Alfric and Mizuki were being weird around each other, and Isra didn’t like it. It was undercutting every meal they shared together, and Mizuki was spending more time in Plenarch than before, coming home late, sometimes after dinner had already been concluded. She said that she was busy with school and it was easier to study there, along with her obligation to the research project she was a part of. There was also some ado about fireballs, which was causing no small amount of drama for Mizuki, but that seemed like a reason to spend less time at school, not more.
Alfric, for his part, had his head down. Isra was helping him, as much as she could, both in terms of doing work with him and helping to speak with him about what had happened.
“There’s really not much to say,” said Alfric as they worked together in Lutopia One.
There were, it turned out, many things on the long list of improvements for the place. Alfric had become a big fan of woodworking, and had all kinds of ideas for what the place would look like in its final form. The actual final form would be something provided by the endless entads he seemed to think Verity was close to providing, but the woodworking was a good project, and Alfric had thought that he might sell the racks and shelves when they had something better.
“I think asking Mizuki not to be impulsive is like asking the wind not to blow,” said Isra.
Alfric gave her a puzzled look. “You can stop the wind from blowing though.”
“Only with great difficulty,” said Isra. “And it doesn’t last.”
“You change the weather all the time,” said Alfric.
“I think you’re missing the metaphor,” said Isra. “Or taking it too literally.”
“It’s like me asking the wind not to blow?” asked Alfric.
“Yes,” nodded Isra. “Sometimes the wind will stop blowing, and sometimes that will be just after you’ve asked it to, but the wind will blow again, and the fact that it stopped has nothing to do with you having asked.”
“That’s grim,” said Alfric. He returned to the pieces of wood.
“It is, if you mind that the wind blows,” said Isra with a shrug.
“Ah,” said Alfric. He looked up for a moment. “So the trick, you think, is to find inner peace?”
“Maybe,” said Isra with a shrug. “Though I agree that at the party she was a bit more impulsive than usual. Getting drunk probably didn’t help.”
“She gets drunk here,” said Alfric. “She’s never been that bad.”
Mizuki had sworn off drinking, though to her credit, didn’t place much of the blame on wine and spirits. She also hadn’t kept to it very well, claiming that a glass of wine ‘wasn’t drinking’, which Isra only somewhat agreed with. Isra could feel the effects of a full glass of wine, if she drank quickly, and she wasn’t as short as Mizuki was.
“She broke a window,” said Isra. “Also, we’re constantly trying to rein her in. And even if we weren’t, the standards for this house, which she owns, are much different. She can make her fireballs here.” Isra knew that Alfric wasn’t really that upset about the fireballs, but it was easier to talk about.
“She’s so much older than us,” said Alfric. He was shaving a piece of wood down so that the joint would be perfect, hands steady despite his obvious annoyance. “I just don’t understand how she hasn’t learned some self-control.”
“It’s worked out for her,” said Isra. “She hasn’t been bitten by it too much.”
“She’s lost lots of friends over the years,” said Alfric. “I don’t know how much she’s shared with you, but the way she talks about some of these people she spent every day with, it’s a wonder that she’s been able to hold it together with this party.”
“All because of boys,” said Isra.
“True, mostly,” said Alfric with a sigh. “A few were from putting her foot in her mouth, I think.”
Isra didn’t know what else to say, how to help Alfric to handle this thing. She would have suggested talking to Hannah, but Hannah had decided that she was on the way out, and privately, Hannah was a little annoyed with both Alfric and Mizuki, though for different reasons. Isra had quite enjoyed having a private conversation about the other members of their party, which made her feel cozy in a way that was difficult to describe. From a certain perspective, it was gossip, but from another, it was an intimate chat about people that were important to both of them.
“I like her,” said Isra.
“I like her too,” said Alfric. “I really do. I’m just … exasperated, I guess.”
“You’re jealous,” said Isra.
Alfric paused. It was the sort of thing he didn’t like to talk about or acknowledge. She was wondering whether he would just let it pass, and as he returned to aggressively filing down a piece of wood, she thought that maybe he was done talking.
“If I were jealous, that would be a pretty stupid thing to be,” Alfric finally said.
“Hannah says that’s not a good way to think about your emotions,” said Isra.
“I guess,” said Alfric. “I do recall her saying something like that.”
“You’re pretending you’re not bothered,” said Isra.
“I think I’m more bothered that she asked me to undo it,” said Alfric. “And … there’s a feeling that comes with undone days sometimes, those that other people have taken, not knowing for certain whether to trust their accounting of things. I got that with Lola a lot. I don’t think I expected to feel it here.”
“Mmm,” said Isra. “You could have told her no, when she asked for you to reset.”
“I know,” said Alfric.
“What do you think really happened?” asked Isra.
“I choose to believe that it was what she said,” replied Alfric. He didn’t manage to make the shrug look comfortable. “But part of having to deal with chrononauts is that the undone day is unknowable. If she was hiding something, and I have to accept that she might have been, that puts me in a position that’s no different than the position that the rest of you are in every time I undo a day.”
“We trust you,” said Isra.
“You don’t trust Mizuki?” asked Alfric.
Isra was silent for a moment. “She means well. She’s very nice. There are certain things that I would trust her with.”
“Wow,” said Alfric.
“You’ve planted seeds of trust,” said Isra. “They’ve grown quite nicely. You could tell me almost anything had happened in an undone day and I would accept it as true, even if it seemed outlandish.”
“Shoot,” said Alfric. He was looking down at the joint he’d been filing down. He had taken off a little too much, and the frown of concentration on his face hadn’t been because he was devoting himself to getting it just perfect. He held the piece up to show Isra. “I don’t know how to fix this.”
“Surely we have an entad solution,” said Isra.
“The oud, yes,” said Alfric. “I can reshape it. It’s just … not what I prefer to do. Doing it that way doesn’t build skills for the future.”
“Alright,” said Isra, at a loss for what else to say. “While you think of some other solution, I’m going to tend to my animals. You don’t need me?”
“No,” said Alfric with a wave of his hand. In truth, he hadn’t needed her in the slightest, not from the start, but Isra was glad that she could hold things in place for him or maneuver awkward things with him, and she liked talking with him, especially when that was what he needed.
Isra exited the extradimensional space, taking in a breath of clean air. The air within the space was ‘cleaned’ using a ventstone and voidstone in concert, but the taste of it was a bit off, and fresh air was always better. Isra seemed to be the only one sensitive to it, maybe because it was so much more sterile than ‘living’ air. She felt the same way about water from the waterstones, which had an odd taste to it, or maybe just lack of taste, though that she’d gotten used to when she was quite young. She still felt that water tasted better when it had just a little of what Mizuki called ‘funk’, a taste of life to it.
Isra’s animals were all in a little box hanging off of the side of her room, an enclosure that Alfric had made for her which was what he’d dubbed the ‘bird apartment’, though there were more than just birds in there. The birds and other animals could get in and out through different sized and shaped openings that led into the open air, but the ‘back’ of the cubby faced the room and was covered by a fine mesh net, which could be removed if Isra wanted the animals to come inside.
In one sense, it was like having twenty different small pets, but Isra let them come and go, not affecting them too much except to tell them that this was a safe place with food that was moving west. The animals didn’t seem to care about ‘west’, or to understand the fact that they were in a moving house, but they did understand food and safety fairly easily, and there was some competition for the spaces. Isra had inadvertently attracted too many birds at first, and a few of them had taken up positions under the eaves of the house, where they were less welcome, along with a flock coating the roof, but Isra had spent some time correcting for that, and now the animals were mostly contained to their enclosure, at least when they weren’t out foraging, exploring, courting, or whatever else they had decided to do that day.
A large part of the reason for keeping dozens of animals in her room was that Isra was trying to get serious about being a better druid, and as with most things, from lute playing to wizardry to woodworking, practice seemed to be the key.
Isra pulled back the net, calming the minds of the animals, then called out a squirrel, stopping herself from using her voice. It hopped out, nervous as many of the prey animals were, but Isra was able to wash that away. She replaced the net and focused on the squirrel, pushing more of her soul into it.
Getting animals to do what she wanted them to do had never been terribly difficult, so long as she wasn’t asking them to do anything that was too unnatural for them, or which went against their instincts too much, or triggered their anxiety and fears. She had talked with her guild about some of that, and there had been general agreement that these things were difficult, but conflicting advice on how easy all that was to overcome, and what a ‘proper’ druid was like, some of which went over her head. Dom seemed to think that a ‘proper’ druid treated animals as though they were people, to be treated with respect and care, but there was at least one druid, Corm, who took a more cynical view on the matter.
Isra had yet to form an opinion, but Corm claimed to be capable of incredible feats, and Isra was at least interested if those feats were possible.
Isra poured as much of her soul into the squirrel as she possibly could, though it was an odd feeling, and not at all similar to pouring. It felt more like a deep empathy, or sympathy, but also like focusing on a little patch of skin at the tip of her finger, or the rhythms of her own breathing.
Corm claimed to have absolute control over animals, as though he was a puppeteer, but so far, Isra had a lot of difficulty getting anything even remotely like that to work. She could make the squirrel go from place to place, but she couldn’t make its paw clench into a fist. The control, to the extent it was control, felt like it was in the form of giving the squirrel instructions, when what she wanted was to move its limbs as though they were her own, like an extension of herself. That was what Corm seemed to be claiming, though Corm was a bit of an odd duck, even among the druids. His messages to the guild were always extremely long and very sporadic, dredging up old conversations a week after they’d happened.
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Isra tried again with the squirrel, keeping it calm, keeping herself calm, keeping her soul extended. It was right in front of her, inches away from her hand, and it felt as though it was an extension of her … but when she extended a lone finger, the squirrel didn’t follow suit. Corm had said that it would, or that it did when he tried it. Isra was tempted to send a message to Corm and meet up with him, but he had a bit of unsavory character, at least through the guild messages. Alfric had said that some people were like that, brusque or with disorganized thoughts, even if they were perfectly normal people when you met them in person.
While Mizuki was off rock petting to become a wizard, Isra had found herself squirrel petting to become a better druid. Unfortunately, druids were rare, and there were basically no proper teachers or apprenticeships or anything like that, and it was hard to tell whether all this practice was being done correctly, or might result in actual dividends.
It happened while Isra’s mind was wandering, off to other subjects. She moved her hand, and the squirrel’s paw curled with it. It was startling, and took a moment to do it again, but once she’d done it a second time, it was easy to do it a third. She moved her hand over to the side, and watched the squirrel’s hand move at the same time.
There came a knock on the door, and Isra answered without looking away at the furry creature in front of her.
“Come in,” she said.
“It’s me,” said Pinion as he stepped in. “How is whatever this is?”
Isra moved her hand and the squirrel moved its paw. She lifted her arm, and the paw lifted high, though they had different bodies and were in different positions from each other. It made sense in her mind, which was the important thing.
“Well,” said Pinion. “That’s, ah, a bit creepy.”
“Is it?” asked Isra, though she was starting to feel the same way. It wasn’t like a puppet, nor like gripping the squirrel about the body, she was just sharing her soul with the creature, but it smacked of something unsavory.
“You can’t do that on people, right?” asked Pinion.
“No,” said Isra. “Or I guess … I haven’t tried.” She gathered her sense of soul back into herself and told the squirrel to run off back into the apartments. She pulled back the mesh to let him in.
“It was only a joke,” said Pinion. “Sorry, maybe it was in poor taste, I’m not actually worried. And it was rude to say that it was creepy, I had only meant —”
“It’s fine,” said Isra, though she didn’t mean it. People said that things were fine when they weren’t, everyone did it.
“I was wondering whether you’d like to do something for Verity’s show tonight,” said Pinion. “She’s put me in charge of ‘the extras’.”
“What does that mean?” asked Isra.
“Well,” said Pinion. “I’m actually not sure. I had the idea that there could be some accompaniment to her music of some kind, and she said that it was a lovely idea that she was going to do nothing with unless someone else took care of it. I offered to see what I could do, and she said that she’d have veto power, which wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of her faith in the plan.”
“And what were you thinking?” asked Isra. “She plays the lute, what would you add to that?”
“Well,” said Pinion. “The lute is good, and she plays it masterfully, but it’s a feast for only one of the senses, or I suppose more if she’s leaning into the magical aspects. People usually have food and drink, but … well, I was thinking that we might have something of a show. You and Mizuki are both suited to it, in terms of your skills, and I had thought that before I saw you moving the mouse around.”
“It’s a squirrel,” said Isra.
“Was it?” asked Pinion. “It was so small, and with such a short tail.” He moved over to the animal apartment, and Isra calmed the animals down as they sensed the movement and the looming of a new creature.
“Stub-tailed squirrel,” said Isra. “It’s native to these parts, I think. I’ll tell it to leave before we get too much further, I’m worried that it’s not going to like the trees further west, nearer the ocean.”
“And what is this project?” asked Pinion.
“It’s … druid training, I suppose,” said Isra. She was watching him. There was something excitable in his nature that she liked, which helped to take her mood in a different direction from where it had been. “I’m trying to be ‘of Qymmos’ a bit.”
“Are you now?” asked Pinion as he looked in at the creatures. “In the sense of … ?”
“Knowing the animals,” said Isra. “There are certain things that are easy, and other things that are hard. I can know what they’re thinking, feeling, the kinds of foods they like, what they need … but it’s harder to know other things, like what their lifecycle is like.”
“When they’ll lay eggs?” asked Pinion.
“I know that if it’s close,” said Isra. “But if it’s seasonal, if the mating season is far on the horizon, then I don’t always know.”
“Ah,” said Pinion. “And … this is something that’s relatively unstudied?”
“I don’t know,” shrugged Isra. “Are there druid researchers?”
“There are,” said Pinion. “I don’t know any personally, but I know that they exist. Druids are enormously helpful for agriculture and other, less important things. Inter would like to have as many druids as possible — sorry, is this new for you? I like talking, but you’re the druid, and I wouldn’t want to explain things you already know.”
Isra shrugged. “I’m in a guild of druids, a local one. I talk to them about these things. Most of us weren’t given our gift through any kind of scheme but the foresight of our mothers.”
“It takes a considerable amount of land,” said Pinion with an excited nod. There was something of Alfric about him, though perhaps Isra only thought that because Alfric was the only boy she knew well. “You need either natural isolation or a dedicated space to be cleared, or an area that’s relatively inhospitable. At any rate, you’ll have to let me know your findings.”
“You could probably speak with a researcher who knows already,” said Isra. “Maybe a druid researcher who was a druid herself, along with also being a cleric of Qymmos.”
“See, that I’m not sure exists,” said Pinion. “There might be a druid researcher who’s also a druid, but I’d think that it would be a game of numbers, and I don’t think the numbers are there. When you start to get into specialities, there are some real problems with with actually having enough people. I was actually talking to Mizuki about it, how she might be one of only a handful of sorcs who ever became wizards.”
“They used to fight though,” said Isra.
“Well, yes, that did come up,” said Pinion. “But even outside of historical tensions, sorcs are somewhat rare, even if their rarity stems from different sources than druidism. It’s something that I find particularly interesting because I have no special power of my own. There’s an enviable bevy of powers in your party.”
“You were asking about a show?” asked Isra. “Using … animals?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Pinion. “Something like that, yes, something novel that would add to the experience of the music rather than take away. I don’t know what that would be, exactly.”
Isra shook her head. “We would need to rehearse it.”
“There’s time today?” asked Pinion. “But otherwise, yes, you’re right, having it be tonight is probably a bit ambitious. I was going to ask Mizuki when she got home whether she might be able to do some kind of light show, but perhaps with her current controversies at school it might not be for the best.”
“She would like it,” said Isra. “I think she’s a natural performer, even if she doesn’t use that talent.”
“The nature of sorcery is such that it would probably only be good for the finale,” said Pinion. “She’d drain the room quickly, if I understand it right.”
“And in the meantime, you’d want … birds?” asked Isra.
Pinion gave a happy shrug. “We’re at that wonderful part of a project where we can scrap it and lose absolutely nothing. If we run into a wall, if we don’t enjoy what we’re doing, we can say ‘you know what, I would rather not’ and then there’s absolutely no consequence. Verity expects nothing from us, we’ve wasted no time — there’s something nice about that, isn’t there? It’s very freeing.”
“So I could do … whatever I wanted?” asked Isra.
“Exactly!” Pinion exclaimed. “Maybe some birds doing a dance, or mice doing acrobatics, or … you know, I don’t know, snakes wrapping themselves around Verity’s limbs. I guess you’d need to coordinate on songs, but it’s the sort of thing that feels like a nice gimmick.”
“Verity isn’t a huge fan of gimmicks,” said Isra.
“Isn’t she?” asked Pinion. “I didn’t get that sense from talking to her.”
“You’re fast friends,” said Isra.
Pinion frowned, just slightly. It might have been because of the way that Isra said it. “I think her view on gimmicks is that they should elevate the work, but that by itself a gimmick isn’t a bad thing. You don’t knock a work of art for having a gimmick, you knock it for leaning on that gimmick for too much support, leaving out all the details of proper execution. Some of the most treasured songs have gimmicks, arguably. A number of the religious canticles are built around a gimmick, or at least with a constraint that’s like a gimmick.”
“So Verity does like gimmicks?” asked Isra.
“I think everyone likes a gimmick, except maybe traditionalists, and for them, you just have to give them twenty years or so.” Pinion smiled. “Can you make birds dance?”
“Birds like to dance and hop around,” said Isra. “Doing that to the tempo of a song … I’m less sure about.” She looked in on the apartment, and all the birds she’d gathered. Many of them were out for the day, finding food as the house marched on, or just riding the house and enjoying the mild wind of its passage. She had never thought about whether birds had a sense of timing and synchronization, but they had flocks, didn’t they, and moved in concert with each other. “I really don’t think that we can put this into practice tonight.”
“All good,” said Pinion. “There’s no pressure to do it. In fact, there’s no pressure on Verity to give a performance, that’s something that she’s put on herself. And I suppose I’m just putting in a request, because obviously I’ll be of absolutely no help whatsoever, not unless you need someone to bounce ideas off of.”
“I suppose I would like that, yes,” said Isra.
They ended up spending the next hour together, which was mostly playing with the animals rather than doing any actual work. Pinion was apparently eager to get to the next dungeon so he could continue on with his studies, but he seemed pleased to spend time with her. Isra, in turn, found herself pleased that he had sought her out, even if they ended up making no headway on making some birds into accompaniment. Their conversation had started on the topic at hand, but quickly drifted in other directions.
“No,” said Pinion. “See, Qymmic jokes aren’t about wrong definitions, they’re about definitions and categories that aren’t strictly wrong. That’s what makes them funny. Saying that a cat is a dog isn’t a Qymmic joke, explaining why a cat is a dog, that’s where the humor comes from.”
“That doesn’t seem that funny to me,” said Isra.
“How do we define a dog?” asked Pinion. “It’s furry, it’s got a tail, walks around with four legs, right? So obviously a cat is a kind of dog.” Isra frowned and Pinion laughed. “Alright, maybe that’s not a good one, but the point is that it’s ridiculous. There’s a stock character in Qymmic jokes, the well-meaning novice, named Branson, who gets asked to do some task or bring some item, and goes off and brings back something unexpected, or does the task in a way that wasn’t intended.”
“Alright, I have a Qymmic joke,” said Isra.
“I am so ready,” said Pinion.
“A man goes to the store,” said Isra. “He asks for nails. The storekeeper gives him fingernails.”
“The concept was solid,” said Pinion. “The execution was, shall we say, a little lacking. I studied jokes in the seminary, believe it or not. We can work on it though.”
“Oh yes,” said Isra. “That’s what I want to do, workshop a joke.” She rolled her eyes and gave a little laugh.
There was a knock on the door, and Isra looked at the door with a frown. “Come in?”
Verity slipped inside and appraised the situation, which was maybe two dozen critters lined up.
“How is … it?” asked Verity.
“It’s well, I think,” said Isra. “We’re mostly just chatting.”
“I’m done with practice, and have had my fill of watching the road roll by,” said Verity. “Any chance that either of you would be up for something more interesting?”
“I can’t imagine what would beat this,” said Pinion, gesturing at the arrayed animals. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor.
“We could take the ship out,” said Verity. “We can meet up with the rest of the party later on, but the bird boy says that we’ll be crossing close to a lake soon. I was thinking that we could do a late picnic, unless either of you have eaten.”
“I could always eat more,” said Pinion.
“And I haven’t eaten,” said Isra.
“I’ll make some sandwiches, and then we’ll disembark,” said Verity.
“I’ve seen your sandwiches,” said Isra. “I’ll make sandwiches.”
Verity stuck out her tongue and left.
“You’ll make a sandwich for me too, right?” asked Pinion as he got to his feet. “I can make my own, obviously.”
“It would be my pleasure,” said Isra. She held out her hand for some help up, even though she didn’t really need it.
There was something about the way that Verity had come in that was bothering Isra, and kept bothering her as she was making ham on rye, which were wrapped in napkins and placed into a small basket. It took quite a while to identify where the discomfort was coming from though, until Isra realized it was the thing that started it: the knock. Verity never knocked on the door.
Maybe Isra wouldn’t have thought twice about it if Verity and Pinion weren’t friends, but that Verity thought she was interrupting something, or might be was causing Isra to have some thoughts. Pinion was fun to be around, had lifted a somewhat melancholy mood, and had made her feel good. He had pretty eyes and nice forearms, and there was something about him being short that Isra liked as well. There was, sometimes, something almost threatening about a big man like Marsh.
It was the thought that maybe Pinion was going to make a move, or that Verity thought Pinion might make a move, that made Isra’s stomach do a little flip. Her emotions were confused, harder to read than a sparrow’s were, and she found herself pushing more of her soul out around her, which did help to keep her from being overwhelmed by second-guessing either interaction she had with either of them.
She was second-guessing the boat ride as they left, and almost bailed out, but Pinion had become Verity’s friend, and Isra felt an urge to be a part of it.