The Church and Its Orbs - Growing Up
More The Church and Its Orbs possible-canon experimentation. Enjoy!
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I know I’m staring at Wren, but I can’t stop myself.
“Is that dress going to be at all appropriate for you Testing Ceremony?” I breathe.
Wren grins, her eyes sparkling. “Not at all,” she says. “That’s kind of the point. I don’t wanna be freaking appropriate.”
The dress pulls my eyes -- it would pull anybody’s eyes. For one thing, it’s a medium cloudy gray color. Wren never wears dull colors like that, and cloudy gray would be as boring as any other neutral, except for one thing -- it’s the color of the Testing Orbs before they’re activated. Tevarenese decorations and clothing favor beiges and browns, with pastels other than pink or gray being fairly common as well. Pure white is the death color -- it’s fairly rare to see it worn in daily life, though the Church does use it because of how much it cares about the afterlife. Ordinary people are taught to “respect death” and thus not use white frivolously. I’ve heard rumors our hospitals are odd with their strange lack of pure white -- apparently, hospitals in other nations gleam white from top to bottom, whereas ours use pale blue and avoid white when they can help it. Wren’s walls are almost too white for an ordinary bedroom -- I’m sure she did that on purpose.
In terms of other, more ordinary, clothing choices, many people wear blue denim as well, though that trend’s fairly recent. To a limited extent, black is nothing extraordinary -- as long as you don’t pair it with the neons Wren favors. People wear red every now and then, though too much red in one’s wardrobe looks odd. Other brighter -- though not neon -- colors occur every now and then, but they, like red, are relatively rare.
Gray, while technically legal, is almost never worn by regular Teveranese people because of its associations with no souls -- Testing Orbs that don’t activate stay that cloudy gray. Citizens end up disliking any shade of gray, even though no soul gray is a very narrow range of shades. Legally, no souls are supposed to wear only cloudy gray after their failed Testing Ceremony, though no souls who stay in their own neighborhoods rarely do. Special shops sell no soul clothes -- I've been inside them. The lack of variety in them startled me. The shades available barely varied. People even get in trouble if their clothes have "faded too much." Some no souls do wear bright and unusual clothing -- even purple despite the danger of that color. Nobody in Tevaren makes purple clothes for everyday people. No child or citizen should wear any shade of purple -- as the major Holy Color, only priests can wear it. The punishments for doing something as seemingly innocuous as wearing purple are...severe. I guess some no souls don’t mind risking it.
Wren’s choice to wear a cloudy gray dress for her Testing Ceremony startles me, but, at the same time, it doesn’t surprise me that much. It’s just like Wren to choose something shocking for a ceremony she doesn’t hold in high regard at all. I thought she would wear something both bright and black, but this makes much more of a statement. In addition to being that cloudy gray, the top part of the dress has been fashioned out of a see-through mesh fabric. The sweetheart neckline of the solid part of the dress dips down low, and that solid part isn’t any higher in the back.
The solid part of the dress clings to her body with its cloudy but shimmery fabric, until flaring out below the hips. While the clingy part of the dress is solid, the flared part is made of layers of see-through fabric like are at the very top of the dress.
“I even dyed the pink streaks out of my hair to match,” Wren says.
Wren’s look is just this side of legal in terms of coverage -- Tevarenese law says women’s shoulders must be covered and “indecent necklines” are forbidden. A sleeveless top is as skimpy as anyone dares to go, and most people don’t dare even that much. I’ve heard of “tank tops” being worn in other, less righteous countries, but I have trouble imagining it. Wren’s shoulders may be covered, but the fabric’s not solid. Honestly, the only reason she can get away with this dress must be her family’s wealth and her technical status as a child.
She’s nothing like a child in that dress, though. Strange color of the dress aside, Wren resembles a goddess in one of the Church paintings. She easily matches any of them in sheer beauty, her tall, slender figure shining in her outfit. Diamond earrings dangle from her ears, matching her sparkling hair clip. Her dark brown eyes sparkle as much as her jewelry. In truth, I spend so much time staring at Wren because I worry -- what will happen when she gets her orb?
“You look lovely,” I say.
Her face turns deadly serious. “I wonder if they’ll do the same thing to me that they did to you,” she says.
“You mean, give you a defective orb?” I say, unable to stop myself from raising an eyebrow. I can’t imagine the Church trying that on a Vickerstaff.
Wren nods. “Yeah, that.”
I shake my head. “I highly doubt they’ll do that to you. Your family’s too important.”
“But I’m a total troublemaker,” she says.
“A ‘total troublemaker’ with a family influential enough to keep you out of press mention in relation to the prostitution scandal,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
“But how long can my...luck with my family even hold? I’ve gotta go too far one of these days, right?” she says. She gestures to herself. “I mean, look at this dress.”
“Believe me, I’ve looked,” I say, feeling my face flush.
“So you realize gray isn’t exactly the ‘in’ color for Testing Ceremony gowns, yeah?” she mutters.
“I realize, but still…gray’s not even illegal,” I murmur. Doesn’t Wren understand anything? She’s going to be fine. Maybe I would have gotten in trouble for a gray dress, but my family’s ordinary.
She laughs. “Maybe I should have worn fuschia or something and told them it was pink,” she says, her eyes sparkling. “Though getting my hands on a fuschia dress would have been difficult. But not impossible.”
“Even you wouldn’t dare do that,” I breathe, my eyes widening.
Wren examines herself in her full-length mirror. “I wouldn’t. But they’d have to make me a no soul if I had,” she says.
As much as I worry about what’ll happen after Wren gets her orb, I don’t want her to end up like me. My family all but disowned me, and I ended up expelled from school, even if I should have been allowed to attend until the end of the year. No souls can’t attend Third School, but we have permission to finish Second School. If Wren ends up a no soul, no amount of family influence will let her obtain an education. She won’t be able to attend University, or have a real life. I don’t want that for her, even if it means we can’t be friends anymore.
Wren’s parents have let me stay with her, since she’s still a child in the eyes of the Church. A bit like my parents, they’re never around -- it’s not like I bother them too much.
“And you don’t want to end up a no soul,” I mutter, shuddering at the idea.
“Would that be so bad?” she says, frowning in thought.
My jaw drops. “Of course it would. Your life would be over,” I say.
“Like it’s not going to be over no matter what,” she says. She sits down on her bed, her shoulders slumping.
“What do you mean?” I say, sitting down on the couch and staring up at the glow in the dark stars on her ceiling.
“Children get to do what they want, you know?” she mutters. “Once you’re an adult, they start making a bigger deal about the rules. Morality Police don’t care so much if I dye my hair right now, but have you ever seen an adult with colorfully dyed hair? Unless she’s a no soul?”
“Unnatural” colors of hair dye aren’t even officially sold in Tevaren, and they’re difficult to obtain. “Natural” colors exist, but they’re dispensed through salons -- and only for covering gray hair. Hair stylists learn never to give someone an “unnatural” look. Wren hinted once that she got her “unnatural” hair dye through an illegal smuggling network. No souls often involve themselves in such things, if only because they have no other options for employment. That’s part of the reason why some of them dress oddly -- they know where to get strange clothes.
“No, I haven’t seen any orbed adults with dyed hair,” I murmur. I think about my own hair -- it’s bright red, and my sister Ruby’s accused me of being a bastard because of it on more than one occasion. Red might be unusual for native Tevarenese, but I’m no bastard. It’s funny that I have the red hair, when my sister’s named for a red jewel.
“Have you seen many orbed adults wear anything interesting?” Wren mutters, looking over at her closet. It’s full of black and neon clothes -- hardly proper attire for a Tevarenese woman.
“No, I haven’t,” I sigh, thinking how Wren will need to change her wardrobe in order to avoid attracting unwanted attention once she’s an adult.
“People, not even Morality Police, attack others, especially women, for wearing the ‘wrong thing,’ and how often does the law do anything about it?” Wren says, her entire body tensing.
Groups of “Moral Citizens” will pick up where they think the official Morality Police have been slacking off. To different degrees, the Church tolerates them, especially if they attack those suspected of having same-sex relations. They go after no souls who leave the no soul neighborhoods, just for “trespassing.” Wren’s even had close calls with them, but has shown her ID indicating her child status to make them back off. These Moral Citizens are oddly protective of children.
“The law doesn’t always do much,” I sigh, my shoulders slumping
“No souls are banned from pretty much everything and most of them have no money, but at least they’re often left alone,” Wren says.
I gape at her, wondering where she got the idea that no souls were “left alone.” People love to harass us. It’s common practice for gangs other than the Moral Citizens and single individuals to beat up no souls for the fun of it -- the Church allows this. No souls neighborhoods are said to be dangerous and violent, but I wonder if that reputation is why many of the citizen gangs stay out of them -- they prefer harassing no souls who dare live in the few regular neighborhoods that allow it. I’ve heard rumors all no souls are going to be purged from the “good” areas sometime soon. Does Wren want to face extreme violence in her everyday life?
“Left alone?” I mutter, crossing my arms over my chest. “You mean, aside from the Moral Citizens and other citizen gangs? Not to mention how dangerous most no soul areas are.”
“No soul neighborhoods are where a lot of the sed bars are,” Wren says. “At least they have some kind of tolerance.”
The reason they have tolerance is because the Church often enough leaves no souls alone if they stay in their designated areas -- though the Morality Police do conduct raids looking for “deviant activity.” The Church looks everywhere for deviant activity. In some ways, no souls do have freedom, but it’s a desperate freedom full of violence and empty of self-respect. They remind us every day how we are “less than.” If we do get in trouble, though, it’s worse for us than for red orbs. Purple orbs, as the elite of society, have the most rules surrounding their behavior -- and the least punishment, as long as they don’t deviate too far. If they behave too badly, though, they almost get it worse than no souls. Most of them behave themselves, simply because it makes them feel superior to everyone else.
“I don’t want to be a purple orb,” Wren says, almost as if she read my mind. “They’re the worst. Self-righteous snobs, all of them. I’d go crazy being one. Already crazy enough in this neighborhood -- rich purple orbs can go jump off a cliff.”
Purple orbs get the best positions in society and are usually the richest. Red orbs have a legal cap on how wealthy they’re allowed to get, while purple orbs have no such thing.
“Maybe you’ll be a red orb?” I murmur, trying to sound hopeful. It would be better for our friendship than her being a purple orb. “Didn’t you have a few in your family?”
“Yeah, a few,” she says.
What kind of orb will Wren get? Does it even matter if she gets red or purple? Neither color’s supposed to hang out with no souls. I don’t know what will happen when Wren finally grows up -- where will I go?
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I know I’m staring at Wren, but I can’t stop myself.
“Is that dress going to be at all appropriate for you Testing Ceremony?” I breathe.
Wren grins, her eyes sparkling. “Not at all,” she says. “That’s kind of the point. I don’t wanna be freaking appropriate.”
The dress pulls my eyes -- it would pull anybody’s eyes. For one thing, it’s a medium cloudy gray color. Wren never wears dull colors like that, and cloudy gray would be as boring as any other neutral, except for one thing -- it’s the color of the Testing Orbs before they’re activated. Tevarenese decorations and clothing favor beiges and browns, with pastels other than pink or gray being fairly common as well. Pure white is the death color -- it’s fairly rare to see it worn in daily life, though the Church does use it because of how much it cares about the afterlife. Ordinary people are taught to “respect death” and thus not use white frivolously. I’ve heard rumors our hospitals are odd with their strange lack of pure white -- apparently, hospitals in other nations gleam white from top to bottom, whereas ours use pale blue and avoid white when they can help it. Wren’s walls are almost too white for an ordinary bedroom -- I’m sure she did that on purpose.
In terms of other, more ordinary, clothing choices, many people wear blue denim as well, though that trend’s fairly recent. To a limited extent, black is nothing extraordinary -- as long as you don’t pair it with the neons Wren favors. People wear red every now and then, though too much red in one’s wardrobe looks odd. Other brighter -- though not neon -- colors occur every now and then, but they, like red, are relatively rare.
Gray, while technically legal, is almost never worn by regular Teveranese people because of its associations with no souls -- Testing Orbs that don’t activate stay that cloudy gray. Citizens end up disliking any shade of gray, even though no soul gray is a very narrow range of shades. Legally, no souls are supposed to wear only cloudy gray after their failed Testing Ceremony, though no souls who stay in their own neighborhoods rarely do. Special shops sell no soul clothes -- I've been inside them. The lack of variety in them startled me. The shades available barely varied. People even get in trouble if their clothes have "faded too much." Some no souls do wear bright and unusual clothing -- even purple despite the danger of that color. Nobody in Tevaren makes purple clothes for everyday people. No child or citizen should wear any shade of purple -- as the major Holy Color, only priests can wear it. The punishments for doing something as seemingly innocuous as wearing purple are...severe. I guess some no souls don’t mind risking it.
Wren’s choice to wear a cloudy gray dress for her Testing Ceremony startles me, but, at the same time, it doesn’t surprise me that much. It’s just like Wren to choose something shocking for a ceremony she doesn’t hold in high regard at all. I thought she would wear something both bright and black, but this makes much more of a statement. In addition to being that cloudy gray, the top part of the dress has been fashioned out of a see-through mesh fabric. The sweetheart neckline of the solid part of the dress dips down low, and that solid part isn’t any higher in the back.
The solid part of the dress clings to her body with its cloudy but shimmery fabric, until flaring out below the hips. While the clingy part of the dress is solid, the flared part is made of layers of see-through fabric like are at the very top of the dress.
“I even dyed the pink streaks out of my hair to match,” Wren says.
Wren’s look is just this side of legal in terms of coverage -- Tevarenese law says women’s shoulders must be covered and “indecent necklines” are forbidden. A sleeveless top is as skimpy as anyone dares to go, and most people don’t dare even that much. I’ve heard of “tank tops” being worn in other, less righteous countries, but I have trouble imagining it. Wren’s shoulders may be covered, but the fabric’s not solid. Honestly, the only reason she can get away with this dress must be her family’s wealth and her technical status as a child.
She’s nothing like a child in that dress, though. Strange color of the dress aside, Wren resembles a goddess in one of the Church paintings. She easily matches any of them in sheer beauty, her tall, slender figure shining in her outfit. Diamond earrings dangle from her ears, matching her sparkling hair clip. Her dark brown eyes sparkle as much as her jewelry. In truth, I spend so much time staring at Wren because I worry -- what will happen when she gets her orb?
“You look lovely,” I say.
Her face turns deadly serious. “I wonder if they’ll do the same thing to me that they did to you,” she says.
“You mean, give you a defective orb?” I say, unable to stop myself from raising an eyebrow. I can’t imagine the Church trying that on a Vickerstaff.
Wren nods. “Yeah, that.”
I shake my head. “I highly doubt they’ll do that to you. Your family’s too important.”
“But I’m a total troublemaker,” she says.
“A ‘total troublemaker’ with a family influential enough to keep you out of press mention in relation to the prostitution scandal,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
“But how long can my...luck with my family even hold? I’ve gotta go too far one of these days, right?” she says. She gestures to herself. “I mean, look at this dress.”
“Believe me, I’ve looked,” I say, feeling my face flush.
“So you realize gray isn’t exactly the ‘in’ color for Testing Ceremony gowns, yeah?” she mutters.
“I realize, but still…gray’s not even illegal,” I murmur. Doesn’t Wren understand anything? She’s going to be fine. Maybe I would have gotten in trouble for a gray dress, but my family’s ordinary.
She laughs. “Maybe I should have worn fuschia or something and told them it was pink,” she says, her eyes sparkling. “Though getting my hands on a fuschia dress would have been difficult. But not impossible.”
“Even you wouldn’t dare do that,” I breathe, my eyes widening.
Wren examines herself in her full-length mirror. “I wouldn’t. But they’d have to make me a no soul if I had,” she says.
As much as I worry about what’ll happen after Wren gets her orb, I don’t want her to end up like me. My family all but disowned me, and I ended up expelled from school, even if I should have been allowed to attend until the end of the year. No souls can’t attend Third School, but we have permission to finish Second School. If Wren ends up a no soul, no amount of family influence will let her obtain an education. She won’t be able to attend University, or have a real life. I don’t want that for her, even if it means we can’t be friends anymore.
Wren’s parents have let me stay with her, since she’s still a child in the eyes of the Church. A bit like my parents, they’re never around -- it’s not like I bother them too much.
“And you don’t want to end up a no soul,” I mutter, shuddering at the idea.
“Would that be so bad?” she says, frowning in thought.
My jaw drops. “Of course it would. Your life would be over,” I say.
“Like it’s not going to be over no matter what,” she says. She sits down on her bed, her shoulders slumping.
“What do you mean?” I say, sitting down on the couch and staring up at the glow in the dark stars on her ceiling.
“Children get to do what they want, you know?” she mutters. “Once you’re an adult, they start making a bigger deal about the rules. Morality Police don’t care so much if I dye my hair right now, but have you ever seen an adult with colorfully dyed hair? Unless she’s a no soul?”
“Unnatural” colors of hair dye aren’t even officially sold in Tevaren, and they’re difficult to obtain. “Natural” colors exist, but they’re dispensed through salons -- and only for covering gray hair. Hair stylists learn never to give someone an “unnatural” look. Wren hinted once that she got her “unnatural” hair dye through an illegal smuggling network. No souls often involve themselves in such things, if only because they have no other options for employment. That’s part of the reason why some of them dress oddly -- they know where to get strange clothes.
“No, I haven’t seen any orbed adults with dyed hair,” I murmur. I think about my own hair -- it’s bright red, and my sister Ruby’s accused me of being a bastard because of it on more than one occasion. Red might be unusual for native Tevarenese, but I’m no bastard. It’s funny that I have the red hair, when my sister’s named for a red jewel.
“Have you seen many orbed adults wear anything interesting?” Wren mutters, looking over at her closet. It’s full of black and neon clothes -- hardly proper attire for a Tevarenese woman.
“No, I haven’t,” I sigh, thinking how Wren will need to change her wardrobe in order to avoid attracting unwanted attention once she’s an adult.
“People, not even Morality Police, attack others, especially women, for wearing the ‘wrong thing,’ and how often does the law do anything about it?” Wren says, her entire body tensing.
Groups of “Moral Citizens” will pick up where they think the official Morality Police have been slacking off. To different degrees, the Church tolerates them, especially if they attack those suspected of having same-sex relations. They go after no souls who leave the no soul neighborhoods, just for “trespassing.” Wren’s even had close calls with them, but has shown her ID indicating her child status to make them back off. These Moral Citizens are oddly protective of children.
“The law doesn’t always do much,” I sigh, my shoulders slumping
“No souls are banned from pretty much everything and most of them have no money, but at least they’re often left alone,” Wren says.
I gape at her, wondering where she got the idea that no souls were “left alone.” People love to harass us. It’s common practice for gangs other than the Moral Citizens and single individuals to beat up no souls for the fun of it -- the Church allows this. No souls neighborhoods are said to be dangerous and violent, but I wonder if that reputation is why many of the citizen gangs stay out of them -- they prefer harassing no souls who dare live in the few regular neighborhoods that allow it. I’ve heard rumors all no souls are going to be purged from the “good” areas sometime soon. Does Wren want to face extreme violence in her everyday life?
“Left alone?” I mutter, crossing my arms over my chest. “You mean, aside from the Moral Citizens and other citizen gangs? Not to mention how dangerous most no soul areas are.”
“No soul neighborhoods are where a lot of the sed bars are,” Wren says. “At least they have some kind of tolerance.”
The reason they have tolerance is because the Church often enough leaves no souls alone if they stay in their designated areas -- though the Morality Police do conduct raids looking for “deviant activity.” The Church looks everywhere for deviant activity. In some ways, no souls do have freedom, but it’s a desperate freedom full of violence and empty of self-respect. They remind us every day how we are “less than.” If we do get in trouble, though, it’s worse for us than for red orbs. Purple orbs, as the elite of society, have the most rules surrounding their behavior -- and the least punishment, as long as they don’t deviate too far. If they behave too badly, though, they almost get it worse than no souls. Most of them behave themselves, simply because it makes them feel superior to everyone else.
“I don’t want to be a purple orb,” Wren says, almost as if she read my mind. “They’re the worst. Self-righteous snobs, all of them. I’d go crazy being one. Already crazy enough in this neighborhood -- rich purple orbs can go jump off a cliff.”
Purple orbs get the best positions in society and are usually the richest. Red orbs have a legal cap on how wealthy they’re allowed to get, while purple orbs have no such thing.
“Maybe you’ll be a red orb?” I murmur, trying to sound hopeful. It would be better for our friendship than her being a purple orb. “Didn’t you have a few in your family?”
“Yeah, a few,” she says.
What kind of orb will Wren get? Does it even matter if she gets red or purple? Neither color’s supposed to hang out with no souls. I don’t know what will happen when Wren finally grows up -- where will I go?