Rising Shards

While having two roommates had a lot of benefits, Kalei quickly learned of the downsides. Our room was a little cramped with all of us in there. Kalei hated every alarm I had on my phone, and it took a while to download one that she didn’t despise. Making matters worse, my alarms tended to wake her up a lot sooner than they woke me up. 

We were also still working on syncing our sleep schedules. Oka liked to read at night, but her reading light kept Kalei up, which threw her off when she had a morning workout. When she missed workouts, she got really frustrated with herself, and even more frustrated when I apologized too much even when it wasn't my fault. A few weeks into classes it got me worried she’d want to switch rooms, or worst-case scenario stop talking to Oka and me entirely.

Kalei huffed as we got into Diast’s class. I could tell she was both tired and antsy to move around, and a long lecture didn’t help either need.

“The toy dough lecture!” Oka said when she saw the balls of toy clay on each of our spots in the room. Kalei was already nodding off by the time class started, not even mustering up a snarky response to Oka's exclamation like she'd normally do.

“OK, so with us going into Node 509,” Dr. Diast said. “The question comes up like, ‘wait a minute, you said the void was all warbly and this place is only partially warbly’, ‘does this place have like real people in it and a history’, ‘if there are people are they like for real real people or can I hit them and they turn to void goo?’ and so on and so forth.”

Diast brought up a diagram showing different blotchy looking things. Some looked more faded and others were clearer.

“So there are strictly void dimensions like the imagination one where stuff from here shows up there, but that doesn’t work in Node 509 and others like it. So why is that?”

Oka was rocking back and forth excitedly about the dough.

“Get out those marbles and put em on your table. Those are faulty realities. For whatever reason, they didn’t make it, unlike our stable one. They float out in the nether space outside of all dimensions. I’ll try to not get too like super high science here because you’re high schoolers, but faulty dimensions either fold in on themselves in some quantum space business or get mushed with something else.”

I raised my hand. Usually I was too socially frightened to ask questions in class but Diast didn’t have that scary teacher effect on me.

“Can our...like dimension become faulty?” I asked.

“No,” Diast said. “Or probably not. I hope not. Most of the leading scientists say there’s pretty much no way it’d happen to us. Knock on wood, right? But these faulty realities get broken from other means, like energies beyond our comprehension ripping em up at the seams. Then the ripped up, barely running realities either blink away into nothing or end up in the void.”

Diast picked up a ball of the toy clay on her desk.

“So the void is the clay in case you haven’t figured it out,” Diast said. “And the marbles are the faulty realities. It rolls up all these faulty realities and stuff and keeps em going in its body, for lack of a better term.”

“Much like the sperm that don’t connect with the egg during fertilization!” A really creepy girl said in a really creepy way, unprompted.

“Well...kinda, I guess.” Diast said. “Not…really. I mean. Anyways, we have a worksheet and an experiment to do! Use your own clay and record your results…”

Kalei was using her clay as a pillow, but luckily not snoring. Dr. Diast didn’t wake her up but I think she noticed.

“Problem: we’re not sure if any of this is right,” Diast said as we started rolling our toy clay around. “We know we can get to the void dimension and that it does have these nodes in it, but this is mostly just accepted theories on how it works. As I’ve said before we can’t even measure the shape of the void because it’s so big and so always moving and rippling and changing.”

After class, Kalei slumped away without saying much to us. I stopped by Dr. Diast, thinking about our trip to the void the day before.

“Hey, are you sure my bloodsaber not being too sparky is cool?” I asked. “Caya said it’s cool. But I was hoping for more like sparks. Or weather or whatever. The Benta thing said I needed to be in control of my powers. And I ain’t.”

Diast was mushing all the class’s clay into one big clay ball in a clear tub.

“You did just start class,” Diast said. “It’s gonna take a while.”

“But I wanna be in tuuuUUUune like Caya said.” I said, mangling note with a high note I couldn’t hit and then my voice cracked.

“You will never be in tune if you hit that note around me again.” Diast said. “I’ll cancel your future in-tuneness with my...teacher...powers.”

“Uh huh. Is there anything I can or should be doing then to get more in tune with my bloodsaber then?” I asked.

“Well, an easy boost is staying active,” Diast said. “Do you exercise a lot?”

“No,” I said.

“Maybe try exercising a little bit and see if that has any effect. Don’t overdo it, obviously. There’s this idea of three pillars of Cani powers, Atria, the second one whose name I’m blanking on, and Havena. Havena is measuring your physical wellbeing, but also how in tune you are to your body.” Caya said. “Also the name of the Cani wrestling league for some reason. Mr. Krangel was a champion there, actually.”

“Yeah, he talks about that a lot,” I said. A lot of gym classes with Krangel were just watching old Cani fights. “What does in tune mean, anyways?”

“Soleri always says, ‘Like the way a bloodsaber’s veins sound like a string being plucked, so is the relationship with us fanged ones and our physical selves.” Diast quoted with a pretty good impression of Soleri’s voice. “Ugh, why does he talk like that?”

“Oh, I see.” I said.

I didn’t see. I didn’t really get it at all.

“Forget I said that thing about Soleri there,” Diast said. “It’s against school policy to be rude about teachers to students. And it's pretty rude of me. Oh! Calestia was the second one of the three. Some other teacher will probably say it too so act surprised when they say it. Or don’t, why would that matter? Anyways, you’re doing fine, now shoo.”

At dinner, Kalei stared blankly into her food.

“Kalei, how do I get in shape like you?” I asked.

“It depends a lot on your genes…your genetics, I mean.” Kalei said.

I winced at “genes” because it sounded like “Jeans." Kalei didn't notice though (why would she?) and sighed.

“I’m sorry I’m in such a bad mood lately,” Kalei said.

“I’m the one who should apologize,” I said.

“Me too…” Oka said.

“For what?” Kalei asked. “You two didn’t close the beam chasers court until spring.”

“It’s closed?” I asked.

“Or Krangel won’t let me practice in it,” Kalei said. “I don’t know how rusty I’m going to be when it starts up again. If I could just get a regular workout going it’d be nice.”

“I could maybe work out with you until then?” I asked. “I probably can’t keep up but if I get on your schedule it’d definitely help. Like not just me, but…”

“Yeah, I got it.” Kalei said.

Kalei was too nice to say how annoying we were to her schedule.

“Me too!” Oka said. “I’m probably out of shape after all the snacks here. They’re just so good though...”

“You can handle diets on your own,” Kalei said. “Want to head over to the tracks after this?”