blood sweat tear

[imeanforever]

He's moving her to a different court to see if it'll improve her attitude. She's allowed to fly. It's been a long, long time since she was allowed to -

She is only allowed to fly to her destination, not anywhere else. She notices that she is not where she should be, that she cannot progress to where she was told to go, and she careens out of control when her wings won't flap anymore, and she crashes.

---

with Miles (kappa)

with Minus (kappa)

Comments

[imeanforever]

[thisvorlunatic]

"Sorry. I can stop talking about how upsetting I find the fundamental rules of your existence if you prefer. Well, I can try, anyway."

[imeanforever]

"It's sort of reassuring."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Well in that case: the fundamental rules of your existence are really upsetting! The immortality part's not bad, admittedly, but in context it also means that the magical unilateral liege relationships have more staying power. If I had somehow found out ahead of time that I would be meeting a magical immortal fairy and somehow believed this information I would've predicted my reaction was going to be 'immortal, you say? where do I get some of that?', but in fact it's mostly," he lifts one hand from the lightflyer's controls briefly to make an expressive gesture and accompanies it with a somewhat self-consciously dramatized moan of dismay.

[imeanforever]

"Sorcery can de-age mortals," she mentions, after a hesitation.

[thisvorlunatic]

"...sorcery continues to be very exciting but still not exciting enough to make up for the existence of vassalization," says Silver. "It's like... I can't think of an analogy." Reflective pause. "I can think of an analogy but I'm not sure you'll understand any of its component parts so it isn't a very communicative analogy."

[imeanforever]

"You could explain it."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I could try."

He sighs and looks out the canopy at his beautiful, beautiful mountains.

"Do fairies have families?"

[imeanforever]

"Some kinds. ...It is however very different because if you have one or more parents, well, they name you."

[thisvorlunatic]

"...ugh. So. Mortals have families," he says, glancing at her. "And we don't end up magically envassaled to ours, so we tend to be very fond of them - not invariably, but usually. And mortals, as the term implies, die. And since we don't have magical vassalization influencing our power structures, we have to come up with other ways to organize large groups and then maintain that organization in the face of inevitable turnover, and one of the commonest ways especially early on in the development of human society was for someone to assume rulership of a group and then pass that rulership on to one of their children when they died, and then that heir passes it to their own heir, and so on and so on. I am in line to inherit such a rulership myself."

He looks at the mountains again.

"So I was going to say, 'it's like inheriting the Countship'. Because the Countship I'm going to inherit from my father one day will come with many advantages, some of which are pretty exciting taken out of context, none of which will make it okay."

[imeanforever]

"I'm sorry you have to be mortal," she says. "It sounds scary."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I'm used to it."

[imeanforever]

"I don't have parents, if you were worried," she adds.

[thisvorlunatic]

"...I was a little worried," he admits.

[imeanforever]

"I just started in my tree. Childhoods sound inconvenient."

[thisvorlunatic]

"They have their ups and downs."

[imeanforever]

"I suppose."

What a pretty round location.

[thisvorlunatic]

It is pretty! And round. Well, the planet is round. The local geography mostly isn't.

Silver overflies a small lake high in the mountains. It seems to give him emotions, but that might just be him continuing to think about the existence and properties of Fairyland.

[imeanforever]

Promise doesn't ask.

[thisvorlunatic]

Well, then she won't find out.

Back to the lake house they go. Zoom.



"Even suspending the question of practical obstacles, if I could hypothetically have wings but it made it awkward to fly a lightflyer I'm not sure I'd make the trade. I'm very fond of lightflyers."

[imeanforever]

"There are a lot of kinds of fairy wings. Some of them allow sitting on chairs with backs comfortably."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Well. There are still plenty of practical obstacles."

[imeanforever]

"Yes. For instance, I don't know how to turn anyone into a fairy, and even if I could it might count as a harmful spell the same way turning you into a sparrow would."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Turning me into a sparrow would count as harmful?"

[imeanforever]

"Yes. Well, probably, if you really wanted me to turn you into a sparrow I might be able to, there's a little flex around what one construes as harm."