[Storytime: 2/9
Adventure GET: 3/21
Up to Date: 1/15
Something To Deal With 1]

The [i]floof[/i] starts right at the small of my back and shoots out in both directions so that by the time it reaches the top of my head and my ears and the [i]floof[/i] runs through them like a wave, my tail’s already voluminous with excitement. “Oh bells and high watch,” I say, breathless, “you’re a [i]spirit![/i]” My smile is broad enough to swallow her blush right up! “Of course I knew you’d be important: this is [i]Rinley and the Spirit![/i]”

I shoot up, brandishing my lily pad like a sword, likely provoking a squeak. “She was the legendary shrine maiden, descendant of Finley, heir to the mantle of the Fish King himself! She was a spirit, the thought that the world has about itself! Can I make it any clearer?” I stop, and lower the lily pad. Not sheepishly, because I have never done anything sheepish in my life, but... in acknowledgement that I probably shouldn’t wave a lily pad at my new friend(!!). “What are you a spirit of? Wait, don’t tell me. If I can’t figure it out, I don’t deserve to know.” I’ll have to figure out a classification system and narrow it down. Maybe she’s a spirit of trees, or a specific tree, or the way the wheat moves in the wind, and did you know that back in olden times it used to be called corn? What we know as good ol’ corn is technically “maize.” That’s why, when you hear of people wearing crowncorns, you shouldn’t imagine a bunch of corncobs pointing out like a halo of swords! I could imagine Sessily (what a fun name! Ssssssessssssssily~) with a corncrown and a cornucopia without even breaking a sweat, but then again, what if she’s actually a spirit of rainy days? I’d be so embarrassed if I looked at her then and told her she was a spirit of plenty and sunlight on the wheat, and besides, wheat’s grown more often in the Walking Fields, on the other side of Horizon; in this part of town, rice is queen, and she doesn’t strike me as being a rice spirit; she’s not sticky enough at all, probably. I should try touching her to test that hypothesis.

“The Fish King’s a fun story,” I add, stepping out into the rain with my lily pad over my head and a hand outstretched in invitation: [i]follow me.[/i] “Which means it’s storytime!”

***

[i]Once upon a time, Fortitude went fallow. It didn’t happen all at once, but bad harvest year followed bad harvest year, and what’s worse, the fish stopped biting at all. Kaiju kept attacking, and to their surprise their arrival wasn’t met with screaming and panic but with forks and knives and napkins, but man cannot live on Kaiju alone! Some people put their affairs in order and moved to Horizon, or out to the Walking Fields, leaving their houses shuttered and dark looking out over dry and withered fields.[/i]

The drainage ditch beside the road is covered with small stone slabs. It’s usually safe to walk on them, or even ride a bicycle on them, because people don’t leave gaps. That’s dangerous, you know? But here, there’s a spot where the ditch suddenly dips, as the road slopes downward, and if the sound of rushing water didn’t warn you, you might have a nasty surprise. It roars, as if trying to drown out a story unsuited to green and grey forever, as far as the eye can see.

[i]Rinley got so skinny that he could hide behind a lamp-post after eating dinner, and fed up with how things were going, got in his rowboat and went out into the middle of Big Lake, so far that he could only see land if he squinted. Then he tied a line to his toe and leaned back with his hat over his face and let Big Lake rock him to sleep.

When he woke up, he was in a great big four-poster bed, soft as a duck’s rear end and twice and three time as comfy. When he turned his head, he saw a bunch of fish swimming by. And he comes to grips with the fact that Big Lake just judged him. He’d always thought he was as safe as a fiddle: that while he meant trouble, he didn’t [b]mean[/b] trouble, and he didn’t think he was [b]wicked.[/b] Wickedness must have crept up to him sneakily, unless it was running on a conversion rate, and a thousand misdemeanors and shenanigans became one wickedness, worthy to be swallowed up by the lake and never seen again. Except, now that he thought about it, his new accommodations at the bottom of the lake seemed awfully cushy for being the wages of sin.[/i]

We see the truck down the road after it passes that one clump of trees, and we step off the road; my sandal starts to slip on the steep slope of mud between road and field full of water. Sessily grabs my hand and I nearly pull her off balance too and drag her into a wet, muddy mess in the field. Instead, I let my lily pad fall into the crook between my head and shoulder and frantically wave my arm around until my foot stops sliding, we’re precariously balanced together, and we’re not in the water. The driver, going a couple of miles now, flashes his lights and bobs his head apologetically. I wave him on with a smile. It’s Mr. Pradelemov, given the [i]GOLDEN PERCH FISHERY[/i] label on the truck. My sandal’s a mess of mud, and we stop to wash it off before we keep going.

[i]Then, a lady came in, wearing a shimmering silver dress and a tiara set with rosy pearls the size of your smallest fingernail. Rinley pretended to still be asleep, because people always say interesting things when they think nobody’s listening.

“I hope he wakes up soon,” the lady said. “Unless someone finds the witch of the waste and frees the king of all fish from her nightmare aquarium, Fortitude will waste away until it’s beyond saving; and he’s the only hero that’s left in Fortitude. Everyone else who’s gone looking for her has been lost.” Hearing that, Rinley yawned and rolled over, and looked her up and down. Then, with his noble heart hammering in his chest, he took her hand, as dark and gentle as midnight, and promised her that he would do whatever it took to find the witch of the waste.[/i]

From here, we can see the Archive, beginning to loom as we round the hill. The roof is a complicated thing of tarps and repurposed sails and rope, and it looks like it’s about to explode into an amazing flying ship; the walls will turn out to have been a hull all along, a panel will slide back in the great spiral staircase to reveal a glowing blue crystal humming with power, and with the wind in its sails it will take everybody inside off across Big Lake to New York, or Hyperborea, or Shangri-la. But I don’t want to get too off track, so we just look at it a moment and then I look at her and go, “it’s cool, right?” and her face lights up and she asks me what it is and I tell her: it’s the Archive of Professor Hideo Hayashi.

[i]That’s why, the next day, Rinley went out with a bunch of cats on leashes, wearing a jacket covered in bells and goose feathers in his hat. Everybody he passed stared at him, and asked him what on earth he thought he was doing. Even Rinley Yatskaya himself couldn’t make all those cats go in a straight line, and he was constantly having to pick them up and carry them when they got sulky, which meant he ended up being more leash and cat than man. But, eventually, he herded them past a particularly blighted old farm, and the cantankerous old man who happened to be leaning on his gate squinted at him and asked him what exactly he thought he was doing with those internal creatures. That being the sign that he had been told to watch for, he let all of the leashes go and let the cats scatter all over that farm.

“Rust your hide,” the old man said, hitting his fist on the gate, “I’ll get you back for this, youngster, or my name isn’t Martinev Titov!” And Martinev went chasing after the cats with a broom while Rinley let himself inside the old man’s house. In the back, in the laundry room, there was an old boarded-up well. Rinley used the shoehorn he happened to be carrying with him to pry up the boards, and then hopped straight down (and of course he landed on his feet). Down there...[/i]

***

“But then the beat poetry cafe overtook her,” I say, in my most breathy and exotic voice. The kind of voice that deserves beads and silk and fancy ice cream. “And she lapsed into silence. Will you tell us the end of this story, her sister asked, and Rinley said: if I am alive and also we hang out again.” I empty out my lily pad one more time, and then fling the door open.

“We are here,” I declare, “for the beat poetry! Let the beats commence!!”

...this does not look like it is open. Or a beat poetry cafe. There’s a redhead and a maid, and both of them are important, vitally important, two in the same [i]room—[/i] or is it the room that’s important? This requires immediate investigation.

I tap my chin. If this were a dating sim, the important things would be highlighted, or at the very least drawn on a different layer. Things being what they are, I have to trust my intuition. “Where are you hiding the beats,” I accuse them, accusatorily, with a point. “Are you an [i]illegal beat operation?[/i] A smuggler’s den? Tax evaders? Are the beats in the back, and this is all a test? Because let me tell you, we’re going to pass. Sessily and I are [i]amazing[/i] at passing tests. Go ahead! Test us! Let us prove that we are worthy to accept the [i]beats![/i]”

[Marking a Storytime XP.]