Treating Sirens

Solis sat atop the bordering walls of the Great Albedion. Her legs dangled freely over its lunar stone face. She did not need sitting, but she sat. Her hair, with its fiery hue hung nearly as far as her feet, draping in front of her face so she watched the capital tiles below through its ribbony slits.

It was snowing—without the sensation. Crystal snow against her face and the faces of her friends. Like tiny bubbles caressing their hairs. If it was a substance meant to be felt then she’d lost the ability to do so long ago. She’d been getting used to this thing called apathy...

But the words escaped her mouth anyway, in a foreign way: “Aren’t you getting tired of this?”

Below her, Freeder crouched over the tiles patterned upward to look like grass—it was incorporated in her training, to know of things like ‘grass’. A crazed smile on his face like he were laughing at a distant memory, always.

She supposed the question wasn’t meant for him. Solis leaned to her left, then tilted her head so her hair fell away from her eyes. She kept them open wide as she placed her gaze on Zen. He was fascinating to look at. Short black hair and dark focused eyes like he always knew what he was looking at and why.

He watched Freeder continue to paint. Though in his hand, Zen rubbed the flat of his weapon—a black dagger to match the rest of his look.

The question was his now, but he did nothing with it for a long while. Then finally—“Years ago”—he answered. Sheathed his dagger, then its chain. Then turned to face her and returned a question: “Wanna quit?”

It burned to hold his gaze. She didn’t like when he stared back at her, but liked Zen, so she held his stare as long as she could. Then set her sights back on Freeder in the fake field.

His hair brown and wavy and almost catching his shoulders. She liked to pull his hair and watch the curls pull back. In a way, Freeder was focused too. Solis saw it in the way he held his painting tools. His hands steady and fluid as they traced over cheekbones and earlobes. He dipped his utensil in some more of the blue scattered across the tiles and kept going.

Freeder’s weapon was his painting tools as the chained dagger was Zen’s. Solis’s weapons weren’t meant for her hands. They were meant for her mind, but this was preoccupied now.

“Quit.” She thought, loudly. She’d never considered it before. Or maybe she had, some time before she’d lost her focus. ‘Before the incident’ is what Zen would’ve said, but she didn’t remember any incident.

“Yes,” said Zen. “I mean: be free. Free from all of this.”

The crystal snow became loud in her ears. A sensation she felt. “How...”

A faint siren lit her vision. She shook her head; shook it away.

Looking at Freeder’s canvas from her vantage point, Solis decided she didn’t like this planet very much. Maybe it was the sensationless snow or the blue of its people’s blood, or the way her mind seemed to unravel the longer she stayed.

“We can pay our proprietors a visit. And kill. Not for them but for ourselves. To free ourselves.”

But then Solis would have no direction. She would have to allow her thoughts to burst down every road and try to follow. Her mind would have to unravel further until she would fall apart.

“No!” She yelled, shaking her head, stripping away the sensations. She did not want that.

The Parentals gave them order. They gave them targets. A place to go and people to kill. She did not have to think this way.

“You used to want this, Solis. We used to fight for it.” He turned to her, his eyes blazing. “To be free. Remember,” he urged her, but his words painted violent sirens across her head—their lights and their noise. It hurt. He was hurting her.

She shoved him. “No!” Why had she asked him silly questions? Zen’s brain was not like hers. It knew things. Knew its path. It did not try to stretch itself apart.

She stood and backed away from her friend, taking a battle stance that felt comforting. The crystal snow picked up between them. He mirrored her, ready for her attacks, always.

She readied her blades, they flitted by her back in the shape of a bird’s wings. Many blades working separately, but held together by her mind. They spread on either side of her, pointing their fangs at Zen, but she didn’t want— she never wanted to attack him, even the times when she did, so she screamed in anger.

She felt Freeder’s eyes on them. He would understand. Zen had said the incident had changed him too. His mind used to work like Zen’s and now it was fractured like hers.

The Parentals were punishers in this way. They’d set their children on planets that needed treatment and release, but the three of them had received treatment before too. Zen had told her himself. And Zen had received it too. That was why he could not fight for long. He needed sitting.

He should be sitting now. Not thinking. He looked tired.

She shook the sirens away.

A streak of blue paint cascaded down the air between them. Freeder’s paint. He stepped through it, crouching upon the Great Albedion even though he used to be below. His paint acted as a tunnel, ridding away long distances of space within the time it took him to flick a stroke.

When he stood, he faced her. His smile aimed at nothing as he watched a spot of nothing. But he was against her; their thoughts were united against her. She screamed again.

“I’m sorry,” Zen said, “I won’t bring it up again, until you’re—... until—”

He gulped then. His face twisting. Pain from inside him unleashing. It was the Parentals’ treatment. Like her sirens, and Freeder’s smile. This was why he should be sitting. But that’s not what he did. It was in a second that all his energy gave out at once. Freeder acted first, lunging his leg back with his strange fluidity, he caught Zen with his calf then pivoted to face him and rested him gracefully down.

Solis was beside him in an instant, her blades clattering to the ground in whichever way. She cradled his head, watched his crystal cold sweat. Freeder slid his painting tool from his ear and tried to use Zen as a canvas. Solis roared at him and tried to slap away his hand, but he dodged and grinned at her.

Pinks and reds and lightning whites shot blades through her brain. They tinted her sights. She needed guidance. Someone to tell her what to do or where to go or how to help him. The parentals were her direction, but Zen was her stability. He was the ground that kept her standing.

Not Solis. Zen needed help; he needed treatment. But this treatment was eating him.

She was cold.

The snow was cold, and she was scared, and they were all in pain, and she finally understood.

It was not treatment that they needed, but release.