An Age of Mysterious Memories

As a blur streaks past me, she calls out telepathically, “I’m gonna go kick some siege butt if I can find any more baddies my Airhead. Take it easy, maybe tune in on your goggles to watch the show! Give Big A some smoochin’ for me, rawr!”

Blushing at Teuila’s, uh, impertinence I guess, I roll my eyes, shake my head and grin like an idiot. Prinrin catches up to me, and frowns, realizing her favorite perch is already held by an adorable goblin woman. She hops to my other side to glom onto me to sit on my left hip with her legs and arms wrapped around me. I’m about to remark on it, when Miraina decides to one-up her mother by glomming onto my front, causing me to nearly topple over for a number of reasons. The—. I can’t say I’m not at least somewhat delighted at the attention, and closeness, of three amazing people whom I’m very enamored of, but this is getting out of hand.

The young woman is certainly capable of flustering me, and her mother. I understand why she had to play the child card, acting like one for years to keep it from appearing like the only known runt had had a clutch. But it makes it difficult to even accept, or play along with, what might be harmless flirtations that are perhaps more about teasing or annoying her mother than about attracting me. Seemingly abashed, Pawn erm, koff, dismounts me, and instead, goes to ride my tail while clinging to my back.

I’m—. The way Pawn situates herself is—. This is incredibly awkwardly intimate, to have three short women grasping me nearly for dear life. Three very attractive, short women, some of whom I consider off-limits. A shiver runs down my spine, and I’m not making any progress towards getting Littlebit acquainted with Solace, with Nala, or with Mount Verdimenn. Then again, right now I also want to comfort Miraina, and seek solace in Prinrin’s embrace.

Today was harrowing for many of us. I shake loose any inappropriate thoughts, and simply tenderly touch Pawn’s hands where they clasp each other in front of my neck. Leaning my head to my left, I rest it on Prinrin’s scalp, feeling her short, mildly spiky hair prickle my chin and jaw. TK Surfing down through Mount Solace is no more difficult with the three women latched onto me than it would be normally though at least.

Waving at the folks in the forgeworks, I continue onwards to Mount Verdimenn, and unsurprisingly, I see a rather-terrified-looking Leezahna awaiting me near the entrance to the main cavern. When her gaze takes me in, she flinches, but gathers herself upon my approach. I pause my surfing in order to await hearing about any needs that Leeza needs to have addressed. Her face is contorted as she tries to take in my current appearance, but she gathers her wits quickly enough.

When Leezahna begins, “Schism, there, there, there was a, a, a siege today, is, is a siege. My, my family. They chose a dwelling closest to the exit, they—.” My eyes flash wide in horror.

I interrupt quickly, “Are they alright? Do they need extra protection? Have they been abducted? I’ll go immediately. Tell me whatever you need.”

Balking momentarily, Leezahna blinks at me before answering, “I, I, sorry. I forget that, um, th-that you really mean that. About everyone. They’re, I think they’re fine. I’m just so scared for mother. She’s t-too stubborn t-to move t-to a more interior dwelling. I worry th-that, I—, it’s strange, but not just for her. I got t-to, t-to thinking about numbers, and things. If, if, well, if our defenders have to cover more distance, or t-territory because she refuses to evacuate, is—. Is she going to get someone hurt? I mean, not directly, but, but is th-that, is th-that selfish? Could someone get hurt if she doesn’t listen? I, I hate th-that I even think about stuff like this. It’s your fault, but, but I think it’s the right thing to think about. I hate you more every day. Glp. Th-thank you for, for not killing me for it.”

Well that’s another dagger of guilt twisting in my guts. I mean, I guess I’m honored that she blames me for her having a wider social conscience. I understand how it can be difficult, even painful, to realize that your actions, or the actions of those you care about, affect other people. I sigh softly. Yeah. I’d blame the person who introduced me to or forced me to find or face my conscience as well. Luni was right. We’ll never be friends. And the only reason we won’t be enemies, is because Leeza actually *is* a good person, deep down. She’ll resent me forever though. I accept the papers in Leezahna’s hands to review them momentarily while I think of what to say.

Passing a breath through puffed cheeks and pursed lips, I start, “Leeza, I’m impressed, honored, touched that you would think with such wide social conscience. I’m proud of you. I—, I don’t think the difference in distance is great enough that she’s specifically causing problems for our defenders, such that someone else might get hurt, thankfully. It’s astute of you to try to determine that. She—, she should evacuate, for her own safety, and that of any of your other family, but we’ll protect them regardless. Thank you for your hard work on these. Can you keep gathering them for a few days, and compare numbers of spawns, with the output and where it goes? Collate them, um, bind them together in a relevant order for me, please? You’re doing great work.”

There’s more than a hint of satisfaction, and a bit of beaming pride burbling up within Leezahna. It fights with the resentment, and cold fury that she has for me, but doesn’t win out. She reclaims the paperwork with the volumes of respawning warrens outputs, and does a snooty about-face with a, “hmph,” before realizing that she’s displaying obnoxious snubbing behavior. I can spot the exact moment when it dawns on her what she just did as her posture tenses up so hard that she freezes in place as a shiver travels down her spine. I can sense her gulping before she quickly scurries away towards her new home.

Not altogether too surprisingly, a reedy, cracked, familiar feminine telepathic voice reaches out to me, calling out in a singsong, teasy, almost flirty manner, “Schism! Heeyyy pal. These swanky digs like the one you got made up for Princess, do you think I could get one next to Lil’s room? Or maybe me and Zayzi? I know you like them too, and then they’d be right next to your bedroom too.” Almost salaciously, she adds, “For whatever you two do when you’re alone. They’re happier than they’ve been in a long, long time y’know.”

Trying not to facepalm, I respond, “Ixey, if you want a room next to Lil’s, you can ask Lil or Lucky. I’m not some ruler or tyrant or something. I don’t command everything that happens, even if a lot of the area was—, okay all of the area was created at my request, but that’s just because Lil and Lucky are wonderful guys who’ll help out almost anyone that asks. Also, as much as I love you, and Zayzi, you’re being a dork. Don’t use Zayzi like a bargaining chip you goober. Plus you and I both know they don’t want romance, much less like, bedroom private time.”

While it might be a fun insinuation at most times, at the moment it grates against me slightly when Ixey responds in a long singsong, “Are you suuuure about that? I mean, if nothing else, *I’d* be right next to your bedroom tooooo.”

I don’t know how Lil or Ixey feel about monogamous relationships or their dating status. I’m flattered by the insinuation, and I do actually like Zayzi, and by extension, Ixey, or, well, maybe I even just like Ixey for herself, but—. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Ixey was dru—. I facepalm. We started up liquor supply lines. She is drunk. Now I’m not even sure I want to respond to her at all, because I don’t want to cause her to say, or do something she’ll regret. Or worse, help her do something she’ll regret.

Ugh, she’s kind of fun and flirty while she’s drunk, and I could totally see enjoying her company, and her chatter in my head, if I weren’t pretty sure that she’d have regrets when she sobered up. I understand more and more why Lil likes her, but this is just awkward. Will she be okay with even what she’s just said, or implied so far, if she remembers it come tomorrow? Poor Ixey. I know that her flirting towards Lil isn’t too different from this, but her having no inhibitions about who she’s aiming it towards has to be the alcohol. I think.

She’s really, extremely friendly across our telepathic wavelength right now, and it feels *nice*. I’m pretty sure that when she sobers up, she’s going to be pissed at herself for what she just implied. If our friendship was a bit tighter, I might even tease her about it, because she’d be mortified with embarrassment if I brought it up. Ugh, she’s even cutely giggling and hiccuping into our telepathic bond at this point. I carefully, softly slam my head into the nearest wall, repeatedly, taking care not to jostle or injure my three passengers.

Shaking my head, I ask, “Ixey, do you want me to bring you some water? I think you should maybe get some water and rest up. You’re—, you’re not yourself right now. I don’t want you saying or doing things you’d regret.”

Floating along in the direction of Leeza’s room, where I can tell Ixey must be telepathically communicating from, I balk at the entryway. Leeza’s never explicitly invited me in, and barging in would tell her that I don’t respect her privacy. In fact, I hear what sounds like exaggeratedly wet, or sloppy, kissing. It ends after only a moment though, so perhaps I was simply hearing things.

Sighing, as I’m about to knock on the exterior wall, Ixeyla saunters out, looking for all the world to be a sultry drunk human college girl. Even the way her shirt hangs loose on her gangly form, off of one shoulder, has its own appeal. Rattling my skull, I shake my head at both Ixey and myself. As I’m about to sigh exasperatedly, Ixey takes in my current form and her eyes go wide.

I swear to gumshoes, if one of the chaos magic side effects was a temporary, or worse, permanent, lust aura, I’m going to break magic in half. Ixey stumbles forward towards me, intending to dance her lanky digits up my chest but ends up toppling into my arms. I carefully set her down at arms length as I reach out telepathically for Lil. Thankfully, he appears to be on his way. Apparently whatever Kinzul needed to say to him was extremely short after all.

Biting my lips, I struggle to not respond as Ixey pouts and asks telepathically, “What, don’cha think I’m pretty?”

There’s no good answer to that. I don’t want to invite any further drunken advances, but I also don’t want to lie and hurt her feelings by telling her I think she’s not pretty, or worse, unappealing or ugly. She’s not any of those things. Her human form has odd proportions, but she’s still cute despite them. Hell, she is actually really pretty when you get down to thinking about it and admiring her form, even with its unusual proportions. The distinctive uniqueness almost makes—. Huff, this is really not the time to be building up an admiration for her physical features.

Honestly, the way she’s wearing her shirt loose off one shoulder like that is kind of sexy too, ugh. Ixey struggles to do a bit of drunken stagger dodging to make it closer to me, to get her face right up to mine where she can whisper in my ear. I catch her to keep her from toppling, but she still leans herself against me firmly to get her lips up next to my ear.

When Ixeyla dejectedly pleads, “Come awn, I’m in heeeeeat.—,” I’m barely keeping my composure. Out of nowhere, apparently Ixey spies Lil as she shouts, “Lil, my prince!”

First of all, I’m pretty sure dragons don’t go into heat. I think. Then again, what if dragonkind go into a sort of heat after consuming alcohol? In that case, what have I done by providing spirits to Mount Solace?

Ixey interrupts my thoughts to, with a hell of an insinuation, salaciously offer up, “Lil’s good at sharing, did you know that? Me, not so much, but I’m sure there’s room for one more in our bed.”

Facepalming, I barely refrain from ramming my forehead into the wall again and again. Prinrin grins deviously, yet Miraina attempts to hide her emotions across our mental wavelengths. I can sense Miraina trying not to giggle though, but even that seems almost like an attempt to cover up something. She seems deep in thought.

Thankfully Littlebit has no idea what’s going on right now. Lil arrives, and Ixey literally jumps him, throwing herself at him. Since Lil is in dragon form, and Ixey in human form, I do her the favor of catching her in the air telekinetically, so she doesn’t impale herself on Lil’s upturned tusks from his underbite-jaw. Lil casts a grateful look my way as he quickly assumes a human form in order to catch Ixey, who wraps her long, gangly limbs around him. Lil carries her away, her mind now entirely occupied by thoughts of her boyfriend, and what she wants to do to him for the rest of the night.

Yeesh. Even with our less intimate bond, Ixey exudes lust. Passing a sigh through puffed cheeks and pursed lips, I shake my head incredulously. What in the everliving hell have I done, by providing alcohol to these goobers? Prinrin and Pawn both snicker.

Pawn telepathically adds, “Sorry. You didn’t stop by this morning to tell me how you wanted it set up, so I just sort of bought a bunch of things and set them out. It seems like she hit the hooch pretty hard. I guess she was probably pretty worried about Lil today. Also, maybe a bit worried about you too? It’s hard to know.”

Oh, that makes sense. Crap. Now I feel like an ass for not at least trying to respond to her advances a bit in a way that reassured her. Oh well, she’s got Lil, and she knows he’s fine. Casting my senses behind me, I attempt to suss out whether or not Miraina has partaken of any alcohol, if that’s why she’s suddenly clinging to me. When I feel her playing her fears through her mind again and again, I realize alcohol has nothing to do with it. Despite her using teasing and playfulness to cover it up, Miraina is terrified, and just wants to feel safe, comforted, and close to someone.

Though she attempts to do so quietly, I hear a far-too-loud sigh of relief coming from Leeza’s domicile. I try not to snicker when I hear her quietly exclaim, “Oh thank Platinum the wasted Red left. No more booze in my home after that.” More quietly, my hypersensitive hearing picks up Leeza muttering, “I don’t even like girls.”

At that last bit, I blush slightly and keep my lips pursed tightly. The implications are—, well, whatever. Other people’s social lives are their own. Whether it was harmless flirting, making out, or whatever—. People have to deal with the consequences of their own actions, and I have no need to know what those actions were, or consequences are. I really don’t need my brain trying to picture the implied scene. I distract myself by reminding myself that Pawn was terrified, and is still clinging to me for comfort.

Poor Pawn. It takes a really brave person to act through the fears that she had to face today. I hate that this war is scaring, scarring, and hurting the people I love. Floating us back towards the craftworks, I spy Nala, and I finally get Littlebit to disentangle herself from me, mostly. She grips my cloak like a lost child, afraid to be anywhere without her guide and protector.

Oh jeeze. Other than the ‘Twixt, with Tiktik, Littlebit has probably never left the Heart. And worse, her time in the ‘Twixt had her getting mesmerized by a vampire, one of her fears come to life, so the one place she has visited exterior to home was a frightening experience. Of course she’s going to be as skittish as a frightened child. Holy crap. I’m an ass for not realizing earlier. And here I am, continually trying to pry her off of me in order to assuage my own guilt for feeling attracted to my friend’s lover. Blugh, it’s not like I even really want her off of me. She’s an incredible woman, but I was sort of trying to disentangle us out of respect for Tiktik’s relationship with her.

Quickly wrapping up my friend’s lover in a tight embrace, and then releasing her, I attempt to introduce the pair, “Curator? Nala? This is Littlebit. She’s an inventor, an artificer, similar to yourself, specializing in things a bit like your clockwork automatons from what I can tell. Littlebit, this is Nala, probably the most brilliant mind in all of Mounts Solace and Verdimenn. If she takes a while to open up, or doesn’t want to collaborate, please don’t hold it against her. Nala, I, well, I won’t ask you to just be friends with someone new, I know you prefer solitude, just, um, I want to give her free reign of the craftworks. She’s very important to someone beloved to me, and some of her ideas, if they pan out, could be huge game changers.”

Nala raises a scaled brow my way, and simply nods at Littlebit, who, after being introduced, now no longer feels the need to latch onto me. She approaches Nala, offers a hand, and announces, “Pleased to meetcha, put’er there square.”

I grimace, unsure if that sounds as insulting to Nala as it did to me. I’m certain it wasn’t meant as such. I think. I’m worried that the meeting of minds is going to go horribly, until Littlebit starts reaching into her own interdimensional bag to deploy her robots. They come out as the small cubes she’d folded them down into. After about a minute’s work on each, having to attach some parts that were separated into their own smaller cubes on the larger clankers, the robots resume their original shapes. Nala drops what she’s doing to stand up, pace around and peer at the metallic creatures before her. All save one are much larger and more complex than any of the little clockwork automatons that Nala has puttering around.

Of the four currently on display, Littlebit has one clanker of a similar size and complexity to Nala’s, but the other three clankers seem quite more advanced. One looks like a combination between a kangaroo, a dragon, and a firefly. That one’s about as tall as Nala. Littlebit also has of course the one that I’m pretty certain is a robotic displacerbeast. There’s also some sort of flighty faerie-drake-hawk that’s at least twice the size of Nala’s little contraptions. While Littlebit only has four clankers out, I think she either has more, or can make more. Additionaly, I think she can grant them autonomy, without quite the same limits to potential that Nala has. Despite that, Littlebit still makes sure to carefully inspect the artistry of all of Nala’s mini clankers up close, intensely.

Despite the fact that I actually understand the terminology that’s suddenly dropped between the two like an ambuscade of technobabble facts, I find myself politely bowing out of the abruptly intense—. Rivalry? Friendship? That blossoms in mere moments. As I’m backing away, there’s a sudden shifting, as Pawn and Prinrin race each other to my right hip. Pawn beats her mother due to her Latent, which leaves Prinrin casting a dubious, devious glare across our telepathic wavelengths as she returns to my left hip.

I roll my eyes, fairly certain that Pawn is playing things up in order to tease her mother, to pay her back for coming home so hurt the other day, and not looking in best-form today either. Shaking my head, I sigh as I’m virtually being used as some sort of psychological battlegrounds between the two women. Floating around Mount Verdimenn with them on my hips, I’m trying to remember what my plans were. I find myself remaining near the hall that leads to our vaults, consequently, unintentionally also near Leeza’s home.

Alright, anyway, enough nonsense. There’s too much to get done to be focusing on other people’s relationships and such. No matter how much I love Prinrin and Pawn, Solace needs some of the things I can bring to it, and despite wanting to spend time with them, I’ve got to get back to crafting, enchanting, and whatever else I can do. Pawn and Prinrin both pout that I haven’t made so much as a single attempt to call them on their obvious plays for my attention, and they both seem to be about to leave dejectedly.

Grinning deviously, I demand, “Excuse me? Where do you two think you’re going? After those little stunts, you’re helping me,” in a bit too singsongy, teasing voice I finish, “Alll night long.”

The three of us have a round of blushing and devious grinning at one another.