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# Soulmage

**It was simpler this way,** thought Meloai to herself.

Ever since she'd started going to school, she'd noticed that the strongest educational tool was simplification. A ball dropped from height *h* with mass *m* had *mgh* units of kinetic energy when it struck the floor—if you made the assumption that air didn't exist. An object in motion would stay in motion, if you removed the rest of the universe from the equation.

A new friend Meloai tried to make would invariably find her "too weird" and leave, if Meloai never learned how to change herself for the better.

So when Meloai woke up and slunk into class, she applied the same simplification to everyone around her. Iola would always bully someone else, if you made the assumption that Meloai kept her head down. Cienne would always defend her with that fierce, reckless protectiveness of his, if you made the assumption that she wouldn't fuck up their friendship and lose him like she lost everyone else. Lucet would always know where to find those places where the three of them could be quiet and alone, if you made the assumption that she would continue being kind to Meloai out of nothing but the goodness of her heart.

Objects in motion. Her classmates' emotions were too complex to understand in their fullness, so she boiled them down to something she could comprehend. Objects in motion.

"Oh, hey, it's the soulless freak." Iola leered at Meloai. She tried not to react. The First Law of Sociodynamics: every reaction to Iola's bullying would be met by an equal and opposite intensification of said bullying.

"You're more of a freak than she is, Iola," Cienne snapped from behind her. Internally, Meloai sighed. The Second Law of Sociodynamics: even though she loved Cienne, the chaos of any situation with Cienne involved always increased.

"Hey, at least I'm not a heartless machine," Iola sneered, unperturbed by Cienne standing up for her. Meloai considered the pros and cons of telling Iola that she felt emotions perfectly fine—just in a different way than he did—but the Third Law of Sociodynamics came into play. The usefulness of explaining neurodivergence to someone approached zero as their intelligence approached zero.

Cienne opened his mouth to snap back, but Meloai placed a hand on his arm. Surprised, he turned towards her, and she gave him a faint smile.

"Ignore him," Meloai said.

Cienne looked uncertainly between Iola and his friend, but there was no demon to slay, no monster to fight. Just a jumped-up little kid who derived some sadistic pleasure from seeing other people squirm.

"I don't know how you do it," he muttered.

Lucet dropped her bag on the desk next to Meloai, completing the trio of friends. Equilateral triangles were about as strong as it got when it came to tensile strength, and so it was with the three of them. As long as they stayed together, nothing could tear them apart. "It's the easiest play," Lucet said. "Wasting energy on jerks like him is just flushing your precious time down the drain."

Meloai nodded sagely. Lucet got it, although she'd come to her conclusions through experiment instead of theory. "We don't need to engage him," Meloai said. "We've got each other."

Cienne gave his two friends a considering look, and some of the perpetual anger on his face bled out. "...Yeah. You're right. We've got each other."

Meloai leaned back as lecture began and smiled to herself as Cienne and Lucet pointedly ignored Iola's taunts. Objects in motion. It was all objects in motion.

It was simpler this way. And when the stars aligned and her models were right, it was simple enough for Meloai to understand.

A.N.

Soulmage will be episodically updated. Want to know what happens next? Check out [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/bubblewriters/comments/uxmwe4/soulmage_masterpost/) to be notified whenever a new part comes out, and check out r/bubblewriters for more stories by me.

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Submitted by meowcats734 on Mon, Jun 06, 2022 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

You wake up to your radio’s announcement that physicists have taken over the world. You can’t push yourself out of bed; there’s no friction. You look out the window, and all your cows are spherical.