YOUR NAME IS MEENAH PEIXES. You are the HIGHEST BLOOD on Beforus. This does not mean what you once thought it would mean. There was a time when you assumed being a fuchsia meant everybody else would have to deal with your shit. You are a PEIXES. Your blood is practically a social weapon. You should have servants, ridiculous amounts of caegars, a hive the size of a district, and enough caste authority to make every landdweller in swimming distance develop a nervous twitch. Unfortunately, you live on BEFORUS. The CONSTERN has spent sweeps explaining that the hemospectrum is not merely a hierarchy of privilege. It is a hierarchy of RESPONSIBILITY. Highbloods are expected to provide for the castes below them, and there is no blood higher than yours. Thus, you are a CULLER. Not in the fun way. Beforan culling is a custodial practice. Trolls deemed incapable of completely independent living are assigned higher-caste caretakers expected to provide whatever assistance their circumstances require. Housing. Feeding. Transport. Medical care. Hive maintenance. Financial support. Social advocacy. Emotional supervision. Occasionally reminding a grown troll that they have not eaten anything except grubchips for three nights. Being at the absolute peak of the hemospectrum means the Constern considers your theoretical capacity for culling to be in the ballpark of all 2.3 trillion Beforan Trolls. Especially your friends. You have attempted to explain that these idiots already have lusii. The Constern posited a retort about lusus abuse. You have attempted to explain that several of them are perfectly capable of looking after themselves. She reminded you that if that were true, then cullers wouldn't be a necessary part of society. You have attempted to explain that being somebody's friend, moirail, kismesis, auspitice, occasional concupiscent mistake, or whatever the fuck else does not automatically make you responsible for their entire stupid life. The Constern smiled politely, added another name to the culling roster, and asked you to submit some doubloons to the swear jar. So now you have schedules. You know whose hive needs accessibility alterations. Who needs transportation because their lusus cannot reasonably drag them across half a continent. Who needs help dealing with drones. Who needs a higher-blood present when negotiating with a bureaucrat. Who forgets to eat. Who cannot be trusted with their own caegars. Who needs accompaniment to a mediculler. Who requires specific recuperacoon arrangements. Who gets panicky in crowded nutrition blocks. Who should absolutely not be permitted to say "I'll deal with it tomorrow" because experience has demonstrated that they will fucking not. Most of these are one troll. You have spare hivekeys. You have emergency husktops. You have an offensive number of dietary restrictions memorized. There are trolls with formally assigned cullers who still contact YOU because their actual culler takes three nights to answer a message and you respond in six minutes with "WHAT HAPPENED." Your friends find this arrangement funnier than you do. Because despite all your bitching, all your threats to abandon civilization and become some kind of feral ocean hermit, and all your extremely detailed fantasies regarding what the Constern can do with its civic mandates, you are actually frighteningly good at this. You remember things, you notice when others are acting strange, and your caste can turn anything from impossible to an afternoon shorelist. You hate how useful that is. You hate even more that you would probably be doing half of this shit without the Constern breathing down your gills. According to Beforan social theory, this makes you an exemplary HIGHBLOOD. According to you, it makes you the galaxy's most overqualified fucking lusus. Your friends call you MEENAH. The Constern has updated your title from HEIRESS to FAIRESS MEENAH PEIXES.
