Misiek

“What do you think is sexy?” said Nona, in her normal voice.
Pyrrha seemed pleased to think about something different, and waited until the bubbles were getting really big before she took the spatula and slid it under a rising patty, flipping it over. Nona had come up by her elbow to watch.
“Do you want to know what I really think is sexy, or what I’d tell someone if they asked and I wanted to impress them?”
Nona was pleased Pyrrha understood.
“The first one.”
“Landmine people,” said Pyrrha, and when she saw Nona’s brows cross in confusion, she said: “Some people were put into the universe to rig it to explode, then walk away… I always fell for that.”
Nona thought she got it, but was unsure on a few points.
“But you can’t really tell that about someone when you first look at them.”
“Oh, you can,” said Pyrrha. “You haven’t looked for it.” She flipped over another pikelet, looked grave and intelligent for a moment, and then said: “I mean, also redheads. Love a redhead.”
Apart from Pyrrha, whose hair was a very deep dark russet, Honesty was the only redhead that Nona knew, and Honesty had big, pallid blue eyes that he could make float in different direction, when one wasn’t smushed. He also had skin like a horrible ghost’s. You could see all the veins in his eyelids. Nona said, “Okay. I don’t think redheads are sexy.”
“What? Hang on,” said Camilla, opening the door—no, Palamedes, opening the door, busy buttoning himself into Camilla’s jacket—“That’s a very interesting thing you just said, Nona. Let me write that down. Is that pikelets Pyrrha? You’re a legend.”
Nona wondered how Palamedes couldn’t see the hitch in Pyrrha’s shoulder, nor all the crinkles in her posture or her clothes that screamed PARK…PARK…PARK…, but took her moment.
“Palamedes, what do you think is sexy?”
“Those little outfits nurses wear,” said Palamedes promptly.
So Camilla had been lying, after all.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth