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

[middlingalong]

Well, that's a relief.

"Wait, when you get married, do you just... I assume this doesn't do anything about the aging rate or the sudden stop at the end," Ivan says.

"Well," says Aurin, "no. The sort of standard life trajectory is you marry various non-dragons in series between the ages of two hundred and a thousand, and then you settle down with a dragon about your age, and if you have trouble finding one of those there's reasonably competent matchmakers."

"That's..." Ivan shakes his head.

"I mean, people do different things," shrugs Aurin, "maybe that fellow's blood has just made Aunt Koridaar immortal? But that's the trend."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Dad's on his second wife, but he's barely said two words about the first one," says Mial.

"Ditto mine, actually, now that I think of it," says Miles. "I wonder if they corresponded...? I don't think we can find out easily from here."

[isthisart]

"If you'd be comfortable asking, we probably have enough grace period for you to lean out the door and see if he's looking at his pen messages right now - do you not even know her name?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"I would feel very weird sending my father a random pen message about his dead first wife," says Miles. "I think I'll pass. And no, I don't."

[middlingalong]

"I could've sworn I knew it at one point," says Ivan. "Can't call it to mind."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Oh well," says Miles. "We can live without knowing."

"I don't think Aeducan ever married," volunteers Stalas. "Kept house with two or three noble hunters, had five or six kids, they all made it to the genealogy records but none of them made it to the general lore."

"Two or three?" says Miles, eyebrows skyrocketing. He glances over at Avar, who is still focused on whatever quiet chat with his singular wife he is having.

[isthisart]

"Maintaining relationships with multiple partners has been a done thing in many places for a long time," Linya tells Miles. "It's more of a stylistic choice than anything within Cetaganda."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yes, I'm aware," says Miles. "I wouldn't find it remarkable if it weren't an alt of my father. It's enough of a strain imagining him with somebody who isn't Mother, let alone imagining him with three such somebodies at once."

[isthisart]

"Is this a 'parents thing' or about Aral's alts specifically?"

[middlingalong]

"Parents thing," says Ivan.

"Human parents thing?" suggests Aurin. "I don't expect her to do it anytime soon but if Mother remarried, again, I'd roll with it."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...There may be overlap," says Mial. "I'm having a hard time imagining Dad with somebody else, too."

[alicornucopia]

Finnah is not looking at any one or making any sounds. She's spacing out and leaning on a wall.

[middlingalong]

"How do you guys know Finnah, anyway, she doesn't seem to be one of Linyabel or either of Mark like at all."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Oh," says Mial. "Uh. Has anyone mentioned yet that shrenhood is contagious...? Well, it is. Correction, it was, the miracle-workers fixed that on their way through. But a hundred and seventy years ago there were no miracle workers available, and somebody left a shren egg sitting in a public park near my house when I was a few weeks old, and out hatched Finnah, and when there's a shren and a dragon near each other in natural form regardless of intervening materials, the dragon gets got, and that is how I'm a shren. And, my parents being my parents, Mom took a personal interest in Finnah and Dad backed her, and... at first it looked like Finnah's mom was fine to keep her but then that turned out not to be true so my parents took over."

[alicornucopia]

Finnah mutters to herself but doesn't add anything to this description.

[unmarred]

Mark has been getting quieter as the number of people in the room increased.

But now, abruptly, he says: "I want to try an experiment. Miles, Mial, over here. Bar, can I have something in the way of a reasonably easy to learn, reasonably interesting strategy game neither of them has played before? Since I imagine the overlap is null."

[alicornucopia]

Bar comes up with a game involving colorful pegs that can be flipped over and hopped around in simple patterns but over a large and changeable board.

[unmarred]

"Thank you." He gestures Mial and Miles to a table and deposits the game in front of them. "Sit. Play. Stalas, you can join in if you feel like it."

[thisvorlunatic]

The three Mileses sit at the table.

"Is there some point to this besides getting us all to swear at each other?" wonders Miles.

"Will we swear at each other?" wonders Stalas.

"Definitely," says Mial.

[alicornucopia]

"Mial is like frightening amounts of good at board games, heads up," says Finnah. "I mean, maybe that's a thing, maybe you all are, but he's older, and he plays a lot. He's won money, playing, what-all, pel-pwon and four corners and stuff, if he picked one and stuck with it he'd place in squarewide for sure."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles and Stalas grin simultaneous identical grins.

Mial glances from one to the other of them and snickers.

"Yeah," says Mial, "we're gonna swear at each other a lot."

They set up the game and start playing.

[isthisart]

Finnah turns into a cardinal and sits on Mial's shoulder to supervise.

Aurin sits next to Ivan to supervise from a greater distance.

Linya raises an amused eyebrow and goes back to her systematic exploitation of Bar.

[thisvorlunatic]

The game is... pretty even. Mial might have an edge against either of them alone, but anytime one of the three gets ahead, the other two immediately turn on him.

It takes all of two minutes before they start swearing at each other. Their attitude towards the game might be described as 'friendly viciousness'; they don't exhibit any signs of genuine anger while spitting creative obscenities across the table.

[middlingalong]

"What is it like to care that much about pegs," wonders Ivan vaguely.

[thisvorlunatic]

"The pegs are not the point," growls Miles. "The point is victory."