B 2 C 33: CHANGE YOU, LIKE A REMIX
I’m torn about who to treat first. I honestly expect Teuila to turn down the plume, to say to save it for later. Or she might say what if we end up needing multiple to awaken Lil. What if one plume only takes off five or ten years from their timer. Something like that. Yeah, I’ll just get Lu and Te both together and ask. Lao hardly is willing to let me leave her embrace, Agwai is similarly smothering me, but it’s a wonderful feeling, being so loved.
Sugar and Spice are excited with the progress they’ve made on some of my designs and requests, but I can’t attend to them until I’ve done this first. I know they understand. Mat and the Mana twins don’t care about me or my successes. Well, the Mana twins are fine with me, I’m surprised Mat hasn’t poisoned them to me, or about me, yet. Or is it poisoned me to them? Badmouthed, made me look evil in their eyes. Or maybe he has tried, and they’re too smart to fall for it. I don’t think he would actually go so far as to try to turn anyone against me though. I mean, he did threaten that exact thing way back when I was first recovering from the Night of High Water, when we were about to journey into the swamp.
I gulp, trying to push the thought out of my mind that Mata would do something so pernicious. A bit exhausted, I telepathically call around for Luni as I sit near Teuila. Lu responds that she’s swimming and she’ll be right in, the excitement in her mental wavelength is palpable.
Snuggling two of my beloveds, I share the tale of my journey. Even before I can complete the tale, Luni whispers into our private deeper telepathic bond, “Told you so, hero, you’ve got this, always have, always will.”
I try not to let her praise cause me to laugh or interrupt my quick recitation of what happened so that Teuila can make her own decision. Teuila for her part though, laughs and slaps my shoulder, my crispy, tender shoulder, one of the only parts on my body still injured. I wince and shed tears of pain, trying not to let any noise out so Teuila doesn’t feel bad.
Te exclaims, “Only you, my wonderpunk. Only you could go out over two thirds dead, looking for what might only be an imaginary creature, go up against a horde of creatures, a god beast, another god beast, your worst nightmare that’s always haunting you, and somehow come back better off than when you left. Hahah, really, truly, only you.”
Jokingly I say, “Hey, I resent that. I wasn’t two thirds dead. I was three quarters dead.” The three of us laugh for a moment.
Teuila pulls me into a tighter embrace, ordering, “Come here my perfect dingleberry.” I sigh contentedly for a moment, getting distracted. Oh, right, the plumes! I present the four plumes.
Te immediately puts one in her inventory, saying “I’m probably going to have to save your life with this at some point goober, I’m definitely not using it for a few broken bones.”
Luni likewise places hers in her inventory. I’m not sure if I should keep one for myself, or give it to Lil for putting them through this. Actually, if I keep it in my inventory, I’ll probably make sure to save it for Lil, or one of our other family members that Lil would want saved anyway.
Finally, the last plume, the one saved for Lil, we head outside to the stone from Fire Biome that I’d carved out for Lil. I carry Teuila, and gently set her down. We all sit lotus style facing one another in a rough triangle. Lu ever so gingerly places Lil’s heart, their core, in the center.
I mirror what the phoenix itself had done for me. As I carefully press the plume against Lil’s core, I blow a warm breeze across it, pushing my love and energy through the quill, into their core.
As the plume disappears, the timer on Lil’s return drops towards zero at full tilt, faster than I can read the numbers change. I swear that their core lets loose silhouettes of various draconic forms that Lil might become in their future life, while their core’s recovery timer is being wound down to zero far in advance of its scheduled time.
Lil returns screaming to life, and as we’re all about to celebrate, Lil lambasts me, “You left me, you froze me then you left me to die!”
My heart sinks, I try to plead my case, defend myself, apologize, beg forgiveness, “Lil, I, I, but you. You said it was just a scratch, but I was worried. I thought a potion, and careful incision. I only knew where to get one kind of potion one way. I didn’t know the potion wouldn’t work, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. Please, please forgive me.”
Lil continues tormenting me, “Don’t tell me the big dumb hero never realized they could just claim the wound? I’m an item to you, aren’t I? I’ve been in your inventory once before, your inventory magic can take apart items. Lu too, we’re not your friends, we’re not ‘of blood,’ we’re just items to you. Maybe even your girlfriend. We’re all just, what was it, digital? Heck, you could probably even put me back together in your inventory.”
My jaw drops, and my eyes fill with tears. I want to gouge my eyes and ears out to check if they’re working properly, to prove to myself this isn’t happening. I can’t find words, I stutter and stammer, it feels like my insides, my blood, my vitality, my soul are drying up and shriveling up.
Lil spits my emotions back at me to my face, “Ugh, I can’t look at you right now, you left to go almost die on me again, and I had to wait on that, I don’t know if I can handle your emotions on top of mine.”
Lil bounds away from the three of us, leaving us all stunned. Wait, that last bit. Lil sounded like Mataalii when I’d finally returned to reality after so long, after the first time at the dam. How, why?
Teuila riding my thought waves answers my unspoken questions, “Mata, he”
Lu interrupts her, trying to deflect, “No, don’t tell!”
Teuila continues, “Mata asked to see Lil’s core. I’m sick of the secrets Lu, I don’t know why you need them, but you know I can’t stand them. I lo, lur, lo, I words you. You know that, but I can’t let this hurt Reggie, you know I can’t.”
Lu’s eyes shoot wide with terror. Luni pulls me into shared thinkspace, begging forgiveness, “Please, please believe, I wasn’t doing it to hurt you, you know part of why it has to be a secret, please, please oh hurk, I, I, I. gods and devils, I, I, no I’d never, please, please please, please believe me, please, I’m begging you, you, you have to know, you know, you must know, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t. We’re,we.” Luni bursts into tears, shaking and sobbing uncontrollably, almost inconsolably.
I stroke Luni’s head as I gently tug her towards our tree for a quiet embrace as I try to puzzle this out. Everything in me is screaming to break down into a sobbing wreck, but Lu needs me right now. I’m not supposed to know Mata did this, so I have to try to puzzle things out from a different angle.
Luni cries out, “Why, why, why do I have to keep this up? Why me, why me!? I can’t do it, I can’t, I can’t, I want Reggie to love me, not hate me, please no, no more, no more, n n no no more. Not the third time, please not the third time too. Please, please no. no, please no, not again.” Her scream of anguish dies to a pitiful whimper by the end.
My heart shatters into a million pieces when Luni finally admits how much this is tearing her apart inside. I feel myself dying for how truly committed she is to doing whatever it is that needs to be done, for our future good. I can’t alleviate her burden. I can only assuage her fears. I’m barely preventing myself from falling into a sobbing mess beside Lu, but I hold her tenderly.
I kiss Luni’s cheek at the corner of her mouth and just try to coo consolingly to her, “Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay. I do, I do love you, endlessly. I can see part of how hard this has been on you. It’s okay, it’s okay to let it out. I’ll do everything in my power to, to, to do whatever needs to be done, the way it needs to be done, to lighten your burden. And everything in my power to prove that you are loved, and beloved, time and time again.”
I wipe my own tears away so that I can focus on Luni’s as I kiss them from her cheek at the corner of her eyes. Even our telepathic avatars are emotionally wrecked from what happened in meatspace. Not to mention the flood of emotions we’re barely able to control in here.
Gulping, I ask, “Lu, you, you don’t have to answer, I’ll trust you, no matter what you say or refuse to say or don’t say or ask me not to ask, anything. I trust you to the ends of the world and beyond. I feel like you knew Lil would come back different, but that you weren’t just less shocked, you seemed to be okay, like you knew not just you and Lil would be okay, but I would be okay. What Te said hurt because you knew what was going on, and that maybe in a possible, or likely, or guaranteed future, we get through it together. Having your big sis accidentally accuse you of something you’re trying so hard to avoid, while trying so hard to protect us must have hurt deeply. Does Lil ever come back to us, the way I know Lil?”
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Luni trembles as she frantically searches for a truth that she can give, she tries to suss out how much she can answer. She seems to come up at a loss for words, but she meekly, almost imperceptibly nods. She seems terrified that I might even pick up on the nod, as if it could cause some catastrophe that she would have to blame herself for, so I just hold her and try to put it out of mind.
We while away half an hour in accelerated thinkspace, only two seconds in meatspace, as we do our best to try to stem the tides of our own emotions. Both of us wanting to be there for each other’s hurts at the moment.
Before we separate from our hypertime thinkspace, I call out to Luni, “Lu, I need a couple of months with Teuila in our space. Can you keep Lil busy for an hour? Maybe more? I’m not trying to get rid of you, I adore you, and cherish you in an epic fashion. I just need to be there for her right now. I’m afraid I might break down if Lil comes back at me like that while I’m trying to be supportive of Teuila.”
Luni gulps and nods. Her right hand explores my face, then strokes my hair. I blink back a few more tears, and Lu floods enough regret into our thinkspace to kick us both out. I clutch my chest, and lean my head over onto Teuila’s shoulder. Te catches on immediately that we just went through some heavy emotions and hashed them out in hypertime.
I beg Teuila to join me in a private thinkspace just for us. At first I think she’s going to refuse, there’s such a cloud over her emotions, such a mixture of different kinds of pain. Teuila relents and drags me to a deep sea beneath our thoughts. I don’t think the two of us have been in a private shared thought realm before, so I’m unsure how to proceed. We’d normally bonded with all four of us together. Unlike this, Luni and I share the same idyllic scene as our quad think space for our private one.
My telepathic avatar struggles to stay afloat and not be lost adrift as I search these stormy seas of moving emotion for Teuila. Even Te seems struggling to stay afloat, in her own projected image of her own mind.
Once I’ve found and latched onto Teuila, I try to politely ask, “Te, um, is this what you want our private thought space to be? Is this like the one, the one that you, that you share with, that you shared with, with Lil?” I gulp, trying not to come off as jealous or manipulative, I just want to know how to proceed, if she wants me to be a rock, a lighthouse, a ship, if she wants us to just struggle in the water. I want to be here for her however she needs.
Te gulps air as she flounders, “No, n, no, no I mean, with, with my dorky dragbutt it’s just words. We, we just, it’s just words, like when we all started joining together in thinkspace.”
Does that mean Teuila is so guarded, even with her closer relationship with Lil, that she’s never shown this depth of her subconscious? The vulnerability of her torrent of emotions? Is this what lies beneath the surface that makes it so hard for her to express herself?
Te, my Teuila, my wings, she’s plagued by torrents of emotions, too many at once, in too large of quantities to handle, no wonder she can’t bring herself to say the words. She’s afraid everything else will spill out too. Teuila can carefully measure out milder emotions, but she’s afraid of how much might come along with the stronger ones.
It’s so touching to learn all this about her, but I don’t know how to help her weather this storm, or ride the waves on this sea, or even know what to do about our current situation. Also, don’t you start if you’re in here with me, voice. That pun was accidental.
I have one idea, and I’m pretty sure it’ll scare Teuila half to death, and she might hate me for it.
I clasp Te closely, and whisper, “It’s okay, it’s okay to let go in here. Even if you can’t out there, in here, we can sink under the weight of our emotions. In here, we have a thousand lifetimes to pull ourselves through them, to measure them, explore them, use them. We can define them, we don’t have to let them define us if we don’t want to, but we can do that too. I know it’s scary, and I know you wouldn’t want to admit to being scared, but I’m here. I’m here, with you, always, I will always love you, and always wait for you. Take as much time as you need.”
I just hold onto Teuila as we bob atop the stormy sea for ages, I try to add my buoyancy to hers. She adds hers to mine for quite some time, until finally she lets go. As she sinks beneath the waves of her emotions, I follow along, letting myself be drawn beneath the pressure, the unending weight of so many unspoken thoughts and feelings.
At times I find myself gasping for air, struggling, but I remind myself that I’m in Teuila’s mindscape, that I’m here for her. The discomfort of breathing water, even telepathically, is persistent, but so am I. Persistent that is, not discomforting. Hopefully.
Over several days in hypertime within Teuila’s mind, she finally begins putting names to certain waves and features. It doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll be able to express them in meatspace, but it means she has words to describe our location in her mind, the feelings she wants to feel and to be near.
Several weeks pass as Teuila slowly comes to grips with just how vast and deep her emotional well truly is, which means we’ve been sitting without really acting in meatspace for at least a quarter of an hour. But I’m willing to be here as long as Te needs. I wonder if Teuila is able to stay active in fully accelerated thinkspace with Lil while she continues to act in external reality. Am I the one that makes private thinkspaces take up all our thought and ability to concentrate?
After about a month and a half of exploration, Teuila lands upon joy, it’s a sandbar deep beneath the waves. Slowly, she builds it up. Teuila erects an island of bliss to share with me, our private retreat in her mind. We can finally start moving forward together, tackling our emotions and making headway towards being who we want to be with one another.
Teuila asks, “I know it’s been a while now, you’ve been dealing with my baggage and weight, but are you going to be okay? If dragbutt keeps acting like that to you, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to be close to them again.”
My chest heaves with sadness momentarily before I reply, “I’m almost positive it’s temporary. I’m not allowed to guess, there’s something massively important at stake, something worth pain and secrecy, possibly worth lives. I have to trust Lu with this, she’s the only one I could. Even though I love and adore you beyond words, to the depths of the hells and the heights of the heavens, I don’t think you would maintain the secrets. I think you would prevent me from making the mistakes I’m supposed to make. I can’t tell you too much of what I’ve figured out, but just trust Lu, please. She never meant to hurt either of us. It’s absolutely destroying her inside.”
Teuila looks distraught in her current melancholy. She tries to redress her earlier calling out of Luni, “I, I never thought she was trying to hurt us, not really. I just can’t do it. I guess you’re right. It really hurts that you’re right. I’m not the one you should trust with something that’s that precise over such a long time, requiring so many secrets. This has something to do with your time skill, doesn’t it?”
I respond as carefully as I’m able, “I’m not allowed to make guesses as to the truth of that. Personally, yeah, I’m fairly positive, but I have to shunt that belief to the back of my mind and forget about it. I have to treat each moment like I’m experiencing it the way it’s happening, with no thoughts that a future me is plotting my course. I can only guess that something horrible, utterly catastrophic is going to happen, and this will help prevent it. Or worse, multiple horrible, catastrophic things are going to happen, and one or more of them has to happen, so we can stop the future ones. Ugh, I’m guessing, I have to stop, I could screw up everything when Luni has put herself through so much hell to get this far.”
Realization dawns on Teuila’s mental avatar’s face. Te exclaims, “Oh, oh wow, yeah, if you both. Okay, okay, new topic, we can’t risk that. Oh my poor little Lu, what have you been going through, for us? New topic though, so um, what do you think about my spear style?”
Chuckling, I raise a brow at Teuila before replying, “Really? It’s amazing. You are fantastic. I hope that we can find out how to fully manifest Valkyrie with creamy gray aura, or umbral energy, soon. You deserve that power, it’s all yours.”
Teuila lets out the Shellcracker family squee, and tugs my left arm to nuzzle my shoulder. Te asks, “So, I heard you had Sugar and Spice doing some building, what’s that about? A shop? I get the word, you know, we both have the vocabularies, but I don’t really understand the concept. How is trade a thing? I mean, stuff exists, it spawns, everyone can get everything they want or need. I think. Right?”
I ponder a bit before I can answer, “Hm, well, no, not necessarily. How many phoenix plumes do you think are out there right now? I’d hazard a guess that there’s probably no more than a dozen. We might have the only three that were handed out. People would trade almost anything for them, people would literally kill for them. I don’t think there will be any more Octorochis, so I’ve got one of the only Octorochi heads left in existence from the time that you first evolved up to Valkyrie. Someone might want that as a prize, or as an ingredient to some powerful spell or potion or arte or ritual. Same with the other body parts I’ve got from Octorochi between that encounter, and our final encounter. We know those bags that can bring inventory capacity from negative one to zero, and zero to one, are tremendously rare. We did something that no little squad of beavers is going to be able to do, to get as many as we did. We might have even ruined the only place to get them, they might never drop again.”
Te holds up her hands for me to slow down as she processes. She contemplates aloud, “Okay, okay, okay I get it, I think. Yeah, you’re right, I guess not everyone can just go fight some godbeast or catastrophe creature or horde of flaming hellhounds. We’re uh, huh, probably pretty lucky to have made it through everything we have so far, huh? I guess I didn’t really appreciate that til now. So, so if things that are rare, or might never be seen again are also things that people might want, if we’re willing to give them up, they might have something rare that we’ve never seen, to trade? I think I get it now, also why you would want a building just to do this. I wouldn’t want severed heads sitting on a shelf next to our bed, waiting for someone to wander by that happens to want one. I mean, just for example. Actually a severed head next to our bed might be kinda cool. Also thank you for the bed. It’s nice, and soft. It um, it’s nice on my mushy legs.” By the end of her rambling, Teuila adopts the Shellcracker shyness expression, where her index fingertips are poking together and she’s avoiding my gaze while speaking out the side of her telepathic mouth.
I chuckle and tackle Teuila to distract her from her embarrassment, we roll off of our joyous sandy beach into the stormy seas of moving emotion, but we happily ride the waves, experiencing the depths Teuila has to offer. We’re finally in a good place. The terror has finally let loose its grip on my heart, and Teuila can share everything of herself with me, no need to hold back.
I would never have meant to change her, but if somehow our interactions changed us, we’re still ourselves, just an updated version, like a remix.