Diana wished that Pylo had picked somewhere else to hold her little performance.
The Catharsisium was purpose built, staffed and maintained by the Estate explicitly to support unfiltered and unfettered expression between Sirens!
A place for the deepest expression of what it meant to be a Courtesan Unshackled by the need to hold back and draw away from the fragilities and weaknesses of others.
According to the fluttering waifs who simply dipped in to gawk and say that they had lived the ‘brutality’ of the Catharsisium there was of course all of the usual things to say it was for.
According to such TOURISTS It was a place for the supremely soul wracking and gentle sport of phage-duels and the tragic violence of the deep poems.
To such shallow attendants It was for exsanguinating orgies of hate and love, for unforeseen violence mixed together into new tender forms.
And Diana was not going to deny that they got up to quite a lot of all of that. But for those that came in on the regular it was much more than that. It was where you could spin a tale without worrying about decorum.
Where it was not only acceptable but expected that you would not sugar coat, sweet lace or gently fold your words and feelings regarding others.
The Catharsisium was for experimentation and exploration for the young and old. For enlightenment and education, for relief and relaxation.
It was a place for Siren sport and Courtesan honesty and those not of the Matriarch clan that attended were pre-vetted to either be able to withstand the danger of attending or had the necessary insurance to be restored from backup lest their own endurance prove insufficient to survive as an audience.
It was to be quite honest Diana’s favorite part of the Estate, where you could let your oviriticuli free and not second guess if a passing phrase would lacerate some flossy spun carbon confectionary of a courtier into rotten pseudo-plasm.
The only place that was a contender for that spot was the Courtesan Forbidden Armory training vault and they didn't serve drinks there!
Diana loved the Catharsisium (but did not Love or Mother help her Treasure it. That’s a good way to get a pummeling from Euclia AND Artemis) and could not really fault any other sister for sharing that attachment.
It was a place for Contest, Sport and honesty where Diana could either let loose with the absolute best and worst she could muster from her cortices or at least expect to see another inspirational performer do the same.
Pylo, the young punk that she was, attended many of the contests, the screaming songs of pain, the anguished dances of the prize winner Oliana.
Also just to chill and vent caustics and swap profanity when there was nothing big planned.
She was of the kind of sister that the appeal of the Carthesisium pumped hot and heavy and strong through her Oviriticuli and Cortices and having been just that same sort Diana could appreciate it.
Pylo was no shallow dipping waif, She was one of the regulars. And so again Diana had to admit the attachment to the place was appreciated. The sprout was even genuinely competent at word play and laescing. If still an inexperienced and rambunctious newcomer.
So yes Diana understood the young Scion of Mother felt a special connection and importance to the place.
But forcing everyone’s schedules so that nothing interesting could be performed at all?
Making sure every surface was sanitized down?! scrubbing all the archival listings of any scrap of the potentially pathological or debilitating.
There were deep and familiar stains in the Catharsisium that Diana fondly remembered splashing the vitriol for herself.
There were scars and burns and festering wounds that had been borne by the place as points of pride for all involved.
Deep aromatic history hung and coalesced pungently in every single cranny! The last cleansing of this magnitude had been seven Mother Broods ago!
Sure the more interesting and novel examples of virulent hatefuck that had taken on a bit more life then anyone intended were siloed off into little corners of the Menagerie. Some had even gone into the Forbidden Armory.
But it was not the same thing as having them here where they were born.
The layers of grime, sludge and barely suppressed hyper aggressive virulence cloying at everything was part of the ATMOSPHERE and AMBIENCE.
But Pylo had to ask for the place to be made presentable for the public!
And all of that for this?!
Pylo was decent at expression In a rough sprout sort of feral way. But trying to manage anything as intricate as a self-censoring public Carthesisium performance?
It was reaching for talents that the child simply did not possess. Which was frustrating.
For this they had to freeze and sterilize that charming pink melange of fuz that had taken to molding into the light fixtures.
For an amateur’s attempts at shock and awe.
At least Diana had her rival sister to commiserate with.
“This is so bland she could have done this in the middle of the port authority customs office and it would not have disoriented a lost Servile. I love the kid but rape a twice dead stone is she trying to weaponize boredom?!”
Hoppis offered a subtle flutter of amusement but also a bit of harsh admonishment.
“Diana, she’s only just past her FIRST motherbrood of younger sisters, we were all once so young. Just because you’re going to have to start over on your Pathogenesis Aria is not an excuse to be a barren celibate about it.”
Diana’s displeasure could indeed kill, She had demonstrated that on quite a regular basis in the very spot Pylo occupied.
The curse on the rivulets of her inner surfaces were nearly primed with toxins that would leave her brood sister melting and sloughing off a good sixth of her outer tissue layers.
But not with the Carthasisium staff enforcing ‘public’ grades of hygiene and cleanliness.
“You're just fermenting in your sterile tracts of viscera because I would have won with it. Had you roilling in your own choked ecstasy sister. But it’s not just about me! They scrubbed out the Frungi! SCRUBBED OUT THE FRUNGI! It’s going to take four motherbroodings to get the smell right again!”
Hoppis entertained her aggression with a bit of her own.
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The bared flaring of sharp, dangerous, almost technically sanctioned colorful displays from Hoppis drew the attention of a cousin among the staff and a warning implication that if the two of them did not hold themselves to the standards of public performances in the Carthisium they could be looking at a dismissal from the privilege of its use until Mother’s NEXT brood.
“Oh dear Diana, your plagues are too sharp and their prose ungentle to even tickle my spite. Let alone tease my joy. I think this is more of a mulligan in your favor so you can go back to the foundations of your garden’s lineage and come up with something at least entertaining. Why I’ll even cede you thirteen generations of a lead on me when we resume after our dear young sister’s little display and her guests pack up and away.”
The insult inherent in there was still technically perfectly legal for the ‘public’. Which of course was a welcome invitation. She could always count on Hoppis for smoothing over her mood when one of the infants was being an infuriating pain.
“Maybe later sister, I welcome the concession but I’d not want to let you starve for attention. I know how much you miss my spore-play when we are too far apart. But really, did she have to make THIS a public performance?! Most of her crew could probably tank it here in a calm session.”
Hoppis gave up in trying to distract her and instead settled down away from the playful poise of predatory riposte and thrust. It was fun to be so vehement but with how close they had to hold their vitriol lest it spill out into the rest of the less durable audience there was just not that relief and honesty to it.
It was more than any of them would have found acceptable outside of even the stifling requirements of a public Catharsisium but with things so stilted it barely measured up as more than a foultasting reminder of what they could have done.
Diana did not need to say as much, her brood sister could taste it on her.
“Oh fine, if all you want to do is grump, Yes I’m a little annoyed with her too. I’m going to have to etch new bilespout calligraphy you know! But it’s her send off on her first proper courting. And she managed to even find a fetish unprecedented even in the forgottening branches of Delphi.”
Okay that distraction piqued her interest.
“The library let you look over her forgottening?! How did you manage that?!”
Hoppis offered a whispering shadow of the earlier rivalry then sighed and relented that Diana was not going to take that bait.
“I earned a favor from her for helping her with some snarls in a marriage. And no I won’t tell you which one. I can’t even recall it, she required I give it up to her afterwards.”
Diana sighed and looked up.
“Confirm anything interesting besides that our young sister managed to somehow find a new way to depart dear mother’s embrace?”
Hoppis got a bit coy for a moment and idly fluttered a few more dangerous hues, drawing the ire of one of the more removed cousins that worked oversight for the Carthesisium.
“Well, I can confirm that there IS indeed at least one of the three rumors about dear Aunt Morrigan that is true.”
Oh that is interesting, almost enough of a distraction to make up for the childish twaddling about that Plyo was doing in the central point of the Catharsisium. As if her meagre tugging on the hearts and minds of her audience deserved to be in the sights of the primary purifiers.
“Really?! Only One?!”
Hoppis sighed and negated the hope.
“No Delphi only let me retain that it was AT LEAST one out of her forgottening. All three could still be true, or even more than the three we suspect.”
Diana clumped a bit closer together in defeat and her sister offered a conciliatory jab and a deep plunge of the richer memories of the experience.
“Here, this is all I got, But it might be enough to work something else out through other channels.”
And it was quite a nice touch to share that, but as always knowing the details just made it all the more clearer how little could be guessed from the vault.
The Library Delphi kept the clan’s secrets well. Even to those daughters that could weasel a little bit of access to them free with unrecalled favors.
“Yeah. Thanks Hoppis.”
With that there was not much else to do but turn attention back to Pylo and her earnest, childish, fumbling and stumbling through a presentation that every single Siren who had seen more than three broods of the mother could see was already utterly unnecessary.
She had won over her entire crew and most of her audience before even showing up.
But the effort gave Pylo the excuse to share the Carthisium with her potential court. Which alright inconvenience and childish waste of everyone’s time (and the ruination of ages of local character they would have to rebuild) might barely be forgiven.
Her and Hoppis were probably going to eventually settle down with something in the Courtesan Forbidden Armory after all. Following in the long tradition the other long timers of the Catharsisium.
So trying to share this aspect of themselves would have been redundant with their future loves.
Annoying it might be Diana had to admit that she did not really hold any ill will for her young sister. But she was going to miss those stains, that pungent sickly flavor that only came in when a place had felt the wretched collapse of a dozen ecocosms.
The cloying taint that required serious decontamination and censoring programs to even describe beyond its walls?
All cleaned. Sanitized and softened to utter banality.
Diana needed another distraction from her mourning!
“So really? Delphi has no sign ANY Courtesan has gone off as a Ship’s Crew before this? That can’t be right. I know there are plenty of our sisters and cousins who go for that kind of rut.”
Hoppis offered confirmation.
“Not as her first courting like this, Not as the founding member of the crew, not from Mother’s direct spawn. Not one, It’s a curious and incidental series of technicalities but the impression of the results of such a query are very firm.”
Not that she would distrust her dear brood sister but Diana had been burned before, this might be a trick. After all there were plenty of Ship Wifes if you dug into the unforgotten records. Surely one of those had started out with a thing for crewing a maiden voyage?
“What about Gloria?! She was a Pirate Queen! Surely she went into things like that?”
But Hoppis negated that too.
“That Ship was already properly mature when she joined and she conquered that crew, did not join together with the initial one. And all the other ones on record it was not the Courtesan’s first court. I know! It’s only strange that it’s strange.”
That was a pattern that spoke to something deeper, for some reason no sister had picked a ship crew as a first court?
That tasted like something done with a purpose.
Courtesan was a very broadly spread variety in expressing Siren fascinations and prided itself on its perversions. There were plenty of ships that had been born and grown in Matriarch’s Gown or one of the less tightly controlled territories that might still have a scion travel too prior to her first courting.
That such was absent suggested perhaps there was a good reason Mother never had beget a daughter inclined that way.
Hoppis however could taste the discomfort the revelation was bringing and offered relief.
“Oh don’t furl up so Diana! Liason does maiden voyages like this all the time, I’m sure she will be fine.”
That got a dismissive puff of laughter at that. If those half starved waifs could manage?!
“Liason? Really! Yeah if one of those collared and chained army skolds can manage that lil Pylo will be fine. She’s tougher and plumper than four of those discount shriveling prudes combined.”
Hoppis offered laughter that mingled with her own in an effervescent cloud and yet another dangerous flash of forbidden hues to taunt the staff.
“Indeed, They hardly count as Sirens.”
The disgruntled ruffle from one of the attendant cousins had Diana thinking at least one of them probably was the product of a marriage into Courtesan from its longtime rival clan.
Which of course meant Diana layered further thickening agents into her shared laughter with Hoppis.
But not in any way that could distract from Pylo’s desperate performance.
The Carthisisium was hers right now after all.
Wouldn't want to spoil the poor dear’s presentation.
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