(Untitled)

[sime_channel]

Suzi is settled in a chair
Hands and tentacles together
Knitting something bright
Out of yarn of different colors
Scraps and ends of projects
She's created in the past

Her smile is, as always, bright
As she uses bits of the past
United in new projects
Separate things coming together
In a riot of many colors
Cascading off her chair

Comments

[scaredbybook]

There once was a young girl named Kyra
Wandering with a box of porphyra.*
When she saw the work of crafts,
She said, "oo, what is that?"
And studied the knits like a baby chimera.

*No, the seaweed. Not porphyria the disease.

[sime_channel]

"Knitting." Suzi says with a small smile, "It's going to be, um. Probably a blanket."

[scaredbybook]

"It's beautiful." Kira looks over all the colors again. "I never got into knitting. I was too young when I tried to learn, I think, and just started making yarn spiderwebs instead. Then my yarn got confiscated for a few years."

[sime_channel]

"All Sime learn." She says cheerfully, "When we Changeover and grow the tentacles it's a useful way to get control over them all. My father taught me."

[scaredbybook]

"Change?" Kira's eyes wander down a bit to the tentacles, which she missed in the general riot of color and yarn glee. "Oh."

It should be said, by the way, that Kira right now is zlinning friendly and perky and fuzz. And bzuh?

But not fear. Suzi is not as scary as Lilly. Suzi is knitting.

[sime_channel]

"Changeover." She says, waving a tentacle, "Half the children on my world go through Changeover, the other half Establish. It determines if you're going to be Sime or Gen as an adult. I'm Sime. Gen look just like baseline humans...your kind, that is. No tentacles. We're symbionts."

[scaredbybook]

"Symbiotes with what?" Kira tries to follow. "Ohh. Sine and Gem with each other?"

. . . okay, maybe she's a little thrown by the presence of tentacles, but only in the OH GOD I'M GOING TO SCREW UP AND CAUSE INTERSTELLAR WAR way.

"I'm just a boring baseline human." Nod! "Uh, physically."

[sime_channel]

"Sime." She corrects cheerfully, "But yes! In the case of here, that just means me and my lover. He's Gen." Nah, no interstellar war. Suzi's from a pre-spaceflight time.

Also fragile. Really fragile, "Baselines aren't boring. Weird, but not boring. You're all dying out around the time Sime and Gen evolve."

[scaredbybook]

"Oh." Sad Kira! "Oops! Go team us. What'd we do?"

[sime_channel]

"Evolve?" She offers, "Quinn says it might have been the dragons? I am human, just...well, I was born in 4848?"

[scaredbybook]

"Oh, hello," says Kira. This reaction makes sense to her because Suzi just sort-of introduced herself again, only this time as human. "Oh, wow. Dragons would be enough to make anyone die off. I'm so glad I'm not likely to meet one."

[sime_channel]

"Me too! They're all gone by the time I was born, I've only heard Quinn talk about them. He's from 2020. I think." She says cheerfully.