Our World Is Still Blue

 OUR WORLD IS STILL BLUE

by Amalie Edwards

(Content Warnings: colonization, racism, state execution and massacres, loss of free will)

My father once held my mother before the spring moon. Its milk would flow off into the night, and honey with its passing. Years later, I held Skye the same way, and braced a whisper against her cheek: “Are we free?”

My hair wasn’t long enough to braid. Every Sunday, Mama would bemoan its dry knots with a wide-tooth comb, until her sighs filled the space that words did not. She needed a pick, not the comb’s flat, faded teeth. But in the space between her blank silences and the soft hum of her doubting, she would ask me: “Are you alright, Sasha? How are you feeling?” 

I didn’t know. My outsides felt alien, dark against pale-skinned boys and girls, othered by the foreignness of my inward longing. I was inhuman wherever I found myself in between. Human was man, sometimes woman. And then there was where I fell, that feeling inside of me…   

Where I wandered through school, just days before the world changed, the scenes of my envy would play out. A boy would take a girl; they’d laugh, reminding me that I fit in with neither of them. She’d smile. Their conversations would waft into my ears, green as Cain. 

“Have you heard?” he’d say. 

“Heard what?” she’d giggle.

“Visitors,” he’d grin, rolling his eyes, “from beyond the stars.” He’d laugh. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.”

Mama sang church hymns under the sirens, braiding my hair in our darkened apartment as the humming slipped through our windows. The city would lose power, but the TV would whine, louder, burning brighter, as the snow against the screen leapt into seething orange. The blinds above our tulips would rise and sway beside the closed window. Sometimes our ears popped, opened, and filled with shrill ringing. But from the west-facing window beside the TV, we saw that same spring moon. She was faint, pink like grapefruit juice. Mama had always scoffed at the colour, rambling how there was too much air pollution.

Americans fought best. We joked like that for a few years after. On the heels of two wars at the time, Americans had defended against the alien invaders. I remembered, vividly, how I began to crave that demonym like spoiled candy. I had been robbed. I had never loved an American girl. The magazines my mother ordered, my dust-covered Barbies, told me I had rarely been one. Or maybe, that was all I was—American and nothing else, with no place to call my home.

They asked us to call them our Guests. We didn’t know how many we had welcomed. Something appeared in our skies one day. Crowds gathered, and instinctively, we all knew to look up into the scattered grey clouds. 

The aliens noted a few things about us: One, that we fought too much. Two, that we lied too much. We understood their language, even if implicitly, without ever knowing how. 

“Freedom is a lie because you have made it so,” they said. 

My mama always read to me from what she called The Good Book.  I never knew how much she believed it. She would read that before the divine, every knee shall bow,  as if by compulsion—sinners and the righteous together. We bowed before the Guests when they visited us, upon the word from their mouths. We could not help ourselves. They told us this was freedom.

This Empire of Words compelled us in ways we could not understand. Words are power, my mother said, not the knowledge of words themselves. We learn kill before we learn magnanimity. Our Guests had harvested the strength of words. They were chains to them, to compel: eprtha’a.  And yet choosing to work for them at Earth’s Imperial Bureau meant I could wear braids, and no one would ever mention my hair or question its meaning. Skye thought I looked good in them. She called it “freedom”... however modest. Our Guests and their cruel sense of irony brought me small liberties I never had. We were all the same to them. 

Violence had always been our status quo, so the day we murdered that girl wasn’t unusual. On Fridays, I had paperwork: sign-offs on gatherings, shrines, and resources for our Guests. They were for internal use. The aliens didn’t seem to take note of them, wherever they were. “An empire is managed on the ground,” we agreed. So their empire would have to start with us.

Nick came to my office. Too often, he reminded me of those pale faces from what seemed like an eternity ago, the ones telling me with their soft glares that I didn’t belong. But the wisdom of the New World came to us. We found ourselves pushing late night audits together. He brought Skye and me housewarming gifts. He complimented my braids.

“Come to the Chief President’s office,” he said. “It’s urgent.”

We took the liberty of calling him that: Chief President. Our Guests said we needed someone who we could call our king. The American majority who ran the bureau came up with something more palatable. It was well known, even before our new leaders: democracy had never failed anyone. It was well known, still, that before our Guests, American democracy had been the best. Chief President was human, handsome: thick black hair, a chiseled jaw, tan skin, and a biting grin. He stood, arms folded behind his back, as two soldiers sternly gripped Secretary Krumins by the arms.

Krumins was young, early twenties perhaps. She spent her days analyzing algorithms, tearing out data points and dissecting them for individuals who caused too much trouble. To manage the entire world from a relatively small staffed bureau, you needed someone like her. She had learned from the Old World’s standards of violence, and knew how to implement them to our Guests’ liking. She was one of our finest assets. She was our friend.

“Krumins?” I frowned, though my gaze was set on the Chief President. Beside me, Nick fidgeted with his knuckles.

Chief President smiled. He stepped past me, stalking his way to Krumins. He bent, pointing below the hem of Krumins’ dress. “She’s torn her garments.”

Torn her garments.  My stomach lurched; chills gripped my skin. But I forced an awkward smile, gingerly making my way to the seat by the window. As I sat down, I cleared my throat. 

“It’s not our custom,” I rasped, then tried again: “We can’t be expected to take it as seriously as they would.”

Chief President frowned. I expected him to understand. The walled bookshelf at the back of the room, the eighteenth century patterned carpet, and the plain oak desk beside the window all described him as a modest academic: one who, despite his position, did not want to be seen. He took a seat at his desk, and reached into a plain white bowl of grapes.

“Secretary Simmons,” he chewed, “what do you think?”

Nick swallowed. He straightened his tie, already loose on his neck. “I, um, can’t say, sir.”

Chief President didn’t look up. “Can’t?”

“I don’t want to, sir.” He glanced to the side. “Maybe we should ask Krumins.”

“Krumins, you know it is a cap-i-tal offense to tear your garments in public—why would you do that?” 

Krumins’ peregrine eyes burned holes through the patterned carpet. Her face was expressionless. Behind her, the soldiers exchanged glances.

“She’s not rational,” I pleaded. “We can’t punish her for this…”

“Secretary James.” Chief President turned. “Are you aware what will happen if we let this go unpunished?”

“Sir?”

“We’re cattle to them. And every time they throw a hissy fit they start slaughtering.”

“But it’s their custom.”

“Ours, now, too,” he concluded.

We decided we would kill her. Or rather, we would have her killed. In public, at a place of our choosing, shortly after, that evening.
Nick walked me to my car. I cried for the first time in what seemed like the half-bliss of eternity. I knew that girl would be alone—because I knew I wouldn’t watch. 

Through tears, I fumbled with my keys. Keys unlocked things, and yet I could not find my fingers along its light contours. Nick took them from me, opening my car door.

“Why?” I whispered. “Why did she do it?”

He looked at me, his eyes dim but not darkened. He only shrugged. “She wanted to.”

“What? She wanted to defy the empire?”

“No. She wanted to be free. There’s a difference. One has consequences. The other is just a compulsion.”

We parted ways without a word, but I kissed his cheek before I left. On the early nights of spring, Skye and I would follow the lights of the city to the harbour. We would go out to the same spot, finding each other in the darkness of the shore to hold each other before the spring moonlight. 

“Hello, stranger,” she would finally say to me, as we caught ourselves in the gazes of passersby. The night Krumins died, I did nothing but follow those lights, hoping Skye would not be there.

What I wanted more than anything was to see my father and mother there, to see my father hold her in that same way he had all those years ago… and I, I wanted to ask them how they found their happiness, their joy. Oh, they had such overwhelming joy. He would wrap his arms around her, my mother said, and she’d lean against his shoulder, and they could have nothing but their silence before the endless bay. In each other’s arms, they could be free.

I found myself there alone, and so I lay face down in the sand. 

“Hello, stranger.”

“Go away,” I told her.

“Nope. Can you get up for me?”

“Why ask? If you want me to, you can just make me.”

Skye’s footsteps set themselves beside me, but her movements were careful as she sat down.

“You think I would do that?” she asked quietly, as she drew a line in the sand. “Maybe we should separate, then.”

“You could stop that, too.”

Sneering, she chuckled at the offer, kicking up sand in front of her. “Do you know what eprtha’a means in our language? It’s not just an ability; it’s an ancient etymon, one we derive several meanings from. Humans would call it something more like coercion in English. That’s what makes us sister species, our unnatural desire to dominate.” She placed a hand against my back, and her warmth flooded through me with the sweetness of summer honey. I sighed. I picked myself up, though irked by the sand that ran down my braided hair. Skye smiled at me. Her cheeks were human, brown like mine.

“Why did you choose this form?” I muttered. “There weren’t better faces to choose from?”

She looked into the distance. “You don’t think I look pretty?”

“I do. But that’s not what pretty looks like.”

“Where?”

“In the place I called home.”

She frowned. The moon, like a bowl of dandelion petals and milk, hung as a prize for those who dare take it. What could I tell her that she didn’t already know? That we humans had jockeyed for the moon only at the threat of killing each other, that we strove for those hollow victories of empire, that these motifs were where we had learned to find pride? 

“Is Homeworld better than this?” I asked.

“No. It’s… the same. You and I are the same.”

“You’ve told me.”

“Then let me teach you,” she said, taking my hand. “How we will crush our enemies.”

“Eprtha’a?”

“Eprtha’a,” she concluded.

I must admit: the offer was alluring. To use their power against them, their power to control, to exact compliance. To constrain them: kneel, as we had knelt before the ideal of their preeminence. To coerce them: give in, as we had been made to submit time and time again. To restrain them: fear as we had feared them and the curling whips of their tongues to dismiss us as they pleased. It was then I realized I was not thinking of the Guests who had taken our home.

“What if our enemies aren’t the same?” I murmured. I took her in my arms, like my father had taken my mother, like he had loved her, like she had loved him. But tears began to stream down my face, burning. 

“Skye,” I whispered, kissing her. “Would we even be free?”