Banish
by Amber Averay
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I can’t stop shaking. It would make sense if I were cold, or capable of feeling the cold, but Earth’s temperature has no effect on me, and the trembling just won’t cease. It can’t be nerves – can it? Why should I be nervous? No, rage. I must be so furious that my body shivers and judders with it. Yes, of course that’s it. Because I am Stanford. I do not feel fear. I do not experience nervousness. I am a man of the family. I am cherished. I am loved. I am superior…
Then how the Hells did I end up sharing a banishment my two sisters should have claimed their own? I – exiled, cast out, deported like some filthy lesser being – expelled from that beautiful world of majesty and unparalleled beauty to this…this…this primitive, revolting, backward nugget of unrefined beings and crude buildings.
Imagine, forcing me to live on the same planet as humans! Human beings – dirty, uneducated, uncouth, unwashed… Oh, the shakes have increased! To think I am now classed as an Earthling, Stanford of Earth. Oh, I am going to choke on the words! I want to spit them out, wash my mouth, scrub my tongue clean of the putrid slick coating it.
I knew – I knew my younger sister’s antics would catch her out one day. Ever was she a creature of selfish intent, seeking enjoyment in adventures forbidden to females – and yet the rules never applied to her. She never once faced a rule she felt compelled to abide by, but took as a challenge to flout, destroy, mocking everything our people were governed by. Our elder sister and I tried to subdue her – we never wanted her to get caught, for there was always a fear that we would be entangled in her messes – yet we’d failed. Obviously. And her punishment is now ours – we, undeserving of such retribution! We were being punished for loving her, for raising her to be free and independent, for nurturing her intelligence and failing to curb her insatiable curiosity…well, fine, I can’t expect to be praised for failures. Yet the rules of our people were clear in that, as the male child, I should have been exempt from sharing her sentence. Because, as I always knew she would, my baby sister – the careless rebel, the reckless adventure seeker – was caught out by her own hubris. She swore she would keep us safe, ensure we were kept apart from her antics – and now here we are. Separated. Banished far from home on a putrid little clump of rot infested with short-lived people who somehow stink worse after death than they do while they yet draw breath.
I clench my fists, feeling the taint of this horrible little planet already spoiling my body. I smell excrement, unwashed flesh, decaying corpses, hear buzzing flies, growling stomachs, the cries of battle… I shiver, not as violently as before but fiercely all the same. ‘I don’t deserve this!’ I cry out, speaking to skies that are an inferior blue to that which I knew back home. ‘Why could you not punish…her?’ I cannot bring myself to say my younger sister’s name. It sits heavy on my tongue, a poison worse than the greasy reek permeating the air. ‘She is the one at fault! She is the creature who challenged your rule, who disregarded everything you stood for! Neither of her elder siblings should have been included in her punishment. How could you insert us into her sentence? Had you banished her alone we would have missed her, wondered about her, but we would have been home. We would have been content. Safe. Happy. Now you’ve exiled us to a lifetime of misery and despair. Are you happy now? Are you happy now?’
Of course no answer comes, and I am left with the sound of my plaintive voice echoing across this fœtid land that is now my home.
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