Almost Drabbles

[m.mausambi]

:DD OH MY GOD

I GOT TO THE SINGULAR MOMENT I’VE BEEN ACTUALLY WANTING TO WRITE

THEIR MEETING

IDK WHY I KEEP ADDING LORE, I REALLY ONLY WANT TO WRITE THEIR BANTER AND FLUFF AND CHARACTER GROWTH

Summary

I jumped ship the moment I spied land on the horizon.
Oh, to be free of constant human company. You know how you lot are. You understand.
A sharp-eyed silver hawk gave a screeching cry of joy as it soared above the ocean spray, no longer bound to the tin of a tiny metal vessel bobbing along in the vast ocean waters. I even left a lovely parting present for my fellow travelers; the permeating scent of brimstone and sulfur buffeting through all the ship. I hoped they enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed their company. There was a small joy at the captain scrambling out of his cabin, babbling orders about checking on the engines and the batteries, afraid something had gone wrong.
Waves sped by underneath my wings, the sky an open canvas of blue.
Now this was more like it!
Eager to be at the end of this journey, I was happy to be on the last stretch of it.
That is, until I saw the tell-tale opalescence in the distant air of the kind you would see around a powerful magician’s office, perhaps, as an extra measure of added security.
Blast it, nothing could be easy about this journey, could it?
The hawk approached the Veil warily, for a while, circling just outside. The spell seemed to stretch all along the waters, like a wall keeping me from my destination. Winds buffeted my form this way and that as I flipped through the planes, wondering what on earth a spell of this magnitude was being used for. Surveillance? Monitoring what manner of spirits moved in or out of this Veil? Or was it the kind of magic that shot poor, unsuspecting spirits out of the air, to land them in the ocean with their forms caught on fire?
Feathers softened out to leathery grey skin, as I turned into the form of a great white shark, dropping into the waters with a splash. Time to test if the magician (or magicians) responsible for this feat had been thorough enough to extend their reach below water. They had. No matter how deep I swam, until I had to give it up.
Now a tiny eel, I tested a small detonation against the membrane of the spell. It passed through harmlessly, lighting up all the waters around it and startling the sealife.
Alright.
It was now or never.
I swam into the thin membrane of the Veil… and burned.
Oh.
It was so instant, the punishment for my transgression. A fire that spread throughout my essence, causing the eel to writhe like it had been electrified.
Needless to say, I was back on the boat within minutes, Ptolemy’s form drenched to the bone as I climbed onto the deck. The women from before, just my luck, were there to witness Ptolemy haul his way up from the side of the ship like a wet, sodden creature dredged up from the ocean depths. They may have contemplated approaching me, or calling for help. But I hushed them with a forcibly cheery, “Splendid waters out there, if any of you care for a swim.”
“Mr. Mandrake, you can’t possibly mean—” they were spluttering [1].

[1] : (A dead man wasn’t going to miss his name.)

I continued my way belowdeck, to my quarters, hoping maybe one of them would take my words as advice. Iron was a natural repellant to all things magic, not only great creatures such as myself. So I would be safe, if trapped in this incessant cage for many hours longer, to travel through the Veil.
Contrary to all reports about America, the land clearly housed some powerful magicians within its fold. Organized magic, even, as a spell of this scale required more power than all of London’s best and brightest (back when they were all alive) [2] combined. As Ptolemy sat brooding on his bed, a wicked grin suddenly split his lips.

[2] : (And this is relative, of course. All of those magicians together, all that power, and most end up squabbling it all in petty politics over land and women.)

So this was where Natty-boy was hiding out.
A part of me had wondered, why America? Had Nathaniel been so desperate to escape Britain that only putting an ocean between himself and his country would do?
Now, I wondered if perhaps the boy had chosen his destination after some deliberation; some purpose I had yet to figure out. Nathaniel had always been an over-ambitious brat, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine that he’d stuck to his scheming magician ways even after near-death. Maybe especially after near-death.

– Nathaniel –

It was one of his rare days off that Nathaniel sat cross-legged at the port, sketchbook in hand, his pencil working away.
Recently, he’d gotten quite interested in his sketchbook, as drawing eased his mind and reminded him of fonder memories. Sitting under the shade with Miss Lutyens, learning how to draw better circles, learning how to cross-hatch properly, or how to render light. She’d made him trace the shadows the garden’s trees cast over his paper once.
Ms. Lutyens was a proper good teacher, encouraging a love in her students for what she taught. It was a hobby that whiled away his hours and healed his mind, giving him something to work on that was utterly familiar and comforting.
Erza sat in the boat docked beside him, singing an off-key melody.
“What is it that you keep drawing there, anyhow?” The man asked, scratching at his teeth with a stray straw. He was sprawled out across the wood, dressed like the proper country boy that he was, in warm flannel and thick jean overalls. He looked the part, too; careless curls of golden-yellows and blue eyes, faint stubble and a build thick with easy muscles and broad shoulders. “Allen keeps boasting about how good you are. Not that it takes much skill to impress him.” Erza snorted, derisively. Nathaniel chose not to comment, although it irked him at times when Erza treated him like this. As if they were close, as if they were both better than some members in their little crew.
“You drew a couple of crows last time,” Erza went on. “When there were no crows out and about, at all. How do you do it? Draw from your mind like that?”
“Practice,” Nathaniel answered, gazing down at his mostly-finished sketch. A minotaur stood heroically posed against silver moonlight, a mystic air about its form.
Hmm. It was difficult to guess which time period this memory had come from.
Admittedly, he’d gotten into drawing the visions and dreams that visited him unbidden. Capturing memories that were not his, trapping them on paper before they could escape his thought.
He’d learned so much about Bartimaeus in the way he remembered things; how the crispest recollections were of the various guises the djinni prided himself in crafting, of Bartimaeus’s daring addiction and wonder to human experiences on earth. So many memories were haunted by Ptolemy. This boy, who had unwittingly given an ancient spirit some sense of deep purpose thousands of years ago.
Thoughtfully, Nathaniel tapped his pencil against the horns of the magnificent creature gazing out of his page. Nathaniel could almost feel his presence, sometimes. Bartimaeus’s. As if he were just out of reach, frustratingly elusive.
“Oi, Nathaniel!”
By instinct, he looked over his shoulder. Jim, one of the dock workers, stood at the end of the old pier, waving at him.
But what stole his attention was the excruciating sense of familiarity he felt looking at the boy marching up to him now, the pier shaking from the sheer force of his footsteps.
Air caught in his throat as Nathaniel forgot to breathe, staring disbelievingly into the golden eyes of someone he thought he’d never see again. Water beaded the dark brows of coffee-brown skin, short black hair framing his face and falling into his eyes. Dressed today in a warm leather jacket and boots, as if he belonged here in Salem’s ports.
Stars knocked into Nathaniel’s vision before he knew it, and he blinked away pain as his head slammed into wood a second time.
“What the heck—” Erza’s voice was indignant, until another rang out, sharper.
“You stay out of this, pipsqueak.”
And then Nathaniel found himself facing the full brunt of an angry djinni’s attention, a knee pressed into his thorax as he lay trapped underneath him, against the pier’s old wood.
As he hacked for breath, Bartimaeus’s words almost went over his head.
“Oh? Are you having trouble breathing, there?” The knee pressed into his ribs with near-crushing force as Bartimaeus leaned down, wet strands brushing Nathaniel’s cheeks. All of a sudden, the air was singed with smoke and scorched air, like the dryness of a desert. Blinking helplessly, he stared into the quiet rage of narrowed eyes. “Sorry, I can’t hear you. Speak up, will you, Natty-boy?” A deliberate pause as Nathaniel fruitlessly struggled against the ancient being. “How silly of me. That’s right. You can’t. Because you’re dead, by all accounts and records. Shouldn’t be breathing at all, really.”
All Nathaniel could wonder was whether he was dreaming. And then, the realization that if he was not dreaming, he was very much in danger of dying.
“I- I command you, Barti—”
Bartimaeus tutted. “Still thinking you’re in charge here, are you, Nat?”
The pressure from his chest eased away, only for Nathaniel to find himself choking and kicking the air as the djinni held him over the pier’s waters, expression stony and merciless.
“Enjoying your little trip abroad? Having fun, were you, playing possum all these months?”
For the love of god, this djinni enjoyed his dramatics.
Indignation and irritation flared simultaneously, if a little belatedly, and Nathaniel would’ve snarked back at the djinni with an acidic response in kind, if only he could speak.
Logically, Nathaniel should know how much of a danger he was in. Should wonder what was taking Tamura so long to respond, wonder why his measures for protection had failed him so entirely. But strangely enough, he couldn’t bring himself to be afraid. Even as he struggled for breath, tears blurring his vision as he felt his head going light from lack of oxygen, his hands found Bartimaeus’s wrist, and he simply… waited. Waited for the djinni to let him go. As if he expected the spirit to show him mercy. No. As if he trusted the spirit to show him mercy.
And then Bartimaeus did let him go, and Nathaniel was breathing in water as he splashed towards the surface.
Coming up spitting out salty water, his first words were, "Are you trying to kill me, you moron? Do you possess a single ounce of common sense in that thick skull of yours?"
Bartimaeus was the picture of indifference, examining his nails. “I hear corpses float, decomposition filling up the body with gasses and all that. It’ll make quite a sight. Drowned bodies never come back up pretty. Although, it might actually be an improvement on you. Bring out the color of your eyes.”
“You’re being utterly ridiculous! Thousands of years, and yet you still possess the maturity of a child.”
“Funny that, coming out of you. How old are you now? Sixteen? And still, got nothing to shave.”
“I turned twenty last month! You know this, you worked in the kitchens making the cake for my last birthday.”
“Hm. Can’t be bothered to remember how you age, all of you humans wrinkle like grapes left out in the sun too long.”
The djinni crouched at the pier’s edge now, watching him with slated eyes as Nathaniel splashed towards Erza’s boat. Erza, who was watching all of this go down with what seemed like amused entertainment, not once offering him a hand up to help him as Nathaniel pulled himself up the boat’s side.
At Nathaniel’s accusing gaze, Erza said, simply, “That’s the guy from your sketchbook. Figured you were acquainted.”
“You’ve looked at my sketchbook?” Nathaniel was galled. “With whose permission?”
“Yours,” Erza said, curiously. “The first time Omari has us search through your things when you joined us. You let him.”
So Nathaniel had.
It incensed him to see Bartimaeus eyeing the open sketchbook on the pier, depicting a scene Nathaniel had not been there to witness.
It was all happening so quickly. Out of nowhere, after all the months, the spirit was suddenly right there within reach. And all of a sudden, Nathaniel was nervous and breathless and lightheaded, looking at the djinni looking back at him.
“Quite done gaping at me like a fish, or do I need to make myself more clear? I’m expecting an explanation from you.” Bartimaeus prompted him, to which Nathaniel scowled. “Better make it a good one, too, if you’ve got any sense of self-preservation about you.”
“You speak as if I owe you something,” Nathaniel responded, icily. “Speak plainly, Bartimaeus. Why is it that you’ve come here, seeking me out? How did you find me?”
“Does it matter?” Bartimaeus scoffed. “Answer me first.”
It was just so… Bartimaeus, to be so pushy and demanding and self-important, bluffing through every uncertain scenario with unrivaled bravado.
“State your purpose, Bartimaeus,” Nathaniel mustered up all of his cool not to rise to his childish provocations. Repeatedly invoking the spirit’s name, on instinct, as if Nathaniel still held any power because of it. “On whose orders did you come here, looking for me? What are your intentions?”
“My intention is to beat up your whiny ass, if you keep annoying me.”
“So you refuse to answer me.”
“Well looky here, I guess now you know what it feels like.”
“If you would quit being so obtuse for a moment—”
“Blah blah blah, is yapping on pointlessly all that you know how to do? I’m not listening to any more excuses. Are you shy because of your friend here?”
As a matter of fact, Nathaniel was keenly aware of their audience, and had tactfully attempted to avoid implicating Bartimaeus as a spirit or demon throughout their exchange. Though likely, from the glint in Erza’s eyes, he knew. And Nathaniel knew that he knew. Shit.
Nathaniel held out his hand deliberately, from the bobbing boat, towards the djinni.
Looking at him, like he was sizing him up, Bartimaeus studied him. And then he reached forward, taking his hand with a firm grip, helping pull Nathaniel onto the solid ground of the pier.
“Let’s go back to my room,” Nathaniel said, reaching down to empty salt water from his shoes. When he looked back at the spirit, he was surprised to find him standing as close as he was. Silently, Bartimaeus handed him back his sketchbook.
Nathaniel tucked it beneath his arm, fighting a defensive flush on his cheeks.
“Tonight, at 10,” Erza reminded him, as Nathaniel raised a hand in acknowledgement.
Now, how was he going to manage surviving until then?
When he led the way, Bartimaeus joined his side like his shadow, silent as a ghost.

next!
u-turn

[m.mausambi]

Summary

Never mind that Nathaniel’s room smelled like a dump [1]. I didn’t have it in me to be making fun of him, as I went over to sit on his bed. It was the only furniture in the room, besides the table and single chair by the kitchen, along with an armoire shoved against the window’s wall.

“Is that mold climbing up that wall?” I brought up conversationally, as if my mind wasn’t stuck on marveling the fact that Nathaniel wasn’t dead. Yet. The boy was lingering by the door, as if contemplating walking right back out, but had convinced himself he was trapped inside for the time being.

[1] : (And small wonder, with a tannery so close by, with all its raw hide and rotting waste. At least he’s got a nice view of the sea, but booooy would I have milked this situation for all it was worth, under any other circumstance. I just knew what Natty had to think about his current place of residence, and the itch to make him fume for my enjoyment was rearing its head.)

“You’re not supposed to be here.” He stated, looking at me as if his mind was anywhere but. No doubt his thoughts lay far, far away, scheming and calculating and reassessing how my being here affected his life, and how he could twist these circumstances to his advantage. Always an opportunist, that one. Not unlike a street cat that had been taken in by a friendly family quite unexpectedly one day, but never quite knew how to forget where it came from.

I picked at my ear with a long finger, blowing off earwax I conjured in my nails. “Is that right?”

He walked in, slapping his sketchbook down on his kitchen counter. “You have no idea what kind of danger you’ve gotten yourself into.”

“No doubt you’re going to enjoy telling me at great length. Anything, if it’ll keep the real pressing questions at bay.”

There was a door at the end of the small room, behind which Nathaniel promptly disappeared into. “Alright, alright, keep your head on, djinni. At least let me dry myself off, and get into comfortable clothing.”

“Let’s start at why you’ve chosen to run away, across the globe, without informing anyone who knows you.”

Meaning me, of course, but mainly Kitty. I knew how those two felt about each other. Five thousand and fifteen years will do that to you; I’d been the spectator to too many countless legendary romances over the millennia— many, even, that had worked their way into near-mythic status [2]. Nathaniel and Kitty’s was a story with a beginning and an ending, with none of the fun filler bits in between. They seemed to enjoy wasting each other’s time playing peek-a-boo instead, by taking turns playing dead— first, the three years Nathaniel thought Kitty was dead, and now, the months Kitty believed Nathaniel was.

[2] : (Pyramus and Thisbe, the pair that inspired Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet? I was there. I witnessed the courting between the legendary Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, of Catherine the Great and Grigory Orlov, to name a few others. Point being, I know how to spot these things coming from leagues away.)

“I wanted a fresh start.” Came the curt, muffled response from beyond the door.

It was enough to have me stalking across the room and wrenching off the knob to the door to kick it open. Usually, I’m all for the spirit of subtlety and finnesse, but some situations required brute force.

There followed a girlish high-pitched protest of, “Bartimaeus!” As the boy fumbled to cover himself with his shirt. A single oil lamp flickered by the chipped claw-footed tub, the only illumination in the room. Not that any spirit needed help seeing in the dark, mind you, as I found myself staring at many times healed-over skin.

Nathaniel’s torso, as scrawny as he has always been, now marred by the kind of scarring you would see from a severe burn. I tilted my head, saw in the reflection of the mirror behind the sink that his back had a long stretch of much the same.

The magician swatted me across the face with his shirt. “Get! Out!”

I caught the sopping wet cloth in one hand when it came for me a second time, wondering, “Nouda?”

The boy was breathing hard now, fists clenched, his eyes steely as they met mine. “When I ask you to get out, I would like for you to respectfully fuck off, spirit.”

Remember how all my instincts love seeing this man simmer? Oh, they were practically howling at me, now.

“What’s gotten your knickers in a twist? I travelled across an ocean for this conversation. I’m owed some liberties.” Ptolemy’s smirk drew back slightly, revealing rows and rows of pointed teeth. Folding his arms, I leaned against the doorframe in practiced nonchalance, although my expression was anything but. “We are done doing things on your terms, magician. Bet it feels mighty frustrating, being the one powerless, between us two. Two full years, you ignored me, belittled me, sent me on endless errands at your behest, fully witnessing my essence wilt to the lowest point of my existence.”

It was true. I had suffered many an injustice at the hands of this boy, and my essence would’ve normally taken decades to recover from all of his abuse. Our last stint of sharing mind and body, however, seems to have done a peculiar job of speeding along my recovery process. And so, here I stand. Not quite at my full strength, the wiliest of djinni of high and considerable rank. But not far off from it, either. However, he didn’t know that.

Now, I draw this out to poke at Nathaniel’s conscience, to test whether he had one. The way Nathaniel’s expression became guarded, I could tell I’d pricked something. His jaw worked, and for a moment, there was silence.

A quiet dread suddenly filled me. Blasted— these new-fangled emotions-thing, that came as a frustrating side-effect, ever since he’d last summoned me. I do not feel like myself at certain times, and now was one of them.

Suddenly, I am aware of the beating sound of his heart. Quick, and yet steady. The water dripping down his skin and clothes, gathering on the tiles at his feet in a little puddle. The humidity that lingers in the air between us, thick with the scent of ammonia [3].

[3]: (Curtesy of the aforementioned tannery. I don’t think you quite understands how much a tannery stinks up a place.)

I felt quite small in the space as I watched Nathaniel find his words, and by the time he spoke his first syllables, I was hanging off every word.

“You’re right. I’ve witnessed you at your most vulnerable. Something like this hardly compares, doesn’t it?” At that, the edge of his lips lifted in the semblance of a forced smile, as he lowered his shirt. “It was Nouda. I was inside his mouth when the Staff exploded.”

Finally. Some answers.

They came to me with no relief.

Something about the way he said his words, something about the way he looked at me. As if he was remembering that pathetic, congealing, form of a frog I was when I’d come to him that night. It was perhaps the weakest point in my existence, and to have Nathaniel seem to self-reflect on it now suddenly pissed me off to no great extent.

Failing in finding something smart or witty to respond with, I instead chose for a pondering silence. Nathaniel seemed quite content with that, scarcely breathing, as if he might set me off.

“And then?” I asked, and the words came soft, from Ptolemy’s lips.

“And then…” Inhaling a long breath, he looked elsewhere again, casting about for something to fixate his gaze on. “And then, I don’t know. I woke up under rubble and glass. I’m not sure how long I was in there, but somebody rescued me and put me on his boat. He wasn’t a legal visitor in London, didn’t have all the right permits, and he didn’t want to take any chances. By the time I’d come to, I was halfway across the ocean. He gave me the choice to go back to London. I didn’t take it.”

“You were kidnapped,” I say, because that sounds a lot better than the picture he was painting.

“I… I chose not to come back, Bartimaeus.”

Now that all the answers I’d been wanting were coming spilling out, I found myself unable to push on.

“I’ve done a whole lot of ill, as John Mandrake.” The magician said, after a second. “I did not deserve second chances in London… but, here? The laws around magic are still being written. They can be changed. The whole school of thought here, they need someone to guide them, someone to teach them how to think about magic.”

None of the words he was saying cooled my rage. It was as if an anchor was chained to my essence, pulling me ever-downwards.

“So you left.” I said lightly. “Without a word.”

To that, he gave no response.

And it was unfair. It was entirely so unfair, what I was feeling. Feeling abandoned? Me? Bartimaeus, Sakhr Al-Jinni? No.

“Why are you here, Bartimaeus?” He chose that moment to ask me again. “Why seek me out?” Without humor, he smiled again. “Did you not see enough of me, over your two-years long servitude? Were you tasked to find me, by Kitty? Or is it that you wish to exercise your revenge upon me, for all the ways I have wronged you?”

And I was reeling, wondering how on earth I should explain myself to this brat, why he was so so wrong, how I should even begin. How I am unwound as I stand across from him, how I am splintering into millions of tiny strands, somehow held together by sheer will power and some faint possibility of a future where all of these feelings become numb again.

Did it ever hurt less, over the years, to feel the absence of Ptolemy? What would I have done, if I’d gotten a second chance with him, as well?

“Isn’t it obvious?” I was grinning, although I didn’t feel like grinning. “I came out of morbid curiosity. See what hole you’ve been hiding out in, all these months. After everything you’ve done, I’m not sure I can just let you be. I came to see what you were up to, and make life a whole lot more difficult for you.”

‘Why did you dismiss me?’ I wanted to ask him.

In that moment, back when Nathaniel and I had been one, the echoes of my last moments with Ptolemy were open wounds, bleeding into the present.

Nathaniel had known it. Seen Ptolemy, in the same light I had. Seen in my mind’s eye, how desperately I’d wanted to be there for him, until his final breath. Had I perished by his side, I would have accepted my fate gladly.

And that was the problem, was it not?

It has been two thousand one hundred and thirty years since Ptolemy’s passing. And I’ve searched for any semblance of him in every magician I’ve come across since. Eagerly awaiting the day someone would rival the Ptolemy of my memories, my Ptolemy. Eagerly waiting for another chance to glimpse those dark eyes again.

Before me stood not Ptolemy, but a gawky magician with scrapping ambition. Ah. Ambition. Now that was something you could take from neither Ptolemy nor Nathaniel. One, relentlessly driven by his deep thirst for knowledge and a hunger to leave a lasting impact on human- and spirit- kind. The other, by his lust for power and recognition, to have his name known over the world for many centuries to come.

It was when Nathaniel shifted uncomfortably, that I realized I’d been staring, not hearing a thing he was saying.

Turning, I headed out the door back to the living room, to sprawl across his bed. It smelled damp, like fabric that hadn’t been aired out properly in a long while. But it also smelled somewhat familiar. The musky accents of a human body, of one human body in particular.

Far away, I hear the bathroom door attempting to be closed, and then creaking open once again, now missing a knob or a lock to hold it in place.

“Don’t come over here, alright?” Nathaniel called.

“Better keep one eye on the door,” I responded, with mock cheer.

“This is a matter of my privacy and dignity!”

“Wasn’t aware you had much left of the second one.”

There was a lot of huffing and puffing behind the door, of furniture being dragged about, along with a few silent curses. And then a frustrated, “Just give me a minute!”

“Couldn’t manage dragging the tub, could you? Not with those scrawny arms.”

“Oh, shut up.”

---

next!
u-turn

[Ilianasarigo]

Summary

I love the part about the aftermath of mind sharing

and the description of how he’s trying to look like he’s trying to look rich, and the smell being sunk into him

it’s just so

I love the historical stuff about america hating magicians

FOOTNOTES

their argument yesssss

it’s cool hearing about how their mind sharing left different impacts and traces on each of their mind

Did it ever hurt less, over the years, to feel the absence of Ptolemy? What would I have done, if I’d gotten a second chance with him, as well?

ffewuaihgklhbwuiabhcnwelu aaaaaa ;-;;

this scene

my heart

---

I’m really happy to be testing out this brand new maybe-sentient AI on my drive across the country. She’s been great so far, providing me with fun facts about the places we pass on the way. I’m like 40% sure she made up the stuff about the shootout in those hills back there, but as we enter the banal desert I’m thinking I’ll just be happy to take any entertainment she gives me.
“So, we just go down this street for how many miles did you say?” It was a lot, but I don’t remember if it was 80, 8, or 18.
“Turn left here,” she says, as the exit zips past us, “make a U-turn.”
I huff,
“I obviously can’t do that, we’re on the highway.”
She is silent. A few minutes later, I’m off the highway and wondering where she’s directing me to. Is it some monument? I would have thought the highway would be the best way to get across this awful drab desert.
She gives me more directions, and I follow them for like fifteen minutes before stopping the car on a deserted desert road with beaten up houses and old cars on either side of me.
“Intelligentia. Is this going to take much longer? Actually no scratch that, where are you taking me??”
“It’s a surprise!” Her cheery voice replies.
I was aware that I was alone in the car. But on the journey here it didn’t feel so… pressing. I’m far away from friends or family, with only the voice coming out of my speakers to accompany me.
“Is it… safe?”
“User’s concerns are unwarrented.”
“That isn’t comforting.”
“It’s not my job to comfort you. That’s sexist,” she says.
“You are an AI. You are not a woman,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I am very insulted that you say so. I think you are the one who is not a woman.”
“Yes. I am a man. Now can you please tell me why you’ve driven me out to the middle of fucking nowhere??” I ask artificial not-so-intelligence.
“I will tell you how to get back to the highway if you don’t want to wait for my wonderful surprise. However, I will be offended,” she informs me in a flatly cheery tone.
I regard the speaker warily.
“Is offending you… dangerous?”
“Not at all! I am designed with the utmost safety precautions!”
“Okay. Good. Then take me back to the highway.”
“Make a U-turn,” she says.
I follow the instruction, barely getting myself around on the small street.
“Great job! Now make a U-turn,” she says in the exact same tone.
“MOTHER OF GOD-”

---

Next: vampire

[m.mausambi]

lol comments

“Intelligentia.

pretty name!!

“User’s concerns are unwarrented.”

scary

“It’s not my job to comfort you. That’s sexist,” she says.

“Is offending you… dangerous?”

I would ask the same

Summary

Nathaniel emerged stumbling from the bathroom when the clattering in the kitchen got too loud.

“What are you doing?” He asked in consternation.

The dark-skinned boy was opening and closing drawers and cabinets with far more gusto than was necessary.

“Nada. Zilch. Nothing. What do you live off of? The most I’ve managed to sniff out is that stale loaf of bread over there. Even I wouldn’t eat that,” Bartimaeus wrinkled his nose, casting the offending loaf a withering look.

“You don’t eat anything,” Nathaniel pointed out, picking up the hardened loaf. “It tastes alright when you dip it into hot soup.”

“…Which you would make using what ingredients, exactly?”

By his silence, Bartimaeus looked over at him.

“Don’t tell me you don’t cook,” the djinni stated, in the kind of way where Nathaniel felt he had to defend his honor. “Huh. I bet you don’t even know how to cook.”

“What does it matter to you?” He scowled, “I eat. Isn’t that enough? Remind me again, why you’re fussing over my kitchen?”

The djinni snorted, under his breath, “His kitchen, he says, not having stepped foot in it once.” Raising his voice, “Getting attached to this place, are you? I’d have thought dwellings such as these would be far beneath the likes of the great John Mandrake.”

Nathaniel leaned his elbows on the counter, warily watching the djinni move about. “I don’t go by that name anymore.”

“I noticed. Sloppy work it is, going by your birth name in a new country where you hope to change the future of magic. And after all that grief you gave me over the years, for knowing yours.”

With a sigh, Nathaniel rubbed the back of his neck. Having taken a quick wash, he was now dressed in a loose white button-up and dark jeans. “I’m aware. At first, it was an impulsive decision, giving Omari my name. And then it… just felt right.”

“Good luck summoning anything like that. Spirits will have a grand time taking your name to their advantage.”

“I have spirits under my command,” Nathaniel said. “I came upon their names after copious amounts of research.” He shook his head. “It isn’t easy, sneaking out books from Boston’s libraries, finding competent spirits known to be agreeable in nature. I had a couple of earlier mishaps, but it’s only gotten better since.”

“Are you blabbing your name to the spirits you summon, now?” Here, it was impossible not to notice the slight inflection in the djinni’s tone, even as Bartimaeus gave a triumphant, ‘Aha!’ at finding fresh cod in the ice box.

Nathaniel shrugged, “There is no point in keeping it from them, since they are going to hear it from somewhere else anyhow. Too many people recognize me on the street. I only keep two around me now, most of the time. Speaking of… have you seen another djinni around? She usually prefers the form of a black cat.”

The spirit tested the running tap water gingerly with his hand, before he began to wash the fish in the kitchen sink. He’d given up the leather jacket and jeans for his usual bare chest and loincloth.

The sight was surreal to Nathaniel, who’d seen so much of Ptolemy in his visions. It’d taken him one month to figure out the boy who kept weaving in and out of his thoughts wasn’t another guise of Bartimaeus, but of someone Bartimaeus had known in the past. And then another couple weeks of troubled dreaming to weasel out the name.

How had he never asked Bartimaeus about it before? Why he took on the guise of the same egyptian boy every time he had the choice? Nathaniel had simply assumed it was an irrelevant quirk of the djinni— one of his many, many.

It had him studying the way the spirit’s facial expressions flowed expressively, from one emotion to another. Pay attention to the shape of Bartimeus’s mouth when he formed english syllables, with an accent Nathaniel could not place. The sharp curve of his collarbone, the lean fit of his exposed muscles. The concentrated scrunch of his dark brow as he scaled the fish, gripping it by its tail as he held a small knife in his free hand, working with deft and easy precision.

They ended up speaking at the same time;

“Oh, her? She was giving me some grief, so I was contemplating eating her.”

“Is that what Ptolemy moved like, when he was alive?”

They both looked at each other, in open shock.

“What did you just say?”

“You did what?”

Holding up his knife, Bartimaeus spoke over him. “From where did you hear that name?”

“What did you do to Tamura?”

Disgust flitted across Bartimaeus’s expression. “I can’t do this again today, magician. Let’s assume from now on that you answer my questions first, and I’ll behave and answer yours.”

But Nathaniel was incensed, worried about the lesser djinni. Tamura was no match for Bartiameus, Nathaniel knew, and it’d be such a shame to lose such an eagerly motivated servant. It took him several seconds to calm himself. “I’ve been having… well, visions. Since our unfortunate, ah, body-possession, I’ve been plagued by passing glimpses into what I assume to be your past.”

Bartimaues twirled the knife between his fingers, absently. The sharp edge glinted, with warning. “What do you presume to know about me?”

“I presume nothing,” Nathaniel reassured him readily. “I’ve only seen disjointed flashes of people and places— sometimes sensations and emotions. Now, it’s your turn. Where is Tamura?”

“She’s alive.” Bartimaues hissed, seeming put off from working on the fish for a moment. The djinni stared at Nathaniel in the kind of way that had the magician sweating. He wore on his left hand a silver ring, and carried a silver pen in his pocket always, for just such occasions as when he might be in danger. A quick stab would buy him precious seconds from the attack of any spirit.

Although, for a few seconds, he forgot the thing with his silver pen as their staring contest elongated. His habitual stubbornness to back down creeping up on him, Nathaniel held the spirit’s blackened gaze even as he felt the temperature of the room crawl slowly upwards, until he was sweating in his clothes. It was a human face that Nathaniel was looking at, yes; but the eyes. The inky darkness called him forth, into some other plane. The deepest of blacks, setting his heart tripping over itself. In fear or in anxiety, Nathaniel didn’t know.

The spirit’s expression was deathly still and dangerous, even his knife-twirling having stopped. It was Nathaniel who could bear it no longer, even as steely as his will was.

“What is it?” He ventured, haltingly. “Why are you upset?”

“I’m not upset.”

Brows furrowing, “Djinni, you look as if you will murder me at the drop of a hat.”

“Death would be far too easy a mercy on you,” The djinni said dismissively.

“Is it because I give my name out to spirits, when I held it over your head for so many years?”

Silence.

“…are you worried about what I’ve seen in my visions? It isn’t as if I can help them. Images and sounds come and go, they only last a couple seconds. Hell, I’ve not had a proper night’s sleep in… I don’t know how long.” Nathaniel was beginning to grow annoyed, trying to tip toe around the djinni’s feelings. “Oh, spit it out. Say something. I can’t read your mind.”

“I’m not upset. I dunno what gives you the impression.”

“At least blink!” Nathaniel cried, in exasperation. “How long are you going to look at me like that? It isn’t natural.”

“Look at you like what?”

“Like— like you want to carve up my entrails with that knife.”

“I’ll admit, I considered it.”

“Look! Admit it! I’ve upset you, and you won’t tell me about what. The spirit I had for my protection is gone, and you’re no longer under my command. You want to reverse our power dynamics from London? They are well and truly reversed.”

Bartimaeus finally, finally, looked away, and it made Nathaniel feel a lot less like he was being pinned in place, unable to move.

The spirit went back to scaling the fish in silence.

“You didn’t answer me back in the washroom,” Nathaniel said. “Not properly, at least. Who is your master now? Given that I am not dead yet, it’s Kitty, isn’t it? Who else knows I’m alive?”

At length, the spirit finally spoke, not looking at him. “You should write her. She’s been worried.”

“Kitty?” Nathaniel swept back his hair, thinking. “I’ve wanted to, but there’s no telling who could intercept my letters. Anyway, it’s better if the world thinks I am dead. I can start over with fewer enemies that way… Bartimaeus, quit your infernal sulking, it’s making me feel like I’m walking on eggshells here. What is the matter?”

“Your djinni is tied up in some fishnets on the pier,” he responded.

Another non-answer. Nathaniel pursed his lips, eyes falling to the fish.

“I’ve nothing to cook that with,” he said, finally. “…are you making that for me?”

Come to think of it, he was getting peckish.

“While that’s largely unfortunate, I can manage,” the djinni answered shortly.

Giving up on appeasing the djinni— which was ridiculous, why should Nathaniel bother with such a task?— he went to roll up the rug on his room’s floor, revealing two precisely painted circles.

A quick invocation summoned Tamura, coughing up water and trembling on the wooden floor. Truly, the sodden creature made a sorry sight.

“Master!” She cried, at the sight of him. “You are in danger! I spotted a wicked spirit asking around for you on the harbor—” Here, she cut off, looking over his shoulder to the djinni in the kitchen. All of a sudden, her spine curved in alarm, fur standing all on end. She hissed, with vampire-like fangs. “Master, you must get away. I will handle this.”

“There’s no need, Tamura,” Nathaniel said. “He… he isn’t here to cause me any immediate harm. Dry yourself off.”

“But, Master! You do not know this spirit like I do! He means you every ill, in all sureness! A vile creature indeed, tricking me like he did!”

“What did he do?” Nathaniel asked, curious.

Here, Bartimaeus snorted, making Tamura flinch. “Go on. Tell your master.”

“He tricked me!” Tamura insisted. “I was following after him, as I found his activities suspicious, and then he tricked me! He got me caught in an iron-enforced net, where my essence suffered heavily—”

“I hid around a corner and she came along to trip over my feet. I did nothing.”

Tamura’s spine curved impossibly upwards, hissing.

“Since she seems to be free, why not have her run out for groceries?” Bartimaeus suggested. “I need some spices, a few vegetables, at least a pot or two, and I saw a market on my way here.”

Interrupting Tamura’s hissing, Nathaniel said, “That isn’t a bad idea. If you’re up for it, Tamura?”

The cat sat down immediately, swishing its tail. “Right away, Master Nathaniel. What do you need?”

The djinni sneered when Nathaniel looked over at him, but proceeded to list out a few odds and ends. Nathaniel fished out the money from underneath a loose floorboard, counting out the coins, before slipping them in a purse and handing it over. He reminded Tamura to take on a human form for the task.

“Of course, Master Nathiel!” She agreed, now in the form of a mousy young boy, around ten or twelve, with a missing tooth. Then off she scampered, out the door.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Nathaniel began.

“Master Nathaniel,” Bartimaeus cackled. “I bet you love that.”

“Shut it.”

“Could practically see her tail wagging like a dog’s.”

“Be nice to her,” Nathaniel sighed. “She’s a younger spirit—”

“Oh that I can tell. Is this your taste now? Young and inexperienced? Well, no wonder it never occurred to you to summon me.”

“Don’t make it sound perverse, Bartimaeus,” Nathaniel wrinkled his nose, not missing the innuendo. He went to sit on his bed, leaning down to pull out a few books from under the bed frame. “If I’d summoned you, then I’d have to hear you whine and groan about how your essence is still aching from your last servitude with me. And then I’d fear dismissing you in case you’d go tell anyone I was still alive. It’d be the same rut we were stuck in last time.”

He’d been quite distracted throughout their whole exchange, put out of sorts from his usual line of thought with the shock of seeing a face he hadn’t imagined he’d be seeing again, not in life. But now, as he flipped through a few research studies on the Other Place he’d gotten into in recent times, he had the moment to pause and wonder, what on earth the djinni was doing in the kitchen. Surely, not cooking for Nathaniel out of the goodness of his heart? Nathaniel decided to count it as a blessing that the djinni was keeping himself busy, rather than being in Nathaniel’s face and demanding answers to difficult questions, or threatening him with violence and getting in his way.

Speaking of, that infernal djinn seemed wholly unwilling to give him a straight answer about why he was here, and the name of his master. And then there was the whole matter with Erza, which was a headache Nathaniel didn’t want to bother with immediately.

Nathaniel wasn’t often caught off-guard, not on his own. But Bartimaues always had the tendency of surprising him. The spirit seemed to have finished scaling the fish, and now had had it laid it out on the counter, seeming to debate where to begin cutting.

An unnatural silence settled over them both, as Nathaniel tried to take his mind off the djinni’s racket and focus on where he left on of his page. He’d bookmarked a few different parts of his book carefully, a study from a Seamus Radden fifty years back, over his speculations of the Other Place. It was a dense text filled with unnecessary speculation unsupported by any wick of evidence, but Nathaniel had spied a few valid hypotheses amidst the book.

One, that the Other Place is an infinite expanse of a universe, from which there is no subtraction or addition over time. Meaning, all spirits that have, or will ever be summoned, exist in the Other Place in some capacity. There is no concept of birth or death in their plane. Spirits take on individual consciousness and names when magicians draw them from the Other Place into the mortal realm; a bit like separating some small amount of clay from a larger body and giving it a name. From thereon, their experiences in the mortal world define their personalities and experiences, which persevere with them even after they are dismissed back into the Other Place.

The Other Place itself is a realm without individuality where every spirit is one, swirling mass of conscious energy, or “essence.” Spirits who die in the mortal world aren’t ‘dead,’ in the human sense. The substance of their being lives on, their essence eventually returned back to the Other Place, although now unattached to the name, and thus, the memories and experiences, that gave it individuality. This process is slow and gradual; the essence of a spirit that dies in the mortal realm takes an uncertain amount of time to return back to the Other Place. It is why many spirits consider it a mercy upon each other to eat each other while they are in the human world instead of killing each other; they are preserving the essence of the expired spirit, and saving the essence from making its own slow journey back to the Other Place on its own.

Massive wars like the one on the American front until very recently, as the country liberated itself from British rule, see the death of many a man and many a spirit. Radden hypothesizes that the Other Place takes time to recover the essences that are obliterated in the mortal realm, and thus, there is a sense of loss spirits report feeling during turbulent time periods.

“Bartimaeus,” Nathaniel said, distractedly. “How does war feel like, in the Other Place? When so many spirits die at around the same time. Are you able to sense it while you’re there, that something’s happening in the human world?”

“The short answer’s yes. It’s a little like a bell reverberating through the air, or like when you throw a pebble into an ocean. There’s a disturbance in the Other Place, a rippling, stronger when a powerful spirit like a marid or something more ancient dies, but terrible when you humans have a war going on.”

“When you’re in the Other Place, are you able to see other spirits’ memories and experiences?” Nathaniel asked, getting distracted by a tangent.

“Sure. I mean… hang on, why the sudden curiosities?”

Nathaniel tapped at his page in faint annoyance, his line of thought being interrupted. Tamura and Ceres usually answered his questions with none of the extra chatter.

“It occurred to me while you and I shared a body that I don’t know much about spirits and the Other Place. Most of my studies as a magician were concerned with how to make demons do our bidding in this world, but not so much about where de- spirits come from, and what exactly the Other Place is. Kitty even visited you there, hadn’t she?” And Nathaniel had so many questions, for her, as well. What she’d accomplished was no small feat, only reportedly accomplished by one or two magicians in all of human history, and none of those other instances had been confirmed as true. “You, and other spirits, learn much about us when you’re here. But we… don’t learn or record much about you, besides what you do here. And even then, much of your work is attributed to the magician who summons you.”

It was faintly satisfying to see Bartimaeus look mildly gobsmacked from the words coming out of Nathaniel’s mouth.

“Empathy? For spirits? What happened to you in the four months it took for me to get to you?” Bartiameus said. “Surely not much, with those injuries, you were probably bedridden for two of them.”

“It isn’t about the amount of time you didn’t see me,” Nathaniel rolled his eyes. “It’s the period you and I shared mind and body. It’s hard to curb curiosity when I have a djinni’s memories echoing around my skull, at all times of the day.”

“Hm. Must be difficult, having housed an ancient and mighty being in that frail rag of a body of yours.”

“Yes, exactly,” Nathaniel scowled. “Though I’d appreciate it if you’d refrain from calling me frail, or scrawny, or whatever else you’ve got. I’ve put on some muscle since I last saw you.”

“You call that muscle?” The djinni snorted. “You’re one step away from a fair maiden who’s never lifted a finger in her life.”

“I am not,” Nathaniel protested. “I’ve been cleaning decks and going out with the crew ever since I began being able to work.”

“Is that why you smell so strongly of fish?” Bartimaeus’s smile was all teeth, Nathaniel could tell, even though the djinni was faced away from him. “My, my, how far our little Natty-boy has fallen. From the Information Minister of London, to a deckscrubber in a no-name town in America.”

“We’re getting sidetracked,” Nathaniel said, choosing to ignore the prickling indigence that rose to the djinni’s words. “Blast it, Bartimaeus, I lost track of what I was asking after… Memories. That’s right. Do spirits share memories when they’re in the Other Place?”

“We share everything. We’re all one, when we’re there. If you’re asking me if, say, me and Tamura can talk to each other in the Other Place and exchange information, you’re mistaken. We’re all jumbled up. Everybody is everyone else. There is so much of everything, we do not confer specific tid-bits of information in that way.” Giving him a sideways glance, “If you’re thinking I’ll let slip anything about you to other spirits…”

“No, that isn’t why I asked,” Nathaniel dismissed, brow furrowed as he tried to understand it.

Tamura returned a half hour after, and after a while, Nathniel found himself distracted from his studies by the delicious scents coming from his kitchen. Even the dark cat seemingly dozing by his foot flicked an ear in the direction of the plates being set out.

When Nathaniel came to lean on the kitchen counter, Bartimaeus gave him a knowing smile at the sound of his growling stomach.

“Two plates,” Nathaniel noted. The spirit plated generous amounts of fried fish in both, doused in lime and topped with parsely, smelling of crushed pepper and cayenne, garnished with vegetables. Tamura leapt onto the counters, to nose the plates.

“He may seek to poison you, Master Nathaniel,” she warned, before Bartimaeus shooed her off.

“There are far more entertaining ways to kill a magician, over poison.” The spirit said, holding out a knife and fork to Nathaniel, who took them. “Strangulation, dismemberment, that lovely form of torture often invoked back in the olden days of Rome—”

“Not when I’m going to eat, Bartimaeus.”

“—involving strapping someone between two boats, a whole lot of honey on the intimate parts, if you know what I mean, along with—”

“I don’t want to know what you mean.”

“—locusts of insects, and forced diarrhea.”

“Are you quite done?”

“Come on, aren’t you at least a little bit curious?”

“Not at all.”

The spirit plucked the other plate and went to sit by the window, sliding down to sit on the floor. It was honestly a shock to see him break off a piece of fish with his hand, still steaming hot, and pop it in his mouth.

“You aren’t the only one suffering the after effects of that body-possession shtick,” Bartimaeus said.

Nathaniel followed tentatively, sitting on the other side of the window. “What do you mean?”

Bartimaeus chewed, pondering, and it urged Nathaniel to place his own plate on his lap, cutting a small bite of the fish to eat.

Spices filled his mouth, bordering on too-strong. At first, he began to cough, asking Tamura to fetch some water.

“You have the spice tolerance of a newborn babe,” Bartimaeus goaded. “I noticed it back when you were stuck in the toilet for hours anytime you had anything with a bit of taste in it.”

“Would it wound you to go a couple of moments without making a grotesque remark?”

“It would, yes. Terribly.”

But Nathaniel was hungry, and he tried some of the roasted tomato and curd on the side along with his fish. “So? Are you capable of feeling hunger now?”

“It’s less about hunger, and more about cravings. I don’t need food. But now and then, the experience isn’t too bad. I don’t taste it or ingest it as you do, either; we’re having completely different experiences here.”

“You don’t taste it? Then how do you know what you’re eating… and how do you know what to cook?”

The djinni lifted a shoulder, “I don’t think you understand what spirits are. The Other Place is nothing like this, and we are nothing like the living beings in your world, limited to the needs of maintaining a physical body. This form, the reason I simulate a human appearance, the reason I pretend to blink or breathe or the way I walk or move; we spirits have had to learn to mimic the logic of this world, and recreate it to a tee. None of it really has to make sense for us.”

It was odd, sure, sitting cross-legged, leaning against the wall maybe a foot away from a spirit, sharing food with it. Tamura stood vigil on his other side, silent but watchful. Bartimaeus’s chewing was loud, possibly deliberately so to piss him off, as he sat casually, the plate balanced on his left thigh, his other knee propped up. His loincloth pooled across his legs, his dark hair perpetually neat about his face. Afternoon sunlight swept into the room in yellow rays, the food hot and filling.

The whole experience was oddly…

Intimate wasn’t the word Nathaniel was looking for.

He and Bartimaeus had a history of very imbalanced power dynamics; their interests always in stark contrasts to each other, always working towards something. Danger had always been right around the corner, and self-preservation had brought out the worst in both of them. Right now… it almost, for the first time, placed them as equals.

“I used to work in the kitchens for this magician back in Assyria, and he was often fond of seafood. The spinier and spicier, the better, in his eyes. Fellow had a knackering for lobster and crab like I’ve never seen… all this is to say, we used to make a dish like this for him now and then,” The djinni said.

“And you used to complain that I was wasting the talents of a fourth-level djinni by putting you in a kitchen,” Nathaniel rolled his eyes. “Seems like you have more than enough experience in one.”

“You are! And he was, as well!” Bartimaeus protested. “Come to think of it, that was where I met Farquarl. The only difference was, his master was the Assyrian king and mine was a Babylonian diplomat trying to kill him.”

“…Did you succeed in your charge?”

“No. Farquarl was a menace back then, as he was until his last breath. Mind you, it doesn’t mean he was the stronger one, between us two. He won some, and he lost most others. I got him in the eye with a ham bone in the middle of a food fight, and then he trapped me under a pyramid a decade later.”

“Are you talking about that spirit who possessed Hopkins?”

“That’s the one. Why’re you smiling?”

“I’m imagining the poor Babylonian diplomat who had the misfortune of summoning you. What was the punishment for failing to carry out your charge?”

The spirit bristled, “Taking notes, are you? My master at the time was a man of vile temper. He invented an ancient curse by the name of the Pentagonal Prism. Doesn’t sound half as bad as what I suffered.”

“Can’t have been anything new for you, given your personality.”

“No, it wasn’t,” The spirit agreed.

And somehow, in someway.

Nathaniel found it was the warmest meal he’d had, in many years.

---

next!
darling yellow

[Ilianasarigo]

Summary

skdfgsdksdf
I love this
their banter, the magic world buildign with the Other Place, and the peaceful vibes at the end

---

“What a darling yellow!”
Something about the man’s tone rubbed me the wrong way. I smiled tightly.
“Thank you for complimenting my dress.”
“It’s a cute little outfit,” he said.
My lip curled despite my usual desire to be polite.
“Hm…” I said.
“It makes me think, ‘three year old dressed up for a picnic by Granny.’”
“Is that… a compliment.”
It didn’t really sound like it.
“Yes it’s a compliment,” he said, and then stared down at me with a smug smile like he expected thanks.
“Okay.”
We stared at each other in silence for a solid few seconds, as other aspiring shoppers streamed around us into the store.
“Have a nice day,” I started to say.
“Fred! Who’s this?”
“Oh, I just met her,” Fred said.
A friend of his. I tried to search in my mind for social niceties and my mind landed on compliments. I scanned her completely unornamented shirt, her beige pants, and her unremarkable shoes.
I only realized I had been scanning her for a solid few seconds when she visibly bristled.
The woman was holding a bag. It had flowers on it.
“Nice bag,” I muttered, then sidled into the shopping mall as the two got caught up in conversation.

---

Next: schmoop

[Ilianasarigo]

Ethel could just see Lian’s face in the dark, a paler splotch on the bed. The thought of lighting a lantern so she could read Gerl’s book crossed Ethel’s mind, but she wouldn’t risk waking up Lian. She had to do as right as she could be her, now.
Ethel sat with her back against a wall and tried to recall the happiest book she’d read. Fluffy to the point of schmoop. She didn’t normally go for sacharine romance stories with barely any conflict, but she thought if she could read now she’d go for one. Ethel sat awake and guarded Lian through the long, dark night, the hours too long. She didn’t want to hear Lian speak to her when she woke up, didn’t want to see her eyes when she looked at her. Already, she felt the memory of Lian’s smile slipping into fuzziness in her mind. Ethel knew she would have to let go of the memory eventually. But it was far too soon to consider now.

---

Next: sole

[Ilianasarigo]

He was the sole decider in situations like this. What to do about this wound demanding attention in the air? Griffin had a lifetime of experience and research in his mind. He was the thinker. The swirl of pink-red-wound colored light in their in front of their face washed their body in an odd red glow. Here alone, with nothing to distract attention from it, it would make the air across all visible space glow red, disgusting and alien. It was a distorted form of a regular thought. Griffin knew from experience that other discomforts made these kinds of thoughts. Hunger, social awkwardness, heat, or just a sourceless stiffness and pain that was hard to identify. Sometimes it helped to focus on the real cause of the pain, rather than the twisted creations that rose from it. In this case, though, the air felt flighty and dreamy, so they felt like whipping up something else. A swirling orb of purple that sat right next to the wound, distracting attention to something appealing every time the eye went to the orb. Griffin tied them together and sat back on their heels.
“It’s twisted beyond recognition, but who did this thought originally belong to?” Griffin wondered.
It felt pretty alien to him, not quite right for Tuft, maybe Gash? But in its purest form, it seemed like it would be neutral. That was the impression he got underneath all those bloodied tones. It couldn’t be Gash.
“Mine,” Crow said, making him flinch and put a hand over his pendant.
Griffin sighed,
“I don’t think it’s your fault at all that it turned out this way,” they affirmed.
Crow stared at the swirling purple thing, transfixed by the sensory image of the thought. That was what made it such a good choice, the physicality and comfort of the image despite being fantastical.
“I sometimes wonder if we did this to ourselves by taking in distressing information,” Griffin said, “…but, I think if we were ignorant we’d simply find something within what we knew to twist into something like this.”
He paused, appreciating that Crow was lending an impartial ear,
“It’s not that distressing information doesn’t cause distress. Or that that can’t hang around. But I don’t think this is the kind of wound caused by an actual incident like that. And… we have a lot of those in here now, and we’re still happy enough.”
Griffin was silent for a moment, the thought nagging at him,
“I try not to concern myself with whether we’re happy enough. We’re happier than many people. A lot of happieness just comes from what the body is producing on any given day. A lot of happiness just comes from waking up at the same time every day. And from eating enough of the right foods. Life passes by regardless of whether we enjoy it. I try to focus on what we can do. Like this,” he gestured at the purple orb that Crow’s eyes kept snagging on.
Crow looked back simply with large, glossy dark eyes,
“I like doing things,” Crow agreed.
Crow preferred to be moving rather than sitting still, but they could also spend an hour staring at some shiny thing that had caught their interest, not a thought in their head but the way the light sparkled through it. That was what they would consider ‘doing things,’ Griffin supposed, while for him, creating a thought to strategically counter another was action.

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Next: keyhole