THE NEXT DAY NIGHT

I awoke as I always did in Wonambi: to magically scheduled, aether-powered lights. Without their help, waking and staying awake would have been beyond my ability. My first thoughts were still of household chores, and of the various preparations for a busy day of managing the care and education of my younger siblings. I regularly wondered when that would fade, if ever. Did I want it to, or would moving on from that mean losing another important part of myself? Would I run out of parts to give?

After a moment of panic at not being in my room, I remembered that this was my room. I was in the right place. No one was waiting for me, expecting anything of me, relying on me. Perhaps back in Forrester's Crossing, my siblings were relying on me, and I had failed them. Had been failing them for months. I had to keep reminding myself that I was not their mother. Even so, I felt as though I was letting them down.

But surely, Father and Mother were making sure they were taken care of properly. As our parents, that was their responsibility. It may have been difficulty adjusting to the loss of two daughters at first, but that was months ago. The situation had to be long resolved now. Normal. There was no point in me worrying about it.

My worries never seemed to care whether there was a point.

Regardless of my worries, no one was depending on me. I was expected to show up to my lessons, but no one would be impacted if I failed to show, except myself. I had to put in the effort to attend for me, not for anyone else. Yes, my lessons would eventually allow me to contribute to Mage society, but that too was for my own benefit, in exchange for my food, clothing and lodging.

I reached for my scryer and balanced it on my lap. I operated the levers and knobs with my flesh hand, ordering Liberty to fetch me a simple breakfast. The domestic demon responded more accurately to specific magical commands, but they took longer to give than spoken orders. It was quicker than walking to the kitchen, and allowed me to dress in the meantime. I attached my arm first, ensuring that it was properly seated and connected, and checking that its aetherbottle had been filled while I slept. While I could dress myself single-handedly, the functional arm made it easier.

A scratching against my bedroom door signaled Liberty's arrival. I checked that my shirt was properly tucked and fastened, and pressed the switch to unlock the door. The little monstrosity scuttled in on metal legs. It produced distorted animal squeals with its metal-enhanced mouth while aetherpushers whirred and buzzed. Its beady black eyes gazed up into mine, one alive and the other not. From my experiments, both functioned. I envied and hated the creature for that.

The front pincers reached up to me, gripping two film-wrapped food bars. I reached down and took the bars, unwrapping one and biting into the compressed mixture of fruits, nuts, and grains. It was tasty and nutritious but still felt very unusual in my mouth. This was my life now: eating food produced by strangers using magical machines. Eating alone, and keeping my own schedule based on my own choices. It was not a state of being that I had ever imagined or anticipated. I had been trained to meet the needs of my parents and siblings, with the expectation of soon transferring that same mindset over to my husband and then our children. And of course to do all for the Great Maker, the Clerics, and the Pure.

Absently, while deep in thought, I finished chewing the first bar and opened the second. I dropped the wrappers down for Liberty to consume.

I was no longer sure what the Great Maker wanted from or for me. His own messengers had lifted me up on wings and conveyed me to this city of his avowed enemies. Was this a punishment? Had I been forsaken? What would happen to me away from my parents' authority, and the protection that only came from being under authority? No great harm had befallen me during my time in the city. I had been made welcome and somewhat comfortable. I even felt a little more whole than I had upon arrival. That wasn't to say that I needed two hands to be myself, but there were moments when I felt the lack keenly. Despite all those positives, I regularly expected some great doom to catch up to me.

Nothing seemed to be happening, so I tried to let myself relax. All my life I had learned and worked, so I chose to continue doing what I was good at. Early on, I had more than half expected to fulfill my duty to raise children by becoming a carer, but I quickly understood that I was too much of an outsider. How could I care for children when I had undergone experiences entirely foreign to them? To thall, rather.

An alarm beeping on my scryer reminded me that I had to leave soon. Without such alarms, I might easily lose half the morning pondering and re-pondering my situation. I grabbed my scryer, found my violet backpack, and slid it inside. I still had a jacket packed — it hadn't been cold yesterday, but it might today — so I shouldn't need anything else. My clothes were among the few splashes of colours in my room. Skids had a few pictures on sa's walls and trinkets on a shelf, but I was yet to collect any. My walls were sheer cream and my bedding was a very pale peach colour. The floor was a very neutral grey, as was the tubular metal frame of my bed. None of the surfaces were patterned. The combination felt drab, but I preferred it to Skids' riot of clashing colours.

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"Get in the bag," I ordered Liberty. It understood that and complied quickly. I slung my pack over my shoulder, left my room, and found my shoes in the closet by the front door.

"Heading off to class?" Skids asked from the kitchen.

"You know it," I said with a little more cheer than I felt.

"Well I hope you have a more exciting night than me."

There was a break in the conversation as I struggled a little pulling my shoes on. They had no laces but they still posed a minor challenge. "Everyone hopes that," I said once I was done. If anything too interesting happened to the hive's guards, something bad was going down.

Skids shrugged. "Then I hope you have a more exciting night than Slink."

"Slink probably stayed up ridiculously late and is sleeping in until lunch," I guessed. That happened often. "I'd better go."

"Please consider changing your mind about the chroma team. And don't forget that 'del' doesn't mean deliver!" Skids called after me.

"That only happened once!" I shot back, but the door had already closed between us.

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The closest training centre was only two blocks away. The academy I attended was six blocks in the opposite direction. I appreciated the walk. It helped me become fully alert before spending most of the night at a desk.

The view inside the hive still fascinated me, even though I had now walked this path well over a hundred times. The hexagonal shape of all the buildings was still unsettling to an eye used to square corners. The contrasting and bold colours everywhere were tempered only slightly by the presence of various cultivated plants. The multilevel nature of the hive was one of the most mindbending features. While the pure did have multistorey buildings and basements, having multiple layers of city felt very different. I was 'outdoors' walking beside a street, but instead of open sky above me, the void was cut off by a ceiling, which also served as the next level's floor.

Actually that was a simplification. There was some amount of utility space between our ceiling and the floor above it. The same went for our floor, though I still sometimes felt wary about falling through. I also sometimes feared suffocating on stale air, in spite of the massive fans ensuring circulation. Other times I worried about being sucked into a fan, even though that was impossible for multiple reasons.

The most striking feature of the hive was its people. I had long since learned to identify people's roles from their clothing, hair, tattoos and other aspects of presentation. It was still a little difficult not to try to think of thall as either men or women, sometimes. Mages did not draw such a distinction in people, and were quite horrified that non-mages did. In that regard, thall saw us as animals. The growth pods put them above such things. That might not be a universal mage belief, but it wasn't a topic openly discussed and I had no grounds or will to ask.

Tattoos were common but not universal. Skids didn't have any yet, but was considering changing that. I wasn't ready to even consider the possibility. I hadn't even dyed my hair yet. I was considering putting it into a more adventurous style than shoulder-length natural waves, but hadn't decided on anything. As I wasn't used to wearing bright colours, I had stuck to wearing neutral colours like tan, cream, and grey. Today I was wearing a light grey robe that I felt contrasted best with my skin tone. Violet wrist bangles were my main display of colour, and my shoes also bore some purple streaks. I was considering obtaining a deep purple dress, but wasn't yet ready to take such an extreme step, especially since dresses hadn't caught on yet.

As I drew closer to my destination, the presence of violet and other purples grew more common. It was called the Sixth Way Academy, and catered entirely to hexmages.

"Hey, Chloe He!" an eager voice called from the other side of the street. I recognised that meticulously spiked hair and sleeve of birdlike designs.

I tried not to frown. It was still odd to answer to 'he', which had an entirely different meaning here. "Oh, Spike He. I didn't see you there. Good night!"

"G'night Chloe. Done next week's assignments yet?" Like the majority of the students in my class, he was a few years younger than me, and very eager.

"Almost," I lied. I had finished each of those assignments by the day after they were handed out. Our classwork was almost beneath my notice. A much bigger project was taking up most of my attention, so I dealt with any competing responsibilities swiftly, before I forgot about them.

"What do you think about question four?"

"Uhhh... Question four on which assignment?"

Spike gave me a significant look, as if I'd asked a very stupid question. "Only one assignmnent has more than two questions. Are you really working on them or did you leave it all for the last minute? That's not gonna work. Question four is pretty tough."

"Oh, the one with the turtles! Instead of storing individual counter data you keep dividing the space in half until the pieces are a single sensor, and store the count of one of each pair of halves. It's slower to store but quicker to add up a range of adjacent counters, and it doesn't require any extra data storage space. Though when I say 'dividing in half' that's an oversimplification because you have to pad it out so you don't reach an odd number."

Spike stared. "Seriously, repeated halving works?"

"It's actually pretty foundational to understanding this entire subject. It's all based on halving, or doubling."

He shook he's head. "I don't get it."

"Then maybe you're not cut out to be a hexmage," I said. We'd reached the outer door of the academy and Spike looked like he wanted to argue. "We'd better move quickly, or we'll be late."

"We've got a few minutes."

"I've got Ginnn's class first. And for Ginnn, not being a few minutes early is late."

Spike sighed and turned away. "We'll discuss this later."