The Return of Niia: Hating Kismirth part 11

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

(Or, Why Rassimel Do Not Rule The World Tree)

Eleven days later, Niia stormed into Chiver’s study without warning. (Exactly what warning is required when one occupant of a shared apartment storms into a room thereof is not clear to me. I suspect that we ought to sell official Kismirth Storming Licences, though that might suggest that we allow storming the barricades or some such.)

“Chiver! Now you must decide!” she proclaimed.

Chiver looked up from a student’s incomprehensible abuse of mathematics. “What must I decide?”

“Me — or Arfaen! Loyalty — or betrayal!” said Niia.

“You and loyalty of course,” said Chiver. “But how does this choice manifest in reality? What, specifically, must I do?”

“Arfaen is trying to destroy my restaurant! Guess what she has done? She has hired two new Craitheian chefs, and is offering mushroom tarts a la toissande — offering horns-of-purity — offering chub-beetles en brochette! By the spanglio, what is she not offering — to them or to you?”

“I daresay you proved that Craitheian food is popular,” said Chiver.

“And her waim-fondue! The most expensive dish in the Nook, because it must be prepared from beginning to end after it is ordered, and two cooks must work hard and fast to have it ready in time! But Arfaen! Arfaen and her damnable stasis-table! She makes it in bulk, at leisure, and sells it so cheap!”

“Well, I don’t understand the full intricacies of her pricing scheme for her high-end foods, but doesn’t she have one price for a Herethroy dinner, and another for a mammal’s dinner, and that’s it? So she’s just charging the mammal price for the waim-fondue?” asked Chiver.

“Ridiculous! And the fondue itself! Who ever heard of making waim-fondue with pigeons? Waim-fondue is served with three roast ortolans! That is the tradition! A roast pigeon — oh, much cheaper I’m sure, but not right!”

Chiver cocked his head. “How do they make it in Draffmoug?” He knew the cuisine of the Trough of Kreischan almost as well as she did. (That’s the part of Craitheia which they come from — a big low spot between two mountain ranges, containg Choulano and Draffmoug and other cities.)

Niia snapped her fingers in his face. “That for Draffmoug. The cuisine of Draffmoug is debased — is everyway inferior to that of Choulano!”

“Perhaps so, but I do know that Arfaen has hired a few refugees from Draffmoug. She took them in, much as she took us in. Only they didn’t want to start a separate restaurant.” (Which is true — we’ve had a lot of people from Craitheia move in, mostly trying to escape the Vepri. Arfaen has hired the best of them. Arfaen, incidentally, is not nearly the best chef in her own restaurant. A couple of the newcomers are world-famous, far beyond Arfaen or Niia, but wanted to work with her for a while to get used to the local situation.) )

Niia glared at her lover. “Well, I’ll bet that your dear little Arfaen is having her pick of them in bed, too.”

Chiver flattened his ears. “I don’t know about that.”

“She’s not sharing, then?”

“I wouldn’t know. She and I only copulated the once,” said Chiver softly.

“Perhaps! I have know way of knowing if you’re telling the truth!” said Niia. “You certainly haven’t been a thunder of excitement in mye bed. Who knows where else you’re splashing your seed?”

Chiver tucked his tail between his legs. “I know — in my own hand and nowhere else. And I’m mournful about us being bad in bed. My fault is that, I think. Every time I’m with you anymore, I have the horrible memories of that afternoon of gushflush.”

Niia snarled in a fury. “What? I took care that afternoon, hours and hours of it, with you puking and shitting on me and on my pantry! And now you’re punishing me for it?”

“I’m not trying to punish you. I’d forget that whole afternoon, truly I would.”

Niia glared at him. “You haven’t even tried to get over it.”

Chiver was backed into a corner. There was no answer save the one that would enrage Niia. “It hasn’t been so easy to try. You’ve barely shared my bed since you opened the Nook, and when you do you’re thinking about the Nook more than me anyhow.”

Niia snapped, “And Arfaen’s easier, is she?”

“It was just the once! And we’re both Cani — we could smell the interest — we weren’t even flirting with each other!” protested Chiver.

“So you were fucking the she-dog as a break from her destroying my business,” said Niia. “Some loyal partner you are.” She pushed past Chiver, snatched a pair of suitcases, and teleported off somewhere.

Chiver fell to his knees and howled.

Comments

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Someone need to invent a Mutoc Mentador (or would it be Creoc Mentador?) spell that makes people realize how crazy they are coming across to other people. Not forcing them to do anything in particular about it, just giving them the insight.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Alas! It would be Mentador.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Also, aren't Ortolans sentient? Is roasting them into a dish legal in Kismirth?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

sentient? Not that they have mentioned to me, or to any natural philosopher. They are one of the 461,512,142,132 or so varieties of small bird that grace, serenade, brighten, and poop upon the World Tree.

You must be thinking of conlee. Conlee are sentient. They are also exceedingly dangerous monsters. I am unaware of any laws governing the treatment of their corpses. We do not, I believe, have conlee in Kismirth; they are too perilous. I doubt that we have any laws about them from Kismirth. We probably have some laws about them that come from being a city in Vheshrame Mene, but I don't know what they are.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was thinking of Conlee, sorry. And even if they are evil, using them in cooking would still seem barbaric to me.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Barbarism is as barbarism does. If a conlee has eaten your wife, I suppose you might be moved to eat the conlee in revenge.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

No, I would not.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I hereby grant you the right to use the words "civilized", "highly ethical", "effete", and "overly refined" about yourself within the Kismirth city limits, as often as you like.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

I demand the right to "sanctimonious" as well, or no deal!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I grant you the right to "sanctimonious"!

And as a special bonus for being the first client of the day, to our bonus words: "pulmonary", "iconoclastic", "dulcet", and "urticationistic"!

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I think that's why it's extremely illegal and highly taboo. We don't want people toget in the habit of eating other people, so even people who are complete monsters get protection.

Not from being killed. Just from being eaten.

[rowyn]

D:

Poor Chiver! Although he's probably better off without Niia, given how she's acting.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

She is simply being Rassimel.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

I didn't think crazy was a distinctly Rassimel trait. If Chiver were one of her main interests, jealousy might be a little more understandable, but then she wouldn't have been spending so little time with him in the first place, would she?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

"Obsessed" is a distinctly Rassimel trait. A Rassimel, left alone for a few months, would have been there on her return.

Chiver was too, but he'd indulged himself socially in her absence.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Nevertheless, among the populous primes, Rassimel are the ones I could soonest see not minding that someone else doesn't devote every scrap of attention to them.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's very fair to Rassimel I mean Archonandi's gotten obsessed with stuff and ignored everyone around him for weeks or months but that doesn't mean that he comes and yells at them over imaginary faults.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Real faults, I think. Touchy topics, though, so getting to the real heart of them was not immediate.

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

All right so them not being properly lovers is a real problem but it's hard to see that being all Chiver's fault when Niia's always GONE. And most of the stuff she was yelling at him over was Arfaen's business which Chiver has no influence or control over AT ALL.

She's just mad that her restaurant's failing and she can't bear to admit that it's all her fault for being so stubborn about starting it in the Quick Quarter in the first place so she has to blame EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD TREE instead. Because it can't be HER. Breaking up with her lover is much better than admitting she was wrong!

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

Given the general (albeit mistaken) belief that one must be entirely traff or entirely not, I can see how she might assume that Chiver's dalliance with another Cani as a rejection of her (particularly since that is the sort of way a Cani would break off a traff relationship).

She may just be lashing out as a way of expressing her hurt, more than because she really expects him to do something about Arfaen's restaurant.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

You understand!

She has a great deal of hurt to express, and only a portion of it is self-inflicted.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

And how is that not a classic Rassimel way of failing? Just like you would suddenly switch to a completely different interest, and I would avoid the issue for a few decades? We all have our flaws, and often enough they fall by species.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Egad. Poor Chiver. He did not in any way deserve that.

[redbird]

I value loyalty, and I abhor some of the ways people talk about it: specifically, thinking they can demand it without beginning to offer it in return. Niia is doing that here, acting as though she can demand whatever of Chiver without offering him anything in return, including actually listening to his answers.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, they have been together for some long time already. In the abstract, one might think that she has offered him anything, in advance.

Still, arguing with someone without listening to their answers is abhorrent, no matter how long the relationship has been going.

[redbird]

In my lexicon, "loyalty" doesn't mean "you have to do whatever I want."

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Ah. Yes. Doom. It's here now.

Although honestly, I think Chiver wasn't being sensitive enough here. Nina is losing her business, along with her life, literally, and has suffered a much greater amount of subjective time with the betrayal than Chiver has. Bringing up that he thinks the restaurant was a mistake is a pretty bad strike against him. Then, admitting you aren't finding your partner sexy after sleeping with another person? I don't particularly think I'd be sticking around either.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

You understand!

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

But she's not being particularly sensitive either. Accusing someone who's experienced a major trauma of "not even trying" to "get over" it is a profoundly nasty, insensitive, and self-centered thing to spit out, and if that's how she's thinking of him, I think she totally deserved every second of his own insensitivity.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

H'm. On the World Tree, it takes a certain sort of glorious individual *to* be particularly sensitive when having a fight with a lover. Once in a while I manage it -- I am sure to brag about such rare occasions! -- but more often I fail utterly. Is it an ordinary thing to do in your world? And, if so, can I visit and acquire a few lovers there?

But again, I fleer at your side point and take your main point. Neither of them was at their best in this fight, unless by "best" you mean "capable of the greatest damage" -- which is how fighters are often measured, is it not?

Again, I claim no great degree of perfection over them, save that I was not fighting that day and they were.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Time Scale Problem. If he had just moved in with her, they'd *both* have had the same time to handle the issues. She's had a MONTH to get over and handle everything that he's taken less than two weeks to handle, and although we do not know all of the facts, He's not bothered trying to visit during that month in QQ time.

I'm not saying Nina is right, mind you, but her reaction is perfectly normal, and not some oddball crazy thing. I'd be leaving too!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

He did visit -- or so he told me -- but less often than he might have, and Niia did not give him as much attention as she could have.

Neither is blameless, in my opinion, and neither is alarmingly wicked or utterly insane either. For that matter, Arfaen and I surely should take an appetizer portion of the blame too.

[redbird]

Agreed. And just as you were fleering at heavenscalyx's side point, I may have been doing that to you in my responses to the stuff about loyalty. And that was partly triggered by stuff in my own homeland, where companies use "loyalty" to mean "you get the regular customer price instead of paying more, and in return we collect lots of information about you, and promise discounts that may vanish before you can collect them."

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Since I do not wish to gratuituously insult the companies of your homeland by mocking their definition of loyalty, I shall instead mock my translator for, it appears, foolishly conflating two concepts by translating them both as "loyalty".

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Please, go ahead, gratuituously insult the companies of our homeland. We do so all the time!

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

That's how these things always are, though. Everyone does something that is wrong. Doesn't mean sometimes, you gotta try harder, though.

[archadia.livejournal.com]

[perhaps your translator means she said she had "no" way of knowing, and not "know" way of knowing and "my" instead of "mye"?]

I fail to see the logic jump of this Rassi when she accuses Arfaen of being easier. What's it got to do with her restaurant? 0.o

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Why, nothing, save it reveals what the fight is really about.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

She's jealous of Arfaen and wants to devour her brain and take her place?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

About half right.

[rowyn]

She's jealous of Arfaen's stasis table, which Arfaen got for free and which gives her an enormous competitive advantage over Niia, I'd say. I can't really blame her for that.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I really am not about to make another one! Not for free, certainly.

And Arfaen *did* offer her the use of the table, and kitchen, and everything -- everything but her own restaurant. I don't think it was a terrible offer.

[stormydragon.livejournal.com]

You know, it occurs to me that a far larger number of people could use the stasis table if you had put the table itself inside the QQ. Then you could make a big batch of meals, take them in, and stasiate them all in a fraction of the time it would require in the normal world.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Or it could be added to the crystalization somehow? Is there an echo stasis table in a lower ply?