Madame Zthulhu looked at the egg cradled in her lap and smiled. She stroked it gently, the living wood on her hands caressing its soft, tender edge. She could sense at this moment exactly where the egg was not only in the present, but in the past and in the future. And with this she knew immediately that the egg was soon due to hatch.
"Oh, I absolutely can't believe it!" the Madame said with a smile. "It's a very rare breed. That much is for certain. Oh, my oh my, how I have dreamed of this day, absolutely wasted away praying to every sort of deity you could possibly consider existing in order to reach this moment today, here, right now!" She giggled with glee and pulled up a book from a large, caddywampus stack of literature.
Madame Zthulhu cracked open the book and blew off the dust and tobacco coating it. She searched through the pages gingerly, finally reaching a point that she could waggle a finger at. It was a subsection of an appendix that mentioned a rare breed of [pairable] animal known as a fony.
Fonies were rare and beautiful. They were also highly sought after and prized. They were short and stout, while still being thin and proportionately lithe. They were ethereal and they were spectral, their four little hooves were very cute and their fluttering wings were soft as a doves' earholes. Their manes were long and flowing, and were always either purple or see-through, whereas their skin was always a combination of either white and pink or aqua and marine. Marine was a rare color in Nomachiato that looked almost like white, but not quite. And of course, they had long, beautiful spires growing out of their forehead, one spire per pony, all made of precious ivory.
One thing that was always true for fonies, something that made it feel almost impossible at times to find them, was that systems never properly communicated their descriptions. In fact, the feature of fonies that allowed them to do such a thing was known as system obfuscation and it only truly happened when people were analyzing them closely. Some people didn't even believe system obfuscation was possible, but Madame Zthulhu was not some people. Madame Zthulhu had seen system obfuscation happen herself.
Oftentimes, system obfuscation was never taken seriously. It was something out of fairy tales, or in situations were there were two people partnered with one another who both had systems. System obfuscation was, in the Nomachiatan legal system, seen as almost a gotcha or catch-all for when a partner would knowingly falsely represent their system to their partner in order to hide things from them. This legal quirk was also something that led to people believing that system obfuscation was impossible, because it was time and time again ruled impossible to prove by courts of the highest order. With that, a lot of people did indeed think that it was impossible. However, at the same time, there were plenty of people who still believed. And once Madame Zthulhu had seen it once, she knew deep in her crotchety bones that indeed, system obfuscation was all too real.
She could remember it like it was yesterday. This was actually fairly reliable, because Madam Zthulhu had long ago picked up a [Photographic Memory] skill that allowed her to really grab what she likened to reality snapshots with her system at a moment notice and load those experiences into her conscious mind on demand.
The only real issues she had with it was when memory photographs got slightly corrupted or degraded by failures in internal system memory storage, as well as limitations of her own tauman mind. Then again, the Madame recognized that if she would just increase her [skill] she'd be able to do away with most of these ill effects.
However, leveling up was getting harder and harder for her, and she sometimes felt that it was a waste of leveling to upgrade something so minor. Additionally, and Madame Zthulhu would only sometimes admit this to herself, but she kind of liked how her memories looked when they got slightly corrupted. It amused her, and kept her on her bunion-encrusted toes. So, the [skill] stayed as is, and her memories... didn't.
[Memory loaded]
"Madame Zthulhu! You've got to help me!" said the young man with a full wooden face. It made him look extremely rugged for his age. He was wearing a long, dark robe and a pair of bagpipes. Occasionally as he spoke he would take a break to blow on one of them.
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"Please, do!" she replied with a toothy grin.
"You see, Madame Zthulhu, my bagpipes are all twisted every which way and it's made my hands rather sore trying to correctly affix them onto their bag. Will you please, please help me?"
"Absolutely," said the Madam. "But please, call me Madam Zthulhu, not Madame. We don't have to be so formal, you and I."
"As you command, Madam Zthulhu."
The way he said Madam Zthulhu made Madam Zthulhu feel like her name was worth hearing. It made her feel like she was decades younger than she was. Or, did she feel like the man was decades older than he was? It didn't seem to matter.
The Madam affixed her wooden hands on the man's pipes and tightened them each, methodically, one by one.
"You truly are an expert at work, Madam Zthulhu. I've got a lot to learn just from watching you," the man proclaimed as he puffed on the biggest pipe he could find, softly gripping the bag so that Madam Zthulhu didn't have to busy her hands with anything other than tightening pipes.
Everything was ruined in an instant. And this instant was etched into Madam Zthulhu's mind as badly as it was etched into her system.
"Mom! What are you doing with my boyfriend's bagpipes?!" shouted a shrill voice.
"What! What? Great Theseosus!" shouted the Madam as she released the many pipes from her grasp and gasped. "Dear, please don't be cross! He only came over to ask me for some help with them! You ought to be more understanding. The pipes are very near and dear to his heart, physically and figuratively."
"A likely story!" said her daughter with an angry huff. "And to think, I came over here to ask you to cook dinner for me! And really, all that's really happening is you wanted to spend all your time twisting pipes with my boyfriend!"
"You have to understand that this was a very needed situation," replied Madam Zthulhu.
"But he's my boyfriend! I should be the one twisting pipes with him, not you!"
"Look, if you want, you can twist the pipes with us, look, I'm almost done, and-"
The Madam's daughter looked absolutely disgusted and disturbed by this suggestion. "You've got to be fucking kidding me, mom. There is no way in hell I want to twist those pipes with you and my boyfriend! That's just ridiculous! Plus, if you're almost done, what would be the benefit? Gods, why don't I, I mean, why don't I just, I don't fucking know, just stand here and watch while you finish up with them?"
"If that's what you want, dear," replied the Madam matter-of-factly. "It's no living wood off my back. Not that there is any living wood on my back, mind you!"
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," said her daughter with an awful scowl and betrayed a considerable amount of nausea. "You really don't see a problem with me just standing here and watching while you finish tightening up all those pipes with my boyfriend?"
"I have a name, you know," said the boyfriend under his breath.
"Shut the fuck up, Carl!" said the Madam and her daughter in unison.
"Mom! Like, oh my gods! You just fucking called my boyfriend Carl!" She looked absolutely horrified.
"Well, that is his name, isn't it, dear?"
"Don't you fucking call me dear you, you, you,"
The Madam laughed a little inwardly. Her daughter always stuttered a little when she was getting overly excited. It was very endearing.
"You oversized fucking feline!" Her daughter screamed in a huff, swishing her hair back and forth with dramaticism.
"Oversized? Dear, please. If anything, I'm undersized," snorted the Madam.
"Mom! What the fuck is wrong with you! Ugh!"
This arguing continued on for a good while, and neither mother nor daughter seemed to want to give in. Finally, they got to the crux of the issue just as the Madam finished twisting the last pipe.
"So why again are you here, dear? You know I love having you over, but you really could've knocked!"
"Because I already told you, mom! I wanted to come over and have dinner with you that you would cook!"
"Why?"
"Um, duh! For your fucking birthday!"
[Memory ended]
Madam Zthulhu sighed. She missed her daughter. But, she also knew that that memory was unequivocal proof of the existence of systemic obfuscation, because without such a feature, there was no way she wouldn't have detected her daughter entering the home due to the power of her [Awareness] skill.
Then, the door chimes jingled.
"Oh my gods, mom, it's been so long," said her daughter, who looked older and skinnier, and her face was slowly hardening with wood now.
"Yes it has, dear, yes it has." The Madam smiled and raised up the large egg she held in her hands. "Look what I have here!" She said in a singsong voice.
"Wow, mom, this is so crazy," said her daughter. "Is it really what I think it is?"
"Of course it is, dear," said the Madam with a smile. "I finally got you that fony you always wanted."
Her daughter squealed with joy and hugged the Madam tightly. "I fucking love you so much!" Then, she backed away with a gasp.
The egg was shaking. And then, with a crack, it split open.