Second floor common room, Tuesday afternoon

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae had decided today was a good day to have a lazy afternoon. She had her crappy (actually, perfectly servicable) tote bag she'd made in class to decorate, a whole bottle of white-out to stink the place up with, and she'd barely watched any TV since she'd gotten here, so she had lots of shows she could catch up on.

Theoretically, anyway. All she could find were weird preteen sitcoms, where kids were excited to get to go to school, and everyone spent the majority of their time screaming.

"Where's the sells-weed-out-behind-the-equipment-shed character?" she wondered, as she watched two girls freak out about being caught rearranging the letters on a highway sign. "Or the 'burnouts vaping in the stairwell' characters? These shows are so unrealistic."

[open!]

Comments

[thishouseishaunted]

"You're probably right," Mae said. "They're probably supposed to make kids think being a teenager is all about bright happy parties and only breaking the little rules."

[justice_undone]

"I'm guessing that's not what your life is like, then."

Breq poured water into the kettle.

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae snorted. "What, and yours is?"

Admittedly, it was possible that was exactly what Breq's life was like. Mae had only been here a week so far, after all.

[justice_undone]

"No. But some people's are."

She reached for the teapot.

"Tea?"

[thishouseishaunted]

"No thanks," Mae said. She wasn't a big tea drinker. "People who think their lives are really like this are lying to themselves. Just . . . pasting a happy picture over whatever fucked up crap is really happening."

Admittedly, Mae was from a small, economically depressed town that routinely pasted happy pictures over fucked up crap. Both literally and figuratively.

Still, she felt she had a point.

[justice_undone]

"Some people really are happy," Breq said. "Or at least content with their life and thinking their goals are within their reach. That doesn't mean you don't get a lot of people faking it too."

[thishouseishaunted]

"You sound like my therapist," Mae said.

It wasn't a compliment.

[justice_undone]

"Maybe your therapist has a point." Breq looked up, making sure to smile.

[thishouseishaunted]

The trouble with not having native, instinctual expressions was that sometimes the ones you made sure to use came off . . . not in the way intended.

Mae, for instance, felt very patronized by that smile.

"Whatever," she said, focusing back on her bag and the portrait of her friend Gregg she was carefully painting on it in whiteout. "It's a stupid show."

[justice_undone]

Oh well. Breq poured hot water into the pot.

"I'm not questioning that. Although you should see the ones with spaceships."

She secretly watched scifi shows with spaceships when no one was watching and gloated over how bad they were.

[thishouseishaunted]

"You don't like spaceships?" Mae asked. Man, what a tea-drinking, therapist-like downer.

[justice_undone]

"I do like spaceships," Breq said. "If they're accurately portrayed."

She obviously wasn't inclined to laughing.

[thishouseishaunted]

"So, what, you only like them if they can only make it as far as the moon?" Mae's world's space program was a little . . . lackluster.

Wait.

"Hang on, are you an alien?"

That would possibly explain a lot.

[justice_undone]

"It depends on your definition," Breq replied. "But I'm not from Earth, and most of the spaceships I've met have been able to travel a lot further than the moon."

[thishouseishaunted]

". . . Met?"

Yeah, Mae wasn't the sort to let a comment like that just go by.

[justice_undone]

"You think you can't meet a spaceship?" Breq asked, looking at Mae.

[thishouseishaunted]

"Not the kind I'm familiar with."

[justice_undone]

"Because you see them as things?"

Breq wasn't going to judge her if she did. Most Radchaai had seen her as a thing, after all.

"The ships I've known have been AIs."

[thishouseishaunted]

"My town can't even get cellphone service," Mae said. "We barely have regular intelligence."

Much less artificially created intelligence.

[justice_undone]

"Do you miss it?"

People missed all sorts of places, or they could be happy to leave the place where they grew up.

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae shrugged. "Not really."

A beat.

"I miss the trains."

She hadn't entirely realized that until right then.

[justice_undone]

"Where do you go on them?" Breq asked. "Around town?"

[I thought I had pinged back]