Amille Gets a Baby -- Ironics Story from Last Month!

Okay so, here's the short I wrote about the final major character in the Ironics story - Amille. It's longer than the others but oddly, it is the least developed. In total there are five viewpoint characters - Ronnie (here and in the initial Irony blog post), Garren ("human" from post 2), Noe (the Ironic smuggler/lover in post 2), Amille and the baby, who is still nameless here. One of them is the "villian" of the collage of stories. I have decided to work them into a full length novel instead of leaving them as shorts. I will post Noe's stand alone short story soon but after that I will spend most of my efforts into working the now 43 shorts (I wrote about 4 in the last few days) into a novel. Thanks for the encouragement... It'll be a colossal task...hmm...Amille Gets A BabyAmille held the baby at arm’s length and gently shook it up and down. The soft-skinned child awoke with a start and a scream. When it looked at Amille, it quieted down abruptly, its shallow breathing caught. Amille offered a grin to the fragile thing and waited for its breathing to even out before she went about her inspection. It appeared to be healthy and strong. The few cuts and bruises it had were to be expected. From its haircut and little shoes, Amille deduced it was a little girl. Although her eyes were bright and intelligent, she was not yet able to walk or talk. She smiled at Amille.Amille looked into the next room, Ronnie and Pearson were still huddled over the map they had unrolled hours before. Neither seemed to have been the least bit curious about the infant. Her cohorts were planning their revolution and such an insignificant thing as a soft skinned baby could be ignored or worse.Amille searched the stocks for something to feed the child and settled for an overripe banana. She peeled and mashed the fruit into a shallow bowl and sat it and the baby on the high table. The child gingerly dipped its small fat hands into the mess and fed itself. Amille knew nothing about children, though she had once had her own, a lifetime ago. She hadn't been a mother then, in fact she been the worst sort of mother, a mother who couldn't mother. Amille was trained as a government reader. Her job was technical, and her imperatives were always collective driven. She had no time for her own life.The soft-skinned baby reminded her of the baby she had to give away, the baby with Sean's face. Her only memory other than its face, were of little fingers that were strong, yet fragile as they held onto her hand the one time she held it. She always thought of her baby as ‘it’. She hadn't taken the time to wonder if it was a boy or girl. She’d only carried it because she'd been away on a mission and not near enough to the Fieldhouse to get it extracted. There hadn't been a need to care or the time to care. Sean was long dead, the commander had already decided on the invasion of the human landing and nothing was to be done without her expertise. Back then everything seemed more vital than her own life. Surely she had done the right thing.The baby giggled at some unseen thing, and Amille smiled the sound of laughter in this place, a place of seriousness, of war, of plotting , of schemes. Laughter without malice here was strange and new and if she could admit it to herself, good. She supposed she would have to change it now, that it had eaten. She looked around for some scrap of cloth that would do. Finding nothing clean enough or big enough in the stock room, she left the child alone on the counter and went out to the barracks. She stripped one of the empty cots of its sheets, and cut it into pieces she thought would work. She made six diapers and a blanket for the little human baby that had a come as an unexpected bonus with the stolen goods.Once back in the stock room, Amille did her best to do a job she'd never done. Her hands moved ably. She fashioned the diaper with the same skill as she had many bandages before. The baby made no complaints, so she assumed it would work. For a moment, she held the warm, soft child to her chest. The baby giggled again, making Amille laugh. Surprised at her reaction, and wanting to explain it to herself, Amille reached out to the child with her mind.Amille had never read a child before, and she assumed that she would get nothing but bright squiggly lines that passed for thoughts in old and dying soft-skins and crazed Ironics. Instead, the child was thinking of a place. There was a large window that looked over a lake. Just beyond the window, right near the surface of the lake, people gathered. Two people stood out from the small group. A man and a woman whose faces were indistinct in the memory, but whose personas glowed. She had no names for them, but the image suggested that they were the babe’s parents. The laughter began there with that thought. Her parents made her happy. But there was also sadness. The child reached out to touch Amille’s cheek. With knowing eyes, the baby acknowledged that something had passed between them, smiled again and offered what could only be thought of as a thank you. Amille abruptly sat the child down . She felt as if she were falling down a hole. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach threatened to flip itself over and surge up through her throat. Amille left the baby and hurried into the other room to see what others are doing.Pearson's face was contorted in deep concentration. His thumb and forefinger were splayed over the map calculating the distance between where they were and some point that Amille did not know. Ronnie was waiting patiently for his calculation. Although they were frequent partners, Amille did not suppose that they loved each other. At least not the way she had loved Sean, and she wondered if either of them missed or knew that they were missing, what that could be like. She’d been with their unit for over a month, and Amille had never talked to either one of them about anything but the revolution. She missed the camaraderie of her sisters. That band of readers she had known for three lives with whom she had always been at home. But they were all dispersed to faraway places, all of them except for her. She thought their names, the new ones and the old ones. She was lost in those thoughts, when Pearson looked up and noticed her standing there."What did you do with that thing?""She's in the stock room." Amille felt hot at the question. She did not know why he wanted to know, could not imagine him trying to see or touch the baby. Did not know why his inquiry about the baby in the stock room made her she feel this way, but knew that in the short moments between its discovery and her reading of it, that she had changed."You going to give it a name too?" Ronnie's sharp tongue cut her.Before Amille could react, the two of them went back to their telepathic wandering about the map. Neither of them seemed to care, she imagined that they just wanted her to throw it out. Take it to the heap with all the waste and return to help them decipher the map. Amille stood waiting. Many moments passed and neither them looked up. Even without listening she could tell they were exchanging thoughts about the map and strategies. Neither of them thought of the human baby in the stock room anymore and they had refocused their attentions to getting to the human landing and what they would do once they got there."What should I do with the child?"Pearson looked up first and Ronnie followed his gaze to her face. The coldest of both of their eyes may have deterred her on any other day."It is of no use to us. Get rid of it." Ronnie again."It's living. It's not trash I can't just throw it out.""Set it free." Pearson shrugged."Put it out in the woods, is that what you want me to do?" Amille heard the edge of her own voice, and was shocked. Since banding with Ronnie and Pearson she had not yet had a disagreement with the two revolutionaries. Their government had fallen or if you believed the news, had changed so drastically as to not be the same. Amille thought of her banding with the revolutionary group as the continuation of the work she'd done as a reader during all of her lives. Many of her comrades had joined the revolution, most thought of their joining in the same way."We can't keep the thing here." Ronnie gave her an appraising look. Bitterness followed her eyes up and down the length of Amille's body. Amille set her jar and refused to shiver."I won't leave it to die.""Then what will you do?" Pearson turned his full tension to Amille, even shifting his body to face her. Like his mirror, Ronnie did the same thing, and Amille faced them with seeing their surprise at her expression.She had not known that she felt this way. Even when she was making the diapers and feeding the baby, she had not known that she felt anything until she read the baby's mind. And even then those thoughts were indistinct, but standing here before them. She thought, 'I want to keep it'. She did not say that, would not say that, could not say that."Let me take it into the encampment. I'll be back before morning." Amille had not allowed herself to plead ,ask or beg for anything in so long that the ache in her voice was foreign to her own ears. The other two Ironics reached out to her and she forced them out of her head. The strength of her shield was a testament to her many years of service because behind it her mind was in turmoil. Instead of her normal linear thinking, her thoughts rambled through her head with no clear direction, and all she could think about was taking the baby away from these cold, cold people. She bit at the corners of her mouth not to say the things that she was thinking. Long ago a commander had told her she was too emotional for the job in front of her peers. She spent two lives trying to shake off that stigma. No one trained harder. No one spent more time at the Catacombs of the Elders in meditation. No one could boast such sharp mental reflexes. She had proved herself to herself and the commander and then kept right on proving that she could live the life of service with no care for her own desires.Three lives later, she thought she'd gotten it right. And then she met Sean, and for the two lives they spent together she had a wonderful time unlearning all that training. She had relearned the other side of Irony. They had been warm and passionate and too much and never enough. She had learned to like being touched and opened her body and mind to him.And against all the odds, all the myths and the details that said they would not die, Sean did. His soul withering to nothing as the body he inhabited was incinerated in fire. It was the months after his death, when she realized she was pregnant. She had been grieving in a way that was unheard of, alone. Amille stilled herself against the memories of her isolation. She’d emerged more emotionless, more focused, more committed to the service."We want to leave out tonight." Pearson's eyes bored through her. If he'd been a Reader, she was certain he would have already been inside of her head trying to pick her apart. Amille would not tell him. Pearson was on a mission. There was only one thing to be done. And that was to get into the human landing and stop the settlement.Amille heard the thud before the baby cried. The crash before the earsplitting scream. She ran into the kitchen to find the baby lying on the floor. A small trickle of blood was dripping from one ear. She picked it up and it stared at her. It's big round eyes shown wet with tears, but suddenly they stopped when it recognized her face and the baby venture to a smile in spite of its injury.Amille's heartbeat steady clip, and in a panic. She shoved the makeshift diapers, the rest of the near-spoiled fruit, and every other thing she could think of from the stock room that might be useful into her gear pack. She held the baby closer and was out the door and on her way before the others had even noticed that she’d left the room.©VD DeVau

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Amille Gets a Baby -- Ironics Story from Last Month!

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