(no subject)

[sythyry]

[Over Choinxeia; 4 Hispis 4385]

So, there I was, having a fight with a couch. Not a bite-and-breathe kind of fight, which I might have won on account of the couch being unable to move and rather flammible. An emotional tearstorm kind of a fight. I'm usually terribly outclassed at those, except with Vae, even when I'm the one crying. (That's probably the real reason I haven't dated anyone for decades.)

The couch had just said, "And my very creator despises me and sides with my enemies against me! Oh, I have no friend in the entire universe, from port to starboard, from bow to stern, from sub-basement to observation deck! No friend, no ally, no consort! Deliver me to the embrace of the flames, merciful Rassimel!"

I tried to use logic. "I don't despise you. I made you because I need you." That usually works, with created beings.

"But you do not! You have never asked me to do the slightest thing, never! Me, who would, if it were set on coasters, roll the entire length of Choinxeia if it would save you the inconvenience of crossing the room!"

I used more logic, because I am a very foolish lizard. (Actually, because it often works on Vae, who is the person usually crying at me.) "That would take a long time, rolling a hundred thousand miles."

"Behold! Again you scorn me! I offer the vastest effort -- vaster than I am capable of, vaster than any couch has ever done for any prime before! And what do you do? A spurn, a scorn, a fleer, a flout! You make it nothing! What must I ever do to win your good regard? What? Must? I? Ever? Do?

"Remind me to be a lot more accurate with Spiridor spells," I snapped. Technically, the spell giving the couch its unwanted life is a Spiridor spell. A beautifully-cast Spiridor spell will make a living thing that is eager to do what you want. (Actually I think I got that part right. The problem is patience.)

(Technical aside. The other problem is permanence. I don't make many permanent mindful servants, so I had kind of forgotten: they tend to get eccentric over time. Usually "over time" is decades. But that's for spells cast the ordinary way, not with the crystallization technique.)

Which reminded me, a bit too late, of the first rule of tearstorming emotional combat: zie who snaps at the other one first, loses. The couch started wailing, "Mismade! I am mismade! I am a botchery! A disaster from my time of first fabrication! A doomy, doomy failament! Alas! I envy the very firewood: immediately useful, soon destroyed!"

Lithia flicked her tail. "You've got a point there."

"Kind Rassimel! You understand! You, alone in the cruelly-constructed universe! You alone have heard the language of my heart!" squeaked the couch.

"Stop pestering Lithia," I told it. "You're a perfectly fine piece of intelligent furniture. We're still sort of exploring Strayway, and there aren't so many of us here, so you haven't had any visitors yet. I'm sure that you will, and I'm sure that you'll give good directions."

The couch ignored me. "Mistress! Sweet Rassimel! What, oh, what is the woe that troubles you now?"

Lithia whined. "Don't worry about it, it happens from time to time to me. I'll live. For a while." The natty black and white stripes in her fur were deliquescing, slipping away into plain brown. "Actually, may I sit on you? I sometimes fall over if I'm standing when I change."

"May you? May you? My queen -- if you were eighty thousand tons of jagged metal, you could sit upon me! You could fall upon me from the height of the Silver Moon -- I would be crushed to splinters happily for you, to save a single scratch on your nigh-invulnerable hide!"

Lithia curled up in the curve of the couch, eyes squeezed shut. She crammed her tailtip into her mouth and chewed on it, which she says helps to take her mind off the shifting itself. I'm used to watching it, and more. I used to hold her when she was an infant, and clean her up and give her a bit of babywine afterwards.

The couch is not used to shifter hybrids, not that it's used to anyone. It squealed, "My mistress, my mistress! Wizard, you must save her! A horrible thing is occurring to her -- her, my only friend in the universe forever!"

I was rather annoyed with the thing. "I've done what I could, long since."

"O, cruel Zi Ri, to leave her to writhe and die upon my cushions!"

"She's not going to die there."

The worst of the change had passed. Lithia was scratching her now-Orren face and arms with blunt now-Orren claws furiously.

Being a surrogate-parental sort of person towards her, I had to warn her, "Careful, Lithia. You'll cut yourself, and you'll rip your clothes." Because, you see, her sleeves were rather tight; she's nearly a foot taller as an Orren than she is as a Rassimel.

She glared at me. "I know how to handle a shapeshift, Sythyry. I've done it a thousand times."

(A thousand times? She's thirty years old. At 243 days a year, and 27 hours a day, and about one change an hour, she's shifted some two hundred thousand times. And she's got some sixty or seventy thousand more to endure.)

But she did unbutton her sleeves, and adjust her vest and skirt so they lay properly on her Orren body. Grinwipey makes her clothes with much care. She doesn't generally need to go change outfits with every shift anymore.

"I know. I just don't want you to rip anything," I said.

"I'll be fine, Sythyry." She poured over the back of the couch, and back to the parlor to get her sketchbook. "Couch, may I sit here and draw for a while?"

"Mistress! If there were ten thousand of you, and the fur of each one were ten thousand pairs of sharp snipping scissors, you all could sit upon me! So great is my love for you that I would gladly be snipped to bits in an instant of a twinkling, to cushion your ten thousand posteriors even for the briefest instant!"

Lithia laughed. "I don't change that much, just Rassy to Orren and back. How about, I sit here for an hour and draw?"

"Mistress --- nothing could give me a greater joy than to serve you in whatever way I am capable of. As furniture, as a guide ... When the assassins come, I beg that you hide behind me, so that my stiff wooden structural elements may shield you from their poisoned arrows!"

Phaniet poked her head in at the door. "Goodness. Are we expecting assassins, Sythyry?"

"No, but you never know what might be lurking in the far reaches of Strayway. I probably should have been a bit more conservative when I made it," I admitted, conceding a technical disagreement that we had been disputing for some months.

"Yes, you should have," she said.

Lithia peered at me with big brown eyes. "Could I have some privacy to sketch, please?"

"Certainly you can, Lithia," said Phaniet. "I need Sythyry, or at least, I need a spell or two."

Thoroughly defeated by my assistant and my furniture, I slunk after her to keep bits from falling off my new and far too complicated sky-yacht.

Comments

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

Lithia reminds me of another acquaintance of mine who shifts uncontrollably between two forms, though said shifts happen randomly anywhere between five hours and five days apart. They pretty much always have to change clothes, however; the two forms are simply that different in size and build. Truth is, I think Sonjun has it far easier than Lithia, and next time I speak with them, I may remind them of this fact.

(Then again, hearing from one's creator that Yes, I Made Your Life Suck But It Could Have Been Worse is probably the furthest thing from comfort.)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

So, has a Prime ever been traff for a piece of furniture? :)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

It's not traff since the furniture isn't prime. Certainly many -- most! -- primes -- and by "primes" I mean "primes who consider themselves upstanding and decent and cisaffectionate people" -- have been known to sleep with a bed, sometimes even maintaining an ongoing -- nightly! -- relationship with said bed. Sometimes even inviting it into their marital confidences! Yet a bed is less prime than a prime, but, somehow, these people consider us indecent.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

But... what does the furniture think of it all?

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Libertine beds. There's an image that I didn't want in my head...

... of course, there are hotels around here that DO have libertine beds... that frightens me, now that I think about it.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

'Wouldn't it be cool if your random shape-changes were slowly killing you?'

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

There are some spells -- like the relatively easy illusion one that lets you conjure a prime-sized, mindful illusion of a creature -- that seem tailor made for desperate or perverted students.

Hmm... or what if you wanted to sleep with your own Cruel Ice Fairy? Would that be monster-loving, or merely a very, very bad idea?

[aprivatefox.livejournal.com]

I've only found one bed willing to talk about it: http://mcsweeneys.net/2008/4/2jodzio.html

It might not be representative of all bed-kind, though.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Hmm. So far, all the furniture I've heard express an opinion has been thoroughly unhappy.

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

Would that be better or worse than using the spell "Many Of Me?"

Lithia's changes and other aspects of the Tree make me wonder about the motives of the gods, and the backstory of how they decided to build the thing. I imagine the whole thing as a future VR world. Imagine the arguments over just how cruel they'd have to make the universe in order to not make it boring. Some parts, like nendrai, seem installed specifically to give the primes something to fight; while other things like diseases are downplayed.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

But is the couch traff?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I've always felt like the philosophy behind the world tree was 'what if this MUD we're the wizards of was a real world?'

Shifter Hybrids are a good example -- they make no sense, but they're the sort of thing a creator god might have thought was 'neat' and put in just for the heck of it, to discourage mary sue 'half-orren so I can wild rush, but my other half is zi ri so I'm immortal and have wings' stuff.

EDIT: Although now I want to play one of those again... otter-dragons are soooo ky00t.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

You know, that solution might work on the Couch. Then it would have company and someone to tell how much to appreciate it. And when the sun turns off, then it can go to sleep on the couch. It could work!

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

I don't know. The Love Sofa is in the other room. let's bring them together and see what happens!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Immortal, except that you die of degenerative troubles after a few decades. But the wings are worthwhile at least.

Really, you're better off as a fullbreed with Cloak of Another God.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Right! Since it doesn't really work, primes are better off not trying to breed overpowered crossbreeds amongst themselves.

And that's probably why the gods made it not really work, even if it's a bit silly for it to not really work in precisely that fashion.

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

Then it's settled. You'll play an otter-dragon with a Keyblade, and I'll be a cyborg otter-raccoon Red Mage. With a cool hat. We'll drag Sythery in to be a mascot who can shapeshift into a starship.

[rowyn]

... if end up I drawing a picture of a Zi Ri-Orren, it is All Your Fault.

[rowyn]

But the couch feels useful and isn't trying to get you to kill it any more! That's good, right? So you won!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Here's a picture that, um, I think it was yellow3 did *ages* ago, when I was playing one on Spindizzy. Or possibly TFF.

http://home.earthlink.net/~aaronm1/pics/wtrotdrg.gif

[rowyn]

Hee! Are the forelegs supposed to look like flippers?