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[For a terrible instant, Paul almost asks Renfri what she means by 'more's the pity', but he is capable of restraint on occasion.]

In all honesty? Likely not, except that you haven't found the book yet, so if you're willing to settle for me, I can do my best. Having experience resisting it is at least a point of reference.

I'm not willing to settle for you, which is why I have no intention of doing any settling to begin with. Come teach me.

And while you're at it, tell me when a door is no longer a door.

When it's ajar. All right, since you insist. You're missing out on some very interesting diagrams.

How will I ever go on, having been deprived of such very interesting diagrams? I'll just have to endure somehow.

It's good to see a sense of humor out of you, you know.

I've had an idea - I'll draw some up for you when we meet. Best of all worlds. And Renfri. I never joke about diagrams.

Oh, good. It just wouldn't be the same without them, I'm sure.

Are you sure this isn't just a sign you missed your calling as an artist?

I'm better at the technical side of things. I would have been a half-decent ecologist. (A scientist who studies the natural world. I've been finding that it helps when I define some words I'm not sure will translate.) Was there anything you wanted to be, when you were younger? Not really, I know, but when you pretended.

I can see that. You've the right sort of mind for it. Always turning over stones to see what's wriggling underneath them, mm?

I pretended sometimes that I could talk to animals. Not the one-sided way. I mean I'd pretend sometimes that they were my friends, and no one knew it but me. Little mice whispering secrets. Crows and magpies bringing me gifts. Even monsters, sometimes, when I was being utterly fanciful. I'd think, maybe I was special, and even the things that everyone else feared, I wouldn't, because they would like me. Just me and no one else.

I prefer seashells. You never know when they'll have crabs inside. Did you know crabs recur on every world with liquid water? It's a law of the universe. I used to pretend that I was a sea creature, and one day, I'd go back into the ocean, shed my skin, and meet all the other sea creatures like me. Maybe I could have been one of your monster friends.

You said you were in a desert before you came here. Is that why you'd pretend things about the ocean? From missing it?

Creyden was tucked away south of the Dragon Mountains, but we weren't far from the sea. It wouldn't have been hard to get there. Would you have waved at me with your dozen monster tentacles, when I ran away to visit?

We didn't go to the desert until I was old enough to have stopped pretending, most of the time. I grew up on forested islands on a world covered in oceans. We had storms like the ones out over the oceans here, sometimes bigger. I didn't know what air without salt smelled like until we left. I would have done much worse. I would have tickled you mercilessly. What is Creyden like, as a place?

Oh, would you have. Ten tickles?

[Hurr hurr hurr.]

A more rural principality than some places, not very big or very vast. We raised a lot of sheep, and did most of our trade on the sea. Some forests, some rocks, mountains to the north. All the richer kingdoms were further to the south, where the land was better. But we were valuable enough to have a wizard, I suppose, and that's something.

They're interesting, the witches and wizards. They keep to themselves, have their own little society and schools, but they send out their members and station them with kings and nobles all over. Helps them keep a guiding hand in things from the shadows, I imagine. When they take up in a place, they're supposed to be bound by oath to protect and serve it, but that doesn't mean anything. No witch or wizard ever owes their real allegiance to anyone but themselves.

Ten times ten tickles. Do you know what else is funny? Sometimes I wonder if we might be from the same universe, just different parts. We have things like wizards and witches where I come from. The Spacing Guild might be wizards, they control travel between worlds, or Bene Tleilax, the flesh crafters. The witches would be Bene Gesserit, a sisterhood of scholars, at least if you believe the rumours. My mother is one. Is there a word for a son of a witch?

Now that really is merciless, you're right. Torment a hundredfold from my friend the sea monster.

...Though, now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever heard of a witch having children. And they're all beautiful — not just pretty or fair-faced, but truly striking. It'd odd, it's like they've been frozen in time. Never changing, always the same.

Do you know what a conjunction is?

I'd have to stop for you, because of your special powers. You'd talk to me and convince me to be kinder. Our witches are known for being beautiful, but they're also known for having children, and aging. But there are different schools within the school. I don't. Would you tell me about it, please?

It's how the world began, or so the legends go. Bards sing old songs about it, sometimes. It all started when the spheres knocked into each other, and people slipped from one to the other between them. They say that's where the monsters came from, too — from somewhere else, originally, until they crossed over between the spheres that collided.

The oldest telling of it I ever heard said that when people came to our sphere, they were refugees fleeing one they'd ruined. But it's hard to tell, with songs and stories. You never know what parts are true, and what parts were just added in to make a catchy ballad.

I don't suppose any of your guilds and crafters and scholars ever went missing, did they?

Over time? Uncountable numbers. It's not out of the question. I wouldn't have thought of it as a possibility, but we're both here from other places. If transit from our worlds to this one is possible, it's not unreasonable to assume it's possible for transit to have occurred between our worlds as well. We've certainly ruined enough worlds in my universe to generate refugees to populate a whole array of new ones. So perhaps I could have visited you through a portal, come to feast on your innocent sheep.

I would've spirited a few away for you here and there, to keep you placated. Only from the farmers I didn't like much, of course.

Maybe I could have followed you back through. Monsters carrying princesses off is how it's supposed to work, you know, so it'd all be very permissible and proper. I think I would've...done some things differently, all told, if I would've had a friendly monster I could've run to.

I do require a great deal of placating. We would have gone to live under the sea, I think. Halfway between both worlds, so we could visit the people we wanted to, but no one could find us if we didn't want to see them. It might have been a little like this place, now that I think about it.

Well, you can't have one for every tentacle, so some of them will just have to share.

Have you thought about it? Who you would go back and visit, I mean. If we were living in the conjoined ocean as little monsters, ourselves.

Edited 2022-02-05 00:27 (UTC)

I've thought about it. My mother, the witch. She could cast spells on our enemies for us, if we had any, which we wouldn't, of course. What about you?

Which we wouldn't, of course.

I'd have us swim down the coast, then. Further south even than the school for witches, to Cintra. There's a girl there, a few years younger than me, who's just become a queen. We're not friends; we've never even met. But I'd want to see her just once, I think.

Why her? If I may ask. She sounds young to be a queen.

Because I can't think of anyone else.

[She doesn't mean it to sound so dismal, but, well. Well. At least there's another tack she can quickly move on to, anyway.]

And I think we're alike, if the stories about her are any indication. She's tough, skilled in battle. They're calling her a lioness, for how soundly she won her first victory. It's made me curious about her, I suppose. What kind of queen she's going to shape up to be.

I couldn't either.

[It's an impulse, to throw himself into the same pit that she stumbled into, but not one he regrets.]

Perhaps she'll come here one day. It's a place that collects remarkable people. What kind of queen do you think she should be?

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