Chương 196: Chapter 217: Humming

Last night I leveled up, finally finishing the quests for Kurumi's [Cache Money] quest, as well as the sideline quest for my math teacher. It was a big hit all at once, I hit ninth level and I'm already a third the way to tenth. And, I'm not even done yet, because I've got another quest reward to cash in. But that's not the first order of business today. Sevenday. Skydown Crossing. Time for me to walk away from Hearstcliff for a few hours, unwind the city from around my neck.

Breathe normal air, talk to normal people. Re-center back where I came from and try to hold a thread to the person I used to be. In some ways this ritual is the most important part of my week. I'm loath to consider what happens when I stop. I think as long as I attend my church services in Skydown every Sevenday morning, there's a lifeline, and I can never really lose my way. If I stop, I think it will be a bad sign. One of the first things I did when I left prison was to rebuild these bonds in this town.

That means something to them and it means something to me. The girl that dressed up for Sevenday morning bore little resemblance to my usual look. Simple. Modest. Low-effort. There is damn little going on in my life that can be described as "low-effort", another reason to treasure this. It's one goddamned thing in my life that I can really count on not to be difficult for no reason. Everything else in my life feels like I'm swimming against a current or hiking uphill, but Skydown Crossing continues to be.... nice.

I blew out one breath in Hearstcliff and drew the next one in Meadowtam. Shaded by the pub's awning, across the square from the church. Instantly I felt a lightness that had nothing to do with flight. A towheaded moppet with crimson eyes was waiting for me, hands behind her back, swinging back and forth. She dipped a curtsy, and I returned it. I was still quite blinded, but I can recognize linen being pinched out and and dipped, so I replied.

"Morning princess. My mam talked to a merchant man that came from Hearstcliff with a caravan and he said you had a new holiday and it was scary but fun and there was candy," she said. My smile was bright and beaming, and I led her over to a bench seat under the awning to talk about my Halloween party. A few of her friends came by and sat with us, listening.

"Well, sort of yes but sort of no. There's more than one way to be scary, after all. I'm not sure I'm doing a good job of explaining this. Do any of you have brothers?" There were a few nods from my audience. Most of them seemed to range from six to ten.

"Ah, good. Older brothers or younger?" They all chorused their answers together, overlapping in a mix, but I picked one whose mouth had opened vertically for an O sound instead of horizontally to shape a Y.

"So, your older brother, sometimes he thinks it's funny to scare you? Maybe to make a loud noise or pretend to be a monster?" She nodded, staring right at me with round, awed eyes. She seemed to be impressed that I knew this specific detail of her family. As if this was part of my famous visions of prophecy and not just knowing enough about brothers. Not my brother obviously. Nathan never did things like that to me. When we were kids he was endlessly wonderful to me every day, and I tried to be the same for him.

That... well, it's probably the reason that I'm still cutting him so much slack after the events of the last few weeks. He's earned a lot of grace in my book, and a few nasty schemes don't offset it all. And he's not wrong that I seem to keep coming out ahead when he interferes... But other people's brothers? I've seen enough to know.

The world is full of unique individuals who all have their own thoughts and their own story, with myriad paths in front of them and it is wrong to try to pretend you know someone from minor details. That said, every brother in the world except mine is pretty much the same. I nodded to the girl with the older brother that liked to startle her. I turned to the towheaded girl who had greeted me first and started this talk.

"So, you've got a younger brother?" She nodded, and her feet started kicking back and forth even harder when my attention was on her.

"And maybe sometimes it's funny for you to startle him, or chase him and be a monster, or tell a scary story?" It was a bashful nod, but she nodded. One other little girl was pinching her kelly-green hair thoughtfully and staring up at my hair. I moved her to my lap and let my hair down for her to run her hands over it.

"Oh it's soft..." she said, as if really surprised that my hair does not actually feel like ice and snow.

"Anyway, that's the kind of scary that I like best with Halloween," I went on.

"Not the kind of scary when a horse breaks its traces, or a thunderstorm gets too close. Not the kind of scary like someone getting sick or from certain kinds of strangers. But the scary that makes you laugh afterwards. Now, not everyone is going to agree. Some people don't like the spooky parts at all and that's all right. And some people like it a lot scarier than I do, and I suppose that's probably all right too, even if it's hard for me to say that." There was a pause for them to digest that.

"But when I scare my bruvver he doesn't laugh about it," said a boy from the back, with two-toned hair.

"That's cuz you do it wrong and you're mean!" someone shouted back. Their argument swelled fast, and I could sense that this was not a new argument, just an old favorite that gets re-fought from time to time. I gave the little one a hug and then set her down on the ground to go take sides in that fight, and I had my hair sweep itself back up into a bun while I returned to the plate that had been waiting for me, growing cold.

I reheated the dish until it was steaming again, and started cutting into my breakfast while the tangle of children chased off in some new game. Chewing, thoughtful. Reheating food by magically heating the air around it and the dish beneath it is not as good as microwaving, but the odds that I'll live to see a microwave again are pretty slim. A voice from my side spoke up.

"You know they're going to insist on having their own celebration next year," said the spindly thatchwife in the gingham. Her flat-topped hat was decorated with tansies.

"I hope they do," I agreed easily.

"I should speak to the lord mayor about a town-wide festival event. Maybe I could get trick-or-treating to catch on." I was going to be bringing a lot of candy in my pockets next week. Bribery does work, and the lord mayor has children. The rest of my morning was nice. I held hands with the minister's wife in the pews, and we laughed together at his surprisingly witty homily. I caught one of the local boys looking at me and blushing, so that was interesting.

A reminder that the rest of the world has normal ideas about attraction and dating, and that taking cues from words and labels that hover in the air makes me the weird one. When I chatted with my neighbors and friends after church, we kept a nice diverse group. I keep finding myself gravitating towards the ones in their thirties or forties, the ones closest to my real total age.

It's not consistent, but when there's a handful of us all together and we're all talking, the ones I find myself nodding along with and chiming in with, are usually the ones who should be old enough to be my parents. I suppose to them it probably looks like I'm trying to find surrogates, like I still have a need for those figures in my life. I don't really know what people make of that, because, well, how the hell do you start that conversation? Besides, the last thing I need right now is a third set of parents.

"A tenth bit for your thoughts," said the thatchwife to my right, jostling me with her elbow.

"Sorry, I'm on commission," I said back.

"Hah! In that case I'll pay the going rate." I smiled a bit, and started with something easy.

"Gonna get cold soon. In for a rough winter."

"Is that polite conversation or an omen of the future?" she cackled.

"Ah, nah, I tease is all. Anyone can see it's a deep winter on its way. Anyone who's got a winter garden best have their stakes and row covers in place before that first frost comes in." Four people nearby heard us talking about weather and gardening, and pivoted our way. Boom, we're in a heated discussion about the best times to spread mulch and the questionable benefits of spritzing water over a row cover.

This kicks us all the way to "well I've seen for myself" versus "my great-grandaunt used to say", which is always a fascinating matchup. I asked the assembly if winter is a good time for using meat and bones for compost, since the cold keeps the smell from carrying to pest predators, and that got a whole discussion going as well. I listened, fascinated. I'm never going to run a farm of my own. If I do, I'm going to use magic to warm the earth in winter and and grind my compost down with machinery.

I won't ever see a real benefit for myself, in learning the traditional ways of the Meadowtam farmer tending the crop and the flock. But there's no subject that is useless to learn about. And besides, I need this. Every day I'm in Hearstcliff it feels like part of me gets chipped out. And most of the people I run into there seem to leave their thoughts in my mind. By the end of the week, I feel diluted, I feel like I'm not sure who I am.

But the Skydown public house and a rousing discussion about how high to trim snow peas to survive a frost? That is what it takes to scrub away all those influences that want to tell me how I should think and act. And it helps grow back those parts of me that the city chisels out. That's why I come back to school each Oneday with a skip in my step and a song in my heart, pollyanna-pure and beaming with smiles. Why every Fiveday sees me slinking around the campus snarling at anyone who stands too close.

And it's why I have so little patience with anyone that steps up to me on Oneday and drops some shit on me that ruins my mood for the rest of the week. But even more than Fivedays and Oneday, there's the weekend itself. See, I've been spending my weekends for a year now attending whatever social occasion Lady Hanje laid out for me on that Sixthday evening. That is the night that has the most events, and I'm still carrying the assumption that Saturday night is the party night.

And then on Sevenday morning I head out to get refreshed. So that's why it is so particular that this one week, due to scheduling issues and strategy planning, I'm attending a Sevenday event instead.

"You're humming."

"I'm in a good mood," I replied,"Bullshit," Elica snapped back.

"Good moods are something that happen to other people. You get dressed for parties like you're arming up for a war, only less lighthearted."

"What the damn, Elica, harsh." She sighed, annoyance and regret together. I've come to expect that sigh in place of an apology, she used it when she understood she was in the wrong and didn't like it. Sometimes she apologizes like a real person, but sometimes it's just the sigh.

"Well, it is true. You're normally so tense-""Surly," Rinnie corrected.

"True," Elica said, nodding.

"Surly." They're not bringing my mood down right now. It'll take more than the two of them. I'm getting dressed, coiffed and refined, and yes I'm humming while I do it. And no, I do not normally hum. The day dresses we all wear to classes and errands are a pain in the neck with several parts, several things to adjust, seams to center, ties to tuck, hems to straighten, layers to mind. And half the time, at least one fastener to mend. Ballgowns are not much worse, honestly.

With regular gowning you need to make sure all of your components are matched and covering and proper. But the dresses I bring to my big parties are built as a single assembly, so at least you can count on the stays dropping low enough, the sleeves securing the neckline, and all those things that can make you scrap a whole look at the last minute. As a trade-off, they're just more pieces in general.

Extra petticoats are the least of your problems, some of my sleeves have three parts each, which then in turn connect to the bodice and chemise! Lady Hanje is a monster, but so is every other vendeuse because I'm not being singled out and my case is not the worst. What I'm not telling Hanje is that she could actually do much worse because I'm shortcutting the whole process. The assembled dress flies off of its hanger, and then it fits onto me all in one movement.

Sometimes I accomplish this by having it fly apart into pieces and then rebuild on me in the same order and fuse back together, sometimes I just have the fabric stretch out, slide around me and then contract back to its original dimensions. Takes me like five seconds. And maybe normally I do this with a very set expression and maybe a little scowl. That's just my face when I'm preoccupied. But it's not like I'm stomping around the place throwing things and dragging storm clouds with me.

Rinnie is sitting on the settee on the far corner just in case Elica needs something, and she's reading from her textbooks, taking notes. Elica is conspicuously not doing that, but she is at her desk writing out greeting cards to be delivered to other people's events in her stead. She gets as many invites as I do; she's not as high-profile but that means she is both less sought-after but also less-avoided. It balances out. Again, another process that I typically burn through in a fraction the time.

An affinity for ink and paper was truly one of my best investments, even if it has not helped my penmanship at all. Magically controlling elements is even better than having a collating printer in your dorm room. With fabric moving at my whims, silver combs taking care of my hair, all I needed was makeup and not much of that. My default coloration is striking enough that I only really need to hit three spots. Just a bit of eyeliner and lipstick does most of the work.

But also I usually mix just a bit of darker powder into my eyebrows just so that they show up. I do a lot of expression through my eyes, and if the lighting isn't with me white-on-white just looks like I'm staring blandly. Either that or I spend several hours trying to 'correct' my coloration, and that becomes a huge headache. So much more worth it just to lean in. Unique coloration, unique cosmetics opportunities. Also, the subtler makeups always fade off me fast.

Anything that colors my skin or hair is slowly bleached out by the lingering presence of the void. Pale colors fade fastest. Another reason why I tend to use very bright, very bold, or very deep colors.

"Anyway," I asked, "what are you two up to? Just lounging around the dorm?"

"I went out last night," Elica grumbled.

"Even if I had the budget, who's got the energy? We have twelve hours of class every day. I must rest up ahead of tomorrow. And it's the week after Fashion, things are slow. Barely got any invitations. Slow time of year." She looked for something on her desk, didn't find it.

"Rinnie, what were the invitations for this evening?"

"The closing of a restaurant, a rotation of soldiers, and the third wedding anniversary of the assistant director of license processing. None of them affiliated to any houses." Rinnie paused, wrinkled her nose.

"Knowing these things makes me feel bad about myself. What have I become?" She went back to her book, and ignored us. Elica nodded.

"See? Nothing to do."

"I'm attending the rotation ceremony," I told her. I'm not expecting much of a turnout, I'm using a gala gown I've worn before. Normally that's not done, most of the nasty little gossips will start rumors that you're broke and struggling if you don't wear an all-new ensemble for every single event. But those types don't attend this event. I should be safe.

"Why?" Elica said, distaste plain on her face. She tossed her hair.

"Because it brings out most of the ranking brass for the military deployment and the standing garrison," I said.

"My support network is kind of light on military force."

"Well, whatever," she said, going back to her greeting cards.

"If any of them look good in uniform, don't bring them back here." She was too far away for me to swat her with a pillow. That's what telekinetic control over objects is for. She squawked and laughed as the pillow beat against her shoulders.

"I! Am! Not! Dating! Random! People!" No, instead, I am dating between seven to nine people with much care and discernment. I don't say that out loud because it sounds so much worse that random hookups.