"Well a joy it is to meet and be met,” the fishhook-wielder says, his smile growing wider. “And a speaker o’ common, too! Accent like a mudclip hatchery, but tis not to be judged till a knowing is had. A stranger you be then, and welcome to the wilds you may be, for I seen naught one of the fops of the republic come skyclad into its wrappings.”
Raika blinks. If ever there was a moment for dissonance, it is to be had in hearing a language one is familiar with in a way that one has never heard it before. The fisher, for want of a more familiar name, smiles wide, and his Intent, the minimal amount of it that leaks from him, matches his Qi- joy and calm. He smells like a deep and still lake, full of life, but primarily from the perspective of one seated on the roots of the shore, quiet and present.
“Skyclad? Oh! You mean naked?”
He throws his head back into a long, loud laugh. “Ay, if nekkid is how you prefer to say it! Personal-like, I think that nekkid is for fucking, skyclad is for communing, and if that look ye had was any indication ye were communing hard. I like that! Joyous in a woman or folk, to be communing and be hard, both and apart!”
“I- think I completely agree with you on all fronts, but it’s hard to tell. Anyways, hello, how are you doing that with your Intent?”
He blinks, a confused but frankly still jovial little frown popping up onto his face. “I- what’cha be meaning, Intent?”
“The- the beast-talk thing, speaking without words. Yours is so quiet, how are you doing that?”
He laughs again, and again she is struck by how quiet it is. The absence of Intent is shocking, and, frankly, confusing. Intent, as far as she knows, is the act of imbuing meaning into things that don’t naturally have it. Now that she’s picked up on it, it feels obvious, universal- of course waving one’s hand means different things in different contexts, even if the action is the same. Being able to imbue and read more meaning into that feels like a strange step, but a natural one.
But to remove it?
The fisher laughs, and it’s like it’s not laughter. Like the sound doesn’t mean anything. It blends into the background, less relevant than the birds or the wind because those at least mean that things are happening and real. But the way he does it…
“I recken you must be new round these parts, ‘though considering your arm, ‘nough said about your toughness. Can’t be screaming out for everybody to hear now ken I? Right dangerous in a purty place like this, wrapsome with music and biting teeth. As you well learned!”
Raika nods along, cataloging every movement. His words still carry meaning, but even they feel like less. Like reading a stuffy letter or an academic paper and realizing that most of it says absolutely nothing, but being able to recall the words anyways. She puts three whole brains on his every mannerism, tracking even the slightest change and trying to triangulate some understanding from it.
At least some of that comes through in her expression, and the Fisher does a sort of ‘aw shucks’ motion, scratching the back of his head. “Ain’t nuthin that special, dancer, just a trick or two I picked up ‘long my ways. Considerin’ ya ain’t bled out from that stump yet, I assume ya got some of yer own!”
She looks down at her stump-arm, remembering the ragged edges and bone blade half-concealed in them. “Oh, yeah,” she says, reabsorbing the damaged matter and plucking a fully-formed limb already prepared deeper in her body (thanks, internal-biology brain!). In less time than it takes to blink, her flesh has folded and morphed, leaving her once again armed. On the right side, at least- her left remains armless, as she tends to keep it unless necessary. Feels comfortable that way, weirdly enough, a reminder of who she was and still is.
“A few tricks here and there,” she tells the Fisher, who is looking at her pretty wide-eyed. She almost laughs at that- considering how she was literally incapable of noticing his giant magic fishhook when it came at her, regenerating from such a small wound seems like nothing.
Then she actually does laugh, because what a thought. A small wound like a missing arm, gone in well under a second, and it ‘seems like nothing’. Like she didn’t once spend the better part of a year dying from exposure with wounds just like that.
The Fisher has, at this point, started to look a little worried- but not as much as she expected, considering the fact she is acting actively insane at the moment. More an awareness of a need to tread gently than any sense of fear, but again, with his Intent not just actively not being transmitted but suppressed, even three brains at once are struggling to get a read on the guy.
Well, beyond the fact that he’s at least mostly a pleasant fellow. If the smile didn’t tell her that, or the fact he rescued her, his Qi would be the clincher. There’s hunger there, some predation, but much closer to the core of what she sees and smells from him in his lake-scent is peace.
She shakes her head, getting her thoughts back on track. Multiple brains or no, adrenaline is a hell of a thing. Maybe she should make something like a control brain without it, something that can try to be more objective?
Focus.
“Sorry about that. Yes, I have some tricks, but I just learned about this Intent stuff, and everything I’ve seen about it is that there’s no way not to use it. You, though, you sound and smell and look just fine, but I can barely notice you. You’re not affecting my mind, I can check that, but it’s like… it’s like you’re quieter than the rest of the world.”
“Well the world’s a loud place, and if you don’t wanna get bit ‘ts a good idea not to be yellin in it! Gotta make sure your song is a quiet note is all.”
“How do you do that?”
“Uh… well, listen dancer-clad, we ain’t hardly been sayin or spoken yet. You seem alright, but it’s republic folk-talk to be asking so many privacy-spanning deets so very soon into a hello, don’t you know. I reckon you can call me Fisher, and y’er Raika, and now we’re proper met and matched.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
He steps back from her a bit, which is when she belatedly realizes how tall he really is. She’s seven feet tall in this form, and he’s still nearly at her height. And she was, admittedly, standing pretty up close to him.
Part of her wonders if she should reduce her hormones further, forcibly calm herself down, but… no. She enjoyed herself, and enjoyed herself a lot, and getting rid of that for no reason would just be wasteful.
She experienced it. She feels it. And it is good.
She does take a nice deep breath though, loud and proud. Fisher shoots her a grin, taking a seat on a nearby root, recognizing the calming action for what it is. He kicks back, and she sees that beyond the fishhook and strange thread, and the bandoliers he’s wearing, he’s just about nude, arms, legs and torso well exposed. He has a small block of some sort of vine-pitcher, filled with clear water, fresh and cold, and in it there floats two small jugs of liquor.
He plucks one out and takes a sip, offering it out to her. She graciously accepts, sitting on a root opposite him- and recoiling a bit as it tries to bite her, some of the moss on it squirming with sharp nettles.
“Ha!” Fisher laughs. “Now that there’s what I mean and be meaning with being loud! Too noisy or too slow, she be taking a nibble from whatever’s worth nibbling, and that’s a fine behind to nibble from there!”
Raika laughs along with him, setting up her bio-mind to start spinning some threads in her Body. She really could use an easily accessible form of clothing, now that she thinks on it, but in the meantime, she does her best to quiet her mind before going to sit. It doesn’t really work, she still gets bitten, but her skin’s tough enough that it can’t really get through.
She gives a patronizing pat on the vine, and Fisher gives a chuckle, pulling out his second jug to drink from. “Or I suppose be right tough and right physical. Never met a bare ass a nettlemoss couldn’t chew into but you look proper comfortable!”
Raika flexes a bicep, taking a pull from the bottle. It’s some sort of fermented fruit juice, maybe some kind of pear or cactus in flavor. Bright, alcoholic as all hell, and it burns bright on the way in and down. She gives a big, relieved sigh, enjoying the burn as it goes down.
“Damn Fisher, I am tough and I am physical and this shit burns. What’s this made of?”
“Fer a nekkid fella dancing in the woods, you sure do ask a lot of questions!”
“I’m a curious woman!” she laughs, taking another swig. “The world is a curious place and I am curious in it, and you make me curious! What are you even doing out here? You’re the first person I’ve met out here. I came in from the stone prairie, out west, so… there’s that.”
“Ah! Well’n you must be tougher’n me, as I wouldn’t touch that with the far side of my hook or the backside of a thought. Dangerous place to be coming from!”
“Couldn’t agree more. And I think I met some of those ‘Republic’ folks on the way in. They claimed that it belonged to some Crashing Rainfall sect, I believe?”
Fisher spits off to one side, hawking a mighty intense wad of mucous over the side of the little outcropping they’re seated in. “Ah, their kind always be and will be grabbing for things that aren’t there and aren’t theirs. Stonedirt’s been there longer than I’ve been here, and I been here longer than they’ll be. Someday it’ll move on and movement be, but till my grandchildren come to dance on fresh soil it’ll be there, thick as can be.”
She hums, nodding. “You wouldn’t happen to recognize some on sight, would you?”
He shrugs, tossing back another sip. “I might, may not. Their kind come by once or twiceby, pluck something hither and there, and if they don’t mess too much, we don’t mess em too much. More for their losers and lackadaisies, though. Gotta be tough enough to swing by the growin and the moving, so never their weaker lessers, but still just poop-scoopin’ duty for the ones on the outs.”
She nods. “They must be proper tough, then, if they can send losers out with Domains and all.”
Fisher snorts. “Baby Domains, maybe! Lil teeny things with two steps and not a sound. They ain’t got no Domains proper, they just got vignettes. There’s no story to ‘em.”
“Story?”
“O’ course! Proper Domain’s more’n just a place to say hi and here’s my thoughts. For it to be meanin something, you gotta understand why it’s sayin what it’s sayin. Once you understand what it’s sayin and why, then it’s a Domain. Otherwise, it’s just a big bubble of hot gas ya farted out tryna convince the world you’re special.”
“...huh. So there’s… it’s more than just declaring an identity, you mean.”
“O’ course! That’s what your Soul is for, innit? That’s yer identity, so what’s yer Domain? Well, that’s the world yer makin, and a world needs a story. Trick between a weak little baby Domain and a right proper tough’un, it needs some intention behind it, not just what you’re making but why.”
“...ok, well that’s something I’ve never heard before but am writing down. Fascinating idea. I don’t suppose you have one you could show me?”
“Whoa! I know we met with you nekkid as can be, but mighty forward of ye! I’m not so easy to get to show all my goodies right and proper, we’re barely even friends yet!”
Raika laughs, raising her jug. “You save my life, offer me drink and talk, and say we’re barely friends? Fisher you tease, all this storytelling and nothing to show for it.”
He cackles with her, raising his jug. “And right and proper it be, to say hello and be greeted! No need to save a dead-un if you’re not gonna at least try and say hello and how be. Just proper hospitality that is!”
She takes a drink, nodding right back to him. “You know what, that makes sense. And I appreciate you saving me. But unless you’re going to show me how to do that thing you’re doing with keeping your Intent quiet, I reckon someone else will need to save me before long, and while you seem nice, I’m not so trusting to think that everyone will be so kind.”
“Oh, a wise one now are ye? Joy unto be, maybe you’re not so dense on the inside as ye are on the out.”
She laughs again, softer this time, approaching him. She takes another sip of her jug, before leaning forward towards him, putting on a bit of a show.
“Oh stranger and friend, I’m a proper softie on the inside, I promise you that.”
This time his Intent actually slips a bit, and she giggles at the look on his face. Mostly surprise, but plenty of blush there too, and he turns his head to take a sip of his own.
“A forward one ye be, stranger and friend,” he says. “A forward one indeed.”
She takes one last drink, before tossing him back his jug. “Life is horror and joy,” she tells him. “I am deeply guilty, entirely traumatized, and enjoying myself for once. It’s rare, and I intend to indulge. Plus, I got what I needed.” She grins. “I got you to crack a bit.”
His eyes widen, and then he slaps his knee hard, laughing loud enough that it rings through the little space they’re in, several of the vines wriggling a bit in response to the sound no matter how muted the Intent. “Oh come now! Don’t tell em ya can figure out how to whisper just from hearin a feller give a cough!”
She grins right back, her teeth long, sharp and inhuman. “Watch me, Fisher. I’ll remember your scent, hmm? I like to pay back those that are good when I can.”
And then she melts down and reabsorbs two brains, reshapes their memories into the third, and… goes away.
Chromatophores bloom over her skin, warping light and color away and into nothing from where she was. For one step, her Intent to move rings out, clearly reflected in how her other brains perceive her… and then she adjusts to match some of what Fisher’s neurochemistry was doing, compared to when she got him to slip. And then she’s invisible beyond visibility, and every step means next to nothing to whoever watches.
It’s not nearly as good as what Fisher was doing, but with that many brains at once, all examining each other and comparing to a functional example- it’s enough that she’s not bothered by nettlemoss or centi-crocodiles for the next few hours.
Except for one, that is, moving oddly slow for one of its kind, its pupils still dilated and following the scent of just the tastiest thing it ever did eat. It’s not doing it very well- but every few hours, there’s the faintest little ringing sound, like a bell, that calls it closer.