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

[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.