#finally feeling out Nyzere more

[cloudbattrolls]

SS: Why would they want me as a trophy and for dinner? You can't eat me and mount me on a wall!

SS: ...unless you were really dedicated, I guess.

SS: Ew.

SS: Is that what the kids do these nights? The newest trend?

SS: I don't want to know about this trend.

[cloudbattrolls]

You’ll Never Know (I Loved You So)

Nyzere Olorik || 6.4 sweeps

When Mmienu sparks, it’s a smooth silver glow wrapping around her, and she always taps her fingers three times against her thigh. Her pupils go bright, and her hair crackles slightly, tiny pinpoints of light flickering through her heavy braids.

You spark and it’s a dull, washed out purple, sluggish tendrils exuding from your horns like the bad effects in the creche movies. You can barely do light at all, and it’s not fair. You puff your cheeks out and she doesn’t even notice. 

“Nyeih!” You flop backwards in the dirt with a huff, getting your curls dirty - Yengei will have your carapace for it later - but nothing else’s working.

Her ears are dumb and short, but she looks down, with her silly tusks poking out of her frowning lips. You can see every pore, the tiny beads of sweat there, individual hairs on her head.

“Ná yo, Olo, you know better than that.”

“Souris.” 

She bites her lip to keep from laughing even as you slide backwards to get out of the way of her slap. Nobody else gets that face out of her, but they also don’t get her fronds quite so much.

“What’s it matter? E nyeih, Mimu. You’re all maroon, except Banshu. Banshu’s crazy anyway.”

“No nyieh, no souris. You want to sound Imperial? Or like an iceblood?”

“Souris’s not so bad.” You protest, shooting back up and waving your fronds. “Squeakbeasts are cute! Only dumb words, Mimu.”

“Whose facts are those, Olo?”

You hate that question every time. Mmienu’s barely half a sweep older, she hasn’t got the right, acting like she’s a jade or something.

“Icebloods’.” You mutter, digging your claws into the ground, watching the dry earth creep under them. Yengei’s going to scrub you like fury.

She boops your nose. “Right! Good troll!” You snap at it and push her -

- then you’re sitting and blinking, and Mmienu looks just as surprised as you do; the most surprising thing.

“What were we doing?” You ask, ears back. You can see her hesitate, the smallest twitch of her body, then she slumps.

“My...psi, it acted by itself...”

“What, no way.” 

It’s possible; Banshu can never stop making plants grow, and that’s why they’re insane. It can’t be Mmienu. She’s different. She's not allowed to go crazy.

 “Before it was just...” She shudders. “Olo, my psi isn’t really psiionics. It’s psychics.”

You flick dirt at her. “You’re not iceblooded! That can’t be.”

“Shut up.” She snaps, and you shuffle a few feet back. “I just made you forget what happened. That’s my power, and I’m nyeih, like you said, want to bleed me and check?!”

She breaks off and her eyes widen, the silver finally dying as you shakily get to your walkstubs.

“Oh, no, Olo, no, please...”

You run.

Nyzere Olorik || 7.3 sweeps

Yengei took it much better than you thought she would, the night you ran into the village half sobbing, half babbling about what Mmienu had told you. She had her lusus hold you, since yours was out hunting, and Yengei’s monkey father was long resigned to pupas crawling all over him. Or burying their faces in his fur.

Mmienu hated you at first, cold as an iceblood’s flesh, and you pretended it didn’t hurt when she pointedly sat on the other side of village gatherings, or when she left bugs in your recuperacoon.

Eventually she warmed to you again, and the pair of you went hunting and climbing like you’d done forever.

“Yengei says the Empire recruiters are coming in two perigees.” 

Mmienu’s on a much higher branch, and you have your smelling on, not your hearing. Your psi-glow fades and you ask her to repeat it - she does, singsong and mocking, asking you what your auriculars are even for. You just shrug.

“So? They came when we were six, too. Bet it’ll be the same. Maybe they’ll take Banshu this time, or Fuuloe. Nobody’ll miss them, except the beer trader.”

You want to like the beer trader - he’s nice, and his mongoose lusus is so pretty - but every time after he stops at your village, Banshu and Fuuloe fight, and it’s usually with each other, or with anyone who doesn’t get out of the way fast enough to avoid being clubbed with a bottle. Yengei says it’s just pitchflirting, but how can she be sure? She doesn’t seem to care much, as long as they clean up after. 

“Be serious, Olo. I’m eight now; they might try to take me.” 

You look up, bracing a hand on the trunk for support, frowning, shifting a little on the smooth bark beneath your walkstubs. 

“Not without testing you first, it wouldn’t be legal.” 

You know much better about psychics now; ever since Mimu’s confession, you’d watched every schoolfeed about them. You couldn’t always follow the words if they were in Standard or even French, but you understood the footage and the diagrams.

She huffs, flicks back a curl she’s letting out loose tonight, unlike her old heavy braids. She’s started filing her tusks, too, and you even sneaked her a better emery board for it.

“You’re such a grub sometimes. The icebloods don’t care what’s legal! They make the laws. None of us can do anything about it.”

The bitterness in her voice is jarring. Why does she hate high trolls so much? As far as you know, she’s never even met one.

You climb up to her level while sits with her arms crossed, and plunk down beside her.

“What’s up, Mimu? Don’t tell me nothing; you’ll stink like a barkbeast carcass.”

“You’re the most annoying troll ever.” She mutters, tapping her fingers against her thigh. You wait for a minute, and she sighs and relents.

“Two weeks back, a cerulean came to the village.”

“What! I don’t remember...” You trail off and she looks at you pointedly. You shuffle and flush in embarrassment.

“She was beautiful, sharp-horned with glossy headfluff and lacquered claws...I wanted to hate her, Olo, but how was I supposed to hate someone so pretty? She was only a sweep older than me, too, and she knew so many things. Yengei was pleased at how well we got along, and then...”

Her face sours like she’s just bitten into a papaya and found it full of flies.

“...Yengei tells me I’m supposed to go be her moirail, and that my powers belong to her now. She gave me away like a slab of hog meat, and I was supposed to step in line like a good little nyeih.” She spits. “All for more supplies for the village! Yengei can choke.”

Your whole body is rigid, and you hardly manage to shakily ask her what happened next.

“I didn’t cull her, stop looking like you turned to stone.” says Mmienu, waving a hand like the idea of culling a blueblood is nothing. “I made her forget, and everyone else. It’s fine.”

“Why did you have to make me forget?” You ask, hugging yourself, voice small. “I thought you trusted me, Mimu.”

She rolls her eyes, just starting to be flecked with maroon, and shakes her head, curls bouncing.

“Olo, I love you, but you’ve already proved how you handle things. Don’t take it personally.”

There’s nothing you can say to that, even if your pumper hadn’t crawled its way into your throat and killed your ability to speak.

Nyzere Olorik || 7.4 sweeps

Fuuloe’s blow nearly breaks your jaw; would’ve if Mmienu hadn’t shoved you out of the way in time, yelling at him fit to crack the heavens. You drop to the ground and scoot out of the way, as far as you can.

“Pisse-froid! Your lusus should’ve eaten you in the egg!”

Fuuloe’s lusus is cowering under a bench; he’s just a bay duiker, and he knows better than to get between troll fights after Fuuloe’s scrapped with Banshu so many times.

Mmienu tries to spark silver, but Fuuloe keeps swinging at her, and he has a head and fifty pounds on her, so she can’t afford to get hit. No time to focus on psychics.

Banshu’s already facedown in their psi’s albertisa flowers, groaning while their civet lusus licks their wounds. The rest of the village is out, or hiding in their hives; Fuuloe has no psi, but he hardly needs it when he towers like an indigo, and everyone would rather swallow live cichelids than get in Mmienu’s way.

You don’t know what happened, but turning on smell confirms your suspicion; Fuuloe reeks of alcohol, even more than Banshu does, and his eyes are a wild orange.

If only your sparks weren’t worthless in every other way. Not like Mmienu’s.

Unless.

You switch to sight, and you scan over Fuuloe until you find what you need.

“Hey, Fufu! Get over here, you nyeih, souris-pumpered basta - “

He barrels toward you, but the weakness you spotted in his ankle - imprinted with vine marks -  results in his heavy body thudding into the dirt as you yank on it and topple him, and Mmienu flares silver so bright you shut your bulbs.

When you open them again, blinking, Fuuloe’s bulbs are vacant. and his mouth’s open. A little blood trickles from it, dark red, but also drool. You shut your sight off, but every detail is still too vivid, too much. He’s breathing, ragged gasps like a downed animal, but...

“Get up, Olo. I need you to help me tell Yengei.”

Mmienu’s grim tones help you get back to the wider world, and you stumble to your feet. A sick, dreadful feeling creeps through you.

“What did you do, Mmienu...?”

She flushes maroon and looks away.

“I had to, Olo. He was going to cull us. Look at Banshu; they’re half dead themself. I saved us.”

You don’t understand, but you feel even sicker somehow, and you look back at the prone troll...

“Fuuloe?”

It’s the gentlest you’ve ever spoken to him. Fuuloe’s a drunk, obnoxious waste of slurry, but he never failed to bring in plenty of food, or to help patch a hive roof when it was needed. He’s still a villager, and you’ve known him your whole life.

His ragged breathing is your only reply.

Your ears flatten all the way to your neck, and your own breathing becomes shallow with fear.

“No. Mmienu, no. You didn’t.”

She’s crying, and there’s no more silver glow, only the burgundy of her tears.

Nyzere Olorik || 7.5 sweeps

The Imperial recruiters are dressed in crisp red and black in the morning’s faded gray sky, no gray or maroon to be seen, but you can only watch from a peephole that Yengei’s letting you use. It’s stuffy in her hive, since she shut the windows and drew the curtains. Your knees are starting to fall asleep from kneeling on the hard plastic floor.

She says the imps will cull you if you get too close, and you really want to see what happens, so you only nodded.

Mmienu’s practically unrecognizable, standing so stiff you could hang meat on her, as the other trolls chatter. Even with hearing on, you can’t make it out too well; it’s a mess of Standard, with some rapid French and occasional Nafaanra, mostly from Yengei. 

Mmienu is eerily silent. Has been for nearly a perigee, ever since she wiped away everything in Fuuloe’s pan. Banshu left him for the hogs and the leopards, and everyone pretended that there were no streaks of bronze on their face when they came back from the forest.

They never smell of beer anymore.

The worst part is that Mmienu doesn’t blame you. You asked, and you know when she’s lying. She wasn’t tapping her fingers on her thigh, either; Yengei’d skin her if she did, and you trust her anyway, even if you know she could just make you forget it.

She didn’t. That’s what matters.

You wish she’d blame you. You wish she’d blame you, Fuuloe, Banshu, Yengei, anyone else - just not her. It wasn’t her fault.

If it wasn’t her fault, she wouldn’t have to go.

“...excellent! You’ll be taken to the testing facility tomorrow night. Here are your papers, and your luggage bags..”

You have to try very hard to not make any noise. 

They finally drift away, and Yengei puts a hand on Mmienu’s shoulder, steering her back in the hive. It’s a punch in the thorax, seeing her this way.

Yengei runs a hand down her face as they walk inbefore looking at you. “Pahuwa wè sɛ́, Nyzere. Don’t try to fight this, for the love of the ancestors, if you’ve any sense. Say your goodbyes now, because you can’t do it next evening.”

It’s been so long since anyone called you by your hatchnames you barely think about yours. You’d practically forgotten Mmienu’s. 

You sniff, even though you know she’ll hate it. You hardly notice Yengei leaving; your bulbs are only for the maroon in front of you.

“You better be really good.” You say, trying not to cry. “The best. Better than all the icebloods.”

She still doesn’t say anything.

“Mimu...please don’t make me forget you.”

“You want to be sad, Nyzere? You want to keep being weak your whole life? Is that what you want?” She snarls, but you don’t care. Olive-lime tears are running down your face, out your sniffsponge.

“I want you. But I know...” You suck in a breath and continue.  “That can’t happen. So please...let me keep this.”

For a moment you think she’s going to strike you, but her hand falls and she looks so, so tired.

“Fine. I’m erasing my own when I get there. Don’t try to find me.”

Your pumper leaps.

“You mean - you mean you know it’s my fault? Mimu, I knew you’d realize, I - “

“Shut up!” Her clenched fists and bared fangs make you wish you were shorter than her, make you wish you could sink into the floor.

“It’s not your fault, so stop acting like it. This would’ve happened anyway. I was a rot-pan for trying to shake it off. It’s the only way you can be safe. Don’t you get it?”

Now she’s shaking, her voice wobbling like a rock about to fall off a very, very high cliff.

You hug her so hard you hear her wheeze, and then she pushes you off. 

“Olo..don’t make this harder than it has to be.” She mutters.

“You might forget me, but I’ll never forget you, even until I die and the leopards eat me, I’ll still remember the way you’re a mean little souris.”

She half-laughs, half-groans.

“Only you could make that less obnoxious.”

You can still barely do light, but you do it for her.

The shape of a mouse.

Nyzere Olorik || 8.5 sweeps

In the half sweep since she left, your eyes have filled in lime-olive, and the other villagers told Yengei you needed to leave for everyone’s safety. Banshu eyed you with a predator’s appraisal, and you didn’t fight as it became official. 

You’ve traveled since, relying on your psi and wits to survive, meeting all kinds of trolls. 

Now you’re at a fleet training center for pre-ascension recruits. You’re confident in your disguise; you look perfectly nyeih, except for your height, but you know how to be non-threatening.

A few hours’ wait, feeding pigeons bread while carefully scanning the campus, and your patience is rewarded.

You hardly recognize her; her ridged horns are filed smooth, her tusks clipped back, and her hair has been cut short. You almost don’t believe it’s her, her eyes fully maroon now, but she laughs the exact same way.

She taps her thigh.

You wander near enough to her that her head darts toward you automatically, but then moves to the next face. No recognition. You can tell she’s not hiding it; she’d be angry you were here, fists clenched. She laughs at someone’s joke, booping their nose.

You turn away, whistling softly.

Pahuwa will be fine.