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Quill & Still [Book One on KU]
Chapter 77 - Lunchtime Tales

Chapter 77 - Lunchtime Tales

There would not, Kelly told me reassuringly, be a party. Not for me, at least; parties were for Tiering up, or for picking up a Feat that you’d been striving towards for a decade or more. Or, well, for Ease itself and for Festival, and every other celebration.

That’s not to say that news wouldn’t get around that I’d pushed myself hard enough to pick up a Skill, during Ease of all times. If it had been any other circumstance, any other Skill, that might have gotten me into some social hot water, but, well… apparently almost everyone was indulgently approving.

It wasn’t, after all, like I was working in my lab or studying anything related to my Path! I was trying to impress a girl, a woman whom just about everyone in Kibosh approved of.

Ketka had an infectious smile for everyone and an absolute willingness to help with anything that needed doing, from single-handing enormous tanks of water to changing diapers and bouncing a fussy baby on her belly by simply breathing. She was stunning, vivacious, a wonderful storyteller, an excellent listener, and shockingly learned; and all of these were things that endeared her to young and old alike.

More practically, her team regularly brought back substantial hauls of magical goods from the dungeon and substantial amounts of Forest fare—meat, whether from monsters or game, and various herbs and spices—which couldn’t be grown within the Wards.

As a five-person unit, they were probably the second biggest tax source for the village of Kibosh. They weren’t quite that high up on the imaginary leaderboard for bringing in food, but the wild garlic that Thesha used in all of her favorite dishes was something only they could bring in reliably. That gave them a huge amount of social credit, above and beyond what they’d have otherwise gotten for the game.

It was still kind of humbling, and kind of hilarious. I did get congratulations from a few people—the ones who’d been there for it, obviously, but Kan pried himself away from Ketana to crack a dry joke about letting nothing stand in my way, and Cleric Veil said something even more elliptical than usual. But mostly it was clear that the real winner here was Ketka, who’d get to dance with the girl she’d picked out and been making the moves on.

Humbling, hilarious, and incredibly hot, but who’s counting, I thought to myself dryly. Rapidly banishing the thought before the flush could become too obvious, I refocused myself on the tables laden with food, not really noticing what I was putting on my plate.

Luckily for my composure, nobody was particularly paying attention to me. There were about thirty people milling around Tome’s open, and it was mostly… not strangers, not exactly, we were acquainted. There just weren’t many of the people I’d grown to call friends in the past couple of weeks sitting in the grass, eating with their plates on the little standing tables, or just circulating and chatting.

Kan and Ketana were sitting with Kanatan and Tino across from them—the similar-sounding names for immediate family was still hilarious, but I was growing used to it—and their body language was pretty closed off. Mattathias—it occurred to me that I had no idea what he did, only that he was Kelly’s previous charge—was at one of the trestle tables, chatting with Tomas and Viri the cooper, and navigating those social dynamics seemed to be more work than pleasure.

Kelly, Tayir, and the two girls were off somewhere, none of the herder kids—actually, none of the herders, full stop—were around, and neither Safra nor Zqar were eating at Tome. I dimly recalled someone saying that people would be eating where they normally weren’t, as a general rule, so that answered for the librarians, and maybe that meant the herders would be over at Rise. But if that was the case…

My quick survey confirmed what should have been immediately obvious. Hammer’s folks, the crafters and other people who worked up at the north end of the village, were the ones eating down here in the south side. The Guard would be up in Hammer, then, which meant that if I spotted—

Ah.

Hitz was sitting somewhat stiffly at one of the tables, a largeish round one whose benches were carved in a swirling set of arcs instead of straight across like all the others. It was very obviously carved with them in mind, and the table itself was at exactly the right height for them, which meant it was a bit tall for Flame and way too tall for Badger. Veil’s junior novice was almost tall enough to do justice to, oh, three out of five of his first name’s components, but at four-foot-ten, Kibosh’s senior glassmaker was genuinely one of the shortest adults I’d ever met.

For Waselle, on the other hand? That table looked like it was too short.

“Hitz!” I greeted them with a nod and a beaming smile. “Badger, Flame, shortstuff. Zenith’s blaze; mind if I join you?”

“Yes,” two voices chorused as Flame and Waselle alike scowled at me.

“Manners,” Hitz grunted, and I winced as I picked up on at least some of the layers there. Getting reprimanded by Hitz was a rarity, but they had a true talent for conveying neither of those people appreciated that name with two taciturn syllables.

“I’m sorry if—I apologize,” I corrected myself, “for my rudeness. Waselle, it’s—” I was about to say good to see you better-rested, and then realized that given that I’d made her a sleeping aid, that might come across as manipulation. “I’m glad to meet a friend of Hitz’s,” I said, missing only about a beat after obviously stumbling the second time.

“Another friend,” she responded with only the faintest hint of hesitation. “Anyone Hitz talks about without prompting is a friend of theirs, and someone worth knowing.”

I managed a nod at that, firmly throttling the threat of a fierce blush. Hitz counts me as a friend. That’s something I didn’t anticipate adding to the accounting of my deeds, not so soon. “Devoted Acolyte Cataclysmic Burning Faith, also known as Novice Kibosh, if I remember how impersonal address works,” I said with an incline of my head. “Son of Graced By The Thousand Yet Still He Might Strive and Joy Ephemeral… um. Ah, fuck.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

I sat down in the open chair, forehead hitting my hands and then busying themselves with belatedly shifting my outfit out of its minor ensuing tangle. There was a burst of laughter from the rest of the table—though not, surprisingly, from the Novice, whose silence was… thoughtful and a little bit surprised, maybe.

“Ephemeral Joy,” he said in the nicest and most pleased tone of voice I’d ever heard from him. “Ephemeral Joy Births Ephemeral Joy And Shatters All Fetters. She took the name when her mother, my grandmother, set aside her old name and became known as Fleeting Are Tyrants when she and Heartbleed put down Hungers Forbidden, who was Consul at the time.”

“I… that’s actually not the name I heard given for her, I’m pretty sure,” I said slowly. I leaned into Spark in a sort of metaphorical-but-sort-of-literal way, and the name floated up into my mind. “I think it was something like… Joy Ephemeral Burns Yet Begets Itself To Break All Chains?”

“Not a poor translation,” he acknowledged. “It is closer in some ways, further in others. The one she chose is still preferred.”

“Set aside…” I interrupted my hand on its way to scratching the back of my neck and ran it from my jaw up to just behind my ear instead, trying my best to make it look natural. Not for the first time, I blessed Jannea—she’d been so intensely happy to paint the rooms of my home with visions of where my home once was that she’d copied her exhaustive notes on body language and social norms for me. “It sounds like there’s a bunch of stories there. You’re… Sudha? I don’t know much about your social context at all.”

“Sudha,” he corrected me, emphasizing the second syllable and raising the vowel into a more nasally region. “I am not a teller of tales, but there are many to be told of all peoples, and those who comprise them.”

“Ain’t it grand that it’s Ease, then.” Badger leaned back on the bench, making the wood creak with the torque somehow. The guy wasn’t skinny, but I’d had a cousin about his build and a couple inches taller, and she’d weighed a hundred pounds sopping wet—magical shenanigans were obviously happening. “If ya were a teller of tales, wouldn’t be able t’tell them to us, would ya?”

“Impeccable logic.” Waselle’s ears and eyebrows twitched in an abortive gesture of humor; she was doing her best at a poker face, but by Kibosh’s standards, she wasn’t very good. “And as the only one not still eating, should it not fall to you to entertain us?”

“Couple hours,” Hitz grunted, forestalling what was clearly an annoyed objection. “Threes, but fours?”

“Threes,” the others chorused immediately—and variously, but chorused in agreement they did.

“I hate to seem the plains-lost,” I interjected, “but what is threes?” It was obviously some sort of storytelling game, by context, but… what, exactly? Other than something which usually was done with one fewer person than the table had.

“Eat.” Hitz’s eyes glinted. “Go last.”

I blinked a couple of times. Right, I thought to myself wryly, food is important. I glanced down at my plate to see a bunch of not-exactly-wraps, flatbread rolled into bean-paste-smeared cylinders and stuffed with slender strings of vegetable and fruit pieces. I’d even remembered to get myself water and some of what was, I judged after a sip, a mildly alcoholic fruit juice blend.

It was all delicious, whether for all of its strangeness or because of it. With the exception of the day before’s quite memorable breakfast, it had all been delicious.

“I saw a bird once,” the young man I’d called Flame began without preamble. “It flew in from the sea to the north, preening and broken. It had been dashed upon the rocks, but its wings still worked, you see. It flew across the ocean despite that—black of wing and white of belly, with a mixed chest-band and a head of scar-orange.”

“Mottled Destroyer Bird.” Hitz snorted. “Subtle.”

“I saw a beast once, slumbering peacefully.” He didn’t seem taken aback by Hitz’s interruption, and Hitz didn’t seem displeased, so presumably this was just part of the game. “Beast though it might have been, it seemed quiescent, so I approached to a distance which I felt to be safe. On one side, verdance; on another, the mind spun to gaze upon the void that stretched out; and on the third, the rapids thundered against the crashing waves, and the rocks shattered there.”

“Oh come on,” Waselle objected in obvious delight. “What am I, Farmer?”

“I saw a rat, once, only far larger than any rat I’d seen. It waddled rather than walked, and barreled along rather than running—”

“—aw, c’mon,” Badger protested, “a beaver?”

“—and disdained the flesh of fish and fowl alike—”

“I do not!”

“—consuming trees for fuel and creating works which range from containers of water to that which distinguishes a home from a rock. I saw the fish which thrived in the care of its wake, it unheeding; but a glass pours but once for every filling.”

“We-ell.” Badger’s face, which I had to admit was remarkably more like a weasel than a rat, made an expression of begrudging acceptance. “That ain’ so bad. I’ll allow it.”

I saw the young man turn to me, take a breath, and then shed his youth and take a weight onto his shoulders. “I saw a plant, once, a water-plant,” Devoted Acolyte Cataclysmic Burning Faith said. “Its flowers were beautiful, a dazzling array of pure blues and reds that did not blend, each as big around as a hand—friendly, too, without any real defenses. It was cultivated, rather than thriving on its own, for its beauty and what it produced. But how much shade is cast by even one of its leaves?”

I tilted my head fractionally at him as a way of buying time while my emotions churned. Fury, because he’d sort of thrown down a gauntlet with that—shock, for the same reason. Sorrow, for apparently having made an enemy, and guilt for whatever I did to incite that. I let all of those flow through me, discarding two different vicious retorts that would have been immensely satisfying to say, and when I spoke, it was in a controlled voice.

“I don’t think I’m choking the waters for anyone else, or standing in the way of anyone else’s thriving. But I’m glad you think I bring beauty to the world and make useful things, Novice.”

“Bit of an unkindness, that kickoff, eh?” Badger grimaced, scratching at his nose. “Little constrained, I figure, but you’ll get better. Fine, I’ll bite. Unless one-ya dibs on follow?” He looked around for a moment, then nodded. “Saw a bloke once. Poked this beast a couple times, thinking he had a long ‘nuff stick. ‘Sides, wasn’t his grandpappy lookin’ over his shoulder, sayin’ not a thing but polishin’ his harpoon? Saw a bloke get lucky, once. Poked a beast couple a’times, but it had an itch. Bloke had sore arms a time after, though—beast didn’t want t’let him go till the itch was real scratched.”

I saw the young man I’d been so furious at a moment before collapse back into himself just the slightest bit, visibly deflating.

I didn’t care, barely noticed. My head was spinning with what Badger had just implied about the storytelling game, because now I got it, and he and his awkward accent had my complete attention.

Take the story, Badger had just told me by implication. Take the story and turn it around; that was the point, that was the game, it didn’t matter that I had no idea what story Badger was turning the beast into.

He’d taken the story and recontextualized it, and thus usurped what the message had been.