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Your name is Lynera Skalbi, and today, you are going to need to be very, very brave. Today is the day you’re going to tell your best friend, Bronya Ursama, that you have strong flushed feelings for her. It’s understandable, you remind yourself; she’s strong, gorgeous, and compassionate, more so than any other troll you know. She’s also a traitor to the empire.
You are her confidante and second-in-command, the only other troll who knows about the illegal grub rehabilitation she’s doing down here in the brooding caverns. It breaks her proverbial pump biscuit to see the little wigglers culled for simple mistakes like weakness or illness, you see. But you’re more occupied by your constant fear of the Heiress’s drones swarming the caverns and culling her — and, in all likelihood, half of your blood caste to make a point. But the time you have with her, when it’s just you two, makes everything worth it. Doesn’t matter if you’re coddling sick grubs. Doesn’t matter if your cleaning up after a lusus who ate something it oughtn’t’ve. With her by your side, any hell could feel like paradise.
In your diary, when you aren’t getting your feelings out through poetry, you’re writing about the burdens you carry for her. Her secrets weigh upon you like great stones. It makes your duties to the other jades all the more exhausting, especially when you have to keep them away from her nursery. You keep a brave face, but the truth is you’re drowning. It’s too much. You’re jumpier and jumpier, and even though the sopor puts you to sleep just fine, you don’t feel at all rested when you wake up. You need to drop something. Anything.
So you figured you should get rid of the only secret that’s yours alone, get that off of your back. You’re scared, of course. You’d be crazy not to be. This could ruin everything. But if you don’t, you don’t know how much longer you’ll be able to keep it together.
It’s the middle of the day, and most of the jades are out cold in their recuperacoons. But Bronya has been worried about this little purpleblood grub who doesn’t chirp and chitter like he should. She’s been waking up in the middle of the day to check on him. It’s rare for her to have privacy, so you’ll have to take the chance you have.
The caverns are dark and cool, even midday, and the stillness makes the air feel thick in your bellowsacs. It’s dreamlike in the fungal glow. But you keep your calm, and without a sound, you make your way to the nursery. When you come around the right corner, your eyes snap to a particular window, and you see a faint light glowing from within. You face grows warm, and your breath catches.
You pass through the nursery’s doors with a practiced, fluid ease. You’re good at going about quietly when you need to. You only pause when you come to that final door you need to pass through, the last thing between you and her.
You could go back. It would be easy. But easy would just keep you where you are. Easy means drowning, means everything falls apart. Besides, a troll is at their most courageous when they’re shaking the hardest. Or at least that’s what you read one time.
You open the door. That’s when you hear crying.
And then you see her, in the middle of the room, on her knees, shoulders quivering. She looks weak, beaten.
“Bronya?” you say, barely above a whisper. She snaps around, tears in her eyes. At first, she looks terrified, which breaks your heart. But then, she hurts you more; relief washes across her face.
“Oh, thank goodness,” she says. It breaks your heart wide open, and you almost cry too.
“What’s wrong?” you ask, concern tamping down the waver in your voice. You cross the room, reach out, kneel next to her. Wrap your arm around her shoulder. Comfort her.
She’s holding the little purple wiggler in her arms. It’s sleeping, peaceful as can be. She looks at it like it’s the most magical thing she’s ever seen, the way she looks at every wiggler she holds in her arms.
“It’s fine,” she whispers. “Karako likes a little song to get to sleep after a meal sometimes.”
You think about when you’ve heard her singing to the grubs. Her voice is the softest thing you can imagine. A chill runs up your spine.
“Why are you crying?” you ask. She smiles at you, sadly.
“Do you think anyone ever did this for us when we were grubs?” she asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she starts, choking back a sob. “Well, I mean, do you?”
You’re still not sure what to make of her question. So you deflect.
“I don’t really remember being a grub,” you admit, truthfully.
“Do you think there’s a chance he’ll remember this?” she asks.
“I doubt it,” you say, neutral. Bronya’s expression falls.
“Uh, I mean, that’s lucky for us, though, right?” you say, rallying. “If any of these grubs remembers what you did for them here, that’s a risk! You might get…” And you want to finish your sentence, but you’ve got this image of drones flooding through the caverns and blasting Bronya to smithereens playing in your think pan, over and over, and it makes you sick with fear.
“There’s no way they can tell anyone what I’m doing,” Bronya laments. “You’re right. It’s safer.” She stands and sets the purp… Karako. She sets Karako in a shallow sopor pool, alongside half a dozen sleeping grubs in a variety of colors. She stares at him. You stand at her side, and you slide your hand into hers as the tears come again. She pulls you into an embrace as the sobs get too strong to hold back and it’s everything you ever hoped for but why did it have to happen like this why does your paradise have to be poisoned does every dream have to turn rotten and sickly when it comes to life why why why WHY WHY LIKE THIS?
You can’t really find words for how it hurts. So you say nothing, and you hold her, and you caress her back as she stains your shirt jade green. You can’t hold back your own tears anymore. But you know what will happen if you wake the wigglers, so you choke them back as best as you can. bellowsacs spasming, you clench, and you guide Bronya out of the room, down into the stairwell. You’ve cried here before; the grubs won’t hear.
And before you can let go, Bronya looks up at you, a wet and puffy mess.
“Why do we even try? Is this even gonna change anything?”
We.
“You told me one time,” you say, choking back tears. This moment is about her, not you, and it needs to stay that way. “If you didn’t, it would hurt even more.”
She sniffles, eyes squeezed shut.
“Why is everything so hard out there?” she asks. “Why do so many have to die?”
Every syllable hits like a knife. You offer her a handkerchief from your pocket. Bronya coughs, sniffles, accepts it, and blows her nose into it. She’s flushed green from ugly crying, and her eyeliner has run down her face in streaks. That’s when you see, maybe for the first time, how rarely Bronya lets her guard down. She even did her makeup to rock a wiggler to sleep. Nobody’s allowed to see this. Bronya’s the figurehead of the brooding caverns. She can’t let anything slip, not with what she’s doing down here.
“I don’t know,” you say. “I don’t… It doesn’t matter. You’re giving these little wigglers a chance to be trolls and to see the world outside of the caverns. None of them would have that without you. And we all have to go eventually! But you give them a chance to live a little more. Maybe some of them will make it to space. Maybe Karako will get to join the fleet and see the universe! He’d be dead already if it weren’t for you. And I know that doesn’t maybe feel like much, but… but it’s a lot better than what they’d get without you.”
Bronya blows her nose into your handkerchief again. She’s stopped sobbing, at least. That’s a good sign. You hope. Then, she holds the handkerchief against her dress with both hands, eyes shut, taking deep breaths through her nose.
“You always know exactly what to say Lynera,” she says. “Thank you. You’re a wonderful friend. I’m glad I can trust you with as much as I do.”
Your heart swells to bursting. You want to tell her how you feel about her, how much she matters to you. But the words won’t come.
Bronya pulls you into an embrace, which you return. She leans on you. She’s been doing that for a long time; she, too, has a lot to carry.
It hurts. Everything hurts. The tears flow, silent.
“You put so much on your shoulders,” you whisper. She nods, sniffles. When she pulls away, she’s smiling, and though she has tears in her eyes, the sadness is gone. Her smile is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, and it’s easy to take pride in helping her find it again; you can’t help but smile too.
“What did I do to deserve you?” she asks. You laugh, a little choked but sincere.
“I ask myself the same thing all the time,” you say. Oh dear, that was a little too honest, wasn’t it? But Bronya isn’t taking it quite
that
way, or at least you don’t think she is.
“We should both get some sleep,” she says, placing her hand on your arm. You nod. Better not to speak right now.
She lives a ways away from you, so you have plenty of time to curse your cowardice on the way back to your cave. But that’s not what you do. Actually, you’re lucky things turned out the way they did today, you tell yourself. Bronya’s so strong; you can’t always tell when she’s weary.
You would rather die than become a burden to her. And you feel like you learned what that means today. Your feelings could become a burden. She doesn’t need… that. What you want from her.
So you’ll carry that weight, just a little longer. And you’ll make a heaven of hell. Within a few sweeps, it won’t matter. She’ll go through the Ordeals, and then she’ll leave Alternia for good. She won’t need you to keep her secrets then. You’ll have a little time to breathe before you follow to your own fate.
If it takes all you have in you, you’ll protect Bronya Ursama, and you’ll carry whatever burden she asks. And she smiles at you, and that will have to be enough.
You curl up in the corner of your room as the pressure becomes overwhelming, and you set all of your burdens down for a few blessed moments, and you let this one small moment be about you and you alone.
Eventually, you dry your tears, and you slip into your recuperacoon, grateful for a little oblivion.