We're so young. Fifteen. A hundred cadets-in-training drinking juice from styrofoam cups and stealing side glances at one another like pride is currency. There's a handshake. A charismatic smile. A name.
"I'm Niyebes," says a girl with icy blue hair, the first to approach me without giving me a peculiar once-over. She's taller than I am and easily more sure of herself. "You can call me Snow, though. That's gonna be my callsign."
Nobody ever calls her Niyebes again. All the best ones turn into single words.
We trade small talk and slowly inch towards the outer corners of the mess hall. It's our first night at boot camp, our first assignment — to find friends among strangers.
They find us instead.
"I'm Hao." He offers me a cookie.
"Nyk." He's huge.
"Pym, nice to meet you." One of her eyes is violet.
"And you?" Snow asks of the quiet one stood behind them.
"Oh. I'm Pluto," He says, and it puzzles that he's unsmiling. His eyes don't have that spark in them, that glint. I can't find a smidge of excitement on his person.
The best one has always been a single word.
I take his hand anyway, try not to stare at the fresh bandage latched to his temple. He stays quiet for much of the evening while the rest of us gather around an unspoken need of each other. And though he retreats to his bed cot without so much as a Goodnight, in the barracks furthest away from mine, I think to myself that I will know him a while.
YOU ARE READING
the parts and pieces of pluto de prado
Romancein which the love of your life is a star-pilot caught in a war, and you watch as pieces of him are slowly ripped away and replaced, wondering if you can love someone who is now made of parts that aren't the ones you loved in the first place. tldr; t...
