Wikipedia:Sandbox

Winnifred was in the middle of her engineering lessons, while lounging in her corner of the world. It really did feel like a corner of the world, a vent that opened into a dead-end of superstructure, where things were meant to connect to the next structure and knit the sky together into a series of docks and platforms of communication arrays meant to carry signals in a loop around the belt. Her bedroom, such as it was, was a vent large enough she could curl into a half circle, or extend a leg to form a three-quarter circle, sitting with open sky, mostly, sprawling out to one side of her. She could see the top half of the clouds out to the horizon.

The top half of that vent was decorated with some sketches and schematics, which she’d had to block out while working on her lessons, otherwise it was too much like trying to play chess while the board was superimposed over another one. She’d started with and zipped through the basic lessons, working with individual components and studying how they worked, most of which she’d already known from working with the family. She knew about G-sails and calibration, because her uncle had yelled at her for sticking her finger into one that had been opened up, that was being carefully cleaned, years ago. She knew HTPB-Fluorine engines from cleaning the inside of more than she could easily count. A game she’d played when she was young had been all about stress points in structures and ships, playing with the parts to see and figure out what broke. She had that fast.

It had been a strain, though. There were enough gaps in her breadth of knowledge that the program couldn’t easily fill in the blanks. Toby had navigated some of it, telling the program to give her a refresher, and the testing had tried to make it more dynamic by throwing scenarios at her that would have been interesting-ish, even if she knew it all. Still, some of it really did just have to be ‘do you know how this works?’ ‘What about this’? ‘What about this variation?’ ‘Now this…’

Now she was into the more interesting parts. Small engines. Now ‘here are three engines in a sequence. Something’s wrong with one of them. Figure it out’.

Her claw-tips moved through the air, touching pieces of the floating image, dragging parts aside, investigating. She could feel everything, tactile, helped by Toby.

[Did you know flesh hands don’t have the ability to sense wetness by touch?] Toby asked.

“Weird.”

[It’s just touch to them, with slight temperature variation.]

“Is that your way of telling me I have projection oils on my claws?” she asked. “I can feel them.”

[I was looking at video feeds of engineers and repair techs at work, and I think it’s one of the things that sets apart people who learned from simulations and those who have practical experience.]

“Do I know to wipe my claws off?”

[Exactly.]

Winnifred got a scrap cloth and wiped off her claws, winking one eye. “You’re so good for this, Toby. Is there slang for that? Wet-fingered newbie?”

[I imagine so. There are enough people out there. Do you want me to search?]

“Nah.”

[People are coming, by the way. Try to finish your test. If they arrive while the test is in progress, it could be canceled because of interference.]

She puzzled over the issue. where the engine had three possible configurations for how it could fire, different fuel mixes for firing in oxygenated atmospheres and vacuum, and the problem to be solved was a report from a veteran pilot that it was pitching during takeoff– the nose was rising, and they were insistent this was the sort of problem that led to issues down the line. Winnifred could request diagnostics about any related systems, and the test would give her the data or let her look at the components.

Except it all looked okay, as she ran through troubleshooting and made the engine go through its motions, different fuel lines opening, configurations of the nozzle, and looked over things like the placement of the fuel tank and landing gear. Would something shift in the process of takeoff? So what was the most likely related system?

“Can I look at the flight logs?”

[Restricted information, owned by the company,] Toby replied. [Which isn’t uncommon. Hurry now, they’re almost here.]

It was hard not to read between the lines, and infer there was an answer that could be given in the next… thirty-five seconds. Normally the systems handling the tests would catch that sort of thing.

The fact a bunch of her older cousins were coming and it was probably something dumb tied into that thought about the limited time, and drew her to a conclusion. Someone dumb.

“Test, don’t register this as a correct answer for the testing. I got this because my onboard gave me an inadvertent hint,” Winnifred said. “But confirm for me? There is no problem with the engine. It’s something wrong with the pilot.”

[Correct,] Toby said, acting as intermediary between her and the test. [Sometimes the problem an engineer has to handle is the user. Or the client.]

“I’m proud of myself for that one.”

[How did I give a hint?]

“If it was solvable that fast, it couldn’t be something I could pull up, study, and find, or a test I hadn’t done,” Winnifred said. She put her things aside, and closed the test.

Her cousins were climbing up the vertical face of the superstructure, toward her vent. It was a relatively small group. Most of her older cousins were either partnered up with people or off with other families.

“Win!”

She poked her head out, and at the same time, glanced around. That glancing included peeping into the eyes of family members, including Aunt Gwen and her parents. People who typically knew what was going on.

Alcohol, dock meat. and people gathering.

She backed up, moving some of her things from the floor of the vent to side-vents. Then she sprinted, leaping. Toby drew out some lines in her field of vision, indicating wind, necessary movements, plotted trajectory. Images of herself, moving through the air, suggested the marks she needed to hit on the way. Knees to chest, then feet out, rightward, to meet the wind.

Thirty-five meters out, there was a massive, branching mount for some heavy duty advertising that would go live after the building was finished. Winnifred sailed across the open air between the vent and the mount, dropping with increasing speed, then, careful with her claws and body, prepared herself to catch it and handle her fall. She was moving down much quicker than she was moving across, by the time she reached it, and and could touch the surface that was rushing past her, repositioning herself until she could put arms, legs, and tail around the branch of metal without touching it.

There were extensions and spoilers on her updated body, which she had obtained when she’d turned sixteen. A bar across the chest, as was her preference, to help clothes hang right, and protective segments around joints. She let those take the brunt of the friction, hugging the metal, with knees drawn up to the hollow, near-nonexistent stomach.

Above her, her cousins were less graceful. Their metal banged and scraped against the pole. She could feel the impacts they made. A couple whooped.

A weird dynamic, where she’d get told off for the wear and tear she caused herself, while her older cousins and even some grown adults would get a pass, because Winnifred cared enough to stop and listen.

She got called a daredevil, pointing to stunts like these, but she was mild mannered, compared to some.

Nobody told her where she was going. She was expected to find out. They chased her, being more reckless, nudging her from her comfortable position, the most easily replaced and sacrificed materials of her body scraping against the metal. Trying to put her off her game.

One of them was Noeh. A cousin who was eighteen or so, about a year and a half older than her, visiting from the other families. Winnifred’s family tended to have light brown skin, dark brown or black hair, and they favored black prosthetics. Some stood out as different, especially those who came from other families. Aunt Gwen had slashes of red at her shoulders and neck, and picked prosthetics that let her have that stylized accent.

Noeh was wild-natured, prosthetics chestnut, skin pale and faintly sunburned, hair red-brown, clothes grey-green, with a handspan-wide band of flesh from chin, down neck, chest. From chest down to, well, places his pants covered. Where he didn’t have the cap that was more common in her family, to keep things contained until they were ready for use. Just… there, apparently, between machine legs. It seemed like madness to her.

He had been paying increasing attention to her in recent days. Probably because he was leaving. He’d spent time with a lot of her cousins who were closest to him in age. If there was a checklist or something more, she supposed she was on it.

She didn’t want to dwell on that stuff.

He was due to leave in a couple of days, and some family was going off-planet to work a job tomorrow, so, while he was still around, they had a party.

Winnifred could hear the singing. Family members whispered it. A long while back, when mods had been new, and the first members of the family were transitioning from being people who tended to work one job, marrying other workers in the same job, and modding themselves and their children for the work, they’d started communicating using the pitches and volumes that modded ears could hear, that flesh ones couldn’t. Then, because communicating in those ranges had its own requirements and ways things could be shortened and still intelligible, syllables had been dropped or swapped.

When they whispered to one another, they weren’t speaking English, really. It could be understood and translated, but really, only by those in the families.

Those sounds and vocal ranges became their own chant-singing, with its own structure, and its own accompaniment. Metal on metal scratches, the scuff of feet and the rustle of loose fit clothing over prosthetics.

Winnifred’s cousins caught up to her. Keeley, who had been sticking close to Noeh for a bit now, tugged hard on Winnifred’s overall strap, pulling her off her feet and nearly onto her face.

Noeh, following so close behind Keeley that he could have been her shadow, caught Winnifred by the neck, circling his tail around it.

She backhanded it away, with a touch more force than necessary. She didn’t like being grabbed like that. The constriction. Maybe with that bit of extra force, he’d get the message.

He was gone into the crowd.

She preferred to dance. She liked the music. People sang to her onboard, and it was out of sync with the whisper-singing coming from their faces and throats. The space they occupied was beneath a platform – it felt too exposed to do this above, where others could look over and see, and judge, or appropriate. There wasn’t enough room to stand entirely straight.

Claw tips scratching metal, glass, or ceramic. Whisking sounds and rasps, as metal with frayed edges ran against more of the same. Rustling clothes. Whispers. It was a music that required her to strain her entire being, turning up the volume on her ears to hear it. In the days this music had been made, there was a trust, that someone wouldn’t spoil the effect with a sudden shout, loud noise, or fumbled footstep. In those days, with older or partial audio mods, it could blow out people’s ears entirely, if people had the volume turned up enough to be fully tuned in.

It wasn’t just sound. Winnifred matched the pace from the outer fringes, then jumped in. It was touch, all of them modded, all capable of bending legs in both directions, with prehensile spines that let them touch shoulder blades to the backs of their thighs, if they so chose. They often slept in vents, personal belongings ready to be packed up and moved somewhere at a moment’s notice, if the vent was needed, and personal space had no meaning, when other family members might come crawling through and past, bodies scraping past a sleeping child’s, who would stir and fall back asleep.

She became part of the press of bodies, where there was barely more than a hand’s span of space between any part of herself and the floor, ceiling, or the half-dozen people around her. This was a dance that, if everyone performed it perfectly, would see them meshing together, impossibly close, parts of her body from her face to her tail, claw tip to claw tip, brushing against metal, decorative bits, cloth, and hair. There were one or two dances in the twenty-nine families that pushed things this close together, but one was a perfectionist’s dance, and the other was more about a constant struggle to be better.

In that struggle dance, and in this one, nobody performed it perfectly. That was the point. In this one, it was expected, and part of the dance, to roughhouse, to push, to tug on clothing, bringing others to where they needed to be. Or push them out if there wasn’t a small adjustment that could bring them back into position.

She could move, rustling past others, who were moving at the same rhythm, vacating spaces that parts of her own body could occupy. She could look through other onboards and other points of view of dancers, and as she strained concentration, touch, and hearing, focused on movement, and remembering the steps that put them together like the tiled-together pieces of an Escher image, she could almost forget how to find her way back to herself.

Her mother was participating in the dance, and found her way to Winnifred. For a moment, they made contact, foreheads touching, then pushing against one another, almost as if trying to drive the other out of the dance, or out of position. In a loving way. A teenager-and-mom way.

Ceris, new-ish to being a proper participant, at eleven, was struggling, and Winnifred and her mother broke apart to bring Ceris into the dance, at least for the introductory part. Kids had to learn the steps somehow.

But as the first section ended, the whisper-singing and noises stopped, and they all went statue-still. Some had chests that heaved, their ox trying to bring in enough that they could both exert themselves and push out the whisper-chanting. Winnifred was among those who had beads of sweat on their foreheads they wouldn’t have from hard work on a ship.

Ellis, close to the center of the dance, broke that stillness and moment of silence with a sharp rap of clawed fingers to thigh. It was a hard balance to strike, to punctuate and signal, pushing the line of ‘loud’ without breaking it. Everyone moved in sync after. Winnifred pulled on Ceris with a hand at the child’s shoulder, end of her tail at the base of Ceris’s, tugging.

The tempo increased. Children who weren’t being helped like Ceris was were first to go. They’d fall from position, get pushed out to the edges, sometimes with surprising force, kids skidding on metal sub-platform floor into the periphery, into waiting arms of family members, who’d cheer for them and laugh, every time. Hugging them, after.

Ceris was good, for her age. But she didn’t know all the steps, and ultimately, as she bumped, whole-body, into the arm of an aunt of theirs, she was seized and tossed out.

Another girl, one of Winnifred’s older cousins, got heated as she was pushed and pulled a few too many times, admittedly unnecessarily in some cases, and pushed at someone, and that was okay, that was the point, but she was loud about it, metal clacking hard against metal, and she was pushed out, with less soft cheering and acknowledgement, after.

Winnifred could go with the flow. She was okay at it. Great, she thought, considering she hadn’t had same-aged cousins to practice with. This particular dance was the sort that could be hypnotic, drawing her into a haze where she was short on breath, space, and lost herself, but the jarring interruptions, clashing, and sudden physicality from others meant she couldn’t.

All to a whispered song about past conflicts and attacks on their people. Strikes, in past generations, before the new economy, which was barely an economy at all.

The tempo steadily increased, the demands of the dance and the exactness required ramped up, and Winnifred’s hand caught on loose clothing from one of her aunt’s.

She saw the writing on the wall and half-scampered out, helped along by some strong pushes. She ducked low, losing her balance, and dropped to all fours. Her mother ducked out soon after, putting an arm around Winnifred as they curled up together, watching as things continued.

“Was I in the top half of those removed?” she vocalized, just for Toby.

[Top 40%.]

She was satisfied with that. “Give me pointers after. Tell me where I messed up.”

[Absolutely.]

[We eat meat after this dance,] Keeley was telling Noeh, onboard to onboard, so they wouldn’t interrupt the singing.

He faintly gurgled his displeasure. But the meat and enzyme pack were deposited in the little processor, reduced down to a slurry, and he connected it to the side of his face mask. The contents were swept in.

[And intoxicants,] one of the guys sent. [Even for kids. Special occasion.]

[I’m not a kid,] Noeh fired back. [But I’m into it.]

Winnifred got her own portion of dock meat and alcohol. It did not take much alcohol to affect any of them, when Winnifred’s biology was only about twelve pounds of brain, head, and biomatter in her chest cavity. She took a half-shot. Enough she could taste it.

The dance was wrapping up. The entire dance was something of an endurance match, that, as it reached the last few individuals, demanded more improvisation from the dancers who circled one another, heads and bodies winding around one another as both turned, stepping in the same tight circle. One of the women was Seren, a distant aunt, a woman who Winnifred hadn’t associated with much, because Seren and her mother were not on good terms. Seren was someone who taught dance and points of culture to the twenty-nine families, and often acted as host parent to visitors like Noeh.

The other was Uncle Ellis’ wife, a very exacting woman who demanded a lot from herself and others. Not a surprising final duo.

The entire crowd joined in, breathing in the same time, making music with their bodies, leaning in, reaching hands and tails forming casual tripping hazards. It was bad form to actively interfere, though.

Seren won out. Or Ellis’ wife intentionally lost and bowed out, to let Seren have her status and respect as teacher.

Every one of the twenty-nine families had their own variations and styles of dance. Noeh and the other visitors were getting a send-off, experiencing theirs, here on Griffey Docks.

Immediately after, with his wife curled up into his lap, her back nestled into the void where his stomach would be, Ellis hummed, a good warning for those with older modded ears to change their volume settings -Toby did that automatically- before he broke into proper song. An old work shanty, where he worked his ox box overtime, for the extra air and volume. Winnifred had seen others have to connect a temporary ox box into their chest to get that kind of sustained air and vocalization.

The shanty was accompanied by a mix of whispers and voices that sang along and echoed it.

Winnifred felt warm. She’d broken into a proper sweat, as much as that was possible, and hair that was normally wavy and dense had relaxed a bit with the moisture. Her mother combed it, while they sat together and joined in on the singing.

Wood was hard to come by, but they poured chemical into a shallow, contained pool and ignited it, and gathered around it. Conversations happened around the margins, with some cousins speculating on who would end up married first, and others sharing stories they’d heard from out in the world. All of the stories Noeh and the other visitors told were new, so they got to be stars for the evening. If one of the older family members decided to speak, though, usually to tell some point of fact about the way things were for their branch of the family, way back when, conversation kind of had to die.

Winnifred’s father came over from a gathering of his friends, and touched foreheads with her mom, and kept his head in contact with hers even as the rest of him moved around to the far side, where there was a bit of room to sit. He touched his fist softly to the side of Winnifred’s facemask, a mock punch.

It was a few minutes before the old heads were done arguing over how things had gone, way back when. Both had gotten onboards late in life, and memory was fallible. Which felt as weird an idea as not being able to feel wetness.

“Studying ship engineering is good,” her father whispered. He was glancing over recordings of her past few days. “Pays well, if you can fix a ship while we’re cleaning it. We’ve got a few who do that.”

“That’s the plan,” Winnifred lied.

“You’re too distant.”

“I’m the only person around my age.”

“Are we going to send you away to another family, where you have more peers your own age, and see you come back transformed? A whole new Winnie?”

“Do you want a whole new Winnie?”

“I think you’re lonely. Sitting in a vent with magnets holding your things to the walls, studying endlessly. It makes you awkward sometimes. I don’t want an unhappy daughter. That’s all.”

She shrugged. Unhappy was the wrong word for it.

“We have family who pick the furthest place possible on the docks to decide where they make their space,” her father whispered. “The ones who are too old to work…”

Even the older ones around the fire here did their share with paperwork and forms, or visiting other families to rally support around some issues that came up. Her dad was talking about the oldest. The ones who couldn’t, who waited to die.

“…the sick…”

Not physically sick. That could be handled, usually. It was those who had had something go terribly wrong with their mods, or with their brains. Mental illness that eluded nanotech rebalancing and management of brain chemicals, or trauma.

Her father was measuring out his words. Leading up to something.

“…those with grudges…”

Most of whom went to other families after a split with this one. Reasons ranged from the petty to the complicated. When someone had a big enough issue to go live on the outskirts but not enough to leave, it was petty most of the time.

“…and you, Win.”

He tapped his metal hand to her lower face again.

“You’re often the last to arrive for jobs, because you put yourself on the fringes,” her mother whispered.

“But I arrive. I work hard.”

Her father said, “We give our children a lot of leeway. You work, so you should have independence. You eat and sleep as if you’re trying to postpone your needs as long as you can. Your refit was postponed the same way. You study at a high level, but you’re still a child.”

When he said ‘our children’, he meant how all or most of the families treated their kids.

“I eat, I sleep, I study, I work. I got my refit. I’m nearly adult.”

“You are far from being grown,” he whispered back, and leaned in to touch the side of her head with his forehead. She leaned away.

“Win, love,” her mother whispered. “We aren’t condemning you. Two things. Spend more time with us. We’ll make that time enjoyable. Eat, watch some media, play a game. Come shopping with me, when we buy necessities, we’ll explore.”

Winnifred nodded, watching her father carefully to make sure he was on board with that idea, and that he didn’t want to keep pressuring her. Seemed like it.

“Find people,” her father whispered. “Peers. Either go to another family to find them, or look outside the family.”

She had to try to avoid looking as shocked as she felt at that suggestion.

“You’re so solitary. Price told me you-“

Toby brought up the conversation, pulled from her father’s onboard. Price’s voice overlapped and overrode her father’s. “-is a child doomed to leap from loneliness to a heart so broken it never heals. Either because she finds someone and clings too hard, then doesn’t survive when they go, or because she doesn’t, and a heart with nothing to fill it will break under its own weight.”

“What if I fill it with something besides people? Or a person?”

“You are still so young, and you’re already too comfortable in that solitude,” her mother said. Clawed fingertips combed Winnifred’s hair.

A friend of her dad passed her dad a cartridge of cannabis. He pressed it to the side of his face mask, then vented out skunky smoke from the face mask and various vents all up and down his body. He didn’t normally like the stuff, as he thought it made you useless for work. It served as a kind of punctuation for what he said next.

“Figure it out. Broaden your heart,” her father said it like it was an order. “Find friends? Don’t be so reluctant to connect to others.”

“I’m not,” she whispered back. She started to shift position, but he bumped his head into hers, and sighed.

“If you don’t, at minimum, I’ll ask you to make your bed and keep your belongings close to base camp. We’d parent you the same way we did when we were younger, to set you on a better path.”

The same way Rhys and Ceris were parented. With a tight leash, parents and other adults in the family not far away. Ick.

“Make decisions for your social development, as we have to,” he added.

“We’d reach out to another family,” her mother whispered, elaborating. “Who have a boy that is also struggling to connect. Arrange something.”

[Say yes,] Toby told her. [That you’ll find friends.]

“Yes. I’ll find friends.”

“Good. And Toby? My daughter does not need coaching to tell her to listen to her parents.”

[Noted.]

But she had. She hadn’t been sure what to say to something as simple as that.

➨

She still had her spot, they hadn’t pushed her to leave and move yet. She could still sleep at the mouth of the circular vent with one arm and her tail dangling over the edge, with a view of the cloud cover below her and starry sky above, and the partial megastructure sprawling out across and over the cloudscape. The sky was studded with the cables that extended from the anchors in the ground below to the stations in the outer atmosphere. Dark lines against dark sky, with lights that ran up their length.

Toby was managing the symptoms from the alcohol more than he was processing the alcohol. She had no liver to do it herself. She felt a bit like she had a headache. She’d tried to sleep and failed, but that wasn’t it. Her mind was a whirr. The conversation with her parents. It felt weird, that her dad had taken the angle he had. Would he really be happy if she reached out to just anyone? Was it a test, seeing if she’d take the opportunity to find people outside the family? She’d wondered what had prodded her father to take the approach he had, and then she’d been looking at conversations he’d had with others. Nothing direct, that she’d found. Nothing like Uncle Ellis telling him to bring her in line.

Before the party, he’d spent a while looking at the other groups of teenagers, modded and not, in the wider area.

Noeh found his way to her. With his approach, a few cousins who hadn’t even gotten to bed yet were looking in too.

This sort of advance and meeting weren’t unusual. People brushed past each other in the vents, and indicated interest. Oftentimes, the fact they chose that particular vent was an overture unto itself, answered with a hint. Then they’d find the nearest dark tunnel, together.

It was more unusual and less subtle when she, as her parents had pointed out, tended to sleep further from home base. Really, her reason was mostly that she liked seeing the sky like this. The comfortable solitude and avoiding moments like the one that was about to happen with Noeh was secondary.

As he approached, she checked. Noeh had glanced over all the recordings of her, his onboard picking out moments. Figuring out her personality, for one thing. But also looking at moments like her own explorations of her body, and when she’d been considering her body for the retrofit and had simulated a variety of body types and shapes, poking and prodding at herself. Other moments. When she’d watched certain videos.

So much of that had been experimental, seeing what the fuss was about.

It was normal, to look at a potential partner. She’d looked through similar files for her cousins, and in general curiosity about Noeh, seeing what he’d been up to, and who. Family members had looked at various moments of hers. Her parents took opportunities to counsel her about being safe, or staying realistic and in bounds about the videos she watched.

Not a big deal.

But he’d looked at her retrofit before this one, back when she’d had the bad fit, that cheap body she hadn’t been able to tolerate in the end, before sinking all of her funds into the body before this one. When she’d had the component pieces of her body pulled away, and she’d been on the table, reduced down to something small. He’d glanced at that. He hadn’t even seemed to care that much.

That bothered her more than all of the other private moments put together. That was a big deal.

It set a certain tone for when he appeared, body stretched across opening of the vent, feet at the bottom, hands gripping the lip where it stuck out at the top. He flexed a little to show off.

She barely reacted as he drew in closer. His clawed hand gripped the bars that gave her chest and the clothing she wore on her upper body a more feminine silhouette.

She made the decision then, and shook her head, turning her body away, until his grip was broken by the torque.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Damn. Came all this way too.”

“Didn’t ask you to. No offense meant. I wish you the best, in travels, with the families, or with ours, if you decide to stay, or marry any of us.”

“Who of you should I marry?” he asked.

“Keeley?” she responded. Keeley and him had spent a lot of time together, and it sure seemed like Keeley had ducked out of going to visit with the family at Howington Station to stay and spend time with him.

“So you’re not a complete idiot with these things,” he whispered back. “Keeley’s great.”

That phrasing nettled her. She twisted around to face him.

He’d brought up a video in the background, as if he was checking something, but he’d know she’d look, so maybe it was an intentional thing, to get a reaction from her, or poke at her. Her spending time with Keeley. Her watching and participating in videos and games.

He’d closed it before she could look deeper at whatever he was reading into it.

“What if I let you call me captain?” he asked. Bringing that up.

Bristling, she shifted from a reclining position to crouching in the vent.

He threw up his hands, laughed, and then leaped backwards. For the same piece of metal they’d slid down earlier that evening, on their way to the party.

She settled back down, but it was hard to relax. The conversation with her dad had already had her mind whirring. Now, feeling defensive, agitated, she couldn’t help but add to the pile in wondering what he’d been reading into things. One embarrassing moment with Keely, where, dared by cousins, they’d ‘kissed’. Meant nothing. They’d been young enough that even the older cousins were figuring things out and playing doctor. Videos where she’d picked out actresses she liked from Generation Light– people picked out to be overmarketed and recur as one age group’s cast of celebrities, to insert into movies. More for her older cousin’s generation than her own. She’d liked a couple and put them into every game and show she had Toby spin up for her.

None of it meant anything.

Toby, subtly, changed something in the interface.

[6 people are watching you.]

To…

[Seven people are watching you.]

The subtle adjustment from a single digit to a fully written out number-as-a-word was purely cosmetic, but it made the box in the corner of her vision longer. She didn’t look at it for more than a moment, but took it as a cue. She closed out the video and investigation, and watched Noeh for a bit as he continued his descent down to the station platform below.

Then she put on videos of ships taking off and landing on the dock. Something she’d done many nights.

Trying to be boring.

[Four people are watching you.]

[Three people are watching you.]

It stuck at that. She peeked. One was Keely, who was asleep, had stirred half-awake when her name was mentioned, and was on her way back to falling asleep, leaving the view-window open into Winnifred’s own point of view. Another was Price, one of the family busybodies.

The last was her dad. He’d watched her poking through things.

“It doesn’t matter who or what you’re interested in,” he messaged her.

“I’m not.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he repeated. “But marry a man, bear enough children for the family we can keep our culture going. Do whatever you want on the side. Ships, girls.”

“I’m tired,” she told him. “You’re reading too much into things. It’s annoying.”

“We’ll talk another time, then.”

She was left too agitated to even think about sleeping.

She gathered her belongings, because- she wasn’t sure why. The feeling of being raw and vulnerable had lingered from the moment Noeh had glanced back at her on the table. The blueprints of ships and engine schematics were an extension of herself she didn’t want anyone poking over. She gathered the magnets that held them to the vent, folded them, and put them away.

Marry? Find someone? Work out some arrangement?

It wasn’t part of her plan or mental picture. If she married, her spouse would own a share of things. Would own her ship. What other options were there? A second-in-command on her ship, that she had trysts with? For romance? For the purely physical side? That got messy. It introduced weird power dynamics.

If she did what her father wanted, she’d marry someone on paper, for inter-family alliance purposes, plug a few wombs into her chest cavity to churn out the requisite three babies, and then leave? Come and go? What would having the kids mean, if she had a responsibility and expectation to pay for their prosthetics, until they were old enough to work? Was she meant to attend official functions with her husband-on-paper, leave raising the kid to the wider family at whatever dock, hangar, or station she called home? Or bring the kids onto the ship with her? Would she have an intimate partner on the side? Or as part of the family unit? Untraditional, in a way that would get constant attention, but…

That was without getting into the issues of boys and girls, marriage, and breeding. Which her family was very old fashioned about. They felt they had to be. That it was the only way to keep a culture alive.

It felt so hollow.

She hated that her family had made her feel this hollow. Enough she couldn’t be still.

The indolent average had kids because they were bored, her father had said, once. It was something to do, challenging and interesting, and even then, they took shortcuts. That would only get worse, as superstructures were built out and filled up with people. Some would only do it because they could.

The families did it because they had a legacy to preserve. So they felt it was necessary and justified to exert a steady, light pressure.

More pressure, maybe, for outliers like Winnifred.

Everything put away, papers folded and packed into a pouch at her belt, magnets on either side to keep them compressed down, she descended.

Toby was quiet. Which was good. She felt like she’d lash out at anyone, even Toby, who prodded her right now.

Why couldn’t it be simple?

She reached the dock and tried to calm herself down. There were four ships in dock. A X56 Commodious, wide, with sockets at the side that would hold, transport, and drop off the heavy duty sorts of vehicles that tore a planet apart for resources. The ship interior was crew, facilities and businesses for various construction crews to have a place to rest, retire, shop, live, bathe, seek entertainment. Right now they were auctioning off space inside and transportation spots for the next long trip. They’d drop off their ships and settle into a configuration with other similar ships, a kind of indoor city of interconnected ships that people could come and go from.

Less interesting, to Winnifred.

Two Tenures. Not the sort of ship Winnifred would ever own or want to own, for very different reasons. They were peacekeeping ships, for breaking up conflicts. Narrow profiles with complex arrangements of fins and g-sails at the back end. Fast in-atmosphere, for getting to a scene, with light armaments at the nose, and the rigging for holding drones of various types against the underbelly. More dangerous than the guns. The designations barely mattered. Tenures had been hammered out ages ago and weren’t iterated on much.

A cover lifted off of a sphere on the side of one of the Tenures as she ventured too close, a visible fast-moving red tracking laser darting between her forehead and upper chest. It was probably more warning than anything truly menacing, since the docks wouldn’t really allow it to operate here if there really was a gun ready to shoot her if she didn’t leave, but she decided to give it a wide berth anyway.

The last was a Tailwind-TX. The golden goose, in some circles, but they were only called that because ‘golden chicken’ didn’t sound right. Tailwinds had a reputation for being ships that the wealthy used if they couldn’t stand ‘roughing it’ on an actual ship, flying alongside something else to a destination, or they’d be ships that a captain would have in the hangar of a more colossal ship, for traveling around the planet. It had enough engine at the ass to get places fast, Prominent G-sails fanned out at the sides for lower-cost maneuvering and flight, often altered from standard green to a gold or a sleek black for the cosmetics, and a body consisting of large, spacious quarters. With the bulky central body, wings, flared ass, and the ‘head’ that was the cockpit, it really did have a silhouette like the chickens she saw in street markets.

The fact it ‘flew’ best by exiting the atmosphere and re-entering, like a chicken flapping madly to take flight, only to awkwardly land a few moments later, only enhanced into that image. Too fat a profile to fly fast through atmosphere unless the owner really wanted to spend on the raw fuel.

Tailwinds had seen a rise in use in Winnifred’s lifetime, for reasons that had Winnifred interested now. The body was meant to have roomy quarters, but with relatively little effort, those quarters could be swapped out for something functional. It seemed to Winnifred that it was an excuse, for those who wanted the luxury, but couldn’t conscience it.

In this case, there was some clamping from a tug, where one of the four quarters would have been. What Winnifred was interested in was the wing configuration around that.

It had the engine at the back to be an awkward tug, but it was so awkward. The g-sails at the side had to fold up and down so they’d be sticking up purely vertically, and would be flush with whatever it was attached to. That limited applications, and probably meant the application was already in mind. The wings at the far side came together, sticking out horizontally, to give it that maneuverability.

“Hey!”

She startled. Toby flashed an indicator arrow, and she turned, meeting the eyes of someone who was close to one of the landing gear legs. The leg, once extended out from the body, had a whole slew of things, ranging from ladders to cables, out there and available.

The young woman, twenty or so, had clearly picked out her most rugged clothes, which were still nicer than anything Winnifed had owned. Loose white shirt, to contrast skin, and skintight pants tucked into boots.

“Where can I connect a hose?” the woman asked.

Silent, startled, she pointed a claw-tip at the nearest station.

Then, remembering her dad’s suggestion that she reach out and connect, she decided to meet the woman there. The station was basically a five foot by five foot panel in the ground with some nozzles sticking out, ringed by a yellow warning square that provided enough warning that people wouldn’t trip over it. In more trafficked areas, the fixtures would recede into the ground when not in use. Water, some external power, sewage dump…

The woman didn’t even know which fixture the hose connected to. Winnifred used her tail to indicate. “New to this?”

“Yes. My friend’s dad owns an operation on a few of the planets we’re tearing apart. We were just on Cecrops. Watching, touring, flying around looking at scenery. Some natural, some where the work’s been done, which is interesting in its own way. Or I thought so. Another of my friends didn’t.”

“It’s interesting, yeah.”

The woman smiled. “I got to blow up a mountain.”

“That’s fun,” Winnifred said. “Careful when you use that. It kicks. Turn the connector part…”

She indicated with her tail again. Still keeping a bit of a distance.

“…that way. Yeah. Or it’ll knock you off your feet and you’ll be running over to turn things off, hoping it doesn’t hit you.”

“Thank you. My friends would never let me live it down.”

“What are you rinsing?”

The woman pointed up at the belly of the ship. Dust caked it.

“That comes down on your head as mud,” Winnifred warned. “It’ll ruin your shirt. And hair. Possibly your day.”

“I don’t know much about any of this,” the woman said.

“Also,” Winnifred said, pointing. “That spatter by that one hole in the side there? It’s not mud. Whoever was flying this thing decided to dump trash and waste into space, to save a few lux on disposal here. You don’t want that on you, especially.”

The woman clicked her tongue. “I wanted to be useful, as thanks. I didn’t think it’d be this hard.”

“I could loan you coveralls, if you’re making a day of this. It’s not gross. There’s no body odor. I don’t sweat, since I don’t have…”

The woman’s eyes widened. “I saw you were modded, obviously, but I didn’t figure… wow. Pretty punk.”

Winnifred, crouching by the station, shrugged. “Offer stands.”

The woman’s friend was coming outside. Another woman, skinnier, with dark blonde hair. The same white shirt, but she wore a jacket, and had nicer boots.

“Do you work here then? Live here?”

“Both,” the friend answered, before Winnifred could. “Don’t legitimize them.”

“Legitimize?”

“They’re homeless, ducking around the docks, trying to convince you to hire them instead of robots. Then once they’re inside, they steal, or scam you. Sometimes even fuck with you, hold your ship hostage.”

“That’s not all of us. Or even most of us. It’s slander from the old days.”

“It’s enough of you.”

“This isn’t like you,” the woman Winnifred had been talking to said.

“They mod babies.”

The first woman gave Winnifred a curious look.

“Don’t you?”

She could answer, say she never had, but she knew what the follow up would be. Would she? If she had one?

“I’m going to go.”

“You’re not victims. You’re not special. You’re edgy, angsty mod-knobs who got together and thought that if you got enough of your kids into it early, pushed enough boundaries, you could call your style a ‘culture’.”

[You should say something,] Toby told her.

She didn’t want to. Because if she pushed herself to think of something, all there was, was…

“They’re my family.”

“You’re an embarrassment. Stay clear of my ship.”

Winnifred tried to think of something else to say, and then decided to go.

➨

The incident bothered her. Lingered. She wasn’t sure if it was the last straw among several, or something clearly identifiable to be upset at, that let her redirect other anxieties and feelings.

She’d been working for years at studying engineering when she wasn’t working extra shifts. Trying to find a way forward. She wanted a ship, and she’d work her way there as an engineer, and that was a dream she couldn’t even talk to Toby about. Onboards were open access to anyone who wanted to look in, as a side consequence of Intelligences being mandated by law to be something anyone could audit. Which the companies wanted, because it drove engagement and helped them further refine the onboards they had elsewhere. She couldn’t shut people out without specific filings, and getting approved for those filings was a whole other business, that invited more scrutiny than even having family peeking in at her exchanges with Toby, or looking at records of moments throughout her life. Like her on the table, just a head without a nose or jaw, a partial neck, and a collarbone.

Her thoughts crossing that moment made her practically squirm, anxious and restless.

Could something be a trauma if it hadn’t bothered her as much back when it happened?

It felt like the subject of marriage and kids was the next shoe, poised and waiting to drop. That if she worked her tail off and saved up, got and worked the engineering job to get on a ship, a curveball would be thrown her way, in the way of fresh expectations. What she wanted would be snatched away from her again.

Easier to be angry at that woman who owned the golden chicken than at… that. A situation she couldn’t even fully wrap her head around.

“Candy?” Noeh asked her.

She glanced at him and the history of the candy before accepting. It wasn’t drugs. Legitimate candy from a machine at the part of the docks where people called for and got rides.

She took it. It came in a capsule of metal, and pressing it against the side of her face, the little vent opened, sucked in the contents, and then closed.

“If you were going to fuck with their ship, what would you do, to ground it for a while?”

What would she do?

She could study the Tailwind, the chicken ship, and work backwards from what she’d been doing in her lessons. What would make the biggest, most complicated puzzle?

User error? Messing with the ship’s owner, who was also the pilot?

That was complicated, and she preferred questions of engineering.

The ‘wings’, with the g-sails, and how they worked and folded around the clamp. Replacement parts for a custom setup like that were tough to get, probably custom-ordered and made by agents few enough in number to have a backlog of orders, and it would hamper flight enough that the chicken couldn’t land comfortably and reliably on the sort of rough terrain that a planet like Cecprops would have. If it could even take off.

Noeh was studying her.

“I wouldn’t,” she said.

“No?”

“Leave it alone.”

She darted off, back toward her sanctuary. She’d curl up in a vent with puzzles about fixing engines. Not sabotage.

She’d feel better if she focused on her tests and getting engineering certification.

“Toby, love.”

[You get most affectionate when you’re most upset. Are you sure you don’t want to talk?]

“Later. For now I want distraction. Is the next slate of tests interesting?”

[We are dangerously close to the grindstone testing.]

“What is that? You’ve made ominous reference to it before.”

[It’s rote and routine testing, for reliability, and making sure you have the composure and love for what you’re doing. It’s boring and hard for a long time, on purpose. A lot of employers will look at your grindstone test results, to see if you have what it takes to stick a job through.]

“Can we postpone it? I’m not in the mood.”

[For a little while. But part of it is that you have to be able to do the work despite your mood.]

“I know, but…”

[We’ll postpone it.]

➨

On the day Noeh and his group of visitors left, Keeley going with, a new crop of visiting youths from other families were supposed to arrive. They didn’t.

It wasn’t just at their dock. People could go home, or stay if they were visiting and had found someone to stay with but they were being asked to stay. All movement was frozen. Families were relatively quiet on what was happening, talking among themselves.

Winnifred had to piece it together from what other families were saying, because hers was very quiet.

She soon realized why.

A drone, unmanned, hacked, had crashed into the Tailwind-TX. Directly into that custom wing job, that maneuvered the wing around the clamp setup. The wing had nearly come off. The ship, sure enough, had been grounded.

It sat like that for eight hours.

The entire family seemed to wait in suspense, seeing what the response would be.

James Oden, father of the Tailwind-TX’s owner, a man who ran seven mining and resource collection setups across three planets, filed suit against the Griffey Docks.

The other shoe wasn’t any insistence that Winnifred marry and have kids, paying for the kids mods, at the cost of her own dreams. It was this.

The amount the suit was filed for was hidden. It was for Oden and Griffey Docks to work out between one another. But it sure looked like it was in the range of ten figures.

“I didn’t want this,” Winnifred told her parents. “I didn’t do this. It was-”

“Say nothing, claim no fault, assign no blame. It won’t help anything,” her mother said.

Winnifred fell silent.

“These things happen,” her father said. “With resentment against us, they’re always looking for an excuse. Whether accident or intentional, they got one.

Griffey Docks, five minutes after he said that, evicted Winnifred and her extended family from the premises. They would be trespassing if they were found there.

She could only watch as dominoes fell down. Predictable, almost, but just enough that she couldn’t know for sure or have any confidence that something would or wouldn’t happen.

The dock owner had friends and allies, with whom he shared information, did business with, and traded employees with. Two other dock owners decided now was the time to act in solidarity. Melville Cap and Sherman Station evicted the families living there.

Winnifred and her family, and the families at those stations were meant to leave their homes here today. Technically, they’d never officially lived here. They could appeal to the block, but the facts didn’t favor them.

Other docks soon began their own discussions about the ‘dock rats’ living on their premises. With three notable docks taking action, there were rolling effects. Winnifred’s family had to go somewhere. Would that multiply numbers at that destination? Multiply problems?

Would other people, tied into the politics of all of this, cause problems? Oden’s hundreds of millions of workers, that would be leaving the planet in a few months, and coming through any convenient dock they could find?

Two more families were banned and evicted.

Howington Station was one of the largest families. After those two additional bans, and much deliberation, they passed on word.

The same thing Winnifred’s family had put into dance.

They’d fight for their place on the docks.

History

Having lost both of her parents at a young age, Snow White is a princess living with her wicked and cold-hearted stepmother, the Queen. Fearing that Snow White's beauty will outshine her own, the Queen forces her to work as a scullery maid and asks her Magic Mirror daily "who is the fairest one of all." For years, the mirror always answers that the Queen is, pleasing her.

One day, Snow White meets and falls in love with a prince who overhears her singing. That same day, the Magic Mirror deems Snow White as the fairest. The Queen orders her Huntsman to take Snow White into the forest, kill her, and bring back her heart in a jeweled box as proof. The Huntsman cannot bring himself to kill Snow White and warns her of the Queen's intentions. At his urging, Snow White flees deep into the forest.

Lost and frightened, Snow White is befriended by woodland animals, who lead her to a hidden woodland cottage. Finding seven small chairs in the cottage's dining room, Snow White assumes the cottage is the untidy home of seven orphaned children. With the animals' help, she proceeds to clean the place and cook a meal. Snow White soon learns that the cottage is the home of seven dwarfs named Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey, who work in a nearby mine. Returning home, they are alarmed to find their cottage clean and suspect that an intruder has invaded their home. Snow White introduces herself, and the dwarfs welcome her after she offers to clean and cook for them. Snow White keeps house for the dwarfs while they mine for jewels during the day, and at night, they all sing, play music, and dance.

Back at the castle, the Magic Mirror reveals that Snow White is still living, and with the dwarfs. Enraged that the Huntsman tricked her, the Queen retreats to her secret chambers, where she creates a magic poisoned apple that will put whoever eats it into a death-like sleep. She learns the curse can be broken by "love's first kiss," but is certain Snow White will be buried alive before this can happen. Using a potion to disguise herself as an old hag, the Queen goes to the cottage while the dwarfs are away. The animals see through the disguise but are unable to warn Snow White; they rush off to find the dwarfs. The Queen offers Snow White the cursed apple, claiming the apple will grant her a wish if she bites into it. Snow White takes the apple, wishes for a reunion with the Prince and takes a bite of the apple, and falls into a death-like sleep.

The dwarfs return with the animals as the Queen leaves the cottage and give chase, trapping her on a cliff. She tries to roll a boulder onto them, but lightning strikes the cliff before she can do so, causing her to fall to her death. In their cottage, the dwarfs find Snow White's body; unwilling to bury her, they instead place her in a glass coffin in the forest. Together with the animals, they keep watch over her.

The following spring, the prince learns of Snow White's eternal sleep and visits the coffin. Saddened by her apparent death, he kisses her, breaking the spell and awakening her. The dwarfs and animals rejoice as the prince takes Snow White to his castle.

Snow White

A benevolent queen gives birth to a daughter during a snowstorm. To honor the day, she and her husband name the child Snow White. Years later, after the queen dies of a sudden illness, the king hastily remarries before embarking on a military campaign. When he disappears, the new queen usurps the throne, revealing herself as an enchantress whose vanity surpasses her beauty. Under the Evil Queen's rule, subjects are either left destitute or conscripted into the royal guard. Fearing that Snow White's beauty will outshine her own, the Queen confines Snow White to the castle as a scullery maid and asks a Magic Mirror daily who is "the fairest one of all". The Mirror always responds in her favor.

One day, Snow White sees Jonathan, the leader of a band of bandits, raiding the pantry. When he is sentenced to be tied to the gates, she frees him. That same day, the Magic Mirror deems Snow White as the fairest. The Queen orders the Royal Huntsman to take Snow White into the forest, kill her, and bring her heart back in a jeweled box. The Huntsman instead warns Snow White of the Queen's intentions. At his urging, Snow White flees deep into the forest.

Lost and frightened, Snow White is befriended by woodland animals, who lead her to a secluded cottage, where she falls asleep. She awakens later that night to find herself confronted by the owners, seven dwarfs named Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey, who work in a diamond mine. They take pity on her and agree to let her stay. Meanwhile, the Queen, having learned from the Magic Mirror that Snow White is still alive, imprisons the Huntsman before ordering a search.

Snow White and Jonathan meet again in the forest and fend off the guards alongside the bandits. The two realize their feelings for each other before Jonathan departs to find the king, whom Snow White believes may still be alive. Jonathan is captured by the guards and imprisoned by the Queen, who deduces Snow White's whereabouts. Retreating to her secret chambers, she creates a magic poisoned apple that will put whoever eats it into a death-like sleep.

Transforming into a peddler woman, the Queen goes to the cottage while the dwarfs are away. The animals, seeing through the disguise, rush off to get the dwarfs. The Queen manipulates Snow White into taking a bite of the apple, and she falls into a death-like sleep. During this, the Queen then reveals to her stepdaughter that she killed her father, and retreats just as the dwarfs and animals arrive. Having escaped, Jonathan arrives to find her body and mournfully kisses her. Snow White awakens and rallies the dwarfs and Jonathan's bandits to overthrow the Evil Queen.

Snow White confronts her stepmother, who forcefully goads her to take the throne, placing a diamond dagger into her hand. Snow White refuses, reminding the people what the kingdom used to be like under her parents' rule. Moved by this, the guards stand up to the Queen and join Snow White's friends, the bandits, the Huntsman, and the civilians. The Queen tries to attack Snow White, but the dwarfs and the bandits defend her. The Magic Mirror tells the Queen that Snow White will always be fairer than her due to her kindness and justness. Snow White arrives to see the Queen destroying the Mirror in anger, which is revealed to be the source of her powers. As a result, she turns into glass herself and disappears into a vortex while the Magic Mirror repairs itself.

Having been named the new queen at a grand celebration, Snow White marries Jonathan and rules the land justly.

Sleeping Beauty

In 14th century Europe, King Stefan and Queen Leah welcome their newborn daughter, Aurora, and proclaim a holiday for their subjects to pay homage to the princess. At her christening, she is betrothed to Prince Phillip, the son of Stefan's friend King Hubert, in order to unite their kingdoms. The three good fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, each bless Aurora with one gift. After Flora and Fauna give her beauty and song, the evil fairy Maleficent appears, angry at not being invited. She places a curse on Aurora: before the sun sets on Aurora's sixteenth birthday, Aurora will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. Merryweather's magic isn't strong enough to undo the curse, so she uses her gift to change it so that Aurora will instead fall into a deep sleep until true love's kiss breaks the spell.

Still fearful, Stefan orders all the kingdom's spinning wheels to be burned. Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather devise a plan to hide Aurora in a secluded location and raise her themselves until her sixteenth birthday, to which Stefan and Leah reluctantly agree. The fairies move into a forest cottage, giving up magic and living as peasants; they also give Aurora the nickname Briar Rose.

On Aurora's sixteenth birthday, the fairies send her outside so they can prepare a surprise party. In the forest, Aurora sings to her animal friends, drawing the attention of Phillip, now a handsome young man. They fall in love without revealing their names, and Aurora invites Phillip to the cottage that evening. Meanwhile, Flora and Merryweather's argument about the color of Aurora's birthday gown attracts the attention of Maleficent's pet raven, Diablo. Aurora returns and tells her guardians that she has fallen in love. They reveal her true identity, which Diablo overhears, and tell her that she must never see the boy again. Meanwhile, Phillip tells his father about Aurora, unaware she is the princess to whom he is betrothed. King Hubert unsuccessfully tries to dissuade him.

Shortly before sunset, the fairies bring the heartbroken Aurora to the castle for her birthday celebration. While Aurora is left alone, Maleficent appears as a glowing ball of light and hypnotically beckons Aurora to a tower room, where Aurora pricks her finger on a spindle of a magic spinning wheel that Maleficent conjures and falls into a death-like sleep. The fairies place the sleeping Aurora in the highest tower, and put the entire kingdom to sleep until Aurora is awakened. While doing so, Flora overhears a conversation between Hubert and Stefan, and realizes that Phillip is the boy that Aurora met. The fairies rush to the cottage, only to discover that Phillip has been abducted by Maleficent.

At her domain, the Forbidden Mountain, Maleficent reveals Aurora's identity to Phillip. She plans to lock him away until he is an old man on the verge of death before releasing him to meet Aurora, who will not have aged a single day. The fairies rescue Phillip and arm him with the magical Sword of Truth and the Shield of Virtue. Maleficent surrounds Stefan's castle with a forest of thorns, but Phillip breaks through it. Outraged, she transforms into a giant, fire-breathing dragon, overpowering Phillip. The fairies enchant Phillip's sword, which he throws straight into Maleficent's heart, killing her.

Phillip finds Aurora and awakens her with a kiss, bringing the rest of the kingdom out of their slumber. The two descend to the ballroom, where Aurora reunites with her parents and happily dances with Phillip as the good fairies look on with joy, with Flora and Merryweather continuing their argument about the color of Aurora's gown.

Maleficent

Maleficent is a powerful fairy living in the Moors, a magical forest realm bordering a human kingdom. As a child, she meets a human peasant boy named Stefan, and they fall in love with each other. However, as they get older, they grow apart, with Stefan's love being overshadowed by his ambition to be king, while Maleficent becomes protector of the Moors.

When King Henry attempts to conquer the Moors, Maleficent mortally wounds him. On his deathbed, he declares that whoever kills her will be king and marry his daughter Leila. Stefan visits Maleficent and drugs her. Unwilling to kill her, Stefan cuts off her wings instead and presents them as "proof" of her death. While distraught by the loss of her wings, Maleficent saves Diaval, a trapped raven, from a farmer and turns him into a human. Diaval offers his service and tells her of Stefan's coronation. Infuriated over the betrayal, Maleficent grows cruel and bitter, ruling the Moors with an iron fist.

Years later, Diaval informs Maleficent about the christening of Stefan's newborn daughter, Aurora. Maleficent arrives uninvited and places a curse on Aurora: before the sun sets on Aurora's sixteenth birthday, Aurora will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a death-like sleep. Maleficent mocks Stefan's plea for mercy, but offers that Aurora's curse can be broken by true love's kiss, which she and Stefan both believe is nonexistent. Stefan orders three pixies, Knotgrass, Flittle, and Thistlewit, to hide and protect Aurora in a forest cottage until the day after her sixteenth birthday. He also destroys every spinning wheel in the kingdom, hiding their remnants in the castle dungeon; he then sends his army to kill Maleficent, but she surrounds the Moors with a wall of thorns. Over the years, Stefan begins mass-manufacturing weapons of iron, which is lethal to fairies; he grows obsessed with killing Maleficent to the point of insanity, even refusing to see his wife on her deathbed.

Maleficent and Diaval watch Aurora grow from afar, and secretly begin taking over care of her from the incompetent pixies. After several face-to-face encounters with Maleficent, whom she believes to be her "fairy godmother", Aurora bonds with her and regularly visits the Moors. Realizing she doesn't have the heart to hurt Aurora, Maleficent privately and unsuccessfully attempts to undo Aurora's curse, forgetting she made "no power on earth" able to do so. Meanwhile, Aurora meets Philip, a prince from the neighboring kingdom, and both are mildly attracted to each other.

Aurora gains Maleficent's permission to live in the Moors before her sixteenth birthday. The next day, however, the pixies reveal Aurora's lineage and curse when she attempts to inform them. Heartbroken, Aurora rides to her father's castle, where Stefan locks her up, intent on killing Maleficent and angered that the pixies didn't do their job. As the sun sets, the curse's power hypnotically draws Aurora to the dungeon, where Aurora pricks her finger on a spindle of a rebuilt magic spinning wheel and falls into a death-like sleep. Hoping to save her, Maleficent and Diaval abduct Philip and infiltrate the castle. Despite the pixies urging him, Philip's kiss fails. Afterward, Maleficent tearfully kisses Aurora, awakening her with true maternal love.

As Maleficent, Aurora, and Diaval attempt to leave, Stefan and his guards ambush them. Maleficent transforms Diaval into a dragon, but both are subdued. Aurora finds and releases Maleficent's caged wings, which reattach themselves to Maleficent, allowing her to fight back. Maleficent drags Stefan to the top of a tower; unwilling to kill him, she announces the fight is over and leaves, but Stefan tackles her from behind, dragging them both off; she saves herself with her wings, while he loses hold and falls to his death.

With Stefan gone, Maleficent returns the Moors to their former glory and crowns Aurora their new ruler, uniting the two kingdoms. Aurora also starts a relationship with Philip.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil

Five years since King Stefan's death, Aurora has benevolently reigned as Queen of the Moors, alongside Maleficent as its powerful guardian and protector. Despite her service, the neighbouring kingdom of Ulstead, home to Aurora's boyfriend Prince Philip, still sees Maleficent as a dangerous villain. Diaval, Maleficent's raven and confidant, overhears Aurora accepting Philip's marriage proposal. When he relays this to Maleficent, she advises against the union, though Aurora vows to prove her wrong.

Philip's parents, King John and Queen Ingrith, host an intimate dinner to celebrate the engagement. Maleficent maintains her composure after Ingrith tauntingly mentions Aurora's sleeping curse and Stefan's death. She openly claims Maleficent killed two human fairy poachers last seen near the Moors. When Ingrith carelessly dismisses Maleficent's maternal bond with Aurora, Maleficent reacts angrily and appears to seemingly curse John, who suddenly falls into a deep slumber; Maleficent says she did not curse him, though Aurora disbelieves her. Philip urges his mother to try and awaken the King with a kiss; Ingrith resists, and her weak attempt fails because she does not love John. As Maleficent flees the castle, Ingrith's servant, Gerda, shoots Maleficent with an iron bullet.

Wounded, Maleficent falls into the ocean and is rescued by a mysterious winged creature. She awakens in a cavern where fairies like herself have been in hiding. Among them is Conall, their peaceful leader who saved Maleficent, and Borra, a warlike fairy who favors open conflict with humans and killed the poachers near the Moors. Maleficent is among the last creatures known as Dark Fae, powerful fairies forced into hiding and nearly driven extinct by human oppression. She is also the last descendant from the Phoenix, an ancient and powerful Dark Fae ancestor. Because Maleficent's magic is so powerful, Conall and Borra believe she is instrumental in ending the conflict with humans through peace or war.

Meanwhile, Aurora is disillusioned with being an Ulstead noblewoman but is happy that the Moor denizens are invited to the royal wedding. Aurora discovers that Ingrith hates all Moor fairy folk, bitterly resenting their prosperity during one winter when her kingdom had suffered and blaming them for her brother's death; she secretly plots to eradicate all fairies and woodland beings using iron weapons and a lethal crimson powder developed by Lickspittle, a de-winged pixie. Aurora also learns that Ingrith cursed John, using Aurora's cursed spindle on his arm, which Ingrith had somehow taken to Ulstead. Ingrith finds out and has Aurora locked up. The Moor folk are trapped inside the castle's chapel when they arrive. At Ingrith's command, Gerda unleashes the deadly crimson powder by playing the chapel's organ. The fairy Flittle selflessly sacrifices herself to save everyone as a last resort by clogging the organ, rendering it unplayable, while fairies Knotgrass and Thistlewit cause Gerda to fall to her death.

The Dark Fae attack Ulstead, but soldiers slaughter them until Maleficent joins the battle, channeling the Phoenix power. She nearly kills Queen Ingrith, but Aurora appeals to Maleficent's humanity, claiming her as mother. Distracted, Maleficent is struck by the Queen's arrow, dissolving into ashes. Devastated, Aurora mourns, but her tears revive Maleficent as a Phoenix. Terrified, Ingrith throws Aurora from the tower and flees, but Maleficent saves her. Borra and the Dark Fae stop Ingrith's escape.

Philip forges peace between the fairies and humans, causing the Ulstead soldiers to stand down. Maleficent reverts to her fairy form and bestows her blessing upon Aurora and Philip. After receiving it from Lickspittle, Maleficent destroys the spindle, awakening John. As punishment for her crimes, Ingrith is transformed into a goat by Maleficent, until she can embrace peace between the two peoples. After Aurora and Philip are wed, Maleficent returns to the Moors with the other Dark Fae. She promises to return for the christening of Aurora and Philip's future child.