Hold Your Color

The Dun Crossing. Written after, on the free side.

The Gray Line's a band of flat paint, ten lanes wide, you've got to walk across without changing color, with guards all down it looking at you, and a flushed cheek is a confession. Ossari hold it from childhood. They've barbered the crown tips down short on all the guards, and it's so quiet you can hear people's sleeves. Every price in the market's done with the hands.

So I blushed. Of course I did. I'm a Human, it's what we do. I blushed at the Line, and then I noticed I had, and then it got worse. Three guards turned and looked, and then the whole line of them, the color of a wet sidewalk, watching a small person in a mustard jacket go red from the neck up for no reason. I was held for questions for two hours. They'd never seen one go that color and they wanted to know what I was confessing to.

Everything, I said. It's very hard to tell.