(no subject)

[sythyry]

OOC: Cool Sythyry News

There's a review of Sythyry's Journal and Godkin at Strange Horizons.

In revenge, we're offering a special deal on orders of the World Tree book: free shipping within North America and a probably-snarky IC signing by Sythyry. The signing by Sythyry is optional. The free shipping is not.

My Dinner with Esory [6 Thory 4261]

Naturally, when I promised to take Esory out to dinner "the next day", I wound up taking her out to dinner three days later. I survived her wrath largely because:

1. On the 4th, when I had promised to take her, she had already promised to have dinner at home with her parents. We postponed it to the next day, the 5th.
2. On the 5th, she chose to write an essay upon "The Hunting Habits of the Greater Spotted Screeve" rather than have dinner with me. I don't know what a screeve is. Neither did she, which is why she chose to write the essay rather than have dinner with me. We postponed it to the next day, the 7th.
3. On the 6th, I arrived at Chateau ky Fiaunrhel at the appointed time, to be met with perplexity and perplexion both.

Esory:"Sythyry, I thought we had said the 7th..?"

Me:"So we had... Esory, I thought we had said the next day."

Esory:"So we had ... Sythyry, I have to apologize, but I cannot dine with you tonight. Indeed, I cannot dine with anyone, for I have already eaten an early dinner, and gorged myself mightily upon roast wudgeon stuffed with dried prens. Perhaps we could try again for the next night, the 7th, but the more sevensome sort of seventh?"

Me:"But how next-day-some a next day? After all, today was as next-day-some a next day as ever there was, and it didn't work at all well."

Esory:"Just as next-day-some as this time, but more sevenly?"

Me:"I will make it as sevenly as ever I can... actually, I shouldn't."

Esory:"Shouldn't? Why not?"

Me:"Thrice I have come for you, and thrice you have spurnfully denied me!" If I were Ghirbis, I would have sung or thundered it, but my improvisational singing is only suitable for medical emergencies, and my thundering is far-off indeed.

Esory:"I'm very sorry! I'll come out with you tonight, then, and count it as dinner even if I'm only eating a bowl of thin, limp, limpid consomee."

Me:"You needn't be so alarmed! Technically you didn't refuse the last one, you just refused to do it on the wrong night, which is hardly so much of a refusal as a correction."

Esory:"Oh, I'm very glad. You're sure it's not a problem?"

Me:"Slootly not a problem!"

Esory:"I'll slootly be there next time!"

So she invited me in to Caer ky Fiaunrhel and showed me around ... the south wall of the parlor. The family has been living there since Fiaunrhel started getting rich, which must be four or five hundred years.

Four or five hundred years of Rassimel.

Rassimel living in the same place.

Rich Rassimel living in the same place.

Rich Rassimel, all of them expert in Locador magic and formal enchantment, living in the same place.

Which is to say ... I think the parlor must have been expanded to be bigger inside than the Ducal palace, and been mutated so that it has six times as many walls as a small square room ought to have, and every inch of every wall is adorned and bedazzled by someRassy's extensive and brilliant collection of something.

If immortality ever grates on me so terribly, I will come here and do a spraddled-catalog analysis of the whole thing. As it was, I was very glad to have taken Famous Collections and was able to make suitably educated-sounded appreciative comments to Esory's father.

Despite not knowing anything at all about collections of ancient, legendary, ornate, and foreign toasting-forks.

(No, that's not an exaggeration. Esory's great-great-great-grandmother has a toasting fork that is older than my ~mother~, and another one imported at great expense from the far end of Craitheia, just because the great-great-great-grandmother could.)

Comments

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

I have heard tell of monsters (perhaps otherworldly primes, judging by their facility with multiple magics -- if such things even really exist at all) who live in another world's sky (so far off that none could live long enough to reach it, as even a Zi Ri would die en route of sheer ennui) who use a similar but much stronger effect. They are able to produce semi-sentient dimensionally transcendent structures (travelling palaces, of a sort, though hopelessly austere and cloistered) whose doors can be moved anywhere in space (as well as anywhere in time, to any point in history), allowing them to go anywhere that there has ever been without ever going more than twenty feet from their front parlors (which of course has obvious appeal, as one's front parlor offers easy access to one's library and kitchen, two rooms which, were I able to carry them with me at all times in a pocket, I certainly would).

I myself considered attempting to construct a similar device (with the aid of other experts, of course, probably with the need of godly assistance in the end, although I can't imagine them not approving), to allow me to obtain and catalog samples of the flora of the lowest branches without having to set foot in such dangerous environs (old and infirm as I am, it would hardly be judicious to gather them in person, and yet my curiosity overwhelms me); merely open a tiny window and Ruloc Herbador the sample right to hand (understandably, that is a magic I am extraordinarily comfortable with). Fortunately, I realized before I had gotten too far along (I was only in the earliest planning stages, barely finished the first volume of diagrams) that perhaps, if I am to embark on such a dangerous exercise with such a high possibility for catastrophe (ironic catastrophe at that, if I may be permitted the use of the word), perhaps I'd better structure my plan around a Noun other than Locador.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

If you're comfortable with Herbador, why not simply shrink the tree itself to a more manageable size, instead of shrinking the space it's in? At least then the inevitable catastrophe will be less ironic. Or at least, there will be fewer people around to shame you with the irony.