“I haven’t seen you before. How many times have you inhabited that skin?”
The girl looked up and slid her hood back to reveal the series of dark dots tattooed above the bridge of her nose, just above the fine lines of dark hair. “Seventeen, m’lady.” With that, she pulled the ivory fabric back up over her dark hair. The soft blue lights overhead danced over the fabric, like an oil slick on water.
Nicoletta looked out the window to the planet below, at the churning swirls of cloud obscuring the landmasses she knew to be there. Two years ago the storms had been frequent, but now they were unending, the planet below deluged. Her chief advisor assured her time and again that her people below had been working around the planet’s unforgiving weather for centuries. A tug at her ankle brought the queen’s attention back to her servant. “Have you been below?”
The girl didn’t look up from her work of winding and fastening the ribbon of the queen’s sandals. “I was remade below. We all are.”