The day, as it turned out, really was slow—and I had no idea how to deal with that.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to relax. Contrary to Kelly’s opinion, and also the opinions of James, Tayir, most of my sisters-in-persuasion, and a few others, I was perfectly capable of the deed. I’d met Artemis on a restorative journey through the Greek woods, after all!

It was the part where we were taking it easy that I was struggling with. My methods of relaxing had always been focused around some kind of effort—hiking, cooking, learning a new skill totally unrelated to work, applying my mind to a puzzle, or more social exertions. Now I needed, apparently, to do something that wasn’t effortful, that didn’t involve any of the talents related to my Path or to my weekday ventures.

Conveniently, I’d spent one in seven days of my entire childhood and early adulthood under those rules. A lot of that time had been spent studying the liturgy and the exegetic commentary—law, mostly; there were a couple million words of it as of fifteen hundred years before I was born, and it didn’t slow down. But a lot of it had been spent… well, relaxing.

Inconveniently, there’d been a decade and a half between then and now.

If I can infuse a vapor or a liquid with one essence, I mused, is there any reason I can’t with another?

“Sophie,” Tayir said in his deep, resonant bass, “I will not say that worse have—that I have not seen worse.”

I kept my eyes closed despite the urge to glare at him, which would have been ridiculous when I was just embarrassed that I’d apparently been thinking out loud. “You won’t say it because it’s not true, or because you’re too nice?”

“I have taught children,” he rumbled pensively. “Those younger than four years may have struggled more than you are now.”

“Rude,” I muttered. I breathed in slow, imagining the air circulating through my body—chest, belly, hips, left leg, and then through the foot to the other foot and back up to my scalp. I breathed it all out, emptying my lungs gently and completing the circuit, and started breathing in again, trying to let my mind clear.

If I can infuse a vapor with essence, and it stays that way, I found myself thinking, can I combine the infused essences to form a blend of gaseous molecules that’s still a stable meta-cycle?

It wasn’t, Tayir had said, about having an empty mind. Rather, it was about allowing the things that came into your mind to flow out, to let everything pass you. I’d cracked a joke about over and through and he’d just nodded gravely, because of course I was a universe away from the book in question, and then we’d started.

He’d said that an hour ago, and I was still getting nowhere on the meditative front even as we slowly worked our way through positions and visualizations.

What happens if we spray something with the essence-vapor? Does it matter if it’s attuned or opposed or neutral? Can we fuel runes with it, or form runes with it?

Comfortable positions, at least.

I wonder what Ketka’s outfit is going to look like?

“I just can’t do this,” I said quietly after a few more breaths. “This is incredibly boring except for when I’m thinking, whether about alchemy or something else, and I’m not getting any less distracted.”

“Not all are well-suited to the practice.”

I opened my eyes to see him smiling at me faintly, and he just shrugged when I quirked an eyebrow at him. “What,” I demanded, “is that face?”

“So few have I met here, as ill-suited to stillness as you are.” His smile flickered into a grimace for a moment, and he shook his head at my baffled expression. “All these years, and the grammar of my mother tongue remains so ingrained as to twist my words.”

“So few have you met here,” I began slowly, thinking it through and framing it in the grammatical slips I’d heard Tayir make on a regular basis. “You’re saying that you haven’t met many people in Shem who are as bad at sitting still as I am?”

“Just so!”

“Grinning idiots,” an unexpected voice interjected. “Ease time-wasting is one thing. Striving for frustration is against letter and spirit.”

“Shuli!” I opened my eyes to see the speaker glowering at both of us from where she was sitting on the grass with Shafta. “I thought you were holding the circle for Kartom!”

The young sorceress huffed, sitting up from where she was leaning back against her partner’s side. “Even the Pillar doesn’t attend to duties someone else can fulfill on Ease.”

Shafta nodded, eyes still closed. “My roster-work,” she said softly, “with James’s review. Those who can, but rarely do, will hold the two ongoing rituals and attend the two Tower duties. Tayir at Ease’s beginning—then Byana, and now Savata. Zenith will bring the duty to Zeva, then Tomas, and then the fist.”

“The mailed fist,” Shuli explained on the junior Clerk’s behalf when Shafta didn’t give any indication of elaborating. “We are most attacked at Ease’s Howl—the fist stands watch.”

“Okay, but what’s—”

“Killers,” Shafta said flatly, interrupting me. “The great dealers of death, the foundation on which Kibosh stands safe instead of burning. Rafa for the evening, Farmer for the night, the Captain, and then Esse for Howl’s End.”

“So that’s…” I frowned. “Three-hour shifts each?” The changeover would happen at three o’clock, the end of howl. We’d go from the end of High Striving—Second Ease of Growth, formally—to First of One in Harvest, also known as Descent’s Onset.

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There was a wealth of nomenclature, and very little of it was sticking. Descent’s Onset was pretty cool, though, and an interesting way to think of the season’s shifts. The apex of Striving was past, and we had the time of Harvest, three fortnights long, before the season of Striving ended and Frost brought us into the season of Quiet. Three fortnights of that, which meant three Eases, and then it would be into…

Well, I’d forgotten what came after that, and it didn’t matter.

“Got distracted again,” I said by way of apology when I realized I was being glowered at again. “Trying to do this meditation thing has been worse than fruitless, honestly. What were we talking about?”

There was a moment of silence, and a series of different expressions flickered across the others’ faces. Tayir was struggling not to laugh, and Kelly likewise to not giggle, but Shafta and Shuli were less amused.

Perplexed and annoyed, if I had to guess, in different proportions and with different tertiary-and-onwards emotions.

“Who holds the Magus’s ritual,” Shafta eventually said. “Others, whose duty it never is.”

“That makes sense.” I stretched, still mostly expecting to feel the popping of joints and the complaints of a body that had never worked all that well even at its best. It hadn’t stopped being novel and deeply delightful when that didn’t happen. I hadn’t gotten any less happy about being able to stretch my legs flat in front of me and both touch my head to my knees and wrap my fingers around the soles of my feet. “So, fuck this, sorry Tayir, what are you all up to?”

“Casual, intimate physical contact is a social ritual of affection,” Shuli said with an expression that was obviously trying, and failing, to be neutral. “Colloquial names for it include cuddling and snuggling, whose Qatn cognate snog bears only a similar meaning rather than an identical one. It’s quite pleasant, and serves equally as a passing joy, an exploration of possibility, and a strengthening of existing bonds.”

“Intimacy is an act of trust,” Shafta said by way of agreement, with a far better act of blandness. “Exchanges of trust are a matter of known art in the study of the behavior of persons.”

Kelly started giggling at that. Fighting a smile, I opened my mouth to either play along or give some sort of scathing retort—I had one working its way through my larynx, I just didn’t know what it was—and was beaten to the punch by Tayir.

“You should attempt it!” His bass was a little fluttery from laughter, just a hair less resonant than usual, and one by one the non-Kellys of us began to fail at keeping our composure. “Perhaps that would aid your meditation. In that same pose, let your legs and hers touch, and place your palms on one another’s knees.”

Raising an eyebrow, feeling like he had somehow just handed the baton over to me for the next line—had I missed a cue that had handed it over to him?—I scooted myself the foot or so needed to do that to him. “Like so?” I fluttered my eyelashes at him, doing my best to simper and knowing that it was a horrible imitation. I had one, maybe two more lines before I lost my own composure and started cackling, so… “I wonder if we should also gaze soulfully into each other’s eyes? Experimentally, of course. For science.”

The rest of them lost it at that, with reactions ranging from Shuli’s snickering and Shafta’s tinkling giggles—which, judging by her body language, she was infuriated by—to Tayir’s quite literally earthshaking guffaws. The startled way I reacted to the ground shaking underneath me seemed to set them off even harder, which got me laughing harder.

The moment stretched and our laughter filled it, pealing joyfully until inevitably we wound down and started to catch our breath.

I somehow wound up lying on my back with my head in Kelly’s lap, her fingers very carefully massaging the base of my neck. Making appreciative murmuring noises, I focused all of my spare attention—that is, the attention not committed to enjoyment of the moment—on convincing my muscles to relax under her ministrations. “You know,” I murmured eventually into the quiet, “this isn’t so bad. I’m on board with Ease now, I think.”

“Predictable,” Shuli remarked. “And rude—one should appreciate the views of tree and sky.”

“Hey!” I objected vaguely, knowing she could see perfectly well that my eyes were closed. “If Kelly wanted me to appreciate tree and sky, she wouldn’t be rubbing my neck. Ain’t doing nothing but my best melting impression.”

“Instant puddle, like a spell hit you broadside,” my headrest agreed. “We shoulda tried this for having you meditate.”

“Or sway, and let her open her eyes.”

“Shuli,” Kelly said sweetly, fingers pausing momentarily before continuing in their motion, “even if Tayir isn’t the type to properly appreciate it, we’re all aware I’m wearing a corset and that my tits are fantastic even without one. How far Sophie and I go in flirting and flaunting at each other is our business.”

“Theirs and the Clerk Administrator’s,” Shafta agreed with a hint of something sharp in her voice. “Barely mine, never yours. Let it go, alhumah.”

There was a moment’s pause, a pause in which I was beginning to worry that this fight, whatever it was, was going to ruin the morning. Tayir broke the tension with a chuckle, and I felt Kelly’s attention shift and her fingers lose a little bit of their force as she turned slightly.

“The breathing exercises,” he said in a tone of deep consideration, “were indeed ineffective. Some small degree of pressure on her trapezius has a greater effect than any of them. At her I look, and see nothing but a woman gone to bliss.”

“No thoughts,” I agreed. “Head empty.”

Everyone was pretty laughed out, but that got a few appreciative chuckles. I didn’t know all that much about the social culture and structure of Kibosh overall, and this was just one specific—and somewhat atypical, I was pretty sure, given the combination of being near the Forest and having a dungeon—village in a pretty substantial country. But self-deprecating humor, used to defuse the tension of a moment, was often a solid choice.

It was also a… point, in a way, in a sort of not-exactly-counting-coup. Shuli had lost some kind of social standing in a miniscule way by sniping at Kelly, and Kelly had in turn slapped her down for it. I couldn’t really tell whether Shuli was jealous, vicariously ashamed, in possession of ethical objections, or had some sort of specific history, but it was unlike her… and the over-thinking of things was very much not unlike me, I reminded myself, but that was nothing new.

They were all basically adults. Young adults, sure, especially the younger two girls. Socially raw and not settled into respectability and responsibility, absolutely. But they could deal with their own drama, and I could trust them to have it handled, which was a novelty and a half.

Within a couple of minutes, their conversation was already turning away from the apparently-contentious topic of Kelly’s sway-potential. It shifted to the sort of mundane trivialities that people in Kibosh used for filling in the gaps and hunting for what the next subject was, and in short order their voices shifted back from tense to relaxed.

I wasn’t trying to meditate or to be mindful of this or that. I wasn’t performing, didn’t need to quip or parse other peoples’ quips—maybe it was because it was Ease, but everyone was acting like I could just be present, without needing to put any effort, any striving, into being present. So I really could lie back, focus on turning into more of a relaxed puddle under Kelly’s touch, luxuriate in how good the clothes felt, and enjoy the warmth as the sun rose higher in the sky.

Ease, as it turned out, was pretty alright when you had friends to spend it with.