2034 is the Kept Year
And Scandal Rocks a Saltwater Bluff
It started as a joke, but everything seemed to start that way past 2030. Jacquelyn already knew, deep down, that none of them were jokes. Testing the water, that’s what it was. With a laugh they dipped their toes into absurdity, and were quickly sucked all the way down, laughing as they drowned, rising bubble plumes breaking on the surface as invitations for others to come on in. The water was fine.
She had a personal channel on a social media platform called Seesaw, where anyone could upload videos of anything, the only requirement being that they hid an advertisement somewhere in its runtime. That angle wasn’t hidden itself. No, that was another one of those, ‘we were just joking at first’ things. The entire site identity, and the engagement of their one hundred million users, was based on it now.
Every week they held competitions where users worked to find the most obscure product placement in the videos, which sometimes involved scanning every pixel, decoding ciphers in the script, or even aligning the backgrounds of two affiliated channels to create one complete logo.
Jacquelyn just wanted to make the videos, so she made miniature signs to post in the background of her aquarium, little ads for the list of platform sponsors, usually the pet supply store because she thought it was thematic.
Mostly it was about her fish, her little drama kings and queens. For two years now she’d kept a large saltwater aquarium, an endeavor made trivial by the amount of money she was willing to spend on it. Coincidentally that was the year she decided to give up on dating altogether, and its associated expenses. Climate change was aging the world faster and faster, so there was nothing wrong with being a spinster in her twenties. The pace of the downward spiral had to be matched if she was going to extract any joy from life.
Six clownfish: Mademoiselle Mime, Goofy Gills, Crybaby Christoph, Bobo Bubbleson, Chester the jester, and Donuts. There were a couple side characters as well, in the form of Mr. Scissors the cleaner shrimp and Wanda the starfish, but it was mostly her clowns capturing her heart with all their shenanigans: forming little social cliques, taking romantic sojourns behind the plastic rocks, and chasing each other in and out of the big anemone, which Jacquelyn had a hard time labeling as either their family manor or another character in itself.
Wouldn’t it be funny, she’d thought, the word ‘funny’ lifting so many different weights across her knowledge. Wouldn’t it be funny if she pretended they were the stars of a little soap opera, if she recorded their antics and then added silly voices over them. She could use the free video effects suite on her computer to put pictures of little items in their fins, like bouquets of roses to dramatically toss aside when they fled a broken engagement, two dimensional tears falling soon after.
So she made her first video: episode one of Saltwater Bluff. After countless hours, the kind of hours that couldn’t be spent on a jest of any kind, she uploaded it to her empty Seesaw channel.
...
There was a stick in Glory’s hands now, but she still hadn’t risen off her knees thanks to the effluence of blood from her nose and gums. Honor used his height advantage, bearing down on Hygenis, so the dentist decided to use the tent’s height advantage by snagging one of the support posts with her hook.
She yanked, making the whole structure shudder. It threatened to collapse in on itself, trap them all in a hell of kicking limbs and smothering hides. Not just a distraction, Hygenis searched for a specific reaction from the tall man, and she got it. Once more he looked at the bulge of white hide directly overhead, before throwing out both arms to try and keep the tent upright.
Such a gap in her enemy’s teeth Hygenis would never miss; the point of her hook found his hip. Blood gushed, and it would not take much exploratory surgery to find the entrance of a vital artery and open the floodgates. All of this was felt and understood by Honor, who had to release the tent to extricate the weapon and save his own life.
Meanwhile Loric spent his energy blocking every blow Justice tried to deal. The mirror vibrated in his hands with each impact, his wrists acting like frightened cats that wanted to bolt out from under his skin and cower elsewhere. Forced to take a step back by the onslaught, his calves found the side of Glory, and before she could find the presence of mind to swipe her vassal stick and smack his shins he delivered a swift kick to her ribs.
The woman rolled under the tent’s flap and disappeared. She managed to keep hold of her stick on her brief journey into the Shedlands, but it did flick Loric’s way before it was gone completely, missing his leg and striking the bottomless book, which spun to a new position and retorted by switching to the next page of its story, which included a record.
...
Interviewer: And Saltwater Bluff was a runaway success right?
Jacquelyn: A swimaway success hah, but yes. I loved it, other people loved it, and it was so much fun to make at first. Season one was all about who was going to inherit the anemone in the mademoiselle’s will, with her obvious favorite being Donuts.
Interviewer: That’s one thing I wanted to talk to you about. Donuts is actually the oldest fish, right? His character is the youngest, but he’s quite a bit older than the average lifespan of a clownfish. You haven’t replaced him with an identical one when no one was looking have you?
Jacquelyn: No, I promise hah. He hasn’t even slowed down. I can’t either. If I don’t get an episode done every two weeks people are at my throat. I like getting the fan mail, and I show some of it during the credits, but a lot of it I really can’t because it’s too strange or mean-spirited.
Interviewer: Some would say that comes with the territory of being the number one entertainment program in the world. Saltwater Bluff has rated higher than any debut this season from any of the big six streaming platforms. As of season three of your show they’ve had to redefine the ratings categories to include Seesaw in the first place.
Jacquelyn: I don’t really care if it does come with the territory. I’m still just one person. I could scale up the budget massively, hire a whole crew, but people get mad when I suggest it. They say it’ll ruin the charm, and that higher production values can’t enhance what the fish are already giving, which is clearly their all hah. But I’m getting pressure and harassment that should be distributed to at least a hundred different people. I get jumpy now, like there’s a crowd above me and a stomp could come from anywhere.
...
A stomp came down, nearly destroyed the bottomless book’s screen. If it had fallen anywhere but the Shedlands it would’ve already been claimed by a blessed mole, escorted to the molten rivers for destruction, a fate that might’ve been preferable to its current limbo between the combative dance steps of the four humans.
Four humans, but five weapons, as despite her gushing mouth Glory had intelligently perceived that forcing her way back in would just limit her allies’ room to work, so she was instead poking her stick in from under the flaps in attempts to trip up their prey. It worked well, briefly, but before it got any of them on the ground Hygenis had it figured out and stomped on her vassal stick to anchor it.
The dentist had to keep her full weight on it to prevent it from disappearing again, which meant she couldn’t move out of the way of any attack. Honor took advantage, going for an overhead strike that she wouldn’t be able to block without her hook snagging the tent and ripping it down.
Unavoidable she deemed it, until a mirror was thrust into the middle of things and practically reflected the blow. Loric had opened himself up to another direct hit to intervene, which he took in full on the ribs, suffering a crack in one in the process. He yelped like a kicked dog.
A veil of great shame fell over Hygenis. The fragile little man had invoked, and she was the invocation, not the other way around. For him to cover for her own weakness to keep their Bloody Mouth roaring was admirable, but should never have been required. The veil was just another tool, one of many instruments, one of the few that had grown dull with disuse, but it could still function.
With a forging blast of determination she smelted it into rage, poured that into the mold of strategy and watched it take shape. Hygenis lifted her heel so that only her toes kept Glory’s stick locked down, then she pushed back with a flick worthy of a donkey’s hindquarters. Vassalwood shot back through the dirt to whence it came, and judging by the grunt and pained swallow that followed its other end had struck Glory somewhere on the jaw or throat. If she still had enough head left to attack again it would’ve been startling.
Hygenis checked Honor in the gut with the blunt end of her hook, part of the same fluid motion that got rid of the low stick, and there could’ve been another move built into the end of it if the tallest Bashbeity didn’t interrupt with brute force, and at his size all that took was leaning forward.
He took a step, his foot catching on the edge of the bottomless book. One of its other corners lifted into the air, spilling fresh pages across its screen.
...
Of course the clowns deserved the lion’s share of the profit, but Jacquelyn didn’t know how to give it to them exactly. There turned out to be an upper limit on how fancy fish food could get, and she doubted whether a fish’s palate was any more complex than a binary indicator of food versus non-food.
Thus she concluded that real estate and interior decorating were the twin answers, and went about the process of expanding the manor and grounds of Saltwater Bluff. A second much larger tank was brought in, more than three times the years of her life in gallons. Plastic decorations were removed and replaced by expertly carved stone.
Real plants oxygenated the new waters the clowns migrated to once the tunnel between the two tanks was opened. They took to the expansion gleefully, their owner promising that all that space was theirs and they wouldn’t have to share it with any new purchases. There was some worry that the fish wouldn’t spend enough time grouped together, which would make filming more difficult and time-consuming, but that concern turned out unfounded. Every fish stuck to the script, and if she hadn’t known better she would’ve sworn they were getting to be better actors the more time passed.
One day she saw a swish of Bobo’s tail that smacked Chester in the face, and she could only characterize it as angry. When the camera wasn’t rolling they were back to being the best of friends.
Streaks of bubbles trailing from the surface after they’d snatched a bite were now language; Jacquelyn found herself interpreting them rather than making up lines of dialogue out of whole cloth. By season three the storyline had gotten away from her, and she was at best someone fighting its pull by kite string and at worst groping for a loose thread in the dark.
Sometimes, when she came downstairs in the morning for coffee and clown conversation, she could’ve sworn she’d seen an additional tank that she didn’t remember adding. One blink and it was gone, but months later it would become a reality because she couldn’t get the image out of her head. That corner just looked so empty without it. There was no reason not to add a tube climbing the wall like ivy; it would make a great shortcut between tank A and tank G.
“Oh you’re doing it! You’re actually falling!” she gasped in an excited whisper during the filming of the seventeenth episode of the seventh season. Quiet she kept so the clowns wouldn’t get distracted, but she still had to say something. A fish somehow knowing to still its fins, stall its mouth, and sink down the side of a miniature cliff at just the right time was remarkable.
And it was Crybaby Christoph on top of that, the maverick of the group if there was one. In the storyline Christoph’s third business was floundering, as was his marriage numbered the same, and he thought perhaps it was fate that he was also staying at the family’s third estate while at his lowest point, and in his desperate turmoil he’d foolishly thrown himself from a cliff and into the sea.
And he fell on cue. Jacquelyn couldn’t believe it, so much so that she felt a sting of worry. Was he dead? But no, the moment he struck gravel at the bottom of the tank he was back to his old self.
It was Jacquelyn’s home that was about to change forever, beginning with her front door opening even though she would’ve sworn up to heaven and down to Atlantis that it was locked. Before she could get up from the uncomfortable kneel that had her eye glued into her camera lens the intruder was by her side, lifting the grate off tank D and dunking his arm into the water.
With a flash of rabid possessive anger, Jacquelyn grabbed the young heavyset man by the shoulder and pulled him back. His soaked forearm dripped all over her carpet.
“Who the hell are you!?” she shouted.
“Why don’t you ask him who the hell Strider is!?” the man honked back, jabbing his wet finger at the tank, more specifically at Crybaby Christoph as he slowly swished his way back up the cliff to recover from his traumatic descent.
“What? This is my house! You can’t just come in here. Plus, I’m in the middle of filming!”
“Yes I know, you’re always filming,” he spat like they’d been stuck together, living in the same cardboard box, for at least eight months. “You’re why I can never get a word in edgewise around here. Oh, we have to be quiet Noah, she’s filming Noah, it’s not like you’ve planted yourself smack in the middle of our actual lives!” Jacquelyn had put herself between the intruder and the tank, but there were now so many aquariums throughout her living room, and extending into the foyer hallway, that all he had to do was turn to continue his backstage trespassing.
“I don’t know you and I don’t know any Strider. Get out of here before I call the cops.”
“You don’t know me?” the man apparently named Noah said, a brief glimpse of confusion passing across his face, like he’d walked into a sauna and wasn’t sure if there was anyone hidden in the steam cloud he addressed. “Real mature Jackie. You know full well that Christoph and I have been in a relationship for over a year. You brought chips to my birthday party, remember? Cheap ones.”
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“He thinks he’s in a relationship… with a clownfish,” Jacquelyn said with a snort, saying it to no one in particular until she twisted to say it to her actors, only to find they were all now hidden away behind plants or within the tendrils of an anemone. Too embarrassed for him, she reasoned silently.
“I think I am, but I don’t know now!” Noah asserted, producing tears. He wiped them away, but with the wrong forearm, and the salt on it turned his eyes much redder. Whatever pain his heart perceived seemed a good deal worse than the sting in the eye. “Not since I heard my Chris has been messaging some guy named Strider! And now he refuses to talk to me about it!”
The last phrase was a hoarse shout over Jacquelyn’s shoulder that didn’t prompt any of the clowns to emerge.
“Then… I guess that’s your answer,” Jacquelyn said after a gap in their very strange conversation. “You’re not wanted here anymore.” The statement hit her own heart with strange solidity, like it had been jabbed with a wrought iron gate post. She hadn’t felt that way since she was in college, having slipped into the tangle of a twisted love triangle and been forced to play negotiator between all parties involved.
“I see Jackie,” Noah sniffled. “You stay out of it until you get your chance to hurt someone. Then it’s 'cut, that’s a wrap, get that guy out of here!' They don’t need you, you know? As soon as they can they’re going to get rid of the show and dump you out with the dirty water. Don’t come crying to me when that happens. We’re through!”
The man stormed off, beating invisible drums in frustration. He slammed the door behind him, and when Jacquelyn went to check she found it locked, as if nothing had happened.
That day passed like one aberrant bubble, one that popped so quickly it was trivial to pretend she’d never seen it at all, but Noah was only the first. Saltwater Bluff had more than fans. It had family, friends, lovers, and victims.
...
Wielding her hook with all the frustrated fury of a red hangnail, Hygenis swung it with such speed and force that it didn’t slow when it shredded the sides of the tent. In pretending she was no longer trapped and swinging it with abandon, her hook opened shafts for light to then pour in.
It was weak, the night was upon them, but it was still enough to blind the two men who weren’t ready for it. A glint caught Justice’s eye, but it was just from the light hitting the mirror, which also caught his eye a second later. Down he went, stick clattering against others, and against the bottomless book.
...
Parasocial relationships had been on the rise for a long time. Jacquelyn knew this, had been fully willing to participate herself, speaking to the people on her screens as if they were in the same room, typing messages they just might see if they didn’t get lost among the countless others with the same hope.
But now that well had grown too deep and too cold. The immersion was now stunning, overwhelming, and despite the distances between the entities involved things changed for both of them. The clowns had business partners, friends, nemeses, and they showed up in droves. Jacquelyn now awoke with strangers in her bed, with newly installed glass pipes over her head that the clowns patrolled.
A crew knocked down a wall, only needing a fish’s permission, and filled its glass replacement with water, coral, and fronds of kelp. The lights they installed inside it would ruin the ambiance for her filming, she complained, only to learn she didn’t need to film anymore.
Saltwater Bluff was still being uploaded, daily now, even though she had no say in its production or its arc. In the distances between program and viewer the viewer was seeing and hearing whatever they wanted, filling the fish’s flapping mouths with whichever words came to them and seeing the two match up perfectly.
By season ten the floor had no carpet, an inch of water instead. She couldn’t wear shoes. The tangle was back, only it was liquid now, and no part of it could be pulled loose. Jacquelyn wondered how much of it, back in the beginning, was even her idea. Seesaw existed not for her to express herself, but for advertisements. Her tanks were not for her to have friends, but for the fish to get fed. The show was an opinion, but one that seemed to come out of the air like a lightning strike. Not from her.
...
The white-tipped tent was a nation of heavy taxes, levied in blood. Once a citizen had paid it convinced them they could never again pay and survive, so they left with their gaping wounds and, of the three of them, two never even looked back.
Hygenis had opened skin on both Honor’s hips, and traced Justice’s spine with her hook. They were slipping in their own crimson when they threw themselves out the flap, though technically Justice tumbled out of one of the gashes in the hide that hadn’t been there minutes prior.
Each Bashbeity took a stick with them as they fled into the Shedlands, but that left two as the spoils of war. Hygenis and Loric both groaned as they settled back down, examining their new weapons to distract from the pain. The storyteller was in a special agony, as the bruises left by the vassal sticks had turned his own blood painfully toxic; it felt like the contents of a graveyard had been disgorged into his veins, clumps of it settling in all the wrong places.
“Don’t rub it,” Hygenis warned when one of his hands was about to do just that on the bruise that was easiest to reach, the one that looked like a decomposing nebula in the night sky. “You’ll only add to the damage.”
“It hurts in five different ways, and one of them is itchy,” Loric hissed, rocking back and forth to control his urges. Hygenis helped him as well by talking, which was simple since there was much to discuss. She picked up what might have been Honor’s duty, glancing at the white bulge in the hide above them.
“As much as it hurts we came out ahead in this Loric. These sticks are faster more expendable weapons, and very light to carry. If we’re desperate we can also barter them. That’s without even mentioning these.” She reached behind, wincing from a pain of her own in the process, and dragged out the trio’s entire supply of pepper-leathers. Even if they too got sick of them, it was enough food to see them through the Shedlands and into Otter’s Whip, where if the river didn’t provide they would be happy to steal.
Loric spotted the bottomless book and reached for it, fingers faltering as he fought against a fresh wave of pain. An unintended tap produced the final section.
...
Jacquelyn went to get groceries, but only for herself. Not once had she offered any food to the countless strangers now squeezed into her home, yet they all remained fed. Some of them had pizzas delivered, but the delivery person just walked right in and never left, helping themselves to a slice of their own labors.
When she returned she dropped the bags at the sight of her home. Eggs within cracked, producing scampering chicks instead of running yolks. Strange as that was, her house's transformation was all the stranger. Every window was blocked off by a massive extrusion of pink coral, like tree branches. The chimney bubbled over with sea foam. A layer of mud grew outward from the foundation, slowly swallowing the hedges.
The knowledge came from a feeling: the house was now filled with water. All one aquarium. With no sign of an exodus, all her visitors must still have been inside. Did they hoard one corner of air, treading water madly, still arguing over who was closest to which clown?
"It's my home," she told the house as if she could convince it. Then she marched to the front door and ripped it open, ready for a flood, only to be greeted by a wall of undulating lilac. The frame was filled with the tendrils of an anemone, far larger than any she'd purchased, far larger than any known to exist.
They were full of poison, and at that size they could surely kill a human foolish enough to wade into their forest. Clownfish were immune as part of a symbiotic arrangement, so perhaps this was some sort of passage to test the worthy. If Jacquelyn wasn't worthy she was nothing, just a stepping stone to Saltwater Bluff consumed as the sea rose to meet it.
On the other side was the world she built, she reminded herself, but the reminder didn't stick. The idea slid off her soul like rain down a windshield. They built? The clowns... No, they never so much as stuck a fin out their tanks. Their world couldn't expand without her help, so she, in some fashion, must have been the one to grow the coral, to pour the new waters, and to put up the security anemone.
So, logic dictated, it had to let her pass. She would march through and be a creature in her handcrafted ocean, complete with gills so she could finally talk to her clowns about their performances. But if she wasn't permitted... dead when she fell through the other side, belly up like the understudies she once purchased.
Jacquelyn didn't test it with an arm. Her whole body passed into the purple tendrils at once, sensation flooding her skin to meet her spirit.
...
"I already know how this one ends," Loric commented idly, stashing the book away in his pack. He leaned back with a groan, having to twist several times on the way to avoid putting pressure on a bruise. The position he wound up in on the dirt floor was something like a lizard trying to sleep with only its knees touching the ground. "So all this was a trap."
"As was the first tent," Hygenis added to confirm. "They knew what to look for, so they set out multiple snares. Their mistake was in baiting them identically."
"Part of one of the hunts opened on us, I assume. Who was it do you suppose?"
"It was the marmosets of Weaviranch," she said bluntly.
"How do you figure?"
"The marmosets are traders, but they live high in the canopy, and so prefer lightweight goods like leathers and vassalwood. Also it could not have been the Scion, who would send beities and not humans. All his humans are under Butterfur's care, and she wouldn't send them out to hunt each other.
Most telling... was that the first tent had a Flameguide and a Strikeflint. No beity sends out such assets without supervision. And these Bashbeities, most likely actually Chamberhands, felt the need to stick to their lines, which meant their master was listening." Loric looked around.
"I don't understand. There's no one here."
"No one but us monkeys." Hygenis tossed her hook to a vertical orientation, caught the bottom, and dragged the blade across the ceiling. It caught in the hanging bulge of white hide, ripping it open and spilling its contents, some of which was chewed leathers and tiny wooden puzzle beads meant to be toys, but most of which was a single mass of golden yellow fur and screams.
The fur ball landed on its feet, then did its best to stay off them, bounding around the tent with a terrible chittering, forced to curve at the wall by an unseen force. Loric wanted to get on his feet to avoid its rampage, but the pain was too intense to bother. Instead he dropped the widest part of his mirror into its path.
The little creature slammed into the bronze and bounced off, dazed enough to sit still and realign its head with both hands, each finger no bigger than a grain of rice. It was plain to see that Hygenis was right; this was a marmoset. A blinding white underbite failed to contain its heaving panicked breaths. A tail like a silk worm curled around one leg and then the other, indecisive. It feared the fate of the pepper-leathers, whether that be days of excruciatingly intense sunlight or being chewed and swallowed by a human before the moon rose.
"Here is the master of the Bashbeities," Hygenis said, "or one given temporary command of them. Since he's been sent this far into the Shedlands he must be even more expendable than these sticks. A name as low as his eyes I'd wager." The marmoset screamed at her in response, eyes back to darting even before they'd recovered from the impact. He searched for a means of escape that didn't exist.
"How does he not have the Shed?" Loric asked.
"They probably put a fine mesh cloth up there," the dentist guessed, pointing at the shredded hide pocket with her weapon. "That might filter the curse out of the air, but it meant he could never leave it during the entire expedition, like he was trapped in a bubble underwater. Their plan was entirely reliant on their slaves taking orders from their tent."
"Only now they've fled," Loric taunted the little animal, surprised at his own cruel tone. Just a few days ago he would've been careful to make every word, even to a mosquito that had chosen him as meal, as ingratiating as possible. "He's all alone with two evil bloody mouths, and if he takes one step outside the tent he'll be in the diseased air, and his life will end slower than if he were to pluck out his own hairs one by one."
"It's his choice," the dentist contemplated aloud, "whether he wants that fate or if he'd rather starve to death in here, mummified inside his beautiful coat so another beity can come along, peel it off his bones, and wear it for themselves. Maybe a vain praying mantis." The marmoset finally regained his higher faculties, spied Loric's pack. The mesh could be transferred easily, but the plan required his authority to transfer from Chamberhand to Shelvtale and Fixtooth just as easily.
"I, Ellapock of Weaviranch, of inerrant errands, order you to put me in your bag and escort me safely out of the Shedlands!" His squeaks almost stretched into the inaudible. Fear concentrated his black eyes to soot gems.
"Isn't that adorable," Hygenis mocked, "he tried to give himself a title. Ellapock of inerrant errands... so you're just an errand boy. And your name is so low I can barely make it out. What was it again? I've already forgotten."
"I think it was Smellac-" Loric started, smile growing.
"Ellapock!" the yellow marmoset shrieked in correction. "Don't pretend you don't know me! I was there when you tried to sneak into our hands. It was my turn to mount, and then all of a sudden there's a giant pile of humans and I'm nearly crushed. So of course I wanted to catch you and straighten you out, that way you don't hurt anyone else." He crossed his tiny arms and used the sides of his feet to swivel away from them.
"Ah, so it was for the public good," Loric said, lightly smacking his forehead. "We should really be on our way then, as we don't want to roll over and crush you in your sleep." Moving felt like he was extricating himself from the crushing grip of a gigantic lobster, but it was worth it to further traumatize the little slave driver. Loric feigned getting up and reaching for the flap.
"No don't!" the itty bitty beity begged. "Don't let that foul air in here!" He grabbed at his fur, but it was so silky he couldn't even make it clump. One full gasp of the Shedlands could be enough to rob him of it forever, followed by his sanity, and finally his heartbeat. "Please... just take me with you. I don't care where, as long as it's out of the Shedlands. Then we'll just go our separate ways. I'll forgive you your trespasses. Please."
"Unless you speak for the Scion of the Salmon Run your forgiveness is worth less than nothing," Hygenis informed him, crawling closer like a stalking cat, putting her nose but a finger away from him. The monkey cringed. "So what reason have we to do anything other than skewer you and roast you until that fur is gone anyway and your skin is nice and crispy?"
"They don't call us bloody mouths for nothing," Loric added with an implied cackle.
"I can't be more than three bites!" Ellapock the pathetically panicked reasoned. "Any fire would expend more energy than I would give, be assured. I... I can be of use! Small I may be-"
"And low," Loric interjected.
"-and low... but I am still a beity! If you need to get past a guard I can claim you as my property and they'll have to let you through. If I mount you we have an excuse for covering your faces. Yes! That's a great idea," he seemed to congratulate himself, as if an unseen committee between his ears had just put forth their only good suggestion in years.
"That does tempt," Loric said with a tilt of his head, looking at Hygenis.
"As long as he understands that revealing us at a crucial moment would be pointless," Hygenis extrapolated, "because dental reflexes would allow me to snatch him off the scalp and crush him to death the moment he acted out of accordance with our instructions."
"He does understand," Ellapock said, finally regaining enough composure to stand. "Glad the talk of eating is behind us. I will also throw in a promise not to eat either of you, even with the right sauce. Now if you would recover my filtration cloth from overhead."
"You're not going in the bag," Loric told him sternly. "We have fragile treasures in there, and we'll give you no opportunity to sabotage them."
"But then what shall I do?" the marmoset asked, already sounding betrayed, as if their ten second old bargain was a years-long friendship. "I can't go out there unprotected; I'll contract the Shed!" Hygenis responded by reaching into the leather straps wrapping her staff, extracting yet another sharpened shard of metal. This one was a little flatter and wider, more of a blade than a needle. She handed it to Ellapock, who held it in both hands like it was his own grave marker.
"You'll have to give yourself a haircut." The beity briefly reconsidered the option of death.