The Big Rains - Sam and Dazzik
Chapter 3
Sam
It’s difficult to set the right sort of scene.
For one, the only tables in the canteen are the big bench type ones. Hardly ideal. Most of the rooms have desks in, and I’m recovered enough from my illness now that dragging one out into the canteen area isn’t difficult. But then the only loose chairs in the downstairs bedrooms are desk chairs, and sitting down for a romantic dinner on wheeled chairs is hardly ideal.
I get lucky in the upstairs bedrooms, finding a couple of solid chairs. The upper management here must have had some say over their rooms because, unlike the downstairs rooms, which are all identical, there are some differences in the layouts and furniture. The chairs are practical, ugly things, nothing like the cute handmade ones the raskarrans have in their homes, but they’ll do. I take them down one at a time and set them on either side of my desk. Progress.
The next part is even harder though - starting with the fact that I only have very old memories to go off. We had no cause to go to the higher tier districts - probably wouldn’t have been allowed through the checkpoints if we tried - but the mistresses at the orphanage weren’t bottom tier like the children in their care. They had the freedom to leave and brought back little bits of higher tier life with them. The things they couldn’t tolerate being without.
I remember the night in question as clearly as if it was yesterday. That morning, a load of the kids in my dorm had been moved out - they’d reached the age where they were considered able to fend for themselves, and were moving into adult housing closer to their workplaces. Move out days were always awful. It was never long afterwards until the beds were full again, but for that one day, the dorms were lonely. I’d struggle to sleep in the sudden, enormous quiet.
After tossing and turning for a while, I decided to sneak up to the kitchens, see if I could steal a bit of extra food. But two of the mistresses were sitting in there together, burning a candle at the centre of the table, instead of using the electric lights, as they ate. The decadence of them using something so scarce for nothing more than ambiance both appalled and delighted me. Dad rarely used our burned down stubs of candles, even when brownouts hit, preferring to make a game of snuggling together in the darkness.
I must have gasped or something, because suddenly the eyes of the two mistresses were on me.
“What are you doing out of bed, Samantha?” one said.
I knew better than to say I was after extra food, so I put on my best sad face.
“I miss my friends.”
The whimper was all acting. Of course I missed them, but I also knew better than to expect sympathy from the mistresses. It was just the response and the emotion I’d judged as least likely to earn me a smack.
“Oh, poor sweet child,” one of the mistresses said. I could hear the malice in her voice, see it in her smile, but I was committed to the act now, and had to go to her when she held her arms out.
Being hugged by someone who absolutely doesn’t like you is never pleasant, but I pretended to be comforted as she stroked a hand over my hair and held me to her heavily perfumed chest. It was then I got a good look at the table - the fancy dishes, the nice cutlery, the tablecloth to hide the cheap, tired table beneath. They even had fancy glasses, a softly bubbling liquid inside them, the bottle it came from sitting in a bucket full of ice. The mistress who wasn’t holding me noticed the direction of my attention and ran her finger down the side of the bottle, sweeping through the condensation gathered on it.
“Do you know what this is, Samantha?”
I shook my head.
“It’s an expensive drink. For adults only. It’s something we only have on special occasions, usually a celebration.”
She tapped her fingers against the glass in front of her, her long nails making the sound ring out. Then she lifted her glass to her mouth and took a generous sip, letting satisfaction fill her features.
“Do you know what we’re celebrating, Samantha?”
I hated how they always used my full name. Hated that everything they said to you was a trap.
“No.”
Pretending ignorance seemed like the best idea.
“We’re celebrating that we never have to see your friends again.”
Their laughter echoes in my ears even now. Delightful women, all of the mistresses.
I pick up my prize, running my finger down the curve of it, just as the mistress did all those years ago. I don’t know if it’s the same drink, but the bottle looks like I remember. Green glass, wider at the bottom, tapering up to a narrow neck. They had it on ice, so I should probably put this in one of the freezers to get the right effect.
A drink to celebrate. I don’t know what the people working here were hoping to celebrate - probably something every bit as horrible as the mistresses celebrating seeing the back of their charges.
It’s a thought that makes my stomach feel heavy - and glad that whoever it was never had enough success to earn their drink. I wonder if it’s bad karma to invoke the ritual used by such terrible people. Perhaps this little idea was doomed from the start.
I slump down into one of the chairs I’ve lugged down here, feeling foolish for wasting my time and energy. Dazzik doesn’t care about eating at the long bench table. He cares that he’s eating consistently for the first time in years. He cares that he’s putting on weight, and I am, too. We don’t need table cloths and strange drinks to celebrate the wins we’ve had since we found each other.
And as for celebrating finding each other - we do that every night.
Just the thought of Dazzik’s body moving over mine stops my mood slipping any further down. Helps me to see the funny side. I’m laughing to myself when Dazzik enters the canteen, soaking wet, a sheepish look on his face.