Sythyry's Journal

Mirrored from Sythyry.

[OOC: posting on a schedule won by about two to one, so I'll keep doing that.]

Feralan followed Wexiset past the Witch column. To his left was the wall of Kismirth, on this level a plain circular cylinder of polished wood. Twelve yards to his right was a balustrade, each wooden baluster echoing the Witch of Agnesi until it abruptly and discontinuously ended in a square capital, as if the arc of the railing — a simple circle! though a huge one, since it went around the city! — could not bear the contact of the Witch. Past the balustrade was a region of protective enchantment, strong enough to easily defy the people who dwelt in the native region of Feralan’s soulmate. They were transparent, invisible, to afford a spectacular view of the branches of the World Tree spread out like an endless plane irregularly tesselated in green beneath Kismirth. Feralan knew the walls were there; he had helped his master construct them. The walls comforted him; he knew far too well what those people were capable of, what they rejoiced in.

Wexiset turned to inspect Feralan, her bright black eyes full of some incomprehensible message or emotion.

You must be new to Kismirth!
They say that the vista grabs you
by both eyes for the first month you're here,
by one eye for the second month, and
by the third you can ignore it.

Her face deformed again, as it had before.

 I think that's silly. Wouldn't it mean that Khtsoyis
 got distracted by it for five months? That is how many
eyestalks they have, isn't it? I don't know any Khtsoyis
well enough to count their eyes.

Feralan pondered her words. What could she mean? Why was she talking about not knowing any Khtsoyis? Was she hinting at some conspiracy against the Grinwipey, master of the casinos, the most important of the few Khtsoyis in Kismirth? He thought he should pump her for further information, but could not think of any way to do so. He temporized, saying, “I’m not new to Kismirth. I helped build it.”

The creature, the girl, emitted a sort of sharp barking noise.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Kismirth has been open for five years.
You would have been a child when it was being built.

It had been rather more than five years for Feralan. He answered, “I’ve been Sythyry’s apprentice for a long time. Since before zie started Kismirth. I was a child … I only helped with a few things, mostly the Locador spells.”

Wexiset turned to stare at him, the way one enigma might stare at another.

The wizard doesn't have an apprentice.
Zie's got an assistant, Phaniet. Well, some kind of assistant.
Phaniet is a lot more important than Sythyry.

“Phaniet sometimes teaches me too,” said Feralan, truthfully.

Wexiset barked again.

Ha! Ha! You are such a joker. Phaniet takes
time out of her busy schedule to teach a lost
and slow little boy?

Feralan reached up to rub his head in confusion, and suffered another instant of disorientation when he discovered he somehow had a pair of rounded furry ears there. Where had they come from? He forced himself to remember seeing those same ears in the mirror-bracelet a minute ago, the same ears he had had all his life. “She doesn’t take time out of her day. She puts it into her day. We do a lot of Tempador, time magic. Some days are three or four days long for us.”

I know they do Tempador. They made the
Quick Quarter and Slow Side, didn't they?

She leaned towards him, and he could smell her breath, with a hint of some pulpy fruits that she must have devoured not long ago.

Are you claiming to have helped with that?

“Just a little of the math and space distortion,” he admitted.

The creature pressed her advantage.

Well. If you're helping the wizard with zir math,
you can help me with my math homework.

An assertion of status? An offer of an alliance? A conciliatory gesture? There was no way to tell. Feralan searched for a way to divert attention from the topic, looking this way and that along the corridor. He discovered that it was a straightforward and bland rectangular prism, radial to the huge circle of this district of Kismirth … and occupied at some distance by a swarm of uncanny beings, combining anthropoid and insectile features. He shuddered, and sought and found a nearer distraction.

“That side-corridor! It is named Chavan’s Striped Walkway!” Feralan and his soulmate had designed a complete system for giving unique coordinates to each corridor and room in Kismirth, in terms that would let one calculate directions from any place to any other simply from their addresses. Even the most mathematically-adept of the other builders winced at the intricate twelve-or-more-part coordinates, and accepted a simpler (but utterly useless for calculation) system of naming each roadway.

The creature moved her head to some swift unheard rhythm.

That's the road. Our class suite is number Sh, on the right.

“Sh isn’t a number. It’s a letter,” said Feralan, who was sensitive about such matters.

Wexiset proclaimed,

I can't call it a house letter. That would be silly.

There was no accounting for the arbitrary precepts of such strange creatures.

Suite Sh was immense: thirty-one rooms, two of them large enough for 418 students, if arranged correctly, to stand so that they could not touch each other or the walls. It was also mostly empty. The same went for most of Kismirth. It was a the size of a large town, but where a branch-bound town would be more or less two-dimensional (with brief excursions into a third on upper floors and basements), Kismirth was fully three-dimensional, or occasionally more where Sythyry’s spells had gotten out of hand. It could be regarded as a single building a mile tall: room enough for the population of a hundred large cities. But nearly all of that space was empty, despite the best efforts of the Purists, and would be for decades or centuries to come.

Feralan followed Wexiset’s ringed tail around two corners in the suite. The door to the classroom was open. The room was pentagonal — a barely-regular pentagon, composed of a square with an equilateral triangle attached to one face, the addition surely due to imperfections in the wizard’s city-construction spell. The ceiling was high and fantastically arched, and a dozen chandeliers of autoluminescent beech-wood crescents made the room bright.

A tall creature stood on four legs in the center of the room: half anthropoid, half insectile, encased in gleaming white chitin and purple and black garments. It stood on four legs, holding a notebook in one forelimb and a pen in the other. It turned its eyes on Feralan when he entered, and raised its antennae and worked its mouth-parts, speaking to a lazy assemblage of a dozen assorted smaller creatures sitting attentively on couches.

Hello, Feralan!
 Students, this is the new pupil I was telling you about.

Feralan instantly understood that the half-insect must be the teacher. An instant’s comparison of her appearance with a memory of their interview revealed that it — she — was indeed Miss Qualsohn. (Or, as persistent and precise inner voice reminded him, it could be some other Herethroy who resembled her in some moderate degree. Feralan had made such mistakes before, often.) He quietly said, “Hallo.”

Miss Qualsohn addressed the half-circle (though Feralan noted that a half-dodecagon would be a better description, as the students were sitting on straight rather than curved couches — and not a completely regular dodecagon either) of students.

 Just to remind everyone, Feralan is the wizard
Sythyry's ward and apprentice.
He's very clever at magic and mathematics;
he won't be studying those with us.
He's been neglecting other studies somewhat. 

With his bitterest flaws thus revealed but minimized, Feralan could only nod.

Miss Qualsohn continued,

 Feralan, would you like to say a few words to introduce yourself? 

“No,” answered Feralan.

Miss Qualsohn gesticulated with her antennae, speaking to the students.

 I'm sorry. He's also the victim of an unusual psychic injury,
and has trouble with ordinary conversation.
Just pretend that you're a Cani talking to a non-Cani,
be very clear about what you mean,
and everything should be fine. 

She turned back to Feralan.

 I meant, please tell us a few words about yourself,
such as your full name,
a bit about your family,
and what you hope to learn this term. 

Feralan shivered in the doorway. He thought about teleporting away, to the safety of his hidey-hole outside the main universe … but Miss Qualsohn’s class had seemed the best place for him to get used to being around people, and he steeled himself to the ordeal. “I’m Feralan ky Disastro. My mother and her Cani lover were Sythyry’s accountants. They embezzled all zir money. Sythyry caught them, and they’re captives in Oorah Thrassen. I don’t see them much. I’ve got one brother, Ochirion, who is fostered with a Rassimel family in Kismirth. I’m Sythyry’s ward and apprentice. My soulmate is named hCevian; he’s here…”

Feralan’s familiar demon manifested by Feralan’s head. hCevian could not wear clothes of course, but he had orthonormalized himself for neatness. All of his spikes were perpendicular to the others, and all were of the same length: one could hardly appear simpler or snappier. Of course, people confined to a three-dimensional locally-Euclidian space (such as Miss Qualsohn and her students) would simply see hCevian as a floating ball of black spikes, glittering and wicked, the size of a walnut. But hCevian did what he could. “I am pleased to meet you all!” hCevian’s voice was an elegant blend of harmonics, purer than the voice of anyone made of flesh.

Feralan nodded nervously. “This is hCevian. He’s a Locador fairy.” Everyone else called the species Locador demon, though the distinction between fairies and demons was sketchy at best. “Vae, the nendrai, had taken me on a trip, and got me killed. She waited a bit too long to get me to a healer, so she grabbed hCevian and transformed him and used him as spiritual glue to keep me from being totally dead until Sythyry could heal me. Then we were stuck together a long time. We got cut apart, except bits of his soul came with me and bits of mine came with him.”

By this time, the students had all become rigid. Those with external ears had generally flattened them, and those with visible tails had tucked them between their legs. Several of them were making low whining or whistling noises. Feralan tried to remember from his notebook what that might mean, but, in his nervousness, he could not picture anything but the cover.

Miss Qualsohn, nearly rigid herself and with lowered antennae, said,

 Feralan, you must banish the demon.
 It is scaring the other students. 

Oh! That was fear they were displaying! He tenderly said, ⊙ ¬({hc} δ here) to the fairy, a slangy mixture of proximity topology and modal logic. hCevian giggled happily. “Told you they’d fear me at first!” He whirled, his spikes appearing to pass through Feralan’s head, but of course missing by whole dimensions, and became mostly elsewhere with the barest ripple in the essential world.

“hCevian won’t hurt you,” Feralan said. “He’s a refugee here. Vae wrecked his soul, and he’s not safe in his proper region. He’s under Sythyry’s protection, and Vae’s. He won’t hurt anyone. He can’t hurt anyone too much; he understands too much about feelings.”

The students remained silent for a moment. Wexiset asked, in a quiet voice with unusually complex frequency and amplitude spectra even for a voice based in flesh,

Will it be back?

“Well,” Feralan said uncertainly. “hCevian isn’t precisely not here, and, fundamentally, couldn’t be anywhere else in the universe without also being slightly here too. Imagine that he’s a …” Feralan glanced at his bracelet to confirm the species. “… a Rassimel with an infinitely fluffy tail — infinitely dense and infinitely long tailfur, but finite mass, so …”

Miss Qualsohn spoke firmly,

 Feralan, leave off.
The question called for a simple yes-or-no answer,
not a mathematical theorem.
Students, the demon has left;
it will not return.
Infinitely fluffy tails need not enter the picture. 

With a familiar person — Sythyry or Phaniet, say — Feralan would have argued. It wasn’t a theorem, and hCevian had simply become far less here than he had been before. Well, there were some points of view from which hCevian was absent. Perhaps Miss Qualsohn was thinking of one of them, rather than considering the matter more generally.

Miss Qualsohn continued.

 Feralan, have a seat on that couch, next to Wexiset.
Now, it is time for a lesson in history.
We discuss the events leading up to the Holocaust Wars." 

Feralan sat down, crouched a bit as if to maximize the ratio of his interior to his surface. He tried to follow the history lesson. The flood of names of historical figures would have overwhelmed him at the best of times. Worse, the bulk of the lesson tried to explain their motivations, why they entered the web of alliances and vengances that nearly destroyed Ketherian civilization. Motivations generally eluded Feralan at the best of times, and the motivations of people who only existed anymore as a mess of words were utterly incomprehensible. He carefully wrote down everything the teacher said, and, in her pauses for breath, developed a formalism for describing alliances and motivations. By lunchtime, he had set of equations detailing the history. He might not understand what it meant for one wizard’s honor to be impugned by another’s actions, but he certainly could chart when it happened.

I seem to be writing Sythyry as a bunch of connected short stories. Would you rather I post a whole short story at a time (perhaps with diary entries between whiles), every week or two or three as I get them written? Or serialize the short stories as I have been doing, so that I post twice a week on something like a schedule but may take a couple weeks to get through a story?

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Welcome!

Welcome to Sythyry’s City, the third story cycle, slice-of-life diary, soap opera, and doomfest about the blue lizard and friends. This will be structured somewhat differently than previous cycles: more of a series of short stories and vignettes interspersed with proper diary entries. Here’s the first one.

The Wizard’s Apprentice

Feralan, the wizard’s apprentice, skulked to the schoolroom on the first day of his classes, as if hoping that nobody and nothing would notice him. He would have succeeded, too, except that he stopped to admire the bellying curve of the floating city’s walls. He ran his fingers over it without looking, and instinctively and correctly identified its shape as a cylinder of rotation of the Witch of Agnesi. He thought a moment about its equation, x(y²+1)=1 since it was vertical, and smiled.

A peculiarly-shaped creature saw him pause and smile. Feralan analyzed its appearance in an instant. It evidently had two legs — probably two, he thought, because that voluminous purple skirt could conceal another one or two, or any number of other organs and appendages of moderate size and nearly arbitrary purpose. But a pair of bare brown-furred feet or paws, their short claws painted purple to match the skirt, could be seen peeking out from under it, so Feralan could assert with some confidence that there were at least the two.

One torso, protruding vertically above the skirted presumed juncture of the legs, clad in a tunic of clean lavender fabric, with a peculiar glyph located centrally. And a pair of matched swellings probably indicative of some sort of gland — quite likely the creature was a female, assuming that such distinctions even applied to beings of that sort.

Continuing on in the vertical was a short joining structure surmounted by … Feralan supposed it might be called a head. It had a pair of bright black eyes surrounded by a mask of black fur, and a pair of rounded ears set high on the back, and a short muzzle bristling with glassy whiskers and modest but gleaming fangs and incisors. Its expression was incomprehensible, unreadable, obscure.

From the top of the torso extended a symmetrical pair of further appendages, evidently constructed to be some sort of compromise between sinuous and rigid. The upper or proximal parts of the appendges were hidden in tubes of the lavender fabric joined with the tunic. The lower or distal parts were fur-covered, rings of brownish-black and of white. The appendages pentafurcated at their ends into complex, asymmetrically structured (but mirror images of each other) clusters of smaller appendages, brown-furred on one side, furless and black-skinned on the other. These appendages terminated in short claws, painted lavender to match the tunic. Feralan noticed this especially, as the creature was gesticulating strangely to him with the appendage. He flinched back, instinctively lifting an arm to protect himself.

And then, to his horror, he saw that his own limb was just such an appendage as the creature’s. Brown-furred, albeit somewhat lighter than the creature’s; pentafurcated, with both the sub-appendages and the larger appendage under his control. The upper part of it was even wrapped in a tube of lavender fabric. There were only two notable differences. First was the claws, which, in his case, had been left unpainted.

Second was the bracelet: a loop of eight disks around his wrist, painted in the shapes of eight strange creatures. The creature before him loosely matched one on the bracelet, with the label “Rassimel” over it — and, unlike any other disk on the bracelet, a perfectly circular and shining circle of silver. A perfectly circular and shining and reflective circle. A glance at it told him that, somehow, the rest of his body loosely matched the creature’s, the “Rassimel”‘s.

Feralan took a deep breath, and reminded himself, for the sixty-third time that day (it was still early), that he was a Rassimel. He was born a Rassimel. He had always been a Rassimel, in body at least, and that only his medical condition made the matter seem unfamiliar. That Rassimel were among the most common and ordinary sort of civilized peoples. That waving an appendage — a hand — was an ordinary gesture, though he couldn’t remember what it meant.

The whole incident, from terrified observation of the strange creature to remembering that it and he were ordinary persons, had taken under two seconds this time. It rarely took longer than four seconds, and never more than six. It never took less than two seconds, either.

The creature — no, the girl, for she was an adolescent of about Feralan’s own age — spoke. Her speech was a strange conglomeration of fricatives, aspirants, and approximants, glued together with rushy vowels. Feralan worked to puzzle out her words, imagining them printed in fine type on cream-colored paper:

Hello, new boy. Are you lost?

Well, that could mean nearly anything. Perhaps she was asking if he was outside of the safe regions — if he was en prise, unguarded, easy to attack? A bit of thought suggested that was unlikely; Rassimel rarely attacked each other, even on neutral territory. But what did her words convey? The simple literal meaning? An assertion of authority and status over him? An invitation, a rejection, an alliance, a defiance?

If he could only have understood her words as she spoke them, without mentally writing them down, the situation would have been much clearer. Or if he could have glanced at his notes — he had a neat little handbook of facial expressions and what they meant. He had left it behind, in his apartments off the wizard Sythyry’s laboratory. The sorceress Phaniet — who knew about these things — suggested that relying on it at school would make him look weird and disconcerting to the other students.

Which is just how they, and every normal person, would appear to him.

He temporized. He extended a hand, fought down the instant of disorientation and dismay when he saw what his hand looked like, and wiggled his fingers in the same gesture that the girl had done. “I’m Feralan. I’m here for Miss Qualsohn’s class. In … in there?”

The girl’s face deformed: whiskers spreading, lips widening, fangs and incisors becoming more prominent. The gesture might have meant anything, or been some involuntary biological process at work and meant nothing. She spoke again, and Feralan saw her words as:

That's where I go too, so you can come with me. I'm Wexiset.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

The Revenge

[Thanks, Stormydragon!]

Dearest Alzagonde,
I must say your stay aboard the Strayaway was most memorable, and I fear the ship will seem nearly empty now that you are gone. Even now, as I lie alone trying to get to sleep, my thoughts keep turning to you. I hope that should you ever choose to journey aboard my ship again, you will allow me to show you how much friendlier I can be. For though I enjoyed the brief tussling we engaged in over our weeks together, I fear I never got to show you the full depths of how pleasurable transffection can be.

It’s literally true, in a certain light. I am alone in bed — I am thinking of her, though with more anger and less lust than that phrase might suggest.

We will see what her parents think of the note, which I sent, as if by mistake, naked of envelope, to their house.

Prince Rastomil

We didn’t manage to get Prince Rastomil disenchanted in Barency. Inventing a new ritual spell takes a while, or, more commonly, two and a half whiles. And, with all due esteem and effection, Saza is not a very diligent wizard. Zie’s certainly powerful, and quite alarmingly clever when zie puts zir mind to it; but zie does not put zir mind to it every day. For contrast, I’ve missed enchanting only nine or ten days in the more-than-a-year of our trip.

But we stopped at Saza’s home in Oorah Thrassen for three weeks, and I got to see Saza at zir wizardly best. Zie doesn’t grind at inventing rituals the way I grind at performing enchantments. Zie flutters around in the trees, sometimes breathing fire at leaves, thinking. After two or three hours of that, zie sprawls on a branch and takes a nap, or indulges in some fine sherry, or drags zir cousin into a fireplace for a bit of smooching. At some point in the later afternoon, zie scribbles a few symbols here and there in zir ritual design, at random.

Alarmingly, by the end of two weeks, every symbol zie wrote turns out to be absolutely correct.

Me: “How do you do that? When I invent a spell, I go through dozens of drafts and waste reams of paper.”

Saza: “Alas, coz! I am a lazy, lazy lizard. I do not have the energy or gumption to make mistakes.”

Zie certainly has the energy and gumption to perform the ritual, once it is composed. Prince Rastomil, Lady Noshi, Lord Kethji, and Nanggi-Zi are all back in their proper bodies. (Rastomil’s opinion of the ritual, which required the same sorts of activities as the original one: “I certainly appreciate the fine qualities of my own body in ways that I did not know before!”)

And never mind, if you please, about just how we got Nanggi-Zi to be compliant and not resist the ritual. Two wizards and a nendrai can accomplish quite a bit, if they’re willing to be flexible on just what sorts of magic are legitimate under what circumstances, and how bad an idea it is to let a nendrai do that sort of thing.

In any case, Nanggi-Zi is now trapped in her corpse (by her own spells and Saza’s considerable work), incapable of doing magic (mostly my doing), probably unconscious (Saza), and back in Hanija for whatever justice they want to inflict on her (Vae). A few letters from Hanija hinted that we should simply kill her and have done with, but two of us weren’t comfortable with that, and the third — who volunteered to do it — we don’t want killing primes.

Prince Rastomil is staying with us for a while longer. He is not in sufficient disgrace with Barency. Somehow the story of his misfortunes was phrased to make him appear an innocent victim, and Jagraton the brave defender of the honor of Barency. Further humiliation is required, and evidently I am just the lizard to do it.

Stowaways

Treacle-Eyes, Lithia, and Dorze have made their peace with Nangbang. There were no fireworks or explosions. The three of them are staying in Oorah Thrassen for a while. Perhaps Lithia will come home to die after that, or perhaps I will go to Oorah Thrassen to be with her.

Orren Boys

Inconnu sulked for two days. Grinwipey apologized to him for his part in the fiasco by constructing for him a wonderful and quite flamboyant short-cape, all set about with sparkle-pods. (Grinwipey does not, I might add, take any responsibility for any wrongdoing. He does, however, take commissions for me, even if they’re not to be enchanted.) That, plus a few seductions of people he knows well — and has seduced before — have more or less set his mood to rights.

Invincible Fire Demon will be Phaniet’s understudy. (I don’t think Phaniet is going to keep working as my assistant for that much longer.) He has not quite decided whether or not he is traff, in the new and improved sense of “someone who frequently has intentions upon people of other species”. He certainly likes other Orren, though he is over his crush on Jyondre. Which is to say, mostly sometimes slightly over his crush on Jyondre.

Jyondre says that he has grown far too accustomed to walking around hand-in-hand with his wife, and refuses to give it up, and that, therefore, I must make a new city for him where such things will not cause people to disapprove. So I will, or I will try, anyhow.

Arfaen and Quendry

Arfaen and Quendry and Jyondre and Yerenthax and Grinwipey and I paid a careful visit to Quendry’s father. Certain points were made:

1. Quendry’s psychic development (both in the sense of personality and of magic) had been quite considerable during his time away. We didn’t quite say how much of this was due to adventuring, or quite how harsh some of the adventures had been.
2. The tail-severing was never my intent, and I would happily pay the full cost that had been incurred for re-attaching it, and triple the amount by way of apology, without the necessity for further legal processes.
3. Quendry will continue to live at Castle Wrong.

Home

I have no idea why I’m so tired. We arrived at the port of Vheshrame slightly after noon. I spent an hour or so on minor chores — mostly installing the Elfimel in their new home in a corner of Vae’s cave. “I’ll build a city for you to live in, but it will take a few years,” I told them.

“We await this eagerly!” said the Elfimel.

Vae, who actually knows what I mean by “city” and “few years”, nodded sagely.

Then I flew home — to Castle Wrong, that is — and mumbled “Well, I’m home” to a few friends I hadn’t seen, and fell into my fireplace and slept for about a month.

The End

I do not approve of the following decision! But I got outvoted. The wrongfolk have, wrongly, decided that everyone gets to make up their own form of marriage and to have it proclaimed a legal form of marriage by the legeriat.

This takes something that I think is perfectly reasonable -- everyone gets to make up their own marriage vows -- and generalizes it to madness. So, for example, Phaniet and Este want to make up an Binary-Open Marriage, which is a pretty conventional couple marriage, except that they can take lovers but they have to do it together. Arfaen, for her part, has decided that she likes having a tofyof, and wants something like that allowed by law too.

We're going to have a great big book listing all the currently available varieties of marriage. We already have the book itself -- a massive ledger book bound in green leather -- and I did manage to get some agreement that, when the book is full, we stop this game.

Anyhow, I'm worried about the game. It needs some rules, or someone's going to get hurt. Here are some rules I am thinking about, or that various of our more enthusiastic Rassimel and mock-Rassimel have discussed.

1. Marriages concern emotional and sexual bonds, long-term life plans, joint living situations, rights of kinship, and selected property matters. (Rationale: We probably have left some things off this list. But we don't want, say, two people who ought to be entering a business arrangement to phrase it as a marriage.)
2. A form of marriage must concern the attachments of a collection of consenting adults (called "spouses"). The collection of spouses is fixed at the time of the marriage.
3. The spouses must know, understand, and agree to the terms of the marriage before they can enter into it. (Rationale: You can't, say, marry the Duke of Vheshrame in a form marriage that gives you half his wealth, unless the Duke wants to.)
4. A spouse may unilaterally proclaim divorce, dissolving the whole marriage unless the terms of the marriage explain what will happen in the case of divorces. (Rationale: Divorce seems essential in various situations. Dissolving the whole marriage may seem rather drastic, but the alternative is chaos -- e.g., if five overzealous Orren have put together an intricate arrangement heavily based on the numerology of 5, and one leaves, there'll be no sensible way to interpret the remaining arrangement for 4. But a standard Cani marriage of 13 adults will turn into a standard Cani marriage of 12 in the natural way.)
5. Marriage vows never supercede other legal requirements. Prior marriage vows have precedence over newer ones. (Rationale: This system is going to be ridiculously unstable, but this rule makes it a touch more stable. Besides, if you don't like the prior vows, you can destroy that marriage and make one that fits your needs.)
Anyhow ... any ideas, suggestions, demands, proclamations, assertions, distractions, uglifications, or derisions?

I should be back soon, to finish up Sythyry's Vacation and start again, seven years later, with Sythyry's City. I'm going to try to do it as more of a series of short stories with interspersed bits of slice-of-life, as opposed to one long continuous mess of story arcs that don't always get finished with interspersed bits of slice-of-life. We'll see how it works.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Frippin was scrambling around her cabin, stuffing clothes and books into suitcases and canvas bags in a wild rush. “Oh no we’re nearly in port I need to get off the boat in three minutes and I’ll have to leave all my clothes behind or I’ll get swooped off to Vheshrame and …”

“We’ll be in port for a day or two …”, said Invincible Fire Demon. He stopped in mid-sentence when Arfaen cuffed his shoulder, and said, “Frippin, we’ll help you pack, but you have to tell us a few things afterwards.”

“OK yes please help help!” said Frippin, and the next third of an hour was a three-way festival of packing.

“So, why did Alzagonde want us to talk to you about … whatever happened with Inconnu?” asked Arfaen, hoisting a clothes-bag on her back.

“Oh no I’m so sorry!” whined Frippin. “I didn’t mean you to get beaten up Invie!”

“I will forgive you, but please tell me how you happened to get me beaten up?”

“I needed a term paper story so I thought I would watch Inconnu do stuff and I would find something to write about like about social interactions and whether he thinks it’s cissy or traff with two people of the same species but a different one than him, it’s not a great topic but I was really running out of time and I don’t want to flunk out and I had to do something. So I was going to hire two Rassimel girls, only when the first one heard I wanted to watch her with an Orren she was going to charge me a lot, I mean a huge lot way more than I could afford, I couldn’t hire another one I didn’t have the money, then I thought, well, I can save some money and I don’t have to go hide in the closet and watch through a keyhole if I’m there in the room helping out, you know? And it’s not traff if I’m really an Orren myself and Inconnu is too, even if I’m looked like a Rassimel … I mean, it’s not as if I were sleeping with my professor to get a passing grade, that would be traff and pretty disgusting too, this is just sleeping with a cute guy for the sake of science, that’s OK, right? But I don’t have a crush on him or anything. I mean he is really good and all, but but, look, could you tell him an apology from me after you leave Barency? I didn’t mean to cause him any trouble, I just had to show Alzagonde my paper so she could help me with it, I didn’t mean that he should find out, I would have given him two Rassimel if I had had the money, and I’m so sorry how it all turned out!”

(Or, rather, that is an approximate condensate of what she said. I believe that she repeated it approximately six hundred and eleven times over the course of a third of an hour, and that intermixed with interrogations and confirmatory questions. Frippin seemed as malice-free as possible.)

Arfaen hugged her — Frippin cringed a bit — and said, “I’ll make sure everyone gets the full story when we’re safely away. I hope that’ll comb down some of the ruffled fur.”

The Injustice

Certain of us held a Secret Council of Justice And Retaliation. It wasn’t particularly secret from Alzagonde, though of course she wasn’t there. It was secret from Vae, who might well have done something very drastic about it, like destroy Barency.

Me: “It’s all Alzagonde’s fault?”

Arfaen: “Alzagonde was the spark, Frippin the flash, Inconnu and Grinwipey were the tinder, eager to burn, and Invincible Fire Demon played the unenviable role of the fireplace.”

Me: “And where is Alzagonde now? Has she disembarked?”

Arfaen: “With her family in Barency.”

Me: “That makes revenge a bit more difficult.”

Arfaen: “You were planning to take revenge?”

Me: “Well, I was planning to call it “justice” or at least “the proper punishment for crimes committed on my airboat”. Not nearly as convenient or legitimate if she is now off the airboat.”

Kantele: “I shouldn’t advise doing what you are starting to think of, Sythyry.”

Me: “Why not?”

Jyondre: “For those of us who are not so telepathic, what is zie thinking of that zie should not do?”

Me: “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

Kantele: “I’m not quite sure — probably either ‘flying off and ignoring the situation’ or ‘challenging her to a duel’. Unwise, in either case.”

So we argued for the better part of an hour — and, as better parts of an hour go, this was far and away the worse part — and decided that the better part of convenience, if not of justice, could be served by hiring Prof. Mump to be vicious to Alzagonde.

So, the next day, Kantele and Mump had a nice conversation about how terrible Alzagonde had been and how much she deserved a future of academic misfortune, and then a nice conversation about how Mump’s research program could be strengthened by a few thousand lozens, and, hopefully, the deal was done. It is notably easy to hire professors to do nearly anything, provided that one phrases it as ‘giving them a grant.’

Not that I’m terribly happy with Mump either.

I think I’m done with this vacation. I am tired of getting in trouble with foreigners in foreign lands. I think I would like to go home, where I can get in trouble with fellow citizens in the convenience of my own house.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Strayway was four miles from Barency, and all the students were packing — except for one or two who were going to stay with us for a bit longer. Arfaen (not a student) and Invincible Fire Demon (not leaving yet) cornered Alzagonde while she was folding her shirts.

“At this point, I think you’ve pretty much escaped all possibility of punishment,” said Arfaen. “But we wish to know something. And we will find out, one way or another. I don’t think you’d like the ‘another’ very much though. You know we’ve got some monsters on board with lots of magic and not much respect for the laws or dignity of people like you.”

Alzagonde tucked her tail between her legs. “I don’t appreciate being threatened.”

“And I don’t appreciate being thrashed by an angry Khtsoyis dressmaker in the fallout from one of somebody’s plots,” said Invincible Fire Demon. “This one sounds like one of yours.”

Alzagonde sighed. “You’re asking about that note to Inconnu, right?” The wrongfolk nodded. Alzagonde said, “Well, yes, I sent it. I needed to see what he would do if he thought he’d somehow become temporarily cisaffectionate.” She used a form of the verb “needed” used by Rassimel in the grip of their lifelong obsession.

Invincible Fire Demon glared at Alzagonde. She added, “And I’m quite sorry about your arm. I couldn’t know that he’d somehow target you for his revenge. I was expecting him to figure it out and target me.”

“I suppose that’s all the apology I’m going to get from you,” said Invincible Fire Demon. “I’ll take it.”

“What do you expect me to do? Throw myself on the floor and grovel at your feet and wail, ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’?” snapped Alzagonde.

“We have long since given up expecting any sort of decency or proper behavior from you,” said Arfaen.

Invincible Fire Demon shrugged. “OK. And, while we’re on the topic, how can you keep complaining about all of us being traff, when you take your ringy Rassimel tail to bed with an Orren? That’s still sex with an Orren, even if you’re temporarily turned into an Orren yourself.” (The whole point being to reveal to everyone that Alzagonde was actually traff.)

“I did nothing of the sort,” snapped Alzagonde. “What do you take me for?”

“We take seriously all the mutterings that you’re so devoutly anti-traff as a way to hide from you being traff yourself,” said Invincible Fire Demon. “Or maybe we take that note you wrote seriously.”

“I am not traff myself,” said Alzagonde, her ears flat with anger. “Stop saying that. It’s disgusting and offensive.”

“It’s nothing of the sort,” said Arfaen. “I have investigated, thoroughly, and I know.”

Invincible Fire Demon, who is calling himself sort-of-traff these days on the flimsiest of evidence, curled his tailtip embarrassedly. “Be that as it may, who did do it? If it happened at all?”

“I think you’d better talk to Frippin about that,” said Alzagonde. “And now, get out of my cabin. I’ve got to finish packing.”

“The sooner you’re off Strayway, the happier we’ll all be,” said Arfaen, and stomped out.

Mirrored from Sythyry.

I set off three small but noisy lightning bolts. “Oyez, oyez, oyez! All shut their muzzles for the honorable Temporary Judge Arfaen!” We do not have a formal judicial system on Strayway. Arfaen had volunteered to mediate, so of course I (1) accepted and (2) provided more pomp than the occasion actually required.

Arfaen waved around a tenderizing mallet, as a symbol of her actual and pretend offices both. “So, I’m here to arrange an arrangement between Inconnu, Grinwipey, and Invincible Fire Demon. Do you all agree to accept my mediation, on pain of being served nothing but pickles and frozen raw sheep entrails for the rest of the journey?” These terms were acceptable to everyone. The journey being almost over, it’s not much of a threat really.

Arfaen continued. “So, as I understand the situation: Inconnu is upset because someone slept with him under false pretenses. He became convinced that it was Invincible Fire Demon. Inconnu considered this to be mockery, and sought to mock Invincible Fire Demon back by plastering the ship with terrible love poetry about Grinwipey, which appeared — even to an educated nose — to be written by Invincible Fire Demon. Grinwipey took exception to this — deciding that it was mockery rather than infatuation — and mocked Invincible Fire Demon back, by forcing him to wear some clothing as hideous as the poetry until Sythyry made Grinwipey stop, and Invie accidentally hurt himself in the process. So far so true?”

Inconnu bounced to his feet. “Not enough! My very purity was assaulted, challenged, shattered! Revenge must and shall be mine!”

“Yeah, yeah, so you slept with a Rassimel. Big deal. You sleep with a lot of Rassimel,” said Grinwipey. “You didn’t sleep with a Khtsoyis. So I kinda don’t see why you have to drag me into this puddle of pig poople.”

“I don’t think that anyone involved behaved terribly civilly,” said Lithia, who was there as the expert witness.

“What did I do?” whined Invincible Fire Demon.

“OK, OK. Inconnu and Grinwipey didn’t. You are just the hapless victim,” snapped Lithia. “You know what I mean.”

“I’m a hapless vapless victim here too!” snarled Grinwipey. “Here I am, floatin’ in my workshop, mindin’ my own business, embroiderin’ phase daisies on a lace mace case, and all of a suddent out of the blue I get whoimped by a bunch of horrible love poems! Mocked! Made a laughing-stocking, and me who doesn’t even have feet!”

“You could have done something that didn’t involve slamming me into a door,” said Invincible Fire Demon. “Maybe write some mocking poems of your own. Even if I had done it, which, um, I hadn’t.”

“I ain’t no aster-basting master poetaster!” shouted Grinwipey. “I’m a coo-turry-urg! So that’s basically what I did, ‘cepting I did it with clothing not poetry!”

“True enough, but you picked the the wrong person about it,” said Arfaen. “And he got hurt in the process.”

Invincible Fire Demon hopped up. “And I was very scared! Suddenly this well-armed and very angry warrior-tailor floats into my room, whomps everything with his clubs a lot, crashes me into an armoire to hurt my arm, and demands I wear a horrible thing! Besides, the poetry was mocking me too.”

“Inconnu and Grinwipey, you’re a pair of dumb-brain squid nipples,” said Arfaen, whose judicial manner is not sufficiently appreciated or imitated in more formal courts.

“Yeah, yeah, I got the wrong guy. So bite my tail and call me Saliet. Least I didn’t actually hurt him, I just made fun of him,” snapped Grinwipey.

“It hurt!” whined Invincible Fire Demon.

“Slamming yourself into furniture ain’t a pillow pie, Invie,” said Grinwipey. “But I didn’t do that bit, and nobody’s even saying I did.”

“And I! I was mislead by Lithia! What can you expect when you take a member of the same species into your confidence?” wailed Inconnu.

Lithia glared at him. “I did not mislead you. I said it might be Invincible Fire Demon because he was grinning about something like that earlier. I said you needed to check on it and talk to him! Not drag him into the gutter for revenge!”

“It wasn’t me! I was talking about a different Orren boy anyways, and I didn’t do anything about that!” protested Invincible Fire Demon.

And everyone but me went around the room saying the same things over and over again for nearly two-thirds of an hour, by which time I was thoroughly bored and feeling like I was wasting my life. I can’t imagine how the mortals endured it.

Finally, Arfaen said, “Right. Inconnu, you owe both Invincible Fire Demon and Grinwipey an apology and thirty-three lozens each. Grinwipey, you owe Invincible Fire Demon an apology and three hundred and thirty-three lozens.

Grinwipey shrugged, flicking its tentacle-tips all around. “Fine, fine. I’ll apologize myself as flat as a flounder.”

Arfaen added, “And you won’t go playing a prank on Inconnu, or taking any further revenge on him. This whole incident is over. Right?”

“Right as a wriggling rhygon, Arfaen,” said Grinwipey, as contritely as he ever is. “I’m a meek little meatball for the rest of the trip, even if everyone calls me a snushmanger right in the dinner hall in front of everyone.”

Inconnu bristled. “What injustice is this? I was wronged in the first place! Nobody even denies this! Yet, somehow, I am apologizing and paying fines! Arfaen! You are a stinking of a judge!”

Arfaen bared her teeth. “You are wronged by getting a night of body-play that you bragged about for days! You then got offended at a fine point, insulted everyone on board, and got revenge on two people who were, in fact, innocent.”

“Or seem to be!” snapped Inconnu.

“Well, no more than one of them is guilty, and probably neither one is,” said Arfaen. “You do have some sort of a legitimate grievance, but not the one you threw at everyone.”

“Well, who did sleep with me?” wailed Inconnu.

“Who didn’t?” snapped Grinwipey. “‘sides me, that is.”

Afterwards…

Later on, with Arfaen putting the kitchen in order for the night and me sitting on the stove offering useful advice and minor assistance.

Arfaen: “Is that what you wanted?”

Me: “Well, truth to tell, I was hoping for something harsher and more vindictive about Grinwipey.”

Arfaen:: “Oh! You want revenge for him being so mocky at you, and doing awful things to your cousin, and everything else he’s done?”

Me: “… yes”

Arfaen: “So he’ll never, ever do anything like any of those again?”

Me: “… yes”

Arfaen: “Well, next time, if you want revenge or fierce justice on someone, ask me to take revenge or fierce justice, not to mediate. Though I think there’s been entirely too much revenge in the last couple of days. And now I think you should put your cute little head to your concubine duties, and stop worrying it about the affairs of those greater than you. Which I think is just about everyone on the ship, measured by volume, excluding Saza.”

Which isn’t the absolutely best way to seduce me, really.