![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skonen_bladesThe red planet. God of war. Seeing red. Red-headed stepchild. The ginger planet. Cinnamon dust. People who live on Mars are used to seeing everything in shades of pink, red and orange. Earthlings refer to it as pinkeye. Red hair was becoming more common on Mars. Strawberry blonde all the way down to a red-yarn scarlet that doesn’t exist on Earth. The women were called the Sirens of Mars. The sun doesn’t beat down the way it does on Earth.
Martians henna their hands and feet red. They stencil complex patterns over the rest of their bodies. Orthodox Martians tattoo their bodies red. The believe that their skin matches the colour of their own blood, it reminds them to be of one mind. They believe Earthlings who are a different colour on the outside have an inherent duplicity that makes them untrustworthy. These days, the children of Mars are being born with less and less pigment in their eyes. They are sometimes called redskins but mostly, they are called reds.
A new element has been found on Mars, crisscrossing the red ball in huge veins that the Martian mining companies have managed to hold in a monopoly. The element is more volatile on Earth that is in on Mars. It’s dark red, like explosive rubies. It’s the new coal but it burns clean, enabling Earth to use less oil. There is enough Marisium to last for thousands of years. The families of those mining companies are the new royalty. Martians are weaker than humans but when those families travel back to Earth for business, they are protected. A derogatory term for them is Marisites.
When Mars humans come to earth, the colour palette is sensory overload. The blue sky, the green trees, the black night. When they’re used to red dust, ochre sunsets and night skies that are such a dark red that they have a name for the colour that earthlings don’t. Somewhere in between maroon and black. The midnight rose. Mars has no moon to compete for attention in the night sky. The winkling red and pink stars nestle in the bloody ribbon of the milky way. Martians can even perceive certain shades of infra red.
The low tech solution for Martian eye protection on earth was red sunglasses. They were called Jakes, after Jake Cartwright, the Martian sports hero that won a gold medal sprinting at the Olympics.
So that’s what I mean when I say I saw her that night, pink-eyed with red pupils, dressed in black with her hair the colour of a Kansas sunset pulled up tight above grenadine skin. An ornate pattern of red splayed across her exposed arms and neck like shadows through trees, like light through a fence. Her nose had the same long sweep as the profile of the face on the Martian twenty-dollar bill. She was the daughter of Marisium Baron Farakkeh Kong. She was in my bar and she had no bodyguards. My bar is not a nice one. You could buy ten of them for the price of her dress.
It was a volatile situation. As volatile as Marisium on Earth.
tags
Martians henna their hands and feet red. They stencil complex patterns over the rest of their bodies. Orthodox Martians tattoo their bodies red. The believe that their skin matches the colour of their own blood, it reminds them to be of one mind. They believe Earthlings who are a different colour on the outside have an inherent duplicity that makes them untrustworthy. These days, the children of Mars are being born with less and less pigment in their eyes. They are sometimes called redskins but mostly, they are called reds.
A new element has been found on Mars, crisscrossing the red ball in huge veins that the Martian mining companies have managed to hold in a monopoly. The element is more volatile on Earth that is in on Mars. It’s dark red, like explosive rubies. It’s the new coal but it burns clean, enabling Earth to use less oil. There is enough Marisium to last for thousands of years. The families of those mining companies are the new royalty. Martians are weaker than humans but when those families travel back to Earth for business, they are protected. A derogatory term for them is Marisites.
When Mars humans come to earth, the colour palette is sensory overload. The blue sky, the green trees, the black night. When they’re used to red dust, ochre sunsets and night skies that are such a dark red that they have a name for the colour that earthlings don’t. Somewhere in between maroon and black. The midnight rose. Mars has no moon to compete for attention in the night sky. The winkling red and pink stars nestle in the bloody ribbon of the milky way. Martians can even perceive certain shades of infra red.
The low tech solution for Martian eye protection on earth was red sunglasses. They were called Jakes, after Jake Cartwright, the Martian sports hero that won a gold medal sprinting at the Olympics.
So that’s what I mean when I say I saw her that night, pink-eyed with red pupils, dressed in black with her hair the colour of a Kansas sunset pulled up tight above grenadine skin. An ornate pattern of red splayed across her exposed arms and neck like shadows through trees, like light through a fence. Her nose had the same long sweep as the profile of the face on the Martian twenty-dollar bill. She was the daughter of Marisium Baron Farakkeh Kong. She was in my bar and she had no bodyguards. My bar is not a nice one. You could buy ten of them for the price of her dress.
It was a volatile situation. As volatile as Marisium on Earth.
tags