Sailing Ether Tides

Ch: 53 Come, As A Friend

Gary felt the kids arrive, with Shai coming in hot; no doubt Otho snitched… The furry rascal.

He could feel the agitation and discontent in the ether down in the lab, fresh from working with Eponna’s bond and with both Ward and lady Dana in the house.

The goddess was still bitching and whining about the indignity and horror of being called by a common mortal into his den of foul witchcraft… But, at just nine inches tall and trapped in a bowl of magical slop, inside a ring of cleansing, purifying, grounding, salt; she was all mouth and easily ignored.

“Can it Dana, men are talking.” The casual misogyny felt awful, and awfully good at the same time, since she fell silent in stunned outrage for nearly a minute.

“I wasn’t gonna… you know…” Gary mumbled to Ward. “I was just going to establish a link and actually contact her in a time and place more conducive to our discussions…” He grinned madly at the man in flowered pink pajamas and winked.

“You planned to humiliate her on the steps of her temple, didn’t you.” It was a statement, not a question; one his mad, mortal brother declined to answer.

Instead, he continued on, as though Ward hadn’t spoken at all. “Now, thanks to dumbass Pangbourne, my whole family is pissed off and headed down here and probably want to yell at me.” He complained. “Nice to see you again, Ward.”

“Nice to be seen… bro. Now tell me why you’ve risked everything on this misadventure? Calling down even a fragment of a deity against their Will is beyond taboo.” He muttered sourly.

“Our prank with War was a unique occurrence… This shouldn’t be possible without a ‘sample’ of the deity.”

“She struck my son. That set a debt between us, a debt I chose to call due, as is allowed under the law.” He answered frostily. “Bitch owes me my due… I’ll take it out how I see fit, since she declined to respond to my lawful demands.” He addressed that part to both the god standing there, and the idol, setting her mouth in motion once more.

“End your obscene curse and release me, filthy creature, unclean one! Defiler of all that is sacred and divine! Wretched and debased mockery of life!”

She ranted and raved on like that for a while, even after the whole family filed down the stairs and joined the party, including the new girl and the rest of the Ragamuffins.

“Yeah, she can’t perceive most of you, because you aren’t part of the ritual… Ward and I are pretty much the only ones she can see and hear.” He paused for a moment and spoke softly into the crowd.

“Barry, stay in the back, ok? She might be able to sense you and I don’t want her thinking this is her chance to make demands of you again.”

“Boy, I’ll be having words about this, wi thee…” Shai growled, splitting her furious glare between her husband and the shimmering figure overlaying the statue in fine robes and garish makeup.

“Yes, dear… but right now I’m yelling at a goddess.” He mumbled, his head hung low. “Please don’t embarrass me in front of this idiot.”

“Nae, I be furious that ye dinnae include meself, tis my son ‘twas struck!” She barked furiously in his face. “An ye nae include me, I’ll belt me displeasure intae thine ears, that she might hear the faint echo of this fury of mine, in thy mush-mouthed words.”

“That sounds pretty reasonable…” Becky mumbled, drawing cheers of ascent from the crowd.

“Grea-at” He moaned, as Ward joined the chorus of kibitzing kin, grinning and winking like a huge asshole.

“All right, but let me work… you can all make suggestions during the station breaks.”

“What’s a station break?” They all asked Ward, while the madman squared up on a furious goddess.

#

Reclined on her golden divan, under a pavilion near the standing stones, Dana was having a not at all good, really awful day. A number of deities had stopped by to chat and seen the shadowy mortal’s haunt scolding her. Naturally, they’d all stopped to listen… and called friends to join in.

Trapped here, in the in-between realm, on what mortal’s called the Madman’s moon, she had no privacy, no escape and no way to end this farce. She could only watch as the crowd gathered, attracted by a new thing. Anything that could disrupt the endless sameness of immortal existence was always a potent draw… Like the Madman’s moon they stood upon itself, they came here, again and again; to taste the echo of the mortal life that had created this odd, impossible place, if only second hand.

They explored this realm with bodies of their own essence; experiencing the memories he’d left behind, sampling a bit here and there. Alien beings, experienced for the first time, many aspects of a mortal existence that were too material and concrete for beings of Will, Mind and Spirit to comprehend intellectually.

Here, they explored mortal concepts and sensations without risk, able to extract themselves at a whim, if things became intense.

Pleasures, joys, the sensations of being corporeal and a living being were fascinating, though far too many were tainted with this ‘pain’ thing that Dana was so obsessed with lately.

“She could conduct her experiments more discreetly…” Hotei muttered to Ishtar, where they stood near a vine and flower draped standing stone.

“This is no experiment, this is a curse wrought by mortals, graven into her avatar. She is bound to this wheel of pain until it comes fully around.” Eponna nickered loudly, for all to hear.

“Please spread this juicy gossip far and wide, for that too is part of the woe she will suffer for this affront against the law.”

She hightailed it away across the eternal meadow, neighing out loud:

“Why else do you think you are trapped here, beside the standing stones, where all may witness your shame? Oh mighty Dana, goddess who would smite mortals in her pique; this pitiable scene is of your own making!”

As humiliating as it was, being imprisoned in an avatar and subjected to this terrible ‘pain’ thing… The public nature of her discomfort was worse. Now the shadow of that awful thing ignored her entirely, strutting, gesticulating and moving about for a prolonged ‘time’.

That was another horror… For the immortal, dwelling in the eternal ether, time was an abstract; a power they could ignore, use, experience or avoid…

Now she was temporally locked, following the excruciating march of endless seconds, one heartbeat at a time in a persistent… Now… that was immutable.

Worse yet, each excruciating second was being scribed into her indelible divine memory, as an event which had occurred and was notably real.

Things did not improve, when it resumed speaking to her, for all to hear. That he was joined by Ward, one of the divines, however minor, was salt in that wound… A phrase she understood slightly more fully, now.

#

Ivy and her familiar joined the mob in his workshop, pressing in beside Lindsey and Flash, who were having trouble keeping up with the action.

“There’s two? A twin brother?” The girl whispered to Amy, hoping for clarity.

“Yeah, that’s close enough, we’ll go with it” She replied, evasively. “That’s uncle Ward, he’s weird, even by our standards. The little woman is Dana, goddess of Healing, she’s been a pain in the ass for a while… Now you’re all caught up. Let’s get back to the action… crap, now the pets have better seats than us.”

Otho and Shiro were all curled up at the front of the crowd, watching the action with Kree, who had a bag of maple sugar candy and was sharing it with her perch, young Flash and Sasha the hawkmoth. A shadowy bat creature dangled from the rafters, emitting ultrasonic vibes of intense satisfaction with her angle on the proceedings.

#

“Well, this is a literal dog and pony show now…” Gary sighed, when he turned back to the Healer of Wounds.

“All right, let’s do this, Dana.” He snarled.

“Vile and despicable thing that you are! You dare call on me?” She wailed, again.

“Pipe down.” He snapped at the goddess. “You and your divine clown-show did everything you could think of to gimp me…” His voice dropped to a soft, twisted whisper, drawn out through an angry, wicked sneer of pleasure.

“Because you aren’t really sure that I can’t still you-know-what, you and your little friends into the you-know-who and directly into you-know-where.”

That brought about a lot of whispering in the crowds, seeming to come from both sides of the interplanar conference call.

“You cut me off and cursed me every which way… and did a shit job of it, so fuck you for that, bitch. I didn’t piss and moan about it…” He growled angrily, sounding feral and more than half mad.

“Now you want more, you want something you can’t have and thought to take by force… you tried to force my child to accept your advances. That would be the end of you if you weren't… You.” He growled.

“That’s the same reason I let your boyfriend get away with as much as I did. Would you care to discuss how my forbearance was rewarded then? Or perhaps how I continue to pay for his crimes, especially the ones he committed against me…?” He asked with patently false sweetness in his voice.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Naturally, the furious divine heard only what she wished to hear and answered without a thought.

“Now you pretend to respect the divine pantheon’s rightful dominion over man? Too little, too late rebellious mortal fragment!” She sneered, venom dripping from her words in a way that seemed alien on those sweet, pink lips.

“That’s still all you can think about…” He sighed, exhaustion making his voice falter.

“Maybe you and your bitchass Wargod could have patched things up, maybe not…” He silenced her outburst with a glare that chilled the room and made the standing stones tremble on the far off fragment of himself they stood on.

“If he hadn’t gotten super stupies and tried on me, what you tried on my son… who knows. My friend Thirp is the best therapist in the known multiverse. She even helped me out a bunch, look how sane I turned out! Too bad my therapy sessions were canceled, otherwise I might have been too well adjusted to do this to you.” He let out a mad little giggle, tainted with a deep and passionate desire to do something awful to someone.

After a long moment of chilling silence, on both sides of the divine connection, the strange madman sighed sadly.

“War made his choices, so did Order, Craft and Morrigan. All those clowns bought a ticket to the show… It was a command performance, against my will; I didn’t even get a cut of the gate or concessions.”

His old, crooked smile of deranged delight at the whole world appeared, for a brief moment at that; stirring something like hope in Shai.

“If they’d stayed home you guys might have become the hottest couple in the pantheon.” He shrugged. “Now you’re a child abuser…”

“She tried to Contract me… Nobody touched my…” Barry was vigorously shushed, ending his defense of his stained virtue, cementing the ‘butt stuff’ explanation firmly into the family lore.

“Anyway…” He yawned mightily and stretched. “I’m done in for today… cursed witches aint got no stamina. Nighty night, Dana.”

He draped a thick canvas dust cover over the construct unceremoniously and smiled at the group.

“She’s stuck here ‘til I’m satisfied. Once I can’t see the idol, she loses all senses and perception through it and the Mana drain stops. She’s still there though; just a tiny part of her divine attention, but like a stone in her shoe…” He yawned again and took Shai under his arm.

“Let’s go upstairs. I’m tired and I still need to apologize to my lovely wife.” In a stage whisper he asked, loudly enough for all to hear. “Tickle your bottom with a feather?”

“Eww, gross!” Amy called. “Bedtime, girls.”

“Setting sail for dreamland!” Harry muttered wistfully, as the girls sashayed toward the stairs.

#

Up at the keep, it was crowded and a little uncomfortable, only part of that was due to the slightly tumbledown and homespun nature of much of the structure. Centuries of haunted abandonment was tough on the architecture and Foresthome had been a frontier town in its heyday.

The count and countess had done a marvelous job with the old pile… yet:

“Yes, batspiders in the third floor guest suites, again.” Tawny sighed. “I’ll send an expert.” Once head maid Lucy was gone, the golden countess sighed in agitation and distress. “Audrey, be a dear and go gobble up the batspiders upstairs.” She held up an admonishing finger to the flowering, potted snapdragon on her tea table.

“Mind the pets and familiars, darling, we have guests.”

Swiftly, the little plant climbed from her pretty, brightly embellished flowerpot and carefully shook all the soil from her root ball. She dipped a courtly bow to the ladies and withdrew, by climbing out the open window, as a flowing tangle of vines; pouring over the stonework, growing steadily larger as she climbed for the third floor and her snacks.

That fierce, golden gaze turned back to her guest.

“Now, duchess Fernlowe… I feel silly addressing you so formally… Emma. What has shaken poor Frank so badly? He seemed greatly troubled by something.”

“The fool man snuck off to take a peek into Gary’s workshop when no one was around to set him straight… now I fear he’s cracked a little more.” She sighed.

“Since we first heard Gary was… ‘back’ he’s been… concerned. Concerned that Gary’s ‘return’ signifies some deeper plot against the divines…” She took another ride on the sigh train; tickets are cheap and it stops lotsa’ places, just not many you wanna’ go.

“Well… I can certainly speak to him…” Tawny mumbled awkwardly. “The pantheon is in a bit of a tizzy at the moment, the outcome and circumstances are… occult.” She murmured urgently to her friend.

“Some secrets are best left buried and some cannot be revealed by divine law and edict… This I can say: If Frank went into that workshop, while he was down there doing something… spooky; your husband may have seen something truly disturbing.”

“What could rile up the very gods so?” Emma wondered idly, staring out the window on the jewel strung sky, haunted by only a few wisps of cloud.

“Only a very great fool… the greatest of them all, perhaps.” Tawny sighed sadly, punching another notch in her own well worn ticket book.

#

No one could really sleep after all that… and with her still downstairs; eventually people started popping up in the bath with Gary and Shai, bobbing there and gazing at the star spangled sky above.

“I don’t even know how you did this, bro.” Ward muttered in the steamy quiet. “It should be impossible.”

“Yup, should be. I shouldn’t be able to wield magic beyond background levels without crashing and burning hard.” He murmured to the stars, floating on his back in a stew of human dumplings.

“That’s why I can’t even tune my instruments or whistle a melody… I can’t control that part of my gifts, anymore than you can stop your heartbeat or make your guts run in reverse.” A few queasy mumbles circulated in the pool of floating friends, family and familiars.

“If Shai’s there, she can stifle me long enough that I dont shit myself, if I forget for a moment. On my own: bye-bye pants, hello nap on the ground, wherever I am at the moment.”

“So that’s why no more wonders flowed from your workshop…” Emma whispered from the edge of the pool, with Gabbie and Jocko. “...and why you gave up Adventuring.”

“Oh, hi Emma. I’m gonna kick your husband in his asshole for screwing up my spell.” He mumbled, eyes closed and a small, mad smile on his lips.

“Screw you too, Gary.” Frank Pangbourne grumbled. “I knew you were neck deep in of all this.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty perceptive… when your head’s not up your ass.” Gary complained right back. “Now shut up and unstopper your ears, cause I’m only going to explain this once… and pretty badly at that.”

#

The explanation that followed was long on generalizations, short on details and absolutely barren of specifics, the scant bullet points of a highlighted, cliffs notes version of a very long, strange and deeply improbable tale.

“That’s just a wild mish-mash of those fanciful picture books the kids read and trade around… What were those called?” Frank pondered that for only a moment. “Ether Tales, it was; that’s it!”

Pangbourne crowed with pleasure, at having outwitted this witch at last.

“I shan’t be deceived by the depraved scribblings of some hack writer! Such a weird and fanciful yarn; the author was no doubt smoked daft on pipeweed, sitting in his underwear, scratching out his fevered, drug hazed imaginings!”

#

Somewhere, far across the endless expanse, a long, lanky, wooly being sagged back on his couch, dressed only in his undershorts, completely exhausted by his long day at the tiresome government office he was trapped working in, day after day.

He set his bong down carefully beside the clunky old laptop and leaned back to let his mind slow to a more measured pace.

Music poured into his ears through the open windows; the dulcet strings of the ‘guitar’ his ‘human’ neighbor preferred, rather than the sweet, piping sounds of the local panflutes.

He was an odd fellow and truly strange to look at, but he also grew truly fine pipeweed and was as generous with his produce as with the sweet, uplifting, alien music… and the lyrics that carried him off to a strange place.

Time on my hands could be time spent with you…

Laughing like children, living like lovers…

Rolling like thunder under the covers…

And I guess that's why they call it the blues

Soon, as always happened, he felt a tickling sensation down the back of his neck; as though a spider had dropped down his non-existent collar, sending chills of anticipation thrilling down his spine. It was time.

Gary Ward the human raised his clear tenor voice; drifting in one of the long folktales his people sang, an unrecorded and previously unknown cycle of myth from wherever the strange, two legged wander had come from.

His songs lifted to the sky every night, plaintive, begging to be heard and so lost and lonely. It was some kind of oral history from an unknown land, sung by an unfamiliar race in a lonely mountain valley, far from anything important.

LlamaLlumps sighed the long whistling exhalation of his people and let the ‘man’ sing him nearly to sleep, as he considered whether to work on his dissertation… or record the lyrical, narrative song rising from the hillside, near the hotspring pool his new friend had absurdly brought along with him when he arrived.

“It was tucked in my Pockets! All along!”

Was his only reply, when asked how his house had appeared, with that remarkable pool overnight. As if a hydro thermal geological feature could simply drift around the countryside… Truly, his friend was an odd being.

Sweet maiden Indica soothed his soul and left a tranquil serene emptiness in the place of his stress and agitation, as the song flitted through his mind, he could almost see the story unfold. The tale of a man lost and alone on an alien world. Heedless of his conscious Will, a soft clicking and clacking sound began, slowly at first…

#

“So that story you sang, when I woke up…” Lindsey whispered softly from her position deep in the heart of the Flotilla of Daring, Darling Damsels. “It was all true?”

“I never lie, I suck at it too hard and no one ever believes the truth.” Gary called from the All Boy, Super Cool Convoy.

That was the point where Gary realized that a few of his pipes were circulating in the bath as freely as the waters were. “Hey…” Gary began, gearing up for another one of his weird ‘hangup’ events.

“We’re not smoking your dumb, geezer pipeweed you grumpy old fart.” Wilf grumbled. “You smoke yourself stupid all the time, but get all bent out of shape at the idea we might try it.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re smart, not an idiot like me and these mooks.” He answered smugly. “Fogging my brain is like pissing in the ocean…”

“Hey…” Dannyl and Liam chorused, from across the pool.

“Liam, hey… nice to have you…” The fool burbled happily, before he was silenced, somehow.

“Anyway…” Amy continued, while gently drowning her dear papa. “My dad’s condition is the result of vile and criminal exploitation and experimentation on his soul, by several divines… Who should have known better, should have had morals and who my dad totally murdered the ever-loving shit out of.”

The sweet girl sang her non-explanation, while her father thrashed weakly under the surface.

“I don’t know how, I don’t know what circumstances were involved… No one who knows what happened, is able… or allowed to discuss the matter.” Amy eyed the gathered people carefully, with a particular focus on Pangbourne.

“There will be no question and answer period, this symposium is officially over.”

“I think you might have actually drowned him…” Frank said with a strained note in his voice. “He stopped moving some time ago.”

“Nah, he’s asleep underwater… He’s a weirdo.” Amy answered, without bothering to pull her dad’s head above the surface.

#

Gary woke, sprawled on the lawn beside Shai in a comfy nest of blankets; the night had been so warm and clear, now sunrise was taking away what little chill had managed to assert itself. It promised a long, hot day and a fine summer evening to come.

He squirmed under the blanket for more cuddly, cozy wife and came up aces, as she snuggled back with some of his favorite things.

With his eyes closed, he could sense everyone on the property… and Kree, who was taking a morning flight over the lake with Mariah and Sasha, terrorizing the late flying skeeters.

He resisted the urge to join their dogfight over the waters, in favor of savoring a full house of people who were all close to him… and also Pangbourne.

Lindsey and Barry were side by side, one foot apart under the same blanket, with Shiro planted firmly between them; allowing them to hold hands… and only that.

Flash was beside her, of course, new familiars were inseparable…

That thought brought his mind back to his sweet honeybee, buzzing through the still air above the lake, her black rapier flashing darkly, as skeeter parts sprinkled down to feed the hungry water dwellers below.

She never would say what she experienced during the time he was ‘away’ drifting in the void, bodiless and undying. That was another debt, beyond what he owed her for keeping him sane with her flying antics and soothing venom.

She felt his mind touch her senses and sent a gentle query back, checking on him in her sweet, loving way.

‘Finally awake? Good, silly primate! You stoppered the candy jar too firmly… again. I’m starving here! I should come back and sting you someplace tender for that!’

‘Come on, I have sweet mandarin marmalade and some royal jelly from your giant bee friends on the valley side.’ He whispered in her mind, while enjoying the hell out of the wild barrel roll she pulled to nail a wily skeeter.

He black needle rapier flicked and flashed, clipping two wings out of eight and shearing one away entirely. Disarming its proboscis was next, a single flick of her blade ended that threat.

At last, she pierced it through the middle, slicing through just enough of its primitive nervous system to kill the thing, while keeping it aloft under its own power for a precious moment.

Three fast flicks of her tiny blade and a purple-gray lump of moist bug tissue dropped neatly into her shadow on the lake surface, no touching of the grisly thing required.

She was poetry on the wing, and a terror with that blade. His own swordsmanship had vastly improved with her tutelage, that was a secret he was keeping for Shai’s present, today.

Gary shuddered with delight at the thought. There were two massive deficits in his column in Shai’s books.

He couldn’t give her children… ‘he carried no spark of life to quicken the womb…’ as Tawny liked to say.

And he was useless as a warrior; at least by her lofty standards. He’d been training diligently, conditioning his body and working to his limit and beyond for so long, but he remained stuck at ‘unranked’.

As long as he couldn’t improve his agility beyond his natural limits, he was going to come up far short of his mate, as she neared the middle of bronze rank.

Even restraining her own martial gifts and handicapping herself, he disappointed her every time. She hid it well, but he could read it in the set of her shoulders.

The bitter sting of that had prodded him to action, and now, maybe he had some results to show her at last.

With care, he peeled himself away from his warm, sweet wife and crept away to warm up and get in costume.

Amy and the boys should have all the other preparations set up already…

#