Inherently Innocent

Walk The Souls

The blue light hit the host's skin like lightning made windows become lamps just before thunder. Liliac would have expected a mixture of colour between the brown and blue, but some kind of illusion made it seem purely white. Against the darkness of the room, only his profile was seen.
The water numbed the screams of the nymph behind the glass. Its desperate pounding, restrained by the liquid, went almost as fast and Liliac's heartbeat.
"Sir, it's been thirteen minutes. We don't know how much more it can stand."
"Last time it got to fourteen. We can get to fifteen now," The host turned to the secretary. Liliac counted the seconds. One, thirty, sixty, one again. The blue lights died. Everything was dark for a moment before the secretary turned on the white ceiling lights.
Inside the glass tank, the nymph floated to the top. It was alive. Barely, but alive.
Liliac knew what came next. Blood analysis. Skin cell deterioration. Testing the limits of a body without concern about the limits of the mind.
"Take it to it’s cell until it wakes up. We’ll be busy enough with the Heseltine weed,” The Host ordered his assistants. Liliac waited for her turn. “You’ll go welcome him when he arrives. Get to know anything you can to protect the settlement. What you're doing is a great sacrifice for all of us, Liliac," The host placed a hand tightly on her shoulder on his way out of the room.
She nodded. She knew.
Liliac was the only nymph kind and wise enough to understand how their sacrifice was right. If only humans could understand the strengths and weaknesses of nymphs, countless medical advancements, and technological discoveries. Maybe, even the connection to Mars could be reestablished. And if not, the violent attacks the ishine deployed on the settlement would be diminished.
"I don't think the others will trust me," Liliac said, fixing her feathery dress in place. “It might be hard to get their trust back.”
The host didn't answer. He just waved Liliac away and closed the door behind her. Liliac read in his eyes how she was old enough to know by herself how to deal with the issue. Her heart kept beating to the rhythm of agony while she thought about failing to do what the Host ordered.

“Raise your chin,” The hairdresser said, or rather ordered.
Liliac obeyed, even if she felt she was in her right to order the hairdresser around. Still, there was nothing to gain from fighting against it.
Her hair was cut and held stiff with products, creating a circular shape. Then the hairdresser started to bend half of it over her right eye, letting it hang loose and using the nose as a stop. With a little pin behind the ear, her left eye was uncovered. Too much production just to gamble. If the new nymph wasn’t as superficial as the Host thought, the production could backfire and the failure would fall on Liliac’s shoulders.
"Have you guys at the lab figured out how your hair got purple already?” A guard asked the hairdresser, who pulled from Liliac’s scalp in search of lice.
"It's like flowers. Some weeds and nymphs get flowers for hair. It's nasty how bugs hide under the petals." The employee added. "But this is hair, these aren't flowers."
She was born with brown hair, never dyed it. But the day her life crumbled had started with that change. Liliac would have wanted to change it back, but she had given up long ago. Something about trying over and over, expecting different results. She had nothing to expect.
With no further words, she was pulled up. All the colours of the rainbow in an uncomfortable, itchy dress were seen in the mirror. Her skin was sore against the texture. She didn’t want to ask if the feathers were real, but they certainly felt as if so.
“We have ten minutes for our break, let's get out,” The guard turned to leave the room, their opaque helmet concealing their expression. Liliac could only assume they were annoyed.
The girl didn’t nod. She just walked out of the room, leaving the guard behind. They gripped their gun tighter when she walked past, but Liliac didn’t only feel fear, she also felt insulted. After so many years with perfect behaviour, the humans still treated her like the weeds that attacked them. Still, she shivered; the feathery dress moved with her fears. The glass of the helmet reflected the rainbow she wore with a grim hue.
Behind the door, there was a line. About half a dozen nymphs her age and younger waited their turn to be served food, standing against the nearest wall of the large bright room. They mumbled with each other, about work, or about how much they hated the mushy carrots. Unlike Liliac, they all wore the same plain clothes. Shirts and jeans with the embroidered initials of Program Imaginaria. Not a soul looked comfortable.
Some rolled curtains crawled against the wall, preventing the nymphs from resting against the wall. Their brownish shadows failed to hide cables and tape. Liliac had once thought the curtains were stupid since they couldn’t cover the cables properly. On second thought she realized they worked perfectly. She realized they were purposefully clumsy. They were a threat.
A hand pressed on her shoulder.
That was it. The other nymphs had found out about Ocarina and would kill her. Or the host noticed a misstep and ordered an execution. This had been her life. Her parent’s faces crossed her mind in a single second, at least the little features she remembered.
She turned to meet her fate.
She found a smile.
“I'd like to know what's going on. What’s your name?” He said.
Liliac had to take a minute to rewire her brain. Her whole body still felt poisoned from the fear, with an aching acid tensing her muscles. She managed to show a frown.
A guy around her age stood in front of her. Just a bit taller, with light brown skin, hair, and eyes. He smiled brightly, with much more warmth than that cold place ever deserved. The only thing offsetting his charismatic look were the handcuffs around his wrists.
The guy followed the girl’s sight down to his hands before laughing.
“Don’t worry about it. I haven’t hurt anyone, and I won’t.” He leaned in, “They’re just afraid.”
Liliac nodded, yet she took a step back.
“You didn’t answer, but don’t worry. I’m Thyme Heseltine, but Thyme’s more than ok. If you want to call me that is,” Thyme separated each word in his last sentence. Liliac thought it was a weird way of speaking, almost as if he was treating her as a child.
“How old are you?” Liliac wished she hadn’t spoken, but the sarcastic question escaped on its own.
“Seventeen, how about you?”
Great, he was older just by a year. Enough to treat her as a child.
"And you're called Time? Like the clock?"
"No, Thyme with an h. Like the plant."
"Like the plant, of course," Liliac hoped to end the conversation there. She found it stupid how ever since humans reached the Earth again, most kids were named after plants and flowers. Who in their right mind would name a baby after a herb?
The line moved. Liliac turned and took the next space. Thyme was still behind, of course, that’s how lines work. But she couldn’t help but wish they didn’t.
The line moved forward two steps more.
“Liliac Lee,” She whispered, “I’m sixteen.”
She heard Thyme’s handcuffs cling against each other.
“It sounds like a song. Your parents must have liked it,” Liliac heard the smile in his voice, “I like it too.”
She didn’t care if he liked it. If her parents did. She just wanted to get rid of the discomfort. "Your name is also funny. Thyme Heseltine."
The young man laughed in the agreeing tone of alike minds, except Liliac couldn't hear the frequency properly.
“I like your hair,” He added once his chuckles died out, lonely and gone inside the quiet spacious dining hall.
“I don’t,” She took another step forward and lifted a wooden tray from the table that appeared by her side. She would get served next.
The boy seemed to quietly comprehend how complimenting someone over looks they were forced to wear could be a bad idea.
“If it’s uncomfortable to have it over your eye, you should move it a bit. Might tire your eyes less.”
“I won’t,” Liliac spoke loudly, trying to seem sharp. Yet Thyme’s exhales made it clear she was a dull old blade.
A Program worker called her forth when the nymph before her had left. She placed the tray where she had to, and lifted it when it was heavier with mushy carrots and almost raw potatoes. Maybe if she ate them at the same time, she thought, she could imagine they had a normal texture.
She turned to leave for a table, Thyme taking her place by the food. She would have taken her seat by the nearest table, but she waited for him. She always waited for the new nymphs. They were the only ones that stayed with her, even if it was only for a few days before becoming shells.
Thyme tried to lift the tray, but his handcuffed hands were too close together to hold it by the sides. He tried to balance it from the middle, but it fell again and again on the pile. Liliac stared until the server told him to stop, saying he wouldn't get food anyways.
"Why not?" He asked.
Liliac tugged from his shirt, feeling the texture different from the one the other nymphs used.
"You probably have to fast for a blood test," She told him, immediately seeing his brown eyes shift.
"Blood tests, right," He laughed nervously, "Is there a garden or something around here? I need some fresh air."
It had started. The panic of the first day.
Liliac bit on a sliced potato, not waiting to sit down to start eating. She'd have to act soon. "There's the fields we go after eating, that's to work. And then the human prison's open grounds right beside here, but nymphs can't cross there. I wouldn't recommend it either."
"What wall's thinner?" He asked.
Liliac didn't answer. He repeated the question.
"I can't tell you that, Thyme. You can't ask that."
"Don't worry, I can get us out. Just trust me. I need a batch of earth and it's done," He smiled, his eyes still in thought.
Another hopeful new nymph. It was exhausting just to listen. Liliac sat, a few other nymphs looking up from their trays to stare. She saw Ocarina look at Liliac instead of Thyme. Their eyes met, unbothered, until Liliac couldn't bear the shame. Her eyes looked up at Ocarina's short brown hair before turning to avoid her all over. Of course.
When she turned back to look at Thyme, he had his hands on the ground.
Liliac froze. Her chest hurt under enormous weight. Her fists were clinged to the feathers, and the dress suffocated her skin.
Her body had forgotten the feeling even if she had felt it the previous day. And the previous. And the previous. It was true she had a bad memory, or maybe she forgot to memorize things when they became routine.
Thyme moved quietly. The chains around his wrists landed on the ground with a soft sound. Liliac could only hear her own heartbeat.
She thought she was going to die. Her chest shook unlike ever before. She couldn't understand what made her so nervous that particular day, why her body shook so much when her mind was unperturbed. Then her feet shook too. That couldn’t have been right.
She looked up to the visible second floor. The doors opened, and guards came on the inner balcony. Even the Host came out of a door, leaning against the rail to look down before vanishing in a sprint. The ground moved, dust fell from the walls and ceiling.
It wasn’t an earthquake. As far as she knew, earthquakes didn’t take the shape of a friendly young man.
The Host appeared running beside the tables, standing behind the boy. He shot and the shaking stopped.
Liliac screamed before she noticed the shaking strings of the taser. Thyme wasn't dead, at least.
“Why did you do that?” She screeched at the Host.
The man dragged Liliac away, clutching her arm tight enough to leave a bruise.
“You're going to keep him alive, you’re going to spend the night in a cell with him. We'll take some tests and then it's your responsibility. He isn’t waking up for a few hours, so I’d advise you to sleep too. When you wake up, say you were hurt by him. That other nymphs are in pain because of him.”
Liliac knew the modus operandi. If he felt guilty of his attempt, he wouldn’t escape. If he grew attached, he wouldn't escape.
A masked guard lifted Thyme’s body over their shoulder. Liliac knew to follow, so she did. She left her tray on the table, the cold food still on it. The other people that had come out of the rooms when the earth shook started discussing what this meant, how it was possible, how it could help reestablish the connection. Ocarina followed her with her stare as she walked past. It might have been the mumbles of the employees, or of the collective of nymphs, but Liliac was sure the betrayed nymph had whispered for her to hear. Don't get this one killed.
The doors to the dining hall closed with the Host looking down at his taser gun.