His teacher was standing in front of the desks, her lesson plan in hand, looking over at him with her steel rimmed glasses, matching her steel colored curls. ‘Hiru, would you come up to the board and solve the next problem?’ Math, that was good, he was good at math. Veridia had a dedicated tutor for math, it was the basis of all other science, she had said, with a stern look on her face that meant he should agree with her. He had nodded solemnly.
His math tutor said he was solving problems two years ahead of his age group, and yet the problem on the board was like nothing he had come across yet. Too many numbers and symbols. His breathing increased, his heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest. He could feel his palms start to sweat as everyone in the class turned to look at him, staring at him with wide eyes, wondering why he couldn’t solve such a simple problem. Their eyes just kept getting larger, until they took over their whole faces, just massive eyes staring at him from all sides. ‘Why can’t you do such a simple thing?’ the teacher said in Veridia’s voice.
Hiru woke up with a start, face clammy with sweat and the sheets rumpled at his feet. He pulled back the bed curtain, it was still gray outside, the morning sun had just started to rise. There was no point in going back to sleep, he thought with begrudging acceptance. The sting of Veridia’s imagined criticism still echoed in his ears. She hadn’t yet said such a thing, but sometimes he could see the frustration, the dismissal in her eyes. Maybe if he was just a bit better, a bit smarter, she would be satisfied with him.
He put on his bear slippers, they matched the teddy bear Verro had given him for his birthday last year, which was much more appreciated than the math work books his mother had given him. ‘You’re not a little boy anymore,’ she had said. He had done his best to look grown up when she had said it, to be glad that his mother thought he was mature enough to have a big boy gift, but right now he was glad that Verro still thought him young enough for a teddy bear. He squeezed it tightly to his face, the comforting lavender smell and soft plush fur soothing him from the nightmare.
He decided to walk around the green house while he waited for breakfast. Veridia liked to have breakfast together and would be annoyed if he ate without her, but he didn’t want to stay in his room after the nightmare. He walked quietly down the hallway, everything eerie in the pre-morning light, empty doorways looming over him and casting strange shadows. He clutched his bear tighter.
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The green house was in the back of the house, connected by a set of old double doors that his mother had imported from abroad. The wood was a vibrant red-orange, carved with images of the doves that his mother kept behind them, with a large whole pearl carved in the shape of an orchid for each of the door knobs. He opened one of the doors with difficulty, using his whole body to push it open while his teddy watched from where it was sitting on the floor. ‘You could have helped,’ Hiru chidded playfully after he finally got it cracked open enough for him to pass.
He walked around the stained glass room, the soft coos of the doves calling to him from their cages, though he knew better than to open their enclosure. They were carnivorous, and would attack him if given the chance, like vicious flying piranha. He had seen them take a bite out of the attendant that had imported them, he had no wish for the same fate.
He made his way to the back, stepping through the small door there to another, smaller room, where his personal plants were kept. His mother had it built when he started collecting cacti, as they required a very different climate from Veridia’s more tropical collection. The fan keeping the humidity down cooled his skin, wicking away the clamminess left over from his nightmare. He placed his bear on one of the rough hewn wooden benches, under a hanging rat-tail cactus, pretty fuschia blooms peeking over the rim of its planter. He supposed he liked cactuses because they thrived under very little attention, something he hoped he could emulate. That and they were really cute. He especially loved his old man cactus, with its wiry silver hair. He hoped to some day succeed in getting it to bloom the pretty pale pink flowers it had when he got it.
He heard a sound from the other room over the whirl of the fan. The gardeners usually came twice a week, and this was not their day. The only other person that it might reasonably be was Veridia, no one else would dare. He peeked out through the glass door, peering between colored glass panes.
‘...I don’t care what sort of pressure you’re getting from the environmentalists, I’ve had this new uranium mining project in the works for months. I am your biggest campaign contributor, make it work.’ Veridia hung up abruptly and turned, Hiru backed away from the glass, knocking over a planter. ‘Hiru, what are you doing out of bed this early?’ She sounded annoyed. It would probably be better not to tell her about his nightmare, but he desperately wanted to be reassured. ‘I had a nightmare about math class. There was a problem that I couldn’t answer and everyone stared at me.’ It sounded so trite when he said it out loud. He cringed a little. Veridia sighed. ‘I know it's hard being under scrutiny, everyone waiting for you to fail, but you’re a big boy now and you have to be stronger, to prove them wrong, ok?’ She knelt on the floor, ignoring the dirt smudging her silk-lace pajamas and offered him her arms. He rushed into them, grateful for the comfort and doing his best to blink away the stinging in his eyes. Mother wouldn’t want to see him cry. She held him for a while, stroking his back absentmindedly.