Poulette – La Fenice – Cinq *** Hallo. Yes, I do go see her, like the others do. What? Wait, let me just take this off. Can you hear me now? Good. Like I was saying, I do visit her, like the others do. Not often though. She’s always there, and always the same. I like to look at her, all glimmering pure white. She’s so pale I don’t even have to swap out the dark lens outserts when I walk in, y’know? I touch her all over and trace the scars everywhere they go. They’re so different from mine. Hers are mostly all silvery and faded, and she’s so tiny and thin that on her they look like frost on the windows in winter, only big, like climbing vines on a wall. She seems to like it, anyhow, from the little noises she makes. I guess we’re the only ones she gets to see, the only ones here to touch her. So of course she likes us. Even me. I remember Medic coming into the mess with that shit-eating grin, slapping his gloves into his hand, to tell us that his latest up-all-night project was a gift from him and the Microphone Bitch for a Job Well Done. Hell, you could hear the capitals all crunchy in his Kraut accent. We all rushed in when he threw the storeroom door open and there she was sitting on a dusty table, wings all rustly and shimmering pearly grey. Everyone speechless staring for a long minute, before Scout breaks the spell with a whoop about how ‘we got a chick now’. Medic shoos us back out, closes the door and gives us a big lecture about rules. I remember zoning out; I couldn’t stop seeing her in my head, all pale and clean like some sort of angel, so different from us with our oilstains and powder burns and grubby nails. Why do you think I keep the gloves on? I even try to get clean rags to replace her old ones, when I remember. Occasionally I’ve seen her trying to wash them in the water bucket. Oh, I keep that hood on her head. It’s a funny looking thing. Together with the ankle jesses she’s always got on, it makes her look like the falcons I saw at a Ren Faire once. Guess that’s Medic for you. He gets some weird ideas in his little dungeon of a sickbay. I don’t know if she can see through it, though I know she can hear fine. It doesn’t look like it gets in her way much, anyway. And to be honest with you, I’m not sure I want to see her face. Maybe it’s like mine; maybe hers is scarred far worse and that’s why they have to make special food for her, and why she can’t talk properly. Or maybe it’s not like the rest of her; maybe it’s perfect and beautiful and terrible. I’m not sure if I wanna find out, or to see it either way. So I never ask her to take it off. Actually, I don’t really talk to her. She doesn’t seem to want me to. Engie says she likes to sing, but I’ve never heard her doing it. Um. Can I have my lighter back now? *** Self-indulgent translation wank: La Fenice (Italian) – The Phoenix. Also an opera house in Venice that was burned down and successfully rebuilt in both 1837 and 1996.