why is there a word for that

[alicornucopia]

Finnah's just arrived at work to open the store for the morning shift; she has her apron on but hasn't put her hair up yet. She lets in the customer who always takes half an angle to determine that he wants four buttercreams, again, and then nips into the back to tend to her hair and check the overnight progress of the rock candy.

This isn't the back.

But that -

No, he's too tall to be Mial, if this is a Mial prank it's a stupidly elaborate one.

"Okay, I give up," she says, "what the hell?"

Comments

[alicornucopia]

"What does age five have to do with anything?" wonders Finnah. "I mean, that would have been adorable, but not that different from four or six."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Well, in my personal timeline - shared up to at least that point by a close alt of mine who's been and gone - up until age five I lived my life in a spinal brace that pretty much completely prevented me from going anywhere under my own power," says Miles. "And the five-year-old Miles who was just here was really ticked off at me for being twenty years older and no longer thusly confined."

[alicornucopia]

"Ohhhh. I didn't get a really close look at your eyes - okay, Mial is a shren, shrens grow ten times slower than humans do. He's my age, which is to say a hundred seventy."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...That's a new one," says Miles, after a pause. "Eyes? What about eyes?"

[alicornucopia]

"Behold how my hair is super red? For guys it's eye color and he's a silver. You probably just all have gray eyes, slightly different if you know what to look for - I don't hang out with shrens and dragons often enough to be sure I could tell a silver apart from a platinum or a spelter but a silver from a human is easy. Come to think of it, he," she points at Ivan, "looks like Mial's cousin but the eye color is usually the first thing I pay attention to on him and brown is way more different from gold than gray from silver."

[middlingalong]

"Oh joy," says Ivan, "more of me."

[unmarred]

"Oh joy," Mark says brightly, "more of you."

[alicornucopia]

"Aurin's not bad, for a dragon. Mial can go get him if he wants, Mial can teleport. Do you think I need to open the door to song him?"

[isthisart]

"Quite likely. There's a time-pausing effect."

[alicornucopia]

"Right then."

Finnah opens the door, and sings: "Mialavaraaninnah!" And then, for flourish but no added mechanical effect: "Get your tail over here!"

[thisvorlunatic]

A short pause, and then Mial whisper-spells Finnah: "Where the hell are you, besides 'not Elcenia'? And why did this spell work anyway?"

[alicornucopia]

"Teleport to my work and come see!"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Oooookay."

He teleports to her work.

He comes and sees.





"What," says Mial, stopping in the doorway.

"Oh my god you're shorter than me," snorts Miles.

[alicornucopia]

Finnah giggles and lets the door close. "He's still too tall to grow his hair out and pass for a halfling-form, though. Alts!" she adds helpfully to Mial, because: word.

[thisvorlunatic]

"...Alts," Mial says thoughtfully. "Huh."

"I'm Miles, this is my brother Mark, that's my alt Stalas, and that is my cousin Ivan," says Miles.

"Human?" says Mial.

"Well, Stalas is a dwarf."

"Stalas is rather absurdly tall for a dwarf. And skinny." (Stalas rolls his eyes.) "And the ears are wrong. Different kind of dwarf, I guess. Should I be fetching Aurin? What should I be telling Aurin? I think I've given him enough unpleasant surprises for a year today already."

[alicornucopia]

"Oh, yeah, how did he take the news?" wonders Finnah.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Um," says Mial. "Coughed all over the girl he was kissing at the time, called me an inconsiderate ass, asked after my reasoning, sat down to a board game with me. We're fine."

[middlingalong]

"You don't have to get Aurin but you might as well," says Ivan. "He would get you. I know because I found this place first. Do I want to know what your coughing-fit-inducing news was? You're about the right age to get yourself a small army..."

[alicornucopia]

"Mial with an army. Hoo boy. We live in a demilitarized country!"

[thisvorlunatic]

"What would I do with an army if I had one?" wonders Mial.

"That is also a question I asked myself when I was seventeen," says Miles, "but it was of rather more practical relevance at the time."

"Anyway, none of you seems to be dragonish, so I don't think you'd understand the coughing-fit-inducing news if I told you. But I should probably catch you up before I go get Aurin... all right, I'll try for a short version," says Mial.

"I am a shren. Aurin is a dragon. Dragons and shrens have a lot of very similar properties, one of which is that we speak a magical language called Draconic. Draconic is very opinionated about shrens. According to Draconic, dragons are awesome and shrens are definitely not awesome. Draconic-speakers will go through the most amazing linguistic contortions to avoid putting dragons and shrens in a single category, and it feels totally natural to do that, I'm a Draconic-speaker too, I know. The actual practical difference between shrens and dragons is that shrens can't fly in our natural forms - what would be our dragon forms if we counted as dragons, which we emphatically don't. I'm not even sure I should still be saying 'we', it's been a couple of angles, I might actually be the last shren already - yeah, so, shrenhood is normally incurable, but some offworlders showed up with offworld magic and casually went around turning all the shrens into dragons over the course of a few days. But when the miracle-worker showed up at our door, I turned him down."

"Of course you did," says Miles, nodding along. "I would've done the same."

"Really? I mean - I know we're theorizing you're my alt here, but I can't help feeling like I maybe didn't explain the impact well enough."

"Gotta win with the hand you're dealt, right?" shrugs Miles. "I know the feeling."

"...yeah," says Mial. He smiles slightly. "Yeah. Wow, you are my alt."

[alicornucopia]

"I used to be a shren, but I took the miracle, and when I can get a day or two off work, I'm going to fly into the fucking sun," says Finnah cheerfully.

[middlingalong]

"You sound," says Ivan, "very pleased about that."

[alicornucopia]

"Aurin and his mom went one time. I think he was like a hundred fifty something?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Red-groups like fire. Flying into the sun will not harm her," Mial clarifies. "Anyway. Should I go get Aurin?"

[unmarred]

"Definitely," says Mark.