Sythyry's Journal

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Chiver was truly in a bad way. His beatiful black fur had been carelessly hacked off much of his body, leaving him looking largely scrawny and shrivelled. Except for his belly — a touch round most of the time, for as a restauranteur’s partner he ate quite well — which was hideously distended. He looked up at Niia, whined a bit, and vomited prodigiously at her feet.

“Oh, no, this is terrible! What happened, Chiver?”

“They … raped me with wooden pipes … and … filled me with gushflush,” gasped Chiver. A bout of diarrhea seized him.

Niia crouched by his side, and tried with all her cley and all her Rassimel connection to the Healoc god to cure him. It did no good, or not much. Chiver mewled, “It hurts, Niia, it hurts…” Which it surely did. Gushflush in its nicest and most medical form is a vicious mixture of emetics, diuretics, and laxitives. A spoonful is a mediocre but cley-free way to purge poisons out of a victim in a hurry — though, more often, used as a legitimate alternative to a public whipping in some cities. Chiver had been given a more potent version, laced with chilis and horseradish so that all of his bodily emissions would be painful, and a Sustenoc spell so that they would continue for some long time.

“Praline! Go get a healer!” said Niia, and she held her stinking lover despite the filth. “Chiver, what can I do to help you?”

“A pail, get me a pail, there’s another wave coming up soon, ” he moaned, and vomited again. Niia handed him a kitchen towel to wipe his mouth, and a chalice of water to lap.

“I’ll do that, Chiver,” said Niia softly. She carried her beloved to the pantry of her cafe, seated him on a dutch oven and gave him another to vomit into, and did her best to see to his needs, and to lessen his great suffering. He mewled gratefully to her.

Inside the cafe, some patrons noticed that the last chef had run off, and left the restaurant in despair of getting their food. Some other patrons smelled the aggressive stench of Chiver’s effluvia, and left the restaurant in disgust. Some others caught a glimpse of Chiver’s condition, and knew what it meant, and left the restaurant for political reasons or simple caution. When the healer came, not a single patron was left.

The healer glanced at Chiver, and spread her antennae. “I can do nothing about this.”

“What, nothing? Maybe you’re not skilled or clever enough to cure it, but you can surely come up with some anaesthetic spells. Or at least something to put him to sleep ’til it wears off!” snapped Niia.

The healer shrugged her four shoulders. “I heal disesases and injuries. This is a punishment for some serious offense. Ameliorating its symptoms would make it less of a punishment, and, thus, require its repetition or more. I will do nothing about this.”

Niia bristled. “A punishment? What court has condemned him to this? What mediator has agreed to it? What crime is he being punished for?”

The healer sniffed. “Being an uppity and resistant glate, if I interpret the signs properly. Being a sclud.”

“What, you think he deserves this? You think anyone deserves this sort of torture?”

The healer flicked her tailtip. “I think that any optime would find it utterly appropriate for persons of late generation who refuse the instruction of their predecessors and betters.”

“Tzantschalffer! What is this nonsense of scluds and optimes? You know us! We are friends — companions in the Choulano Sky-Racing Club! Why, not three weeks ago, we tied for fourth in the aerial race!” protested Niia.

Tzantschalffer shrugged. “At the time, I did not know your generation of origin. In any case, a bit of piloting boats in the same sky is hardly a close or dear friendship. You and your cheap little rented sky-dinghy have no real call on me.” A bit too late, Niia remembered how proud Tzantschalffer was of her skayak of gleaming crimson lacquer, matching her carapace, and how displeased she was that Niia and Chiver had, by skill and luck, made a far inferior rented craft be its equal.

“You are a spot of decay on your noble guild!” snapped Niia. “You condemn where you should assist! Get out! But first — your payment!” She took the dutch oven Chiver had been using as a chamberpot, and flung it into the healer’s face.

“And that will make your situation become wailingly worse!” snapped the healer, and stormed to the kitchen to wash her face in the basin there, and to splash the befouled water all about.

* * *

Seven truly unpleasant hours later, Chiver had managed to get all of the gushflush out of his belly. Niia cleaned him up as best she could, and wrapped him in a tablecloth and an apron. The dinner-hour of the cafe was ruined. The kitchen was in poor shape, as all the staff had run off without doing any cleaning, with cauldrons still boiling on the fires — cauldrons which were now solid with charred goulash. The pantry was even worse, as Chiver had been there for most of the time. Nothing in the pantry was fit for use as food, or should not be.

“Your poor cafe,” whispered Chiver. His throat, and elsewhere, was scored and scoured raw by hours of puking chili-laden gushflush, and he could barely talk.

“Don’t worry about my cafe,” said Niia. “I’ll get it cleaned, I’ll get it going again as good as new in a few days. Let’s get to home, and get you to bed, and face our troubles fiercely on tomorrow.”

* * *

But when they got back to their apartment, they discovered that someone had broken the door in, scattered straw all about, and set it ablaze, so that nearly all they owned was ash. The walls had been carefully fireproofed, though, and the adjacent apartments were unharmed. There was no comfort for them there, either.

Resolutions! It is vitally important to the economy that you make resolutions!
And that you break them quickly thereafter!

Me, too. In fact, this year, you get to choose my resolution! You can vote,
separately, from the list of popular choices for verb, quantifier, and object.
Maybe you will resolve me to lose some weight --- or maybe you will resolve me
to read less healthy food! There's only one way to find out!

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Four days later, Niia had her own professional problems. Her cafe in Choulano had four chefs. One of them had the day off, which is understandable and forgiveable, and even essential, since the chef’s cousin was getting married.

The second chef had not come to work at all. “That Dargoosa!” shouted Niia. “I could arrange to give her a day off, if she asked in advance! But where is she? Or where is her apologetic letter? A thousand Orren street urchins would be glad to carry a letter for a few terch! Where is her letter?” In fact, Dargoosa would have come herself, or at least sent a letter, but she had been set upon by thugs and was at that point lying unconscious under a boardwalk. Later in the day she was rescued by a noble-spirited Orren haberdasher, enjoyed a swift and intense romance, married, was impregnated, and, only then, hours later, did write Niia a letter. By then it was too late.

The third and fourth chefs, Secura and Praline, had come to work properly. Secura, though, had a few words with Niia about back pay at the height of the lunchtime. These words quickly became numerous, and, unlike the orders of many patrons, heated.

“I already paid you, Secura!” roared Niia. “Come look at my ledger book and you will see!”

“Who writes your ledger book, Niia? Why — guess what! It is you, Niia, yourself! Your ledger book will say whatevery you want it to say. ‘Is Secura a shoggie?’ you may ask it — and behold, it will answer ‘Yes! Secura is utterly Khtsoyis!’ Yet I will not have tentacles!” This got giggles from half of the three dozen patrons of the restaurant; the other half were waiting for their food, hoping to finish it during their limited lunch hours, and would rather not be the audience of this little drama.

“What, you think I can wave my hand thus, like a make-out artist feeling up an invisible female Gormoror, and suddenly the records of the last month will be changed? Not so! I have two columns and I cast out nines — my ledger books have clearly not been tampered with!” snapped Niia.

“That proves nothing! Perhaps you wrote down that you had paid me at the very moment that you decided to cheat me, rather than several weeks later! In any case! I demand my full payment for the last month, or it will go wailingly worse with you! said Secura.

“I have paid you once! You are barely worth it — you are not worth double!” said Niia.

Secura stormed into the kitchen, and returned with a vast wooden stew-pot full of a thick and concentrated beet soup. Standing at the kitchen door, she hurled the pot at Niia. As Niia was standing by the entrance to the restaurant, the pot passed over the entire restaurant like a comet of blood. Two dozen patrons yelped in corporeal pain and costumeal horror, as thick boiling purple-red soup scalded their skins and dyed spots of their garments. The pot struck Niia full in the face. Secura darted out of the back door while Niia was still trying to regain her composure and clear the beets from her vision.

While Niia and everyone who could be spared were working hard to tend the wounded waistcoats, the fourth and last chef came out of the kitchen. “Niia? I’m afraid there’s a bit of a problem.”

“What, we’re down three chefs out of four, we’ve pissed off and beeten on all our customers, we’re way behind on orders, and we’re going to get a lawsuit from that she-leech Secura?”

Praline tucked his tail between his legs. “No, I’m sorry, it’s much worse than that. Your partner Chiver is lying in the alley behind the cafe, and he’s in a bad way.”

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Over the year after his uncle’s retirement, it was also suggested that Chiver himself retire. The uncle, being a dignified old Cani of about a hundred years [70-ish of your bloated Earth years -bb], had some reason to retire. Chiver, being a relatively young pup of fifty, saw no reason to give up his position as a Tutor of Mathematics and Classical Languages at the Doiverdikk Academy for the Education and Correction of the Lesser Scions of the Nobility. He was as apolitical as it is possible for a Cani to be, and never quarreled with anybody. Nonetheless, the principal of Doiverdikk, appointed two years ago, hinted to Chiver that he might wish to retire sooner rather than later, perhaps to take up a second career as the teacher of a nice safe Herethroy village, or some equally removed school.

Chiver carefully neglected to notice these hints at first, but they became broader and broader. Finally, on the third of Nivvem, 4393, the principal called him in to her office. “Really, Chiver, I’m speaking entirely for the benefit of you. You must resign.”

“Really, M’lady Principal, there’s no ‘must’ about it. I am one of your popular and effective teachers, well-liked by students and faculty both, and even by custodians and secretaries and — perhaps most importantly of all — by parents. And if there is anything the least bit questionable or troublesome about my private life, that hardly interferes with the teaching of algebra or third-form declensions!”

The principal frowned. “That has nothing to do with the matter, Chiver. Yes, you exert some crude and wicked attraction to our students. I suspect that it is verging on the sexual and improper.” (“It’s not,” protested Chiver, and barring such unacknowledged and unrequited crushes as are inevitable under the circumstances, it was not.) “In any case, you are a glate, and we cannot have you teaching optimes.”

“I am not conversant with Vepri technical terms,” said Chiver.

“You are a person whose first incarnation was of a recent generation; a Generation LATEs, or, for short, a glate. I suspect you are in fact a fround — that this is your first time around, that you have never been incarnated before. This makes you as non-primordeal as possible.”

“With all due respect, m’lady principal, you can’t possibly have any actual information about that. It requires great magic to determine — great magic indeed! — and I would have noticed if anyone had done such a thing to me. In any case, there’s been a wee bit of actual scientific research on it, and nobody of any intellectual reputation believes there’s any correlation between one’s number of incarnations and, well, anything about their personality.”

The principal stood up and slammed a fist on her desk. “That research was performed by glates — by scluds! The results are pure lies. Vepri scientists have done those experiments a thousand times more accurately, and found conclusively that one’s first generation of birth is a perfect predictor of one’s moral character and value to society!”

“That research has a thousand taints and flaws!” proclaimed Chiver, whose uncle had pointed out each one of those taints and flaws.

“Nothing of the sorts! It is quite accurate! Observe, as a case in point, your own behavior — aside from that Rassimel you defile yourself with, you have the temerity to argue with me about the matter!” snapped the principal.

“You don’t even know what generation I come from! I don’t even know what generation I come from! Where is the wizard who has investigated this?”

The principal glowered at him. “We do not need a wizard. There are simpler, non-magical means, described in Verification of Primes with perfect accuracy.”

“I haven’t taken your silly little tests, either,” snapped Chiver.

“Your actions have been watched, observed, recorded, quantified, measured!” crowed the principal. “You are a glate; you are surely a fround. You act like a sclud. This is not to be tolerated in Doiverdikk! And it will not be! You should resign immediately!”

Chiver shrugged. “If you want me out, you may attempt to expel me. The Academy laws give a procedure for doing so. You simply need to get three-quarters of the faculty and more than half the students to petition for my removal. Given that I am tolerably well-liked by both, you may find this difficult to do, but the procedure is simple enough.”

The principal glared. “I give you one chance to reconsider this ridiculous and scluddish position. Resign now, and you will keep a portion of your pension and whatever respectability you might have given who your uncle is and who your lover is. Attempt to stay, and your situation will become wailingly worse.”

Chiver glared back. “The faculty and students are not nearly so infested with this Vepri nonsense as you are. They know a good teacher and a good colleague when they see one. If you petition for my removal, I will petition for yours, and we will see who is actually a good teacher and a good colleague.” And, so saying, he strode out of the principal’s office.

This one is about sexual orientation.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

I’ve uploaded improved versions of the e-books of The Wrath of Trees to both Amazon and Smashwords. The new versions have, among other improvements suggested by several of you, a Table of Contents. Amazon’s gadgetry is perplexing me, and I’m not sure that the Kindle will recognize the Table of Contents as the Table of Contents, or format it properly — but at least it’s a list of links at the beginning of the book to all the chapters, including the appendix, which is most of it.

If you’ve bought the book already, I think you can download the newer edition for free.

If not, and if you buy it soon, you’ll get a slightly nicer edition than the first.

• Kindle edition from Amazon
• Paper edition from Amazon
• Many formats of e-book from SmashWords

Mirrored from Sythyry.

The e-book of The Wrath of Trees is up at Smashwords, here. You can get it formatted for most readers, from plain text or HTML to epub (iPad, Nook, etc.) and Kindle.

I didn’t intend for it to be up there before, since there were some problems with the illustrations. If you got a copy there already, go back and get a good one. If you bought one copy there, I think you should be able to get the new one for free.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

I will give five Kindle-format copies of The Wrath of Trees to five people who will promise to review it on Amazon by Jan 31. Do you want one, on those terms?