Tatterdemalion

Sunshards

The knee lands between her shoulders when she tries to push herself up off the deck. She hits the deck with plenty of padding, but the wind’s still knocked out of her long enough for the three to get to work. The lithe one, Prim, grabs her ankles and folds them back, lashing them crossed over each other before securing her legs again and again: shins, knees, thighs, making it impossible for her to so much as think about squirming free. With her feet like this, she can’t even hop; she’ll have to be carried. Quick Ji wrenches her wrists into the small of her back and cinches them securely together, before wrapping more rope around her arms, over and under her chest, forcing her shoulders back and emphasizing her heavenly mounds.

Blackleaf just waits. She sits and waits for Rose’s head to jerk up. “You! Ungrateful, wicked—“ That’s all Rosepetal gets to spit out. Then she’s got lace crammed in her mouth, and satin, and silk, and the strong taste of foxes. The pairs pulled over her head add the smell of foxes, too, and she’s mewling and struggling and trying to speak, to be heard, even as Blackleaf pulls the first of many scarves over her well-packed mouth. She doesn’t get to speak. She doesn’t have to. All she has to do is whine uselessly and give pleading, humiliated looks upwards.

And then they’ll bring Chen out, hopping so cutely, her ears perky and her tail twitching, and Chen will get to see her like this, and they’ll be tied back-to-back, or with Chen’s limbs wrapped around her Rosepetal so that Chen can get a front-row seat to her Rosepetal’s humiliation, helplessness, and objectification. Desirable, owned, used as a bargaining chip. Teased by four victorious foxes, forced to watch as Chen’s plan falls apart, as they rub it in that she could have stopped it, tear her top open, show off to everyone what a big girl Rosepetal is, as Chen does her best to tell the foxes off and mmmphs indignantly on her behalf and gives her reassuring looks papering over her own dismay, because even in the midst of failure she wants to keep her girlfriend’s heart safe…

Rosepetal stands up, and foxes tumble, and somehow end up in her arms. (Even if she had to catch Prim in the crook of one leg and then kick her up like the football.) “Girls,” she says, calmly, even though they can feel her heart racing, it’s impossible for her to hide it from them, the foxes have always known what she wants better than she does, “you can betray me afterwards. I promise. I’ll even give you suggestions.” Now she can tell she’s got their ears perking, their squirming more perfunctory. “But for now…”

All three scream as they go flying into the pool, hitting the water flailing and shrieking and vowing vengeance upon treacherous maidservants. And Rosepetal is all squirming and melting inside over the thought of four vindictive foxes taking her up on her offer, especially if Chen will have to come save her, but she still knows her part in this play.

“Honored guest,” she says to Omets, sternly, “we will be docking at our destination shortly. I must ask that you retire below decks to meet with the captain, as we are clearing the deck for our entry.”

No fight. No opening for the other monks. No simpering or wringing her apron. Rosepetal lets just a flash of her old demeanor through, a reminder that she has chosen to be just a maid. She is tall, and she is in command of her space, and she has just flung three foxes like they were even lighter and fluffier than regular foxes. Do not think you can brush her aside so easily!

[Rosepetal hammers her Defy Disaster with a 10. The foxes will have to wait their turn like good girls.]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri!

“Don’t give me that,” Uusha says, and straightens under her own power. Her muscles are taut and trembling with the exertion. “If she’d grabbed your bound wrists and ignored your squeals, that’d be different. That would be different. But you were unbound, everything was war and chaos around you, and the witch barked out orders because that’s what witches do. She made that call because I couldn’t drag you off to fight that rotting knight. So let me cut to it.”

Her eyes are piercing. Wickedly so. Her body is as tense as a held bowstring. When she speaks, it’s with authority, as if being lectured by an older relative. “You serve the Dominion. Don’t fish for sympathy here, in this room, knowing what happens to me next. You can punish me, let me accept your anger and crush it between my teeth, or you can go and let it fester until your heart’s gone rotten with it, but I won’t pretend that you’re uniquely wronged. Unless you intend to tell me that your owner means to let me go and leave my home, it’s just a cut. Just a failure on her part, and thus mine, and that’s the only reason I’d even offer to be your whipping girl.”

Is she right? What is her likely doom, Piripiri of Hymair?

***

Han!

“I should go apologize,” Lotus says. She sits with her hands in her lap, her body like a flower at night with its petals folded in on themselves. “I can’t believe I— that I made you think— I led her on, Han!”

Emli pours tea into a steaming cup in the Ember Stateroom, where you ended up pulling Lotus (running into oh-so-helpful Emli on the way). The tea tray slides up in front of the two of you as Emli loudly does not offer any commentary on whatever you two might be talking about.

“I just thought she was being nice, and— and now she’s going to think you’re not nice just because I made her think— and I wasn’t doing it on purpose, you know that, right?”

When she looks at you, she’s trembling and so, so vulnerable. Like a flower being torn at by the wind, almost pulled from its stem. “Right?” She whispers, hands not moving from where they sit, clenched, in her lap.

Emli gives you an expressive Look that you are completely and totally unable to decipher, but it sure is saying something super loudly. What do you assume is it saying, o dragoness, o guardian of little petals?

Breathless Dead

Redana is—

She’s not the Nemean. But she’s big. Maybe even a little taller than Bella, though the heels are definitely doing a lot of the heavy lifting there. She looks older, more mature, more sure of herself right now. When she smiles back, it’s as someone who is comfortable in her own skin, who isn’t second-guessing herself. There’s magic here. And it’s beautiful, isn’t it?

“We have to take out the Pyramid,” the Shepherdess says, her gaiety tempered by the battle raging all around. A victory’s been won here, but there’s more to be done. “Alexa, do you think these shining arms of yours can tear it down and leave no stone standing on another? I’ll keep the Gardener off your back while you work.”

The impossible shape in her hand twists and writhes into the shape of that long and terrible bow with which she harried the tyrant. Her fingers brush against the string, which quivers with a dreadful note, a promise of battle.

“Once that is done, my uncle’s shackles will fall away, and perhaps these breathless dead all around will be allowed their rest. And then there will be nothing standing between me and Bella. And after that… well, I suppose we’ll all find out together. Shall we?”

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

On Aevum.

There it is. Disarmament. There’s no risk of being reviewed. Not after sharing something like that. Something hard and stiff and tense as a held bowstring relaxes, melts, inside of Vesna. She’s been holding it since Yellow— since November made her offer. How sore it is. How incredible the relief of letting it fall slack.

“Exactly,” she says. “It‘s that same feeling you get from the really good open world games: that you walk into a place and it’s both imbued with meaning and begging for you to interact with it. That the indents in the carpet mean something. That there’ll be a reward if you pay attention to them, even if it’s only in your own heart. This is a place where people are encouraged to do that. Where they can be themselves with friends, where they can poke around and get to know the place, where I don’t keep too many secrets back here.”

She sneaks Yellow a glance and smiles like, say, a fox might. “But of course there are secrets. It’s just that most of them are upstairs…”

***

Concerning the Park.

Maybe? Maybe? As if that’s not 3V’s goal once she gets the whole Dating Disaster squared away. Hitting up the forums, asking around on social media, doing her best to try to get in contact with the kind of people who know better than she does how to get this treasure trove reproduced and maintained.

There’s definitely more story here, some hitch, some intellectual property snag that will hit before the end of the project— but that’s for later. Right now, 3V is back in town, she’s dating an android harem, and she’s on the Move to find more interesting things. So what’s good? What’s the new place to eat, what’s the underground scene, what’s the latest station attraction?

Sunshards

A challenge. Thrust and counter-thrust. He asks: what is Chen’s hospitality? And moreover, he asks: is this labor worthy of you, Rose? Or are you uselessly flailing at a skill you have not mastered?

Rose cedes a small victory to deny him a grander one: she moves slowly, attending to one thing at a time, so that at least she can say she’s handled one thing. The mop dips into the bucket and she attends first to the tea, lest it stain. Her movements are deliberate, controlled, her chin raised as she wipes the deck clean.

But she is not perfect. She does not do everything with a bounce and a nimble flourish of her apron. If he continued, he could lead her from task to task, if he wanted. Walk her into a trap. Or just make her say something she shouldn’t.

Her shoulders rise and fall as she mops up the ash with the patience of a glacier. She steps over one carelessly askew leg and snorts through her nose. Let him speak, then. Or play some mischief on her. She refuses to be goaded so easily.

Such is the patience of both a maid and a monk.

[Rosepetal rolls a beautiful 2 on Figuring Omets Out. Do as you will.]

Breathless Dead

The arrows are almost white, if you look at them from the right angle. They’re not Thunderbolts, not terrible explosive impositions of wrath. They’re tight-packed shapes, compressed harder than the flickering thing in the Shepherdess’s hands. Holos always like to talk up the impossible shapes of chthonic monsters and the wrongness they inherently possess, all slimy and mind-breaking and gross, but the shapes comprising the darts of Hermes’ daughter are impossible in a way that makes them more right. As if the shapes of man are simply attempts to replicate the idea of a shape, perfected.

She’s darting here and there, always a step ahead of Liu Ban, more intense than graceful, and where she digs her heels in to a halt, she draws back the string of the bow and the shapes interlock behind her, the wind kicking up and setting her skirt to wild fluttering, and the shapes are a language inexpressible, writhing as a halo about her. When she lets the finger slip from what might be a string, the aura roars, the shapes lance out, and something that is like an arrow hits true. After all, archery is an Olympic sport, too.

Sometimes they are whistling clean-cutting things that slice away skin, braids, neatly digging furrows in his body where they pass. Other times they hit his limbs with sudden force, knocking blows askew, cracking his jaw, and they shiver out into writhing sigils and fading signs. It’s hard to tell which one they will be until they strike him.

One, two, three. Darts slam into Liu Ban’s chest with such vehemence that even he is forced to stumble a step back, as they roar out anthems of almost-comprehensible defiance in their dissipation. Redana Epimelios spins her wand between her fingers, makes it something small and sharp where it was a well-curved bow a moment before. She looks Alexa in the eyes, smiling, as she stabs it through the back of her hand.

The Command Seal smokes and whines underneath the wand of the Shepherdess, the concentrated meaning cutting through coils of tightly-wound compulsion and will, until— with a snap, with a roar— it shatters and tears out from beneath her skin. The noise released from it, a thousand commandments and strictures, is a cacophony that swells suddenly and then collapses into nothing.

Redana barely hisses as the wand slides back out of her skin, leaving in its wake only the quality of Injury. She taps it twice, then, on her hand, and silently commands the quality of Injury to be otherwise. Her hand, stiff with the knowledge that it should be suffering Injury, relaxes in relief. She flexes her fingers with a satisfied grin, and turns back to Alexa, beaming.

“How about—“

Liu Ban’s backhand should have sent her flying halfway across the battlefield. Instead, she does a complicated mid-air twist and lands on her feet some distance away, skidding but controlled, like a cat tossed down a hallway. She coils her muscles beneath her and then launches back towards the tyrant, her wand a thin and wicked sword that slices through the dead in her path, its reach impossibly long and its keening song the sound of Redana’s heart, her mother’s heart, her aching and her yearning.

I have failed, that song says to the spine, to the nerves. Watch me try again, and again, until I have done it right!

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri!

“…she’s a witch,” Uusha finally croaks. Her tone of voice is hard to read at first; it’s cracked, dry, thin with pain, but unbroken. “They don’t tend to ask when they’re dealing with… that. Could have been worse, even. This one witch I know, she wouldn’t have even told you, just cut your hand and let the results— wilt— speak for themselves. Was it acceptable? It got us out. That’s what matters.”

Her head lolls back. Despite the dried drool on her chin, her smile is impudent, almost patronizing. “But you don’t want to hear that. You don’t want to hear that I’d order anyone in my retinue to bleed, there, because I’d rather you be bleeding than at the mercy of them. And if you admit it was necessary, you can’t let yourself stay angry at us, and that anger feels good. Trust me. I know.”

Her shoulders stiffen; she puts the last of her strength into lifting her chin, adding a deeper growl to her voice. “But you are right that she was under my authority. So go ahead. Punish me.”

She can barely keep herself upright, but that growl… it’s a challenge, and not a mocking one. For her sake? For yours? Who’s to say?

***

Han!

It’s a weird sensation. It feels like your thoughts suddenly cut through… let’s call it smoke. And behind them, well, it’s obvious. It’s always been obvious. What does the Red Wolf want to get from Lotus?

She wants to steal her. One dragon’s child to another, you recognize this. She wants to tumble Lotus into bed, use her for fun, and then add her to a collection. Take some token of hers as a prize, proof that she had her way with the little priestess. And she wants Lotus to think she’s hot, to stay, to decide not to leave with you, for…

Well, the reasons are big and depend on something you don’t know yet. You don’t know that the Red Wolf intends to blackmail the Sapphire Mother by holding her daughter prisoner. All you know is that Cathak Agata wants to use Melody, or Lotus, or whoever this little priestess is; wants to make her squeak and squeal and make noises you can barely imagine; and then she wants to keep her, not even out of love but because she wants a trophy.

Even Machi’s better than that. At least she’s honest. If you’d gotten here a moment later, the Red Wolf would have been kissing Lotus, without permission, to try to make her head spin and her legs open, and she would have told you Lotus started it. It’s obvious. It’s achingly obvious.

Lotus inches towards you as much as she can, and both of you notice. The corridor is cramped. Painfully cramped. And hot. The heat is rolling off Agata’s skin now, in waves. But it’s still not hotter than what’s boiling inside of you.

“It’d be a shame to hide her face,” Agata says, pleasantly. She wants you to die. She wants you to keel over dead on the spot. “It’s such a… parochial custom, isn’t it?” Whatever that word means, she’s using it to make fun of you, hiding behind it like it’s a shield. “The only ones I might have to hand are from Chiaroscuro, but— well, do you think she deserves one of those?” Laying out a trap: wherever that is, she wants you to say yes so she can turn to Lotus all scandalized and tell her they’re worn by, like, dead grandmothers or something.

Because this is her ship and she wants Lotus to be hers and you interrupted her and the thing she wants is yours. Lotus picked you. Lotus picked you.

And that means you’re no longer a possible peer or a curiosity or someone for her to add to her collection. You’re a rival. The ancient dragons all killed themselves in wars, feeling this way. And her ancestor was the one that won all those wars, in the end.

Lotus’s fingers touch your pinkie, half-curl around it. “Actually, Han, I wanted to talk to you,” she squeaks. It takes literally all of her courage to do, but… not because she’s scared? She won’t look at you. She’s ashamed. “If that’s okay…?”

Sunshards

The thing to understand about the monks of the Nine Kingdoms is that there is no centralized authority, and as such, there are many authorities: as many as can be followed. Monks move like water: some, like Rose from the River, are quick-moving streams, pilgrims who move where the Way directs them, impositions on what it means to be a monk on the rest of the world, while others congregate in the pools of monasteries, under the insight and spiritual leadership of a monk with an Idea. There is no church, there is no Arch-Abbot, there is only the transcendent search for what is right and good.

Which means, in practical terms, that one of the old monks got wind of Chen’s plan to release the foxes and disliked it. Foxes are impious creatures who cause mischief and tempt people away from austerity, towards possessions, and above all, towards desire. Desire is a trap, a beautiful golden trap, and Rosepetal is so deep in it that she doesn’t want to come out.

And so this monk went to the groupchat with her old friends, and her old rivals, and informed them that the young heiress to the twin shards, you know the one, she’s going to break all of the foxes out of cutie jail, where they’re quarantined for everyone’s good. I’m going to see about correcting her error as kindly as she lets me. And enough of them nodded and got their good traveling clothes on and told the gods to come and join them if they liked, but they’re going anyway.

(Again, there is no central authority: the fashion of the monks is austere but diverse. Some wear the traditional saffron robes, but others, like Rose from the River once did, wear simple black workout clothes, all tank tops and sensible pants and staves. Some drape themselves in dark shrouds to drown out the world’s temptations all around them, so they can hear the Way’s quiet urgings all the better, and carry canes to tap along their path. Yin’s former cult wear unitards with heavy glass plates sewn on, to reflect the world back at itself, and carry swords in honor of the one they thought the Bodhisattva. There’s Mina the Computer in her heavy jacket, each stud an old plastic key, carrying a club wrapped in cables, counting her way to eudaemonia. And, yes, there’s Aoi the Pilgrim Mendicant, wearing a thriftstore babydoll tee and worn-out Burrows sneakers, thoughtfully hefting what was once an umbrella.)

And most of them have come here to pass judgment. They’re here because they think what Chen is doing is wrong. Not all of them; some are here because they’re friends with someone who does, or because they owe someone a favor. Lalisa of the Black Wind might be here just because she wants a rematch with Rose from the River, actually. But the wall of judgment she’s getting from them is still difficult to bear.

Rose from the River could have managed it. She could have air-jumped into the midst of them and told them that she’s honor-bound to see the foxes reach shore safely, and while they can hunt foxes as much as they like once they arrive, anyone who wanted to stop Chen would have to fight their way through her. She would have been a figure of terrible strength, beating down people she looked up to as clever thinkers, kind aunties, or just annoyingly persistent duelists, inspiring sullen envy in everyone she beat down.

Assuming, of course, that she was not leading the pack. Dueling Chen, disarming her and getting her in a headlock with affected casualness, letting her fellow monks sweep through the decks and shut up the foxes in their cabins, turning the ship around and taking them all back to cutie jail where they belonged. And maybe she’d leave Chen with them, too, to learn a lesson about trusting foxes. The thought makes her palms sweaty and her body off-kilter, like it’s not fitting into the space apportioned to it correctly.

She takes one more look back up at those cliffs. Then she turns, walks back into the ship. The deck is cleared. The ship is a ghost, for a moment, cutting smoothly through the water.

She comes back out with a mop, a bucket with a prickly yellow rope tied to its handle, and a custodial apron, her braids tied up in a bun. She sits in the lotus position, mop across her lap, bucket by her side, apron old and stained. She drapes herself in a different sort of humility and waits. She will not go out and challenge them, bombastic and grinning, but she will not let them stop her Chen. So come, then. Try, if you dare.

The Princess’s maid is waiting to see if you are worthy to even face her.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

The Park.

“It won’t be. It isn’t.”

Vesna puts everything she has into those words. Not defensive. Sincere. Of course it won’t be. It never would have been. There’s real worth here, something to share with the world, a digital gold mine.

It won’t be. It isn’t.

She does take the out, after a moment. It’s a long way back home, after all. A long and lonesome way. But it’s important to say that, first. To reassure. To offer that kindness.

Of course it won’t be. It never would have been.

***

Aevum!

3V listens, and gives Sympathy Nods. By this time, it’s just the two of them, the door blinds are shuttered, and the only light’s the one right above the shop counter. The booths have had their screens pulled shut, and the game shelves at the far end of the room are dark, looming things. Outside, very occasionally, lights go past, limning the shutters in neon orange and washed-out yellow.

“Money goes in, money goes out.” She shares a rueful smile. “I was lucky enough to have some money squirreled away, but moving up here, buying the place, renovations… this is really my eccentric retirement, not a way to make money. All this breaks even, if I’m in a good month.”

She gestures out at the booths, where (when it’s not this early in the morning) regulars sit on mats, chug tea and slurp down cheap ramen, run campaigns and yell at each other over meeples and fill up what would otherwise have been an empty house. It’s here. It’s hers. She’s keeping it above water, barely.

She stops and gives Yellow a curious look. “That’s eight different opinions on aesthetics I counted. C’mon, what’s your aesthetic?”

Sunshards

“She must be punished,” Vanimasé howls, digging her nails into Rosepetal’s biceps as she scrambles back onto the deck. “That was deliberate! Meibelle acted with malice aforethought! I have witnesses! You saw it! If not for my quick wit and indefatigable spirit, that brazen assassination attempt would have succeeded! Oh! Oh!! Jail! Jail for Meibelle! Jail for Meibelle for one thousand years!”

“Mmmhm,” Rosepetal replies, wrapping the thick emergency towel around Vanimasé, ostensibly to help dry off her fluffy tails and avoid the risk of serious illness from Wet Tail Shock Syndrome. Pinning her grabby nails to her sides is certainly just a side effect. There, cinch it all just above her fluffy tails with a thick knot.

Then she notices Chen giving her a Look, and all of Vanimasé’s complaints turn into white noise and static from a dead Burrower channel.

It gets her every time. She’s not used to being looked at like that when she’s not trying. Don’t get her wrong: she’s a knockout. Chen’s not a helpless, blushing innocent, effortlessly disarmed, but her Rosepetal still knows how to make her want to melt. But she’s just over here, handling a fussy fox, and Chen’s making a face like her Rosepetal’s over on the sidelines shaking pompoms and more than pompoms. Like she’s about to point, and someone’s going to swing a spotlight, and then she’ll go: and I’m dedicating all of this to my girlfriend!

Blossoms snap open all up and down Rosepetal’s hair, soft and delicate pink against her thick curls, and then one lets out a burst of pollen.

“Now let’s get you back over to somewhere comfortable where you can sit and get all eaten off—— dried out,” Rose says, squishing Vanimasé to her chest, cutting her off mid-war declaration, while simultaneously trying to pat down her treacherous hair and wave away the pollen, succeeding at neither. “How’s the poolside sound that’s great glad you like it too!!”