[J] Kirkcaldy's Diary +Illusionist: romesilk+

[romesilk]

"You're sure I can't change your mind?"

"Dead sure."

"Ha ha, very funny."

Emperial and n'Barit were standing at the cusp of the Bridge looking out at the world. They could have been looking out at any number of worlds: futuristic cities, medieval towns, magical hamlets, or alien vistas. Instead, they were looking at Gaia.

"You could still go to Earth," said Emperial, thinking of all the ways this could go wrong. Gaia was one of her favorite places, it had given her many wonderful things, but that did not mean it was without its problems. There were many days she wished she had never found the place. Every action led to some sort of problem down the line no matter how well-intentioned or beneficial it seemed. Being nice to one person meant offending another. Adopting a new pet or child meant incurring the jealousy of strangers. Acting made people angry, not acting made people angry, and if one person was angry that usually meant a mob...

"This was your idea," pointed out n'Barit, interrupting Emperial's train of thought.

So it had been, because her Praetorian instincts told her that Gaia was the right place, and she would continue to involve herself in the realm until her instincts said otherwise. "You can still opt for an Earth setting," she said.

"Can you guarantee me there'll be no magisterial control?" Her hesitation was answer enough. "Then I choose Gaia." He intended those words to be finality in the matter, but a moment later he had a question. "What is it you've predicted that's making you suddenly object?"

She briefly laughed. He was so intelligent sometimes. Not knowing the reason for her laughter, n'Barit thought it might be at his expense. Emperial said, "It's not a sudden objection, just my last chance to make an objection. It's going to be hard."

"I know," said n'Barit.

"And you're stubborn, and I don't like the idea of you doing this to punish yourself."

N'Barit frowned. He had thought her to be more supportive.

"I can't help my feelings, I can only help my doings," said Emperial, reaching her arm around his shoulder. "That's why I'm helping you do this. I don't have to agree with it to know it's important to you."

"Thanks, I think," said n'Barit, sarcasm creeping in.

"I just don't want you getting hurt."

There was the crux of it, their difference in philosophies and the reason he was leaving. "Life is pain. Pain is growth."

"And death's the final punchline," she quipped, to n'Barit's dismay. He had no sense of humor. Emperial reached into her coat pocket and removed something. "I got you a gift."

"You shouldn't have," he said, not out of modesty. He eschewed personal belongings. That was part of the point of all this.

"It's useful," Emperial insisted. "Objects of use can be necessities."

Not quite the teaching, but fairly close. N'Barit looked at the little black thing doubtfully.

"You press this button and it records what you're saying."

"Why would I want that?" n'Barit retorted.

"Look," said Emperial, and pressed the button. It clicked. "N'Barit Kinmera, I love you." She pressed the button again. She pressed another button and it whirred. A third button and it repeated her words back. A thin, pale imitation, but her voice. N'Barit was struck by the magnitude of it. Not so much the technology, he had seen many more impressive things in the past ten years, but by the sentiment. He took the device and let her press his fingers in the right order so her voice repeated.

"You'll thank me for it later," she promised.

"I'll thank you for it now," he corrected. True, he had few manners and rarely exercised them, but he knew when they were required.

Emperial smiled. "You're very welcome." She ruffled her hand through his light green hair, a move which used to frustrate him, but which he now found affectionate. "If you get sick, you promise you come back to me. Promise."

"I promise," he said, leaning his head on her shoulder. "Don't cry."

"I won't. There's no reason to."

Possibly they were both lying.

That was two months ago. She had been right. N'Barit was stubborn and it was hard. He knew he was stubborn. He was proud of it. Hardness he was used to.

The first few nights it was bitter cold. He slept on sewer grates for warmth. For someone who had spent his life on dirt pallets it was not hard, but the planet he was from was warmer and he was almost overwhelmed by the cold. Eventually he learned that trash piles were warmer and slept there, but he still woke shivering. Almost as bad was the noise. Gaia was never quiet and he was several times accosted by passer-bys. "Get up off the streets, noob," they would say, and, "Don't you know you can get a house?" To someone who had spent a good deal of his life immersed in silence, it was torture, and he ignored them all, even the well-meaning ones. Especially the well-meaning ones.

This was the point after all, to experience pain. Only through destitution could the full magnitude of his sin be expressed. Only when his life reflected his unclean status could he be at rights with the divine.

He ate what he could scrounge out of dumpsters, fighting down his revulsion at the insects and the smells. Unclean sustenance for an unclean soul. He did get sick and throw up, but it was not the kind of sickness Emperial had pleaded him to return for. Just common indigestion.

He let himself get dirty. Scrounging around in dumpsters made that easy. The compulsion to wash obsessively made it hard. He could feel his skin crawling with desire for the religious fastidiousness of his former life. He fought it back. This was not the first time he had gone without washing. It was in a way the third, for twice he had been exiled, in two separate lives. This was his fourth life, depending how you counted it.

He continued to pray. Even in his unworthy state he was devoted. He prayed for the divine to make him whole again so that he might rejoin the ranks of the barrigaters and serve his people. He prayed for the return of his powers so that, regardless of his uncleanliness, he might once again serve his people as he always had. He prayed simply for the act of praying.

In two months, the weight dropped off of him, and the muscle, too. He became a shadow of his former self, but then, he had been a shadow for a long time. It was simply starting to show. He was tired, thin, destitute, and grateful for it.

Life before had been too easy. He deserved this suffering and felt fulfilled now that he had it. The sores and pain defined him and gave his life meaning in a way nothing material ever could.

Gaia was, he mused, perfect. Materialism was everywhere. On every street corner people hawked their wares and begged for offerings. Gold fell on the streets and they clamored for it. Here was this sin, this cardinal sin, and he lived in it because there was no escape from it on Gaia. The magnitude of the materialism equaled his physical defect and put his suffering in balance: his surroundings were as dirty as he was.

This was why he had chosen a human world. Had he simply wandered the wilds or vast deserts, he would have been living in holy solitude. He needed the noise, the waste, the greed that only humans (in his admittedly limited experience) possessed. His other option was Earth, but it was abundantly clear that while Earth held many humans and unclean notions, there was no Earth he could go to that was free from Praetorian influence. So: Gaia. That thorn in the Praetorians' side where, he had to admit, the sins of humanity seemed multiplied. It was as if humanity's inherent greed had been compressed and squeezed into every facet of Gaian life until it simply was Gaian life.

In short: it was everything Emperial had said it would be.

N'Barit talked to her sometimes, as she had said he could. "You leave, but I'm still your imperatrix. I'll be your imperatrix until the end of your existence. That's one decision that cannot be undone."

"Thank you," he had said at the time, and had not really meant it then, but now he was grateful that he could talk and she would listen no matter where she was. He clicked the recorder on and off as he talked. He spoke to Emperial at the edge of sleep and tried to imagine her responses. "There, there," he said at the end of one very bad day, "Don't cry." He was reminded of a Beatles' song and he mumbled as he drifted into sleep, "make your mother sad." Beatles songs always cheered her and that one was her favorite. The song stayed with him every day after. He thought of it when things were particularly bad and hummed it under his breath in broken pieces. It was a sad song, but comforting for that very reason.

Music was the one thing n'Barit had gained from all his time in the household that he would never give up. Coming from a world which had none, he had at first been reluctant and suspicious. When he could find no religious laws against it, he had permitted himself to experience it, and it stuck. It was so important. It would be nice if he could take that back and bring song to his people, combine music and religion, the way some of the human religions did. A way for the non-Tuulan to express divinity.

If only he could. They would never accept anything from a disbodied. But n'Barit would never have found music had not been disbodied. It was a vicious cycle. If only things had gone differently, but he had already tried that, and to have everything he wanted was impossible. The continued existence of his people was enough.

So here he was, on Gaia, picking at leftover bread behind a bakery, when he saw it.

At first he thought it was just a trick of the light, a flicker of shadow from a bird flying. He dismissed it as easily as the flies with which he would be sharing his lunch. Then, when he had a fairly edible piece of bread in hand, he noticed it again, but he turned to look at it directly and it was gone. He paused. A fly buzzed onto his hand and he swatted it away and was distracted. He forgot all about the shadowy flicker.

It did not forget about him. He went to wash in the pond, since it was Aerday (as near as he could guess) and he noticed it again. He was out halfway in the water. He looked back at his clothes and he thought he saw a dark stain on his white tunic, but when he swam up there was nothing. He scrubbed the tunic until his hand was raw, which felt really good and reminded him of the past, so he chanted a prayer under his breath. He'd pay for it later. He was unworthy of the words even submerged in cleansing water.

He dunked his head three times until he nearly lost consciousness and swam to the shore with dark spots in his vision and there it was again. A dark spot that seemed improper. Too real, or not real enough. He kept squinting at it as his vision cleared, trying to make it go away, and then come back. He might have thought he damaged his vision with his ritual of near-drowning but the phenomenon was localized to a physical area and not a symptom of his eyesight.

He got up to leave and it followed him. Every few steps he turned and looked and there it was. Sometimes it moved. Sometimes it was gone and it came back. "Techt," he said, and hobbled along, confused, letting the sun warm him.  

[romesilk]

Click.

Quote:

I think I'm going insane. You said someone told you insane don't they're insane, and you didn't believe that, and I don't know if I agree with you, Emi, but I'm not not agreeing. It's just... rrrg I don't... sss I keep seeing it. It doesn't matter where I go, it's like it's following me. That might be giving it too much credit. Hrg. It's probably some glitch. I don't know. Didn't you say this was a virtual realm? Virtual corporeal. Techt. That's a crock. I swear you make these thing up just to annoy me.

... (noises) ...

I can't put it past you. I just... want to believe you. You said you wouldn't interfere. ...

If not you, who!? Who knows I'm here? I don't even know I'm here! I swear, techt, there's got to be some explanation. This isn't the divine. Only Yuul is pure enough. The divine living and breathing on this world? Ha! As if! These heathens wouldn't know the divine if it ate them! They're all corrupted by false paths! They have no sense of sin and purity, they only act like they do! They follow their egomaniacal concept of god, a being so laughable, it could only exist in children's stories, as if chasing their own psyches will lead them to salvation! Missing the entire time what is plastered right in front of their faces! Gh--Ghk-- Graaaagh! Haah... haah... Holright. Alright. Hn.

Click.

Click.

Quote:

It's still here.

 

[romesilk]

After a few days he had resigned himself to its presence. Sometimes he would sit and watch it intently, searching for some clue in its shadowy confines. It was in flux, every day bringing some changes. It was so hard to tell what precisely it was except that it lay outside his experience. He tried to reach out his hand to it and it felt tingly against his fingers, not quite there but not quite nonexistent.

He went about his daily tasks, rummaging for food and resting, recording comments and queries on his tape recorder and playing them back, then rerecording over the top of his messages. He left the front of the tape untouched, even though he could not bear to listen to it. It was enough comfort to know the words were there.

He thought, on Kemday, that the thing had at least doubled in size from the little smudge it had once been and debated asking someone about it, but he was beginning to think that only he could see it. Sometimes, when he stood and stared at it, people gave him strange looks like they had no idea what he was staring at. It made no sense. He was well aware that his visual range was slightly different from that of a humans, but it was shifted to a higher range, so if it were an ultraviolet anomaly it should appear a bright shade, not a shadow.

Then what? The question nagged him.

The one thing he was not doing was going to ask Emi about it. His mystery, his problem. And only his. Besides, there was always the argument that, imperatrix or not, she might not be capable of physically seeing it anyway. Weak excuse. But all he needed.

He searched his mind for some written guidance from the texts. Try as he might, applicable wisdom eluded him. He had never excelled in his rote memorization anyway. He was better with the picts.

When he was not otherwise busy, he used a stick to trace picts in the dirt. He started at the beginning of the texts and let the boxy letters run on and on until he had reached the edge of the dirt and many hours had gone by. The shadow hovered over him, watching. When he wrote, he was so engrossed in it he lost all track of time and place. Sometimes when he looked up he would find that the wind had erased what he had written, or dark clouds had gathered overhead and it began to rain and the words turned to mud. Then he would realize he had been at it for hours and go to find food, momentarily forgetting about the dark smudge until he caught sight of it in the corner of his eye again.  

[romesilk]

Click.

Quote:

Ahh, finally it's getting warm. I don't know how these humans tolerate it so damn cold. If I didn't have doublethreads, I'd've frozen to death. And I don't understand why they celebrate in the winter. It's cold. Ehhh. It's warmer now. That's all that matters.

I did almost all the Book of n'Tevin today and I got to the end and... I didn't know it. I guess it's... tsss... I can't... I can't have... ah, I can't remember but I'm sure I know it. I just... I'll remember it tomorrow. That's all there is to it.

Fff, hhhw. N'Tevin... I was, sss, gherhas, it's been a long time. Another rotation coming up soon. I don't even know any more how I can keep track of it. The days just don't add up. These stupid... Hhhh! It's not important. I don't know how old I am. Emi's got it written down somewhere, but each day isn't equal, I don't know how you figure it out. It just doesn't make any sense.

Eh, that's nothing. I just want... hn.

...

... swallow...

Hnh! Huh! That's a good one. What's it by? Uhh, Croxy Bills or something. I'm not gonna sing. Thanks anyway. Yeah, I love you too. Hmf. I do too say it, just not when you're around. I'm allowed that. Allowed anything.

Huyah! I'm going to bed. Night, Emi. Night, shadow thingy. Don't eat me in the middle of the night. I don't taste very good. Hmf. ...

Click.  

[romesilk]

Laying on the grass, staring at the clouds, n’Barit reflected on the state of his life. There was a lot to consider. His training, his exile, his travels, his new world, and a cloud that looked just like a fish. N’Barit held his hand skyward and looked at it, silhouetted against the blue. (His blue was not the same as everyone else’s, of course. His blue was brilliantly more vibrant with its hues stretching into the ultraviolet.) His fingers trembled slightly with life, resisting stillness, compelled by the firings of nerves and pumping of blood to be always in some motion. So it was with all living things.

He held up his other hand. In shape, it was very similar to the left. In every other respect it differed. The fingers stretched with mechanical precision, acting only at his specific command. If he ignored them they would be deathly still. There was no life in his right hand, only cold hard metal with oil for blood and pistons for nerves. If he wanted his hand to close it did so into a perfect fist, the fingers falling into the grooves intended for them. There was no shifting of fingers for position, no stretching of flesh across his knuckles, no feeling of muscles tensing except what his brain summoned up in sympathetic memory. He released the fist and let the hand settle into its normal resting position. An idealized version of a resting hand as a sculptor might have carved it, perfect in every way except the ones that really counted.

The metal surface reflected things in the world around him: the blue of the sky and the green of the trees and grass. Emperial had asked him if he wouldn’t prefer a flesh-colored hand. The technology existed to make his bionic hand look much like the other, with a layer of rubbery fake flesh colored to match his skin tone and details painted to look like his own hand. George Hartley had one. It was a very impressive prosthetic.

But that would be a lie. “How do you know it will look like my hand?” he demanded. “You’ve never seen my hand.”

“We match it to other,” said Emperial.

“What makes you think both hands looked the same?” he had retorted hotly. In truth he had never noticed any particular difference to his hands back when he had two. What he meant to say was that it would not really be his hand no matter how perfect the replica and there was no reason to pretend otherwise.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” said Emperial, and they left it at that. That had been six years ago by Earth’s calendar, or just six months, depending on how you measured time. Possibly it never really happened, bur he had the artificial arm to prove it.

The arm was heavy on his shoulder and n’Barit let it fall to his chest, wincing on impact. It was sometimes hard to remember that his own arm could hurt him if he was not careful. The edges were all smooth and rounded, but it was still made of metal. Like most Fleet technology it was engineered for strength before safety. He could do a lot of damage with that arm if he ever had a mind to. There were several hidden systems even he was not aware of, probably a tracking device included. He remembered a demonstration by one of the Fleet's other amputees, George Hartley. With unsettling glee, George had revealed hidden in his arm a veritable arsenal of surgical instruments, each calibrated with robotic precision and control. He needed a special neural implant to control them all, but according to him, it was well worth it for the effect his arm had at parties. Thankfully, George was not n'Barit's doctor.

Eyes closed, n'Barit relaxed on the grass, the breeze just stirring the threads of his clothing.

At once, he was upright, flooded momentarily with instinctive panic. The organ in the back of his head that detected flares of ultraviolet radiation had noticed something. It was an evolutionary relic of a time when his planet had been privy to dangerous solar flares, well before n'Barit's birth, and it had just made him aware of something that was not a solar radiation wave but something else.

He looked to the side and saw that his constant companion, that blotch of darkness that followed him around Gaia, had changed. He suppressed a scream. It had eyes. Bright, brilliant blue eyes, peering at him through the darkness, and pale skin, paler than his. It fluttered like a heat illusion in the air, somehow flat and somehow with dimension, almost like it was outside his dimension in a way he would have thought impossible before all his interdimensional travels. There was his answer, this thing was outside this dimension, leaking in as through a rift, but hesitantly and incomplete.

He was strangely not directly scared of it. He had met in his time a lot of extradimensional monsters, and killed no small number, but he felt kinship for this little struggling smudge stuck between one dimension and another, the way he was afloat in a world not his own. It was a face so like his own behind that smudge, with two bright eyes and distinctly humanoid features. A female, he thought. He thought he could make out an arm, like she was reaching for him. He almost wanted to try and touch her back, to pull her all the way through, but she was somehow not all there and beyond his reach. "What..."

And she smiled at him and rested her head on her arms, patient.  

[romesilk]

He was so close she could almost reach out and touch him, and she felt herself squeeze through the crack a little without dislodging. Her watery vision, filtering through the stains that surrounded her, the someone she was reaching out to with all her hopes and being and not quite touching.

She folded her arms and tilted her head and smiled, liking being closer, even if it meant she was still so far. She had come far, she was almost there she knew, and the important thing was that he was there, and looked to be waiting. He had a funny kind of expression on his face, it made her want to giggle, but sounds like that had no meaning here. She hoped they meant something there because it had been so long and she missed it even without quite remembering what it was.

She could feel herself drawn to him inexplicably, but somehow it all made sense. Everything made sense. She didn't have to know all the details to accept it. There was a time she had been propelled by some defining curiosity, but it was long gone in the haze of lost memory. Now she knew to accept certain things without testing them, and this felt like one of those times.

He was so very funny-looking, though, with light green hair and white marks on his cheek and his funny wooden sticks and silver hand. He was strangely isolated, though she could sometimes see people around him. Like she was isolated, all alone.

It was hard to determine what was here and what was not, because she herself was not quite there. She could feel parts of herself congealing without looking, and felt no particular urge to look. She just felt that there was part of her here, and part of her not, and she was going there, wherever there was, to meet the man with the silly expression. It was a delightfully simple paradigm of existence.

Of course, if she kept going, it would change. After so long, or maybe no time whatsoever, she welcomed that change.  

[romesilk]

N'Barit fumbled with his tape recorder, not even sure what he was trying to record, or why. He did not bother rewinding, just pressed the record button.

Quote:

Huh, uhhh... I... I'm not sure. Should I... I don't know what to do. Emi? I don't care if you interfere now. ... Are you listening? You're my goddamned imperator, you have to be there. What the hell is going on? It's not of this dimension. Do you hear me? It's from somewhere else. I don't have to be a praetor to know that. This is what you do, isn't it? This is your specialty. Come and interfere, I know you want to. I'm telling you you can.

Aren't you there?

Emi?

Techt, I don't believe you. I thought you were looking for an excuse. You were telling the truth. Are you crying? Don't cry. It's here, now, and I don't think it's a monster, I don't think you're a monster. I don't know who you are.

I know two things. I know who I am and I know the Teaching. That should be enough. That's always been enough, hasn't it? I just didn't realize it. You were right, about everything, and I've never been happier that you were right. I don't mind any more if you're right.

I have the Teaching. The important thing is the Teaching. If we follow the Teaching, all of its paths lead to the divine. I don't need you, I don't need anything but the Teaching.

I'm beginning to see what you saw. If you knew this would happen, you knew where it was leading, you've just been a tool of the divine the whole time. All of the Teaching's paths lead to the divine and to righteousness! Techt, Emi, why didn't you just-- hhh, we walk the path alone but for the followers.

...

It's not--

The tape recorder clicked off of its own accord. N'Barit let his sentence trail on his lips. He had hit the end of the tape. He bowed his head and closed his eyes. Of course. He rewound to the beginning of the tape and played the sound bite there. He smiled. The Teaching, the Path. It was all there from the very beginning.

He looked at the nearly-there person, the little dark smudge of the past weeks, understanding dawning. All right, whoever she was. He was here.  

[romesilk]

Inch by inch she could feel herself moving forward, sometimes from sheer will and sometimes as a natural result of whatever unnatural equation had put her here in this position. It was in its own way exhausting, a feeling she had not felt in a long time and was feeling for the first time in this new existence. She could conceive of better reintroductions to existence than exhaustion.

She breathed little breaths and closed her eyes. She was not sure if it made any difference if she was straining, but she longed to be out there so very much, so she tried just in case it made a difference. Anything to get out there where she felt she belonged.

He had moved, and the little blip of existence that was her still trailed after him, almost a magnetic attraction. He had not gone far, and she could see the creases of worry on his forehead, as if he thought moving too far would cause her trouble. He had moved over to a tree where he could rest in a sitting position and there he sat, waiting and watching, not daring to go farther.

She was beginning to wonder if she might just have to sit here and wait for this process to complete, but after so long (and it was more time than she had existed) she had simply no more patience. Out and be done with it. She bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut and moved with everything she had.

It was as if she had crossed a threshold. One moment she was there in that space where nothing exists, and the next she was sliding out into reality like a buttered ham, almost choking on her first breath of the vibrant, fresh air, more invigorating and sweet than her wildest imaginings. She quite lost thought as to anything else, even the fact that she was falling.

A hand moved, but not fast enough, for there was a moment's hesitation about which hand to use, and down she went to the ground into the roots and rocks and dirt. It was a sharp contrast to the crisp invitation of the air. The hand came reassuringly to her shoulder, but too late. Her lungs filled with that precious, pollen-scented spring air, and she expelled it in a plaintive wail.

The sound of her cry hit him like a brick wall. N'Barit was momentarily at a loss. He had been quite attentive, had thought he was ready, but all the same had not expected it when it happened. One moment, a face wavering through the smudge of darkness, the next a little girl falling with such reality it caught him off guard and he almost reached with his prosthetic, which could have hurt her. His momentary hesitation cost him the chance and she fell on the ground and he was intensely sorry.

N'Barit could remember well the way his academy teachers had treated children who cried. He had, somewhere on his back, the faint traces of lashings to prove it. It made the Tuul stronger, taught them that a sign of weakness was an invitation to attack, and never to hesitate in compassion against your opponent. If there is a moment of weakness, you must seize it to your advantage, and damn you if you ever displayed such moments yourself because the weak were not fit to lead.

The teaching for Yuul was much different. A Tuulan, upon perceiving a Yuul's weakness, must always strive to protect, for a great leader serves first his people and only then himself. To teach a Yuul strength was divine, but to comfort one acceptable if the teaching was lacking.

Personally, n'Barit had never particularly excelled in ministering to his flock, preferring to focus his time on the art of battle and perfecting his rare powers. His last barrigater review summed it up: "n'Barit is a model of inner strength and personal dedication but his ability to instill virtue in others is lacking." At the time he had thought his powers were the more important thing in his training. Now that those powers were gone, he had only the other skills that made a barrigater. His former weak points would have to become his strengths.

In the dozen rotations he had been away from his people he had other teachers. They were not Yuulani or of the Divine, but the lessons were from his experiences and not the teachers themselves. You could never trust the words or beliefs of an unclean person, but you could study their actions and apply their methodology. He did that now. With his hand on her shoulder he said, "It's okay. Don't cry." There was the tiniest break in her sobs and n'Barit promptly swept her up and drew her close to his chest, the way Sally had when he was younger, in both versions of his past. There was some bauble attached to her wrist by silver chain and ribbon that trailed after her, bouncing against a root of the tree.

She quieted almost immediately, sniffling into his shirt (which was not as clean as he might have liked). N'Barit decided the thing to do was take her to Sally, if he could manage it. They were a fair ways from the bridge. He checked her over. Aside from a few scratches on her arm she seemed fine. Still sniffling, she tolerated the examination, then looked at n'Barit with big blue eyes.

Her eyes were the color of the sky and n'Barit was momentarily awestruck by them. It was like seeing the reflection of sky on water, a sign of her purity if ever there was one. "You're fine," he told her. "Come on." He extended his metal hand to help her up.

The little girl looked a moment at his hand, mystified by its appearance. Then she looked down at her own hand with the silver chain encircling. They seemed to complement one another. She put her hand in his and stood on uncertain feet. N'Barit held her steady, letting her hang off his arm for now.

He waited for her to make some sort of step, but it became clear standing was the extent of her powers, and she was not particularly adept at even that. After a minute she plopped back to the ground with a little "hoo!" N'Barit let out a sigh. She could not quite walk, he could not manage both her and his crutches. Something would have to get left behind.  

[romesilk]

With a crutch in one hand and the little girl in the other, n'Barit managed. She settled into his arm with her arms around his neck like it was the most natural position in the world. The other crutch n'Barit abandoned, tucking it under some bushes in the vain hope he might return to retrieve it later. Assuming he remembered its exact location and no one took it.

It had been weeks since he last used the Bridge, but he found it as simple as always. He had only to focus on where he wanted to go. Concentration came easily to him, the skill honed by years of practice. He entered the Bridge without even noticing any of the alternate destinations, heading straight for the one he wanted.

He was only peripherally aware of the Bridge's effect on the little girl. Her mouth fell open at the swirling maelstrom of dimensions. It was like being in that place between, before she had existed. Amazement filled her eyes. If she had been the one focusing on the destination she would have gone a thousand other places.

N'Barit was so focused he nearly missed Emperial waiting for him on the Bridge's other side. "Ho, Bart!" she said, touching him on the arm to stop him from heading out quite so soon.

Reactionless, n'Barit stared at Emperial. The little girl shifted around to better see the stranger. Emperial smiled.

"Was there something you were wanting to do with this?" Emperial held up his abandoned crutch. N'Barit had the decency to register some surprise on his face.

"I hate it when you do that," he remarked, mostly out of habit, since she was clearly doing him a useful favor and he minded it not in the slightest.

"You're very welcome," was her deadpan response. "Walk you wherever you're going?"

N'Barit shook his head. "As if you don't know."

Emperial elbowed him in the arm. "Play along." They continued into the gateway of their destination, a stretch of asphalt and grass sandwiched between several other outcomes.

In a moment the Bridge and its infinity of possibilities were gone, replaced by the suburban streets of the Neighborhood. The little girl hiccupped in surprise. It was an unexpected transition for someone experiencing it the first time. N'Barit and Emperial paid it no heed. To them, moving from the Bridge to the Neighborhood was as easy as breathing.

By all accounting the Neighborhood was a nice place to live. Quiet, fair-weathered, and safe from the dangers of a thousand million universes. It consisted entirely of residential housing, like any other suburb. Look a little closer and the suburban façade vanished.

Instead of the typical rows of cookie-cutter houses, the Neighborhood comprised of a myriad collection of unusual domiciles. Here was a roof made from thatches and painted walls of mud, there a seeming starship rising through the ground, and between them a spidery, twisting structure conceived of in some demonic nightmare. There were castles and campsites and apartment buildings scattered between single-family homes, each crafted to the precise wishes of its occupants. Concrete, coral, stucco, and metals of strange origins, reflections of a thousand different time periods and cultures. No two were alike.

Even in weather they differed. An unexplainable rain fell over some houses, seemingly isolated to those properties, and darkness covered others. What looked like a single, cohesive neighborhood was in fact a collection of hundreds of pocket dimensions. The streets were merely the glue that bound the worlds together.

Emperial led the way along the street, swinging the crutch. "You know, I've always wanted to use these. It's a shame you can't loan me the other. It doesn't quite work with just the one."

"Chop off your leg and you can have your own set," growled n'Barit, to his passenger's alarm. The little girl pulled on his shirt to signal some unvoiced opinion.

"Let's pretend you're in a good mood," countered Emperial.

"I am in a good mood," said n'Barit just as smartly. "Ha ha."

"Your sarcasm is so unbecoming," said Emperial with rolled eyes. She looked at the little girl. The little girl looked back with blank incomprehension of the grownups' conversation. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"

N'Barit was silent a moment, eyes straight ahead. Then he said, "Do you remember that Beatles song?"

"You'll have to be less specific."

"In it, there's that line," he said as they walked along. "'The Duchess of Kirkcaldy, always smiling.'"

Emperial hummed, nodding. It was her favorite song, no matter how much John Lennon dismissed it.

N'Barit looked at the little girl, her sweet smile and clear blue eyes shining back at him. "You said the Duchess of Kirkcaldy was a very important person, and this is a very important person."

Emperial paused in thought, not losing her step, and sucked on her lip. True, she had said that, but apparently she had not made it quite clear to n'Barit when explaining the song that "duchess" was a title and not a person. At most it might be a Persian cat. "It's not really--"

"And I thought at the time," n'Barit cut her off, "that the Duchess of Kirkcaldy sounded like a very kind and happy person."

Emperial shrugged at herself and bounced the rubber foot of the wooden crutch off the ground. Who was she to tell him what to do? She was probably underestimating his grasp of the linguistics. It was years ago she had given him that explanation, before the language chip. A lot had changed since then. It was some remnant of his childhood he held on to. "I think it's wonderful," she said diplomatically, sincere enough to have a ring of truth.

They were coming now to Sally's house. Emperial gave the crutch a twirl. "I can hang on to this until you need it."

"That would be good," said n'Barit, pausing before Sally's gate. "Trafalgar?"

"You know it," said Emperial, twirling the crutch again and taking two giant steps back. N'Barit looked away to ring the bell, and Kirkcaldy was not sure how Emperial disappeared, engulfed into some tall bushes growing along the wall. The sound of the buzzer only confused her more still, as did the voice that came through the intercom a moment later.

"Yes?" a woman asked, sounding strangely distant.

"It's Bart," said n'Barit, using the nickname most of his human friends did. There was a muffled click and the gate unlocked. N'Barit fumbled with it one-handed, managing to get inside just before Sally emerged from the front door.

Sally Veers was taller by an inch than n'Barit and about a dozen rotations older, but still young and very pretty. Her soft brown hair was gathered into a braided halo on the crown of her head. She wore a deep blue blouse and high-waisted tan slacks, the color of her blouse dimming some of the warmth in her grey eyes. When she saw that n'Barit was not alone she faltered just a step in uncertainty, but she was unfailingly kind and generous and understanding. "N'Barit!" she greeted, clasping her hands in welcome. A moment later she had unclasped them to hug him lightly, mindful of Kirkcaldy, brushing a kiss on his cheek. "And who is this?"

"Kirkcaldy," said n'Barit, who tolerated Sally's frivolities only out of politeness. He started up his progress towards the front door again, eager to get inside.

Mostly because she did not want to know, Sally did not inquire about Kirkcaldy further, but she did smile warmly at the infant. She had been exposed to enough children from Gaia to sense what was amiss. "How have you been?" she asked, searching for some way to help n'Barit. As ungainly as his progress was, there was nothing Sally could do about it. N'Barit had the situation firmly in control and pride demanded he handle it.

"Fine," grunted n'Barit, seemingly reduced to petulant one-word answers.

"Any unfortunate run-ins?" she asked. What she referred to was n'Barit's lifelong rivalry with Jaden Amn, but since the Second Conference, n'Barit had avoided his adversary and made no attempts to kill him.

"No," he said pointedly.

"That's good," said Sally slowly, knowing it was a sign of how profoundly depressed n'Barit had become. She went a pace ahead of n'Barit to get the door.

"Feh," said n'Barit, navigating up the front step. Kirkcaldy oomphed as he stomped his foot and then his prosthetic leg and crutch down onto the landing, bouncing her in the process.

Two steps into the house, n'Barit stopped and lowered Kirkcaldy to the beige carpet, just as Sally was beginning to ask him if he wanted something to drink. Ignoring her, n'Barit started to undress.

Yuulani garments were layered but simple, and it took n'Barit no time at all to strip naked, passing each article of clothing to Sally as he did. Kirkcaldy watched with awe, not with any consciousness of his masculinity (she was far too young for that) but because she could now see both of his prosthetics clearly, and it was a striking difference between arm and leg. "Wash these," demanded n'Barit to Sally, "and watch Kirkcaldy." Picking up his crutch, he went hobbling off down the hall towards the bathroom. In the process, he crossed into view of Sally's husband Max, who roared, "What the hell is that rat doing here!? And naked!"

Sally quieted her husband with a reprimand and looked down at Kirkcaldy and the pile of clothes in her hands. "Well," she said at last.

~~~

N'Barit did not take long in the bathroom, restricting himself to only a shower. In ten minutes (a record time for him) he was out, a fluffy white towel wrapped around his waist. He had already decided to keep the towel. He was going to need to make some changes to accommodate Kirkcaldy.

With a coo and a tickle Sally had enchanted Kirkcaldy into being picked up and brought into the laundry room with her. While Sally sorted and set to washing n'Barit's clothing, Kirkcaldy used the silver ribbon connecting her to the dark red bauble to draw it close and study it with interest. She gave it a shake, banged it against the table she was sitting on, and did not notice n'Barit's entrance.

"Ho there," said n'Barit, going straight to Kirkcaldy. He tossed the towel at Sally so he could have his hand free to tease the little girl.

"N'Barit!" exclaimed Sally, not sure what she was most unhappy about: the fact he was totally naked, the fact he was treating her like a servant, or the fact that he had not actually dried himself off and had left a trail of water between here and the bathroom. A puddle was forming on the laundry room floor.

"Wash that, too," n'Barit said of the towel. "I'm going to wash Kirkcaldy."

"Wait!" said Sally, stuffing the towel into the washer with the rest of his clothing. She reached up to grab one of her skirts from the line, left hanging to dry from the last load of laundry. "Would you please put something on?"

In truth, she minded not one bit if n'Barit walked around her house naked (he was growing into quite an attractive young man, albeit too skinny), but her husband certainly minded, and it was about time the Yuulani boy started observing some human customs. He had only been living among humans for ten years now.

N'Barit stared at the skirt. "I'm not wearing that," he said, "it's for a female!"

"You cannot walk around my house naked, there are children here."

"So?" said n'Barit, rebellious. "I don't see Maddy." Maddy, or Zenobia Madeline, was Sally and Max's daughter, currently in the midst of the terrible twos.

"She's napping." Sally took a deep breath. This speech was a long time coming. "If you intend to live among humans, it is past time you accepted we have a certain set of morals, and if you do not observe these morals you will no longer be allowed near children." The warning was clear. Follow some human rules or lose Kirkcaldy.

Taking the skirt, n'Barit was chastised, but did his best not to show it. "I think you humans make a big deal about a load of nothing," said n'Barit. "You have absolutely no sense or appreciation of the divine, and it's no wonder your culture is completely filthy. When I'm on my own with Kirkcaldy, I will only follow those rules which are divine, and they say nothing should be worn in the process of cleansing, and that we should only wear clothing to ward off dirt and keep it from our own skin." He fumbled with the skirt as he spoke, hating the buttons.

Sally was unperturbed, having been the recipient of many such speeches from n'Barit over the course of their friendship. So long as he did what she asked, he could say whatever he wanted. She helped him with the buttons and thought that he looked much, much too skinny. Six months ago she never would have been able to close that top button around his waist.

"I'm only doing this because you asked me," he said, just to make it clear he was not about to compromise his personal morals and replace them with human ones.

"That's all I mant from you while you're here," said Sally, and took a shirt of her husband's from the drying line.

"Tch," pouted n'Barit, and then: "I'm trying to go wash Kirkcaldy!" Having just given a speech about the importance of not including clothing in cleansing, he was more than a little disappointed at Sally's reaction. Obviously she had not been listening to a word he said.

"You can use the kitchen sink," said Sally imperiously, draping the shirt on n'Barit's shoulder. It was at least ten sizes too large for him. "I'll take Kirkcaldy while you get dressed."

Sally moved to pick up Kirkcaldy, but when she tried to lift the little girl Kirkcaldy did not bother to get up, just flopped like a sack of potatoes and made herself heavy. Sally frowned thoughtfully and Kirkcaldy giggled. The infant reached out a hand for n'Barit. "Ka!"

"Dyadin," corrected n'Barit automatically. He left the shirt unbuttoned and reached over to take Kirkcaldy. She settled into his arm gracefully and rested her head on his damp shoulder. This was the person who should be carrying her. The little silver bauble trailed after her and hit n'Barit on the butt as he hobbled off with her towards the kitchen.

Sally let them go ahead so she could hang back and deal privately with her laughter. The sight of n'Barit in a skirt was simply too much. In the weeks to come, her husband would occasionally find her doubled over with laughter and demand to know what was so funny, but Sally would not answer. The tale of how she tricked n'Barit would be her little secret.  

[romesilk]

In the end, n'Barit made off with the towel, a knapsack, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and one of Maddy's old dresses for Kirkcaldy. They left just as Maddy was waking. N'Barit was all too happy to avoid Maddy, who spent most of her waking hours screaming. The toddler meant well, she was just loud beyond all reason.

The dress nBarit had taken was white with some ribbon and a few decorative ruffles. Nothing too crazy. The important thing was that it was white and reflected Kirkcaldy's purity. The dark shift she had arrived in was stored safely in the knapsack, along with a cloth diaper and "sippy cup." Sally had assured n'Barit that the cup was absolutely essential for any small child. Sally's experience with children was the entire reason for n'Barit's visit, so he took the cup without protest, though he did draw the line at disposable diapers. Only natural fibers were acceptable clothing.

Most importantly, he and Kirkcaldy were now squeaky clean. N'Barit felt as if his shower had almost completely wiped the stain from him. "You must always be clean," he said to Kirkcaldy. "Always." Kirkcaldy listened to him with rapt attention, glad to be back outdoors again.

To reach the Bridge, n'Barit took a shortcut through the dim, leaf-lined builders' trails between the pocket dimensions, not wanting to run into anyone on the street. The trails operated on the same principle as the Bridge, requiring travelers to be conscious of their destination, and it was impossible to run into another person unless they were specifically looking for you. Instead of a ten minute walk through the neighborhood they were out and back to Gaia in less than five. For n'Barit, to whom each step was considerable discomfort, that was no small difference.

He set out for someplace quiet. Now that it was warmer, he had his pick of locations for sleeping and sitting. Kirkcaldy, though, was hungry. N'Barit frowned and wished she had been hungry at Sally's. "All right, I'm going," he said. He knew where he could find food cheap in the marketplace, and a few shops where a quick hand was capable of obtaining several treats when the owner was not looking. One bakery in particular had so much stuff it was practically tumbling into the street. N'Barit usually visited their dumpster, but this was food for Kirkcaldy, and his eye told him the main shop would make for an easy target. For now, he thought he might just head to the market, collecting a few coins on the way.

It was in the process of putting the first handful of coins into the knapsack that n'Barit found the bananas. Sally. N'Barit sighed. She knew his pride would not have let him accept food for the journey, so she had just stuck the food in there without asking. Since it was there he may as well use it. Parking himself under a tree and setting out the towel for Kirkcaldy, he helped her eat half of the banana, then ate the other half himself. "Baa," cooed Kirkcaldy in happiness, draping herself on n'Barit's prosthetic leg for an after-meal nap. N'Barit permitted himself a rare smile and stroked her hair.

"You're absolutely perfect, Duchess of Kirkcaldy."  

[romesilk]

It was with no small amount of dismay he discovered that the bananas were in fact magical. He pulled off two bananas and a moment later there were two fresh ones. Just to be doubly sure, he pulled off two more.

The bananas were infinite. N'Barit let out a deep sigh and sat there with four bananas. He realized he could flood the market with individual bananas if he felt so inclined. Of all the ridiculously pointless things he could do... Kirkcaldy reached across and grabbed for one of the bananas. She seemed to like the fruit, which was good, since it was soon to become a main staple of their diet. N'Barit was tired of the taste of bananas just thinking about it.

"Here, I'll do it," he said, carefully peeling the banana and giving Kirkcaldy a piece. She grabbed it tightly and it went splat in her fingers. For a moment she was amused, but n'Barit's reprimand quickly corrected her. "No," he said with sudden fierceness, and she was shocked into stillness, confused by the reaction.

N'Barit carefully used a corner of the towel to wipe her fingers, spit as a cleaning agent. Then he put her hands flat against the towel's soft surface. Without quite understanding, she let him hold her hands there a moment. When he moved his hands away she lifted hers up, but he pushed them back down again. "Don't move." He let her go again, she moved her hands again, and again he put them back down on the towel.

This time she stayed still, looking at him. "Good," said n'Barit. "Be sorry when you make a mess, it is an affront to the divine inside you. We must be clean inside and out. Do you understand?"

Even if she did totally (which she did not) Kirkcaldy did not know how to indicate an affirmative or a negative. She only knew that she had done something wrong and made him angry. Her lip trembled and her eyes watered.

"No," said n'Barit, but gently this time, "don't cry. C'mere." He picked her up and shuffled her into his arms as a big tear ran down her face and she sniffled. N'Barit wiped it away with his metal finger. Kirkcaldy reached out and grabbed his smooth, shiny metal hand, pacified by it. N'Barit let her play with the fingers, bending them one by one. One of the marvels of the bionic hand was that he could move the fingers totally independently, like a robot. It was a little disquieting. He could probably turn the hand completely backwards if he wanted to.

"You'll understand the right way to do things in time," he assured Kirkcaldy. "No one, not even barrigaters, learns the path overnight." She was not listening, already past the episode thanks to her fascination with his hand. The sound of his voice was comforting even if the words were lost.  

[romesilk]

He'd not had any time with the tape recorder since Kirkcaldy arrived, and now that she was sleeping he did not want to wake her up. He did have something important to say. Shout was more like it. All he could do was think it while he recorded blank tape, imagining his own voice.

Quote:

You probably thought that was real funny with the bananas, didn't you? Think you could trick me? I figured out it was you. It was obvious from the moment it was infinite. I don't even like bananas, but I bet you know that, don't you? Laugh it up, Emperial, but this just gives me an infinite supply of projectiles the next time I see you. And I will use them. Don't think your being a girl or a praetorix or anything else will stop me. Next time, why not give me something useful, like an infinite supply of shut the hell up.

Ghrk, you are so frustrating. If I didn't have to I wouldn't put up with you, you know.

I bet that peroxide is infinite, too. At least that's useful. Better a bottle of infinite peroxide than a tape recorder I can't even use right now because I'm angry at you and don't want to wake Kirkcaldy up. You are so lucky I don't want to wake her up or you'd be getting an earful. A tapeful. I don't care about the terminology. Why don't you just show your lousy face up so I can pelt you with bananas like the monkey you are, and don't think this means I paid any attention to those nature specials because they were a load of crap. How am I supposed to get rid of an infinity of bananas? That's not something you just leave laying around.

Techt, you're just lucky Kirkcaldy actually likes bananas, because I sure don't. The nerve...

Kirkcaldy wriggled on n'Barit's shoulder, distracting him. It was late and dark, and he should probably be sleeping instead of thinking angry thoughts to a tape recorder. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

Quote:

Goodnight, the Duchess of Kirkcaldy.

 

[romesilk]

She did learn, by copying his example and accepting his reprimands when he gave them. After a few days, she no longer started to cry if he was irritated by something she did wrong. She sat there and was obedient and then he was pleased with her again, simple as that. She even put her hands flat without needing him to prompt her.

She learned the things that were wrong to do, like touching the ground beyond the confines of the towel he always placed her on and trying to pull at leaves on the trees they passed. Spitting on her hands and wiping them was acceptable, but sticking her fingers in her mouth was not.

She also learned the word "no." N'Barit was positively shocked when she first used it. He had dropped the sippy cup while carrying her and leaned over to pick it up, tilting her sideways and then upside down as he did, and she said in an undeniably loud and firm voice just like the one he always used: "No."

Immediately n'Barit straightened, fixing the problem, but Kirkcaldy could not so easily forgive him. She pouted in his arms and wriggled and made it so hard for him to carry her that he had to stop and put the towel and then her down at the side of the street amid some pointed strangers' staring. He was not pleased with her behavior and gave her a firm, "No."

Kirkcaldy grabbed for his hands and tried to pull on them, but that pleased him even less and he said the dreaded "no" again and began to get cross with her for a change instead of just her actions. N'Barit wondered what the hell was wrong with her.

His aloofness infuriated her and she let out an ear-piercing shriek of displeasure that made n'Barit even more upset. "No!" he said to her for the third time.

Kirkcaldy, not having anywhere to go, started to smack her hands flat on the towel in what passersby mistook for a child throwing a tantrum. "No!" she shrieked, smacking her hands and crying, turning red-faced.

Only then did n'Barit piece together the problem. As fast as he could without hurting himself he sat down on the sidewalk next to her and put his hands flat on the towel in front of her. "Kirkcaldy!"

She stopped shrieking and crying slowly, reduced to choking sniffles after a few moments. Tears ran down her face at the fact he had not understood her. "Shh," soothed n'Barit, keeping his hands flat for her even though he wanted very much to pick her up and hug her until she stopped crying. The people on the street were forced to walk around him, grumbling and angry, but he ignored them and kept his eyes focused completely on Kirkcaldy. "Kirkcaldy, I am very sorry," he said, for while he usually refused to apologize, he recognized that he had done her one of those great wrongs for which even a barrigater had to apologize. Perhaps it was not on the usual scale of wrongs requiring an apology, but he could see that to her it was absolutely that important, and he wanted her to understand that he valued her and had not meant to do it. If it mattered that much to her, it would matter that much to him. She was his divine salvation.

Kirkcaldy finally reached down and pried up his metal hand, her favorite. She brought it to the tears on her face. Apology accepted, she was saying. N'Barit gratefully gathered her up, wiping away her tears. He was glad to have her happy again. The fact that she had not properly understood the point of placing the hands flat was of some concern, but certainly something he could live with. Eventually, she would learn to understand the meaning to that, too.  

[romesilk]

The strains of "I'm A Sweet Transvestite" filtered through her headphones, much to the chagrin of any prude listening. It was near the end of the song, so said prudes were hoping it would cut to something head-banging, possibly hard rock. Anything was better than a song proclaiming a male singer to be a "sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania". They were out of luck- her iPod dwelt on a Rocky Horror Picture Show playlist, and the next song was Time Warp.

She didn't look like a regular useless punk, as did others of her seeming age on this street. She was wearing a white blouse, black tie, and black slacks (as much as she hated to wear dark colors) on her way to the library for her daily visit.

Her eyes scanned the sidewalks, as they usually did; people were interesting in Gaia, and sometimes she stole small bits of hair for genetic experimentation. She paused at a man with green hair and her eyes widened in defiance of the bright spring sun. Now, the hair wasn't unusual, but the silver arm he had was. Aurelius was afraid- no, terrified!- of things that shone. She started to look away, but her Illusionary radar went ping! and she felt obliged to turn back to him. With slightly pursed lips- she would not shiver, no fear at all!- she walked over and looked around for an Illusionary or small baby. Yes, he was holding a little girl...

"Hi," she said finally, after staring for what seemed like ages to her, but might have only been a few minutes.

The response was not immediate because n'Barit was not used to being addressed. He had learned how to avoid the most importunate pesterings of Gaians in his weeks here and preferred to walk through the world unnoticed, or at least unconfronted. He hunched his shoulders, he glared at nothing in particular, he pointedly ignored the world and people around him. In return, the world mostly ignored him.

He might never have noticed the greeting had it not been for Kirkcaldy, who pulled at his shirt for his attention and looked wide-eyed at Aurelius. Then n'Barit realized the "hi" had been for him; there was no one else even within earshot.

He turned with great care, not an easy move to manage with his crutch and prosthetics. He was especially careful not to twist his leg. It had a tendency to come off at the most inopportune moments.

Were it not for the protuberances from her head, n'Barit might have mistaken the girl for Yuulani. She had the right colorization. Kirkcaldy, of course, held no illusions about this stranger's origins, but she was at a loss as how to explain it. "Hiii," she said softly, dangling her dark red ornament from her wrist in a signal to her father.

N'Barit was not so pleasant. "Yes?" he said, preemptively annoyed. Kirkcaldy's signal went unrecognized.

That drummed up Aure's usual arrogance, though it was tempered by Kirkcaldy's presence. Instead of chewing him out, like she so desperately wanted to, she smiled. "She's a lovely baby. Is she yours?" Ha. Let him think I'm on crime watch or whatever. Really, she wanted to know if he knew what the little girl was; it was always fun to be able to flat-out lie to the new guardians. One case came to mind: she'd tricked some imbecile into thinking she was an angel. The edges of her smile seemed to tremble as she fought the giggles that threatened. That was just too funny.

Her smile got a little wider as she held out one hand to shake, like her grandfather had taught her to. "I'm Aurelius Venport. You are?"

"Not buying," said n'Barit flatly, "so peddle to someone else." It could be applied equally to street wares and Aure's intended dishonesty, though the latter was a sale of a slightly different kind. Thinking the exchange was finished, n'Barit started to turn away.

Dismayed, Kirkcaldy jerked her shiny bauble so it smacked into n'Barit's good leg and let out a squeak of disappointment towards her father. N'Barit could only scrunch his face in distaste. If Aurelius was trying to sell something to Kirkcaldy he wanted it even less. The spot on his leg smarted and he wished he had a free hand to rub it.

She laughed, putting both hands on her knees. "I'm going to the library," she managed to say. "Besides, I'm too young to sell anything. I'm only nine." Despite all appearances otherwise, Aure was only a kid. After a moment longer of self-indulgence (all unease at the shining gone) she straightened and cleared her throat, straightening the tie.

"I'm Aure," she said again. "And I think your daughter is an Illusionary, like me." After a moment of standing there, she added, "And she really is very pretty."

"I was no bigger when they made me a barrigater," said n'Barit, who did not think age was an excuse for anything. He had probably been about her size when he saved his whole planet, if not smaller. He had always been small for his age. Emperial said he probably had small parents. "My name is n'Barit Kinmera." From the way he said it, it was clear his name held some importance, at least to him.

"Kay," said Kirkcaldy, maybe introducing herself, maybe not. She smiled broadly at Aure.

She didn't know what a barrigater was, but decided not to mention it. Nor did she mention the moment of what'd he say? that she experienced at his name. Sounded foreign, and she'd only just started Chinese. With a little shrug, Aure leant over to Kirkcaldy's level. "Nice to meet you, Mister Kinmera." She put no small effort into pronouncing it correctly, but felt she'd probably butchered the syllables anyway. Well, she'd try harder next time she had a chance.

"And you too, Kay," she added, patting the baby on the head. "I'm very happy to meet you. I was starting to think I was the only light-haired Illusionary!"

There was a grinding noise: n'Barit's teeth. He hefted Kirkcaldy against his shoulder, away from Aure's well-meaning reach (never mind that the damned bauble hit him for perhaps the twentieth time) and tried to remember that non-Yuulani simply could not help it if they were rude, ignorant, and unclean. He took a deep breath through clenched teeth and exhaled it loudly, hitting the guttural spot of his throat with clear displeasure. It helped put him into a more meditative space, an exhaling of his anger.

He still had plenty of anger to spare in his growl of a response: "You will address me as n'Barit--" he said it more slowly to simplify the pronunciation-- "and if that's too hard, Bart." His brow was furrowed in a scowl of indignation despite the knowledge that most non-Yuul were thrown off by the nn honorific and it was really no fault of Aure's. Sometimes it was a little hard for n'Barit to curtail his total disgust at non-Yuulani societies.

Kirkcaldy shifted in n'Barit's arms and let out a little mewl of distress at this sudden anger. She really wanted everyone to get along and be happy, not growl and fight! Maybe it would have been better not to alert n'Barit to the presence of the other Illusionary. Kirkcaldy scrunched up her little nose in guilt. Now everything had gone all wrong and her favorite person was upset. She patted her hand twice on n'Barit's cheek to apologize. While it did nothing for her guilt, it did relax n'Barit a little bit, at least to the point where he might not be considered angry.

"Just use Bart," he said more forgivingly, averting his eyes. He so hated anything that could even remotely be construed as an apology. Stupid, stupid diplomacy. He did not bother to correct Kirkcaldy's name. There was no insult in that mistake. It might even be a boon, since Kirkcaldy had no family name.

This was confusing to Aure for only a moment. "No thank you," she said coldly. "n'Barit." She took care to pronounce it correctly, even if it was a little slower than her usual conversational speed. Presumably she would be able to master the weird 'nn' sound at the front of the name in time, but until then, she'd make the extra effort. It wasn't like she was Mereneth. Her grandparents had taken care to remind her that manners weren't dead, after all.

She took a deep breath. If she didn't find out who this new Illusionary was, next time she saw Shen her nose might get bitten off. Now just to find out how to get that information without pissing off n'Barit anymore. "So..." How infuriating. Usually she could charm adults well enough. This would take time and care to work out. "Are you new to Gaia?" It was a guess- his clothes didn't look like they were a Gaian style that she was familiar with (she could be wrong, though, as what was Gaian and what wasn't was changing every time she blinked).

There was a pause before n'Barit answered, trying to decide if there was any risk in telling the truth, and if Aurelius was stating the obvious or being observant. Given the uniqueness of his attire and name, it was probably just an attempt at conversation. Paltry human social habits. He left the possibility open that she was being observant just in case her actions provided him with further information.

Since it was never wise to show your full hand, n'Barit chose an ambivalent response. "I've been here long enough." He might have asked her something in return, but questions were something he used sparingly with strangers. Asking a question could be revealing a weakness, admitting there was something he did not know. It left him open to receiving misinformation. The best times to ask questions were when the answers were already known, when the point was to gauge a respondent's reaction, or when a truthful response had some benefit to the person answering. No such questions came to mind right then.

That generally meant yes, in Aure's experience. A conversation with her dorm mother came to mind, involving a certain computer and the hour of three in the morning. Miss Thompson had been outside 'long enough', meaning she'd just noticed the light from under the door. But she hid her smile from n'Barit as best she could behind one hand until she managed to smooth her face over.

With a vague gesture at Kirkcaldy, she asked, "May I hold her?"

N'Barit stared. This unclean degenerate wanted to touch his precious Kirkcaldy? Maybe over his dead body. That sort of contact was sure to lead to spiritual corruption and he was quite determined to protect Kirkcaldy until she was old enough to learn a cleansing ritual for herself. Bad enough Aure had already touched her once today. "No," he said flatly. He rather hoped that his continued unreceptiveness would drive away Aurelius.

"Dyaaa," cooed Kirkcaldy, tiptoeing her fingers across n'Barit's shoulder. She stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth thoughtfully. If she was not careful, in a few minutes she would be drooling. Such was the way of babies, even spiritually pure ones.

Unfortunately, he had not encountered Aure before and didn't know that she did not take hints when she didn't feel like it. "You're certainly not very friendly," she said, crossing her arms again. All she had was a guardian name and a nickname for the child. And that wasn't enough to fend of Shen and her nose-bitingness. Though...

She couldn't deny n'Barit had made her curious. "So, what is it you don't like about me?" Her eyes had gone bright with the fire of learning. It was actually sort of creepy; several cats, puppies and birds promptly deserted their respective posts in acknowledgment.

N'Barit let out a little snort and rolled his eyes, two very human habits he had picked up from Emperial. "Where to begin?" he mused.

Kirkcaldy shifted around in his arm and put her chin on his shoulder. Her eyes crossed as she focused on a piece of hair lying on her face and tried to blow it away. Her lips had trouble getting the right shape for the task.

Wedging the top of his crutch in his armpit and leaning on it, n'Barit was able to free up his other hand to reach over and brush the hair from Kirkcaldy's face. His metal fingers glinted in the sunlight. "There's the point that you've interrupted me from what I was doing," n'Barit said to Aurelius, "and the fact that you're annoying, not to mention being totally bereft of any spiritual cleanliness. A better question is why I should like you, seeing as you haven't done me any favors, and you're in the way of my going somewhere and sitting down." The last bit was unnecessary, but he was getting rather tired of standing and his discomfort demanded recognition. If he could have, he would have simply run off and left Aurelius. He would rather not lead her to any of his favorite resting places lest she start hanging around there looking for him.

"From what I could see, you weren't doing much of anything," she said pleasantly, after a moment where it seemed like she might actually be getting angry. The glinting of light off his fingers made her shiver slightly, though it certainly wasn't cold enough to warrant it. That was just creepy. "Perhaps a better word for what I meant would be, why are you being so rude? I don't believe that I have ever treated anyone-" except Mereneth, she amended in her mind, except he deserved it. Totally, in seventeen million different ways "-the way that you're acting. It's actually rather immature."

She was not going to touch the spiritual cleanliness with a ten-foot pole, but she couldn't hide her smile. n'Barit was funny.

Desperately n'Barit wanted to smack this child upside the head with his crutch, but he could just hear the tongue-lashing Emperial would give him if she were called upon to bail him out of an assault charge against a minor. Then he realized he had Kirkcaldy to worry about. It was in his best interest to avoid trouble. He would never again be free to experience the recklessness of his younger years when he had slain dragons and destroyed demons. N'Barit was almost shocked into silence by the realization that there was a downside to Kirkcaldy.

Almost.

"It's not the responsibility of the barrigater to show respect to common classes, it is your responsibility to show respect to me," said n'Barit pointedly, the words stinging him more than they ever could Aurelius. "Until you have done something worthy of earning my respect, I am not obliged to give it. So go away." He sniffed in disdain, hoping that would be the end of it.

Oh, that one stung! The mere implication that she was below somebody... Aure would have growled, except she had to prove she was more controlled than he was. So she smiled again. "I don't answer to anyone with the title of barrigater, though. Maybe Mother Superior and the Headmistress at school, and my grandmama and grandpapa. But you're not them, right?" Without waiting for an answer, she continued to say, "But if you'd be kind enough to tell me what exactly a barrigater is I might be more inclined to listen to you."

Okay, so that was a bald-faced lie. But Aure wasn't exactly happy with n'Barit... although she had to admit, she liked him. He made her work for the information she wanted, which was new. D and Jamie had collapsed like card houses.

Kirkcaldy quietly pouted. Just how long were these two going to go at it? She was beginning to think they should all just share a banana or two and relax. That was her solution to life's many problems: eat half a banana and give the other half to n'Barit. Usually it solved his problems, too.

"And why do you care? You're--" he almost said human, but would be wrong-- "not Yuul." As if a non-Yuul would be capable of understanding. N'Barit had tried to explain several times before to humans, but accepting the concept of a barrigater meant accepting self-subjugation, and human ego got in the way. Humans could understand the surface of the concept, but not the feeling. To be forceful and yet submissive... N'Barit winced and closed his eyes as if in pain. This was beyond the scope of a single banana, or even two.

"I care because I like to learn things." Which wasn't a lie, as much as she felt inclined to warp the truth a little. She switched her bag to her other shoulder in what was almost stalling for time. If she wasn't careful, she might have to try a new tactic, like kicking n'Barit in the shin. Or much better, and less likely to see her into jail, seeing if she could find out anything over the marvel that was the Internet. It wasn't of life-or-death importance, all the Illusionary came back to the headquarters and met Shen eventually...

She glanced over at Kay and sighed. "She looks sad," Aure said, tapping her fingers on her arm. Or at least a little annoyed.

"Not for you," said n'Barit, bizarrely, emphasis on the second word. The statement made some kind of sense to him, but must have gotten scrambled in biochip translation. Maybe some saying for which there was a literal meaning but no English correlation. Maybe some mistake on n'Barit's part in contextual application of an English phrasing.

"Mmmmda," groaned Kirkcaldy, and n'Barit sympathized, albeit for the wrong reason. He was thinking that if Aure would just go away they could go sit in the shade and have something to eat and do their normal routine of living. Kirkcaldy was thinking that grownups (and to her perspective Aure was a grownup) were boring when they were just standing around talking, an activity in which she could not yet fully participate. If they were thinking it would be better. Kirkcaldy was awfully good at thinking. It had not yet dawned on her that most people considered thinking to be a solitary diversion.

Aure shrugged. "Of course not, she doesn't even know me. Maybe she's bored." His less-than-concise use of language was rather surprising. She'd taken him to be more of a grammar dork (well... more of a purist) than it appeared he really was. At this point, she was (secretly) hoping that Kay would use more physical methods of telling n'Barit what she wanted, simply for the amusement it would provide. She fell silent, but didn't move from her spot. Instead she seemed to be staring at the pair (though her eyes never ventured to the arm. She was sure that if she looked, she would faint dead away).

With a snort, n'Barit shifted Kirkcaldy in his arm and glared at Aure. "I'm bored. Why not go bore some other people? Or don't you have your own life?" He was determined to see Aure leave first. He would not give her the satisfaction of seeing him turn tail and leave. She was a kid by human standards, she probably had someone who looked after her and paid for her iPod and music downloads. That person would eventually come looking for her, or she would be forced to return home.

N'Barit, on the other hand, could wait here for-almost-ever. The only person he answered to was leaning on his shoulder. He also had the bananas. Aurelius would starve long before he did. It was simply a matter of waiting her out.

She pursed her lips. "No, not really. Nothing planned for today, anyway." Except a trip to the library, but Aure made that a habit. And she'd almost exhausted the philosophy section now. Soon she'd have to go to a different library and start studying there. She sighed. That thought made her depressed.

"Now, if it were tomorrow, I'd have to go home right now. But it's not, and I'm expected to be at the library for the next hour and a half." She smiled sunnily at n'Barit, thinking, So there.

"Suit yourself," said n'Barit, gripping his crutch and Kirkcaldy with equal decisiveness. When he walked, there was a sound like a rusty swing or hinged gate. It was small, barely noticeable, but perfectly in time with the swinging of his right foot.

N'Barit hobbled over to the nearest building wall and leaned against it, closing his eyes. If this girl thought she could out-wait him, she had another thing coming. He had trained extensively in meditation and could wait unmoving for days, transcending the needs of his physical body.

Kirkcaldy was not so trained, but she had little choice in the matter. She set her chin on n'Barit's shoulder and started making little "bff" noises for her own amusement, pressing her lips together and blowing in short bursts. She really wasn't ready for naptime. Thank goodness she had recently gone to the potty or n'Barit would have had a real problem on his hands.

At first she thought he was leaving. She almost fell over with quiet giggles when she finally deduced that he wanted her to leave first. With a dignified air, she settled against a streetlight and watched him walk to the wall.

But unfortunately for n'Barit, Aure was observant. Also, her ears were very sharp and good for listening with because of their unique shape. "Hey, what's up with your leg?" She followed him, pausing only to pick up the dog plushie that fell out of her messenger bag and tuck it back in among the mess of papers. "I don't think regular legs are supposed to do that."

In perfect mockery, n'Barit asked, "Hey, what's up with your ears? I don't think regular ears are supposed to look like that. Maybe if you washed once in a while you wouldn't have plants growing out." He had gone just a bit further than Aurelius, because like any good Yuul leader, when he committed to something, he did so wholeheartedly.

N'Barit is a very unfortunate person for four reasons.

1.) Aure was standing well within striking range of him.

2.) He had just really, really pissed her off by talking about the ears.

3.) She never, ever hits above the belt.

4.) Aure kicks very hard.

And that was just what Aure did. As her iPod switched playlists- from Rocky Horror to Apocalyptica- she finally made use of gym class's self defense unit and kicked him in the shin with a proper Tae-Kwon-Do move that was usually used to counter aerial attacks. If only her teacher had been around to see it, she would have passed Physical Education forever, rather like putting Dean Winchester down in a Scrabble game.

That isn't to say she didn't think of Kirkcaldy. She wouldn't've hit him in his right leg if she'd thought he might fall on her. Probably. Maybe.

"They aren't plants," she snapped once she felt she stood far enough away to escape retribution. "They are dragonfly wings, and ten times better than any random false leg!" She was really getting worked up over this.

Maybe he had a fifth reason to feel like fortune currently hated him:

Aure was less likely to go away than ever.

As terrible as all that was, n'Barit did not go crashing down. Far from it. He had a habit of not putting weight on his prosthetic if he could avoid it, so while his leg was knocked aside, it only upset his balance momentarily. Between the crutch and the wall he was well supported. He did slide some inches to the side, scraping the scars on his back and leaving a pattern of dirt on the back of his shirt. The skin on his back was tough enough that this was merely a moment of discomfort and not a real injury.

But Kirkcaldy was jarred by the event and hiccupped in sudden surprise. N'Barit could have forgiven Aure if the attack had just been a strike on him, but that little hiccup was enough to condemn the older Illusionary.

It was Aurelius's turn to be unfortunate for four reasons.

1) In contrast to a few martial arts moves learned in gym class, n'Barit had twenty years of combat experience literally beaten into him.

2) N'Barit was never above retaliating, even against a girl.

3) As insulted as Aurelius was, it was nothing compared to the wrath of a parent who feels his child is threatened.

4) N'Barit's crutch had a much longer range than he himself did and he knew how to use it.

His reaction to the hiccup was instantaneous. In a smooth, practiced move, N'Barit pushed off the wall while sliding his hand down his crutch, swung his right leg out in a giant step towards Aurelius, and swung the crutch about as he did. All the while he held Kirkcaldy snug against his chest.

The crutch didn't hurt Aure. It barely touched her. What it did get was the pale green plush hanging out of her bag.

It was like time itself slowed; the dog plushie flew up into the air, its silly pink ribbon fluttering slightly. She didn't even care that notes on Nietzsche had come out with it, though those had taken the longest. Without even thinking, she jumped into the place where the dog's arc was most likely to end and caught it, leaving even more of her papers fluttering around.

For a minute, she just stood there cradling the plushie. It didn't seem to be adversely affected by its experiments with gravity. As a matter of fact, it looked like it might actually have benefited; at least it was out of the cramped bag.

"You b*****d," she hissed finally, still with her back turned. "This was my mother's! It's all I've got left." She spun and glared. The fear-spiked adrenaline made her maybe a little more honest than she should have been; that had been scary. "Actually, I wouldn't've cared if you'd gone and- and broken my arm, or shredded my textbooks, or insulted me even more. As long... as you left... my mother's plushie... alone!"

Aure paused and took a deep breath, shaky fingers petting the dog's head. With another inhalation, she said, "You realize I'm not likely to go away until I've gotten you back for almost landing my plush in the trash, right?" She glared again.

There was a really terrible yet brilliant retort in there about landing in the trash and Aure's arms being the same thing, but n'Barit was too preoccupied with his own situation to make it. The kick, the lunge-- his prosthetic leg was at its limit. N'Barit could feel it sliding and turning on his thigh. Even in the best of times it had a tendency to come loose and fall off after a day of walking. This was beyond its usual limits. He had just enough time to drop his crutch and catch himself with his one free arm to keep from falling completely over.

He landed on the ground with a jolt. His prosthetic completely twisted off and landed at a strange angle a few inches from where it should have been attached, giving him an oddly long and misshapen leg. Several inches of garish gold boot stuck out from the end of his trouser leg. N'Barit barely noticed. He was more concerned with making sure Kirkcaldy was all right.

Poor Kirkcaldy had no idea what to think. The ride from her perspective was smooth but mildly nauseating, a brief taste of amusement park excitement, even down to the bump of the landing as her "ride" came to a stop. She sat, stunned.

If this had happened before, she might have giggled and offered to help him up. But she was still trying to convince herself that no harm had come to her mother's plushie. It was just too much. Aure started to laugh and cry, all at once. "I think she's fine," she choked out, drying her eyes off with the sleeve of her blouse. (Not that it mattered, as she still hadn't managed to get control of herself- though she was trying.)

Once her eyes were clear enough to see- though now she had the hiccups, obviously a rather undignified thing- she said, "Your leg is golden," and then averted her eyes. Too shiny, again. (Was he just made of shiny things? Was he the Antichrist or whatever Grandmother sometimes accused Raziel of being? This would bear thought later.) Instead, she tucked the plushie into her unbuttoned and now dirty sleeve cuff. To distract herself from both the hiccups and the fact that it was now twice that n'Barit had gotten to her like that, Aure began to gather up her papers and put them back into alphabetical order.

She wanted to go home, but damned if he was going to see her give up this contest of wills.

"My boot is golden," he corrected, and with a little growl of displeasure pulled the whole apparatus out, boot and all. The reason for his leg's squeaking was clearly a rather basic metal hinge, in stark contrast to the advanced machinery of his arm. N'Barit appraised the lower prosthetic with a critical eye, just as he had checked Kirkcaldy over, and arrived at the same conclusion. Shaken but intact. He set about trying to get the thing back into his pants leg one-handed, which was at least twice as hard as it looked.

In his arm, Kirkcaldy was beginning to find her limit, and unless something was done she was going to throw a tantrum. She had been quiet for several moments now not because she had no opinions but because she was so shocked she could not formulate a response. It would come eventually. She just needed another minute for her brain to finish processing.

"That's incongruous." She tucked the papers and plushie back into her bag. "I thought you'd be more of a black-boots type, not gaudy gold. Anyway, need help?" The offer came not from any desire to be kind, but because she knew by now that merely offering would piss him off. Aure thought that while n'Barit was displaying the sort of protectiveness that she approved of in parents, he was really, really weird about it.

She didn't notice Kirkcaldy's impending tantrum simply because she was so focused on finding a way of getting revenge on him. Since he seemed to lack any human emotions other than anger, this might be a little hard.

As predicted, n'Barit replied flatly, "No--"

He never finished. It was precisely the wrong thing to say in front of Kirkcaldy. In total fury she screamed, "No!" and grabbed n'Barit's shirt and shook it. N'Barit promptly dropped his booted leg and spread his hand out with the intention of flattening it on the ground, but he was still holding Kirkcaldy. He could not complete the ritual properly with only one free hand.

Then again, why should he? As far as n'Barit could see, he had done nothing wrong. The person at fault here was Aurelius. Why should he apologize or make penance? It was high time Kirkcaldy learned that penance was for slights against the divine and not personal grievances. He grunted and frowned at Kirkcaldy. "Stop that."

Kirkcaldy wailed in reply, grabbed the silver ribbon attached to her bauble, and jerked it. The bauble flew up and would have hit n'Barit in the head had not he deftly caught it with a clang in his metal hand. Kirkcaldy promptly began to try and tug free the bauble but n'Barit held it firmly. After everything he had put up with from Aurelius, he was in a really stubborn mood.

Aure closed her eyes and started to press her hands over her ears, intending to block Kay out. Let him deal with it; after all, she had offered to help and he'd refused. Halfway through the motion, her hands covered her eyes and she asked, "What's wrong with Kay?" She wasn't hurt, Aure had seen that when she'd been shouting at n'Barit. "Why's she crying?" It's not like she really cared. Just she would need all the people she could to make her ideals go global, and alienating one of them...

"What kind of a moron are you?" snapped n'Barit. He dearly wanted to pick up his crutch and swipe at Aurelius, but that would mean letting go of the bauble and giving in to Kirkcaldy. The infant was reduced to grunting with frustration as she tried to pry apart n'Barit's immovable fingers. Her preoccupation with the task gave him an idea.

N'Barit lifted his hand up and Kirkcaldy reached after it, half-climbing n'Barit's shoulder. That allowed him to free up his other hand and reach across to grab the crutch with a satisfied smirk, using his head to keep Kirkcaldy from falling off and touching the ground. Having been thoroughly outmaneuvered, Kirkcaldy gave a little squeal of frustration. She pulled on the ribbon with one hand and made a little fist with the other, pounding n'Barit on the shoulder.

Now he had what he needed. Crutch to ward off Aurelius, bauble to occupy Kirkcaldy. N'Barit sneered at Aure, daring her to try something now that he had his crutch in hand again and could defend against her.

His sneer was lost on her, as Aure still had her eyes closed and covered by both hands. Once she heard n'Barit stop moving, she dropped her hands and looked at him. And it was indeed a funny sight, with Kay half up his arm. "Do you want it calculated in the imperial or metric system? Imperial might take a little longer, because I don't use it very often. Only when I'm writing a dissertation."

N'Barit tried to keep up the sneer, but... what the heck? He stared blankly while Kirkcaldy squealed and squirmed and continued digging at his fingers. It was pretty clear he had no idea what Aurelius was talking about. He just sat there, confused, pointing the crutch in Aure's direction. It somehow ceased to be threatening.

She continued, smiling with sadistic glee at n'Barit's confusion. "Of course, I should probably be giving it to you in scientific notation, as the sort of idiot I am is small enough to require it." Confidence was quickly returning, that much was obvious. "So? Any preference?"

Having no idea what she meant, n'Barit could not answer. He was lost at the word metric. He had no idea what Emperial had to do with it. He had never even heard of scientific notation nor did he know why he would want something in it.

Rather than ask and reveal the sheer depth of his ignorance, he completely ignored her question, hardened his grip on the crutch, and demanded, "Go away."

"Nyieh!" Kirkcaldy punctuated his demand, entirely focused on her own frustrating situation with the bauble.

Aure shrugged. "Oh, I'm much too messy to go to the library now. Katan won't be here for a bit, anyway." She scooted over to the opposite wall and pulled out a notebook and pencil. Calculating her stupid moves versus her smart ones ought to reveal a decent account of how much of an idiot she was.

But then, how did she know which moves were smart and which were stupid? This might be harder than her hypothesis had originally predicted. The blue ballpoint pen tapped out a tattoo on the feint-ruled paper as she contemplated this.

With Aure out of his immediate way n'Barit was able to redirect his attentions to Kirkcaldy. She was just figuring out that no matter what she did, she could not make n'Barit let go of her shiny bauble. Tears streaming down her face, Kirkcaldy gave up. She flopped down on n'Barit's lap and let out little gasping sobs.

Just like that, n'Barit released the bauble and handed it to her. Kirkcaldy stared at it, not wanting it any more, too upset. She pushed it off n'Barit's hand. It fell and rolled on the ground, coming to a stop at the end of its tether.

"Oh, come on," said n'Barit, putting down the crutch and hugging Kirkcaldy reassuringly. "You're not hurt, you're fine, so stop crying. You can't get anything by throwing tantrums and weeping." It was a sweet little Hallmark moment, if a tad hypocritical.

Aure marked that down, as if it were very important. "Actually, you can. I did when I was little. My grandmother was scared to death that I'd break." She smiled sunnily at n'Barit.

N'Barit snorted and glared at Aure anew, annoyed that she had effectively interrupted his moment with Kirkcaldy. "Well if your grandmother was such a weak leader than she deserved to be defeated." It was as close to a compliment of Aurelius as n'Barit was likely to make. He continued more derisively, "It's a reflection on the weakness of your unclean society." He teased Kirkcaldy's chin with his finger, cheering her in spite of his angry words.

Aure couldn't argue, seeing as she had a smudge of dirt under her left eye and her entire outfit was a mess. So she tilted her head to the side and folded her hands around the pen again. "I've calculated it to be about three, to the negative sixth power," she said. "In imperial measures. It's exactly 3.14 to the negative third power in metric." She shrugged and doodled on the pad of paper. Kirkcaldy was cute.

With Kirkcaldy placated and Aure seemingly babbling nonsense, n'Barit finally resumed reattaching his leg. Ideally he would have taken his pants off, but with Kirkcaldy on his lap that maneuver would be too hard. He wanted to keep Kirkcaldy close until they were rid of this Aurelius freak. He trusted this stranger not one bit.

Feeding the prosthetic back through the pants leg, n'Barit positioned it where it belonged and twisted it into place. He would have chosen a more permanent model, but he took the prosthetic off when he went swimming, which was at least once a week, so he valued the convenience of being able to drop it at a moment's notice. Even if that moment often seemed to happen at the most inopportune times.

Aure sat there, glowering at n'Barit. "You asked how many different kinds of an idiot I was," she said pointedly. "I only answered."

At that moment, a black car pulled up near the alley where they were sitting. It would have passed by except the silhouette seemed to notice something and put the Audi into reverse. It came to a complete stop, perfectly parallel-parked. The door opened, closed.

Aure flinched.

A man in an impeccable black suit with a chauffeur's cap approached for a moment before coming to a dead stop. "Miss Aurelius!" He sounded as if someone had just slapped him with a wet codfish. "You're absolutely filthy! What will your grandmother say?"

She tried to wave him off as he came over and pulled her up. Going completely limp and throwing all her weight on him didn't seem to help, either; he stood 6'6" and wasn't exactly a weed. "Behave," he chided her, standing her up. He turned to n'Barit and said, with great deference, "I'm sorry. Was Miss Aurelius bothering you? Sometimes she seems to think that she is quite the equal of any adult when she is not." He aimed this last at Aure. "We'll be going now, seeing as she now must change for dinner..."

"Filthy and disrespectful," muttered n'Barit under his breath, and had to close his eyes to repress the shudder of revulsion that coursed through him. He felt dirtied already. Worse, he felt Kirkcaldy had been stained by the encounter. He had to go cleanse her before anything else. Purity above all other virtues.

Kirkcaldy was not so concerned with the morality of it. "Kay-mm," she said, shaking her silver-and-red bauble at Aurelius. It might have been construed as a farewell. Certainly n'Barit was not so forthcoming. He was perfectly happy to be rid of Aurelius without ever having another conversation with her. He already had the last word in his own mind, he needed no parting jibe. Let Kirkcaldy give the goodbye for both of them, it suited him just fine.

"Bye, Kay~" Aure waved and smiled at the younger Illusionary, then turned to the blonde man behind her. "Katan, I am not going to change. Grandma can complain all she wants. I'm fine," she said as he frog-marched her back to the Audi, then helped her in.

He hummed, shutting the door behind her. "Yes you will," he- Katan?- said to the open window. While he walked around the car, he bowed to n'Barit again. "Have a pleasant evening!"

The car door slammed again, the window shut- probably by Katan's influence- and they drove off.  

[romesilk]

N'Barit could not get to the pond fast enough. He scrubbed Kirkcaldy until she was red and teary-eyed, then went about ducking himself in the water so long he thought he might pass out. He made sure to come up before he did. Without him, Kirkcaldy had no one to take care of her, and he would sooner cut off his other arm and leg than see her raised in by unclean people. He had a duty to this guardianship of divine providence and he could not die before it was over.

Afterwards he lay on the grass, exhausted, Kirkcaldy on her towel beside him. His tired hands found the buttons of the tape recorder.

Quote:

Hhaa... hhaa...

For several long moments he recorded only heavy breathing, still recovering from the cleansing.

Quote:

I think... It's just... so stupid. These people. Unclean people. Don't know what to do about 'em. Escape the praetorix, but 's not... Huhm. I wish I could... aah, what's the point.

Make the best of it, you get... what given. 'T! Hyyyeh. 'Kady... C'mere. ... Aah, that's better! You have to know not to touch unclean people. That person... was unclean. They're all unclean. Except you. So don't ever touch them. Don't ever let the dirt of this world get on you. Someday you'll understand it better.

Ah, okay. hha, lay down. Stay on the towel. Hnnn. If I never run into her... let's just hope we don't. Chh. Hate... stupid...

.................................

N'Barit quite forgot about the tape recorder, succumbing at last to his exhaustion. He knew Kirkcaldy was a good girl, she would stay on the towel while he rested.

Careful not to touch the ground as she had been taught, Kirkcaldy half-climbed onto n'Barit's smooth chest, her bottom parts still sitting on the towel, and pushed aside the tape recorder so she could rest with him. It landed with a sharp click, shutting off the recording.