Chapter Text
YEAR 16 ABOARD THE STRATOSPHERIC
When Elucidate is ten years old, she comes to the conclusion that Uncle Geranium and Auntie Fluorescent’s kid is just plain weird.
According to her papa, who is big and broad and gentle, Luci’s ‘old enough to help out’, which means she doesn’t have to be in either the creche or the classroom until one of her parents finishes working for the day. Luci likes learning with Professor Hal, but he’s got kids younger than her to teach too now, and you can’t really have ten year olds and six year olds in the same class. So, Luci helps her renny, who is tall and slim and quiet, while they study things called geological charts, because it’s neat spending time with them at work. Sometimes she plays sportsball, because Kom is there and he’s her best friend, and often she tags along with whatever Utopia is doing, because Utopia is cool and grown up but not so grown up as the actual grown ups, and doesn’t treat Luci like a baby just because she’s only ten.
Today, though, Luci is doing none of those things. She’s in the creche, because Auntie Cy is having a baby and papa has to help with that, and Uncle Tonin ate something bad, and there are just a few too many younger kids for Auntie Seedent to keep track of by herself.
Earlier, Auntie Seedent had lined up Luci and Kom like Chief Rhett and the security officers* and explained the task ahead. “I’m afraid I’ll be quite occupied with the little ones most of the time,” she’d said. “The older ones are shaping up to be a bit of a handful, but I know you two can do it. You may need to be a little firm with Annie, Kombucha, but she’ll listen if you tell her.”
Kom had nodded, grinning at first his mom, then Luci. For her part, Luci had smiled back. This wouldn’t be so bad.
Wrong. Very.
The twins are a nightmare, Recalcitrance has exactly the right name, and Marzipan is a brat; she argues back every time Luci tells her something, and has invented a game that centres entirely around escaping the creche. That is the opposite of what’s supposed to happen! Worst of all, she’s got accomplices. Earlier, sweet little Tammy took Luci by the hand and led her off to a drawing table, showing her a very scribbly picture that Luci tried very hard to say something nice about, and while her back was turned, Marz made a break for it and only didn’t get away because she tripped over Dys. Which caused an argument.
Marz is a dangerous miscreant, Luci decides, as the volume climbs. She can’t trust anyone who can corrupt someone as innocent as Tammy.
…although thinking about it, Tammy’s so often in dreamland that maybe she was oblivious to what she was doing.
Uh—Luci needs to stop those two from fighting.
Luckily, Kom is more on the ball than her, throwing a hail mary by dangling the temptation of a game of sportsball. Miraculously, it works, defusing the squabble as the kids collectively perk up, especially his little sister. Kom flashes Luci a boyish grin as she sags with relief. He’s way better with kids than her. Heck, he’s even got Marz agreeing to go, which is a surprise, since Marz isn’t really that enthusiastic about sportsball usually.
…Marz is just using it as another way to get out of the creche, isn’t she? The realisation dawns at roughly the same time Marz shoots the smuggest little smile over her shoulder as Kom leads most of the kids out of the room.
It would have been convenient if both Luci and Kom could handle sportsball together, but Tangent refuses to leave and besides, Diffident is sleeping. Even Luci knows that if a five year old is napping, you let them.
Thankfully, Tangent is way easier to handle alone, and actually starts drifting off too after a little while. The creche isn’t quiet, with Auntie Seedent not too far away corralling a bunch of toddlers, but Luci can hear herself think now.
She can also hear Diffident stir, murmuring unhappily, before sitting bolt upright. Xe takes one long look around the room, tears springing to xer eyes, and then suddenly Luci has a crying child clinging to her like a liferaft.
Luci assesses the situation.
“Ack.”
Diffident’s sobs are quiet, but wrack xer entire body.
“What’s wrong, Diff?” Luci asks, trying to be gentle. She’s dealt with crying children before—her little brother Excavate isn’t even four yet—and this seems… different. Diff almost sounds like xe’s in pain.
“I—I dreamed something bad,” xe burbles, then looks up at Luci, xer red-brown eyes wet and pleading. “A monster got Anemone, an’ she—she’s gone!”
Just a nightmare? Luci can handle that.
“Anemone’s fine. She and the others went with Kom to play sportsball,” Luci explains. Kom sometimes laughs at her for ‘talking to kids all normal’, but why shouldn’t she? Luci doesn’t like it when adults use their kiddie voices on her.
“It was a really big monster,” Diff mumbles.
“A really big monster wouldn’t fit on the ship,” Luci replies, because ‘monsters aren’t real’ doesn’t seem like the right thing to say.
“It, it was someplace else, a big place.” Diff flails an arm out to demonstrate. “The air was pink an’ it made dad sick an’ he started coughing pink an’-an’ turning into clouds an’—” Xe breaks off and breaks down, burying xer face in Luci’s torso with a thin wail.
Luci looks desperately for Auntie Seedent, but she’s surrounded by a gaggle of toddlers, rapt with storytime. Help is very much not on the way. She doesn’t think logically explaining that the dream doesn’t make sense is going to calm Diffident down; the kid’s distraught.
All Luci can think to do is awkwardly put her arms around Diff and let xem cry it out. After a moment of consideration, she adds her tail. She’s heard doctor Instance describe it as ‘simian’ and ‘prehensile’, but right now, it’s another layer of softness to the hug.
“It’s okay to be upset,” Luci ventures, as Diff’s tears continue unabated. Papa told her that once. “Dreams can be scary.” Diff mumbles something in response and Luci cocks her head. Xe’s muffled. She must have heard wrong. “Say that again?”
“My dreams are real,” Diff repeats.
Um.
Luci thinks hard, but can’t come up with a single sensible response. It doesn’t matter that Diffident is wrong if xe believes she’s right, and xe’s already crying and Luci is pretty sure that arguing with xer will only make things worse.
Luci thinks hard, but what pops out of her mouth is an accident. “What do you dream about?”
Diff stills, then peels xerself out of Luci’s chest. Xer eyes have gone totally huge, and Luci has a weird feeling xe’s not used to being taken seriously.
To be fair, Luci isn’t sure she’s taking xem seriously.
“A lotta things,” Diff mumbles. “Being bigger. Thingies with lotsa eyes.” Xe makes two fists on either side of xer head, which Luci supposes means eyes. “Wiggly hair guy.”
“Wiggly… hair?”
“Uh huh. It goes like this.” Diff illustrates, sliding xer fingers—oh hey xe’s got a couple extra—into xer hair and waggling xer hands. Then xe huffs. “Mine’s not long enough.”
Luci can feel her face reddening. This is annoying and childish, and she’s embarrassed that she decided to listen. She’s about to shush Diff, and then xe continues.
“Dreamed I’d see you an’ Kom today, an’ that Marz fell over cause of Dys.” Xe makes a face. “Sometimes things don’t happen how I dream.”
Luci blinks, staring at xem. But… xe was asleep for that, right? Luci’s brows knit as she inspects Diff’s face. Xe doesn’t look like xe’s lying. And kids are pretty bad at lying.
There’s still no way. Xe must have—maybe xe was only half asleep and sort of saw the trip and thought xe was dreaming? Ugh, duh. Of course that’s it. That makes way more sense.
Diff only just got done crying though, and Luci doesn’t want to make xem start back up again, so she just nods. “You should tell your mama and papa about them,” she says, since that’s what other grown-ups tend to tell her. And it usually works, actually. But maybe that’s cause she has three parents—well, she actually has four but Luci isn’t sure her mom counts since she never got on the ship, and Luci isn’t brave enough to ask more stuff about it.
Diff makes a sour face. “They just say I have a big imagination.” Xe must have heard the word often to pronounce it so clearly.
“Oh.” Luci fidgets. Diff’s lower lip is starting to wobble again. “Um. Okay. Well. How about. You can tell me your stor—dreams, so long as you’re quiet and don’t wake up Tangent.”
The way that Diff’s eyes light up makes Luci feel like the smartest kid on the ship.
Luckily, Diff’s still pretty sleepy, so after a little while of dream stories that get increasingly rambly and nonsensical, xe starts listing to the side, and eventually flops over in the little cubby. Luci mulls over the strange stories for a brief time, but then Tangent is awake and demanding attention and Luci ends up forgetting all about it.
The rest of Luci’s ‘shift’ passes in a blur of rampaging children—how do Auntie Seedent and papa and the others do this every day?—and the only other thing that sticks with her is when Diffident’s dad, who is friendly and warm in a way that reminds her of papa, comes by to collect xem.
“Ah, there’s my little aubergine!” he calls, scooping xem up and settling xem on his hip as xe reaches up for him. “Thanks for keeping an eye on xem, kiddo.”
“Xe wasn’t any trouble, Uncle,” Luci replies dutifully.
Uncle Geranium grins, then ruffles xer head. “What do we say, Diffident?”
Xe extracts xer sixth finger from xer mouth. “‘Ank you, Luci.”
“Good job, sprout. We’d better be getting back to your mom, huh?” He mouths a ‘goodbye’ to Luci, and then turns to leave.
He's stepping out into the corridor when Diffident peeks around xer head around his back and shouts. “Thanks for listening good!” As the door slides shut behind them, Uncle Geranium is scolding xem for yelling.
Hm.
Xe might be weird, but Luci prefers watching Diffident to Marzipan. By like, a lot.
(She will revise this ranking two weeks from now, when Diff manages to wedge xerself into a drawer, which gets all the others trying to do it, because children are terrible awful and no good).
*Well, that’s how seriously Luci was taking it, anyway.