Pinion had mixed feelings on the dress. The party had, in practical terms, gifted it to him, but he wasn’t sure that he actually wanted it. It allowed the wearer to slide between feminine and masculine, and he was currently having breakfast with Verity and Isra, in the form of a girl. Hannah still hadn’t woken, or perhaps was in her extradimensional space with Marsh, and Alfric wasn’t awake yet, which was a bit unusual.
“It’s one of those things that has no downside, right?” asked Verity.
“I suppose,” said Pinion. “As with most entads, there’s still a cost in terms of wearing it or lugging it around. It’s the same reason that if someone offers you a piece of furniture, you wouldn’t necessarily take it.”
“I think you look good in it,” said Verity.
“Yes, well,” said Pinion. “I think you think I look good for the wrong reasons.” He said it with a smile, though he wasn’t entirely joking.
“You look good as a girl,” said Verity. “I actually think most men would look good as girls. Girls look good, generally speaking, better than men.”
“Now, do you say that as personal preference, or because you really believe it to be true in a general sense?” asked Pinion.
“Hmm,” said Verity. She pondered this while sipping on her apple cider.
“I think we’ve had this conversation before,” said Isra. She’d been the one to do the light cooking for them, though Pinion only had a bit of egg.
“Have we?” asked Verity.
“Not about men and women,” said Isra. “But about music and art.”
“Right, right,” said Verity. “The universality of beauty and aesthetics.”
“Surely we must accept that beauty is subjective?” asked Pinion.
“Must we?” asked Verity. She pouted. “I think that’s so boring, such a cop out answer to the question. You get asked whether something is good or bad, and you answer that good and bad are all relative, it’s such dreck. It’s the slime stuck to the bottom of a boot. The answer of cowards.”
“It’s the answer that Qymmos gives to the question,” said Pinion. “Have you read Answer to the Nebulous?”
“No,” said Verity. “And if the answer is ‘really, it depends on your point of view’ then I don’t think I need to read it. Did someone really write such a facile tract?”
“She’s fired up about this,” said Isra.
“I can tell,” Pinion smiled. “Which is nice, but the question of how to bring objectivity to subjective topics is actually pretty well-worn.”
“It feels wrong in my bones to say that my ‘opinion’ on a topic is just as correct as, say, Mizuki’s. No offense to her.”
“I think I’d be the proper point of comparison,” said Isra.
“You have a refinement of your own,” said Verity, briefly placing a gentle hand on Isra’s forearm. “It irks me, that’s all. I’m a musician, how could it not? I spend my time trying to make beautiful things, or at least compelling things. To pour myself into something with all the craft, creativity, and effort I possibly can, and then have someone have unprincipled takes on why it’s bad … hopefully you can at least tell how and why that irks me.”
“It’s funny,” said Pinion. “Or … funny in an ironic way, I suppose. Because what you crave is some metric for success, and you’re in a field that doesn’t provide that. A farmer can be judged on the yields of their crops, a dungeoneer on the money they take in from the dungeon spoils, an ectad engineer by the efficiency of their processes — but there’s no such thing for art.”
“All Verity wants is to be told that she’s done a good job,” said Isra. “That’s the root of it.”
“Is it?” asked Verity.
“Ah, I could see that,” said Pinion. “It’s not the metrics per se, it’s the feedback, and when someone says ‘oh, that song was nice’ your first instinct is to say ‘well, that’s just your opinion’.”
“Wow,” said Verity. “I’m thinking that neither of you know me well enough to be saying that. Though it does have the ring of truth to it.” She frowned. “Is that something that you can unlearn, praise-seeking? Or a preference of the concrete over the ethereal?”
“I’d think, as with most things, it changes with time,” said Pinion. “Your performance last night got applause. Did that feel too transient for you, too subject to being revoked or invalidated?”
“I don’t suppose it did,” said Verity. “Mostly when I’m listening to the audience, it’s about calibrating the songs to their mood, not trying to capture their, ah, love.” She paused on the word.
“I’ve only been privy to a minority of the performances, but you seem quite aloof when you play. Like you’re in your own world,” said Pinion. His voice was higher as a girl, which Verity said had something to do with vocal cords.
“Sometimes,” shrugged Verity. “I like music more when it’s like that. But I think ignoring the whims of the audience is something that you only do when you’re on a larger stage, when managing the audience isn’t really expected. Playing Beruchald is already supposed to have relatively little interpretation, so I’m not even sure what responding to the audience would be. But with these little songs that I’ve been playing, sometimes I’ll hold off on a verse to get to the next song, or go one verse extra, or play more instrumental, and there’s no set list, so I’ll sometimes decide what comes next based on what I feel from the audience.” She paused. “And there’s second-guessing there, not that there’s really time for it. You know, put like that, I’m not sure that I’d like a more concrete understanding.”
“There’s something nice about going with the vibes,” said Isra.
“Yes,” nodded Verity. “But I still don’t hold with the idea that everyone has their own view of beauty which is equally valid. It offends me.”
“Well, I’m going to change out of this dress, as fun as it’s been,” said Pinion.
“Aw,” said Verity.
“Back to looking like an ugly man, I guess,” said Pinion. He smiled at Verity, but the smile she gave him back wasn’t quite right. She really did find men to be unaesthetic in most cases, and there was something about that which hurt a little bit, even if she didn’t intend it.
Pinion had spent the night with Isra and Verity, having used the dress to ‘become’ a girl. He had often wondered what it would be like, in the interests of scientific curiosity, and the truth was, it wasn’t very different at all. Most of what they’d done had been things that he could have just as easily done in a man’s form, like putting makeup on his face and polish on his nails, though he’d done the former before, since it was expected of men in formal events on the eastern side of Inter. Wearing women's clothes was likewise just as possible when he was his normal self, and so didn’t have much appeal or thrill, except that Isra and Verity seemed to be having fun, which made it fun. He’d put on a few of their dresses and twirled around in them, which they’d seemed to enjoy.
As Pinion looked at the dress in the mirror in his room, he puzzled over it. It was as close as they’d gotten to a ‘broken’ entad, and it had taken Hannah giving a diatribe on the topic for Pinion to realize that she was right.
“The gods don’t give a fig about gender,” said Hannah. “And it’s not baked into the entads either, for whatever reason, which might well have been an Editorial choice.” She held up a hand and began counting off subjects. “No entads restrict gender, no magic is blocked by it, there’s no way to flip a person from one to the other except through general means like copyin’ or replacement or manipulation, there’s no grammar for it, no vocabulary. So in that sense, a dress that can do what this one did was unprecedented.
It wasn’t too useful, especially because it needed to be fully worn. If you wanted to change how you looked, there were other entads for that, and it wasn’t as though it allowed for full customization of the sort that was available for anyone with enough money or through the lottery.
The dress didn’t just ‘flip’ gender, a concept that Hannah in particular rolled her eyes at, it operated on a whole range of features. Pinion could warp just his eyes, making them more masculine or more feminine, at least as the dress seemed to understand these concepts. Pushing at the boundaries of it, Pinion could see why Hannah felt it was so ridiculous a thing, divorced from any ground reality, but there was something that felt compelling about it, a chance to make changes.
For as much as Verity had said that she found women more aesthetically pleasing than men — or more, that women simply were more pleasing to look at in general from the viewpoint of any right-thinking person — for all that, Pinion still spent some time in the mirror, seeing what he’d look like with more masculine features. Pushed to the extremes that the dress allowed, it was a caricature of masculinity, but there was still something that Pinion liked about it.
Once the dress was off, he examined himself, giving a critical eye to his features. It wasn’t something that he did often, in part because most of what he saw were the things he didn’t like.
When Pinion came downstairs, dressed in his usual clothes and with the nail polish taken off, the house was ready to start moving again. It was a part of the rhythm of their travels, the house taking off down the backroads of Inter, though Alfric had said that at least once before they settled into their planned plot in Plenarch, he’d like to take one of the major thoroughfares, just for the experience of it.
Isra was at the dining room table, frowning as she looked through a book. She was wearing her headscarf and conservatively dressed, which seemed to be something that she did with no consistency, depending on her mood. The night before, at their sleepover, she’d been in just a shift.
Of all the party members, Verity had become his closest friend, and perhaps because she shared a room with Isra, Isra had become a friend too. By contrast, Pinion spent relatively little time with Hannah and Mizuki, who had their own affairs away from the house, and with Alfric, it was much more like being colleagues.
“Moving in five!” Alfric called, his traditional warning. He was overly paranoid that the house would end up stepping on someone, or that someone might get left behind, not that they didn’t have a dozen ways of dealing with that.
“What are you reading?” Pinion asked as he took a seat.
“It’s a travel guide for Tarbin,” said Isra.
“Ah,” said Pinion.
“I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do once we get to Plenarch,” said Isra.
“As soon as we get done with this long journey, you’re going to go on another one?” asked Pinion.
“Right now, we’re seeing the sights,” said Isra. Her eyes were still on the book. “But when we’re in Plenarch … there are only so many days I want to spend there, especially if I’m not interested in the shops.”
“You’re not?” asked Pinion. “That’s the best part of a large city, in my opinion. Second best, maybe, after the entertainment. A city has variety that small towns can’t hope to match, and there are things to find in the shops that you’d never in a million years come across in the relative middle of nowhere.”
“I’ve been shopping in Plenarch before,” said Isra. She flipped a page. “It was nice. I don’t know that I need to do it again. Verity said that some people get obsessed with it, having new things, and they enjoy the act of collection more than actual having. I’m a collector, but collecting things that cost money seems like it might ruin me.”
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“Ah,” said Pinion.
“Alfric and Mizuki seem like they’re getting along better,” said Isra.
“I think I missed seeing her off,” said Pinion. “She’s at school?”
“She is, or on her way,” said Isra. “She said goodbye to him.”
“Good that the fight wasn’t serious, I guess,” said Pinion. He looked at the book Isra was leafing through, which was open to a map with indexed time tables. “Portals?”
“Yes,” said Isra. “It’s between portals, leycraft, and just using the entads we have. I’m not decided.”
“Alone, or with the party?” asked Pinion.
Isra looked up. “I wouldn’t want to inconvenience anyone.”
“No,” said Pinion. “But you have to realize that they’d come with you, right? Verity would insist, Mizuki would take a break from school, Alfric would try to plan around it … even if Hannah is on her way out, I do think she’d want to be with you.”
Isra sighed. “I know, they would come.”
“I’m a bit envious,” said Pinion. “I’ve never really had anyone in my life like that.”
“It helps that they’re not tied down,” said Isra. As she said it, the house lurched to its feet.
“I suppose it does,” said Pinion. “The mark of a true friend would be following you anywhere, even if it cost them dearly and disrupted their life, at least if the stories are to be believed. But I don’t think that means them coming with you would mean any less.”
“I don’t know I’d need them,” said Isra.
“No, you seem quite capable,” said Pinion.
Isra narrowed her eyes at him. “Not for these things.”
“Finding your family?” asked Pinion. “Your past?”
Her eyes returned to the book. “It’s not something that I’m good at.” After her eyes idly traced the legend of the map, she looked back up. “You can be stubborn and plow your way through a great many things, and you can be willing to make a fool of yourself, but I might be able to find aunts, uncles, grandparents, all from a different culture I’ve known only through my father, through books, and I wouldn’t get a second chance to make an impression.”
“Good people would give you a second chance,” said Pinion.
“They might not be good people,” said Isra.
“I suppose not,” he replied.
He’d been given the brief version of her life story, having been raised in the woods after her mother’s death by a father who kept her hidden from the village. It was certainly odd, and Isra had apparently been flirting with the idea of traveling to Tarbin to find some answers for herself, something that Verity had confided was probably overdue.
People with good lives didn’t typically move to another country to live in seclusion, and it wasn’t out of the question that Isra would find some heartbreak there. She seemed aware of that fact.
“Have you done either of them?” asked Isra. “A portal or leycraft?”
“Both,” said Pinion. “Leycraft feels fast, which is about as much as I can say for it. Mostly, it’s cramped, and there’s a smell to it that I wasn’t a fan of. It’s also expensive, though sometimes the cheapest option for reliably getting from one place to another. You have a pilot, who’s doing all the work of staying within the lane, and all you do is sit there.” He shrugged. “I suppose I would recommend doing it at least once, if only for the thrill of it.”
“And portals?” asked Isra.
“I’ve only taken a portal once,” said Pinion. “It’s a much different experience, mostly because you’re queueing up with other people. And because the portals only open randomly — or not randomly, but at specific times that have their own rhyme and reason — most of the people going through are going with the understanding that they won’t be back.”
“It’s … rich and poor?” asked Isra.
“Hrm, I suppose,” said Pinion. “Most of the people at the leycraft station were people of means, and the ones like me were a rarity. Regular leycraft travel is mostly for government officials though, and I don’t think they’re usually rich. But the portals, yes, it’s people all lined up and ready, most of them carrying what luggage they have. You can’t really do a holiday with portal travel unless you’re willing to wait for an opportune portal back. It’s very different. Which were you thinking?”
“I don’t know,” said Isra. She looked back down at the book. “It seems daunting. I’ve been all over Greater Plenarch, but a longer trip like that, out of the country, to a place where they speak a language that I’m rusty with …”
“I’ve always found the prospect of travel daunting,” said Pinion. “But then when I’m actually traveling, it’s not so bad as all that.”
“Why did you go by leycraft, if it’s so expensive?” asked Isra.
“My great-grandmother had died,” said Pinion. “She was a matriarch and it was something of an occasion. She’d set aside money for travel arrangements for all of what she called her brood.”
Isra tapped her fingers against the table. “I might have a great-grandmother.”
“Was your father young?” asked Pinion.
“I don’t actually know,” said Isra. “Isn’t that strange, that I couldn’t tell you his age? He seemed ancient to me when I was small, but … I think he might have been young, yes. Younger, anyway. He didn’t have gray hair.”
“Common wisdom is that having children young is better,” said Pinion. “You have more energy for them, and you get to watch more of their lives. But I obviously don’t know the circumstances your parents found themselves in.”
“Nor do I,” said Isra.
“Well, I can’t say that I would stop my life to come help you, but you’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do, won’t you?” asked Pinion.
“Thank you,” nodded Isra. She’d returned to maps. “There’s a portal that goes to the heart of Tarbin a month from now.”
“Near to us?” asked Pinion.
“Yes,” said Isra. “Or near where we’ll be. Three hexes from Plenarch.”
“Mmm,” said Pinion. “Then there’s a chance I will go with you, if the whole party is going there.”
“I think I’ve made plans, but I haven’t told anyone,” said Isra.
“Why?” asked Pinion.
“The encouragement,” said Isra. “I like being supported, but the way that they encourage me to do this thing … I feel unappreciative, but it might be better if they weren’t so kind and gentle.”
“Ah,” said Pinion. “So if I say ‘your outfit looks nice!’ you’re happy for the compliment, but if I say ‘I’ll help you in any way I can, whether you decide to find your family or not’ it feels … what, too mushy?”
“They lose their strong opinions,” said Isra. “Because it’s delicate.” She was frowning. She looked up at Pinion. “And you have no strong opinions either?”
“I don’t know you that well,” said Pinion. “And strong opinions are a bit rude, in this sort of case. It would be like having strong opinions on someone’s choice of a mate, or their career, or something like that. And if you say to someone ‘you really should do everything in your power to find whatever family you have, otherwise you’ll regret it’, and then they don’t do that thing, it would feel like a harsh judgment, wouldn’t it?”
“I’d rather people say what they think,” said Isra. She set the book down and stood from her seat, swaying slightly with the movement of the house. “If you weren’t being polite, what would you say?”
“If I weren’t deferring because I don’t know you well enough,” said Pinion, considering that. “I would say that yes, you’re at a point in your life where you can just decide that you’re going to another continent, and if you do have family then time might be wasting away. A great-grandmother might not be alive in another decade. The information about your father might be lost.” He smiled at her. “So yes, unequivocally, with no waffling or caveats, you should make the trip to Tarbin and find what you can.”
“Thank you,” said Isra.
“Not a problem,” said Pinion. “Now, I need to write a letter to my mentor, is there any way that you can stick me in Lutopia One for an hour or so?”
“Of course,” said Isra.
The house, at least as Alfric controlled it, went along steadily enough, but occasionally it needed to make a long step, or there was a rough patch, and that made penning a letter a little sloppy. Ideally, Pinion would have waited until the house was stopped, but the problem was that he didn’t have a lot to do during the day, and once the house came to a stop, that was usually when it was time for them to have fun at whatever destination Isra had picked for them. They’d been going to interesting lakes and hills, and this coming day promised a meadow with flowers that responded to sound, which Isra had scouted for them.
Pinion quite liked Lutopia One, though he always had a bit of fear that he’d get left in there, forgotten. It had a ventstone, which meant that air wasn’t a problem, and there was a makeshift latrine, along with a glass tank with water and some dried provisions. There were bedrolls as well, and apparently the party had made the place their home for a series of days during a previous adventure, but after even an hour it began to feel claustrophobic.
Still, for a brief time it was almost ideal, a hermetically austere place with no distractions, no sounds, and nothing much else to do aside from contemplate the isolation.
As far as the dungeon investigations went, it had been a smashing success and was also frustratingly incomplete. Verity could influence the dungeon, but the last dungeon had been adversarial in some respects, twisting around what she’d been trying to do, and it wasn’t clear whether that was something that was inherent to her, or her efforts, or to the dungeons themselves.
The source of dungeon madness has long been speculated, but we might actually be getting close to something important, Pinion wrote. I’ve been discussing it with Verity, and we might learn something by having her relax her attempted prohibitions on creatures. This does introduce some risks to life and limb, especially given the results of their dungeons before I came along, but the scientific value might be incalculable.
Pinion went on for a bit, giving both a description of the dungeons thus far and his analysis of them, then hesitated on his final paragraph, which he’d intended to give over to more personal matters.
Argya Ham was his mentor and boss, and part of the reason she’d sent him on what had seemed like a wild goose chase was that she thought he needed to see more of the world. In that respect, it had been wildly successful, though there was a part of Pinion that wished they’d stay in one place for a bit more time. Still, they were making stops all over Greater Plenarch, visiting interesting buildings and monuments, a variety of natural wonders, and a number of small towns that were somehow all alike and yet with their own character.
He had been enjoying himself, overall, though the sleepover the night before had raised some confusing feelings in him, not with respect to his self-conception, but with regards to both Verity and Isra. He got along well with Verity, but when he’d changed his appearance to that of a girl, she’d been downright flirty, and he had no idea what that meant, if anything, whether she temporarily saw him as an option to date or whether it was something else. That the entad he’d used was one that she influenced added to the confusion, though it was difficult to ascribe intent.
Isra came to fetch him ten minutes after the letter was finished, and then Pinion had to go to the trouble of figuring out how to post it, mostly because of the difficulty involved in having a return address when the house was moving.
“Oh,” said Isra. “I go back to Pucklechurch fairly often. You can just have the return address be there. Bethany holds our mail for us, she works at the general store there. I’m actually still part of the gardening club.”
“So it’s like you never left?” asked Pinion.
“I’m not sure I would say that, but if you can travel widely at will, why not?” asked Isra. “This trip has been different for me than for the others.”
Pinion nodded at that. Of course, being a druid, it would be different for Isra anyhow. She was seeing more of the lands as they traveled, and would have been even without her travel lute. All the fantastic places they’d visited had been scouted by her, some with the help of locals, others with maps, and a few that she’d found simply by going to a hex and rising high into the air until she found something interesting.
It was around noon when they stopped at the meadow, and the waves of colors were immediately visible, reflecting the sounds of the wind.
They stepped down onto the ground and the flowers nearest their footsteps turned red with white centers, and as they spoke, green bursts happened around them.
“How does it work?” asked Verity.
“I have no idea,” said Isra.
“Not volume,” said Hannah, who was peering at a close-by flower. She hummed, and it pinkened.
“No,” said Isra.
“A dungeon escape?” asked Alfric. “Or something else?”
“The locals didn’t know,” said Isra. “They’ve tried to cultivate them, but there’s something in the soil here that they thrive on. I promised I would try to figure it out. Her hands went down to the flowers, and she gently cupped one, which pulsed blue to the sound of her breath.”
“Would you prefer the mini concert before or after we eat?” asked Verity. She was cradling one of her many lutes, this one an old standby which needed to be played with at least six fingers.
“Before, if that’s alright,” said Alfric. “I had a late breakfast.”
“Mmm,” said Hannah. “You and Mizuki made up then?”
“You could say that,” said Alfric.
“You’ve been in a good mood today,” said Hannah.
“Maybe,” Alfric smiled.
“Did it finally happen?” asked Isra. Her mood had brightened at the prospect.
“Look at his face,” Verity laughed. The laughter sent ripples of red out through the flowers.
“Mizuki and I still need to talk,” said Alfric.
“What were you doin’ last night then, ay?” asked Hannah.
“Hang on,” said Alfric. He was smiling though. “There are some issues that need to be worked out so that we don’t get in the way of the party’s —”
“Well, I’m happy for you,” said Verity, speaking over him.
“We should celebrate,” said Isra.
“Give them space,” said Hannah. “If they worked out somethin’ amicable last night they don’t need friends hornin’ in.” She clapped Alfric on the back. “But I’m happy for you, and so long as you talk things over and work together, I’ve high hopes. I’ve seen plenty of couples dash themselves upon easily avoidable rocks, and I hope that you have the good sense not to.”
Alfric looked around. “The concert?” he asked.
“Fine, fine,” said Verity. “But only because I know that Mizuki will blab once she gets home.”
Alfric seemed relieved, and Verity strode out into the flowers, trying to find a spot on a hill where she’d have the best visibility. After a moment to compose herself, she began a fast song that seemed to go up and down and breakneck speed, her words barely audible over the strumming of the lute.
It was a song of flowers, and it evolved as she played, certain notes that the flowers responded well to coming up more often, the colors growing richer and deeper as Verity learned to play with them. By the time her flower song was over, the colors were coming in waves, a hypnotic pattern emanating from where she was standing, and to cap it off, a gust of wind blew in to make the flowers wave around.
They applauded the display and then set out everything they needed for the picnic, which was a meal of soup in bowls made of bread, something that Hannah had said she’d wanted to share with the group before she left. It was a staple of festivals, she said, and was topped with cheese, which made it more than enough of a meal for lunch, and almost demanded that they have a smaller dinner.
The group was happy and boisterous, and Pinion was happy that he had a chance to be with them, but once they went back inside and got the house moving again, he began to feel a bit lonesome. The summer was fading into fall, and he wouldn’t be with these people forever. He was already feeling bad about having to say goodbye.