There was a loud crashing sound from somewhere downstairs, followed by an angered scream.
Fiona dropped the book she was reading and sprang from her bed, dashing downstairs to find Daisy standing over a broken plate and a dozen deviled eggs spread across the floor. She winced.
“Samurai again?” she asked.
Daisy glared at Fiona. “These cats are a menace.”
Fiona crouched and started picking up eggs. “I’m sorry. I’ll clean this up. And I’ll replace the eggs. And the plate.”
“It’s not about replacing it,” Daisy said sharply. “It’s about the fact that this keeps happening. I’ve lost track of how many things she’s broken.”
“There’s no need to berate Fiona about it,” said Thistle as he walked in. He crouched down to help Fiona. “Samurai’s just a cat. Fiona can’t control her behavior.”
Daisy sighed heavily. “I know she can’t control it. Just like she can’t control the way Guardian keeps attacking my leg, or the way Druid keeps nearly tripping me, or the way Rogue keeps bringing me dead birds. She can’t control any of them because they’re wild animals. How long are we going to have to live like this?”
“Sorry, sorry,” Fiona said hastily as she deposited a handful of eggs on the largest plate fragment. From somewhere behind her Samurai started nuzzling against her elbow. The tabby always acted affectionate after destroying something.
“Why did you make so many of these, anyway?” Thistle asked.
“I wanted to use up the last of the eggs before they went bad. And your mom likes deviled eggs,” Daisy explained as she fetched the broom.
“I’m really sorry,” Fiona repeated.
Daisy didn’t really deserve all this trouble. She was a kindhearted woman who loved Thistle dearly and Fiona felt immense guilt for all of the trouble she caused her. Back when the war started, Andra had needed to stash Fiona somewhere where her status as a hero wouldn’t be discovered, and Riven’s brother’s cottage in the outskirts of Parapet City was the perfect place. “Everyone forgets about Parapet City,” Andra had said. Fiona wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but she knew that Andra was a brilliant strategist who would ensure that Fiona didn’t inadvertently cause any genocides.
When she had first arrived, Daisy had welcomed her warmly, excited to meet a friend of Riven’s. Thistle’s wife was an unusually tall elf, but had the customary pointed ears and angular features. She had brown hair and skin and due to a birth defect her left arm was shorter than the right and the forearm and hand curved oddly. Thistle made enough money at his accounting firm to sustain the two of them, so Daisy worked as a homemaker, doing most of the cooking and chores and preparing for their soon-to-arrive baby. Kaylen would have bristled at this arrangement, Fiona knew, but the pair of them seemed happy enough with it.
Unfortunately, Fiona had quickly worn out her welcome. The cats had not hesitated to make themselves at home and caused Daisy no end of trouble. Add to that the fact that Andra insisted that Fiona lay low as much as possible and not work, afraid that her ears made her too easily recognizable, and it hadn’t taken long for the huge warrior to get in Daisy’s way. By the end of the second month, it was clear that Daisy wanted her out, a desire that had only grown when Daisy became pregnant a few months later. As the birth of her child grew closer, she was only becoming more anxious to be free of the burden of taking care of a guest.
When they had finished cleaning up, Thistle led Fiona out to the living room, where they chatted while Daisy continued to prepare dinner. Riven had once described her brother as the dullest, happiest man she knew and Fiona had to agree. He seemed completely content to talk about his job of solving the same financial problems over and over again and repeatedly telling the same joke about a fisherman and a pair of nylon stockings. He was a man who loved his life, and Fiona had to admit that she was a little jealous.
Millicent arrived shortly afterward, just as Daisy announced that dinner was ready. Fiona wasn’t entirely comfortable around Riven’s mother. She got the sense that the woman didn’t like her, perhaps even blamed her for her daughter’s disappearance, and she found herself intimidated by the way Millicent seemed to quickly shift moods when talking.
The four sat down to eat, but Fiona hadn’t even finished filling her plate when Millicent asked the question she was dreading.
“Has there been any word from Riven?”
Thistle sighed. Fiona had noticed that he had a very specific sigh for whenever Millicent talked about Riven. It was a sigh that said “I know you worry about her, but you just don’t understand her.”
“No, there hasn’t been any word from her,” he said.
“It’s been a year now, you know,” Millicent said. Her tone suggested that this was important.
“Mom, she’s happy. She made her choice. She’s wanted this since she was a child.”
“You know what that world is like. You were miserable there.”
“Because I didn’t belong there. I belong in this world. Where everything is stable, consistent, logical. But Riven fits in that world. She pined after it the way I pined for one like this.”
“I already saved my daughter from being one fairy’s plaything. I’m supposed to let her go off to become another’s? They messed with her head the first time they took her. She thinks she’s going to be happy living like that, but they’re going to hurt her and force her to do terrible, degrading things.” Millicent’s voice cracked. She was trying to hold back tears.
“That doesn’t sound very pleasant,” said Daisy.
“Unless you’re Riven,” Fiona replied.
Daisy blinked, confused. “What do you mean?”
“Riven’s into that kind of thing,” Fiona explained. “Has she never mentioned that around you?”
“I’ve only met her a few times.”
Fiona shrugged. “It’s still surprising. She talks about it constantly. I’ve actually been reading some books about it, myself, in case—”
She realized what she was about to admit and shut her mouth, blushing furiously.
Thistle gestured to Fiona. “You see? Fiona understands it. Riven’s different from you and me. The things that make her happy are things that would make most people miserable.”
Millicent’s tone suddenly turned angry. “I know what she’s like. But if she were really safe, if she were really happy, she would contact us and let us know that she’s okay. Do you really believe that she’d just forget about us?”
The table fell silent. Fiona looked down at her untouched pot roast and tried to imagine the answer to Millicent’s question. Riven had always seemed completely focused on living out her fantasies, unafraid to put herself or her friends in danger to achieve them. But at the same time, she seemed to genuinely care about both her friends and family. She had helped Kaylen through her depression, she had made an enchanted weapon for Fiona. When she had gone off with that fairy had she really done so with the assumption that she would never see any of them again?
Thistle had also begun to have doubts. “It wouldn’t be hard for her. There are plenty of ways for someone in the Fae Realms to get a message to this world. Even more for a mage, since she could connect a book to Magi-net.”
“Well, not now, she couldn’t,” Millicent replied.
Thistle looked at her curiously. “What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you heard? Constellation Academy was destroyed. Their entire library was burned.”
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Fiona’s head snapped up to look at Millicent.
“Oh, gods, was anyone killed?” Daisy asked.
“About a dozen people. Everyone who was in the library at the time of the attack. They say that was the target, an attempt to make it harder for us to communicate.”
“Was there any... Did they find…?” Fiona couldn’t quite find the words to ask the question she wanted to ask. No one knew about Bookworm, and she was so tiny and looked like a bug most of the time. No one would ever find her in the rubble.
“They’ll be attacking the other libraries next, I imagine,” said Thistle. “How is Lady von Ekko planning to protect them?”
“I have to go,” Fiona murmured. And she stood and left the kitchen without waiting for a response.
As she made her way to the front door, Guardian leapt out from around a corner and nipped at Fiona’s pant leg. She ignored him and continued outside, allowing him to follow her before shutting the door behind her.
She wasn’t even sure why she was upset. If it was because of Bookworm or Riven or the fact that she was stuck here and forced to place her entire life on hold just because of something some woman wrote over a thousand years ago. She wondered if she should have ignored Andra and become the hero she was supposed to be. Would she have been able to prevent the burning of the academy then? Would the war already be over? Even if she couldn’t be a hero, she wished that she could do something. She was supposed to be an adventurer, after all. She was supposed to help people and protect them.
But Andra had to be trusted. She was an unstoppable force. That was what nobody understood about her. No matter how difficult a task she was faced with she would always find a way to do it, usually a shockingly direct one. If you tried to protest or fight against her, you might be able to hold her back, even delay her, but never stop her. There was a reason Fiona called her “boss.” If Andra had decided she was going to save the world, then she was going to save the world. If she needed Fiona, she would tell her. Otherwise, the only thing the warrior could do was stay out of the way.
But was there really nothing she could do? After all, adventurers were supposed to—
Fiona shook her head, realizing that her thoughts were going in circles. She continued walking past the lines of cottages making up the outer edge of Parapet City, along the fields of wheat that composed the surrounding farmland, then beyond those, abandoning the road at a bend to wander into the woods, Guardian following at her heels.
She wished she could decide what to do. Making decisions was easy for Andra. She always seemed to know exactly how to get what she wanted. It was easy for Riven, too. She never hesitated to pursue what she wanted. Nor did Kaylen. Even when she made mistakes she seemed to shrug them off as if they didn’t matter at all. Sometimes it felt to Fiona as if she was playing by a completely different set of rules from everyone else. For her, making mistakes meant punishments and lost friends. For Kaylen, it just meant a headache and teasing. Fiona would call it unfair, but that wouldn’t change anything. She had to accept reality for what it was.
She managed to muddle her way through life by imitating others. That was all a homunculus was, she supposed. An imitation of a human. Or several humans, really. First her father. Then the boys at school. Finally, the women in her life. She was a strange mish-mash of traits taken from each. She had made herself muscular because she had observed that the stronger children were not bullied as much. Then she had become a warrior because she had observed that warriors were muscular. Every decision she had made was like this. Every choice, since leaving the flask, had been an imitation of someone else. Was there any part of her that was truly her?
Unexpectedly, the answer appeared before her as she walked. When she rounded a weeping willow, she came across dozens of slimes, all laying in a huge pile. Fiona froze, staring at the featureless blobs. They looked like a bowl of oddly-shaped marbles. It was said that slimes were dangerous, mindless creatures that attacked anything that drew near. They could turn their surface corrosive in an instant and dissolve anything they touched. However, these slimes didn’t move to attack her, or show any sign that they were aware of her presence. Perhaps they were sleeping. She thought of when her cats were young and would sleep in a pile. Did slimes sleep?
Guardian crept forward, crouching slightly. When he was close to one of the slimes, he reached out slowly and batted at it with his paw a couple of times. The slime did not react. It didn’t seem to be interested in hurting anyone.
Relaxing slightly, Fiona continued to stare at the slimes. This was what she was at her core, wasn’t it? A slime. She was nothing but a brainless animal imitating a human. Suddenly she felt very tired. Perhaps it was the brisk walk combined with skipping dinner, but the walk back home seemed too distant to be worth it. Why shouldn’t she just go to sleep here? After all, she belonged here as much as she belonged there.
She approached the slimes and, tentatively, reached out and touched one. Its translucent gray body was smooth and cool to the touch. Despite the name, it wasn’t slimy at all, just soft and squishy. She couldn’t recall what her own body had been like, but it felt much like her sisters when they were young. The sensation was familiar and comforting, like the feel of a familiar blanket.
She sat back against the pile, then slowly let herself lean to the side until she was lying down, using one of the slimes as a pillow. Guardian curled up next to her, his own back slightly touching her leg.
----------------------------------------
Fiona didn't wake up so much as she became aware. She couldn’t see or hear, but she felt no distress at the lack of sight and sound. She wasn’t in darkness or silence; it was more that the idea that she should be seeing or hearing something didn’t occur to her.
There were others with her. She could detect them with some sense that she didn’t have a word for. They weren’t frightening or sinister, flitting at the edge of her senses and whispering to each other. Instead they seemed open and relaxed, quietly communing with each other.
They seemed to be sharing information. Here is where food can be found. Here is safety. Here is where there are other slimes. They shared methods of changing shape, how to become hard or sharp, how to become small and dense. One shared a method for becoming fire, making it easy to consume foods that would normally require more energy to digest than they would provide. Another described methods of moving through water, growing tentacles to swim or becoming buoyant to float. Still another told a cautionary tale of an encounter with a strange monster that stabbed slimes with a needle-like appendage and stole a part of them.
Something about this state of being was familiar to Fiona. She had been like this once. It was before she had been capable of remembering experiences, but she now knew that it must have been in her infancy, when her father had first brought her to life. Some of the knowledge from that time was still within her, it seemed. For example, she knew how to make herself able to detect light and sound.
She attuned her body appropriately and took a look at her surroundings. She was still in the forest, where she had gone to sleep. The sun had set and stars dotted the sky. Guardian was there, pacing back and forth and meowing frantically. Her clothes were there, too, on the ground around her. With some surprise she realized that for the first time in years she had changed shape. In fact, she had returned to a shape much like her original, resembling the slimes. She told herself to remain calm, that she would find a way to change back, but then she realized that she wasn’t frightened at all. She knew she should be panicking, yet she felt safe.
One of the slimes addressed Fiona. She wasn’t sure how she knew it was addressing her, but it noted her confusion and apparently thought that she was lost. It offered her a description of her surroundings, describing the nearest human settlements and rivers. The information settled into her mind, becoming a map. It asked to look into her mind in exchange. She did not know how to prevent this and saw no particular reason to, so she allowed it to look. After just a moment it reacted with something akin to a yelp of excitement. The others gathered around, curious.
They reacted with awe as she showed them her knowledge and memories. The taste of cheese soup, the proper way to sheath a sword, the way to become skin, muscle, bone, and hair, the complex emotions she felt when she was around Riven, her favorite song, the first time a classmate had knocked the books out of her hands, the feeling of taking a deep breath of fresh air right after a rain, the smell of a dungeon, the history of the Obeliski war, the feeling of Abigail’s hand in hers. The slimes understood little of this, and they were capable of remembering even less, but their excitement as they sifted through this treasure trove of information made Fiona feel proud. Maybe the simple act of living and having experiences had a value of its own.
The slimes begged her to demonstrate her ability. She replied that she didn’t know how. She had only done it once. The slimes explained that if she had done it once, she could do it again, that as long as one knew what humans were made of, as long as one knew how they looked and felt, that any slime would be capable of doing it. She told them that she wasn’t a slime, that she was a homunculus, but they didn’t understand. She could do it, they promised. If she tried, the shape would come.
She realized that they were no longer begging her to change because they wanted to see her do it. They were encouraging her because she thought that she couldn’t do it. She resolved to give it a try. After all, she couldn’t stay here forever.
The map that makes up a human was still part of her, as well as the memory of the changes she had made to it over the years, and the sense of how her body felt. She brought all of those thoughts to the surface of her mind which, without the constraints of a physical brain, she found allowed her to think about it all at once. She told her body what to do and she felt a strange pulling sensation that seemed to touch every part of her, inside and out as her body returned to its tall, muscular, cat-eared form.
She lay there, naked on the forest floor, gasping for breath for a few minutes. Guardian came over and began rubbing his face against hers, purring. When she had finally caught her breath, she stood and pulled her clothes back on. She took another look at the slimes, which continued to sit in an unmoving pile, before walking away. She wondered if these slimes would tell others of the strange slime full of impossible experiences. Perhaps she would become a legend amongst the slimes.
She made her way back through the woods, the farmland, the cottages. Despite the fact that she had been walking aimlessly, the route home stood clear in her mind. When she finally made it back to Thistle’s house she found that the living room was still lit. She took a deep breath and opened the door, Guardian scampering through ahead of her.
Thistle was sitting there, alone. It seemed that he had decided to stay up and wait for her to come home. He looked up at her from the couch, relieved.
“I’m going to go to the Fae Realms,” Fiona announced. “I’m going to find out what happened to Riven. And if I have to, I’m going to rescue her.”