Wildlings

57: The Sun

"This is really amazing." Sannah stroked the page of Judit's book admiringly. "Some of these skills are just... genius. Such a clever way to use the resources at hand both effectively and sustainably." She turned the page.

"Rama wrote it," Judit declared, a fuzzy feeling in her stomach at the thought of him. "He said it was his life's work."

"I can see that." Sannah nodded, twisting the book to get a closer look at a diagram of a spinning-wheel. "It's really something."

Judit smiled, proud for Rama, and turned her head to survey the sea and sky, sparkling huge and blue around them, infused by the light of the sun.

They'd been on the boat for days, but Brock had said that they were on course. If it didn't take so long to get there, it wouldn't be so safe.

"I just can't believe how sophisticated the Natives were," Sannah went on, her nose still buried in the book. "I mean, I really thought, all that stuff we did at school about savage attacks, heads on spikes..."

Judit looked up sharply to see if Gaen was in earshot. Skit, he was. He'd heard her too. Was Sannah about to get a roasting?

"It just goes to show," Sannah carried on, oblivious, "the power of the Generic hegemony, that they could rewrite history to such an extent. Demonise a society so superior to their own in so many ways."

Judit glanced again at Gaen. He was looking at Sannah like she'd just come down in a beam of light, was still brushing off her wings and halo. Judit couldn't suppress the grin that was spreading across her face, licit making her cheeks ache.

"That hegemony, eh?" she said, trying to keep a straight face.

"You must be really proud." Sannah looked up at Gaen, still standing and staring at her. "That this is your heritage."

He blushed, almost purple, and opened his mouth then closed it again. Judit decided to jump to his aid, cos she was nice like that.

"Yours too," she reminded Sannah. "You're part Native, remember? Rama told me."

"Not that it matters." Gaen had finally scraped his wits back up off the deck. "I mean, Lulu and Deera are no different from us. Ancestors don't really mean anything."

The oldest Exotic girl looked up from the other side of the deck, where she was chopping vegetables with Merle, and said something unintelligible.

"She wants to know why you're talking about her," Merle reported, without looking up from her chopping board.

"Trust you to be an immediate expert in their language," Gaen grumbled under his breath, scowling at his sister.

"It's called Tvu, you nyaff." Merle said condescendingly, then turned to say something nonsensical to Lulu, which resulted in both girls collapsing in giggles. Deera leaned in, and Lulu repeated Merle's joke, and she laughed too, shaking her head.

"Where's Pii?" Gaen turned away, clearly sore that the joke was on him. And in front of Sannah, too.

"She's here." Jaddy's voice drifted from the back of the wheelhouse, shortly followed by the emergence of his body. He held up a paper boat. "We're making boats. She likes how fast they move in the slipstream."