ignored her command. Micha looked into my scared face, grinned, and
licked me from chin to hairline with one wide, sloppy swipe of sandpaper.
“Ugh!” I exclaimed as she laughed that husky, rasping laugh
and ambled away, presumably to go terrorize someone else. I think I was going
to need to go change my shorts.
Three loud words, accompanied by Micha’s raspy laugh, popped
into my head for no apparent reason, making my ears ring as I lay on the cold,
stone floor: Welcome, girl-child.
Chapter 11: Family History
I picked myself up off the floor to find practically the
whole room laughing at me. All except my mother who was shaking her head and
frowning at me in disappointment.
“Did you have a good meeting?” I asked her with bite in my
voice as I wiped giant cat saliva off my burning face and took my seat again.
“No. It was a waste of time, like usual,” she said, looking
sharply at me. She took a breath and arranged her features into a more pleasant
mask. “But attendance by the farming representatives is critical. One didn’t
show up and we almost lost another seat because of it. Pendergrast,” she
mumbled unhappily to Great-Aunt Nico seated beside her, “seems happy to sit
back and let Glass City dictate the terms of our water rights." She shook
her head and turned to me.
“So, did someone show you around?”
I nodded, determined to bite my tongue and not think about
my ‘tour’ before I said, or did, anything else that gave away what I was
feeling.
“Well, good then. I’m glad you’re finally here,” she said
stiffly. It didn’t seem like she was all that glad as we sat down to dinner and
had nothing more to talk about.
“Oh, you two! You are so much alike!” Ethem gushed, wiping
at the corners of his eyes with a handkerchief. “Lean towards each other. I’ll
get a picture you can send to your father, Veridian. Sunny, I mean Sunny!” He
corrected himself quickly and snapped some photos with the same model phone
that everyone seemed to be carrying.
Dinner was served and people focused on their food, quickly
losing interest in me. I watched Sensei take her food and followed her lead,
relieved to find that the dishes, while unfamiliar, at least resembled
recognizable food. My system worked out well except for the scoop of
pink-orange mashed potatoes that turned out to be fermented squash. I coughed
it out into my cloth napkin as fast as possible and chugged my coconut-pear
juice while Sensei chuckled quietly at me.
Throughout the meal, I looked around the crowded room and
the first thing I noticed was that it was mostly women, like two to one.
Amazons. The name came from classical Greek, a-mazos: “without breast”. It
looked like all those ancient myths had been wrong about that, thank God. The
idea that they cut or burned off one breast so they could throw a spear or
shoot a bow and arrow had always seemed ridiculous. Even thousands of years
ago, women would have bound their breasts with cloth or something, not cut them
off.
The next thing I noticed was how diverse the gathering was.
I guess I hadn’t realized how overwhelmingly white my life was back home. Here,
there were people of every color sitting shoulder to shoulder on the long
benches, comfortably talking and laughing together. It was cool, except I felt…
like I stuck out, the only Earthling.
Women were generally tall, a lot of them taller than me, and
stockier than I was used to, like the twins. Teague was still on the mucho
grande end of the size spectrum, but overall, the women were roughly the same
size as the men and I was now average. Small even. I’d always hated being so
much taller than most girls, but now that I was surrounded by women who looked
like they could play for the WNBA, I didn’t feel like I fit in here either.
They were all in shape; I mean like everyone. Okay, Great
Aunt Nico across from me was kind of flabby and barrel-chested (and one of the
few old people here, though she was probably only
licked me from chin to hairline with one wide, sloppy swipe of sandpaper.
“Ugh!” I exclaimed as she laughed that husky, rasping laugh
and ambled away, presumably to go terrorize someone else. I think I was going
to need to go change my shorts.
Three loud words, accompanied by Micha’s raspy laugh, popped
into my head for no apparent reason, making my ears ring as I lay on the cold,
stone floor: Welcome, girl-child.
Chapter 11: Family History
I picked myself up off the floor to find practically the
whole room laughing at me. All except my mother who was shaking her head and
frowning at me in disappointment.
“Did you have a good meeting?” I asked her with bite in my
voice as I wiped giant cat saliva off my burning face and took my seat again.
“No. It was a waste of time, like usual,” she said, looking
sharply at me. She took a breath and arranged her features into a more pleasant
mask. “But attendance by the farming representatives is critical. One didn’t
show up and we almost lost another seat because of it. Pendergrast,” she
mumbled unhappily to Great-Aunt Nico seated beside her, “seems happy to sit
back and let Glass City dictate the terms of our water rights." She shook
her head and turned to me.
“So, did someone show you around?”
I nodded, determined to bite my tongue and not think about
my ‘tour’ before I said, or did, anything else that gave away what I was
feeling.
“Well, good then. I’m glad you’re finally here,” she said
stiffly. It didn’t seem like she was all that glad as we sat down to dinner and
had nothing more to talk about.
“Oh, you two! You are so much alike!” Ethem gushed, wiping
at the corners of his eyes with a handkerchief. “Lean towards each other. I’ll
get a picture you can send to your father, Veridian. Sunny, I mean Sunny!” He
corrected himself quickly and snapped some photos with the same model phone
that everyone seemed to be carrying.
Dinner was served and people focused on their food, quickly
losing interest in me. I watched Sensei take her food and followed her lead,
relieved to find that the dishes, while unfamiliar, at least resembled
recognizable food. My system worked out well except for the scoop of
pink-orange mashed potatoes that turned out to be fermented squash. I coughed
it out into my cloth napkin as fast as possible and chugged my coconut-pear
juice while Sensei chuckled quietly at me.
Throughout the meal, I looked around the crowded room and
the first thing I noticed was that it was mostly women, like two to one.
Amazons. The name came from classical Greek, a-mazos: “without breast”. It
looked like all those ancient myths had been wrong about that, thank God. The
idea that they cut or burned off one breast so they could throw a spear or
shoot a bow and arrow had always seemed ridiculous. Even thousands of years
ago, women would have bound their breasts with cloth or something, not cut them
off.
The next thing I noticed was how diverse the gathering was.
I guess I hadn’t realized how overwhelmingly white my life was back home. Here,
there were people of every color sitting shoulder to shoulder on the long
benches, comfortably talking and laughing together. It was cool, except I felt…
like I stuck out, the only Earthling.
Women were generally tall, a lot of them taller than me, and
stockier than I was used to, like the twins. Teague was still on the mucho
grande end of the size spectrum, but overall, the women were roughly the same
size as the men and I was now average. Small even. I’d always hated being so
much taller than most girls, but now that I was surrounded by women who looked
like they could play for the WNBA, I didn’t feel like I fit in here either.
They were all in shape; I mean like everyone. Okay, Great
Aunt Nico across from me was kind of flabby and barrel-chested (and one of the
few old people here, though she was probably only
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