Jeanne G'Fellers - No Sister of Mine

Quall’s head!”
Malley gasped. “You wouldn’t?”
LaRenna cleared her throat and pursed her lips. “Watch me.”
“Oh no!” Malley’s normal monotone disappeared into a shriek. “You’re not getting me in deep this time!” She grabbed LaRenna’s boot tops, pulling her to the floor. The weapons belt circling LaRenna’s curving waist gave a metallic clank as it bounced on the floor tiles.
“Ouch!” LaRenna rubbed her insulted backside. “Would you give me a warning or a cushion?”
“Let me know before you decide to wash Quall’s hair and you won’t need a cushion for your rump,” grumped Malley, offering a pillow.
“Thanks, Mal. What hair? Quall’s guardian, remember?”
“And what’s wrong with that?” Malley snapped. “Or do you forget what I am?”
“How could I?” A brief, intimate familiarity swept into LaRenna’s tone. “Besides, I knew you were when we first met.”
“At sixteen?” Malley’s hands found their way to her mussed crop of flaxen hair. “I wasn’t even quite sure myself at that age.”
“Everyone decides in their own time. I’d just decided before we met.” LaRenna tousled her roommate’s short, unruly locks as she ran her free hand over her own loosely tacked spirals. “You chose well.”
Malley reveled in the warmth of her touch. How she loved LaRenna’s caresses, infrequent and platonic as they might be. Malley had always been attracted to women like her roommate— their curves, their gentle smell when she bent to kiss them, but with LaRenna her attraction neared obsession. Familiarity and trust led to the mind linking required of Taelach mates, they said. Malley held tight to those words. “Where do you think they’ll send us?”
“Who knows?” said LaRenna softly. “But at least we won’t be alone.”
“Yes, we will.” Malley’s head now rested fully against LaRenna’s shoulder. Should her urges, her emotions be expressed before they were separated? No, the timing just wasn’t right.
“You’re assigned to a Kimshee your first post.”
“That’s only temporary.” Malley’s return sounded almost angry. “Maybe it’s me, but I always feel so uneasy when I’m in a room of Auts.”
“When were you ever in a room of Auts?” Malley’s teeth clenched and released at LaRenna’s biting observation. “Most of them accept us these days. They depend on us as much as we do them.” LaRenna continued stroking Malley’s hair and smiled thoughtfully. Her high-shouldered roommate was demonstrating some of the customary Taelach reservations. Besides, a strong sense of protection was part of a guardian’s nature, and Malley’s had come to include LaRenna. It was all right that it be extended to her. They had been roommates for quite some time. “Like it or not, we are related to them.”
“Yeah, we’re mutant cousins.” Malley slid down to use LaRenna’s thigh as a headrest, affording her the lingering physical contact she longed for.
“That’s not our fault.”
“They treat you differently if you’re Taelach. It’s as if they don’t trust us.” Malley toyed with the holder loops of LaRenna’s loose belt. “You’re losing weight again. Get much smaller and someone will mistake you for a child.”
LaRenna ignored the affectionate concern. Malley knew well enough that she was frequently mistaken for a Taelach youth. “Look at our history. We’re like them but nothing like them. Too hu-man—” she stumbled over the pronunciation—“in appearance. Physically too similar to the witches the Autlach’s Raskhallak deity warns against. Besides, would you trust a people who obtain their young by taking yours? Even if what they take are your castoffs, your misfits, your cursed?”
“Your gay.”
“There’re gay Auts.”
“Not if they’re caught at it.” Malley shuddered a bit. “The way they cleanse . . . it’s so . . .”
“Fire cleansing’s been banned so there’s not as many disfigurements as there used to be. Kimshees are helping in that regard.” LaRenna sat up a bit taller.
“Only ’cause we forced the Auts into it as part of the treaty.”
“Doesn’t matter how it came to be, only that Kimshees are opening Aut eyes. A Kimshee’s purpose, besides bringing infants to their raisers, is to help us adapt to the Aut and them to us. That’s why I chose to become one.”
“Well, I certainly couldn’t do it.”
“Why?” asked LaRenna, though she had no doubt about the answer.
“Too much bad blood.” Malley’s lean face darkened with contempt. Autlach blood might course through Taelach veins, but it certainly didn’t mean they had to be an intricate part of their lives. Malley couldn’t understand why a beautiful, bright woman like LaRenna would want to either. Taelachs who never dealt with Autlachs seemed to live much happier lives. “They used to hunt us. Slave us. Burn us alive. Cleanse us en masse. Worse. Many Auts would still have it that way if it weren’t for our technology. How can you possibly get past that enough to deal with them on a daily basis?”
Malley’s bitterness deeply disturbed LaRenna but it was something she knew she’d never change. Like Autlach prejudices, they were ingrained into the Taelach mentality. “I think about the future. I think about the young ones I will get to hold before their own raisers do. I think of how lucky we are that now we no longer have to abduct mothers carrying Taelach sisters to ensure the baby’s survival. I think of how the Kinship’s numbers are growing because we finally convinced the Autlach to accept us.”
“They merely tolerate us because we could blow them from the sky at any moment and they know it.” Malley’s mouth twitched with scorn. “And so do you.”
“I admit it’s sometimes a strained relationship, but it’s something and more than we’ve ever had before.” LaRenna’s fingers unconsciously tightened about Malley’s hair until her eyes opened. LaRenna’s downward gaze was by far her most serious. “I want to help change things, be part of the peace. That’s why I chose to become Kimshee.”
“And go through apprenticeship training to do it. You’ll never finish your schooling.” Malley ran her finger down LaRenna’s soft palm. “Do you ever think about them?”
“Kimshee apprentices?”
“No, your birth parents. Don’t you ever wonder what they’re like or if you have Aut brothers and sisters?”
“Of course I do.”