“Yeah,” Snier said, sounding like he was already mulling over our night’s work. “Pass it here so I can share such enlightenments.”

One puff was all it ever took for Snier; not hard to imagine, being that he wasn’t much bigger than one of my legs. The smoke tickled his lungs, then his brain, then shot out those blue eyes onto the beautiful filth of Nilghorde.

“How’d I get here,” Snier said, “Nilghorde—ugh.” He had a habit of doing this. We’d usually sit and watch. I’d gape. Somyellia’d usually giggle. “Not sure where to start,” he went on, “that’s all. Too hard on yourself. Always have been. You abandoned the thought of it. Besides, looks fade—like your hairline. Too hard on yourself. Always have been. Robbery is—”

“Snier,” Somyellia said, “kind sir, may we have our pipe back now?”

“Robbery is too dangerous. Street-thieving too competitive. Besides—here you go, Sommy—the margins are too low.” Snier was still carrying on as we made our way back into our side of the duplex. “Oh well, every now and again we get a good load.”

“We sure do,” Somyellia said, grabbing my thickened member and shutting our door with her heel.

Draped in a fresh intestinal track, Somyellia ground on top of me. Once spent, our pipe returned, cradled in her hands, the golden snake. Too stunned to go at it again, exalted visions came to me in patches, like a dreary giant who was blinking as he lumbered across the world.

“…You will be a doctor,” I heard, coming to. My love was on her side, reading my latest batch of notes and sketches, bare, save the scrolls ribboned over her thigh. “We’ll have droves of bodies to spin our wealth.”

When I came to again, Somyellia was on the floor, dreamily covering our floorboards in the symbols of her craft with her red and white paints.

“I can buy a batch of girl slaves,” Somyellia said, “and have a row of wiggling rumps waiting for you after a long day of curing washerwomen of their cough. Our garden will explode with all the illegal vines and bulbs. Finer arts demand it, you know. Many coffins will have to be dumped out for some of the advanced stuff. And I’ll need close to constant petting too.” I went for my work tools lying next to a jar of thumbs, a sight that would have made our landlord’s head pop off if he ever gulped down the courage to come in. “But if my brute is too busy writing books and cutting out tumors,” she blew me a kiss as I waved her off amiably, “then the boy slaves will just have to do.”

—

“She really thinks I can get into the—”

“Institute of Human Sciences, never heard of it,” Snier said, rearranging the picks in his work-belt.

Copping to the sarcasm: “Just need the tuition.”