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]

"I don't remember. Maybe I should've asked Little Ivan."

[unmarred]

Mark giggles.

[alicornucopia]

Finnah goes up to the bar and asks for a book of candy recipes Elcenia doesn't have with which she may make a billion aaberik when she has her own store. She gets a fat volume in a language nobody in the bar has seen before and flops down into her chair again to read it.

[unmarred]

"At least you didn't know me as a small child," muses Mark. "Now there was a little fucker you didn't want to get on the wrong side of. You know they shipped me off Jackson's Whole early because I was such a troublemaker? I think they were afraid one of my escape attempts would succeed."

[middlingalong]

"Where would you've gone?" asks Ivan.

[unmarred]

"Away. Anywhere. Offplanet, as soon as possible."

[middlingalong]

"I meant more like, would you have ever turned up at home."

[unmarred]

"Who knows? I didn't really start getting the details of my heritage until I was already on Earth. I caught enough references beforehand that I probably could've pieced it together eventually, but it would've taken a while and I might not have cared unless I expected a warm welcome I could exploit."

[middlingalong]

"Exploitable," snorts Ivan. "That's one way to describe Aunt Cordelia's sentiments."

[unmarred]

"By my five-year-old definition they certainly would've been. On the other hand, since every other clone I knew was made for the brain-transplant business, I might not have wanted to risk contact with my progenitor."

[middlingalong]

"That whole thing," says Aurin, "is very gross."

"Yes, yes it is," says Ivan.

"At home the only people who seem particularly motivated by their potential lifespans want to bite me."

"...That's kind of gross."

"Eh, it doesn't hurt or anything."

[unmarred]

"...Eh?" says Mark.

[middlingalong]

"Vampires," says Aurin. "They wind up with the lifespans of whoever they bite, averaged out, so they're very fond of dragons, we're delicious."

[unmarred]

"Shrens too, I imagine?"

[middlingalong]

"Yeah, s'pose. I think I've seen Mial with bite marks."

[unmarred]

"Hm, since everyone else with the right knowledge base is occupied right now - how bad does it get for shrens? Pain-wise, I mean."

[middlingalong]

"Uh - very? I don't think there's a great way to describe it - uh, shrens and miracles who've been through the whole usual course of it can completely ignore basically anything else that happens to them as long as it doesn't lose them a form. Finnah has a story about how some guy tried to mug her once when she was on a dance company trip to Baveria and she just grabbed his knife in her bare hand and grinned at him and he got scared and ran away," says Aurin. "...Then she bitched about getting blood on her dance uniform and had to fly to a light, but the rest of the girls in her company were very impressed and bought her an iced planet."

[unmarred]

"I have a baseless hunch that that might be related to why Mial is so... accelerated in his Milesness," says Mark. "And my baseless hunches about Miles and his alts are usually spot-on."

[middlingalong]

"How's that meant to work?" asks Aurin.

[unmarred]

"Intuition formed over long years of study?" he suggests.

[middlingalong]

"No, I mean, how's the esu thing supposed to turn up the Milesitude," Aurin clarifies.

[unmarred]

"Good question. Damned if I know. Something about - pressure," he says.

[alicornucopia]

"It does that, all right. He held out without the painkillers longer than me, too," Finnah remarks from where she is studying the art of confectionery.

[unmarred]

"Through sheer stubbornness, no doubt. What was he like?"

[middlingalong]

"He... calmed down," says Aurin. "I didn't hang out with Finnah back then but I'm told she was a screaming terror. He just sort of tried very hard to keep busy and when it didn't work he'd go on long crying jags - when he was littler and it wasn't that bad and when he was on the drugs he was much more fluttery and excitable."