Mirror Sky. Part 1 - Blissful Nemesis

05 - God's Will

Sophia was painting low-hanging pipes in the corridors of Landship Insolent. Everyone learned the location of all the damn pipes ages ago and avoided them on instinct. Yet, she was tasked with turning them bright red so that nobody "would accidentally split their head." Sophia did short left and right strokes of paint with an old crappy brush. The brush could not hold the paint well, so she had to dip it in the bucket after every left-to-right motion against the pipe. Dip, left, right. Dip, left, right. Dip, left, right.

It was dull. Sophia's mind wandered, protecting itself from boredom-induced death, and always ended up thinking of Alexander. Nowadays, there were few things on her mind aside from him.

Alexander was a typical child of the Twilight. He never complained, never threw tantrums, and never cried. And yet, Sophia could sense his moods well. Alexander hated the four walls of his bedroom, and he suffered under Landship Insolent's oppressive order.

Sophia liked to forget, and Magnar liked to remind her, but the landships were the tools of war with military discipline. Even knowing all the rules, it was easy to get in trouble. The action was rare, and everyone dealt with boredom in any way possible, often bending a rule or two. For a curious six-year-old conquering the unexplored world, the issue of boredom and rules was acute: do not do this, do not go there, do not touch that, no matter how interesting everything is. In fact, do nothing at all except grow three feet higher. Then and only then can you do something. Sophia felt sorry for the boy. She remembered how difficult it was to be in his shoes.

Alexander was boiling with internal frustration. Being a Twilight child, it boiled over in unchildlike ways. Instead of tantrums and crying, there was cold and calculated rule-breaking. While the adults exercised some degree of sensibility and patience in their rule-breaking, Alexander trampled over regulations like a mythical enraged bull on a rampage. His stunts became legendary not just on the Insolent but far beyond. She heard soldiers of other landships passing around stories about Skypuncher, also known as Lit Kid. The soldiers were jealous, believing that any adult in his stead would have been shot long ago.

Sure, her son received leniency compared to adults. However, compared to the kids of his age, he got punished tenfold. Sophia knew how Magnar justified it - Alexander's screw-ups put lives at risk, and it almost made sense to her. Nevertheless, Alexander was only a kid who had the world to learn. In her eyes, he endured the extra cruel punishments because of the situation she and Sam put him in. The boy was on the road in the Twilight because of their ambitions. That alone gave him credit for future mischief. Good thing he was not familiar with the perished concept of credit, and she was not going to teach him.

Magnar was right about one thing - the Landship was no place to raise a kid.

Sophia knew that Alexander longed for her freedom, adulthood, and knowledge. In his eyes, she was living a dream - she knew everything, could go anywhere and do whatever. Little did he know that her days on Landship Insolent were as routine and miserable as his. Extra perks made no difference. She had her own adult version of four walls - she spent her days cleaning the rooms, doing minor repairs, organizing the guns, or pointlessly painting pipes. Dip, left, right. Dip, left, right. This mind-numbing order was engineered and perfected by Magnar just for her.

Her misfortunes began at the talk with the Blind Queen. At first, all went well. The Queen accepted the godstech they found in the Twilight. She forgave their AWOL, spared the lives of everyone on the Landship Daring, bumped their ranks - which sent Magnar's rank all the way to General - and allowed them to live in the Gardens.

With that done and everyone pleased, it was time for Sophia and Sam's secret mission. They came clean about their ambition to broker peace between Skydream and Libra - the only two cities left in the world, the cities that wanted nothing to do with one another after centuries of nasty episodes and mutual grudges.