The Selection: but less competitive, more wholesome

Off Both Ends

In under twenty-four hours, we had an irritable pair of palace officials knocking on our door.

"Miss Kira?"

"Maybe."

"Attitude, Kira!" Mom shouted from the back of the house.

One of them huffed. "We've been to your apartment, and spent quite sometime attempting to contact you before one of your neighbors directed us here. We're from the palace, and we're here to make an assessment of the security measures needed to ensure your safety until you're brought to the palace."

I resisted the urge to make a face, but couldn't batten down all of it. I'd spent two years learning and enforcing 'security,' was that not enough?

"Standard procedure, Miss Kira."

I took a breath. "Fair enough." I stepped aside and extended my arm to invite them in.

"Thank you. Is this your primary residence, Miss Kira?"

"I spend quite a lot of time here."

"We only have the resources to secure one residence per Selection candidate. I'm afraid you'll have to settle for one, for the time being."

May raced out of the living room where she'd been eavesdropping. "Oh please move back in! Please please please?"

"Are there more of you coming?" I asked the officers.

"I beg your pardon, Miss?"

I gestured between the pair of them. "Will there be more....officials, before departure?"

"Oh yes, quite a few more, I'd expect."

I couldn't face that alone. "Yes, this is my primary residence."

May shrieked. I picked her up with an arm around her middle, and one over her mouth. "I'll show you the property." I walked them through, May carried before me like a dancing doll. She giggled the whole time, the gremlin.

After the security officers, appeared a woman intent on dissecting every piece of my application. When she reached the Special Skills section, she sharpened one eyebrow on the word 'acrobatics'.

"And you can still do, all of this?" she inquired. Her gaze lingered on the muscles I'd grown since joining the military.

In reply, I stood, pushed my chair in because I was raised correctly, bent over backwards, and bent, and bent, until when I threw my head back I could just see her from between my knees. "Muscle isn't as flexible as other tissues, so I did lose some of that when I started getting the military injections. But I stopped receiving those when I was discharged, so I'm actually gaining a lot of it back, as long as I practice. Would you like a glass of lemonade?"

Mom had already offered, but I wanted to see just a little more color leave the woman's face when I walked like a broken goblin to the fridge and opened it, still bent in half backward.

She'd pursed her lips at Gerad's dirty knees when she'd come in. She could have that color back when she earned it.

A woman named Silvia called several times, to ask if there was anything in particular if we needed. I liked her from the moment she made it clear she wasn't speaking singularly to me, as many of the other officials had.

"Oh, yes, actually." I'd been worrying about this part. "Has anyone been able to obtain a copy of my medical records?" I knew they'd begetting their noses as far into everyone's business as was physically possible, it was just a matter of timing. Everything was a matter of timing.

Her tone turned concerned. "Is there something we should know, Miss Kira?"

"I'm on the list to receive a kidney transplant, when one becomes available. I get dialysis four times a week. Otherwise I'm completely healthy and functional. But I will need about four hours, four days a week, for treatments."