094: Bullets and Boards – Nine
After so many years of being shoved into stasis instead of getting actual sleep, waking up in a bed with the light of dawn slowly unfurling through the hotel room around her was a novelty that V'tala was more than happy to indulge in.
Though, she had to admit to herself, nearly every aspect of her new life was a novelty. A far cry from the bare minimum she had been raised on, it was now full of things that she hadn't even know she'd needed.
Things like fresh air, light, rest, entertainment, and friends.
And again, thanks to how she was raised, it was sometimes a struggle to allow herself to just exist in a way that wasn't in service to her dryhten, the woman being deliberately forced from her mind any time V'tala thought of her. She'd heard once that a person wasn't truly dead until they were forgotten, and so V'tala was doing her very best to forget all those who had wronged her, and first and foremost on that chopping block was her one and only dryhten.
(While Pryseia may have been her dryhten on a technical level, V'tala didn't think of her as such. The other woman had fought tooth and nail at every turn to guarantee V'tala's autonomy, and the flawed dlegh she'd forced on her was so incompatible that Pryseia's commands had held no sway over her. Pryseia couldn't have ordered around even if she'd wanted to.)
In another time, remaining abed while the dawn light grew steadily brighter outside would have been met with disciplinary action. Instead of the comfortably warm and soft blankets she was buried in, she would have been in a simple cot, perhaps with a single sheet if it was actually cold enough. And her room, if she'd even been granted one, would have been nothing more than whatever storage closet happened to be empty at the time. She'd slept in equipment storage rooms for most of her life, just another tool.
Her shower would have been lukewarm, quick and efficient. The scalding heat and pressure of the water raining down on her, the pleasant smelling soap and shampoo, the soft washcloth and skincare creams she used as she went about her morning routine were not things that would have been allowed to a dregil.
Tapping a button on the side of the bathroom's mirror to clear the condensation from it, the woman who stared back at V'tala was a far cry from who she used to be, and it went deeper than just her altered colouring. Dregil training had forged her into a weapon, all lean, corded muscles meant more for precision than power. Being subjected to stasis over sustenance had quite literally stripped the meat from her bones, to the point that when she had first caught sight of herself in a reflective surface in the medbay while convalescing, she had momentarily thought that she had been staring at a some kind of preserved specimen on display, as she'd been little more than a mummified husk.
She wasn't anywhere near back to normal just yet, but as she turned slightly to observe herself in the mirror, she at least no longer look desiccated. She still looked hollowed out, her limbs still whip thin, her face gaunt, her abdomen sunken except for where it flared around the jut of her pelvis and ribcage, but she wasn't able to count each individual rib anymore, the sharp outline of her skull was less noticeable, and she could no longer see the divide between the bones of her forearms as she braced her hands against the counter.
Twisting a little further, enough to see over the curve of her shoulder, she was met with the unmarred skin of her back. Once upon a time, before stasis had stripped her of colour, she'd had a massively intricate tattoo that had spanned her entire back from the base of her spine to the base of her skull, spreading down to cover both her arms and wrapping around her neck like a noose. Never able to see all of it, it had nevertheless been a marker of what she was - a dregil - the tattoo a litany of words and symbols that would proclaim to the world that she was an object, not a person in her own right. That stasis had taken the tattoo from her was an unexpected blessing.
For most of her life, her hair had been kept close cropped, all to make the maintenance of it easier. Like everything else about her well being in stasis while she and Enaruli had been shuttled between the Coalition's enemies, it had been neglected for long enough that it had grown past her shoulders. It was longer now than it had ever been throughout the course of her entire life, bone straight and bleached white, and V'tala liked it.
She liked a lot about the way she looked now.
Flushed from her decadently hot and lengthy shower, there was a subtle green tint to her pure white skin. She looked alien, the bloom of blood across her body the closest she would get to her original skin tone, and the spiteful part of her that seemed to be growing stronger with every passing day was glad for that. After everything she had gone through at their hands, she didn't want to be usgaisjan. On a biological level, of course she always would be, but she was more than happy to symbolically separate herself from the people that had made her into little more than a tool in whatever way she could.
Devoid of colour, there was something unsettling about her eyes now. A light grey only due to the shadows that would catch in the ripples of her irises, it made her look inusgaisjan, which was a net positive as far as she was concerned. The row of horns along the back of her head, instead of the lively green they had once been, were a deathly white. It made her look haunted, haunting, and that thought brought the faintest of smiles to her lips. She bared her teeth at her own reflection, as white as her horns now were, her prominent upper and lower canine teeth on display as she hissed intimidatingly at herself.
She looked like a nightmare, and she liked that.
During her recovery, Rhea had told her that it would be medically simple enough to get her natural pigmentation restored, but V'tala had refused the procedure. Stripped of her past in such a literal way, the woman in the mirror, bleached and unnerving, was an anthesis to the tool that her own people had tried to make of her.
The woman in the mirror was who V'tala wanted to be.
She finished drying off, going back into the bedroom in order to get ready for the day. Warm clothes would be needed, as they were set to head off to one of the colder areas of Osatiawjo in order to partake in some wintertime activities.
Such frivolity would have been forbidden to her, once upon a time, and so she planned on enjoying herself as much as she could. Her time of deprivation was as dead as those who had once enslaved her.
Breakfast had been a hearty affair, and a necessity given the day's activities.
"It's gonna be cold, so you're gonna need more fuel to keep you warm in all that," Rhea had said, gesturing with the wedge of pancake she had on her fork, "Plus, skating takes more energy than you'd expect, and the last thing we need is to get hangry on the rink!"
Their destination, a town built atop a mountain by the name of Niamod, was further afield than Pernula was, and another test of Viatrix's range.
"I think I'm starting to feel it now," she said as Nevara set the shuttle down in one of the mostly empty parking lots, "It's not drastic enough for me to lose the connection completely, but I'd say it's dropped down to about ninety percent strength?"
Letting out an impressed huff of laughter, Malakh said, "That's surprising, and a huge improvement over what your range used to be. I'm curious to see how far it would extend when the Pelekys isn't tucked away in a subspace parking lot."
"Perhaps we can test that once we're spaceborne." Nevara said as she shut the shuttle down, "For now, the ice awaits."
Like Pernula, Niamod had been designed with pedestrians in mind, walking paths linking together the shops and recreation centres that made up the bulk of the town. Stone buildings were plentiful here too, all of them a dusty red veined with black, the walkways made from some dark concrete kept perpetually warm thanks to a robust network of waterways that piped hot water all throughout the town. A necessity, otherwise the roads would have been inaccessible under the constantly falling snow.
"It never got cold enough where I grew up to have snow like this." Malakh breathed, her words fogging in the frigid air, "We'd get little flurries now and again, but never enough to stick around."
"This is similar to what spring was like on my own childhood world," Pryseia beamed, "A far more pleasant temperatures than our winters. Even with proper clothing, it was best not to remain outdoors for very long, as you could begin to feel your very blood freezing in your veins."
"I suppose that could account for the energy-intense recreational activities you would partake in, as a means to keep one's core temperature up?" Nevara mused, and Pryseia just shrugged at that.
"Speaking of, looks like the ice rink is open all day, but the mountain doesn't open until the afternoon," Rhea said, looking up hours of operation on her data pad, "So skating first, then some lunch and sightseeing, and hit up the slopes after that?"
No one had a reason to disagree, and so to the rink they went.
Despite the off season, there were still a handful of other vacation goers on the ice when they got there. The rink attendants had them set up with the equipment they would need in no time at all, as well as with quick lessons on how to use it all. Despite the both of them already having experience when it came to skating, Pryseia and Rhea joined the others in the learner's class.
"It has been quite some time since I have been skating, since before my imprisonment at the hands of the Thalatte. It would behoove me to brush up on the basics." Pryseia had explained, Rhea nodding in agreement.
Despite getting an explanation of how it worked from Pryseia before they went on their vacation, skating was not what V'tala had imagined it to be. The shoes were sturdier, the blades attached to them not quite the knives she had been envisioning, but it was the ice itself that was the most surprising. She'd never seen snow in person, only witnessed it through the eyes of Enaruli during one of her deployments, everywhere else she'd been having been too warm for anything to ice over. The deadly slipperiness of the ice came as a total shock, as well as how easy it was for one to lose their footing on it, even with the skates.
If it hadn't been for the mandatory harnesses they had to wear while on the ice, an antigrav device that would kick in automatically to prevent a person from falling injuriously hard against the ice, V'tala was sure that she would have broken a bone before she even got through the introductory lesson.
"Me too," Elytra hissed from between her and Malakh as they made a slow and careful circuit around a patch of the rink designated for novices learning the ropes, her arms twitching out now and again in order to correct her balance, "The way the two of them just glided out with no problem really made me think this would be easier than it actually is!"
V'tala looked over to where Elytra had nodded, to a separate rink where those who actually knew how to skate were gliding effortlessly across the ice. Pryseia and Rhea were racing each other around the perimeter at an alarming speed, the both of them laughing wildly as they chased each other back and forth.
"So much for brushing up on the basics," the bite of Malakh's bitter words were spoiled by the fond smile she wore as she watched the two of them, "They can get around just fine."
"I don't know about Rhea, but I do know that Pryseia had skated competitively in her youth." Nevara said as she and Viatrix caught up to the three of them ("I'm coming along for emotional support, obviously!" Viatrix had told the rink attendants when they asked if they'd need a holding area for their drone, "Unless you've got a skate that will actually fit me.").
"Really?" V'tala questioned, "Was the competition to see how long a person could last out here without falling?"
Her mandibles doing nothing to hide her grin, Nevara told her, "More or less. It involved stringing together complicated maneuvers in the form of a dance."
"On ice?!?" Elytra squawked.
Instead of answering her, Nevara turned towards the intermediate rink and shouted, "DO A JUMP!"
Not slowing down her breakneck speed, Pryseia turned in order to skate backwards so she could face them, and pointed a hand at herself questioningly, to which Nevara nodded in return. Even from this distance, they could see the wicked smirk that spread across Pryseia's face, and she turned once again, somehow picking up even more speed as she rounded the furthest end of the rink.
Faster than before, she headed back in their direction, before she flung herself off the surface of the ice, spinning rapidly through the air as she tucked her arms and tail in, before landing, backwards and on one leg, the other extended out behind her while she bent forward, arms out at her sides. With seemingly no effort, she turned in that pose to face them, winking and blowing a kiss with her mechanical arm.
Elytra had shrieked when Pryseia had gotten airborne, clutching onto V'tala and Malakh and almost bringing the three of them down in her shock.
"Strung together moves like that?!" Elytra demanded as she turned to Nevara, "So more than just launching yourself into space!?"
"There's probably recordings of her doing so in the archives from her world. She competed up until she was captured by the Thalatte." Nevara replied with a nonchalant little shrug, "Her coach was disappointed that she had more of a passion for mechs than she did for figure skating."
"Well I guess I know what I'll be looking up tonight!" Viatrix cackled, clapping her drone's hands together with delight.
Viatrix ended up finding footage of Pryseia's skating career well before they finished at the rink, and so crammed together around a table at a nearby restaurant, they watched one of Pryseia's routines on a data pad.
"It's impressive, but it's nerveracking." Elytra's voice was thick with wonder as she shot Pryseia a look, "Knowing how slick the ice is, it's somewhat anxiety inducing to watch!"
Pryseia let out a surprised laugh at that. "I suppose I'm so used to the dangers inherent in the sport that they no longer register as a threat. I can assure you, my spills were few and far between."
"Did you ever compete like this?" V'tala asked Rhea, who shook her head in response.
"I played hockey for a couple years as a kid, but nothing quite like this," she explained, before making an aggravated noise in the back of her throat, "When I hit my growth spurt, suddenly everyone had opinions on what kinds of sports I should be playing, so I quit playing sports altogether."
After a followup question and explanation as to what hockey actually was (including finding a recording of a game, just to give everyone a visual), their lunch arrived and was quickly devoured, then it was into the town to take a browse through the stores.
The wares on sale were a mix of practical and whimsical, gear for surviving the cold and trinkets for livening up the dark days of winter. They had to make a stop off at the shuttle to put away their shopping before they headed to the nearby ski resort.
Skiing ended up being something those without experience in winter weather had an easier time picking up than skating had been. After a short class with an on-site instructor, and a few runs down a gentler course, the seven of them were sat on the ski lift up to one of the longer trails that ran down the mountain.
"I bet we're going to be feeling it tomorrow," Elytra told V'tala, patting her thighs, "I've definitely been working muscles that see less action!"
From the chair behind them, Rhea called out, "If you need any painkillers, just let me know. I can hook you up with the good drugs!"
Getting down the mountain, shock of shocks, ended up taking nowhere near as long as it did getting up it. Sliding along close enough to talk, but far enough away that they wouldn't crash into one another, their first proper go down the trail had been a leisurely affair, even at the speeds they were going at.
"It definitely feels a lot safer than being on the ice," Malakh said as they made their way back to the ski life, "If I fall in the snow, I know it's not going to shatter my bones!"
"You are aware of the other uses of snow, aren't you?" Pryseia said cryptically, shooting her a look over her shoulder. When Malakh could only respond with a confused look of her own, Pryseia twisted so that she could lob a ball of snow directly in Malakh's face. Spluttering in indignation, Malakh hastily scooped up a snowball of her own, and their next run was waylaid when collateral damage brought the rest of them into the fight.
It was well after sunset by the time they made their way back to the shuttle, after a filling meal to satiate the ravenous hunger they'd earned with their time on the slopes.
"I do believe I prefer skiing over skating," Nevara said from the pilot's seat, "But both drained me more than I expected."
"Yeah, I'm definitely going to crash once we get in," Malakh said from the back seat, leaning against Rhea, "And I am absolutely sleeping in tomorrow."
Indeed, they were stumbling over themselves with exhaustion by the time they separated to their own rooms back at the hotel, and after another wonderfully hot shower, V'tala threw herself into bed, fully expecting sleep to drag her under.
But despite the pleasant burn in her muscles from a day spent at play, V'tala found herself unable to succumb to sleep, her mind far too active to let consciousness slip from her, one image looping on repeat through her thoughts.
Pryseia launching herself into a high speed spin, only to land with a carefree grace.
Reaching out for the side table in the dark, she slapped her hand around until she came in contact with her data pad, dimming the light of it as she turned on the screen. Viatrix had shared the recordings she'd found of Pryseia in her skating days, and V'tala brought up one of the ones they hadn't all watched together earlier.
Pryseia was in her late adolescence in it, her hair longer than it was now, braided back and devoid of the white streak it was now shot through with. Her eye unmarred, her arm still flesh, her constellations of freckles missing their tracery of scars. She looked as young as she had in the memory V'tala witnessed of her getting her mech pilot's license, and she couldn't help but wonder how far away that event was from this recording.
This younger Pryseia flowed out onto the ice like it wasn't second nature, but first. Her expression was focused, but not on the cheering crowd that filled the stands around this rink. She was intent on something that only she could feel in that moment. Music began to play over the rink's speakers and Pryseia moved to it, subtle shifts of her body bringing her to speed in shockingly little time.
At lunch, Pryseia had explained the names of some of the maneuvers from the other recordings, but V'tala couldn't recall them for the life of her as she watched this younger version of Pryseia dash across the ice, leaping and spinning to the beat of the song. Her routine came to an end in seemingly no time at all, the recording ending with Pryseia accepting a towel from her coach as she sank onto a bench flushed and heaving, but grinning ear to ear.
V'tala let the data pad fall against her chest after that, a curious concoction of emotions swirling within her. She was surprised to find that envy wasn't among them.
Compared to herself, Pryseia had led a carefree childhood. She'd had mothers who loved her, a passion to work towards, and leisure time enough to take up a sport and not pursue it professionally, a far cry from the endless training and forced subservience V'tala's own childhood had been filled with.
It wasn't envy that filled V'tala at this disparity in their upbringing, but an ache. She'd been born and bred for her harsh life, but Pryseia hadn't. That smiling, carefree girl had everything stripped away from her, shaped into a weapon as thoroughly as V'tala herself had been. As all save for Elytra and Viatrix had been, though their own lives weren't free from heartache.
Cruelty was not an inherently usgaisjan trait, it seemed, and that was somehow both disquieting and a comfort at the same time.
Tilting her data pad back up, V'tala was once again greeted by the smiling face of a younger Pryseia. For all intents and purposes, that girl was dead, the woman who had taken her place weighted down by decades of mistreatment.
The girl had thrown herself across the ice with the confidence of someone who knew she wouldn't fall.
The woman threw herself into combat without a thought to her own safety because she didn't care if she fell.
A different training regiment, but V'tala had been raised to treat her own life with the same disdain.
When she had still been convalescing, she had asked Pryseia why she was fighting so hard for V'tala's autonomy, and her answer of her being part of her crew hadn't satisfied her at the time, but she'd been unsure on how to probe deeper. But now she knew she didn't need to. Now she could see that, despite their wildly different upbringings, she and Pryseia had been cut from the same cloth: made to be tools, and nothing more.
The erosion of her self worth was something V'tala had been slowing becoming aware of with every day she lived without the shackle of her dlegh. Pryseia hadn't been bound so thoroughly, but she'd been stripped of her self worth just the same. She could see it in the way the other woman fought in the Kith recordings, throwing herself bodily in the way of blows meant for the others.
She could understand the subtext to Pryseia's treatment of her now, because it was the same way that V'tala had been raised to think: "I'm not worth it, but you are."
With everything she had been subjected to throughout her life, the thought of making her own preservation a priority was something she knew she couldn't yet even think of doing. She'd been trained to be a martyr for so long that she didn't know how to put that particular mantle down. And she knew now that Pryseia was the exact same way. She'd go to any lengths to protect her crew, but she wouldn't lift a finger to protect herself.
Sighing into the quiet of the night, V'tala made her own vow, of her own volition, completely separate from any of the baggage of her dlegh. If Pryseia wouldn't protect herself, then V'tala would protect her. They couldn't spend the rest of their lives looking for swords to fall upon, so V'tala could only hope that their self destructive tendencies would cancel each other out long enough that they could grow out of them.
She knew that it was a long road ahead of them on that front, to say nothing of the other threats crowding up along the edges of their path. For the most part, there was nothing she could do to guard against the monsters and menaces that lay before them, but she could learn, she could prepare, and she could work to make herself better able to handle the trials and tribulations that were coming their way.
And she could figure out what she wanted to do with her life, both behind and in front of the cameras. With that in mind, her own thoughts still racing, she brought up the Pelekys' Kith forum again, to research until sleep finally claimed her.
The instinct to be productive at all times was a habit she was still working to break, after all.