, "Let me know when you are done."

Ajita turns to watch her exit, and then quickly cleans scanners ten, eleven and twelve. She takes the last one carefully and goes to the door. It disappears and she silently watches as Yallie sets up different pieces of equipment.

"Why is it that you exercise?"

Yallie barely looks up, "I'm a Trainee. I train."

"For what?"

"What are you a Student for?"

Ajita is silent because she doesn't know.

"None of the other Trainees come here after hours. Why do you?" she asks instead.

"Extra practice."

"Oh," Ajita says, and makes a face, because she could use extra practice in Lessons, but she could never imagine going through with it.

"You're finished?" Yallie asks.

"Yes."

"Good. Leave."

"Why didn't you ask to see me today?"

"Why? Were you waiting?" Yallie raises her eyebrow.

"You do that a lot, that motion with your eyebrow."

Yallie's eyebrow immediately falls flat and she gestures to the door, "Leave or else I will be forced to call an Instructor."

Ajita glares at her and discreetly smears a big fat thumbprint over the scanner's eye as she turns it over in her hands. She walks over to Yallie and holds out the scanner.

"Here, you can use this one."

"Thank you," Yallie says in a short tone.

Ajita leaves, wondering why she is not allowed to ask questions about Training, but Yallie is allowed to ask questions about drawing and humming.

During Lessons next day, Ajita ignores the kiosk and turns to the Instructor.

"Instructor?" she calls to him.

He pauses in his pacing and then comes to stand behind her, "Student? You have not yet completed the assignment."

"I have a question."

He is quiet like Aber is when she doesn't know how to answer.

"What is a Trainee and what do they train for?" she continues.

"That is two questions."

"That much is obvious," she says, perfecting a drawl.

The Instructor blinks rapidly, and his mouth quirks up and down, as if he doesn't know what to say next. For once she is not the one without the answers.

But he quickly recovers, "That does not have to do with the assignment. Please continue to answer the designated questions on your kiosk."

"So you don't know the answer?"

"Again, Student, you must focus on what you are doing," he walks away quickly.

He doesn't pace up and down the aisle for the rest of the Lesson; instead, he stays in a corner on the other side of the room. The other Students pretend not to look at her.

Yallie doesn't meet with her during this Lesson either...not even to tell her about humming.

Ajita enters the room and observes the twelve pristine scanners. She sets her tray down on the counter. Grabs the cleaning fluid. Sloshes it around. With a twist, the cap pops off and she smells the liquid, clean and sharp.

She tosses the bottle to the floor, watching it bounce and then roll.

_Glup, glup, glup_ , the cleaning solution pours out of the bottle. She waits until the very last drop is gone, and then steps onto the spill with a patter. With feet and hands, she kicks and spreads the fluid and then kneels over it, perfecting details and tiny characteristics, until before her is a massive star pattern: Rasjaurom with his many sharp teeth, the swan with his majestic beak, and the scorpion with his deadly stinger.

She leaves the room, scanners untouched, and goes to report that her Task is done. She smells of sanitation, her fingers are sticky, and her shoes leave wet prints behind her as she walks, creating a mess in the hallway. But at least it is a clean mess, she thinks dryly. The Students pretend not to smell her as she changes for sleep.

Tonight she is in an unfamiliar place. Not in the village, not in the crowded streets, not even in the mud buildings. A domed ceiling spins above her, and she stands in the middle of a stream of people, her gaze riveted to the ceiling as the masses pass by, avoiding her as if she were mist. Drawings bedazzle the chapel, the walls and the ceiling covered with delicate and bright brushes of color. Pale and olive-skinned people pose mid-action, a repertoire of benevolent and menacing beings. And out of all the nine scenes on the ceiling so high, but one captures her attention. It's the simple brush of two finger tips, an intimate caress that contains the universe.

She blinks, and the sound crashes down upon her, and she can feel the warmth from the crowd as people stand unerringly close to her. Within a single breath, the candles go out, and as she resurfaces, gasping, to the darkness of the bunk room, she can still hear the whispers of incerta et occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi.

The strange words from last night still roll around in her head, and she can't stop thinking about the drawings on the walls. What makes those kinds of colors? What could have such thick texture? If the cleaning fluid came in different colors, could she make drawings like those? She examines her fingers, wondering if they are small enough to form such details. Yallie would know, probably.

An equation blinks on the screen, indicating that she is running out of time to answer the question. She sighs and waits for it to pass by. She doesn't know this one, but the Instructors keep expecting her to answer it. xk+1 = fr(xk). Blink blink blink. xk+1 = fr(xk).

Pushing away from her kiosk, she watches the other Students as they finish their Exams, faces pinched with concentration.

"Student, you must focus on your own work."

Ajita looks back. The Instructor, who had spent the last Lesson avoiding her, now stands behind her.

"I do not understand what this equation is," she explains.

"Then you must pay attention during the Introduction," he answers, "Looking at other Student's work is not permissible."

"I was watching them, not their answers."

He never seemed to mind when the other Students looked at her. Then again, they knew the answers already.

"Please continue with your Lesson," he responds curtly, stepping back.

"Do you know what this equation means?"

"You must learn for yourself, Student."

"I have tried. The Introduction does not explain well. I am in need of assistance," she thinks this must be the longest conversation she's ever had with an Instructor.

His eyes shift left to right, "You are not allowed to receive help during the Exam portion of the Lesson."

"Then tomorrow, during the Introduction, you will assist in explaining the equation?"

"You must wait until Tutoring."

She swivels around in her seat to face him head-on, "I am rarely scheduled to be in Tutoring."

Although, her Instructor for Tutoring never seemed to care that she missed answers, either.

"I will see to it that you are scheduled to be in Tutoring," he says, before walking to the other end of the room at a brisk pace.

Ajita turns back to her kiosk, but most of the questions have already passed by.

When it is time to endure more of the Diet, she is careful to not swallow all of her food.

She enters the scanner room and notices that someone cleaned up the drawing she made yesterday. Turing slowly in the spot where Rasjaurom had once been, she scrutinizes the shiny grey floor. Her shoes squeak loudly against it. Ajita supposes it must have been Yallie who cleaned it up. If an Instructor had found it the next morning, they would have pulled Ajita aside and scolded her. Yallie may not want to see her anymore, but she is not like an Instructor.

Ajita sits down on the floor, surveying the expanse of grey, and she liberally applies the cleaning solution all around her. She creates several puddles, tiny little messes, and then leans over one. Her reflection ripples, made misty white like the cleaning fluid, and then she opens her mouth and spits.

The white blooms blue.

Her smile, blue and a little bubbly, smiles back up at her. With a finger she mixes it, creating a large expanse of blue-tinted cleaning fluid. She then takes the bottle of solution and carefully squeezes out tiny misty white drops over the large blue puddle. She watches with frustration as it blends together.

Clink. Yallie stands in the doorway, as still as any sleeping scanner.

"Hello," Ajita says.

Yallie's mouth opens, her eyes darting to the mess and then to Ajita's fingers, stained blue and slick with the cleaning solution and her spit. Ajita shrugs.

"I cannot understand why you leave messes for others to find," Yallie moves no closer.

Her voice sounds a little higher than normal.

"These are not messes. They are drawings," she explains.

"Why are they blue?" Yallie bursts out, confounded, and then sharply closes her mouth.

"I wanted to make different colors."

Yallie's nose wrinkles, "You used your food."

"The tube from the Diet contained blue liquid."

Yallie looks like she might retch as she observes her spit-puddles.

Ajita sits up straighter, "I wanted to draw the stars in the night sky."

She couldn't match the texture of the drawings on the ceiling though, the thick liquid that left strokes of bold color.

"I do not see any resemblance," Yallie says and her tone is dry, but she takes a step closer.

With hands behind her back, she tiptoes around the puddles, leaning over them as if cataloging their different shades.

"I created the background of the night sky, but I couldn't make the stars. The white mixed completely with the blue," Ajita laments. She can't help it if her shoulders droop.

Yallie just paces around, head tilting this way and that.

"But you researched art and drawing. Tell me, what are such things made of?" Ajita asks.

"I do not know."

"Then we must find out."

"Why must we find out?"

Ajita's hands clench in her lap. She stands up and says, "You are the one who was so curious about art and drawing and humming and bears and star charts. Why did you find out about all that?"

Yallie pauses and looks aside. She doesn't answer, but at least she doesn't briskly walk away.

Eventually she takes a deep breath and answers, "What would be the point of conducting more research? This art seems to be a rather pointless endeavor. I do not see how drawing with saliva and food can create anything of worth. It is best to concentrate on matters that have immediate importance."

"You did not seem to find it so unimportant a few days ago when you took me out of my Lessons."

"That was for the purpose of research. That research led to my current conclusions."

"Are you afraid of what the Instructors will say?" Ajita asks, "I was afraid of them finding out about my drawing on the floor from yesterday."

Yallie snorts, "I am not afraid."

"Then help me. You may find it fruitless, but I see worth. Perhaps I can change your mind."

"I have many other things to do," Yallie says.

Ajita kicks at her drawings, sending some of it splashing at Yallie, "I asked an Instructor for assistance today. I always have trouble understanding numbers and equations; he said he wasn't allowed to help me...that he couldn't. That he wouldn't. I am always behind, and they never care. Why is it that none of you care?"

"I am not an Instructor, it is not my—"

"They make me do Lessons and admonish me for not understanding them, but never do anything to help. When I discover something that I have interest in, you brush me aside as well. Why does this not have worth? Because it does not have numbers or equations on a kiosk?"

Yallie's face is carefully blank, and then her gaze drifts to the runny drawings on the floor.

Ajita heaves, her breath coming fast like it did when she trained, and she has never experienced this flush in her stomach before, this odd heat that makes her hands clench tight at her sides.

"What in particular do you not understand?" Yallie asks, still looking at the floor.

_Numbers!_ Ajita wants to shout at her, but her throat already hurts from her previous speech, and she feels as if an Instructor will swoop in and rebuke her for talking so much.

"There is one equation that I always have been unable to understand," Ajita says slowly.

Yallie raises her head and their eyes meet for a split second, then Yallie turns towards the exit.

"Come with me," she says.

They are back at the science kiosk, and Yallie is using the pointer to pull up the equation. xk+1 = fr(xk) hovers in the air, and Yallie asks her to sit down. Ajita doesn't want to, it feels too much like she is in a Lesson, but she's afraid Yallie will stop and walk away, so she sits. Immediately, paragraphs of long words appear under the equation. It looks like an Introduction. Ajita crosses her arms and slinks down in her seat.

"This is an equation that is used in creating fractals," Yallie summarizes as her eyes scan over the document.

"What is a fractal?"

"It is an infinite pattern."

The equation looks awfully small to create something infinite.

"So a fractal is something that is very large?"

"Not necessarily."

"It is something that is infinitely small?"

"No it is an infinite repetition, or iteration, of self-similar shapes."

"So it is something that is visual?"

She wonders where one could even find something infinite.

Yallie uses the pointer to expand part of the document, "Yes. It occurs in nature but can also be generated."

"Show me one."

"I do not know how to create one."

"Surely the Introduction includes an example?"

"There are numerous equations for different types of fractals. I shall explain to you what each variable means."

"Can you explain while you show what parts of the fractal each variable affects?"

Yallie tosses an aggravated glance her way. Ajita is sure Yallie has never had to do so much explaining before.

"The numbers speak for themselves," she says.

Ajita wrinkles her nose, because numbers probably do many things, but they don't speak any comprehensible language Ajita understands.

"Watch," Yallie says and clicks on various equations.

They expand until the numbers and letters float around the room, and Ajita feels trapped by all the equations surrounding her, filling the room and lighting it with their electronic glow. Yallie, her face awash with the whitish shine from the numbers, is no longer frowning or glaring or raising her eyebrows. Her lips are curved upwards, an unusual thing to do with one's mouth.

She brings forward the original equation Ajita had trouble with.

"This equation allows one to find the fixed point, or an attractor, of a fractal using the iterated function system."

It's gibberish to her.

"You will have to explain those concepts," Ajita says crisply, "because equations do not explain themselves."

"Equations explain how everything works, from the smallest particle to the largest star. Math is the language of the Universe," Yallie says, her tone supple and suspended.

Ajita's eyebrow ticks and she quickly presses her hand over it, glowering at Yallie and her eyebrows. Yallie doesn't seem to notice.

She clicks the equation again, "This is called the Chaos Game method."

Different parts of the equation glow, and text ripples into the air. Yallie's mouth drops open a little, and Ajita wants to know what she's learning, what she understands that Ajita can't. She grabs the pointer out of the blonde's slack grip, and Yallie's eyes snap out of their glaze. Ajita shoots to her feet, right into the hazy forms of the equations, and the numbers splay over her face, her hands. Click. Click. She shoves the pointer against the equations, causing text after text to pop up, a constant clickclickclickclick noise filling the room.

"Stop!" Yallie says, but Ajita can't really hear her over the clickclickclick.

Diagrams, curious black and white things, begin to pop up as the kiosk empties out its knowledge, going into the depths of its memory banks; a male's voice, deep and croaky, begins to narrate, and various recordings run over each other as each equation starts to play some sort of explanation.

And just when she thinks the room can't hold anymore, when she thinks the kiosk must be close to empty, when she feels Yallie stand up next to her in agitation, it all stops for a breath.

Then the room bursts with color.

Beautiful prickly spiral shapes spin out of each equation, expanding so that the texts, the diagrams, the numbers, fade into nothingness. Yallie's ascent is slowed, softened, as she gapes at the room. The clickclickclick stops, the narrator's voice gradually peters off, and they're left in a room with luminous shapes, shapes that start large, and then curl in on themselves, creating delicate, impossibly infinite edges. They come in vibrant shades of so many colors, from green to purple. A large red one hangs over Yallie's shoulders, flickering over her blue training suit. The fractals don't have the texture the drawings did, but she wants to call them art anyway. She's never seen anything like them.

The different types of fractals morph then, turning into leaves, clouds, snowflakes, ocean waves, bolts of lightning, blood vessels, and DNA. Things Ajita has only briefly studied or dreamed of. They fade, going black, and she and Yallie are left in the dark...until sparkling galaxies grow out of the gloom, exploding in size and shape and flowing over Ajita's body. She holds out her hands and watches as the galaxies ripple over her. The images slow down and Ajita and Yallie look at each other in the same moment.

They're covered in stars.

Ajita's lips curve upwards, and she wonders how long she must have been doing it, and if she can remember doing it before.

"I didn't know numbers could do that," she says.

Yallie's expression mirrors her own.

"What I don't understand," Yallie gestures languidly with the pointer, "is why you waited so long to say anything."

Ajita shrugs one shoulder, "The Instructors didn't care, so neither did I."

"Hmm," Yallie says, and it sounds awfully like the hum Ajita was making earlier.

Ajita concentrates on working with her own pointer. Click. A black dot shows up. Ajita sneaks a look at what Yallie is doing on her side of the kiosk. They've split the screen, and text streams over Yallie's side. She's going through too fast for Ajita to read, but Yallie's eyes zip over the words as she reads all about art and drawing. Apparently Yallie doesn't need to see drawings to figure out what they are made of. Ajita bites her lip. She wishes she could tell her about her dreams, and describe for her the texture of the drawings, and then maybe she would understand better.

Ajita adds another click and the seventh black dot appears. She sits back, satisfied with her rendering.

"These are the stars of the Rasjaurom the Great Bear," Ajita says.

Yallie leans over to squint at the series of dots.

"Do you see the shape of Rasjaurom?" she asks hopefully.

"How did you decide this was a bear, then?" Yallie asks, nose wrinkled.

Ajita shrugs, wondering if anyone ever told Yallie stories of the stars like the villagers told her.

"I can only see it because I've seen your previous drawings," Yallie says.

She leans back over to her side of the kiosk, curls bouncing, and Ajita wonders if she could draw their springiness.

"We have spent a long time in here," Yallie announces, "and it is nearly time for you to report to the bunk room."

"Oh," Ajita blinks.

She still hasn't reported her Task as complete. Not that she finished her Task. But who would notice? The scanners were always so clean.

"I will send a bot to clean your mess in the scanner room," Yallie says.

Ajita flushes slightly because she had forgotten about that. Yallie begins to shut down the kiosk and Ajita hands her the spare pointer. She likes the warmth of Yallie's hands when she takes it from her and her lips curve when Yallie twirls it in her fingers before putting it away.

The kiosk shuts down and the room is half-lit. They stand. Yallie tucks a blonde curl behind her ear.

"I trust that your questions about the Chaos Game equation have been answered."

Ajita nods and looks her in the eye, "Yes. Thank you for your assistance."

Yallie leans, as if she is going to walk to the door, but something holds her in her place. She tilts her head to the side, inquisitive eyebrow raising.

"I have a question," she says, like it is some sort of admission.

Ajita nods again, silent. Her heart is loud in her chest.

"You said you did not care before, so what was it that finally made you ask for assistance? Why do you care now?"

And that is an easy question, an answer blank that Ajita knows how to fill in. She thinks of the questions, the research, the definitions, the star charts, the growl of the bear and information at her fingertips, the need and ability to find answers.

"I started to care because you did."

The night in her dream is dank, brushed with a cold chill that makes her clothes feel damp. A rocky surface encloses her. It grips her fingers when she touches it, shockingly cold and rough. Crack. Bright light slams over the gritty wall and a deep clap follows, rocking into her body, causing vibrations to tingle in her fingers. She looks down and her fingers are no longer clean. They're dripping.

Pitter patter pitter patter. Her world is encased in a gentle sound and a rumble from the sky makes her think of Rasjaurom. Something flares and crackles and the jagged walls are illuminated with a crimson glow. She rubs her fingers together and realizes that they're red. The paste feels good, smooth with a few pieces of dirt. She likes the texture.

She can hear murmurings from behind her, muted by the pitter patter. Shadows play on the walls. She is unable to turn around, but soon her attention is captured by something else. As the crimson glow grows brighter, and she can feel heat against her thighs, the walls become brighter and brighter.

Hundreds of figures adorn the walls, individuals made of ochre and dirt and paste and lines. It's a tableau of strange beings, creatures with horns and spots and tails she is sure she hasn't seen before. She finds the two-legged figure and traces it. It's much less detailed than the ceiling drawings and the man made of hard dirt. It could be anybody.

Another flash of light draws her eyes away, almost as if leading her to another painting.

It's a bear.

She breathes out, breath misting over the wall, and presses her hand against it, stroking the fur. Rasjaurom is surrounded by three people, each of them holding something in their hands, arms aloft. She wonders what they're doing, but the light flashes again—and she wakes up in the bunk room, blinded by the lights above her as the Instructor rings the morning bell.

The Instructor paces back and forth, farther out than he's ever been; the Students hunch over their kiosks, numbers flashing over their eyes.

The question appears on her screen just as she knew it would.

She bends towards the kiosk, rests her hands over the console and keys in her answer. Row after row of letters fill the answer box. She hits submit.

"Apparently what you draw on matters just as much as what you draw with," Yallie says.

Ajita picks up a packet between her two fingers and inspects it. It's a faint red color.

"So you could draw on the walls," Ajita says, thinking of the red beings on the rocky wall.

"Yes, but there are other surfaces as well, made from trees and cloth. Each medium reacts differently with whatever you decide to draw with. Drawings can be made from many things such as eggs, milk, and oil."

Ajita sets the packet down, "What are those things?"

Yallie's expression flickers for a moment, her mouth tightens. Ajita drags her hand through the supplies laid out before them on the floor. Packets, tubes, cylindrical flasks.

"I cannot believe you know of imaginary bears in the sky, and not eggs."

Ajita sticks her tongue in her cheek, thinking. Were eggs something the people in her dreams should have told her about?

"Eggs, milk, oil, those are things that are...natural. They come from creatures and plants, like fur comes from a bear."

Well that was relatively hard to believe. How could one draw with something like fur?

"Why have I not seen eggs, milk and oil before?"

"We do not have them here," Yallie says, and lines up the packets that Ajita had disturbed.

Ajita rolls her lips into her mouth, frowning, "Like bears?"

"Like bears."

"If we do not have these things here, where do they exist then?"

Yallie puts her chin in her hand and crosses her legs. Ajita mirrors the position. It's uncomfortable, lying on the floor, but she also thinks it's something she has never done enough.

"They exist in the databases," the blonde answers eventually.

"What do they look like?"

"Eggs are oval and white, milk is a liquid and is also white, and oil is yellow and comes from plants. They are all edible."

"You can eat them and also draw with them?"

Yallie nods, "You can make paint out of them."

"Paint?"

"Yes, like how you made your blue puddles. Only paint is supposed to be adhesive and sticks to the surface you are drawing on."

Like the red paste on her fingers. She rips open a tube and squeezes the liquid out a bit. It's blue.

"So we make something sticky, dye it a color, and then draw with it?"

Yallie nods, curls bobbing. She seems pleased.

"Do we have something similar to eggs, milk and oil?"

"I thought of what you were doing earlier," Yallie says, "and decided we can use water for the base, packets for the color, and the liquid tubes can act as the adhesive agent."

She pushes forward a flask. Ajita pulls up the lid and looks at the clear substance. Dragging her tray towards her, she rids it of the cleaning supplies. She takes the red packet of food, makes a fist, and begins to crumble it over the tray. The fragments bounce everywhere, and she presses down on them with her fingertip to break them up. Yallie watches her with a raised eyebrow, but does nothing to assist. By the time Ajita thinks the packet is crushed enough her hands are stained red.

She grabs the flask and tips a bit of water onto the tray. It hits the pile of red crumbs with a splash and runs everywhere. Using the flask lid she herds the water into a puddle. The water becomes streaked with red, but it looks nothing like paste.

"I think I have to mix it more," she says.

"The packet crumbs are dissolving," Yallie points out, her nose wrinkled.

Many of the crumbs have become engorged and float on top of the water aimlessly.

Yallie rifles through the tubes, picking them up and squeezing them, "Some of these are old."

"Where did you get them?" Ajita asks.

The dispenser only ever gives her enough to eat.

Yallie pops one open, "This looks gummy enough."

"It's not red."

"Does the paint have to be red?"

"No, I suppose not," Ajita relents.

She hands over the tube and Ajita squirts the blue liquid onto the tray. She stirs it with her finger, and the mixture becomes a bit brown, but the gummy pieces don't combine with the water and the crumbs still float, fat and squishy. She's not extremely fond of the texture. Picking through her cleaning supplies, she finds the sanitization patches and rips one open. Yallie leans forward on her elbows, eyebrows raised.

Ajita squishes the patch so that corner becomes a point. She uses the point to pick up some of the blue chunks and holds it up for Yallie to see.

"It looks like paste on the patch," Ajita explains.

Yallie gingerly takes it and squints at the texture. She doesn't touch it. Taking back the patch from Yallie, she uses it to draw a line on a clean section of the tray.

"It works," Yallie says, and her lips curve.

Ajita murmurs her agreement, but she's busy watching a curl dangle in front of Yallie's eye, a delicate ringlet that shines in the white light. The texture looks glossy and fine. Ajita takes the blue-specked point and draws a loop on the tray.

Yallie watches, her chin resting on her fist, and Ajita scowls at the wobbly loop. The delicate twist is fraught with unsightly blobs of paint.

"What are you going to draw?" Yallie asks.

"Nothing yet," Ajita answers, and smacks another patch against the thick misshapen curl.

Yallie breathes out through her nose, a sort of scoff, and Ajita flushes, pulling away the patch with substantially less vigor. As she peels it back, the mush where the curl was turns into something else...a mirror image begins to form, and dark blue branches stretch out over the patch and tray. The branches gradually break up into tinier and tinier rivulets.

"It's a pattern," Yallie says.

"It's a fractal," Ajita clarifies.

"I didn't know art could do that," Yallie says faintly.

Ajita looks up from the pattern and meets Yallie's eyes. Their lips curl upwards at the same time.

After the mess has been cleaned up and their supplies are disposed of, they stand at the doorway of the scanner room, and Ajita is not exactly sure what comes next.

"May I watch you train?" she asks.

Yallie raises her chin, "Don't you have to finish your Task?"

"No."

"Then you should report to the bunk room."

"I still have some time."

Yallie's eyes flick to the side and back, "You wouldn't want to watch me train. It's boring."

Ajita huffs, "Why is it that you sought me out? You didn't have to arrive early and bring painting supplies."

Yallie folds her arms behind her back and takes a breath, "Did you not like being disturbed?"

Ajita rocks back on her feet and sticks her tongue in her cheek. What a ridiculous question.

"You can't answer a question with a question."

"Of course I can."

Ajita rolls her eyes, and then wonders where she learned that expression from. No Instructor had ever rolled their eyes at her, just as they had never curved their lips.

"Other Students and Instructors have never talked about art or Rasjaurom or humming. Why are you interested?"

Yallie presses her lips together and shrugs, "It is as you said. No one else knows about such things. When I walked in and saw you with that puddle...I was curious. You knew things that only the databases had knowledge of. I wanted to learn as well."

Ajita rocks forward on her feet and can't stop the feeling in her chest, something that feels like a burn, a pleasant smolder, and it makes her reach forward and flick that blonde curl. It swishes against Yallie's forehead and her blue eyes snap open and her mouth is frozen in shock. Ajita resists the urge to hum, and instead leans back to give Yallie some more room.

"And that is exactly why I wish to watch you train," Ajita says, "there is no one else quite like you."

Yallie's lips curve again, but this time it falters and doesn't stay too long, "Very well."

Watching Yallie train is like watching her learn from the kiosk. Ajita could never imagine being so focused on such a task, but Yallie runs and jogs and jumps and scrutinizes the numbers on the display screen and judges them with a shake of her head. Ajita wonders what she is trying to achieve.

Her blonde hair is dark with sweat, and it streaks down her face and drips off of her chin. She doesn't try to wipe it away, doesn't seem to mind the texture. Ajita has never trained to the point of sweating, where it comes down on her face like the rain she sees and feels in her dreams. She licks her lips. She likes the taste of rain.

Yallie holds a bar with two hands and tries to raise it, the numbers on the screen steadily increasing, and the bar gets heavier and heavier. Muscles twitch and fight against her skin, and her bones seem to tremble as she clenches her teeth, loud puffs of breath coming from her mouth. Slowly, slowly, slowly, she raises the bar higher and higher...past her elbows and past her shoulders and Ajita thinks she might actually get the bar into the air, over her head, but in a fraction of a second...her arms collapse.

The bar falls to the ground and her hands are on her knees, and the display screen turns blank. With a ferocious kick, she sends the now weightless bar rolling across the floor, and it spins rapidly into the wall with a CLANG. Ajita jumps at the sound.

Yallie paces in a circle, flexing her hands, issuing short almost silent grunts. Ajita leaves her spot by the wall, where she had curled up comfortably, and walks to the bar slowly. Yallie doesn't notice her movement. She picks up the colorless bar, and inspects it when she notices something familiar. Various grayish smudges wrap around the bar, and she rolls it over to follow the continuous curvaceous lines. She places her hands over Yallie's prints, and turns back to the Trainee.

She walks up to her, stopping short of her circle of pacing. Yallie looks up, back hunched and a snarl on her lips. Ajita tries not to flinch, but Yallie's face is not serene or blank or playful. It is a mess of frowns and sneers and her eyes, for a moment, don't look blue and round and familiar. They seem alien. Ajita shifts from foot to foot, a little nervous, because she doesn't understand this abrupt facial and attitude change.

When Yallie seems to relax, at least by the slightest margin, Ajita holds out the bar. Yallie lets out a long, hard breath as she views it, and then takes it from her with a strong, sharp tug. But when she has it in her hands she slumps and sighs, running a hand through her messy curly bangs. She is no longer angry, but simply defeated, like Ajita was when she couldn't replicate the delicate nature of Yallie's curls. Ajita braves a question.

"Why do you Train like this?"

"What's the point of Training if you don't push yourself?"

"No, I mean, why do you Train after hours?"

Yallie turns her back to her, rolling the bar in her fingers distractedly.

Ajita suddenly wonders if she is not the only one who has a hard time during Lessons, "Is this like Tutoring time for you?"

Yallie's back stiffens.

Ajita walks around to Yallie's front. Her face is ducked and she stares at the ground.

"I need practice with Lessons and numbers. The Instructors gave up, and rarely offer me Tutoring. I never sought out answers on my own before, tried to Tutor myself...until I met you."

Yallie places her hands on her hips, purses her lips, and meets her eyes.

Ajita's lips curve, "It is very impressive that you do extra Training on your own."

"I shouldn't have to need it," Yallie snaps.

"It is bothersome that we have to work extra hard to be good at things others are naturally good at," Ajita concedes, "but it is either that, or be left behind and disappoint ourselves."

Yallie huffs again, but this time her tension has eased, and she glances up self-deprecatingly, "When did you start having all the answers?"

"Since you motivated me to find them."

Yallie takes the bar back from her. She doesn't manage to raise the bar all the way, but for the rest of the session, she doesn't stop trying either.

It's a muggy night, and her skin feels wet as she stares at a ceiling. This one is dark and rocky, like the one in her last dream. _A_ _cave_ , the words pop up in her head. She raises her hand, reaching for the eleven stenciled hands on the ceiling. They're dark red and brown in outline, each decorated with a different design, linked together to emulate the shape of a tree. She places her hand next to the others, and when she lifts it away, an outline of her fingers is left behind, joined with the other hands for thousands of years to come.

"Student," the Instructor intones, face schooled in polite disinterest.

Ajita nods, scuffing a foot against the floor as she resists the urge to slump down in her seat.

"Let us go over your last assignment," the Instructor brings up a screen and she can see her filled-in answer box.

"This is your response to the question regarding the Chaos Game formula. You were asked to explain the purpose of the equation," the Instructor continues.

"Aren't we supposed to go over questions I don't know, rather than the ones I do?" Ajita attempts to sound courteous.

The Instructor goes on, "I will read aloud your answer. You said 'this equation replicates the fractals found in nature. It is our way of copying and explaining the patterns we observe in the waves, lightening and the Universe itself. This equation expresses the art found in the natural world'."

Ajita nods again and fidgets with the end of her plait, foot tapping against the floor. She has never liked Tutoring time less, now that she is expecting to see Yallie soon, during her Task. Tutoring time now seems to last far longer than it really is.

"Your answer is not entirely correct," the Instructor explains.

Ajita raises her head sharply, letting go of her plait. Her foot-tapping ceases.

"You are correct that the equation correlates with fractals, however you did not explain any of the variables, or how the equation is used. You did not explain the concept of an attractor or how to use this equation to find it. Without that, you cannot create a fractal and the point is moot. Additionally, parts of your answer seem to originate from outside and unverified sources. The presence of fractals in lightening and waves is unverified information, it was not in the Introduction and I am unsure how you concluded upon such a hypothesis. The word 'art' is also incongruous with the question being asked. That word is has not been used in any Lessons thus far as it has nothing to do with what is being taught."

The Instructor then erases her answer. He says he will give her another chance to answer the question, to explain what an attractor is and how it works.

Ajita sits there blankly, slowly deciphering the Instructor's words. What she thought she had understood perfectly is now being thrown into question. The Instructor thinks she is wrong. She feels as if she is in a fractal now, spinning down infinite loops, caught in some repetitious environment where no matter how she turns or twists, she always ends up right back where she started. The blank answer box hovers before her. The equation xk+1 = fr(xk) blinkblinkblinks.

"Instructor," she says, "I do not know the answer."

And thus her Tutoring session ends.

She stalks into the scanner room and snaps the scanners out of their holsters one by one. Roughly swiping the sanitization patches across each of them, she scrubs the scanners until they gleam like they've never gleamed before. Clink. She continues to clean the scanners even when the clickclackclickclack of Yallie's shoes turns into Click. Clack...Click.

"It is good to see you applying yourself to your Task with such dedication," Yallie says, and Ajita imagines that her lips must be curved, but she doesn't turn around to check.

She instead moves onto the next scanner.

"Will you be cleaning the scanners the entire time?" Yallie asks, and she doesn't sound so amused anymore.

Ajita throws the patch onto the table, "Does it matter?"

"I brought some more painting supplies."

"Why? Art isn't relevant to School," she slams her hands down on the counter, "it has no discernible purpose and is incongruent with our Lessons and Tasks."

There is a short silence, and she can hear Yallie's sharp little intake of breath.

"If you no longer desire to continue our explorations of database knowledge, then I suppose we are done here," the blonde says stiffly.

Click. Clack. Click.

She picks up the patch and twists it in her hands.

"Wait," Ajita's voice cracks. With a breath, she turns around.

Yallie is frozen by the door, looking back over her shoulder.

"Yes?"

Ajita slumps against the counter and lets the patch fall to the floor, "What did you bring?"

Yallie turns around and reveals the large container in her arms, filled with paint supplies and sheets of plastic.

"Scrap," she explains.

Ajita nods and Yallie cautiously approaches and sets it down on the floor. Ajita walks over, slowly, to kneel beside it as well. They're carefully avoiding each other's eyes.

"Art is usually done on something called a canvas, which can be stored or put on a wall for viewing," Yallie continues and holds up a plastic sheet to demonstrate, "I figured we could use these instead of the floor or the tray."

They would no longer have to wash their art away, Ajita realizes. They could keep it forever. The art could live on, like the hands on the cave walls, existing for thousands of years. The image sticks in her mind and her hands automatically start creating the paint, fingers wet with food and dye, constantly judging the color and consistency. The paint is bright red, not soft brown or faded ochre like in her dreams, but she figures it will do. She wipes her hands off on some patches, until her skin feels stretchy and clean.

Blank sheets lay before her and she places her right hand flat against one; with her left hand she grabs a big chuck of her goopy paint. Splat. She brushes it against the edges of the fingers on her right hand. When she is done, she peels her hand away to reveal the bright red outline of her hand on the white plastic. Then she starts all over again, this time switching hands, until several of her prints scatter across the white expanse.

Wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her wrist, she sits back and looks over her work with a critical eye. Her work is a little messier than the art on the cave walls; her fingers are not as always clearly defined, the paint is chunkier and not as smooth, and she didn't manage to replicate the tree-like pattern that was present in the cave.

"Why your hands?" Yallie asks.

Ajita startles at the question. So far Yallie has preferred to remain silent, watching so quietly that Ajita sometimes forgot she was there. Ajita pulls her bottom lip into her mouth, thinking. Yallie raises an expectant eyebrow.

"They're...handprints," she fumbles for the word, "they represent your identity."

Yallie's eyebrow goes higher, which means she does not believe it, and Ajita scowls. She takes Yallie's hand and pulls it against the plastic. Yallie's skin twitches, and Ajita stops, realizing that so far Yallie has not once gotten her hands dirty. Snickering, Ajita lobs a big blob of paint against her skin and Yallie yelps.

"Sorry, it's cold," Ajita says, not sorry at all.

Yallie glowers at her.

Ajita continues to paint, fingers gently moving against Yallie's, and her skin feels good even covered in paint. The fine hairs of her hands become slick with paint, something else Ajita's lips curve at. She tries to memorize the contour of Yallie's palm, the shape of her nails. She is more careful this time, more detailed, smoothing out the paint and tracing the outline of the blonde's hands with more forethought, making sure each finger is clearly distinguishable from the next.

When she can linger no longer, she pulls up Yallie's hand and they look at the outline of her hands. Yallie inspects her paint-covered hand and then squints at the painted image.

"It is relatively accurate," she concludes.

Ajita huffs and shakes her head, unable to stop her lips curving, "Yes, accurate."

"Not accurate down to microscopic levels, of course."

"Of course."

But something else is preserved on the plastic besides the print. Inside the print, Ajita can see grey-ish lines, the same thin lines she saw on the scanner's eye before. Thumbprint, the word comes to her.

"It's your identity," Ajita says.

Yallie hums deep in her throat, a speculative noise.

"It will last a long time, even after you are no more," she continues, "it says: you existed."

"But only because you are the artist. Without you, the prints wouldn't have been painted."

Ajita catches the wistful the note, the way Yallie's eye drift to the paint, "Your turn, then."

Yallie's eyebrows shoot up in shock, and Ajita pushes the sheet with the paint on it closer to her.

"It would be a shame to do all this research, and forgo the experimentation," Ajita croons sweetly.

Yallie hesitates for a moment, and then with a single finger, taps the paint. She frowns. Ajita stays silent as Yallie familiarizes herself with the feel of the paint. Eventually she sighs and grabs a bunch of it, watching with distaste as it drips down her arm. Ajita puts her hand flat against the plastic and nods encouragingly at Yallie. The blonde scrunches up her nose, narrows her eyes at her target, and tosses the paint.

It splatters all over the back of Ajita's hand and the parts that break away skid across the rest of their prints and over the floor. Ajita's lips curve, but when she looks up, Yallie's expression is furious. Instantly, she's hunched over the canvas and smearing the paint over Ajita's hand. It's not the careful, soft touch Ajita had been employing, and she rears back at the unexpected fervor. Yallie's grip keeps her hand in place, but her skin quickly feels raw as Yallie continues her vehement painting.

"Yallie," she says, because she's not sure what this is, but it doesn't look like painting.

Yallie yanks Ajita's hand off the plastic and glares at the result.

"It's okay, we can try again with the other hand," Ajita consoles.

Yallie drops her hand, kicks the paint tray to the other side of room and stalks off to the corner. Ajita winces at the clang and the paint that spews across the room in red streaks. The handprint looks more like an accidental blob, and the streaks across the room weren't intentional, but they're the product of something.

"Art doesn't have to be an accurate representation," Ajita reminds her softly.

Yallie, hands on her hips, breathes harshly and stares at the wall.

"It didn't turn out like I envisioned. If art serves as a representation of what the artist imagines, then my art failed," Yallie says sourly.

"But it is the product of intention and emotion," Ajita says, "the product of your imagination and inspiration. It is still art."

Yallie snorts.

"Not everything turns out how we want it to," Ajita stands up.

"Your paintings turn out fine," Yallie grouses.

"How would you know? Can you see inside my head? What I imagine each painting to look like?"

Yallie huffs. Ajita moves closer to the blonde.

"Just because we are not as good at something as we want to be, does that mean we give up?"

Yallie groans and puts her head in her hands. Then she spins around, folds her arms, and rolls her eyes heavenward, "No. We keep training."

Ajita's lips curve and she holds out her paint-covered hand. Yallie, hand sticky and red as well, takes it. Ajita leads her back to the scraps and splays her fingers against the plastic. Still holding Yallie's hand, she guides her to the paint, and then helps her trace Ajita's fingers. Yallie's fingers swirl along the edges of Ajita's, her touch soft and light; she leaves Ajita's fingers tingling in her wake.

Ajita's heart is beating faster than it was a minute go, and she swallows to wet her throat. She's never felt this bubbly feeling in her chest before, something that makes it difficult to breathe, something that shoots heat through her arms, legs and chest. It makes her stomach constrict and she scoots a little closer to Yallie, as if obeying some sort of subconscious calling.

Yallie looks up at her movement, and Ajita has never loved the color blue as much as she does now. Their movements slow as they retain eye contact, and Yallie's eyes are bright, like the way they were when she was learning about fractals, and Ajita loves to see herself reflected in them. For the first time, Ajita wonders what Yallie sees in Ajita's eyes.

"Look," Yallie says softly.

Ajita backs up abruptly, and somehow her face is burning and red, but then she look down. Their various handprints, some smudged, others well defined, are spread across the entire sheet in bright red. Linked together the handprints, their identities, proof of their lives and existence, form a pattern...a tree. Ajita blinks rapidly, as if trying to disprove the existence of the image, but it remains the same. She had somehow finished creating the tree with Yallie even though that hadn't even been her intention.

"We did it," she says, still surprised.

"We are artists," Yallie beams proudly.

Ajita laughs.

Yallie raises an eyebrow and Ajita promptly stops because no one laughs in School. It is something she has only heard of in her dreams. Her face flushes again.

"You are very strange," Yallie says, lips curving, and Ajita wishes she knew the word for that, wishes she could name it, this special something that only two of them do.

"So are you," she says, laughter threatening to emerge again.

She hopes she can feel like this forever.

The cave painting flickers in the fire light. It's the bear again, running across the wall, followed by three stick figures, each holding something different. The fire flickflickflickers and the bear starts to move, his mouth opening in a long cry. He looks over his shoulder with a grunt at the stick men rushing towards him. The image moves faster and faster and she can hear the whip of the long grass as the stick men gallop through it...

...and then it's passing by her, dark reeds brushing against her legs. The night is young and the moon is yellow and bright, and a harmony of insects surrounds her. The grass whips against her legs as she runs and darts around trees. Behind her...the men follow. One man leads the chase, eyes narrowed in concentration and face formed in a frown, sweat trickling down his neck. Something glints in the light, a pointed stone...an arrowhead. He loads the arrow onto his bow.

Whipwhipwhip. On her right another man jogs forward, a large pot over his shoulder. He disappears in and out of view as he flits between the trees and shadows. Her legs feel heavy and her muscles pull and push against each other in pain, but she doesn't stop. In her peripheral she sees the last man, carrying chopped trees in his arms.

She wakes with a headache, with words like hunter and weapon carousing through her mind. Rubbing her temples, she sits up in bed and remains like that until the Instructor comes in to wake them.

Her headache persists throughout Lessons, and her stomach feels vaguely queasy. She glares at the Instructor that morning, but he avoids her and doesn't react if he sees her face. Glaring at the screen as well, she tires of the Introduction and its ongoing drivel. She wonders what the Instructor would say if she called it 'pointless' and 'incongruous with what I am interested in learning'. But he doesn't approach her at all, and she is tired of the blinkblinkblink of the blank answer boxes too. So she begins filling them in.'I do not understand this question. The Introduction material was insufficient.' 'This equation is irrelevant to my interests.' 'I find the shape of this graph intriguing; it reminds me of the ebb and flow of waves on the ocean. Do you know what an ocean is? Probably not, as you most likely don't do any extracurricular research.'

Other Students glance her way, probably unused to this amount of activity from her. She can hear the Instructor stutter in his pacing, which means he's confused as well, but he continues to ignore her so she ignores him as well. Just when she is almost finished answering all of the questions, way ahead of her peers for once, there is the clink of a door opening. The Instructor stops pacing and begins a muted conversation with someone. She listens carefully as she submits the last question and hears her name, whispered quietly.

She looks up and there in the door is Yallie. The Instructor has a distinctly sour look on his face and Ajita stands up, lips curving, not caring who sees. Yallie tips her head in a 'come here' gesture and Ajita gleefully logs off the kiosk. She breezes past the Instructor and is glad to see that Yallie, while her lips are not curved, has a bright look in her eye. Yallie nods respectfully to the Instructor, but Ajita doesn't bother to give a farewell, and matches Yallie step for step as they walk down the hallway.

"How are your Lessons going?" Yallie asks politely.

"I had the most productive Lesson yet," Ajita says, and feels she just might burst out of her skin.

Yallie hums once and Ajita basks in the sound, replaying it over and over again in her head, ridding the words 'hunter' and 'weapon' from her mind.

"How is Training going?" Ajita asks.

Yallie doesn't answer right away and Ajita misses a step in her stride. The blonde's face is pinched, but the look disappears quickly. Ajita catches up and falls in step with Yallie once more.

"Fine," she answers.

Ajita hums in response too, but only because she doesn't know what to say. They walk to the science kiosk in silence and Ajita tries to conjure the carefree, bursting feeling from earlier.

"Are we going to paint again today?" Ajita asks.

Clink. The door opens and they go to the kiosk.

"Perhaps later. I was doing more research on your star bear," Yallie says and starts up the kiosk.

Ajita likes the sound of 'star bear' and sits down next to Yallie feeling better because Yallie had been thinking of Rasjaurom and Ajita all day. She hums again, meaning it this time. Yallie quirks an eyebrow in her direction. Ajita shrugs her shoulders, can't resist that bursting feeling, and Yallie just shakes her head, causing her curly bangs to bounce over her forehead.

Ajita laughs, doesn't hide it, and Yallie huffs, feigning impatience.

"Contain yourself," Yallie says, lips curving.

Large pieces of text dominate the room and Yallie goes through them, explaining, "I wondered if your star bear was part of an old star chart. So I looked through star charts, starting with the ones we use now, and going through earlier versions. I ended up reading about the history of star charts. Older star charts were used for navigation as well, but were not as precise and accurate as those we have today. While they did include astronomical objects like planets and galaxies, the charters also included something of their own machination."

She pulls up another piece of text, "These were asterisms, also known as constellations. They were created and charted by visualizing a pattern in stars that had apparent proximity to each other. Such patterns differed throughout the ages, but there used to be a listing of eighty-eight standardized asterisms, and included patterns like a scorpion, swan...and your bear."

"Visuals?" Ajita asks.

She tries to picture Rasjaurom being charted by ancient inhabitants, being visualized and created by the imaginations of primordial navigators and charters.

Yallie nods at her request, queuing up images without fuss. Some of the star charts are dark blue, with various sized dots and rigid white lines; others are done on a white canvas, with bulky black dots and lines representing the stars and constellations. A few are colorful and contain figures of people and animals. None of them are multi-dimensional like their star charts; they are simply flat. Unchangeable. Most of the symbols and writing are unfamiliar to her, but she can still recognize the stars.

"They are works of art," she says.

"Mmm," Yallie says, "and not entirely helpful."

"Well not to us," Ajita corrects, "but to whoever created them."

She takes the pointer from Yallie and goes through the images, positioning them so she can see Rasjaurom, the star bear. He looks mighty and beautiful in all of them, even on charts that don't outline his figure or draw lines connecting the stars. She tries to memorize the seven stars, and wishes she could see them with her own two eyes. She flips to another image...and freezes.

Her dream flashes through her mind, the whipwhipwhip of the grass, the hum of the insects, and the steady and strong footsteps of the three hunters. Within a blink the flashback in gone and she is left staring at the eerily familiar star chart. Rasjaurom looks over his shoulder at three stars behind him, which are depicted as three men who carry various items: a bow and arrow, a pot, and a pile of firewood.

She backs up in her seat and looks away from the image.

"Could we plot the constellations on our star chart?" Ajita asks.

She hands off the pointer to Yallie, and stills the shaking in her hands. Yallie cocks her head to the side and Ajita does her best to shrug off her queasiness.

"I will try," Yallie says.

Yallie clears the images and text and clicks through settings on the kiosk. Soon the entire room is filled with a dark blue hue and the rest of the lights dim. Ajita relaxes as it grows dark. With another click, stars fill the room, growing brighter as they hover in the gloom. Their Numerical Designations float beside their forms. Once they are surrounded by stars, Ajita stands up.

She spins around and stars fly over her body as she moves through them. Spreading her arms out, she opens her eyes wide and tilts her head back, and pretends she is drifting through the stars. A laugh disturbs her from her fantasy, and she turns around to find Yallie by her side. Stars dot Yallie's body and gleam in her eyes.

Ajita reaches up with a finger and touches one of the stars that rests on Yallie's cheek, "You are so strange."

"So are you," Yallie replies.

Ajita takes Yallie's hands and with a tug, spins them though the stars. She makes Yallie laugh again, and marvels at how light she feels, as if she could really float up into the night sky. She wonders if Yallie feels it too.

"I want to live with the stars," Ajita says.

Yallie snorts, "You're completely illogical."

"You have to live there with me," Ajita declares, wanting Yallie to promise, hoping she does.

"I already am. Look where we are," Yallie replies, and this time she's the one guiding the spin.

With a bright spark, lines start forming between the stars, spreading from one to the other. Their spinning slows, and Yallie leans in close as if divulging a secret. Her eyes are bright with stars and excitement and Ajita wishes she had paint so she could draw them.

"We're a part of the stars," Yallie whispers, "we're all made of the same stuff: starstuff."

Ajita holds her breath, she's not sure she understands what Yallie is trying to explain, but her proximity is making her head ring and her blood burn. They stop spinning and the stars are painted over them, the lines continually connecting stars, and the constellations are almost all formed. A line shoots between them, and seven stars brightly glow, and as the Great Bear comes into being around them, Ajita leans forward...

...and places her mouth against Yallie's.

The Trainee gasps and Ajita feels her warm breath brush against her face. Heat rushes through her body, and she surges forward, prolonging their contact, enjoying the softness of Yallie's mouth, never knowing that her insides could burn the way they do, that her body could feel such a way. And just a few seconds later, she feels pressure on her lips as Yallie returns the gesture. Ajita raises her trembling hands, and cups Yallie's face, brushing against the soft hairs on her nape and cheeks.

With a sigh, their lips part, and Rasjaurom is fully formed around them. Ajita still gently holds Yallie's face in her hands.

"What was that?" Yallie asks, dazed.

Their lips are wet, and their cheeks are flushed, and Ajita can't believe that they don't learn about this in School. This is a topic that is relevant to her interests.

"A kiss," she says, the word coming unbidden to her mind.

"A kiss," Yallie slowly repeats, and Ajita curls her toes, because Yallie has that look on her face that means she's going to go straight to the kiosk and research it.

"Yes. We kiss on the mouth," she's sure she must have learnt this in her dreams.

"Why mouths?"

"It is where we draw breath," is her best explanation.

Yallie leans forward, "You also breathe through your nose."

She bumps her nose against Ajita's briefly.

"But we also consume sustenance through our mouths," Ajita says, and Yallie is still close, enough so that she can feel her warm breath on her cheeks.

"Sustenance," Yalli repeats, and her eyes immediately fly to Ajita's mouth, "so when you kiss a person, you are saying they are your sustenance."

"Yes."

"Ah— it is a metaphor," her eyes brighten up as they always do when she figures something out.

"Yes," Ajita whispers, though she has no idea if Yallie is right or not.

They lay on the floor, their hands intertwined, and their gazes are on the stars surrounding them. Ajita remembers the villages, and how the stars were visible from huts and bed rolls. She thinks this is just as good. The stars slowly rotate around them and Ajita points out various constellations as they become visible.

"I wish we could see the stars from the Observation Hall," she says longingly.

Yallie nods.

"It's always so cloudy," Ajita murmurs, "Do you know why?"

Yallie's gaze flicks towards her and away again, "They are clouds of pollution."

"Pollution? What is that?"

"Pollution is something that is bad for a planet and upsets its natural balance."

That doesn't sound good at all, Ajita thinks, with ice in her heart.

"How did the pollution get here?"

"It was created by the inhabitants."

"How?"

"Through warfare, mainly."

The word is foreign to her, "Is that something we did?"

"Not us, not the School," Yallie says defensively, and then shoots a glare at Ajita.

Her breath quickens as she thinks of the village and the monastery, "There are other people outside of School then?"

"No," Yallie says, and her jaw is tight.

"Oh. Is pollution reversible?"

"That remains to be seen," Yallie says cryptically.

She wonders what she said to make Yallie angry, to make her close up. She silently thinks for something to say, something to ease the tension in Yallie's shoulders. Glancing up at the stars, inspiration from their previous conversation strikes her.

"What is starstuff?" she asks.

Yallie takes a deep breath and releases it, as if consciously letting go of her irritation. Her entire face relaxes and Ajita instantly feels more at ease.

"Do you know how we came to be?" Yallie asks.

Ajita shakes her head.

"When older stars die the dust they leave behind eventually combines with other interstellar gas and debris; these dust clouds become the birthplace of a new generation of stars and planets. So you see, the stuff we're made of, the stuff this planet is made of, is starstuff. It's been recycled over and over again and will be used in the future. In a way, it's like we never die. We just become something new."

Ajita wonders if her glimpses of foreign lands and people come from these ancient suns and planets. She presses her face against Yallie's shoulder, and can imagine where the fabric of her shirt came from, what her pale skin is made of. Starstuff. From across a thousand galaxies. Ajita's body tingles, but she's not sure if it's with excitement or fear.

"Do we even matter?" Ajita whispers into Yallie's shirt.

Yallie frowns, "Matter? To whom?"

"To the Universe."

"Well of course," Yallie says, "we are part of the Universe, are we not? Our current forms may be a small piece of the whole, but we are indeed a piece."

"Do we matter a whole lot?"

"Matter is never destroyed, it is simply rearranged. So our particles are part of all that has been and all that will be. I would say that is pretty important. If you were a Universe, would you ever want to be missing any of your particles?"

"I should think not."

"Therefore, we are important."

"Because the Universe would be missing us if we went missing?"

"Because the Universe would be incomplete otherwise," Yallie sits up, shaking her head so her curls fall back in place.

"Well, if I were a Universe there would certainly be some particles I'd miss more than others."

"It is good thing you aren't a Universe then, isn't it?" Yallie says, her lips curved.

Ajita has to bite her to lip to keep from speaking. It's easy talking to Yallie, but there are some things that possibly should not be spoken of. I think I have a good idea about being a Universe, she would say, I have dreams.

"I would like to see the rest of the Universe," she says.

Yallie offers her a hand up and they stand in the middle of the star-filled room.

"Me too," Yallie confesses, eyes bright and determined, "that's why I train so hard."

Ajita's breath catches, "You are going to see the stars?"

"If I make the cut, then yes, I will."

"How?" Ajita grasps the fabric of Yallie's shirt.

A bright star passes over Yallie's face as she hesitates, and Ajita wonders what Yallie must see in Ajita's eyes, because after the star moves on, the hesitation is gone and she's pulling her through the constellations.

"Let me show you."

The corridors seem to fold in on themselves, like they're going around in circles. Yallie walks fast, like she's flying through the hallways, and Ajita doesn't have much time to observe what's around them. The blue hallways become filled with noise, the clink of doors and machines, the hum of electronics, and the loud voices of Trainees. Yallie yanks her into a side room, and then into a side hallway, one that is narrow and dank and dim and contains pipes and panels that blink slowly, regularly. Yallie leads her into another dingy room, down a flight of stairs and then she stops by a door and puts a finger to her lips.

It takes Ajita a moment to realize that maybe she's not supposed to be here. She closes her mouth tightly, hand sweaty in Yallie's, and their eyes meet. Yallie breathes out, long and slow, and then the door disappears.

The room is blue and long, and a gigantic window dominates the wall opposite them. The room is otherwise empty and the air seems rather stale and still. It reminds Ajita of the Observation Hall. Yallie squeezes her hand, and her eyes have a fierce look to them, her face filled with a breathless, nervous sort of excitement, and she leads her to the window.

A cavern-like structure yawns before them. It's the largest room Ajita has ever seen, and it expands far above their heads and far below them. Pipes, steam, data-filled screens, elevators and staircases twist through the room, coming together in an organized sense of chaos, a tableau of grey, blue and white. Trainees, dozens, maybe even hundreds of them, scurry about. There are no Students here, no Instructors in black.

The Trainees carry screens and tools, and work on kiosks that control huge pieces of machinery that create bright sparks. Large screens display data, graphs, and blueprints. There is so much movement that Ajita isn't sure where to look, how to make sense of it.

"Look," Yallie says, and she's right behind her, right next to her ear.

She puts a finger against the window and Ajita's eyes are drawn to where she is pointing. At first she doesn't understand what she's looking at, doesn't understand what they are. But years of dreams and years of Lessons coalesce in her mind, and she's able to find the word.

"Ships," she says, voice quiet and strained.

A row of silvery-blue rockets gleam in the room below.

"Yes," Yallie says.

Ajita rips her gaze from the ships, turning to Yallie as if to double-check that she isn't seeing things. Never have the stars felt so close. Yallie leans in close to the window, her breath misting over the surface, her eyes focused on the rockets.

"This is why I train," she whispers, lips curving, "a chance to see the stars and live among them. To explore the rest of the galaxy, and maybe even those beyond it."

Ajita places a hand against her chest, feels her heart's thumpa-thumpa, and thinks that her and Yallie's hearts must beat the same.

"I want to see them too," she whispers.

Yallie's lips downturn and Ajita's heart drops.

"I wish we could see them together," Yallie says quietly.

"Are Students not allowed to go on the ships?" she asks, and the stars seem to be drifting farther and farther from her reach.

"Trainees are not Students and Students are not Trainees," Yallie explains.

Ajita steps back, letting go of Yallie's hand, and her face stings, "Why are you a Trainee and I a Student?"

Yallie purses her lips and says carefully, "We are different."

"We do not get to choose whether we become a Trainee or a Student?"

"No."

"What do Students become then?" she asks, wondering why Yallie knows all this, why she has the answers and Ajita doesn't.

"They are Students," Yallie says carefully, "it is important that you continue to learn and do Tasks. The more you learn, the different Tasks you can accomplish."

Ajita pictures herself cleaning scanners for days upon days, as the answer box continually blinks at her, empty empty empty empty.

"We are taught so that we can do Tasks?" she asks, bewildered.

Yallie nods, "Yes. We all must be productive. We all must put our knowledge to good use. What is the point of learning if you do not use the knowledge?"

"I don't want to do Tasks forever," Ajita snaps, "I don't like what we learn, either."

Yallie shrugs one shoulder, vaguely apologetic, and looks rather bewildered herself.

"You have a goal," Ajita gestures to the ships, "you have something you Train for. Something you want to Train for. Why can't I?"

Yallie fidgets and doesn't meet her eye, "We can try and find a Task that is better suited to you. You are...rather unique, even among Students. I am sure I am not the only one baffled by and curious about your star bears and art."

Ajita pauses, trying to figure out if that was insulting or not, and decides to cross her arms and stare at the ships. Yallie clears her throat gently, and her fingers flit against Ajita's. Ajita doesn't let her take her hand.

"You get this look," Yallie says quietly, as if to assure her she wasn't insulting her, "when you create. Like you're seeing things others can't."

Ajita closes her eyes and swallows.

"You too," she admits, thinking of Yallie when she talks about numbers or conducts research in the databases.

"I wanted to see what you were seeing," Yallie whispers.

Ajita nods to show that she feels the same way. She doesn't pull away when Yallie takes her hand, doesn't resist when Yallie tugs her towards the door, doesn't flinch at the clink as the door shuts behind them; and when she opens her eyes she's back in the grey corridors, and she's convincing herself that she doesn't yearn or regret. When she falls asleep she's not thinking of star bears, art or kissing. She's thinking of one word: escape.

The night envelops her and the long reeds sting her legs as she gallops through them. She's back in the forest, with the humming insects and bright moon. Behind her, three shadows follow. She runs without really feeling it, knowing with some fatalistic sense that her night is almost at its end. Her pacing slows, and the trees close in, the gaps between them becoming narrower and narrower until a ring forms around her and she stares at the tall, thick trees blocking her escape. There is the crunchcrunchcrunch of the three hunters stepping out from their shadows. She hangs her head, and with a heavy grunt, turns around to face them.

Instead, Yallie stands there in the moonlight, frail and tall in her blue uniform, her hair and eyes illuminated. Ajita would dare to call her beautiful.

"This is what I have been training for," Yallie says.

She raises a bow and arrow, gaze steady and determined, eyes bright with the moonlight. She nocks the arrow, pulls it back...and releases the bowstring. With a single forceful shot, Rasjaurom the Great Bear of the Stars...falls.

When Ajita awakens, her peers do their best to ignore her scream.

She glares at the ceiling as the Instructor comes in to awaken them and debates between getting up and staying in bed. She settles for lagging behind the other Students, staring at the back of their heads and wondering for the first time where they had all come from. No matter how hard she tries, she can't remember anything before School. She knows she was small once, barely waist height, learning numbers and letters and speech. It has been a while since then, she decides, and all the faces that surround her, they all seem vaguely familiar, but she can't remember their Numerical Designations. She can't remember ever wanting to talk to them, but now she wants to know what they remember, and if they know they will be doing Tasks forever.

They sit at their kiosks, and Ajita ignores the blank answer boxes, turning instead to a Student next to her. She registers, for the first time, that she has short dark hair and pale skin, with a large brown dot on her dainty chin. They must have been sitting next to each other for as long as Ajita can remember, but the details of her face have always escaped her.

"Student," she says.

The Student's eyes don't flicker from the screen. Ajita, with a single finger, taps her shoulder. Immediately, her eyes snap to Ajita, shoulder twitching at the contact. She leans away a bit, and Ajita leans closer in response.

"Student, I have a question for you," she says.

The Student's eyes nervously slide away and she grasps her kiosk tightly, "Instructors are the ones who ask questions; Students are supposed to answer."

Ajita huffs a little impatiently, "Since you are Student then, answering my question shouldn't be a problem."

"You are not an Instructor," the Student says, her voice tight.

She turns back to her kiosk, quickly keying in an answer to a blinking question. Ajita resists the urge to roll her eyes.

"Student, do you like our Lessons?"

The Student stills, just for a split second, before continuing to answer questions.

"Student, do you like our Tasks?"

Ajita watches her expression closely, and thinks she sees the beginning of a frown.

"Do you understand the question?" Ajita asks.

"Your answers are blinking, you should answer them."

"Why?"

"They are there for you to answer them."

"What would the point be in answering them?"

"To get the questions correct."

"Why does correctness matter?"

"Correctness implies one is learning."

"What is the point of learning?"

The Student opens her mouth, perhaps automatically, so used to having all of the answers, but she says nothing.

"Do you like what we are learning?" Ajita asks.

The Student's mouth shuts with a click and her lips are pressed tight, and Ajita wonders if she even knows what the phrase means.

"I like to paint," Ajita offers.

"Paint?" the Student asks, wary.

She's looking at the kiosk but Ajita thinks she's not really seeing it.

Ajita's lips curve, "Yes. Drawing. Creating art."

"Those words have not been in any Introduction I have read."

"A drawing, a piece of art, or a painting, is something created with one's imagination that takes a visual form."

The Student looks perplexed and her answers go blinkblinkblink.

Ajita decides to test out one final set of questions, "Student, why are we in School? Why do we do Tasks? What is our purpose?"

Very slowly, the Student shakes her head.

"Student."

Ajita jumps and turns around. Behind her, an Instructor looms. She squints at him suspiciously, and once he is sure he has her attention, he gestures for her to stand up.

"Follow me," he says.

They walk to the door, but before they leave, the Instructor turns around. He addresses the Student Ajita had been talking to.

"Student, finish your Lesson. Answer the questions."

The Student comes out of her stupor and begins to key in answers, looking rather relieved. Ajita rolls her eyes and follows the Instructor out of the room.

She sits in front of three Instructors she has only seen briefly before. There's a large kiosk screen on the wall next to them, but otherwise the room is empty. The woman Instructor briefly confers with the two men Instructors, too quiet for her to hear, before addressing Ajita.

"Student, we have decided to redo your Placement Assessments to determine which Task is best suited for you at this moment in your education."

Ajita fumbles with the end of her plait; she remembers where she had last seen these Instructors. They had, individually at the time, assessed her for other Tasks before, Tasks that included calculations and wires and screens and numbers. She cringes and slinks lower in her seat. She had not been suited for those Tasks at all.

One of the Instructors uses a clicker and the screen turns on, the rest of the lights dimming.

"Student, can you identify what this is?"

Ajita freezes, before slowly sitting up, "That is a star chart."

The skeletal figures of stars hover in the darkness, Designations blinking next to their figures.

"Correct," the Instructor says smoothly, "do you know its purpose?"

"It is used for navigation."

"Correct."

The screen changes, lines begin to connect different stars and the image flattens out.

"Identify this image."

"It is a star chart."

"There are additions now. Can you name what they are?"

"Constellations."

At the Instructor's expectant look, she clarifies, "Asterisms."

"Correct."

With a sudden clink a small screen appears before her, resting at elbow height. It's flat, like a counter. She's handed a pointer.

"Can you replicate the star chart?"

She glances around at each Instructor, but their faces are blank, not giving anything away. She squints up at the star chart, and quickly draws on the blank, flat screen in front of her. She tries to be exact as she copies the stars and the constellations she sees. Rasjaurom isn't among them.

"What is the purpose of replicating what is already shown on the screen?" she asks.

The Instructors stall, blinking more rapidly than normal.

"We are assessing your fine motor skills," the woman Instructor finally answers.

Ajita is sure she had already done that during training at the Center. Her screen flickers once and then her drawing appears on the large kiosk screen.

"Surprisingly accurate," one of the male Instructors murmurs.

The woman does not seem so pleased, "Yes, but accuracy is something all Students strive for."

Ajita's screen flickers back to life.

The woman insists that she, "Replicate my face."

Ajita pauses in surprise, eyebrow climbing her forehead, and for the first time...studies the face of an Instructor. The woman's face is oval and soft, her hair short and severe, her eyebrows brown and delicate, her nose long and pointy. Her lips are thin and dark peach and she has very slight wrinkles around her grey eyes. Ajita can't remember the eye or hair color of her usual Instructors, and the way their faces slip out of focus in her mind worries her. Has it always been this way?

She has never drawn a face before, and she fears it is not accurate the way the star chart was, because the woman looks too stern in her picture, too foreboding, all sharp lines and harsh angles. She can't seem to replicate the soft curve of her cheek, or the delicate rise of her eyebrow. She can't even replicate the neutral expression that usually rests on her pale face.

When she is finished, her image flickers up onto to the kiosk screen and the Instructors scrutinize it.

"It is not accurate," the other male Instructor says uneasily.

Ajita takes a good look at him, trying to burn his features into her mind: dark skin, like hers, dark fuzzy hair, crooked nose, thick eyebrows. While she knows she has seen him before, remembers his questions as he assessed her, she cannot recall his exact expressions, his exact features. It's blurry, foggy, and she is unable to dispel the mist in her memories.

"Student, can you explain why this is not accurate?" the woman Instructor asks.

"It is impossible to replicate real life," Ajita says warily.

"Then why did you try?"

"Because you asked."

The two male Instructors seem satisfied, and look to the woman expectantly. The woman frowns. Ajita doesn't like the expression. She remembers the woman's Assessments being the most difficult.

Her screen flickers to life again.

"Student, show me what you think of when you think of anger."

The men shift in their seats, and Ajita does as well, because this one she probably can't bluff through.

"Student?"

Ajita grips the pointer tightly, and then draws a blank answer box. The woman sits up a little straighter when the image pops up on the kiosk screen.

"Student, show me what you think of when you think of happiness."

Ajita draws seven stars.

"That is merely replication," one of the male Instructors says, "She is just recreating something that she connects with an emotion. It is not a unique creation."

The woman clicks her teeth together in agitation, and with her clicker, begins to bring up different things on Ajita's screen. A row of circles appear on her screen, each circle a different color.

"Student, using the colors, show me what you feel when you hear the word friendship."

The other two Instructors look perplexed as if they don't even know what the word is. Ajita licks her lips, wondering if she should play dumb, but as the blank screen flickers before her, she realizes they are finally asking her questions she can answer.

Did Yallie have a hand in this? What she remembers of yesterday's conversation centers around the blue and silvery ships, freedom she could see but not touch. But didn't Yallie say she would try and have her moved to a different Task? Did she tell these Instructors about their art, about star bears and humming and kissing?

She selects a red color, vibrant and smooth on the screen, the way she imagined paint should be like. It doesn't have a texture, but when she clicks it and draws over the screen it flows from the pointer effortlessly. She creates wicked splashes of red paint, making them spiral until they become fractal-like against the backdrop of a night sky. She draws seven bright stars and connects them with fine white lines.

The woman tilts her head triumphantly when Ajita's image comes up on the large screen.

"You see? A unique interpretation," the woman says.

The other Instructors look vaguely uncomfortable.

"It is just a collage," the other Instructor says, albeit feebly.

The woman purses her lips and says, "Student, can you create something that is not a replication?"

Ajita blinks, "Create something that neither exists in nature nor has been manufactured?"

"Yes."

Her hand hovers over the screen, pondering how to create something that has never been created before. She selects the blue and paints in long lines. With the silver she outlines them, hazy and indistinct, like fog before a sunrise; and behind the long lines and silvery clouds, dominating the majority of the screen: darkness.

The woman studies the image intently and asks slowly, "Student, can you explain this picture?"

"This is freedom," she says.

The lines cannot be recognized as rockets, and perhaps the Instructors do not see that the blackness is supposed to be space. The woman turns to the men and cocks her head to the side.

"Are we done here?" she asks.

She doesn't wait for an answer before she stands up, turns off all the screens and heads for the door.

All Ajita is told is, "Attend to your Task, Student."

Since Yallie is not there when she arrives, Ajita slowly works her way through the scanners, scrubbing their eyes clean. They stare back at her blankly. When she finishes she stands in the middle of the room and waits and waits and waits until she finally hears that clink.

"You weren't going to see me today," she says, without turning around.

There's a soft sigh from the doorway and Ajita crosses her arms, waiting for the Click. Clack. It doesn't come. She twists her torso to look over her shoulder, and Yallie stands there, staring at the ground, hands on hips.

"Why did they ask all those questions about drawing?"

Yallie brings her head up, frown on her face, as if being drawn away from a far off thought, "What?"

"Today various Instructors asked me questions about art. They pulled me aside and had me draw for them."

Yallie's gaze flicks to the side and back, and then again to the side. She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth, "Uh-huh."

Ajita swivels completely around and leans against the counter. Yallie says nothing else.

"Did you tell them about my art? You did mention that it was possible for me to be assessed for a new Task."

Yallie swipes a hand over the back of her neck, "Right."

She pushes herself off the counter and stalks, slowly, to Yallie's side. She waits until Yallie looks up at her. Though she meets her eyes, her gaze is not unwavering. There are no stars, no light, in her eyes. Ajita rarely thinks of death outside of her dreams, but she wonders if this is what it feels like.

"I waited for you," Ajita whispers.

Yallie doesn't react beyond a slight twitching of her shoulders.

"Did you get in trouble for showing me the ships?"

Yallie looks up at that, and her cheeks have the slightest red tinge.

"I figured it wasn't something you were supposed to do. Why must Students not know about the ships?"

Yallie opens her mouth, closes it, and then walks to the scanners. Ajita follows her, not letting the space between them grow.

"Why did you show me them if I shouldn't know they exist?"

Yallie turns on a scanner and Ajita is by her elbow, trying to catch her eye. The scanner floats in the air and follows Yallie as she sweeps to the door.

"Why did you wait so long to train today? Why is it that you didn't want to see me?"

They stop in the training room and Yallie's posture is rigid, her gaze averted, and though they are almost touching, Ajita feels as if there is a wall between them and she doesn't know how to scale it. She slowly releases a breath, and once she is sure the trembling anger has left her skin, she raises her fingers to cup Yallie's jaw. Her skin is soft, and smooth and sweet just like when they kissed, but Yallie snaps her head away and punches the control to open the door.

She points to the entryway, "Leave or I will be forced to summon an Instructor."

Ajita swallows, "Yallie."

"Do not call me that."

This is what it must feel like to be struck by an arrow. She leaves, walking slowly past Yallie and her blank gaze, and when she leaves the room, hearing the clink of the door shutting and locking behind her...she falls.

She lies in bed, cold and distant, as she waits for sleep to greet her. She fingers the tag on her wrist and wonders, for the first time, what it would be like if it were gone. Would she be free then, to go gallivanting among the stars? She hums deep in her throat at the thought. Cuddling her head in her arms, she wonders what it would be like to leave. What is outside of School? Do other Schools exist, other people, villages and chapels and caves with paintings? She closes her eyes, but can't remember any doors at School that would take her outside. Perhaps the silvery blue ships are the only way out. It is no wonder, then, she thinks soberly, that Yallie trains so desperately. Maybe she just wants to escape too.

Her dreams are full of blinking fluorescent beams, sleek grey-silver and gleaming white, hoses and wires and static. It's a jumble, a swirl, of color, with big voluminous balloons shooting up into the air, and metal wings with propellers and inky smoke, and a tiny sphere winking around a planet, and then people talking: _ya chaika_ and _that's one small step_. A step for whom, she wonders. Her vision plummets into darkness, and the voices surround her with beeps and grainy noise, before blinding light bursts out from behind a curved horizon.

The light escalates, and slowly coalesces into one bright point of light...the sun. A giant star, yellow and warm and beaming over the round surface of the planet. Of Earth. It's watery blue, with spans of brown and green and swatches of white. What color, she thinks, and desires to paint, to splash that beautiful dot of color over an expanse of space-black.

Something looms in her periphery, and with shock, she realizes it's a machine. Her lips curve as it moves around the Earth, a large cylinder of white and grey and black. A gasp chokes her breath when a figure, white and seemingly engorged, exits the machine and begins to float around the cylinder. Floating among the stars.

From there it's a whirlwind, and _woosh woosh woosh_ a line of rockets fire off from the Earth, and then from the cylinder, and then from the pale white satellite, and before her rise a line of planets, extending from Earth: one ruddy brown, and another a beautiful giant with delicate looking rings. Beyond that...the stars shine back at her and she reaches for them. Rockets, white and black, shoot off for the distant stars and she watches as they disappear into the depths of unexplored space. _A giant leap for mankind_ , whispers the static voice.

She wakes, covered in sweat, gasping with exhilaration, and she stares at her hands and pulls at her hair, because _how_ and _why_ and _when_? Leaping off her bunk, she paces in the room, and her skin itches, and she feels too big for her body. Her feet clip and clop against the floor, causing her bunk mates to stir and she feels like she could float to the ceiling and beyond.

She leans her forehead against the wall, presses her skin hard against the smooth grey, and lets the cold of it permeate her body. She attempts to shake off her shivers, and she stays in that position until the Instructor comes to wake them up.

She ignores the questions, her thoughts with the white and black rockets, and those thoughts give her goose bumps. She imagines where they could be now and if she could possibly ever find them. The Instructor jostles her out of her daydreams, and she resents him for it; but she follows him when he leads her to the room from yesterday. The three Instructors sit at a white table, waiting for her. She slides into the seat provided for her, aware she is in the middle of the room, being watched by three pairs of eyes.

"Student, we will continue your Placement Assessment," the woman announces.

She gives a pointed look at the male Instructor beside her and he brings out something from behind the table. Ajita cranes her neck, but can't see what it is because it's laying flat on the table.

"I want you to explain this image to me."

Ajita doesn't nod, but instead waits on the edge of her seat, hands gripping the edge. Something is sinking in her stomach, heavy like the bar from the training room. The woman Instructor lifts the image up...and Ajita is faced with her own dried red handprints.

She feels like she is small again, when she used to wet the bed after scary dreams and all the Instructors and all the Students knew. She thought she would never see the image again. She had given it to Yallie; Ajita had no place for it. Yallie considered it part of her research. Why had Yallie given it to the Instructors? Had they taken it from her? She bitterly recalls the way their last conversation had ended, in a solid sounding clink of finality. But perhaps there had been more to it?

"Student?" the woman asks crisply.

Ajita wets her lips, and considers how to explain the messy smears of paint, the rather juvenile display of handprints. Hers and Yallie's. Like a thundercloud, foreboding, dark and heavy, rolls through her body. Had Yallie gotten in trouble for this?

The Instructor breathes out heavily through her nose, but Ajita still hasn't compiled a coherent answer. So far the Instructors have been tight-lipped about their thoughts on the painting. Perhaps, since they have not yet reprimanded her, they are truly considering it part of her new Task placement?

"It is a painting," she says.

The dream snags at her memory, villages swamped by desert sands, rockets leaving the Earth, cave paintings that haunt the walls, and beautiful hands linked for all eternity. Forever sharing a bond. A history.

"It is history," she adds.

The other two Instructors swivel their heads at the same time, staring at the woman Instructor expectantly. The woman Instructor lowers the image and carefully places it on the table. She stares at it for a fraction of a second, before meeting Ajita's eyes.

"And what, Student, is your history?"

She hears the other Instructors' quick intake of breath, and her eyes narrow.

"The School."

"And what was the purpose of this...painting?" she hesitates over the word.

"Research."

"What type of research?"

"The viscosity of different substances and the replication of thumbprints and handprints."

"In other words: what is unique to each individual."

"Unique, just like every Numerical Designation."

This time, all of the Instructors glance at each other. They can't seem to form any more questions, and let her go.

She snakes through the corridors, feet following the path she had taken several times before, holding her breath every time her tag blinks. She holds her head down, walking with purpose, feeling fear tingle down her spine every time she passes someone in the hallway. The grey corridors just start to turn blue when her tag starts blinking like crazy, and her arm is caught in a vice-like grip.

She is dragged from the hallway and pressed into a side corridor.

"You can't be here!"

She hears Yallie's hiss in her ear, feels her hot breath on her cheek. She digs her heels in.

"I wanted to see you."

Yallie makes a noise of frustration and lets go with a dramatic flair. She crosses her arms and glares at her. Ajita makes a show of straightening her sleeves, rubbing tenderly where Yallie had clamped down on her arm.

"The Instructors asked me more questions about painting today."

Yallie's expression doesn't change. Ajita decides to go for more of a direct hit.

"Why did you give them the painting we made together? The one with the handprints?"

Ajita tries not to feel too victorious when Yallie flinches.

"So it is not a good thing they are asking me all these questions, is it?"

"Why would you think that?" Yallie snaps.

Ajita raises an eyebrow at her outburst and Yallie flushes, looking away. Her arms hug her body in a gesture of insecurity.

"Why did you give them the painting?"

"They asked for it."

"How did they know to ask for it?"

Yallie stares at a point far down the hall, and Ajita feels something start to crawl in her belly.

"Have they known all along?" Ajita asks.

"I may have informed them that you were artistically inclined after our initial meeting," Yallie elaborates delicately.

Ajita blinks rapidly, trying to dispel the sudden wet heat gathering in her eyes, "Why?"

Yallie shrugs stiffly, "I had never seen it happen before. I was sure they'd be interested in such a unique development in one of their Students."

Ajita feels like the man floating outside of the space ship, un-tethered and consumed by the surrounding darkness.

"They asked you to do the research?" she asks.

"I always have unrestricted access to the databases," Yallie glares at her, "I choose to research what I want."

"But they allowed you to...show me the knowledge inside the databases?"

Yallie nods.

"Why?"

"It was an...Assessment."

"What were they assessing?"

"Your artistic ability," Yallie stresses, as if she's said this again and again.

Ajita backs up, shaking her head, because something doesn't feel right about the answer. She itches her palms in agitation, because the answer is in her head, she knows it.

"It's the truth," Yallie whispers, and she looks so broken, that Ajita feels sorry.

"I don't like not knowing when I'm going to see you," Ajita says, because the previous subject is suffocating her.

Yallie blinks at the change of subject, and asks rather dumbly, "What do you mean?"

"I mean I can never see you when I want to, and I don't know when you next want to see me."

By Yallie's dumbfounded expression, Ajita guesses that Yallie has never thought about this before. But why would she? She could see Ajita whenever she felt like it. Could pull her out of Lessons on a whim. Ajita narrows her eyes.

"The Instructors...they let you change my schedule whenever you wanted."

Yallie wrinkles her nose incredulously, "Within reason. You still had to do your Lessons and Tasks. I never had complete control. The visit had to serve a purpose."

"Had to benefit the research you were conducting," Ajita feels a bitter taste in the back of her throat.

"Obviously," Yallie says, eyebrows raised.

"So you never saw me just because...you wanted to?" Ajita hates how fragile her voice sounds.

And then Yallie gets it. Her eyes light up and her arms drop loosely to her side.

"Ajita," she breathes.

Shivers go up and down her arms, and heat boils in her body. She can't ever remember anyone saying her name before.

"Our meetings served two purposes," she confides quietly, "both professional and personal. But it had to serve at least the first purpose in order for me to take you out of your schedule."

Its Yallie's way of saying she wasn't allowed to see Ajita whenever she wanted to. The thought makes Ajita feel a little consoled, and suddenly she wants Yallie to go on those silver blue ships, to get far away from here, to be among the stars. Yallie's corridors are blue, and Ajita's corridors are grey, but they're still walls. Ajita hates them more every day.

"Can I watch you Train?" Ajita asks.

She's pleading with her eyes make it work, make it work. Yallie nods slowly, finds a reason to excuse Ajita of her Tasks, so that Ajita can watch Yallie works towards a goal, train for freedom, and pretend that she's going to be free too.

The floor of the training room is flat and hard and cold and uncomfortable, but they sit on it anyway. Ajita's arms are draped over her knees and Yallie is stretching, touching her toes and putting her forehead to the floor. She watches Yallie's curves and curls and itches for a screen and pen, so she can draw them. Little streams of sweat glide down the gentle slopes of Yallie's cheeks and arms and shoulders and while she's breathing deep and stretching her body so beautifully, Ajita leans over and places her lips against one shoulder. Yallie's sweat clings to her lips. She feels more than hears Yallie's breathing hitch, but she continues her stretching and Ajita licks the sweat a little, presses a kiss against that shoulder, and then licks up that little stream. Drinks it all.

She moves with Yallie, continuing to taste her neck, behind her ear, her elbow, all while Yallie stretches and bends, her breathing coming faster and faster until they're breathing at the same rate, and Ajita feels as if the Universe would fall apart if she lifted her mouth away from Yallie's skin.

Yallie stands in one swoop, but she doesn't leave Ajita behind; she grabs her forearms, tight and strong, and lifts them both up. She walks them backwards and then the bar appears, hovering in the air and Yallie, meeting her eyes, grabs it. Ajita glides her hands down Yallie's arms as Yallie holds the bar and the numbers on the screen increase. She feels her muscles shake and tense, and catches the drops of sweat on the hairs of her arms. Then Yallie begins to lift her arms, lips pursing until they're white, jaw clenching so hard the bones jut powerfully against her skin. Ajita keeps her touch light, not intending to help or hinder. But she feels the strength as Yallie lifts and lifts and lifts.

She can feel the weakness too, the weakness that makes Yallie gasp in pain and struggle, the weakness that makes her want to drop the bar because her arms are frail and shaking as she tries to not be defeated by her own limitations.

"I can't do it," Yallie confesses, a sob that is ripped from her.

Ajita comes around her back, presses her cheek against the back of Yallie's neck, and whispers, "Why are we assessed?"

Yallie's grip almost falters, but she regroups quickly, "What?"

"Why are we assessed?"

"To show what we know," Yallie grunts, "so that we know where we belong."

That's why Ajita hates this kind of assessing. It places people in Tasks and lives designated only by their limitations.

"No," Ajita says, right into Yallie's ear, "it's to show you where you can improve."

Yallie laughs, strangled and breathy all at once because she still hasn't let go of that bar.

"When you were first assessed," Ajita says, rough and fast, trying to make Yallie get it, "you weren't placed with the ships. You failed that part of the Assessment."

She hears Yallie gnash her teeth at the bitter reminder.

"So you continued to train on your own, because you knew the Assessments only showed you where you had to improve."

"It's my body," Yallie hisses, "it is weak and fragile."

"And able to be improved."

"You call this improvement?"

Ajita's eyes flick to the escalating numbers and she pushes her face forward to press a long kiss against the side of Yallie's mouth.

She whispers, "Yes."

And when Yallie finally manages to lift the bar above her head, it doesn't just feel like improvement, it feels like victory. It feels like freedom and creativity and though they didn't create a painting, she feels like they created something just as a beautiful and powerful and inspired.

It's the first time Ajita ever kisses someone goodbye, and she enjoys it in the moments before they leave the training room. She thinks of it, sweet on her lips, as she lies down for sleep. Yallie's sweat is still on her fingers, on her mouth, the scent of her training and success on her clothes, and she curls up in it. It makes her drift to sleep soundly, but the feeling of comfort and satisfaction is dashed with the first bloom of fire.

It streaks across the bleak, smoky atmosphere of her dreams. Tall buildings, once shiny and proud, are reduced to crumbling shells; people strolling down clean walkways now run, smeared with blood and terror. The stars, once bright and visible, are now covered by thick clouds and dark smoke and ashes. Then beside her, in space, looking down upon the grey and black planet, is a massive cylinder. A machine. And behind it...several more. She remembers the man floating beside the cylindrical machine, how peaceful, how serene, and now these machines are monstrous. They destroy each other and with long, fiery shots, cause spots on the world to bloom into a dark, smoky haze.

She flies over cities and towns, deserted and torn to pieces, with dead people and molted people and people hiding out in shelters and ripping poisoned food from each other's hands. She struggles to understand.

The villages are destroyed. The colorful cities are no more. The mud buildings, the chapel, the caves and the space cylinders born from collaboration are gone. Razor sharp machines with weapons rule the atmosphere and destroy the ground and water and people, and she wonders when one step turned into this. She watches as another machine loads a projectile, and as it hits the Earth, she feels like Rasjaurom, struck by an arrow, falling and falling and falling.

She wakes, face wet with tears and her own sweat, and the words incerta et occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi fall into her mind, heavy in the darkness with flashes of destruction still lingering on her inner-eye.

As she walks to Lessons, she wonders, for the first time, how this all came to be: the School, the Instructors, the Students, the ships and the Trainees. She hasn't been in the Observation Hall in a while, but she remembers how outside looked: dead. This must be Earth. They are on Earth, the planet of her dreams. She's never had a name for where she lives; she logically knows she is on a planet, but she has never had a name, not until her dreams. So what came after the destruction, she wonders. How did they all come to be here? Who organized this system of existence?

As she sits at her kiosk, she concludes that the databases must have the answers. The databases knew about bears and paintings, all the things that existed before the destruction. Perhaps she and Yallie can do more research. During Lessons she is called away again, and she is not even surprised this time to find herself in the same room with the same three Instructors.

The woman pulls up her drawings, all the ones she did last time, plus the one of the handprints, which is now on the screen. Ajita wonders where the original went, and fear winds through her body like slime, because it might be the last painting on Earth.

"Student," the woman says, "we have studied your...paintings. We would like to know more about them."

Ajita doesn't react and they bring up the one of the seven stars.

"We are aware that you have briefly studied star charts in your Lessons before, and have never seen the night sky due to the climate. We are curious to know why you picked these stars. We are aware you have attempted to draw them before, even before you knew what a constellation was."

Yallie must have told them everything, Ajita realizes, told them about every single drawing and all of their research.

"Is it a part of your history?" the woman asks delicately.

Ajita stares at her, long and hard, "History is not a part of Lessons."

"And yet you explained you knew what history was in our previous meetings. Your handprints represented history."

"Personal history."

"And how did the stars come to be a component of your personal history? How can you know something that has never been taught? Something that you had never seen?"

"I have seen the stars in Lessons before."

"You had seen them in star charts, yes, but not as constellations. No other Student makes shapes out of stars. You made a pattern of a bear: a creature that does not exist here, a creature you have never learned about. This constellation bear had previously been created by ancient navigators."

"Perhaps genius can be replicated," Ajita says with false politeness, "a great idea can occur twice."

"If you had made a star pattern of a bed or a scanner it would been odd, but still logical. You made a pattern out of a creature you had no idea existed. How did you come to know of bears, a creature of ancient past?"

"The same way you came to know of bears, I suspect."

They trade quick glances among the three of them.

"Bears have come to our knowledge only recently," the woman answers.

Ajita breathes out slowly, through her nose, and tries to stay calm. Yallie told them everything, everythingeverythingeverything.

"We are asking how you learned about bears," the woman's look is pointed, "without access, authorized or unauthorized, to the databases previous to your first painting."

Ajita's shoulders twitch and she feels hounded. The three Instructors lean forward, like the three hunters crashing through the grass, weapons held aloft.

"I have always known about bears," is all she can say.

She knows she has been backed against the trees, and she won't give away her dreams, she won't, but she is still trapped and with that arrow pointed dead at her heart.

The Instructors decide to give her a different kind of Assessment. The woman had been full of victory, a cold steely kind of victory while the two male Instructors had looked on in shock. She had never seen so much expression on their faces before, or on the face of any other Instructor. She is led down grey halls; everything familiar passes in a blur, and she lets herself get lost in the bright lights on the ceiling.

They sit her down in a chair, and something is placed behind her ears. Screens show up, displaying the scan of her brain, and she wonders if it's possible for them to read her mind. Then she closes her eyes, and her dreams flash by, all sorts of people and sounds and colors and forms, all the things inside her, all the knowledge she has consumed, all that her dreams have shown her. Then it all winks out, as if being smothered by smoky clouds, and she wakes up in a bunk and wonders where she is.

The second thing she thinks is that her life is very slick and clean. She attends School in a large building where she also sleeps and eats. She thinks nothing of it, because everything feels routine, she must have done it a thousand times. She must have been doing it for forever. She ponders her complexion: skin a dark brown, hair darker than that. There are others like her, and others that are pale with bright hair. Somehow she feels like that is familiar too, but isn't everything?

After departing from her bunk with her peers, she stands in a long line of grey uniforms. When it is her turn at the dispenser her tag flashes once and out drops several tubes and tiny packets. She consumes them and thinks nothing of the various colors.

Then they break up into pods and go to their Lessons. Her pod works on the kiosk most days, where they sit down in front of a large screen that feeds material to them. There is always an Introduction first, and then they are tested on the concepts from the Introduction in the Exam portion of the Lesson.

The other Students work quickly, and she struggles to formulate answers as the Instructor paces up and down the aisle, waiting for her to finish. She is having a hard time giving an answer, trying to explain the concept behind the equation xk+1 = fr(xk).

The answer boxes remain empty and her fingers hover uselessly and she sits back.

"Are you not going to answer today?"

She jumps and looks to her side. Another Student, with short dark hair and a spot on her dainty chin, peers at her expectantly. She fingers the end of her plait because this does not feel routine, and this Student does not look familiar even though she must have sat beside her thousands of times.

"I do not know the answers," she says.

"Do you feel like that is a bad thing?" the Student persists, "Do you think that knowing the answers is a priority?"

"I have never known the answers," she says, uneasy; she can't remember ever talking to Students before.

"Do you think that knowing the answers implies correctness?"

"Answering the questions correct means they are correct; answering them wrongly means that you are incorrect; not answering them at all means that you do not know the correct or incorrect answer or understand the question."

The Student nods, "And what would be the point in answering them correctly?"

"Correctness implies one is learning."

"What is the point of learning?"

She opens her mouth, automatically, but says nothing.

"You don't know either?" the Student asks.

She shakes her head.

"Then we really should ask, or not be doing it," the Student concludes, "why would you do something you could not discern the purpose of?"

"Student, finish your Lesson. Answer the questions," says an Instructor from behind them.

Ajita quickly turns away from the other Student, relieved. She misses the look the Instructor gives the other Student, features full of nervousness, perhaps fear.

Tasks are completed after Lessons. Ajita sees others working with bits of wire or tapping numbers into screens, checking lists of long things called 'calculations'. Ajita's experiences with these things are limited. She had failed many of the Placement Assessments and had once stood in front of several Instructors, all of them looking at each other and not saying a word. After that she was then put into the Physical Training Center, with the Task to clean the equipment.

Little bots buff the floor of the main equipment and training room, and she goes to the room where the scanners rest. It is her job to shine and disinfect the tiny scanners, round things with red eyes that blink as they look at people's bodies and deliver streams of information to Instructors. Ajita and her classmates had, during the initial phases of the program, trained quite often. The little scanners had run their eyes over them as they ran and jumped.

The visit the Center less and less nowadays.

She touches the scanners gently, not wanting to awaken the eyes. There are twelve scanners in all, and they can float and change direction without noise. They always sit quietly in their stations whenever Ajita comes to clean them, but she is afraid that one day she will find them swarming through the air, red eyes staring at her, watching every move.

The room is quiet as usual, the door immediately blinking out of existence when she steps up to it, and then reappearing after she goes inside. The scanners are asleep and she takes her small tray filled with supplies to begin cleaning the delicate machines. They gleam as usual. The scanners never seem to actually get dirty.

She cleans them anyway. She takes out a patch and sprays it with the sanitizing liquid and applies one to each of the scanners. Once done, she walks out and reports her Task as complete before heading to the bunk room.

Her peers sleep silently around her. Most Students sleep on their stomachs, laying with heads turned to the door, unmoving in their grey stretchy sleepwear. After the lights go out, Ajita turns and goes to sleep on her back so that she faces the ceiling, and beyond that the stormy clouds, and beyond them...the twinkling stars. She does not remember seeing them before, but she knows they are there. She has a top bunk and has always had one, since the Students never change bunks. She's slept in the same room and same bed for years.

The bunk room is huge, a long rectangular structure that contains every Student in Ajita's class. The atmosphere is never unpleasant; it is as unchanging and consistent as the rest of the climate in School. She has only her sleepwear, as their beds are bare and very flat.

It is always quiet at bedtime; her classmates settle down and fall asleep, their breathing the only disturbance. When she finally closed her eyes, images greet her. At first she is scared, because how was she transported from her bunk to the inside of a hut? The features are utterly unfamiliar, and so different from the cleanliness and smoothness of School. She shivers and out of the darkness, pairs of eyes blink at her. They're almond shaped like hers. The people lead her outside and soft, sliding granules shift beneath her feet. Sand, the word floats through her head. Then she looks up and gasps because she can see them, the stars.

The night is so cold and her bare feet feel numb, but everyone else is barefoot as well. More barefooted people come out of huts and she surveys the village, nearly swallowed up by dark brown sand and isolation. Eventually, the entire village stands by her side.

"Ajita," a woman whispers.

The word is not familiar, but it falls easily from her lips as she parrots back the word.

"This is the story of Rasjaurom, the mighty bear of the night."

She and the woman look upwards at the stars, and other villagers gather around them to point out the renowned hunter. Seven stars seem to lift off from the night sky, shining brighter than the others.

"In his younger years he bounded across the dark depths of the sky and gobbled up all other creatures in his wake. Rasjaurom eventually became so fattened on the carcasses of his prey that he decided to find a safe place to rest. He found a small blue and brown planet and now stalks across the sky, a lumbering creature that chases off other hunters like the giant scorpion...but because he is so full, he no longer feeds."

She feels the brown sand beneath her feet, can see shallow blue in a pond not so far away, reflecting stars.

"When will he hunt again?" One villager whispers, his voice hoarse and full of awe.

The villagers laugh and argue and squeal over different answers, but she wonders what is inside of the bear and thinks of ways to release the thousands of ancient creatures that must be in the hunter's belly.

She awakens, shaking and cold, with nothing but her sleepwear to ward off her chill. The Students around her continue slumbering, and she wonders if they ever have these illusions, these strange images that invade her mind at night. Is it something her mind generates on its own? She wonders how and why; she has never heard of Rasjaurom before, or seen the villages...or has she? She frowns, because the stars seemed so familiar. How did she come to know of stars in the first place? Was it during Lessons? She carefully stops thinking of anything in particular, because surely Students are not supposed to ask so many questions.

She goes through Roll Call, tag flashing as she eats and then sits down for Lessons. For some reason, she glances to her side. The chair next to her is empty. This is certainly not routine. She watches the answer boxes blink away and plans on not saying anything until an Instructor stands behind her. His face is impassive, a blank stretch of white, and she struggles to stop her eyes from watering as the bright ceiling lights flare behind his head.

"Student, you are not answering the questions."

"I do not know the answers," she admits, and then adds, "I also do not understand the questions."

He nods and moves off, and she wonders why not knowing the answers is satisfactory.

More empty answer boxes blink by, until chink the door opens.

"Student 1618033," the Instructor drones.

She looks up. That Numerical Designation is familiar. The Instructor gestures for her to stand and she walks over to him. He steps aside and reveals the visitor. Her uniform is blue, so she is neither an Instructor nor a Student. She's frail in form, with white skin and yellow springy curls that frame her face. The rest of her hair is pulled back into a bun.

"Follow me," is all she says.

She leads her through grey corridors, and these are familiar because she was here yesterday, and she's sure she must have been here thousands of times before that. They enter the room with the scanners and her cleaning supplies are already there and she finds this odd, not very routine...is she supposed to start her Task early, and with supervision? Perhaps her last cleaning effort was not satisfactory.

The other woman takes the cleaning fluid, and with quick motion, twists off the cap and flings it aside. She jumps at the sharp movement; usually Instructors are not so violent. Then again, she doesn't seem to be an Instructor.

She chances a quiet question, "You are wearing a blue uniform. What are you, if not an Instructor?"

The blonde pauses, stares at her hard, close and faraway all at once.

"A Trainee," she answers and then dumps the cleaning liquid onto the grey floor.

She jumps away from the spill, eyes wide, watching as the cold fluid spreads and spreads and spreads. Messes aren't common at School. Ajita tries to remember the last time she had seen one, and comes up with a foggy memory of her wetting the bed.

"Student 1618033," the blonde starts to say.

"What is a Numerical Designation?" She quickly asks, because she doesn't see anything blank in the stranger's eyes.

The Trainee cocks her head to the side, "It is an identifier. It is something you are called. Each Designation is unique."

She nods because that makes sense, and she relaxes a little, but the Trainee is not done.

"Do you wish to be that Designation?"

The thought had never really occurred to her. Or had it? She frowns as dredges of last night's illusion filters through her mind. A dream, the words pops into her head instantly. Was that what it was?

"Is Ajita a Designation?" she asks.

The blonde stands very still, and her face is still not blank, not like the Instructor, but Ajita still thinks she can see the walls in her expression.

"It is a name," she answers eventually, "it is similar to a Numerical Designation."

She nods, and can't think of anything else to say. The blonde bites her lip, and Ajita doesn't think she has seen such open expressions on anyone's face before.

"You can call yourself Ajita if you wish."

"All right," she says, "do you have a Designation also?"

"Everyone has one," she answers, "mine is 1821108."

"Who gives you a Designation?"

"We are assigned them by a kiosk."

"Are we assigned names?"

"No," and here the blonde's lips curve, "but we can give them to each other."

"Has someone given you a name?" Ajita asks, and her eyes follow the sweep of 1821108's mouth.

That curve is something else familiar; not exactly routine, but familiar, something that makes her chest feel warm.

The blonde nods, "Yes, my name is Yallie."

"Who gave you your name?"

The blonde blinks rapidly, and the curve of her mouth morphs into a thin line, "A friend."

Ajita pauses to place the meaning of the word, and then continues, "Did a friend give me my name too?"

This draws Yallie up short and she looks lost, "I do not know."

Ajita nods, and wonders if the brown woman in her dream is her friend, or maybe her friend who named her told the brown woman her name? It's a confusing thought pattern so Ajita brushes it off and looks back at the floor.

She points to the spill, "What was the point of creating a mess?"

"Art is messy," Yallie states proudly, hands on hips.

"Art?"

"Yes."

"What is the purpose of art?"

"It doesn't have to have one," Yallie answers.

Ajita blinks rapidly. She is sure that everything in School must have a purpose.

The Trainee monitors her expression carefully, "Do you see a shape in the liquid?"

Ajita looks down at the spill, "Not any shape I know the name of."

She knows shapes like squares and rectangles and circles, but the spill is just a large blob that looks like nothing in particular. Yallie sighs but nods as if she's satisfied.

"Is this some sort of Assessment?" Ajita asks, although this is a bizarre Assessment she has never heard of before.

"Yes," she answers, blankly.

Ajita thinks that tone of voice doesn't fit her very well.

"Did I fail or pass?"

"Pass."

They stare at each other and Ajita can't even feel elation over having passed, because though she got the answer correct, she can't even guess as to what was the question. Where is the victory in answering correctly, when not understanding what is being asked? Ajita tries to find some sort of illumination in Yallie's expression, and the reflections of lights create patterns in her blue eyes. Her iris is bright, like lightning, contained by a dark blue limbal ring.

The patterns of light remind Ajita of stars.

"What shape do you see in the puddle?" Ajita suddenly blurts out, when the silence has gone on for too long.

Yallie's eyes immediately sharpen, and her face loses it blankness, replaced with surprise.

"A bear," she answers resolutely.

"A bear," Ajita whispers, and it's like a gust of wind is blowing through her, clean and cold, wiping away some of the haze from her mind.

"Like Rasjaurom," the name isn't so familiar, but like Ajita, it falls from her lips naturally, "the Great Bear in the sky."

A strangled sort of sound issues from Yallie's throat, and she places her hands against her mouth, like she's trying to contain the sound, contain the emotion. Ajita's breathing quickens and she stares at the puddle. She still can't see a bear, but Yallie does. Yallie knows. She knows about Rasjaurom and the villages and Ajita and names. She brings her head up quickly and Yallie is looking left and right, left and right, as if for some sort of answer or escape.

"Do you...do you remember bears?" Yallie whispers, choked.

"No," Ajita exclaims painfully, "Yes."

They take a step towards each other at the same time and patpatpat they're standing in the spill.

"I...I see them in my dreams. Star bears. People."

There's a rush of breath from Yallie, and her eyes are lit up in a special way, calculating and disbelieving and in shock, but full of illumination.

"That's it," the blonde breathes, carefully and slowly.

She looks like she might faint.

"It shouldn't be possible. It's impossible," she says.

Ajita has no idea what she is talking about, but she reaches forward, as if to grab her arm, her hand. Yallie lets her take it.

"We have to be careful," Yallie mutters.

She steps back suddenly and then continues in a monotone voice, "Student, you have passed the Assessment. You are a free to go to your bunk."

She gestures her out and Ajita's head is spinning, but she meets Yallie's eyes and sees the light in them, the reflections of stars, and turns to the door. As it opens with a chink, she chances a look back and sees Yallie pressing something on each of the scanners, making their eyes flicker. A cold shiver goes down Ajita's spine; she always feels uneasy going to clean the scanners, always hoping they will be sleeping and not flying around, going wild, watching her with their wide-awake eyes. Now she wonders if perhaps they had never been sleeping after all.

Ajita waits in the hallway because it feels like something she is supposed to do, and doesn't go to her bunk at all. Her instinct is correct when Yallie comes striding out of the room minutes later, agitated and short on breath. With a sharp flick of her hand, she indicates that Ajita should follow her. They don't go down the familiar dull grey corridors. Instead Yallie veers off into a side hallway, something small and full of automatized machines. Ajita's tag doesn't flash.

"You must sneak around a lot," Ajita observes.

Yallie glances over her shoulder, an abrupt laugh on her lips, "All because of you."

Ajita startles at the sound of the laugh, but says nothing as they leave the grey corridor. Yallie looks down every turn; they are in blue hallways and Ajita likes the color. She is pulled into a room with a science kiosk and Yallie's hands fly over the controls.

"We have to hurry or they'll notice you are missing," she murmurs to herself.

Ajita freezes, "Are we hiding from the Instructors?"

"And the Trainees," Yallie laughs again, a little wild, a little crazy.

"What are we doing?" Ajita asks.

She has never been in serious trouble before, and doesn't want to find out what punishment is like.

"Assessing you," she answers, lips curving toothily.

"I thought we just did that," Ajita says weakly, confused, "And I thought I passed."

"I thought you did too," Yallie says cheerfully, "and then, at the last minute, you failed."

Ajita's mouth drops open in shock, and she's not sure if she should feel insulted or not. Before she can decide, Yallie continues speaking.

"That's all right. Failure shows you where you have room for improvement."

"And what exactly am I supposed to improve?"

"Your memory."

Ajita has no idea how to answer that. As far as she knows, she hasn't forgotten anything. Perhaps her memorization skills are not up to par? She has always had trouble with the matching game, where she had to clear the screen by matching pairs of images. She also has trouble memorizing equations.

"Here," Yallie says breathlessly.

Grrrrrr...chills streak down Ajita's spine as a strange, grumbled sound emits from the station.

"That is the sound of a bear," she says.

Ajita swallows and nods, the low gravelly noise replaying in her ears again and again.

"Where can one find bears, if not here?"

Yallie gives her an odd look, "Nowhere."

"But...they must exist somewhere, if we have their sound."

"They lived a long time ago."

"They do not exist now?"

"No."

Ajita gulps and looks down at her fingers. The blonde sighs and sets down the pointer, sitting back in her seat as they linger in silence. Ajita looks askance at the other woman, her blonde curls dangling around her nose, and something about them makes her want to tighten the curls around her finger.

"Was that another Assessment?" she asks.

Yallie nods, and then quickly brings up images of bears. Ajita could never imagine a bear being so...furry.

"Nothing?" Yallie asks.

Ajita shakes her head. She isn't sure what Yallie is asking her for. Clickclickclick, Yallie is busy with the pointer again. Diagrams, curious black and white things, begin to pop up as the kiosk empties out its knowledge, going into the depths of its memory banks; a male's voice, deep and croaky, begins to narrate, and various recordings run over each other as each equation starts to play some sort of explanation.

Then the room bursts with color.

Beautiful prickly spiral shapes spin out of each equation, expanding so that the texts, the diagrams, the numbers, fade into nothingness. The clickclickclick stops, the narrator's voice gradually peters off, and they're left in a room with luminous shapes, shapes that start large, and then curl in on themselves, creating delicate, impossibly infinite edges. They come in vibrant shades of so many colors, from green to purple to red. They don't have the texture the drawings did, but she wants to call them art anyway. She's never seen anything like them.

The different types of fractals morph then, turning into leaves, clouds, snowflakes, ocean waves, bolts of lightning, blood vessels, and DNA. Things Ajita has only briefly studied or dreamed of. They fade, going black, and she and Yallie are left in the dark...until sparkling galaxies grow out of the gloom, exploding in size and shape and flowing over Ajita's body. She holds out her hands and watches as the galaxies ripple over her. The images slow down and Ajita and Yallie look over at each other in the same moment.

They're covered in stars.

Ajita's lips curve upwards, and she wonders how long she must have been doing it, and if she can remember doing it before. Yallie's expression mirrors her own.

Gradually the fractals fade, the lights come back on, and Yallie looks at her hopefully, expectantly, and Ajita wonders if this goes beyond just an Assessment. If it's something personal, because no one has ever looked at her the way Yallie is looking her now.

"I think I'm failing this Assessment," Ajita whispers.

Yallie looks broken all over, and she squeezes her eyes shut, hand over her face in frustration. Then she lets out a big breath and begins working on the kiosk again. Images begin to fill the air, and Ajita has to think to place them. She remembers vaguely, from a Lesson long ago....

"Star charts?" she sounds unsure to her own ears.

Yallie whips towards her and Ajita cringes backwards, "I remember them from a Lesson."

The blonde purses her lips and begins to bring up more. Some of the star charts are dark blue, with various sized dots and rigid white lines; others are done on a white surface, with bulky black dots and lines. A few are colorful and contain figures of people and animals. None of them are multi-dimensional like their star charts; they are simply flat. Unchangeable. Most of the symbols and writing are unfamiliar to her, but she can still recognize the stars.

"What are the lines connecting the stars?" she asks.

"Try to remember."

Ajita wonders how much she must have forgotten. She doesn't remember forgetting anything, but would a person remember if they've forgotten something? If they've forgotten something, was it like it never happened, so they knew nothing was missing? Or would there be a blank space in their memory? Ajita thinks back and senses no holes in her memory, no large spaces of empty time, but her mind seems to be hazy anyway.

Yallie brings up several star charts that look the same.

"Can you see the bear?"

Yallie sounds a little desperate to her ears. Ajita is agitated, nervous about Yallie's expectations and the fact that she's failing them, but all she can see are...seven stars.

"That's Rasjaurom!" she shouts.

Yallie doesn't even shush her. She looks like she might shout too.

The night from the village flashes through her mind, the woman telling her the star story, and pointing out the star pattern. Yallie goes through the images, positioning them so she can see Rasjaurom, the star bear. He looks mighty and beautiful in all of them, even on charts that don't outline his figure or draw lines connecting the stars. She tries to memorize the seven stars, and wishes she could see them with her own two eyes. Yallie flips to another image...and Ajita grabs her hand.

She stares at the eerily familiar star chart. Rasjaurom looks over his shoulder at three stars behind him, which are depicted as three men who carry various items: a bow and arrow, a pot, and a pile of firewood.

She backs up in her seat and looks away from the image. The space behind her ears aches, and she scratches it, wondering why she has a sudden headache. Fear imprisons her stomach, causing it to clench.

"Would you like to see Rasjaurom on our kind of star chart?" Yallie asks.

Ajita stills the shaking in her hands and nods. Yallie cocks her head to the side and Ajita does her best to shrug off her queasiness. Yallie clears the images and text and clicks through settings on the kiosk. Soon the entire room is filled with a dark blue hue and the rest of the lights dim. Ajita relaxes as it grows dark. With another click, stars fill the room, growing brighter as they hover in the gloom. Their numbers float beside their forms. Once they are surrounded by stars, Ajita stands up.

"So the lines connecting the stars form patterns...constellations," she says.

Yallie beams and Ajita feels her lips curve. It feels good when she gets questions right.

"That's what you were trying to see in the puddle. A pattern. A shape. But why of Rasjaurom?"

"Because you saw Rasjaurom everywhere," Yallie says.

As if to prove her point, with a bright spark, lines start forming between the stars, spreading from one to the other. Ajita spins, trying to see all of the stars that fly over her body. She spreads her arms out, opens her eyes wide, and thinks of drifting among the stars. The phrase feels right, rings true in her mind.

A laugh disturbs her from her fantasy, and she turns around to find Yallie by her side. Stars dot Yallie's body and gleam in her eyes.

Ajita reaches up with a finger and touches one of the stars that rest on Yallie's cheek. Yallie doesn't look so good.

"Are you all right?" Ajita asks.

"Fine," Yallie says, and Ajita doesn't believe her.

But Yallie takes her finger, the one on her cheek, and clasps it. Then with a tug, Yallie spins them through the stars.

"You are so strange," Ajita exclaims.

"So are you," Yallie replies.

They continue to rotate through the spinning constellations, and the stars spin across Yallie's cheeks, fall from her eyes.

"I'll be living among the stars soon," Yallie says, voice thick.

Ajita blinks curiously, but says nothing.

"I passed my Assessment. I made the cut," she elaborates.

Their spinning slows and Yallie leans in close as if divulging a secret, "But it means nothing if you don't remember."

"What should I be remembering?"

Ajita's a little scared, doesn't know what this stranger wants from her, and doesn't know why she's giving her Assessments if she is not an Instructor.

"That you want to be there with me. That you got me there in the first place!"

"Look where we are," Ajita replies, and this time she's the one guiding the spin.

Yallie's eyes are bright with something other than stars, more liquid and shiny and Ajita wishes she could memorize them, immortalize them, and her fingers itch for something, yearn to do something, but she doesn't know what.

"We're a part of the stars," Yallie laughs sadly, "we're all made of the same stuff: starstuff, and that's what we'll eventually become again."

Ajita holds her breath, she's not sure she understands what Yallie is trying to explain, but her proximity is making her head ring and her blood burn. They stop spinning and the stars are painted over them, the lines continually connecting stars, and the constellations are almost all the formed. A line shoots between them, and seven stars brightly glow, the Great Bear coming into being around them. Yallie leans forward...

...and then pulls back abruptly.

Agitation chases away the brightness in Yallie's eyes, and she rubs the back of her neck with her hand. She stares hard at the floor.

"I'm going to be leaving soon. For good. Forever. So you have to...you have to remember before then. Before tomorrow night."

"Okay," she says, and nothing else seems appropriate.

Yallie curves her lips, but the gesture is strained, "I don't know if we can meet again like this. If I can arrange it. I won't have any more excuses."

"So kidnap me," Ajita says.

Yallie brings her head up fast.

"Where did you learn a word like that?" Yallie's asks, boggled.

Ajita laughs and shrugs, because this feels familiar, words and phrase popping into her head.

"They're going to start getting suspicious," Yallie says, "I have to get you back to your bunk."

And it all feels so illegal, Yallie leading her through unused corridors, gripping her hand so tightly the bones feel like they might turn to dust. When they're at the end of their journey, Yallie grabs her shoulders and looks her in the eye. Her expression is tinted with doubt, but when Ajita offers her a raised eyebrow, the doubt melts away and she breathes out deeply, as if steeling herself for something.

"I don't know what to say to make you remember," She says, "so just...remember this."

She places her mouth against Ajita's.

Ajita gasps and can feel Yallie's warm breath brush against her face. Heat rushes through her body, and she surges forward, prolonging their contact, enjoying the softness of Yallie's mouth, never knowing that her insides could burn the way they do, that her body could feel such a way. Yallie raises her trembling hands, and cups Ajita's face, brushing against the soft hairs on her nape and cheeks.

With a sigh, their lips part.

Yallie is searching her eyes, desperately seeking something.

"What was that?" Ajita asks.

It's another familiar thing, more wonderful and familiar than anything else so far, and it almost seems routine. But not boring, not forced.

Their lips are wet, and their cheeks are flushed, and Ajita can't believe she hasn't learnt about this before.

"A kiss," Yallie says.

"A kiss," Ajita slowly repeats.

"I researched it," Yallie says, and her eyes are sad, "on this planet, in many culture of ancient time, it was a form of affection, greeting, respect...or a show of love."

"And kisses always happen on the mouth?"

"Not always."

"Then why do we kiss on the mouth?"

Yallie pauses and then, "It is where we draw breath."

"Besides through our noses."

Yallie chuckles, "Sometimes we think so alike. I never noticed. I knew we were kindred in a way, but...."

She draws back, as if remembering herself.

"We consume sustenance through our mouths," she continues her explanation, "so when you kiss a person, you are saying they are your sustenance."

"There's a word for that," Ajita says, and something is tickling in the back of her brain.

"A metaphor?"

"How did you know?" Ajita asks, because while it's something familiar, she can't remember hearing it before.

And maybe that's what Yallie means, when she talks about remembering; she is referring to why everything is familiar but Ajita can't recall the exact memory or reason it seems familiar. She knows she's done things thousands of times before, but can't specifically recall a single instance. It's like she just...woke up with a life in her head. Knowledge preprogrammed to be there.

Yallie presses their hands together, palm to palm, skin to skin. Their hands are pressed so tightly together, Ajita imagines that she can feel the ridges of thumbprints. When they finally part, Ajita's hands smart, as if Yallie's handprints had been pressed into hers.

She lays down in bed, spreading herself out over the surface, and stares at the ceiling, imagining Rasjaurom beyond the building, beyond the clouds. She can picture the stars in her head, and when she thinks of them, way out there, with Yallie among them...she feels lonely.

She stands in the sand, the wind whispering through her hair. The night sky stretches above her, Rasjaurom bright and clear among the stars. The woman is by her side again, but this time she is alone. The village is quiet, and the huts are dark and empty...it is as if they are the only people on the planet.

"Ajita," she whispers.

"What is Ajita?" she asks.

The woman raises a hand and points to the sky, at the seven stars of Rasjaurom.

"The stars are like sages. They speak only the truth. They are wisdom from the old world, born again."

Without even closing her eyes, something flashes in her vision...the village melts away and she stands in a temple. A figure of hardened clay, in a monastery high in the mountains, looks down at her. The wind whistles in the distance as the man of clay surveys his temple with benevolence. The statue has a scarf tied around his waist, and dons a headdress.

She feels, more than hears, an additional person joining her in the room. Turning her head slightly, she stares at the village woman. The village woman nods at the statue.

"Maitreya."

Their eyes meet and the woman stares at her, unblinking. She brushes a hand across Ajita's forehead.

"The future," she says.

The room dims, clay fading away, and a chapel made of intricate detail and color rises around her. Above her, high on the ceiling, two figures brush fingertips, an intimate caress that contains the universe and signifies creation.

"This is Ajita?" she asks.

Voices whisper from the crevices in the walls _i_ ncerta et occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi.

"Sapientiae," says someone behind her.

Ajita turns and finds the village woman staring at her. Gently, with a fingertip, she brushes Ajita's cheek. The touch is warm. Her fingers flit behind Ajita's ear.

"Wisdom," she continues, lips curving.

Ajita gasps at the expression and reaches up, as if to touch the delicate curve, but the woman points at the two male figures on the ceiling.

"Creation," she says.

Bringing her hand down, she rests it against Ajita's heart, and she is thrown into darkness. Then something flares and crackles and she feels warmth on the back of her legs, and the walls are illuminated with a crimson glow.

It's not the chapel, but a dark jagged wall. Hundreds of figures adorn the wall, individuals made of ochre and dirt and paste and lines. She raises her hand, reaching for the eleven stenciled hands on the ceiling and places her hand next to the others. When she lifts her hand away, an outline of her fingers is left behind, joined with the other hands for thousands of years to come.

"History," the woman says.

Ajita startles, and next to her the woman places her hand on a print, matching it up perfectly.

" _Our_ history. Our identity."

Again, the woman presses her hand to Ajita's chest. When she pulls away, a handprint is left behind over Ajita's heart. When she blinks, she's suddenly outside.

The night is young and the moon is yellow and bright, and a harmony of insects surrounds her. She runs through the grass and darts around trees, and behind her...three hunters follow. She runs until she's caught by a ring of trees. When she turns around, Yallie stands there, frail and tall in her blue uniform, hair and eyes illuminated by the moonlight. Ajita would dare to call her beautiful.

"This is what I have been training for," Yallie says.

She raises a bow and arrow, gaze steady and determined, eyes bright with the moonlight. She releases the arrow. It flies true, and beside her, the three hunters fall. Their faces are revealed to be the blank faces of Instructors.

She gapes and tears her gaze away from the Instructors, glancing at Yallie for an explanation. But Yallie stands there no longer. Instead, the village woman stands in her place, barefoot in the grass.

"Paradigm shift," she explains.

She reaches forward, grasps Ajita's trembling hands, and they're whisked away from the forest. They stand on a launch pad, bitter wind whipping their legs. Rockets, white and black, shoot off for the distant stars and disappear into the depths of unexplored space. _A giant leap for mankind_ , whispers the static voice. She glances at the village woman, but her face is impassive, almost blank.

"Progress," she says quietly.

She squeezes her hands and they leave the launch pad behind.

They materialize far above the Earth, standing in a white and sterile environment. They watch out of a window as razor sharp machines with weapons rule the atmosphere, destroying the ground, water and people. Her feet shake as whatever they are standing in moves; she grips the wall, and looks over the village woman questioningly.

"We're not...we're not in one of those machines, are we?"

The woman simply nods and Ajita wonders when _one step_ turned into this. With a jolt, their machine loads a projectile...aiming precisely for the planet below. When it strikes the Earth, she feels like Rasjaurom, struck by an arrow, falling and falling and falling.

The world is ashes. The green and brown are gone, replaced by charcoal. The white is gone, replaced by grey smog. The blue is gone, replaced by nothing. She remembers Yallie telling her about why it was so cloudy out, about how it was caused by warfare. Is this what she meant?

"No," she croaks.

The village woman tilts her head compassionately. Her dark eyes search out her own, and Ajita grips her hand tight.

"What happened to all the people?" she asks desperately.

Suddenly, they're standing in barren hills made of dark clay. The air is noxious, the very ground is poisoned, and all trace of color has vanished. Most of the creatures and animals have vanished as well, but there a few people...climbing out of the ground, coming out of hiding, evicting themselves from ruined buildings. They growl and snarl at each other and Ajita is sure isn't supposed to be like this at all.

"Why did we do this?" she asks the woman next to her.

The woman delicately brushes some hair from Ajita's forehead. The gesture seems out of place in an environment such as this.

"Perhaps it is human nature," she eventually answers.

"Human...is that what I am?"

"What we are," the woman corrects patiently.

Ajita feels sick and tries to rip her hands from the woman's grip.

"How could we be something...that does this?"

Since the woman won't let her hands go, she nods to the dead planet around them.

"Ajita," she says gently, "we are so much more than this. You are so much more than this."

She shakes her head, she just can't see it.

"Art, humming, names, star bears, kissing...those things are human as well."

"They are?"

This time the woman's lips curve wide and bright, "Of course. You are a collection of everything we are. The bad and the good. Our history and identity. Our past and our future. You are Ajita."

Ajita inhales a deep breath, remembers what Yallie told her: we are starstuff, recycled matter, created from the dust of past stars, worlds and creatures.

"Then what happened? If we are art and humming and kissing, how come I am the only one who knows about it?"

The woman gestures above her.

Blue and silver rockets streak across the sky. They land on the black and grey planet, the planet Earth, and survey the dead world. The invaders with their alien faces examine the stragglers that survive with wild eyes and bared teeth...and build a School. Commanders with silver uniforms begin construction on the highest mountain, the closest to the sky. Trainees with blue suits begin to train, and Instructors in black structure curriculum and productive Tasks. The natives are dressed in grey and go to Lessons forever and forever, until they are done existing, never to walk the Earth again or see the stars.

"Knowledge," the woman murmurs.

Ajita shakes her head violently. She didn't want knowledge like this. With a distressed breath she is transported from the site of the new School back to the sands of the abandoned village. She shivers as she looks around...realizing that all of this doesn't exist now.

"This isn't right," she shouts at the woman beside her.

The village woman doesn't react to her anger. Instead, she puts her hands on her shoulders and draws her close.

"What should I do?" Ajita asks, letting her forehead drop to the other woman's shoulder.

"Oh Ajita," she sighs, "you will always be a part of the Earth. The important thing is that you shared what it is to be human. You are no longer alone, no longer the only one with a name."

Ajita draws back in horror. Does the woman mean Ajita will never leave the Earth? Or just that she will always have her human memories? Her throat closes tight at the thought of never leaving, never escaping the dead planet. Her earlier jealousy of Yallie washes over her, tinged now with disbelief and anger.

"Do not let your love be corrupted Ajita, don't lose sight of it. You have seen what happens when we forget," the woman says.

Ajita grits her teeth, her frame shaking, and the woman hums, something like a lullaby. All it does it make Ajita sad, and she feels hollow when the woman melts away and the village around her fades.

She wakes, face wet with tears and her own sweat, and the words incerta et occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi ring through her mind, loud, so loud. Her feet hit the floor as she leaps out of bed; she startles awake a few Students, but she doesn't care, because she's running out the door, down the hallways which are lit even now so early in the morning. They seem grey and dull as always, unchanging. Her tag starts to flash.

Her feet follow a familiar pattern, so familiar it's etched into her brain, as the grey corridors become blue, and she follows some ingrained instinct, like her kiss with Yallie connected them somehow. The kiss that betrayed. She hits the corner of a corridor hard, and slips into the side hallway Yallie had shown her, jumping over machines and flying down staircases until she's in the room, the abandoned blue room, and her tag isn't flashing anymore.

Yallie stands, facing the silver and blue ships and turns around when she hears the door open with a clink. Her mouth drops open, shock and joy racing over her features.

"Ajita," she says.

She cringes when she hears her name upon those lips, because those are the same that took away her name, and gave her a Designation.

"I remember," she says.

Yallie comes forward, breathless with excitement, with hope.

"I was so afraid that—" Yallie stops herself and Ajita snarls in her direction.

"Afraid they'd wipe my memory for good?"

Yallie takes an abrupt step back; face frozen and turning red as if she had been slapped.

"I remember...everything," she reveals loudly, eyes narrowed on Yallie's expression, relishing in her flinches.

"No thanks to you, of course. You helped them, telling them all about my art!"

"I also helped you get it back," Yallie says stiffly, and her walls are coming up, and her body is slinking into a defensive position.

"Why?" Ajita demands, "Weren't you satisfied with your handiwork?"  
"No," Yallie says quietly.

"Then why the change of heart? Don't you believe in enslaving humans anymore? Whether I remember or not, I'll still be trapped here."

Yallie wets her lips, and then she steels herself again, "I think what we did was necessary."

"But? Why am I the exception to the rule?"

"You have...," Yallie falters, "something different."

Ajita rolls her eyes, "That was specific."

Yallie clenches her fist, "I didn't have to do anything to help you. I didn't have to help you do research, or paint."

"You did for the Instructors!"

"Most of what I did was out of my own curiosity, out of the...connection I felt we had."

"Connection!" Ajita can't believe her ears, "Yet in the end, you betrayed me anyway."

"I didn't have a choice; the Instructors already decided from the first Rasjaurom painting that they were going to wipe your memory. They wanted me to explore this human curiosity a bit more, see why and how you started to remember, so they could...."

Yallie looks away guiltily.

"So they could stop it from reoccurring or developing in other human Students."

Yallie nods, "Yes, but understand that it has never happened before. Not to any Student we've ever had, human or otherwise."

"You've enslaved other planets?" Ajita shrieks, and can't believe it.

The lines and dots are connecting in her mind, like the lines connecting the stars into constellations; she can see shapes form, and soon a distinct picture, like that of the entire night sky. It is like her mind has expanded, and she can see this now for what it really is.

"Why?" she chokes.

Yallie's eyes slide to the side uneasily, "My planet, which is part of a vast alliance, is engaged in warfare. We needed other claims, other bases."

"So you invaded Earth."

"We're not invaders! We're...colonists."

Ajita can't breathe, and feels closed in, feels trapped and hunted and hounded, "What was Earth like when you first 'colonized' it? Tell me."

Yallie brings her eyes up to meet hers, and her gaze is hard and vicious, "Your cities were flattened, your food and water poisoned; humans lived as scavengers or in tiny groups, isolated from the world at large."

"So that made it right for you to take over? Involve us in your own war?"

"You humans were killing yourselves. Your entire race was halfway to dead; we found a species putting itself to extinction. You could say—"

She stops, panting, cheeks red and glistening with sweat. She reaches out with a clammy hand and cups Ajita's cheek, "You could say we saved you."

Ajita takes a step backwards, reaching out with a hand for the wall. Yallie's grip slips from her cheek.

"Wait," Yallie calls, but she is already out the door and up the stairs.

She takes them two at a time and bursts into the hallway. She runs without thinking, down tiny little nooks and crannies, each corridor folding in on itself, until she feels like she's run the world over, but it looks like she hasn't moved. Round and round, everything looks the same, like she's trapped in a fractal. Repeating the same steps over and over and over. She limps down a staircase, winded and wary, and finds herself back at the door to the abandoned blue observatory.

With a clink she enters.

Yallie is still there, turned to face the rockets again. Her frame is shaking, her fingers held tightly behind her back.

"I remembered our handprints too," Ajita says.

She ignores Yallie's stifled sniffle. Ajita feels like it should be her who is crying, instead.

"That's one of the events that made my perception of...what we do...change," Yallie confides softly, voice raw, "that, and when we were standing in all of those stars and constellations. I realized that...we're the same, deep down. We're all made of the same stuff...starstuff. It didn't make sense any longer that you were...."

"Enslaved?" Ajita says dryly.

Yallie jerks.

"How does it work? Why do I see you as human? Why has my memory always been so unclear and muddled? "

"It's the tag, and the drug that we inject here," Yallie points to the back of her ears vaguely, "the drug changes your perception and induces complacency. It alters your mind, muddling your memory. The tag keeps track of your whereabouts."

Ajita fingers the tag on her body, almost afraid to touch it, as if it can sense her, as if she can feel its malevolent presence.

"I couldn't figure out why you had memories of human existence, so the Instructors went ahead and injected you with the drug. It wasn't until after...that you mentioned your dreams. I never thought your subconscious could be so powerful."

But Ajita doesn't think this is her subconscious. She is a collection of Earth's history. She's almost like a planet, a galaxy, a universe unto herself. She knows of things she has never seen herself, she is a collection of millions of people and creatures and languages and art.

"I don't think your mind can truly be erased," Yallie confides, "your dreams will always show you the truth. They'll always come back."

Like leaves rising in a pool of water. Surfacing slowly.

"And the databases, the knowledge of Earth...where did that come from?"

"We took what was left from your data banks, what survived the destruction. There were some humans," and she has difficulty admitting this, "that gathered and saved information, protecting the databases, that knowledge, with their lives."

"So we weren't all scavengers and heathens."

"But you were still on the brink of extinction. There was no hope," Yallie defends.

The _and yet_ lingers between them, unspoken.

"Do you think the knowledge of Earth's history was implanted in me?" Ajita asks.

Yallie can only shrug, "Where your dreams come from...we can only guess."

Ajita wonders if it has anything to do with the fact that they're all made of the same stuff...and that she is made from the Earth and the stars and if somehow the pieces left a living memory inside of her.

"And you've been training to become part of this war," Ajita says, "I helped you train to take over other civilizations."

"No!" Yallie says, "I was training to fly the ships, to explore. And yes, defend our species, but also to explore."

"To escape?" Ajita asks softly.

Yallie looks around helplessly, and they both realize and acknowledge the dimness, the dullness of the School. The cage it really is.

"Why not destroy us, though? Why are we in School?"

"You are in School to...be Students," she cringes.

And Ajita gets it, remembers the Assessments and the Tasks and the Lessons in order to do Tasks.

"You need us," Ajita whispers, "to do Tasks that help run the School and help run your war."

She thinks of the wires and calculations other Students slave over, thinks of her own pathetic Task to clean machines.

"We do it on all the planets we take over," Yallie says defensively, "and the planets we take over are all past rehabilitation. We take it over, keep your species going, and put the planet to use."

"It's not for you to decide!"

"Your species wasn't being responsible," she shrugs, but her voice is getting weaker.

"And what about yours?" Ajita sneers, "Do you think you're going to end up as anything better? You're in a constant war that stretches beyond your planet, encompassing other aliens and star systems. Our own self-destruction is nothing compared to yours."

"And yet my species has already lasted longer than yours," Yallie snaps, "we've outlived and outrun dozens of other species."

Ajita closes her eyes, and thinks of the brown people and the chapel and the monastery and the handprints. How all of it is ash, and yet it exists inside of her. Still living. Part of her and part of everything. Even part of Yallie, because they're all made of starstuff.

"Why did you do all that extra research? Single me out and paint with me and...kiss me?"

She opens her eyes, she wants, needs to see Yallie's expression.

"I saw...possibilities. Possibilities others don't see or understand. I felt like we were...kindred to one another."

And Ajita can remember thinking of the stars, of Yallie among them and feeling lonely, and she tries to imagine Yallie feeling similarly. She slides closer to Yallie, slowly, and can see the light from the observation window in her eyes, the gleam of silver and blue. Like the dance of stars across her eyes. Like their handprints linked together.

"I think we are," Ajita admits.

_And yet_. They remain separated by a small span of air, and Ajita can't force herself to close it, to bridge the distance.

"I passed my Assessment. I made the cut," Yallie says, nervously, gulping and looking away.

"I remember," Ajita says.

Yallie looks down at her hands, "I thought it would be a moment of celebration, but considering what you think it means, and that it will be a separation...it doesn't feel like victory."

Ajita breaks all over, like her heart is too small and squeezed to pump blood through her body, because even though she's enslaved, she'd rather be enslaved with Yallie than without her.

"At least one of us will escape," Ajita says through numb lips.

Yallie looks up at her, and dares to break the space between them, with one finger underneath Ajita's chin, and her eyes burn, alight with some inner fire, "I'll find a way to get you out."

Ajita accepts the promise silently, though she doesn't plan to hold her to it. In many ways, it was enough that she got to know Yallie, become her friend, and bequeath her a name.

"I have until tonight," Yallie says.

"That's not a lot of time."

"I'll figure something out."

"That's not what I meant," and Ajita is the one to initiate eye contact, "I meant...you'll be leaving so soon."

Yallie leans down and...they kiss. They pass air back and forth between them and it feels safe and forbidden and too much like goodbye.

Her mouth is dry and her tongue flicks against her lips and she can remember different tastes from Earth's past, spicy red and fluffy brown; she knows the bland taste of the food from the dispenser, stale packets and tangy tubes. But she has never tasted skin like she wants to now.

Ajita closes her eyes, colors bursting on the dark of her eyelids and it feels she has been flung out of the observation window, falling and falling and falling. Everything is static noise and loss of gravity, floating and falling

It is as if she and Yallie have shared souls and the ticking of their hearts. They came together on a different plane of existence, one of starstuff. She wraps her arms around Yallie, feels Yallie return the gesture, and never wants to let go.

Ajita didn't sleep, but her eyes don't droop. She can't doze. Not even as she stares at her screen, watching the answer boxes blink. She doesn't feel tired at all, she feels wide awake, her heart heavy in her chest, as if it is a block of ice, and has frozen her entire body, including her face, her eyes, her feelings.

"Student, you are not answering the questions," the Instructor says, and he sounds so far away.

"They don't matter," Ajita says.

She feels like she has all the answers anyway, as if everything is inside her, a part of her.

The Instructor doesn't hear her quiet reply, and Ajita flicks her eyes over to the Student next to her, back again. The Student absently scratches behind her ear, before continuing to key in answers. Ajita, with a single finger, taps her shoulder. Immediately, her eyes snap to Ajita, shoulder twitching at the contact. She leans away a bit, and Ajita leans closer in response.

"Student, I have a question for you," she says.

The Student's eyes nervously slide away and she grasps her kiosk tightly, "Instructors are the ones who ask questions; Students are supposed to answer."

Ajita feels her lips curve, "Since you are a Student then, answering my question shouldn't be a problem."

"You are not an Instructor," the Student says, her voice tight.

She turns back to her kiosk, quickly keying in an answer to a blinking question.

"Student, do you think that knowing answers is a priority?"

"Of course, they are necessary for completing the Lesson, for learning."

"What is the point of learning?"

The Student doesn't answer and Ajita continues, "You don't know? Then you really should ask, or not be doing it. Why would you do something if you cannot discern the purpose of doing it?"

The Student resists looking at her.

"Student, why are we in School? Why do we do Tasks? What is our purpose?"

"The Instructors tell us to do so."

"Why do we listen to what they say?"

"They are in a position of authority."

"Why did we give them authority? Why not give ourselves authority?"

"Because we are still learning, we are still Students."

"But we will never become Instructors, so we will never have any authority over ourselves."

The Student freezes, glances over at her with just her eyes, and then says out of the corner of her mouth, "You're the one who likes to paint."

"You remembered," and Ajita feels ridiculously, incredibly, free.

The Student quickly looks around, using minimal head movement, and Ajita feels slightly hunted again, like prey.

"We will never become Instructors?"

"Never," Ajita whispers, "we will be Students forever, always doing what the Instructors tell us, always doing the same Tasks."

"But," the Students starts, falters, and then starts again, "I do not like our Lessons, I do not like our Tasks, sometimes I do not like learning at all."

"Then maybe we should stop doing it."

And they sit there for the rest of the Lesson, watching the blinking answer boxes, ignoring the Instructor who tells them to answer the questions.

Like usual, Ajita goes to her Task, and stands in the room full of scanners. She strides in and surveys them all with their gleaming shells and little traitorous eyes, and this doesn't feel routine at all. Because Yallie is leaving tonight, barely a few hours, not long at all, and Ajita sees everything for what it is now. She watches time fade, and when she feels like she has waited long enough, she gets out her supplies, stolen tubes and packets. She rips them open, relishing the sound as they burst open, body alight with fire and a light buzz, because they're _watching her_ do this. And then it's all over the floor, and she's mixing it together, a grand spread, a big mess, of red paint.

Wiping her hands in it, she goes up to every scanner and presses her thumbprint against each eye. The paint drips down, obscures the little scanner eyes, marks them and changes them, and now they see through her thumbprints.

She leaves the room without a backward glance, and her tag is flashing, and she wonders if the Instructors just don't care, or if they've given in to the inevitable. She doesn't think about it for too long before she's in the side corridors and going down the stairs because she's not missing the ships leaving for anything in the world.

She enters the blue observatory with its large reflective window, and it feels cold and more abandoned than ever before. But it's not empty. She's not so surprised.

Yallie isn't in blue; she's in silver, a wonderful suit with pockets and wires and the smell of rockets. Yallie doesn't turn at the clink of the door and so Ajita joins her at her side, watching the rockets huff and puff below, filling the room with steam. The lights of the cavern look different now, yellow blotches against seas of black, and she thinks of a countdown.

"They don't launch from here," Yallie says, "but they're being readied for transportation to the launching pad."

Ajita nods and feels the roar of the ships in her feet, sees it in the shaking glass, and can't keep her heart from racing and her blood from singing. Her body is tight with anticipation. A soft touch at a her arm makes her turn and she faces Yallie, her face so serious, and Ajita can see the worlds and stars and galaxies she is going to explore, stretched out between them, shining in Yallie's eyes, locked in Ajita's heart.

Yallie suddenly grabs her cheeks, hands so cold, eyes so wide she can see the delicate veins, "There are _thousands_ of stars out there Ajita. Thousands of stars in thousands of galaxies. I wish I could show you them all."

You don't have to, Ajita thinks, they are inside of me.

"I will be lost among them," Yallie adds quietly, and the pressure of her hands increases even though her voice grows softer.

Ajita raises her hands and places them over Yallie's. Warm against cold. She can feel the roughness of the skin where Yallie's knuckles are, the tiny soft hairs on fingers, all the details she will never have again.

"I'll always remember the name you gave me. Maybe one day, I'll be able to change my Designation to Yallie."

Ajita imagines Yallie asking other Trainees to call her by her name, imagines Yallie bestowing names upon her peers...sharing what it means to be human.

"We will meet again," Yallie whispers fiercely, with a light in her eyes Ajita has never seen before, "maybe not in this form, but we will see each other again somewhere, somehow. It is not a matter of if, but when."

Ajita can imagine it now, how they will be thrown together sometime in the future, colliding and meeting like they collided and met here at School. Perhaps they would both be in a newborn star, together for billions of years, creating a bright shining light such that the Universe has never seen. They would spin across the dark landscape of space, seeing so many different stars, becoming part of so many constellations. Dozens of planets would orbit around them, and they would provide light and life for them for as long as their core burned. Then they would supernova, be flung far from each other, only to find each other years and years later, and do it all over again.

"I would like that," Ajita responds, lips curving.

Yallie's lips curve too, aching and sweet, and Ajita finally has a word for it. A smile.

Yallie leans down and Ajita pushes up to meet her, their lips connecting softly and slowly, smile to smile. Ajita feels a strange breath enter her and she breathes back, pushing her breath into Yallie's mouth as they kiss. She hopes Yallie will take this piece of her to the stars, like she's taking her name, art, star bears and kissing.

Ajita holds her breath long after they part, tasting Yallie's breath and swallowing it and consuming it, never wanting to breathe it out.

"When Students die," Yallie says softly, and her voice sounds low and full of promise like the roar of the ships, "we deactivate their tags."

She reaches forward with two hands and presses her tag, which lights up bright and sudden.

"Only Instructors are supposed to know how," she continues, "but I did some research."

Ajita smiles, wide and blazing. She can just picture Yallie going through the databases, those of the humans and those of the Instructors. And just as sudden, the light on her tag goes out, and it falls from her wrist with a clatter.

"You can walk through the halls unmonitored. You can walk out the door, and they wouldn't know."

"Which door?" Ajita asks.

Yallie shrugs, "Pick one."

Ajita frowns, tangles their fingers together, and doesn't understand. Yallie smiles, its one tinged with sympathy, sadness, guilt. Ajita smoothes it away with a finger.

"There are exits everywhere. In every single room. You just weren't able to see them before."

She had believed they didn't exist and she looks around, as if expecting a dozen doors to appear. But then they're hugging, and Yallie's curls brush against the bridge of her nose and she was never able to paint them, and now she'll never see them again. She wraps her finger in them, twisting them, and lets them go after a moment of trying to memorize how they feel, how they curl.

Ajita isn't able to watch the liftoff. She was only able to watch Yallie walk out the door in her new silver uniform, turn around and give her a salute, or an air kiss, Ajita can't really remember. Her eyes were all watery and blurry. So she leans against the window, face pressed against the glass, and watches until Yallie boards the ship, until they roll out of the cavernous room and off to the launch pad.

When the room is empty, and mostly dark, and the observatory truly abandoned, she turns around and finds the stairway. She doesn't stop going up, going past floor after floor, staircases and levels she had never noticed in her feverish run through the halls, never noticed during her dull, hazy days. And she knows when she reaches the top floor, because there's a door, a door with a handle and not one that goes clink.

Before she steps outside, she stands very still, so still she can feel the air move, and closes her eyes. She can't hear anything, but she can feel the vibrations. They begin as a small shiver, something she can feel only in her toes. But the shivers become stronger and she stands in an empty staircase imagining the ships roaring to life, aiming for worlds and space ports beyond her tiny, brown planet, which is a mere stop post in the passageways and places of the Universe.

And in her mind she can see it – a consuming darkness punctuated by bright sparkles of light, galaxies and stars spinning and shining and her brave Yallie looking out the window. She'll be taking all those measurements and thinking of all those numbers and then she'll look at a star and think of _her_.

She opens her eyes. The vibrations fade. The ships are spiraling away to the edges of the Universe. The grey walls of the School surround her, but all Ajita can see are stars.

She shoves the door open and the wind greets her and she climbed all those stairs but there is nothing but ground before her. Stumbling, she leaves the stoop, and hears the door close and lock behind her. She gasps, heaves, with the coldness of the wind; it scrapes and freezes her throat and the clouds above her churn, dark and smoky.

Falling to her knees, she presses her hands into the frozen dirt. It's not soft like sand. She feels as if the wind has stripped her of her memories, as if it has left her naked and alone and stranded. It is hard to think of what sand feels like when it is so cold, when there is nothing but deadness and emptiness. Earth is very different from her memories, and she thinks of Yallie's words about Earth, about how it was killed, slain, murdered by its inhabitants while they attempted to destroy each other, and in turn, themselves.

But over the whipping of the wind, she can hear it, that roar, and she knows the rockets are ascending. She scrambles to follow them, not turning once to look back at the School, hauling herself over rocks as she climbs and climbs and climbs. She flattens herself against the rock face, presses her cheek against it, and remembers the mud buildings and the figure of stone clay, built on mountain tops so high. She ignores the pain and bleeding in her hands, the tears in her uniform; she can't hear the roar of the ships anymore, and she supposes the liftoff is over and done already, but she needs to escape and be free, she needs to see them...the stars.

And then she puts her hand against something that is not rock or dirt. It is cold, colder than the wind, and bright white. _Snow_. Her breath puffs in front of her face, visible. She continues on, slipping in it and marveling in it and as she surveys the mountainside, she thinks of Earth: it's not dead, it's recovering.

By the time her sensation has faded, by the time her fingers are unfeeling and red and black, the snow is noticeably thicker, the air noticeably thinner, and all is quiet. Not static. Not white noise. Just...quiet.

She collapses against the mountain and stares at the clouds that swirl around her, and they don't seem so dark anymore, but white and thin. Like the snow.

Her insides are cold, and her shivers have long since stopped, and she wants to laugh because she feels hurt and free and never thought the two would go hand in hand. Imprisonment, though, she reflects, hurt as well, in different ways.

She waits and waits, and it's as if the Earth hears her...or maybe it is recovering, because the thicker clouds pass by, and the thinner clouds get thinner and thinner, until among all the white...she can see black.

Her breath catches in her throat, and it's almost painful to start breathing again, but there they are: silvery white stars shining against the blackness of space.

"Rasjaurom," she whispers hoarsely, as loudly as her voice will allow.

The seven stars shine over her, reflect in her eyes, and she reaches out towards them. And among all those beautiful stars, in all that darkness, she thinks she sees a star fly by, a little silvery twinkle that is actually a silver and blue rocket.

Free and united with the Earth and Rasjaurom at last, Ajita lets her arm fall and listens to her breathing slow. Her vision seems to be darkening, but the stars still glimmer brightly, and she makes sure to keep her eyes open, until her very last breath.

After they had kissed, Ajita had held her breath, keeping Yallie's life force inside of her, feeling it burn in her lungs. She hadn't opened her mouth until she was sure Yallie's breath had become a part of her so that it would remain with her...even when Ajita's current form ceased to exist. Then she and Yallie could become part of the Earth.

Ajita would be like Rasjaurom, filled with all that she had consumed, forever patrolling Earth, only able to look at the stars and wonder _when?_

###

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