[partim] Ainlouk.

Dec 12

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Karkedon is one of the biggest cities in the world—maybe even bigger than Alexandreï, depending on who’s counting.

I love cities.  You put a few people together, they’ll talk and get to know each other, but put a hundred thousand people together and nobody gets to know anyone if they can help it. The mind just gives up and refuses to see other people as people; you can be more alone in a crowded city than in any solitary place.

It was morning when we reached the city.  I left the ship and went up through narrow streets of pale buildings, apartment houses and storefronts of artisans and the offices where the scribes tried to keep track of it all, to the city center, where a building like any other building waited with no indication that Karkedon’s powerful were inside, plotting against the world.

Some things it is nice to be part of.

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[partim] Scott the Alchemist 4.

Oct 30

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NSFW (M/M, rimming) below cut…»

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[partim] Ainlouk.

Oct 27

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I stayed in my cabin for as much as I could on the trip back to Karkedon – at least, that was my intention.  I didn’t want to have to talk about the bridge to anyone—even on a Karkedonian ship I wasn’t necessarily safe.

But then the hyena happened, lurching out of his compartment and crashing into mine, the smaller creature quite green with seasickness.  I scrambled out of the way of the window where I’d been sitting and held on to him as he leaned out and was sick.

The hyena, whom I learned later was called Mikips, recovered himself and, with no other apology than a nervous laugh and a blush of embarrassment, rushed back to his own compartment.

I wish that had been the only time I would see him.

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[partim] Scott the Alchemist 4.

Oct 22

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NSFW (M/M, hyper) below cut…»

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[scrap] Kint.

Oct 22

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Heartbeat.  I felt a tiny rush of life from the spell, and held it up.

Heartbeat.  I tried to focus on staying alive, tried to forget my wounds, tried to forget the chill of winter, the howling raucous wind, and the snow piling up at the entrance to the cave.  And I tried to focus on the spell to stay alive.

Heartbeat.  I was alive a moment ago; my heart is beating, so I’m alive now; I will be alive for another moment.

Heartbeat.  Oh, it did hurt.  I heard searchers shouting, but I couldn’t tell from here if they were Arcadian or not, and I didn’t want to risk it.

Heartbeat.  I could outwait them all anyway.  The blood had—well, it had almost abated its flow, though with the spell I don’t think it would have mattered anyway.

Heartbeat. The cold was going through me though, and I felt quite weak, and tired. I knew falling asleep would be bad—it’d be a gamble as to whether I could keep the heartbeat going in my sleep.

Heartbeat.  I tried to focus on recovering, on getting my strength back, but I still half felt like I would lose.

Forget hiding, I thought, I need help.

Heartbeat.  I struggled to get up, which was a little difficult, not wanting to take my hand off my ruined arm, but I managed it carefully and staggered to the cave mouth.

Heartbeat.  I saw a searcher further up the valley. I gave a mental shout and, not knowing if he was terras or in hearing distance, flashed a spenselight signal showing where I was.

The weakness overcame me again and I struggled back into what little shelter the cave had.

I waited.

I fell asleep.

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[scrap] Matanky.

Oct 20

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Planets.

It’d be weird for people to come down out of space and live on big rocks.  You have to remember it was the other way around.  They escaped the rocks and started roaming free.

They say it was just one rock to start with.  Which is silly if you bother to look at the timelines—they say Earth was the first, but I can think of at least half a dozen rocks with longer histories.

Like this one I was stuck on.  Axmic had a massive and boring history behind it, about as massive and boring as the place itself.

The gravity is all wrong.  It wasn’t the natural gravity, which would have been ridiculous.  But that only made it worse somehow, that people had sat around a table and come up with a consensus and the lot of them had decided, they’d chosen, to make gravity just a little higher than standard.

It’s not just a question of my own mass—that’s easy enough to change—but the way you interact with everything else.  Nothing’s unusable, but everything is just a little heavier than you expect. Everything’s… just… off.

And here, because stuck here.

They said it’d be at least a week to investigate.

And Axmic was old-fashioned enough that I actually had to be present for it.

I hate planets.

I want off this rock.

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[WIP] Classifieds.

Oct 20

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NSFW (M/solo) below cut…»

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[WIP] Kaido no Yume.

Oct 20

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I woke up again, covered in tigers.

Maro’s arm was over my back, and he was sleeping with his cheek pressed against mine.  Or rather—the absence of feline snores from his direction suggested maybe he was still awake.

I pulled in closer to him, and softly murmured his name into his ear.

“K’haiso, you should be sleeping.”  His voice was full of sleep itself; I wondered if maybe I had woken him up after all.

“Maro, who was Kaido?”

His arm gripped me tighter to him, pulling me into his stripy warmth.  “Our brother,” he said.

I nuzzled into his powerful arm and didn’t say anything.

He leaned in closer and I could feel his breath on the fur of my ear.

“Our brother who was lost to the sea.”

It was sad enough to hear the words.  It was worse to feel the tiger shaking against me, eyes shut, entirely unafraid of showing his tears.

“Our brother who never came home…”

And he only held me tighter, and kissed my forehead, still trembling with the emotion.

“Sleep, wuafo,” he said, and I knew it ought to be impossible, because my tears were wetting his fur and I couldn’t make them stop.  But sleep came anyway and soon enough it was morning.

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[scrap] Matanky.

Oct 17

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The little human from Traff’s Γ7 was trying to sell me a new spaceship, and doing a lousy job of it.

“I need a decent observation deck,” I said, looking over the ugly beige ship he was trying to sell me at the moment.  “Does this even have one?”

“Oh sure, sure,” he said, and I suspected maybe his translator was missing something. He took me through long empty hallways, and into a tiny space about the size of a wiring closet and pointed to a small screen.

It only took half a second of awareness to see that the screen was not, in fact, a viewport, and given the way he failed to pretend to sustain the illusion, proudly turning the screen on to show a moderate-resolution view of wherever the spaceship’s mounted camera was, I knew I had not been understood.

I brought up a picture and tried to show him what I meant.  He responded by tapping a few buttons on the pad below the monitor, which immediately changed to display the exact same picture I showed him.

“See?” the little human said, beaming.  “Observes anything!”

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[scrap] Matanky.

Oct 17

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The transit drive was humming.

The transit drive, of course, shouldn’t ought to hum.

The correct sound is a rush, like roaring wind just about to lull.

The hum, a bit louder now, was far from the idea of lulling.

I turned my eyes away from the starfield, which was appearing to jitter as the Lyra started to shake.

And it started to jolt.

I ran through the narrow cramped halls of the ship, metal clanking with each step, hoping to reach the engine room in time.

Animal instinct said, away is probably a better direction to run.

Animal instinct knotted my stomach.

I don’t have to worry about animal instinct if I don’t want to, I thought, panting.

The clang-clang of the metal pathway redoubled with the clank-clan of metallic feet.

I can be strong enough to survive an exploding starship engine.

My fists clenched with the sound of metal scraping metal as my body continued to change.

I can get there faster so I don’t have to.

My roboticizing body moved faster, and when I reached the overlook, I just hefted myself over the railing and jumped down.

I sensed heat, and more dangerous radiation.

Energy shields too then—not a problem.

And then I thought, looking at the ailing engine… “Troubleshooting, really? Not a chance.”

I’m a computer now, I’m not going to stop and think.

There was too much radiation interference for me to connect to the diagnostic over the wireless, so I ran to the nearest console and punched the port, changing my paw to interface.

I didn’t think.  Thinking was way too slow.  The Lyra’s diagnostic routine hit my processor and I processed.

—And it was hopeless.  The Lyra hadn’t isolated the problem’s root cause and neither could I.  That generally meant a full-blown failure—irrecoverable.

Diagnostics only gave me a few seconds before the whole thing went bang.

Stop thinking, stop thinking, stop thinking…

Safety protocols for an exploding spaceship—check, check, check.

Internal alarm.

Safety protocol for an exploding spaceship traveling at FTL speeds: I believe the full text of the procedure would be something like “Don’t be silly.”

C’mon, shapeshifter, think—

stop thinking stop thinking stop thinking

Index of what remains after a spaceship blows up while in transit: assorted subatomic particles and intense radiation of a rather exotic sort.

So be it then.

The Lyra turned into an explosion of blinding hyperplasma the instant after I did.

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