The large lecture halls generally hosted the non-mandatory, uncredited lectures that covered broad subjects that were useful for many of the more focused seminars. Stuff like ‘Histories and Mythologies’, which went over the broad strokes of the origins of ancient and popular myths, what perceptions they encouraged, and how these perceptions affected the real people living there.
As an example, the relatively small raiding parties of individual viking ships allowed werewolf packs — precursors to the modern lodge based purely on blood — to conduct their business quite openly, provided they didn’t leave any witnesses. Vampires and werewolves both were well-respected among many Germanic tribes throughout antiquity, which in turn caused Romans, and later with the solidification of Christianity as state religion the entire western half of Europe, to persecute them strongly, in turn pushing vampires and werewolves further eastward, where they could still practice their pagan cultures and rituals without state interference for a time. The satanic panic of the 80s, a social hysteria that pseudoscientific experts and delusional individuals fed like a bonfire, nearly revealed an actual witch coven's ritual to increase a local farm’s corn harvest, which in turn scared the witches to the point that most rituals nowadays are completed online, where able.
Getting into these kinds of lectures was easy. All I had to do was send an e-mail saying ‘oopsie, missed the deadline. Can I pretty please sit quietly at the back of your lecture? I love hearing about the persecution of Julian under emperor Constantine I.’ Or something along those lines.
Those weren’t the important lectures though. They didn’t even do a headcount.
Those that did were the important seminars, graded lectures on molecular alchemy, fae pact mechanics in agriculture, and some stuff about barriers that went way over my head.
Not that I needed those anyways.
What I needed was a permit for late entry into Professor Nemo Fowl’s Image, Identity, Immortality seminar, among a couple other ones. I’d already gotten into the general Cultures of the World class, which was basically an abstract of how people from different parts of the world understood it and themselves within it, with a single mental click since the professor forgot to close the digital application forum. As I was marked as a Custodian student, I was automatically signed up for Practical Cantrips and Applied Casting I — PCAC for short — as well as Battlefield Tactics I, II, and III, which, as far as I understood, was the the academic spine of the Custodian’s path.
I stood in front of what I hoped was the right office. Getting here was already hard enough, but it’d be worse to find out that I was in the wrong department, again.
The door opened by itself with a creak after two knocks. A woman with salt-and-pepper hair was sitting at an elaborate wooden desk. There was no indication that she was going to get up to greet me, nor that she had gotten up to open the door. She typed away at her keyboard in a monotone rhythm.
“Hello?” I asked. “Professor Fowl? I have a question regarding your course.”
“Come in,” the woman said.
I closed the door behind me and sat down on a chair, politely waiting until she was done with whatever task I was interrupting. She looked like the strict type, her hair tightly woven into a bun, her body packed into a blouse-and-office-pants combo that were practically screaming that she was the boss in this room. Except…
I stood up, squinting at her as I watched her fingers move across the keyboard. The click sounds were slightly off. Why were they off?
I poked the professor. My finger met resistance at first, of normal human skin. Then it slid right through.
“Most first years don’t see through advanced illusions until I give them a big hint,” came a male voice from up high. There, on a ladder on rails hung a man I’d completely overlooked. He was rather young looking, coquettish, with a wry grin that didn’t hide his vampiric canines. “It took you half a minute. I suppose I must congratulate you.”
He slid down the ladder, a thick tome in hand, before looking around the rest of the office.
“No, there aren’t any more of me hiding anywhere in this room,” he said.
“I was wondering where the real you is then,” I shot back, turning to face him, her… both of them. “Since this is also not the real you.”
The professor’s brows raised higher, as did the corner of their lips. “Now, how would you ever come to that conclusion?”
“Small inconsistencies. The book in your hands reads Treatise & Travails IV, but there is already an exact copy neatly sorted in the row you supposedly took it from.”
“It could be a duplicate.”
“Fair. I’m also cheating. My eyes are… somewhat special. I can see ghosts clear as day, and see through illusions.”
“Oh. Well. That’s disappointing.” Their face fell for a brief moment. There was a knock at the door.
A young boy, younger still than the young man before me, peeked inside. His face was scaled, his hands were webbed, and his skin looked like it was permanently covered in a thin layer of sweat.
“Finished correcting the stack of exams, Professor Fowl, sir.”
I raised an eyebrow at him, and then at the Professor. The boy disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“Yes, yes, I get it, parlour tricks have no effect. My, you do seem to have a gift for seeing past the veneer of things.” Not that it really helped me when my main job was blasting mimics and murderbots apart. The Ur-mimic was pretty pissed when I saw through it though. Maybe all illusionists were like that. I know I’d be angry if someone just ignored my body doubles and ran straight for me.
Regardless, this lecturer was a master of magic, and since the system wasn’t introducing him as either associate or a Custodian, there was only one real answer to what he was.
He was a wizard. And wizards, supposedly, despised Custodians.
He circled me like a shark, hand on his chin, eyes focused on me and only me. One moment he was a young vampiric man, the next an elderly human woman, then a portly, androgynous werebeaver.
“I suppose you’re here to sign up for my seminar. I appreciate honest effort and cannot abide tardiness. If you are late to even one of my seminars by even a second, I will fail you. If you do not show the proper initiative and willingness to learn, I will fail you. Acceptable terms?”
I blinked. “I can do all of that. I won’t disappoint.”
Not again. I’m finally studying something I like. Failure is not an option.
He regarded me for a solid minute.
“My course is primarily interested in exploring perception, the power and effects thereof, and how to manipulate it to your benefit. Your eyes are a gift, but they mean you are lacking, in a way, as you do not perceive the world as others do. More effort will be necessary, more by far. As a Custodian, this should come easily to you.” He chewed his lip, coming to a stop behind me. “Find me, the real me, and I just might be inclined to give you a reward. As an additional motivation. And to make it official, here.”
[Optional Quest: Finding Nemo]
Description: Nemo Fowl is on this campus somewhere. Or is he? Find his real body until before semester is over.
Reward: x1 Mystery deluxe super mega ultra special awesome reward.
Failure: You fail all of Nemo Fowl’s courses.
I swallowed heavily, staring at the system notification, and then his oustretched hand.
“Do we have a deal?”
“Oh. Uh. Yes sir?”
“Good.”
I blinked and he was gone. Slowly, the room around me changed contours and colors. In place of a bookshelf there were shelves filled with rows of muddy jars and vials. Instead of a table and chair stood boxes and crates. The room had a strong herbal smell.
“Oh, you motherf— how’d he do that?”
At least he let me join the seminar. Hopefully all the other professors were just as willing to bargain.
But that was one professor down. Only a few more to go.
+++
They’re all illusions.
Half of every single lecture was hosted by an illusion. Most of them belonged to Professor Nemo Fowl, I suspected. And ninety percent of those were hosting courses I desperately wanted in on.
He even pretended not to recognize me! I had to argue and debate with freaking illusions of the same person five times, and he even had the gall not to accept me on the last one! And, as per the quest, failing to find the real Nemo Fowl meant it didn’t even matter how many of the exams and projects I succeeded at.
“I am so screwed,” I muttered into the cafeteria table. A bowl of tomato soup was sitting next to me, steam long cooled. It didn’t taste as great as I thought it would. Maybe I should have accepted the supplementary bloodbag after all.
I sighed, tried to come up with a plan for the future, and didn’t find anything. My brain was fried and my stores of motivation exhausted. Which was of course when I saw Orianna walking straight towards me.
She sat down at the opposite side of my table, sipping a bag of blood with the description ‘simian - Type A, flavored ’. Her plate of beans, blood sausage, and spinach smelled awfully enticing. She even had a salad with bits fruits and veggies I’d never even heard of.
“You look like you’ve just had to sit through a seminar on Tetradar’s Triangular Theorem. First semesters are always exhausting. Bloodbag?”
I looked up at the vampire girl staring right at my upper eyes. Entering university life was either the most freeing or the most alienating experience possible. Everything depended on initiative and first impressions.
On the one hand, she was trying not so subtly to drive a wedge between me and Addy, rather, between me and all werepeople-kind. On the other hand, maybe she was just trying her best to make and look out for a friend? I didn’t exactly see her walking around in any big clique. She was always alone. It was kinda sad.
I accepted the bloodbag, taking a sip and feeling vitalized. It was mango flavored.
I sipped more strongly, until the straw started making noises. “So, where does this blood come from?”
“Donated to and supplied by The Society… and various renowned hospitals. Nobody benefits from having a bunch of hangry bloodsuckers prowling the academy grounds. People wouldn’t get anything done. It’s all A, AB, or AB+ anyways, which is in constant oversupply worldwide.”
“Huh.” I took another deep sip. “Any difference in taste?”
“Barely. Why do you think we put artificial flavor in it?”
“Fair.”
An awkward pause stretched for upwards of a minute.
Orianna spoke up first. “You know, I don’t enjoy trying to tear a relationship apart. Even if it is between you and that… tanuki girl.”
“You called her a bomb. To my face.” I rubbed my eyes. “You know, sometimes she does seem a little prickly. And I’m afraid she’ll suffocate me one day by shapeshifting while she’s lying on top of me. But the one thing I’m certain of is that whenever she is brimming with violence, it isn’t pointed at me. Maybe that’s why you’re afraid. You think it’s intended for you, even though you’re a fellow Custodian; even though we both are.”
“I don’t see how that matters.”
“It’s the only metric that does matter! We’re on the same team,” I said, throwing up my many hands. “And nothing feels worse than a team that doesn’t want to play together because some people are actively griefing it.”
She stared at me. “Griefing?”
“Videogame terminology. Not playing towards the common goal of the game, but to cause grief or suffering, or being an annoying twat. Turns out, saving the world isn’t as unifying an idea as I was hoping.” I slurped until my bloodbag was crinkled into a ball of plastic, then tossed it into the garbage can specifically marked for bloodbags, right next to the can marked for discarded hairballs, scales, and whatnot. Because apparently the bureaucracy stocking this Academy was more considerate than the freaking students.
“Good talk.” I got up, watching Orianna flounder as she tried to swallow a mouthful of blood and talk at the same time. A withering stare told her I was not interested in whatever followup she thought was necessary.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Am I being snippy? I think I am. But I’m justifiably angry, no? Isn’t that alright? Anger is a necessary component to some spells. Not that I’d ever voluntarily get any, but still, does that mean I can just discard anger as a whole?
No, probably not. I ought to be a better balanced magical girl. I ought to be better, period.
I sighed. “I’ll meet you back at the dorm. We can pretend that it’s the first time we ever met. If you like.”
There. Peace offer extended. Let her chew on that for a while.
I left her sitting there, stewing in the consequences of her own actions. Stew. I could really go for some stew right now.
… I wonder if vampire muscles atrophy from protein-deficiency if they only ever drink blood bags?
Maybe vampires just kept their muscles. Vampire biology was still a mystery to me — I had a course for that on Wednesdays though — and so I was still pondering the possible benefits and downsides of a fluid-only diet when I arrived at a five-spoked crossroads of corridors.
Oh, it’s FiveLane. Lessee, two full rotations clockwise, half a rotation counterclockwise, a short skip — one, two three — and there it is.
The hallways all melded into one, rooms marked 302 through 307 spanning left and right. I was somewhat dreading my next seminar held in 302. Cultures of the World sounded incredibly geographical. Despite being an outlier in Creektin for having studied all the way across the Atlantic, I had still barely toured the world. Geography was always a bit of a weak point in my report cards.
I entered the seminar room, which was less a lecture hall for hundreds and more a room fit for a school class, and watched as all conversation was smothered. Two dozen eyes slowly turned to look at the new entrant. They were werewolves and weredogs, werelizards, werebears, were-just-about-anything. Most of them wore normal clothes, others the costumes some Custodians preferred.
“Hello!” I said with three cheery waves.
The answer was complete and utter silence. The lecturer, a female professor in a slim black pullover and equally black pants with a few more buckles than the average legwear on it, was still busy getting the projector to work.
My heart beat nervously as I made my way to the last free spot, smack-dab in the middle of the entire room. Don’t imagine them staring at you, Sam. You’re not that important. They’ll go back to their discussions any minute now.
The moment, the literal, exact moment I sat down, everyone in the entire room stood up as one.
Huh!?
And then they left, filing out in perfect order one after the other.
Wait, what is happening? What did I do wrong? Please tell me, please!
The nervousness turned into panic turned to guilt, and every other emotion I didn’t want. It wasn’t right, but there were tears in my eyes and a plea stuck in a suddenly too-dry throat as every single wereperson in the entire room left because I had the gall to sit in the same room as them.
… I thought we could all be friends.
The door closed all too quietly. They were gone. Now there were only two students left out of previously twenty: Me, the confused, self-pitying girl-spider vampire thing that didn’t even know what she was supposed to be if not friendly and helpful, and some sort of yellow skinned, bat-like demon sitting in a corner way at the back.
Sniffling, I scooted my chair over to his side.
“Hey.”
He screeched at me in a pitch that could crack glass. Honestly, this was preferable to whatever… whatever stupid bullshit made people protest my entire existence.
A sudden system message popped up in front of my eyes. It was an automatic translation function.
<
“Well, happy to have you, Al… can I call you Al?”
The demon yawned, grumbling in a deep baritone now.
<
“Alright. Well, Al, welcome to earth, and sorry to disappoint. I think I’m also still picking up some differences in culture between here and… anywhere else, really.”
He screeched again. This time, the projector flickered to life.
“Aha, there we go!” The lecturer looked up from her screen. “Hm. I could swear there were more people here just a moment ago.”
She looked cheerful despite having hemorrhaged an above-lethal dose of students for any other lecture.
“Well, teaching you two is going to be a treat. Tell me, what do you think is the primary difference between vampires and the various clades of werefolk?”
<
I… what? Vampires used to be shapeshifters too? How… how do I not know that? Besides not growing up in this society of course.
I paused, then chewed through the question in my mind. Hopefully she wasn’t going to give up on the entire course if I answered wrong, because the more I thought, the more I didn’t have a good answer.
“I don’t know. I suppose my knowledge ends at the fact that both didn’t originate on earth. But, like, I haven’t seen any vampire or werepeople invasion, so I don’t quite understand how that can be important?”
“And thus, you have found the central conundrum that this course will busy itself with solving. And the others will busy themselves, or they will have to retake this course next semester, with the addendum that I will be remembering their smells. Or faces, to say it in layman’s terms.”
I blinked at her. “Wait, is this not Cultures of the World?”
Her laugh was bright and honest. “I get one of you at least once every two semesters. You should’ve learned all about earth's cultures in your pre-university education. This is Cultures of the Worlds, plural. Ready yourself, because the history of the entire universe isn’t as interesting as the history of the only nine planets to develop advanced life, excluding Earth.”
This is… I like this turn of events.
And I liked this woman already. No bullshit. No pretenses. Just a keen interest in her field of choice and the teaching thereof.
At least for today I just get to sit here and learn. Those who want to take this course seriously will return now that I got their statement. And oh boy did I get it, loud, clear, straight to the heart.
And if you think I’ll just take this lying down, you don’t know me well enough yet.
+++
Becca
The worst thing about being mute was that people forgot about you all the time.
I didn’t blame Sam for forgetting about me whenever she was flirting with someone else a few feet in front of me. Even if our relationship hadn’t ended on such a sour note (thanks for that, me, by the way), neither of us were inclined to restart where we’d left off.
She could’ve at least left me the keys to the dorm.
Not that it made a difference. The one thing a malleable, goopy body was fantastic for was picking locks. Just push a pseudopod in, listen for clicks, adjust the shape — boom, inside the dorm, and from there through recreating my own room keys, I was inside a private space, a clean, open place just for me.
But then I couldn’t fall asleep, and suddenly it didn’t seem like that much of a gift. My mind needed a distraction, a project I could fully immerse myself in. I did eat an alien robot a few days ago. Let no one say that I, Rebecca, am not ambitious.
I’d figured out the general motor behavior of its right arm — the one with the energy weapon on it. It had a hinge joint at the elbow, connecting the upper and lower arm with what looked to be a mix of hydraulic actuators plus a ludicrously powerful tiny electromotor and gear train. The hydraulics were stable and moved smoothly, providing excellent support for a weapons arm, while the electric motors offered the precision movement necessary for aiming.
Except, the thing is that the whole arm weighed a hundred pounds due to all of the fluid lines, wiring, and insulation necessary to fire the huge-ass laser at the other end (It wasn’t a laser, more like a hyper-focused plasma flamethrower, but I digress). That meant the entire robot itself weighed somewhere north of six to seven hundred pounds. More than an adult grizzly bear!
And that wasn’t even the scary part. The scary parts were the imperfections of the welds, the wear around the joints and inside the gearboxes… the fucking hydraulics were leaky!
These things were mass manufactured and made to break. It would be a wonder if any of them managed to go through a year of moderate activity without catastrophic malfunctions. And the fact that an enemy of humanity was out there with the ability to just make these murderous robots with the same accuracy as we used to slather jam on half-burnt toast was terrifying.
I had to learn more about them, and fast. Alas, there was no convenient book close by. I’d have to wait until some of the tinkering and mechanics seminars that started later this week for an overview. Currently, it felt like I was trying to build a car by starting with figuring out the gearbox, except without having the concept of what a car’s purpose actually was.
Man, I wish I could communicate with the purported AI system Sam and Adelaide can. Then again, maybe not. I’ll probably just be disappointed anyhow. It’s probably just another advanced language learning model.
I stared at the damn hand as I materialized and unmaterialized it. The annoying part of mimic biology meant that, on instinct, I put more focus on the outside of a box, completely ignoring the insides. That was not an issue when I was a cardboard box, but it was different when I was trying to create a functioning gearbox, or make a cable that wasn’t 100% rubber.
A puzzle. Great. At least that leaves ol’ Becca with something to do.
… god, I hope these walls are thick enough that I don’t hear those two banging.
The night went by in a haze. Create arm, find imperfection, remember imperfection, destroy, repeat.
Create, destroy, create, destroy, create, destroy.
[Congratulations!You have reached level 6]
Oh hey, a level. Neat.
I felt more than heard Sam’s door open quietly. Slithering past the door, there was the tanuki girl, sneaking out at the ungodly hour of… six thirty.
I could continue optimizing the arm for another couple hours. Or I could follow her.
One of the two seemed slightly more appealing.
Time for Ball-Becca.
I turned into my ball-form, and rolled on after her.
Rolling was a remarkably efficient and quick way to get from point A to point B, but only while the ground was flat. Stairs were my greatest enemy, threatening to send me careening past, or even straight into her. To combat that, I made my outer layer just sticky enough that I could still move by internally shifting my mass, and crawled down the steps one safe inch at a time.
I almost lost her twice. This Academy was confusing. It was also dirty as heck. Did nobody ever bother to clean the corners? There were dust bunnies here that were half as tall as I was.
Ew.
It took fifteen minutes until she arrived at what looked like a hospital of freaks. Beds were laid out in two rows, filled with injured people in varying states of repose. One of them was wrapped in a giant blue bubble, floating half a foot off of her bed. Another one was wrapped in vines, the only part visible being an elfin face, and a green toe.
[Custodian Sasha, Effervescent Droplet. Lives: 0. Affected by: Level 79 Poison (Unknown Source). Treatment: Stasis until antidote can be synthesized.]
[Custodian Ivan, Of the Green Path. Lives: 0. Affected by: Level 99 Mindworm. Treatment: Comforting rest, until Custodian overcomes internal 100 year challenge, or expires.]
They were all Custodians. Their bodies were inhuman, each a unique work of art, each cared for in their own way, as the system provided. And it did provide it; Custodians had health insurance after all, a reward and necessity for the self-destructive service we in turn delivered at the drop of a quest notification.
Still. There has to be a better way to go about this.
Was it odd to say that I felt more accepted by an unfeeling system than by my family?
The general trend for Custodians was that they gained the powers of their enemies, modifying themselves into whatever they wanted to be. Necessity had to play its part as well. Some of the forms I’d seen… lets say it would take a very twisted, or very stressed mind to voluntarily take those. But no matter how many razorblades you had for elbows, you were cared for nonetheless.
And if that wasn’t magical, what was?
I didn’t see a single nurse as I rolled after Adelaide. She stalked the halls before stopping in front of an awfully normally looking, if large man, normal only if you discounted the pinky-length spikes he had instead of hair. They ran down the back of his body, clearly poking out the back of his hospital gown and… ugh.
How does he sleep anywhere but on his stomach? Scratch that, how does he even wear shirts?
Adelaide took a seat next to him. “Mason. Hey. It’s me, Addy. Remember me?”
He looked up from a graphic novel. Bone, it read, volume three. It looked to have been read a million times. The paperback cover was in tatters, with holes where his slightly pointed fingernails cradled it with all the gentleness of a giant holding a lamb. “You? Yes… yes, you were the girl who brought me here yesterday, right? Anna?”
[Custodian Mason, The Bomb. Lives: 3. Affected by: Soulbound curse (Memory loop). Treatment: Low-security internment until curse can be lifted.]
“That was two years ago,” she said. “I’m Addy. Your teammate. I am going to free you now, Mason.”
“Free me?” He laughed. “I just got here! And I’ve got nothing to complain about. Breakfast is great, and I’ve got my favorite book right here.”
She took a deep breath and presented him with a flower. It was a flower black as machine oil, with yellow pistils and red stamen.
“What is—” Mason’s eyes were transfixed on the flower, whose petals seemed to repeat endlessly, again and again, like a Mandelbrot figure. There was the distant sound of shattered glass and an eldritch warble-scream as she took a lighter and burned the flower, the ash flowing straight up Mason’s nostrils.
He sneezed. Then blinked. Then dropped his book. “Oh… Oh my god. I’m late for my seminar. I have a paper to hand in! Addy, you don’t understand, I am so late for classes—”
Adelaide embraced him in a hug. Which was, on the one hand, pretty endearing, but on the other hand, girl, you are absolutely impaling yourself on those spines.
He seemed flustered, hands raised in the air as if he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hug her back. “O-ok. Not the time for jokes, I take it?”
She peeled herself off before punching him in the upper arm. “Asshole. Welcome back, cousin.”
A number of spines were sticking out of her body.
“I, uhh, am glad to be back.” He plucked a spine from her forearm. “Y’know, when I said I wasn’t hugged much as a kid, that wasn’t an invitation for you to martyr yourself.”
Adelaide just blinked at him. “I’ll be fine.”
Her wounds healed, pushing the spikes out until they clattered to the floor. Which was not how she said it worked when she came into the RV with a back full of spines, and made Sam pull them all out. That was before they were together and… wait, did she do it on purpose? Did she keep those spines inside, just to give Sam an excuse to touch her?
Not sure if manipulative, desperately horny, or insane. Probably all three, in some part.
Regardless, the two seemed to get on quite well. And no matter how black my bitter heart had become, I liked seeing Sam happy.
I edged around and under a sickbed so I could get a closer look. Adelaide and her old teammate Mason were retreading memories now.
“I… I remember. The hunt, the ambush, so many high level mimics, sensei screaming for us to run…. Did she make it out?”
Adelaide shook her head. His face fell.
“I got the ur-mimic piece,” Adelaide added, to which he made an exaggerated, comical face before grabbing her in a noogie.
“You, our team’s scout, got that bastard in the end? How’d you do it?”
“Asked for help.”
He guffawed. “Help! You? I must’ve been asleep longer than two years. You actively scorned any help every time I offered so much as to make you coffee. What changed?”
“I don’t know. I seriously, genuinely don’t know. I… I met a girl. Friend. Girlfriend. I’m still the same me as before, but whenever I look at that damn girl’s face, it’s just, just…” At that, her face grew red as a tomato. She hid it behind two hands and groaned into them in utter despair. “I think I’m going crazy. I have a date today. And I don’t know what to do about it.”
“You woke me up from two years of amnesia, for dating tips?” His look was full of mock disapproval. “Addy, I feel touched that you’d turn to me and honored that you think I carry the answers to all romantic troubles.”
“You don’t?” she asked, genuinely confused.
“We both had the same hellish mentor — may her soul rest in Elysium — Addy. Where would I find the time? And besides, the women I know are more into the big and cuddly type, not the big and… spiky.”
“Oh.”
They both sat there for a moment, not knowing what to do. Perhaps this was the time for rebecca-ball to reveal itself.
I rolled up to them, and immediately felt a mass of heat waft over me. A fireball the size of my face hit me straight in the center, boring a hole through and evaporating entire pounds worth of… me.
AAAAH, MY BIOMASS!
Adelaide was pulling the hedgehog man’s hand aside while I tried to put this stupid fire out. It just kept burning and burning… I had to carve away a decent chunk of more biomass and watch it sizzle in a separate pile from me. “Mason, stop! That’s… that’s our teammate.”
Glad I’m an honorary member at least. Not that I’ve done much so far.
“I know a mimic when I see one,” he said in a low, warning tone. “Wait, it’s your teammate?”
“It’s a she, and she is a Custodian!”
“I… huh. So she is.” He lowered his hand, which stopped glowing like red-hot wood. “Sorry, friend. Did I hurt you?”
I… he didn’t. Really? I was missing half my mass and my mimic instincts were giving me the mental equivalent of a shrug?
Turns out, I am mildly unkillable. Until you evaporate my entire mass of course.
I wobbled a negative. Apparently all I’d need was to eat some food, since that seemed to regenerate my bodymass the best, but other than that I wasn’t in any critical danger.
I wonder if the only way I can die now is by burning my entire body to ash?
“Did you follow me?” Adelaide asked.
I wobbled an affirmative.
“Why?”
Not being a yes-or-no question, that took a bit more time to communicate. By the end, I had wobbled an entire essay, just to say that ‘I was bored, and curious, and hey, I support your undefined yet undoubtedly romantic attraction to my former girlfriend’.
Addy looked a bit uncomfortable about that whole ‘former girlfriend part’, but I wobbled past that. The past was the past, and the present was full of opportunity for the both of us. For me, to find a place to be, and a dream to follow. For her… a whirlwind, leg-sweeping romance.
Now, how to communicate via wobbles that I was here to help facilitate that?
Shivers.