With a motion too complicated for my eyes to follow, Remi suddenly folds the whole weave in half, does something while it’s cupped in their hands, then crushes it. The spell explodes into a dazzling cloud of tiny stars that rush toward me, fly a lap around my head, and settle into my hair. They tickle where they rest on the close-shaved side of my head, and a smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. I pick one of the stars from a lock of hair hanging near my face and pinch it between two fingers, then crush it and sprinkle the sparkling residue over Remi’s head.
“There, now we match,” I say, watching the glittering dust settle on their cheeks and the tips of their ears. Their whole face glows warm. Touching maz like this would have majorly freaked me out a few years ago. Remi has helped me get used to it.
“Shouldn’t you be getting your beauty sleep for our job tomorrow?” they say, their voice pitched low, for my ears only.
“Shouldn’t you?” I reply automatically, suppressing a wince at the reflexive snap in my voice.
“Touché. I’m just surprised you’re not hacking into the dating profiles of Kyrkarta’s head of police or something. Isn’t that your usual insomniac boredom killer?”
I shrug, blinking the deck interface out of my contacts altogether so my vision holds nothing but city and sparkling cheeks. “I ran out of interesting people. There are no mysteries anymore. Tragic.”
“You’ll have to start in on the politicians of other cities, I guess. Bring a little spark back into your relationship with the internet.”
I let the hint slide right on by. I can do that just as well here. No need to follow them to Jattapore to dig up their new landlord’s sick tastes and secret hobbies. Besides, if this job goes well, in a day or two they’ll be formally enrolling at KyrU and staying in mystery-free Kyrkarta with me anyway. I watch as they draw a new strand of maz from the necklace I made them last summer. It’s constructed from five concentric circles of fine metallic tubing that act as maz chambers, letting Remi carry a bit of maz wherever they go. I gave it to them for their seventeenth birthday, almost a year ago. The look on their face when they opened the package and heard my explanation, the way our eyes caught and held . . .
My stomach tightens, and I cut my gaze back out to the lights of the city.
“What are you doing up, anyway?” I ask.
They shrug. “I slept too much after the clinic. Wide awake now. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine to do the job tomorrow.”
I breathe long and slow through my nose.
“Good,” I reply, as if that’s my only concern.
Their mouth twists into an odd shape, then smooths back to blank. They coax another strand of sunnaz from the innermost ring of their necklace and twine it around their pointer finger, then weave in the barest trace of motaz from another ring. Making something animated then, able to move on its own. Remi’s specialty. They work silently for several minutes, spinning the maz into a complex tangle of light until, with one taut pull of a thread, the whole thing shifts from strings of light to solid form. A tiny, palm-sized golden bunny.
The bunny hops from their hand up their arm, onto their shoulder, pauses, then leaps straight at my face. It smacks me in the nose with its little rabbit feet, bracing against my face for the jump back to Remi, where it finally nestles into their tousled bedhead. I reach a finger up to pet its tiny glowing ears, catching a few strands of Remi’s hair in the process. It’s soft, so dark it’s almost black, with just a bit of wavy wildness to it, a total contrast to the tame, golden bunny. My gaze slides from their hair to their eyes. And there we pause, suspended in time, under the stars and the neon of our city, locked in connection. The air becomes heavy.
I snatch my hand back and let my gaze fall to my lap.
I feel more than hear Remi’s sigh where their shoulder presses against mine. They lift the tiny golden bunny from their hair and pull the maz strands apart, threading them back into the necklace.
“Do you ever wonder what the people who hire us actually do with the maz?” they ask, voice flat as they start in on a darker, more complex spell. Something for our job tomorrow, probably.
I shrug, and my shoulder brushes against theirs, warm and close. I shiver and scoot away as subtly as I can.
“Not really. Probably not making vicious attack rabbits that want to kick me in the face, unlike some people. I imagine some are cooking up stims or weaving illegal spells, but . . . I think a lot of people just remember having free access to as much maz as they wanted, before the plague. They’re like you. They want to be able to live like they used to.”
I pause and consider, tracing patterns in the stars with my eyes. “I don’t know, maybe that’s naive. The balance of innocent to illegal is probably worse than I think it is. And the people who are buying more maz for daily life aren’t the ones who have none. They’re the ones who miss the convenience and want to get around the rationing. It’s not like we’re maz-liberating heroes or anything. But we need the money for a good cause, right?” I ask, turning to look at them.
They refuse to meet my eyes, instead putting the finishing touches on a deep blue-black spell, then placing it to one side to settle and fuse. It’ll be stronger tomorrow than it would be if we used it right away, the way the leftovers of a spicy dish are always more flavorful the next day. They stare at the spell for a long moment, then fold their hands in their lap and wiggle one foot back and forth.
“I hate the idea of you all doing this really dangerous job just for me. So I can play with this new maz, if that’s really what it is. So I can go to the school I want. Maybe we should just call it—”
“Stop,” I snap. Every muscle goes tense, going from bone-weary tired to thrumming with adrenaline and ready to hit something in a single second. “It’s not all about you, you know.”
“I know that,” they say, matter-of-fact. I purse my lips and brace my hands on the ground to push to my feet, but Remi places one hand on my knee and just says, “Don’t.”
My whole body goes warm. I don’t move. They close their eyes and take a breath, then forge on.
“Do you want me to stay, Dizzy?”
They open their eyes again, and the world falls out from under me. I’m pinned, my lungs and vocal cords frozen, my mind perfectly blank.
Just say it, my brain screams as it comes back online. Stay, please stay, I can’t come with you, but I don’t want to be without you. Please stay.
My body recoils at the thought.
“You want you to stay” are the words that actually came out. “You want to go to Kyrkarta U.”
“That’s not what I asked.” Their hand squeezes my leg, and they turn farther toward me, leaning closer.
“Ask me to stay.”
No, no, no. Pathetic, I’m pathetic, totally unable to form any words that might actually work for this situation. I don’t need them, I can live without them, can start my new job and get my own place, can survive while they abandon me for a new life in Jattapore. They’ll only end up leaving me eventually anyway. Them staying now would only delay the inevitable.
I can’t do this.
I can’t.
Eventually Remi takes their hand away. They push to their feet and brush the dirt off the seat of their galaxy-print sleep pants.