The roof of the Sinker was a pretty okay place to stay, actually. A ladder led through the ceiling onto a flat summit ringed with gothic-y spikes, much like the spot where Salazar had tried to kill them all. Thankfully, this roof didn’t have any disturbing plant-babies, so that was a plus.
Quet put down her glyph and, after a couple of failed attempts, summoned a sleeping bag. As she suspected, the ambient magic wasn’t pulled as strongly into the Ley Lines this high up. Convenient.
With something to sit on, she brought out her cooking supplies. Leftovers wouldn’t cut it, she needed to make something from scratch. She pulled out an impressively hefty handwritten cookbook, flipped to a random page in the middle and brought out the necessary ingredients.
While she was still figuring out the proper levels of magnitude her fire glyphs should be in order to properly emulate a stove, she heard Horan float up the trap door behind her. “Hey, dude? Figured it’s around that time of day, you got anything for Mark to eat? Looks like you’ve already got the stuff out.”
Quet patted the part of the sleeping bag next to her. “I’m making patatas bravas, so even with my elite culinary skills, and also magic, that’ll probably take, like, half an hour. You’re welcome to wait up here, I guess.”
“Awesome, I think the last time I had that stuff was a tea party with the Visigoths back in… I wanna say 1820-something. I only remember that because the food was awful.” Horan glided over and watched Quet dice potatoes. “So. You, uh, you like cooking. That’s a thing.”
“Okay, when I said you could stay here, I assumed that wouldn’t entail conversation. But that’s probably my bad, actually.”
“Well, uh…” Horan shifted in discomfort and looked around the roof. “What were we supposed to do instead?”
“Dunno. Like I said, I should’ve seen this coming. Well, if you’re gonna engage with me, you might as well actually be productive.” She pointed at the smallish spice rack off to the side. “Get the right stuff, it says what in the book.”
Horan inspected the ingredient list, which Quet did not even look at as she prepped the onions. “You know, you didn’t actually answer my question.”
“Yeah I did. You asked what I expected you to do, I answered.”
“No, the… The other one, the first one. About your whole cooking thing.”
Quet didn’t look up while she spoke. “You never asked a question about that, you just made an observation about it.”
“I… Okay.” Horan put a bottle of olive oil onto the fold-out countertop next to Quet. “Just gonna put that there…”
“Sorry, am I being rude?” Quet looked up from her preparations while she put the oil in the pan. “Sometimes I say stuff like that when my family has guests from other Domains over, and they always look at me weird and say that stuff like that’s rude. Sorry, I’m really not good at things like this.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine.” Horan relaxed. “Mark’s the same, it’s just that he’s a lot whinier about not liking crowds.” He chuckled, but received little reaction from Quet. “Okay, then.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I don’t like them, it’s more just that all the noise gets to me after a while, and there are usually a bunch of strangers who treat me like garbage once we start talking, so… I like the idea on paper, but that’s as far as I’ll go. It’s a lot more manageable when it’s just family dinners.”
“By the way,” said Horan, “Why exactly do you and Omet do that? Call your Domain your family? I can’t think of any other Primoi who do that.”
“Well… We are, aren’t we?” Quet began adding additional ingredients to the pan. “Do you have some other word for other people in your Domain besides ‘sibling’?”
“Actually, I’m second generation, so it’s mostly aunts and uncles.”
“Oh, that’s right. I think I heard somewhere that Thel was your uncle, right?”
Horan nodded.
“Yeah, we don’t really have second generations in my fa-Domain. We just kinda figure that, since we’re all siblings and all that, it’s a little gross.”
Horan groaned. “Oh no, you really are the same as Mark!”
“Hey, it’s been seven centuries of sibling dynamics! You don’t come back from that!”
Horan shrugged. “Okay, fine. I guess I, as an only child, am just too good to understand a whole extra type of family member. I’ve got my parents, and the people my parents allegedly call their brothers and sisters. Or… had.” He realized that Quet might try to follow up on that. “By the way, what’s the deal with you trying to get your family back? Aren’t you just the group cook or something?”
“Well… Yeah. But I’m also the most capable thaumaturge out of anyone I know at that party, and to my knowledge, sufficient thaumatological proficiency to create a portal to the Down Below is the only means of assisting my family in-”
“No, I was asking why.” Horan threw his hands up. “We’ve been hanging out, so to speak, for a few days now. But every time I hear you talk about them, it sounds like they treat you like garbage. I mean, Omet seems fine, but… What exactly do you see in them?”
Quet had absolutely no idea where she was supposed to take the conversation, so she opted to continue watching the ingredients cook. “Uh… What?”
“Okay, let me slow down a little.”
“No, no, it’s fine, you can…” Quet sighed. “...Sorry.”
“What I mean is,” began Horan, “Why are you so worried about them? What have they done to warrant you risking your life just to make sure they’re safe? Is there something I’m missing? Because it really does sound like they’ve been taking you for granted.”
“Well, they’re…” Quet put her fireproof gloves on and turned up the intensity of the glyph under the pot. “They’re my family, you know?”
“I don’t know. Just because you’re related- not even by blood or anything, in your case you all just manifested at once! That doesn’t mean anything by itself. I speak from experience when I say that even people who you’ve been close to for a really, really long time can turn out to be some of the worst people imaginable. That’s why I prefer friends. When you meet someone and the two of you end up close enough to really become a family, related or otherwise, that means the both of you earned it.”
“Okay, but…” Quet was becoming increasingly angry at herself for not being able to put any of the right words together. “But that applies to an actual family, can’t it? I get the impression that you’re letting personal experience cloud your judgment and cherry-picking bad examples from recent memory.” There it was.
“Wh- I’m not trying to win an argument here, I’m trying to help you!”
Quet shrank forward into her work. “Yeah, right, sorry…”
Horan wiped his eye. This conversation wasn’t going the way he wanted it to. “Look. A lot’s going on right now, and I’m just trying to get to know you. I’m risking life and limb to help you and Omet solve this whole thing, and I’m happy to do it, but… I dunno. I just want you to think about all this. Stressful situations can be a good chance to get a good look at what you’re worried about. What happened with my Domain a few months back was awful, and I wish I’d just dealt with Thel for good way back when, but… I can’t say it’s only been bad stuff since.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
When Quet had nothing to say in response, Horan got up and went back to the trap door. Halfway across the roof, he was interrupted by the sound of a bell ringing from the counter, followed by Quet mumbling “Wow, okay” just loud enough for it to be clear she wasn’t trying to hide anything from Horan.
Horan turned around. “What’s up?”
“Yeah, it’s done.” Quet scooped a cocktail of spices onto a pile of diced potatoes and held up a steaming plate. “Weird, it usually takes a lot longer. You wanted Mark to eat something, right?”
“Yup.” Horan took the plate from her. “Guess I’m just that good of an assistant, huh?”
“Ha ha. Make sure Mang gives the proper compliments to the chef.”
Horan gave a thumbs-up and turned back around. Okay, he had no idea how Quet had taken all of what he had said. Had she even paid attention? He didn’t know, and he had no intention of prying.
-
Mark was curled up in the corner of his bed, still trying to unwind from the rollercoaster of a day that had been nonstop unfolding for the past- Oh, hey, Horan was back.
Horan placed the plate on the far side of Mark’s bed and sprawled across his own. “Quet made something for you to eat. Humans need their calories, all that.” After a moment, his head tilted up. “Wait, she didn’t make me any!”
Mark popped a cube of seasoned potato into his mouth and started chewing, which produced a louder crunch sound than he had expected. “You were up there a while, did you talk about something else besides making me dinner?”
“Eh, nothing that you wouldn’t start complaining about if I started talking about it unprompted.”
Mark raised an eyebrow. “I’m picking up ‘I don’t want to talk about it because it was really awkward’ vibes from you.”
Horan moaned. “You weren’t supposed to actually learn anything from me, dude!”
“Wait, I was right? I was just saying stuff you normally say when I lie down like that.”
Horan pulled his head up from the bed to stare incredulously at Mark. “Wow, you really do do anything besides learn how to actually properly interact with people socially, huh?”
Mark shrugged. “Whatever it takes to get you off my back.”
Horan noticed a sheet of paper lowering down into view right outside the room’s sole window, dangling from a string attached to something that had not yet made itself visible. On the paper was scrawled the phrase ‘TAKE THE PLATE IMMEDIATELY’. A second later, another plate of food floated down, wreathed in a fading aura of green light.
Horan reached out and grabbed the plate right before the aura faded and pulled it inside the room. One of Quet’s glyphs rested on the rim of the plate, a safe distance from any food. Horan heard Quet mumble “Cool, it works. Maybe add a proximal activation matrix…” before fading out of earshot.
Mark slowed down in the consumption of his plate. He was already almost done. “So. She’s… something, right? I know you talked to her about something sensitive, you always do something like that.”
“Wh- excuse me? I am perfectly alright with talking about normal, non-incisive topics, it’s just that delving into the core of people’s psyches is the most relevant thing I can think of. Might not help that you’re an easy target. I’ve been conditioned.”
Mark stared at Horan blankly. “You asked her something really personal and uncomfortable, didn’t you?”
Horan refused to even act like he was making eye contact.
Mark put his plate to the sighed and leaned against the wall. “Unbelievable. You keep doing this, Horan. You always try to get someone to talk about their deepest secrets once you’ve known them for five days, then act like you have no idea what’s happening the moment someone does the same to you. I’ve got plenty to ask about you too, you know.”
Horan snorted. “Like what? I’m an open book, dude.”
“Mm-hmm, sure. Like how you were so up front and honest about why you almost kill yourself any time there’s a halfway difficult fight despite the fact that any halfway decent tactician, which would easily include you, can tell that it would be much more efficient if you provided more spread-out support?”
Horan groaned again. “Seriously? This again? I said sorry, didn’t I?”
Mark continued the moment Horan finished. “Or how about the question itself? Why are you so interested in what’s going on in people’s heads? You’re always so quiet once you get someone talking-”
“Yeah, It’s called being polite.”
Mark pursed his lips. “...But then by the time they’re done explaining whatever it is you want from then, you take the reins of the talk and do whatever you wanted to do from the outset. It’s like a battle plan. Why’re you so strategic when it comes to talking to people, but you act like an idiot when it really matters?”
Horan began to look genuinely angry. “Look, you might not understand the importance of a good impression. I don’t much blame you. You’re, what, fifty?”
“Thirty-five.”
“And you’ve spent a good deal of that small amount of time alone in a car. I, meanwhile, have been pharaoh of my- was king of my Domain for five millennia. I don’t do much besides talk to other people, plenty of whom I rarely see again.” He took another bite of his food. “The Breezy Slide’s gotten me this far, and I don’t plan on changing it as long as it keeps working.”
“Is it, though?”
Horan stopped chewing. “...Okay, you know something here. Stop.”
Mark sighed. “I know Breezy Slide isn’t just a bunch of words you threw together that you think describe you. I pay attention, I know what you’re talking about. Acting in ways that don’t come naturally for you just to get them to like you… It’s not just something you do when there’s someone that needs buttering up, is there?”
Horan put his plate to the side and pulled away from Mark, leaning against the wall in much the same way Mark was. “Okay, I get it. You don’t want me to keep messing up. We don’t need to discuss this anymore, I understand what you’re trying to get across.”
“No, no, it’s not just about that one thing anymore.” The pieces were beginning to visibly fall into place in Mark’s head. “When I look at it through this lens of weird pseudo-philosophy you’ve got going, it sort of makes sense. But what exactly are you trying to get out of it? What was it in that last fight that made you so keen to impress us?”
Horan picked his plate back up and started eating. Or rather, chewing. He didn’t feel much like swallowing.
Mark’s eyes widened. “...I’m onto something, aren’t I? Yeah, we’re in the territory where you can’t say anything that’s both true and makes you look good!”
Horan pulled his knees up to his chest and balanced his plate between them and his collarbone, tilted slightly to the right. With the angle he had his new arrangement at, he didn’t need to look Mark in the eye.
Mark read the reaction. “...Okay. You don’t like this. I… That’s fair, actually. Look. I know you don’t like it, but I’m trying to help you here. You helped me talk about things I didn’t like back when it was just us, so I’m doing the same for you. And this isn’t supposed to be revenge or anything, I’m repaying the favor.”
“Then you can stop asking me this.”
Mark was about to sigh again, but decided against it. “I know this isn’t fun for you, I definitely wasn’t happy about any of what we talked about back in the day, but trust me when I say that you’ll be really glad it’s all out there when we’re done. You were fine with talking about your family when that came up, why is this so much scarier? It can’t be that bad.”
“When you did it, it made you look good,” mumbled Horan.
“Horan, I’m the last person to care about if saying something makes you look bad, that should be obvious.”
“But you cared when I messed up back then. People only notice the Breezy Slide when it doesn’t work, you know. That’s its job.”
Mark leaned forward and rested his head on his knotted-together fingers. “Then it doesn’t work on me. I notice these things, I’m not stupid.”
Horan tilted his plate so that he could just see Mark’s face over the rim. “That just means I need to fix it. It was enough to get you to stop treating me like garbage back when we had the car, you’re just as vulnerable to it as anyone. Problem is, you know me now. You know who I am, so you know when I’m someone I’m not.”
“Yeah, but…” Mark let his head fall into his lap. “I’m not sure I do know who you are. Most of the time, you’re just going along with whatever I’m doing. When was the last time you actually got me to do something yourself? The Norse party?”
Horan shrugged, which brought his plate dangerously close to spilling its contents on the bed. He opted to bring his knees down. “I just do whatever works. You never complained before, after all. Like I said, you can only see the Breezy Slide when it fails. More I keep it up, the less you notice it.”
“But I don’t think it’s actually up during all those parties, is it? Those are the exception, aren’t they?” Mark’s speech began to speed up. “It all makes sense. It’s why you’re suddenly taking charge, why you’re actually worried about what I look like.” He smirked. “Is that just another layer of this big facade? Or the real you coming out?”
“What does it even matter? The stuff that goes on in those places should stay there. I bring it out when it’s useful, and I do more important things when there are more important things to be done. A bit like everything going on right now, in fact.”
Mark nodded. “Sure. You know I’m not the one to downplay whatever big thing is happening right now. But what’s happening right now is this: You are relaxing in a decent hotel, having freshly-cooked dinner and a calm conversation with your friend. Today was stressful, really stressful, but I specifically told everyone not to leave because I wanted to slow the rest of the day down and come out of the night ready to deal with the next batch of insanity this city has to throw at us. You can drop the act, it’s just me.”
Horan looked down at what remained of his food and didn’t say anything else, but Mark thought he saw a hint of a nod. “...Good talk.”