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]

"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."

[middlingalong]

"But if this were... Gestured Nouns, or something, you don't get weird about Gestured Nouns even though winning it is entirely possible," says Aurin.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Different kind of victory," says Mial. "Oh, fuck you!" (This to Stalas, who has just eliminated one of Mial's pegs.) "You're gonna regret that, you overgrown mushroom!"

[middlingalong]

"What's this meant to accomplish, exactly?" Ivan asks Mark.

[unmarred]

"I'm trying to rate Mial's - Milesness," he says. "I suspected it might be higher than baseline, and I think I'm right."

[alicornucopia]

"Why would Milesness come in amounts?" wonders Finnah.

[unmarred]

"There are some relevant things Mial has obviously got more of than Miles. Things like the weight and applicability of 'shren' versus 'mutie'. And, I don't know... there are certain kinds of, of personal intensity that I'm reading higher on him than Miles or Stalas. Maybe it won't make sense to someone who isn't an expert in Miles, I don't know."

[alicornucopia]

"I have lived with one for more than a century," Finnah says.

[unmarred]

"I spent my entire childhood and adolescence training to be one."

[alicornucopia]

"Uh, why, does it pay well?" Finnah asks.

[unmarred]

"It wasn't by my choice. Someone wanted Miles replaced with a substitute who could mimic him well enough to get past relevant security measures, kill a lot of his relatives, and become emperor of his planet, hopefully sparking a nasty civil war in the process. So this person created me and put me through intensive study in the subjects of Miles and murder until he could set up the switch. I didn't like him very much, and I ditched his plan as soon as I could."

[alicornucopia]

"Oh. Good on you, then," says Finnah.

[unmarred]

"Thanks."