Tiktik hops aboard our carriage, and marvels at the several tomes laying open within. I hope it wasn’t a mistake to invite her to tag along. She seems incredibly pleasant, and I hope she’s as earnest as she appears, but her chaotic pranking nature leaves me with a seed of doubt and mistrust. Still, she’s definitely one of the better people we’ve met, the most amusing on Rayileklia so far, to be sure. Coming across her is about the best thing that has happened to us in the last few weeks. I have the horses resume our travel path back along the side of the mountain range, westerly towards Noirdivinhoz, and The Brook.
Wait a tick. Go back a bit. I ask, “Tiktik, you said you thought you were on the trail of a dragon? Do you have any more information on that dragon? What kind? Size? Anything?”
Tiktik’s face is bright and cheerful as she gleefully, unhelpfully, responds, “Nope!”
I facepalm, struggling not to laugh as I shake my head incredulously. Tiktik adds, “Actually, pretty small for a dragon, maybe about two Clydesdales side by side in size? A bit more? A bit less? Oh, a bit! We’ve gotta introduce you guys to Littlebit if we ever go back to the Fae’s Wilds. Uh, if we happen to be traveling in the same direction, at some point, and happen to be going that way at the same time.”
Tiktik appears ever-so-slightly mousey at realizing she’d been presumptuous in assuming that we might be traveling together longer than just enough time to stop by The Brook and drop her off. Honestly, I certainly wouldn’t be against it. Then again, the last companion we had on our Rayileklian journey was fated to end as dust in my arms. Worse, she was fated to be erased from existence and history all together. I barely succeeded in preventing the last part. I couldn’t save her, but I was able to save our memories of her. I gulp in sadness as tears well within my eyes yet again.
I turn away from Tiktik as I sadly, slowly continue practicing my runecrafting. I struggle to choke down sobs that keep attempting to form, and my breathing is ragged. Teulia’s struggling to not give in to the same sadness since she was riding around in my head. A ragged inhalation becomes a sad sigh once more as I continue to fail at crafting the same rune, over and over.
Tiktik, not one to be silent amongst friends, apparently, calls out, “Hey look at you two, my glum chums. There’s that remorse I was talking about. As my Brookian friends would say, shid braddah. Or as Littlebit might say, that’s rough buddy. Um, well, I know what you need! What you need is, is, it’s in here somewhere.”
I raise an eyebrow as I cock my head slightly towards Tiktik’s direction. She looks for all the world to be digging through empty space in front of her, like a mime. I can’t tell if she’s joking around or not. One of the downsides to her constant playful prankster behavior. Perhaps not a downside in her eyes, but it strains the trust of her companions and friends, I would imagine.
Tiktik frown and grumps, “Bah, I swear I kept one. Darn it. Okay, fine. Let’s do it this way.”
The faint, nearly inaudible ticking returns as Tiktik begins to work magic, and what appears surprises me. A translucent image is projected upwards from her palm towards the ceiling of the carriage. It appears to be a star chart, or star map, or even just a view of what the night sky might look like over Rayieklia if we could see beyond the acid-clouds.
Tiktik starts pointing out the stars and explaining, “So, so normally I draw this out, and label them. So that one? That one I call, I’m sorry Littlebit. That one’s for the time that I really hurt my pal’s feelings, and she wouldn’t talk to me for weeks. I was super super bummed out, let me tell ya. That one over there? I call that one I’m sorry Granda, and fam. It, um. My family blames me for Granda’s last heart problem. He’s alive and all! Just—.”
Tiktik scratches her chin and avoids our gazes momentarily before continuing, “Just, my last prank back home spooked him too hard I guess. I guess he forgot the schedule, because he’s getting older. I had to leave home after that. Couldn’t stand everyone feeling that way about me. Err, but, but I’m okay! Doing great on my first case as an urban bountyhunter! Well, sort of. Okay, it’s harder than the time I was battling hoggleshades at the Spirushian Sanctum, and less rewarding, but, well, I haven’t been on my own long. That one up there? I call that one homesick.”
My jaw hangs lower and lower as we’re given incredibly deep, meaningful insight into Tiktik and her story. More, the sweetness of the sentiment reaches my heart and breaks it free from its current episode of sadness. Teuila and I exchange a look, and nod. We know what the other is thinking, and we both feel the same way about it.
Together, we point at a bright cluster of stars and simultaneously say, “Dawn.”
Tiktik rubs her eyes a moment as she stares between us, our synchronization seemingly surprising her. She may also have been rubbing away several tears, but who could blame her after those admissions? Oh hell, my right eye won’t stop tearing up with how touched I am by Tiktik’s admissions. I exchange a glance with Teuila, despite not needing to. We nod to each other, as we agree in our mindscape with our telepathic avatars hashing it out.
Teuila states, “She needs a hug, bad.” Then asks, “Ready Air?”
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I nod to Teuila, and the two of us spread our arms towards Tiktik, symbolizing our willingness and desire to hug the saddened, impish woman. She tentatively stands in the carriage, between the front and back seats, and avoids eye contact shyly for several moments. I’m surprised to see yet another side to her.
Immediately after I have such a thought, Tiktik leaps into our shared embrace, hugging the two of us, exuberantly exclaiming, “You guys! Awe you’re total sweethearts. Thanks chums. But, but seriously though. I’m okay. I’ll be okay. What about you two?”
I remove one arm from our shared hug to scratch the back of my head. How much do we want to lay on Tiktik, Teuila? I’m not even sure how old she is. Maybe she has lifetimes upon lifetimes of hurts already, or maybe she’s so young she shouldn’t be saddled with our sadness. Teuila shrugs in response to my thoughts that she’s observing telepathically.
Teuila brazenly asks, “Hey, one woman to another, how old are you babe?”
Tiktik remove her arm from around me to use her right hand to tap her chin. She does that while her ghostly hand has shrunken down, and is scratching the back of her head. After a ponderous moment, Tiktik responds, “About a hundred fifty seven to a hundred ninety seven I think? But most of that was spent in the ‘Twixt. Hm, so I’m probably only, eh twenty or so physically, give or take?”
Teuila and I raise our brows and simultaneously ask, “The ‘Twixt?”
Tiktik facepalms as she explains, “Oy, of course you wouldn’t, awe heck. Okay, so, hubbub around the Keel Over is that you two might literally be out of this world, like from another world. The ‘Twixt is kind of like a world, kind of like an imagination. What happens there really does affect anyone who travels there, but thankfully, creatures that are created there seem stuck there. Really thankfully, since some people dream up some pretty scary things."
Our stunned, ravenously curious gazes clue Tiktik in to continue, "Littlebit was freaking out about vampires one time, and let me tell you, she could not handle herself a vampire, no siree, no way. One look in the eyes, and she was mesmerized, and if I wasn’t there, she’d have been dinner, or, or maybe like a bride or something.”
The shock on our faces seems to continue to prompt Tiktik to further relay her tale, “So, there was Littlebit, coming along with me to the ‘Twixt for some adventure and fun and stuff, to try out some of her gadgets, like her little robodog thingy modeled after this really advanced golem that came through some time back, Bimetal Stormzolt. Err, not the point."
Tiktik gets back on topic, I think, "Anyway, there we were, Littlebit seconds away from being eaten when I started brain blasting the vampire with psychic mind lances, pew pew pew, and brain lashing whips, fwish fwish fwish. That wasn’t enough, so I did a thing that takes a lot out of me, and I sent Littlebit ahead in time a little bit, hah, err. It’s only like five or ten seconds, but long enough that the vampy had to turn to me.”
Tiktik suddenly stands back away from our embrace, and adopts the same pose Teuila used earlier to show off her warrior’s pride. Tiktik claims, “I might not look it, but I’m pretty fierce and scrappy. Ol’ fangface couldn’t lay one on me, and my brain’s too tricky to just be all mesmerized in one go. Lotsa stuff up in my head, like all the math and clocks and time stuff. Hard to pin down my brain when it might not even be in the now, ya know?"
Tiktik laughs a moment at her comment about her own brain and the implication about how scatterbrained she is before continuing, "Anyway, I conjured up a little dagger, and started poking the jerk while I did some ensorcelling to shroud myself in hidden elements of fire and ice. When the jerkface finally did lay one on me, well, almost on me, instead he basically blew his own arm off as the ice swept up it, and the fire backlash smoked his frozen arm.”
Tiktik’s chin and bottom jaw jut out as she thinks about the end of her current tale, “Hm, what happened next? Oh yeah! So, I kinda, uh, well, when I conjured my little dagger, accidentally imagined a living weapon, one powerful enough to help out. Now, I was using my own magic a bit, but the ‘Twixt has a funny way of playing with things sometimes. I got my hands on a weapon powerful enough to form a pact with me unintentionally."
Tiktik quickly adds, "I had to! Since Littlebit was about to pop back into reality any instant now, and the vampy fangface was still around, I accepted the pact. I know, I know, never do that, but it was for Littlebit! I couldn’t let her get eaten on her first adventure. Well, her first adventure with me while testing gadgets instead of, err, well it’s not the point.”
Tiktik’s chatter pauses a moment as she struggles to return to the right track on her train of thought, “Err, anyway, so there we were, and, well, yeah, Bizzenblade is still my pact patron, and still exists in the ‘Twixt, so, ah, might be some repercussions there at some point. Anyway, my freebie cantrips might have maybe been able to blast ol’ fangface back to imagination, but I couldn’t risk it, not with Littlebit’s life on the line."
Tiktik huffs and drops a weighty sigh, recalling something tiring, "I dug deep into my ol’ Sorc Pool for a bigger bundle of Sorcy Pointerooskies than I’d ever used before, and I conjured the very stars themselves! Sort of. Little throwing stars. Anyway, those little throwing stars held the power of miniature suns, let me tell you. And what kills a vampire faster than the sun? Several suns. What kills a vampire faster than several suns? Nothing, that’s what. Thwip thwip thwip, pew pew pew and ol’ fangface turns to ash, just as Littlebit is showing back up from the few seconds ago that I’d sent her forward from."
There's a pause of remembrance as Tiktik giggles. She fights through laughter to say, "She was all dazed from the enchanting gaze and stuff, so she fell into my arms, and I was like having my own whole big darn hero moment. Ugh, I was totally going to smooch her, but we’re like sisters, and she doesn’t feel that way about me. Whatevs. I wouldn’t want to make her uncomfortable, so I just kinda stood there like a dork.”
Tiktik asks, “Wait, why’d I tell you guys that story anyway? Oh right! The ‘Twixt! It kinda wibbles and wobbles in time a bit, you can get a lot of living done in a couple of minutes, but it might or might not be time that you age. It's really weird. It’s only accessible to a few kinds of Fae, mostly mixbreeds like me. I’m half goblin half hobgoblin half, um, something else. It’s the something else that lets me in, and lets me bring one other person in with me."
A reddish brown blush overrides the turquoise of Tiktik's face as she realizes how much she just relayed to us. She ends her explanation with, "Uh, yeah. So, that’s kinda it. The ‘Twixt that is. Kinda short for betwixt here and there, you get it, I’m sure.”