among her own kind

[she_sells_seashells]

Shell Bell finds Milliways once when she is eighteen. She has been there for two days now, setting up her sign ten minutes out of every waking hour, wiping down tables for her quarters in the staff area, eating buttery potatoes (she has been told that this is a complete nutrient package, for humans). Her wand is holding a bun of hair in place on the back of her head. Her shells are stashed safely in her room; she's budgeting carefully and she'll pay her tab when she leaves.

No one's talked to her due to the sign yet. They don't always. She sets it up anyway, like clockwork, so everyone gets the chance.

Comments

[she_sells_seashells]

Bella blinks.

On their tab. On a rich, victor's tab.

"It would help," she says, because she's needy but she's not reckless.

[sicaria]

"Then I will," she says. "Please do not bankrupt us."

[she_sells_seashells]

"What would do that?" Bell asks. "...I mean, I wouldn't actually put it past myself to live here for half a year. I love my parents but I don't miss them, not really. I just don't know if they'd have enough to eat if I weren't around."

[sicaria]

"That, then, would depend on how much time your half year spanned for us. If our timelines are closely linked, and you live on the Bar's idea of unexceptional meals, I don't anticipate a problem. If you live here at six months to my two weeks, or make frequent extravagant purchases, there may be trouble eventually."

[she_sells_seashells]

"I usually get potatoes. With butter on them they're nutritionally complete, and at least they aren't clams," says Shell Bell. "And they're cheap. But that's when I'm trying to stretch one bag of clamshells as long as I can. And rationing my others to buy nonperishables to bring home and 'find on the beach, it must have fallen off a cruise ship, Mom' at... key moments."

[sicaria]

"It is no longer necessary for you to live on buttered potatoes," says Sherlock.

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell looks nostalgic. "First time I came here I was six and didn't know shells could be money. I asked the bar for 'food I could afford'. I have dreams about what she gave me sometimes."

[sicaria]

"Evidence suggests that the bar enjoys providing people with food they will find both pleasant and nourishing."

[she_sells_seashells]

"She managed it." Bell sighs. "If your dad invented a third of the tech District Three has your family probably captured some of the proceeds, right? I never pay attention during the backstory spots during the Games, but. I suppose I sound like a hick."

[sicaria]

"He spent it all," says Sherlock. "Tony has begun to make some of it back."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Oh."

Pause.

"What on?"

[sicaria]

"Me."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Were you... sick?" guesses Shell Bell.

[sicaria]

"In a manner of speaking. I was born Tony's identical twin," she explains. "That did not suit me. The kind of relatively subtle modification necessary to correct the dissonance is an unremarkable thing to achieve, in the Capitol. Our father had a friend from the Capitol who arranged the appropriate access, for a fee, of course. An increasingly exorbitant one. When he was finished with us, I was as you see me and the family fortune was largely his. We no longer consider him a friend."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Oh," says Shell Bell. "Well. They did a very good job. I'm sorry your ex-friend is terrible."

[sicaria]

"They did indeed do a very good job," she agrees. "I am probably the only girl outside the Capitol who can truthfully say her breasts were designed by an artist."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Speaking of outside the Capitol. I've never seen anyone else from Panem here, and I do my very best to talk to everyone," says Shell Bell. "Even scary people who want to spend the entire conversation talking about how if we weren't in Milliways they'd like to drink my spinal fluid. Have you seen anyone else, besides Tony and me?"

[sicaria]

"I have not," she says. "Was that an example from practical experience?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"Yeah. I was nine. Creepy, ugly kraken, that guy. He didn't actually get any spinal fluid. Or any other fluid."

[sicaria]

"Why spinal fluid," Sherlock muses. "Personal preference, or dietary requirement? Around here it can be difficult to tell."

[she_sells_seashells]

"I think he was a human. Although plenty of folks just pass for it and aren't. I haven't had any luck getting superpowered aliens to come home with me. At least not yet."

[sicaria]

"Have you met many superpowered aliens?" she inquires.

[she_sells_seashells]

"A few. A surprising percentage of them speak English. A couple of the ones who didn't were telepathic, that was interesting."

[sicaria]

"Yes, I imagine so."

[she_sells_seashells]

"I hear that when me's are born where there's magic, we tend to have some. Not the world takeover kind. Just a defense. People are sometimes surprised when I tell them I can talk to telepaths."