holy place

[she_sells_seashells]

My alternates tend to take over the world. Advice available. Rates negotiable.

Shell Bell puts up her sign and nibbles her most recent charity meal. Not potatoes! It is not potatoes. Or fish or clams. It is rice and curry and a fruity yogurt drink. That nice person told Bar she could use his tab for four meals, and this is meal number two.

Comments

[seewhathappens]

"Hello," says the bit of wood. (And the same word more quietly in a hundred other languages, all at the same time, each one somehow distinct and declining to interfere with the sound of the rest.)

[she_sells_seashells]

Cerulean blinks. "What was that."

"The god," says Shell Bell.

"...You can come in."

Shell Bell steps inside.

[seewhathappens]

"Thank you," says Kirovalin, still in his many-layered god-voice.

[she_sells_seashells]

"I've already buried one of the discs," says Shell Bell. "But he needs to spread out everywhere, as fast as possible, and that's easiest if he has more places to do it from, more edges. You have a reason to be in the Capitol sometimes. If I give you one, could you bury it somewhere in or near there?"

"I. I'm still stuck on the god in your pocket, thing."

[seewhathappens]

"Should I offer more proof?" asks the pocket god.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Like what?" asks Cerulean warily.

[seewhathappens]

"I can move any object here from my original domain as long as it is smaller than this piece of wood. Suggest such an object," he says.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Suggest an object, he says," says Cerulean blankly.

"Kiro, does your world have chocolate? You could fit a little bit of chocolate and it would have been really hard for me to get," says Shell Bell, putting a disk flat on Cerulean's coffee table.

[seewhathappens]

"We do."

A small flat square piece of chocolate appears on top of the disk.

[she_sells_seashells]

Cerulean looks at it; picks it up and sniffs it; licks its corner.

"Where did you get this?" he asks.

"Kiro has a whole continent he's the god of in another world," says Shell Bell. "There's a lot of stuff there, and he can move it around between his disks."

Cerulean shakes his head in disbelief.

[seewhathappens]

"There's more where that came from, but I don't expect you to want to stand around all day very slowly accumulating chocolate," says Kirovalin.

[she_sells_seashells]

"No. Not as such," says Cerulean. "You want to - do - what - exactly?"

"He can do a lot of things once he's in a place," says Shell Bell. "But if he were being really obvious when all he's got is this peninsula, then it's possible the Capitol could just nuke it and have done. He needs to be everywhere at once, but needs time to spread and somewhere to spread from. I want you to go to the Capitol with one of these disks and find someplace to bury it, underground," Shell Bell says. "And then he can spread from there, and if necessary bring the whole city down around their ears. Getting this done quickly could be the difference between saving this year's tributes or not, depending on how sudden-death the arena is."

[seewhathappens]

"And I would strongly prefer to save this year's tributes," says Kirovalin quietly.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Krakens in the well, little prophet girl, I don't go to the Capitol when I can help it," says Cerulean. "Being a victor's not like actually being one of them. You don't know what it's like."

"I know it needs to stop being like that," says Shell Bell.

[seewhathappens]

"It really, really does," says Shell Bell's pocket god.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Why me?" Cerulean asks.

"I looked up all the victors and you seem more approachable than the more recent Four victors and you go to the Capitol more often than the -"

"- not because I want to go there!"

[seewhathappens]

...That most emphatically did not sound like someone who wants to go to the Capitol.

[she_sells_seashells]

Shell Bell clenches her jaw. "Can you get me there? If I have to wait to smuggle a disc with one of this year's Careers they may well not have a chance to bury it and it'll be delayed until at least the Reaping, which won't help."

"You don't even know what you're asking. And anyway, no I can't get you there, especially not without going myself."

[seewhathappens]

"We don't know what we're asking," Kirovalin agrees; this much is clear to him. "But we must ask anyway. Whether you help us is up to you."

[she_sells_seashells]

"You go to the Capitol two to four times a year, not on any set schedule," Shell Bell says to Cerulean.

"I - yeah."

"If you go now," she says, "it could be the last time. There can stop being any Capitol to go to. Soon. In time to save the tributes, before fever season hits, before another winter goes by and freezes and starves a few thousand people. If you don't go, and if I can't get anyone else to go either, there will be time for another visit or two before Kiro can do anything."

Cerulean is not making eye contact.

[seewhathappens]

Kirovalin waits.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Has to be underground," says Cerulean, "not in - a potted plant?"

[seewhathappens]

"Underground, preferably at least a few feet deep. I need to go about a mile down from there before I can start spreading out to surrounding areas, and it's much faster and quieter through natural terrain than anything constructed by mortals."

[she_sells_seashells]

"There's - plumbing and such, under the Capitol. A subway," says Cerulean.

[seewhathappens]

"If leaving it lying in a tunnel is the best you can do, I can work with that, as long as it's touching natural dirt or stone and no one comes by and picks it up for a few hours at minimum. If you bury it somewhere and I have to thread my way around tunnels to get far enough underground without disturbing anything, that will slow me down but not intolerably. For that matter, I'll get better than nowhere if you throw it out the side of a train on the way into the city before the built-over areas start - again, as long as no one picks it up for a few hours afterward. The important parts are that it must be connected to the landscape and it should be left alone afterward for as long as possible."