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“Uh, Draven?” Laux asked. “Care to clue us in?”
“I’ve come across a solution to our entertainment problem, right under our noses. Boys, I’m bringing in some fresh talent.”
I nearly choked on my drink at the words. “I thought I was the entertainment,” I said, mocking a sheepish simper for them. Sitting next to me, Thelev responded with an ineffective punch against my rock-hard bicep.
Ryrik piped in, his face buried in his percomm. “Draven, is this resume for real? She has no real experience.”
“You’re just going to have to trust me on this one,” Draven said. His hand held up high, motioning for a dark figure standing by the bar to join us.
“Here she is now.”
SERENA
It all started with a song.
There was this saying I used to hear for as long as I can remember. That no one lived like they do in the old-timey musicals. No one burst into song, knowing what to say or how to make the rhyme scheme work. It was absurd to think someone could write the hook, the chorus, and the verses, all at once, in a unity of sound and instrument.
But I did.
It wasn’t something I planned to do or tried to do. It was more like walking and stumbling on a rock. The rock was always there. Mine was just the lucky foot that found it.
I’d learned when I was a little girl that when I sang, my fears melted away and I could take control.
It was easy to feel that fear. Living in The Under, I never knew where dinner would come from. If there would be enough. The songs got me through it. I found my power in the freeform expression, unhindered by the need for tools, which I couldn’t afford, or appreciation, which I wouldn’t find.
And since I was a human on Thodos III, a dishwasher at the Black Star, I was so far under anyone’s radar that I had freedom in my belief that no one would ever hear me.
I guess it was the dishwashing machine. The high-pressure water wand between my fingers splashing back my choruses to me. I guess I got lulled into a sense of security.
And just like in a musical, my voice saved me.
It was your regular crap on toast day, the kind I’d become hardened to in all my years on the station. I came here as an orphaned teenager and had been paying off the indentured contract that bought my passageway onto the station ever since.
I woke up that morning in my apartment in The Under—if you could call it that. In The Under, living spaces were free, but they were hardly more than little hovels constructed out of whatever could be found. Since we were the unfortunate few who couldn’t afford a real place to live, we certainly couldn’t afford niceties like a real apartment.
In general, we were just lucky to stay alive and something close to safe.
Still, my living situation was just one of many hills to climb in the day.
“Watch it, human,” a Fanaith scowled at me on my way down the dank and dirty corridor in The Under.
“Just going to the showers.” Human offenses against station inhabitants were among the worst things I could’ve done.
The shower line augured what I thought would be my real struggle of the day. Nothing bothered me more than pouring sweat over steam for ten hours and not being able to wash it off at the beginning and end of each day.
But I saw that hope vanish as the line reached down the stairwell. So I took my stinky self to work, and despite the early arrival, my boss tore into me with a very stupid concern.
“Serena,” sneered the large Monion who hired me. “I thought I told you to remove this red mark from these new pans the boss ordered.”
I gritted my teeth. “I told you, Teril. It’s the manufacturer’s mark. It doesn’t come off.”
“I said I want it gone.”
It was a merry-go-round conversation. Teril loved to jerk my chain, even if he’d forget what he asked for by the next day. I had no choice but to set to scrubbing. An impossible task in an impossible life.
And yet, I had my silver lining. I had my songs. With the machines at work around me, the kitchen in full force, banging pots and searing meats in the background, I found comfort and joy in singing while I worked. It brought me a sense of stability and gave me the chance to clear my head.
If I could, then it wouldn’t matter what Teril said, or the mark I would never be able to remove. I had my escape, and as long as I could melt into it, the rest just didn’t matter.
