Varietals: Tell me something.
She can feel her skin drying, her throat already coated with dust, sand collecting in pools from the wrinkles in her clothes and falling like baby birds to the ground, shaking and lurching with the wind. Unsteady, the picture of first flights, and a thought appears from the recesses of her mind. There is trouble focusing, and if she’s like this, how is Karime feeling because she knows there is little difference between her and the others, between those here and gone. It’s something she’s learned, in this place. And it’s an effect of miracles, perhaps, the way this one is still alive and moving when no one else is left.
The android sighs and her head lolls to the other girl, who rests against a large section of concrete still standing relatively intact. Despite the bombings that have been frequent in this country for so many years, they have found sections of rubble large enough to protect them from view, choking in the dust and rot. Back against shadows, limbs splayed against the grit of earth, her companion is careless with youth: fragile, quiet, staring into the sky and dreaming of somewhere far away. Fingers testing the feel of themselves with a delicate sort of uncertainty. And like glass, worn and faded and used and reused until it is so rare that a even glimpse of it is enough, as if it’s something to be kept safe and locked away with key and chain.
Still - when she smiles it is a filmy memory of history: all smooth, tan skin and hair the colour of ink, and Mara knows with certainty that this girl, at least, will not die.
But at the moment, they need water. She has been saving all of her rations for her comrade, and even though her artificial body can last far longer than those it is based on, it is still quite uncomfortable to experience the dulling of senses, the tinge of monochrome that creeps into her vision. The slight distortion of hearing, sentences which drown in layers and layers of ocean waves against a quiet shore, of textbook learning, of blurry swallows on horizons far, far away.
Otherwise, they have been fine – there has been a lull in fighting for days, the enemy soldiers as exhausted as their own, and so they wait. Outlast, outlast. The girl has faith in backup, faith in something she knows herself will never come, and so they don’t move far, yet.
And with this, she has the opportunity to scan for something. Closes her eyes and hums a song from the past, a grainy image of the surrounding area taking place of rocks and sand, superimposed. Water, to their left, and she must gather enough no matter how sick it makes her after drinking.
The song ends, the map vanishes, and she is crawling towards Karime with a purpose. Words low, accompanied by a touch on the shoulder. It's only miles, she can wait, she can wait. Mara knows that she must return before too long, because the soldier's reply is mumbled and disjointed, her eyes closed against the sun. The words slip regretfully from her mouth.
"Hay agua at tu izquierda. Me estoy yendo ahora."
Then, she goes. Her shoes slamming against the ground and the force whipping her bangs into her eyes, leaping over debris like so many drops of fallen rain. She can run a mile in about three minutes at this rate - but consequentially will take longer to recuperate in the future, and she'll deal with that when needed. For her friend to survive, that is her most important goal, and she has found the - and it is brown, like the colour of her eyes. Choked with dust and filth. But it is all they have, and so she rests the open lip of the canteen into the water and listens to the level of disease rise and rise until it overflows. Mara drinks directly from the stream herself, mud sinking her fingers and coating her wrists, unashamedly kneeling into the liquid as it flows around her.
As her body processes it, filtering and soaking and rejuvenating, everything is amplified. Hues brighten, hearing sharpens, the muck of the slight bank becomes more and more apparent as the slime shifts against her sensitive fingertips. She pauses, readying herself, and then rushes from the area towards the one she just left. Container clutched tightly by the grasp of her hand, she is hurrying to the one person that remains of her assigned mission, the one. It's been programmed into her brain from the very moment she was sentient, and it lurks behind all of her actions as nothing else can.
This is fact: She is one of many. Children of humanity, machines, dolls, these are what define her. And the current war is a danger, killing off mothers and fathers with rage and senseless pride, and she must do what she can to see it through to the end, to bring it to a close as early as she is able. One day the cities will be rebuilt, the farms returned, the people happy. This, at least, is textbook knowledge.
The soldier is unmoving, and she nudges her roughly with the toe of her boot. Shakes her awake, watches her blink lethargically at the canteen held in front of her face. The sloshing of malady, delicious in its promises of satisfaction. "Toma."
She does, coughing it down with a grimace. The android slumps against the concrete next to her and half-smiles with relief, her gaze lingering on the sky above. Dried mud flakes from the creases in her fingers and falls to the ground like so many baby birds, fluttering gracelessly with the wind to push and pull, and it's the effect of miracles, perhaps, the way they are the only ones left.
The android sighs and her head lolls to the other girl, who rests against a large section of concrete still standing relatively intact. Despite the bombings that have been frequent in this country for so many years, they have found sections of rubble large enough to protect them from view, choking in the dust and rot. Back against shadows, limbs splayed against the grit of earth, her companion is careless with youth: fragile, quiet, staring into the sky and dreaming of somewhere far away. Fingers testing the feel of themselves with a delicate sort of uncertainty. And like glass, worn and faded and used and reused until it is so rare that a even glimpse of it is enough, as if it’s something to be kept safe and locked away with key and chain.
Still - when she smiles it is a filmy memory of history: all smooth, tan skin and hair the colour of ink, and Mara knows with certainty that this girl, at least, will not die.
But at the moment, they need water. She has been saving all of her rations for her comrade, and even though her artificial body can last far longer than those it is based on, it is still quite uncomfortable to experience the dulling of senses, the tinge of monochrome that creeps into her vision. The slight distortion of hearing, sentences which drown in layers and layers of ocean waves against a quiet shore, of textbook learning, of blurry swallows on horizons far, far away.
Otherwise, they have been fine – there has been a lull in fighting for days, the enemy soldiers as exhausted as their own, and so they wait. Outlast, outlast. The girl has faith in backup, faith in something she knows herself will never come, and so they don’t move far, yet.
And with this, she has the opportunity to scan for something. Closes her eyes and hums a song from the past, a grainy image of the surrounding area taking place of rocks and sand, superimposed. Water, to their left, and she must gather enough no matter how sick it makes her after drinking.
The song ends, the map vanishes, and she is crawling towards Karime with a purpose. Words low, accompanied by a touch on the shoulder. It's only miles, she can wait, she can wait. Mara knows that she must return before too long, because the soldier's reply is mumbled and disjointed, her eyes closed against the sun. The words slip regretfully from her mouth.
"Hay agua at tu izquierda. Me estoy yendo ahora."
Then, she goes. Her shoes slamming against the ground and the force whipping her bangs into her eyes, leaping over debris like so many drops of fallen rain. She can run a mile in about three minutes at this rate - but consequentially will take longer to recuperate in the future, and she'll deal with that when needed. For her friend to survive, that is her most important goal, and she has found the - and it is brown, like the colour of her eyes. Choked with dust and filth. But it is all they have, and so she rests the open lip of the canteen into the water and listens to the level of disease rise and rise until it overflows. Mara drinks directly from the stream herself, mud sinking her fingers and coating her wrists, unashamedly kneeling into the liquid as it flows around her.
As her body processes it, filtering and soaking and rejuvenating, everything is amplified. Hues brighten, hearing sharpens, the muck of the slight bank becomes more and more apparent as the slime shifts against her sensitive fingertips. She pauses, readying herself, and then rushes from the area towards the one she just left. Container clutched tightly by the grasp of her hand, she is hurrying to the one person that remains of her assigned mission, the one. It's been programmed into her brain from the very moment she was sentient, and it lurks behind all of her actions as nothing else can.
This is fact: She is one of many. Children of humanity, machines, dolls, these are what define her. And the current war is a danger, killing off mothers and fathers with rage and senseless pride, and she must do what she can to see it through to the end, to bring it to a close as early as she is able. One day the cities will be rebuilt, the farms returned, the people happy. This, at least, is textbook knowledge.
The soldier is unmoving, and she nudges her roughly with the toe of her boot. Shakes her awake, watches her blink lethargically at the canteen held in front of her face. The sloshing of malady, delicious in its promises of satisfaction. "Toma."
She does, coughing it down with a grimace. The android slumps against the concrete next to her and half-smiles with relief, her gaze lingering on the sky above. Dried mud flakes from the creases in her fingers and falls to the ground like so many baby birds, fluttering gracelessly with the wind to push and pull, and it's the effect of miracles, perhaps, the way they are the only ones left.
