#it's the whole aspect of being bound PERMANENTLY to this awful thing that was done to you and having to relearn how to be a person after

[eponymous-rose]

I’ve also further progressed in my Vorkosigan re-read! Memory was as wonderful as I remembered (Illyan and Miles going fishing via improvised hand grenade out of boredom is always a highlight). 

I love the way Bujold structures her books---I talked about that a bunch with Mirror Dance---but Memory is just brilliantly laid out. Miles is spiraling, Miles fucks up, Miles gets fired (the closest pop-culture parallel I can think of is a superhero having to permanently revert to their mundane secret identity), Miles’s friends manage to yank him out of the mire, and then... surprise bizarre out-of-sequence murder mystery! The victim’s not dead! Miles keeps finding clues out of sequence and realizing he was meant to be framed! And god, you’re so sure it’s Haroche right at the start and then you have that moment of “oh well shit of course he thinks Miles might have it in for the boss that just eviscerated his identity” and so you’re still surprised when that first instinct was right! And then he offers Miles his life as Naismith back. Even Cordelia placed a bet on Miles giving up his life as Vorkosigan. And... he doesn’t. Mirror Dance was about Mark fracturing himself to survive. Memory is about Miles dragging himself back together to live.

I love how Illyan takes the loss of his memory chip---it’s fundamentally a piece of him gone, but it’s also freedom from thirty years of being a tool of his emperor (and then of Aral), and his embracing this destruction of his identity and learning to move forward is such a great foil/foreshadowing for Miles’s revelation. Everything in this story is about moving forward, not without regrets, but moving forward. It’s so fitting that the romance story going on in the background is Alys and Illyan, two 60-somethings, falling in love (and god, I love the scene where Miles wanders in on them in the morning and thinks something like “huh that dress is more of an evening style isn’t it?” and then like ten hours later the penny drops).

And god, Miles and Elli. I love how this was done, how it’s made apparent that you can love someone, and they can love you, and you can be very good for each other in a lot of ways, but your circumstances can still be such that marriage will annihilate one or both of you. It’s nobody’s fault, but the inevitability and recognition of it means it’s not always a devastation: “He could feel the letting-go in them, with the easing of the tension and the terror, with the slowing of every pulse of their blood. Not pain, or not so much pain, but only a just sadness, a due measure of melancholy, quiet and right.” Even when they’re quite bizarre relationships, the relationships in these books are very mature and well-thought-out from a narrative point of view, and this is a wonderful example.

Just a really, really lovely book:

No wonder he was laughing. He wasn’t mourning a death. He was celebrating an escape.

“I’m not dead. I’m here.” He touched his scarred chest in wonder.

[...]

Harra Csurik had been almost right. It wasn’t your life again you found, going on. It was your life anew.

Aaaand on to Komarr! God! I love this book! The most Miles possible meet-cute for his future wife: board at the home of her family on an investigation, have combat flashbacks on a shopping trip with her, and wind up watching her husband die horrifically while chained to a rail on a planet with a toxic atmosphere, knowing if he reacts too strongly he’s likely to have a seizure that’ll dislodge his own breathing mask, killing him in the same terrible way. You know. Rom-com stuff.

Speaking of relationships portrayed well, Ekaterin and Tien’s disaster of a marriage is extremely chilling in its realism. Even as you absolutely detest Tien, you can see how Ekaterin got yanked into that orbit, and it’s all all all so tied in with the very same aspects of Barrayaran culture that we’ve seen Miles face: Tien destroys everything because of his perception of what the response would be to his illness (where Miles, for better or worse, never had the option of hiding it), and because of his shitty insecurities about Ekaterin’s fidelity (echoes of a young Aral come to mind). We’re given explanations (his brother’s literally impossible-to-live-up-to example) but are never expected to see them as excuses, which is a very fine line to walk. The end result is a believably fucked-up relationship that draws on parallels with every single time you’ve ever thought to yourself about a friend, “Oh god sweetie you can do so much better than him”.

And Ekaterin’s thoughts about being bound to this marriage are right along the lines of the most stick-in-the-mud traditional Barrayaran loyalties we’ve seen Miles exhibit, all tangled up in language about honor. And even though it very shortly (and mortally) becomes a moot point, I love that she gets the chance to decide to leave Tien in spite of that. 

I also love the scene between Tien and Miles, talking about Nikki’s jumpship obsession, partly because of the obvious contrast between the two of them, but mostly because it illustrates how much of Tien’s awfulness is because he’s just... fundamentally a bitter coward with no imagination.

"Well, every boy goes through that phase, I suppose. We all outgrow it. Pick up all that mess, Nikki.”

Nikki’s eyes were downcast, but narrowed in brief resentment at this, Miles could see from his angle of view. The boy bent to scoop up the last of his miniature fleet.

“Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them,” Miles murmured.

“That depends on whether your dreams are reasonable,” said Vorsoisson, his lips twitching in rather bleak amusement. Ah, yes. Vorsoisson must be fully aware of the secret medical bar between Nikki and his ambition.

“No, it doesn’t.” Miles smiled slightly. “It depends on how hard you grow.”

The alternating POVs between Miles and Ekaterin are charming because we get to see Miles from an external (non-hostile) point of view and get all excited about each small revelation, and then we get to see Ekaterin both from Miles’s point of view and from the point of view of her own very active inner monologue, giving us insights we would otherwise have missed since she, as Miles says in the understatement of the century, has a tendency to underreact.

Their relationship is built up very carefully: there’s an obvious mutual interest practically from the first, but they both have reason to be cautious. There are those moments of genuine rapport early on, and then the shopping trip! It’s such a clever revelation, and so layered!

Miles was traumatized at Dagoola IV by watching Beatrice fall from the shuttle in front of him: he reached out to try to catch her, and just missed, and she died. And then we have this perfectly safe little parallel, with himself and Ekaterin falling off a water feature in a shopping district, and he manages to catch her, this time... and they both go over. It’s cute and oddly triumphant...

...and then he realizes exactly what it means. If he’d caught Beatrice, he’d have gone over with her. They’d both be dead, and that revelation hits right after he’s had a whole book to figure out just how badly he wants to live. And to Ekaterin, it’s a very quick summary of what and who Miles is: he’s the man who would not let go. BUT Ekaterin ALSO frames her leaving Tien in that context: she’s not just watching him fall, but purposefully releasing her hands. It’s so twisted and so complicated and such a weird little microcosm of their respective states of mind. And while part of it is Ekaterin giving Miles the little push he needed to properly process that trauma, fundamentally and on a larger timescale it places Miles as the “I’ve been in this hole before and I know the way out” path to Ekaterin’s healing. It’s so well done.

There’s also a hell of a parallel in the physical aspect of Miles’s seizures coming on unexpectedly in moments of great stress versus the psychological aspect of Ekaterin’s whole coping mechanism being built on trying desperately not to flinch or show strong emotion.

(And I don’t know where else to put this but special shout-out to the running gag of Vorkosigan House getting gradually overrun with cats, to the point where Miles starts, apropos of nothing and on a totally different planet, asking strangers if they’d like a kitten.)

These kids! Will they make it work? I may be only halfway through the book, but I have a funny feeling things might work out...

Also, here’s the “rescue” scene in full, because it delights me so:

The root-compacted soil of the edge sagged under her weight, and she began to slide precipitously forward. She yelped; pushing backward fragmented her support totally. One wildly back-grappling arm was caught suddenly in a viselike grip, but the rest of her body turned as the soil gave way beneath her, and she found herself dangling absurdly feet-down over the pond. Her other arm, swinging around, was caught, too, and she looked up into Vorkosigan’s face above her. He was lying prone on the slope, one hand locked around each of her wrists. His teeth were clenched and grinning, his gray eyes alight.

“Let go, you idiot!” she cried.

The look on his face was weirdly, wildly exultant. “Never,” he gasped, “again--”

His half-boots were locked around... nothing, she realized, as he began to slide inexorably over the edge after her. But his death-grip never slackened. The exalted look on his face melted to sudden horrified realization. The laws of physics took precedence over heroic intent for the next couple of seconds; dirt, pebbles, vegetation, and two Barrayaran bodies all hit the chilly water more or less simultaneously.

The water, it turned out, was a bit over a meter deep. The bottom was soft with muck. She wallowed upright onto her feet, one shoe gone who knew where, sputtering and dragging her hair from her eyes and looking around frantically for Vorkosigan. Lord Vorkosigan. The water came to her waist, it ought not to be over his head---no half-booted feet were sticking up like waving stumps anywhere---could he swim?

He popped up beside her, and blew muddy water out of his mouth, and dashed it from his eyes to clear his vision. His beautiful suit was sodden, and a water-plant dangled over one ear. He clawed it away, and located her, his hand going toward her and then stopping.

“Oh,” said Ekaterin faintly. “Drat.”

There was a meditative pause before Lord Vorkosigan spoke. “Madame Vorsoisson,” he said mildly at last, “has it ever occurred to you that you may be just a touch oversocialized?”

[doedipus]

Seasick Off the Sword Coast

The campaign went on hiatus for a couple weeks over the summer, and I’ll admit, I got restless pretty quick. I ended up writing a couple of... short stories? scenes? vignettes? based on events in the campaign to keep myself busy. This one takes place during the sea voyage from Athkatla to Waterdeep.

This was written a while after the session where Coy transitioned, however, at the time in the campaign neither the players or their characters knew what was up. I decided to use female pronouns for her in the narration, because I’d feel awful for knowingly misgendering someone (yes, even a fictional character, shut up :P), but the characters still see her as a dude and refer to her as such.

Anyway, I’m posting this because it might give readers a better grasp on the characters than simple greentext-style notes would. As usual, content under the break.

Constanza had never been to sea before, and after the last week, she never wanted to go to sea ever again. The gentle rocking of river boats and ferries she’d ridden before were nothing compared to the interminable and often violent undulation of the open ocean. She’d been plagued by terrible seasickness through the whole voyage. Behind her illusion, her usually rust-hued skin had taken a turn for the green, and she was having trouble keeping her meals down. While the rest of her companions had long since found their sea legs, Constanza still struggled to keep her balance. During the brief calm moments, she was filled with deep pangs of inferiority. She kept to herself, and barely left her cabin.

These sorts of moods were hardly uncommon for her. Growing up, her sister Lou was always by her side when Constanza needed her, and would always have a corny joke or amusing story that could take the edge off for a time. Since she’d left, it had become harder and harder to push past the voices telling her that she was less than or unworthy of their respect. Nowadays, she tried to focus herself on her faith, praying at a makeshift altar, or trying to parse the hefty tome her superiors had left her with. Self-help was a pillar of the church’s outreach, and sometimes they had the right ideas. It certainly offered many distractions she could focus on instead.

This morning, she was meditating on the story of Saint Fripp of Neverwinter. Fripp had been an acolyte of The Late Allfather Emerson the Immortal during the early days of the church, when Ascension was something that was still a serious area of study among the church elites. The ultimate goal of the church had always been to reach a state of open dialogue between them and the Great Ones, for knowledge and power, but they had never succeeded in the way they wanted. Emerson once saw a vision of a humanoid metamorphosing into a Great One, a process that came to be known as Ascension. His description of the process seemed incomprehensible and gruesome, but he and his followers were willing to sacrifice anything to be closer to their god.

Saint Fripp was born without eyes, but Emerson granted her true vision. Her eyes lay on the inside, and her insight earned her a permanent place at Emerson’s side. When Emerson received the Revelation of Ascension, she was first to volunteer to corrupt her very being in the name of progress. Early on, much progress was made, and though her veins became hardened from the injections, and her left arm quickly became necrotic and unceremoniously slid off in the night, she made amazing leaps and bounds in her mind, receiving vivid messages from the beyond at a frightening frequency, and the new arm that emerged from the socket had almost as many digits and also a nice tan.

As the procedures continued, though, she began to experience difficulty focusing on the world around her, and took to wearing a tall brass cage over her head to keep herself inside until she was ready to make a final leap. On the two hundred fifty-fifth day of treatment, she was found unresponsive in her quarters. The pair of aids responsible for her care quickly fetched father Emerson. When they returned, her body was bloated, barely even recognizable as herself, and something was moving underneath the surface of her skin.

Emerson suddenly grasped his head, screeching in pain. A vision had struck him! He was consumed by the smell of fresh blood and raw meat, surrounded on all sides by what felt like flesh, tightly pressed against his body, suffocating him. His only instinct was to dig. And dig. And dig. He frantically clawed at the moist tissue for what felt to him like hours, until he hit a smooth brass wall. He turned, and dug in another direction, before coming to another wall. His prison of meat was itself completely encased in brass. The walls closed in on him, and as they began to crush his body, he violently snapped back to reality.

“The cage!” he yelled at his companions, “We need to get that blasted cage off her!”

The three rushed to the side of the bed and tried desperately to remove the heavy metal apparatus, but the corpse of their dear friend had expanded in such a way that this task became difficult. They tugged with all their strength, but it would not budge. One of the aids suggested sawing off her head to remove the cage, but Emerson shot him a glare that could melt adamantine. The struggle continued for an hour, until with a final exertion, the cage popped off, sending an aid reeling.

When they had caught their breath, they noticed that the writhing in the body had ceased. A great cascade of blood and viscera suddenly burst forth from what was left of Saint Fripp’s nether regions. Among the carnage lay the remains of a squid-like creature, about the size of a forearm, with seven tentacles, and a transparent mantle. Inside the mantle was a multitude of eyes, with a wide range of iris colors and pupil geometries. Human eyes, elven eyes, orcish eyes, and though they weren’t mentioned in the holy texts, Constanza liked to think that there were tiefling eyes in the Stillborn Mantle as well. Good media representation was so hard to come by these days.

The story was sometimes brought up as a cautionary tale about exploring unknown aspects of church doctrine, but Constanza thought that though Fripp had died, her exceptionalism had taken her from a nameless beggar on the streets to a life dedicated to knowledge and adventure, recorded forever within the sacred texts. She hoped she could one day make a similar contribution, but for now, she could only stare intently at the puke bucket beside her bed, and try to hold in her half-digested dinner.

A knock on the door to her cabin nearly broke her concentration. The door creaked open, and Greg poked his head through the crack.

“Connie, we’re all going up to eat breakfast, are you coming?”

“Ask her if she wants us to just bring her something down here,” Lucas mumbled from behind the door.

Part of her wanted to take him up on that offer, but the rest of her was determined to look tough at all times.

“N-no, that’s okay. I’ll-” She heaved a bit as a swell passed under the ship. “Ughk... I’ll be up in a minute.”

Lucas peered around his boyfriend. “Are you sure? It’s really no problem for us, or anythi-”

“I’m fine. Really.” Constanza cut him off before he could finish.

“Okay then. Uh, see you in a few, then, I guess...” Lucas looked a bit hurt as he rounded the corner and went up the stairs. Greg followed after him, hand-in-hand.

    Constanza returned to her morning ritual, finished the Tuesday set of prayers, and prepared to reapply the brand of binding to her left shoulder. Left arms held a special significance in the church ever since Saint Fripp’s sacrifice, and were believed to be the most blessed limb. As such, all casting was done through that arm, and the limb could easily fill to burst with arcane fallout. The brand allowed some of the energy to filter out into the ether. After the skirmish in Amswater, Constanza suspected that it was the only thing keeping her arm attached anymore. Other initiates often complained about the pain of applying the brand, and were reluctant to use any spells at all, in case they had to reapply it later. Other initiates were also usually not tieflings, and Constanza barely felt a thing as she pressed the red-hot iron firmly against her skin, counted to twenty-three at a reasonable pace, and then quickly plunged the iron into a nearby bucket of seawater to cool it off. A rush of pins and needles shot down her arm as circulation returned. She flexed her grip a few times to test the strength in her hand.

    Having completed her morning rituals, she laboriously hoisted herself upright, pausing briefly as blood rushed to her head. She briefly checked herself out in a mirror to make sure that her illusory avatar was working correctly, blinking a few times, and trying out a variety of facial expressions. Satisfied, she wobbled out the door, and onto the deck.

    Her eyes stung as they slowly adjusted to the morning sunlight. She pulled her coat tight against her body to protect herself from the frigid marine air. Squinting, shivering, and utterly unsteady, she hurriedly made her way to the cabin where her companions were gathered.

    Most of the floor space in the main room of the cabin was taken up by a long wooden table with benches on either side. Most of the gang was still in their rooms, it seemed, and the only people at the table were Greg and Lucas. Constanza waved awkwardly to the pair as she entered. They both waved back. She started towards the pantry.

    Lucas called after her. “Hey, Constanza, Coy’s passed out in the pantry. Can you do your thing again and wake him up?”

    The pantry was a large closet off the main room. The shelves on the walls were full of jars of preserves and honey, and bottles of brightly colored potions and exotic booze. A chest lay in the corner that stored cuts of dried and cured meat, wrapped in sheets of thin paper. In another corner, a cabinet stored cutlery and cups. Hanging from the ceiling above the chest was a hollowed out bovine carcass held in gentle repose. Its insides were stocked with bread, vegetables, cheeses, and other perishable produce, kept fresh by the enchantment. The sight was more than a little macabre.

    Taking up much of the floor was Coy the titanic dragonborn, curled up in a ball, with Akim slumped over her. A handful of empty bottles were scattered on the floor around them, and they appeared to be deep in slumber. A small puddle of noxious drool seeped from the dragonborn’s mouth, and had begun to corrode the floor a bit.

    Constanza gingerly shook Akim awake. Ages ago, a popular church had spread propaganda about tieflings being sexual predators by nature, and a non-negligible portion of the population still sincerely believed them. So, she tried her best to avoid interacting with children in public, lest she be accused of trying something unspeakable. Even though she knew that Coy was perfectly fine with her being around Akim, it still made her uncomfortable. The boy yawned and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

    She tried to wake Coy in the same manner, but she remained dead to the world. It’s not like that had worked any of the previous times, either, but it was worth a shot. Constanza felt down deep inside her being for her natural mana reserves, and concentrated as hard as she could. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but instead of words, a loud BOOOONNNNG filled the room. Akim apparently thought this was the funniest thing ever, and began giggling uncontrollably. The feathers on Coy’s head and neck stood on end, and her reptilian eyes snapped open. She sat up and looked around the room, obviously dismayed about something. Akim hugged her, and her expression grew a bit less severe.

    “We’re, um, about to eat breakfast,” Constanza explained.

Coy stared off into space for a moment.

    “Do you mind moving? I can’t reach the cow from here.”

    No answer.

    “Coy? Are you okay?”

    “Hm? Yes! Yes, is fine!” Coy shook her head a bit and stood up, towering over her companion and the child, and hit her head on the ceiling with a dull THUNK.

    “Cyka blyat!” She quickly slapped a hand over her mouth, and glanced down at Akim nervously. Akim mimicked her action before continuing to giggle. Holding hands with Akim, she ducked out of the pantry and took a seat at the table. Constanza pulled a mostly-whole loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese from the cow’s empty chest cavity, and a knife from the cabinet, and joined them.

    A few others had filtered into the mess hall in the meantime. Rolen had taken a seat opposite Lucas, and the two glared wordlessly at each other, while Greg tried to avoid eye contact with either of them. Escrima had decided to sit on the other side of Greg, adding to his obvious discomfort. Escrima fidgeted a bit and mumbled something under his breath about “antipodes.” Constanza took her place at the table, sliced off a bit of bread and cheese, and passed the food and knife down the table. She ate quietly, mostly just trying to keep her mind off the nausea.

    After a time, the door of the cabin slammed open, and Graham strode in with a big, goofy grin plastered across his face. He shouted, triumphantly, “Lady Catarina! I have a matter of the utmost importance to discuss! Please accompany me below decks posthaste!”

    The outburst caught Constanza by surprise, and she stared blankly back at Graham for a moment. “I’m sorry, what?”

    “Come on, Connie, I found something amazing in the hold!” Graham had a hard time maintaining his facade of dignity through his excitement.

    Constanza hoisted herself off the bench, took a moment to balance herself, and wobbled outside after Graham.

    “It’s an amazing find, my lady.” Graham assured her as they crossed the deck, “It even has all the pieces, too! Top condition!”

    “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Graham. What exactly did you find?”

    “Just wait and see!”

    The pair descended the stairs to the lower levels of the ship, and stopped outside the door to Graham’s room. He opened the door with a flourish, and indicated towards the cot in the center of the room. On the cot was a dragonchess board made of polished walnut, each plane stained the appropriate color. The full set of pieces was laid out on the board, ready to play.

    “Wow, Graham, where’d you find this?” Constanza was in awe. “It’s a beauty!”

    “It was in a chest down in the hold. We found it when we were looking for a place to put Coy’s diamond last night, and I thought ‘My, I bet Lady Catarina would love to hear about this!’” A pause. “Would my lady be willing oblige a request for a rematch?”

    “Any time, Graham,” she replied, “Maybe it’ll help distract from this awful seasickness.”

    “Splendid!” Graham walked over to the chest in the corner of the room and rummaged around inside. After a moment, he resurfaced holding a hefty tome, and waved it about triumphantly. “This time, I have a secret weapon!” Constanza caught a glimpse of the cover. Beginner’s Dragonchess Manual, Condensed Edition. “I got this while we were back in Amn,” He explained, “With its help, I wager I can at least put up quite a fight.”

    She giggled. “I don’t know, Graham. After the last game, I’m surprised you can even manage to fasten the clasps on your armor.” The room the two had shared at the Styx Oarsman had been equipped with a board. The first night the gang spent in that alien world had been terrifying and isolating. She and Graham found themselves unable to sleep, and looked for anything to keep their minds off their predicament. Constanza had attempted to teach Graham how to play, but... The man just wasn’t cut out for that sort of thing.

    That night had been a strange one. Constanza hadn’t had much time to socialize with her companions before then, and just assumed that Ser Graham Broyer, Paladin would have no qualms about “exorcising” her if she ever gave him the flimsiest casus belli. Yet, when it was decided that he would room with her in The Cage, he didn’t put up a fight. He spoke to her with a genuine kindness, the same as he did to anyone else. He made her feel like any other person, which few felt inclined to do. Even many of those who could act with civility towards her and other tieflings in public would pitch a fit about sharing a room. Graham was a welcome change of pace.

    They set about playing. Graham was certainly performing better than he did back in Sigil, though Constanza suspected that the rocking of the ocean was playing a large role. The game progressed at a glacial pace, with Graham stopping each turn to consult the manual for advice. His brow would furrow, and his eyes narrow as he spent all his mental energy reading and turning the pages. She found it rather charming. By the end of the game, Graham had captured a sizeable chunk of her pieces before he had gotten most of his own stuck in a corner, making for easy containment.

The second game progressed similarly, as did the third. At one point, Lucas brought them down some food, but hours had passed since then, and the bread and preserves sat on the desk largely untouched. During the fourth game, Graham went completely silent, and seemed about to lose his composure.

“Graham, are you okay?”

Silence.

“Do you want to stop for today, maybe pick the game up tomorrow?”

He sighed heavily. “...Yes, that might be best. I’m sorry, my lady, I can’t imagine this has been any fun for you, either.”

“Quite the contrary! I’m just glad to have a sparring partner again.” But you’re no Lou, she added in her mind. She and her sister had spent many a winter inside their wagon playing until it became too dark for Lou to see. Once Constanza got a handle on her thaumaturgy, the two barely slept at all. “I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it soon enough, Graham. Just try not to be so hard on yourself in the meantime.”

“Thank you, Lady Catarina.” He paused, apparently deep in thought. “You know... you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself either. Sometimes I can hear the things you say at night when you’re praying, and I feel awful. You deserve to treat yourself much better, my lady.”

“Oh, I’m not sure about that,” she replied. She felt a lump in her throat as Graham’s words brought to the surface thoughts and emotions she preferred to keep bottled up. “I’m a monster, Graham. I’m no different from those orcs we slaughtered, or the minotaurs, or the naga. I don’t deserve shit! I wake up in the morning and wonder why you all haven’t come to your senses and just taken that hammer of yours and- and-” The tears came before she could finish her thought. She slumped over the bed, head in her hands, and sobbed.

Graham reached over the cot and grabbed her by the shoulders. She felt a pleasant tingling on her skin where the holy man placed his hands. “I mean it, Constanza! You’re a valuable addition to the party. Not a day goes by that I don’t thank the heavens that we ran into you in that tavern. I know the others feel the same way. When you lock yourself away in your quarters all day, we all miss you and worry about you. You don’t need to feel ashamed or hide behind that illusion of yours around us, okay? We can handle you, Constanza. We like having you around. I just wish you’d give us a chance.”

Constanza nodded weakly as Graham let go of her. She wanted to speak, to thank him and say so many other things, but she knew that if she opened her mouth, she’d just start bawling again. She tried very hard to regain her composure, with some success. She pulled her handkerchief out to clean her face off.

After a long silence, Graham cleared his throat. “You know, I think I might have another few turns left in me after all. What do you say we try and finish this match once and for all?”

She managed a more adamant nod in response.

“Splendid! Now, where were we...” He picked the manual off the floor and started flipping through it again.

The pair played through the afternoon and into the evening. She tried her best to give him advice, and Graham gradually became more confident in his moves. When the others called them up for dinner, Constanza felt more steady on her feet, and she realized that her nausea had lessened as well. The gang ate as hearty a meal as rations allowed, and spent the evening retelling tales of their exploits on the road before they’d met by lamplight, over glasses of mysterious beverages from the pantry. When Constanza went to sleep, she dreamed of dragonchess, and Graham, and snakes. Always snakes, slithering up and down her body, enveloping her in their firm, comforting embrace.

The next morning, she meditated and applied the brand, as usual. This time, though, she decided to drop her avatar. Maybe he was right. Maybe these people were different.

[hearsaykrp]

                 Presenting — choi ahra as the starling.

— info.

name / choi ahra birthday / 910613 pronouns / she/her occupation / actress

— traits.

( abrasive, detached, hard-working, passionate )

Abrasive

Sometimes her father asks her how she ended up this way. There’s something vitriolic about Choi Ahra, sweet to look at and bitter to taste. She’s something to be looked at but never heard, she’s not good for any of it. She always meets her father with the same reply. “It must be a flaw within my genes.”

Her father never replies with more than a hum that’s ambivalent at best.

Detached

Chaekyung thinks it’s wrong how easily she shrugs things off. “You can’t just dismiss people and things just because you’re bored with them. Ahra it’s not right.” She doesn’t bother to register it, people are expendable so are ideas, so is every single aspect of life. Permanence is just another human concept, nothing is rooted, nothing is connected. “So what,” she tells Chaekyung, so fucking what.

Passionate

A specter hangs over the dinner table. Mostly they eat in silence, faces turned downward focus only on food. Her mother can’t look anyone in the eye anymore and her father withdraws into himself. The life of their household dies with Goeun, left floating downstream in the river never to be found again.

“The police seem to think that Magpie boy did it.”

Ahra can’t remember the last time her mother spoke, the last time anyone uttered a noise at the dinner table. The metal of her chopstick knocks into her teeth painfully.

“Itsnothim.”

“I’m sorry?”

The words get caught on the tip of her tongue and she puts down her utensils and looks her mother in the eye in who knows how long.

“I said, it’s not him. It was Donghyun.”

Her father laughs in a sort of incredulous way full of disbelief. Donghyun is a saint now that he dead, any wrong committed in life forgotten. He’s canonized the same way Jungsoo, Chaekyung, and Goeun are.

“Ahra, Donghyun was a good boy, he didn’t kill his wife.”

“But he did.” Her voice is louder than it needs to be, and her hand hits the table too hard, the plates quake in her wake. “He hit her before, they argued whenever no one was looking, and we all know Goeun had a talent for pushing people beyond their breaking point. It was him, not Magpie, it was that bastard Donghyun and no one wants to admit it because he’s dead now too.”

Her mother’s fists hit the table harder, and the dishes tremble again and the room goes silent. Ahra trains her eyes to her plate again and she hears her father sigh as the front door slams.

“Ahra, why would you say any of that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“Even if it is true, what does it matter. Your mother is getting closure, isn’t that more important?”

She picks her chopsticks up and resumes her meal.

“Donghyun still did it.”

Hard-working

She’s probably some kind of idiot. Mostly the company sets her up to fail, sets her for auditions she’ll never get (no one really knows who Choi Ahra is, not when so many bigger names exist) or gives her jobs that are beneath her talent. The reality is most actors can’t act, but it doesn’t matter what matters are pretty faces that translate well on screen and name recognition. Ahra’s too much of the former and none of the latter, but she comes to the audition anyways and tries knowing the ultimate answer ( “You’ve read well but we found someone who fits the part a little better.” A rejection all the same.) Her agent says he admires her tenacity, other girls would’ve given up by now, she gets intermittent work, below her level of talent and the cards never seem to align right for her.

“Doesn’t matter,” she tells him as they wait for the subway, “eventually something’s bound to work out. Just gotta keep working at it I guess.”

— about.

tw: death mention

Her father (read: her biological father, not the man who’s given her his last name and housed, clothed, and fed her all these years) was a man who sold diet pills. Twenty-seven with an easy, sleazy way and a smile with too many teeth.

Her father’s (read: the man who gave Ahra her name and not the man who sold diet pills) sister tells her in between glass number 3 and glass number four of plum wine.

“You know the type, greasy and speaks too fast. Just another city guy trying to pull a fast one and con poor country folk.”

She takes a long drag off of her cigarette and gives Ahra a look that only unnerves, the kind of look that goes right through her.

“He’s here for a month and then he’s gone and your whore of a mother ends up pregnant and cons my poor idiot of a brother into thinking it’s somehow his kid.”

There’s shame to be felt, bastard daughter of a snake-oil salesman and a whore. Somewhere, the bible probably, there’s a parable about people like her; born of sinners and clawing desperately for sanctification.

“It’s a pity. I hoped my family would prevent you from ending up like the shit you came from.”

Auntie takes another long drag and turns her attention to the window, Ahra’s too lowly for long spurts of attention— a wasted effort.

“I guess it was in vain.”

—————————

For half a second, falling feels more like flying.

Icarus must’ve felt this joy, she thinks, pure jubilation.

—————————–

The sheriff asks her to identify Goeun’s body down at the morgue.

Her parents can’t bear it. There’s something unnatural in a parent burying a child her grandmother says as she holds her daughter’s weeping face; life isn’t supposed to work out this way. Ahra volunteers instead because redemption seems like the only way to freedom.

Goeun’s face in death is grotesque. Swollen and pale with a restless and pained expression. The mortician says that in drownings the body bloats, that somehow Goeun is lucky because she doesn’t reach the size she could’ve.

“She looks good,” he tells her as he holds the little white sheet up covering her baby sister’s face, “you know considering…”

His hands move in a wide circle and Ahra notes the way he won’t look her quiet in the eye.

Ahra’s eyes move about Goeun’s face, trying to search for familiarity. Goeun was pretty, not as pretty as Ahra, but she was pretty and lively and lovely. Nothing like the corpse that sits on the table with its mouth half-open.

Fucking awful.

She pivots on her heel and makes her exit. Ahra’s a great many things, but masochism to this degree doesn’t suit her.

“That’s Choi Goeun,” she says in a voice that’s close to normal, but she can’t look the sheriff in the eye and can’t stop her feet from moving as she heads towards the exit.

Fucking awful.

She only stops when the sunlight greets her and burns her retinas, it’s a staggering sort of greeting and Ahra vomits on the steps of the funeral home in reply.

Fucking God Awful.

—————————–

Chaekyung’s house is nicer, mostly because she doesn’t have to share a room with Goeun.

Instead, Chaekyung has a whole room to herself to do with as she pleases. It’s the luck of being born the younger child and having only an older brother. She gets a room, a pretty pink one that hasn’t been updated since she was a girl and still has frills on her bed skirt and little pictures of cartoon stickers stuck to the wall.

And there’s no bratty-attention-snatching little sister to steal all of Chaekyung’s glory as well as the covers in the middle of the night.

“But it’s really not that great,” Chaekyung always says.

Sometimes, Ahra hates her for being so gracious, as if somehow vying to be the next fucking Mother Theresa is a thing to hate— but Ahra is imperfect, wildly so, and she can’t help herself from the jealousy that wells up.

“I think it’d be fun to have a little sister. The bonds between brothers and sisters isn’t the same as the bonds between sisters.”

Ahra only flops down on Chaekyung’s bed and stares at the empty white expanse of the ceiling.

“Chaekyung that sounds all well and good but you have no idea what you’re talking about. Younger sisters are the worst, just ask your brother.”

Ahra only lets out a bawdy sort of laugh as the words leave her lips. It’s better to mask the truth with a lie, makes it easier to swallow.  

—————————–

There’s a terror that rises up.

Adrenaline rushes as her body falls and the water gets closer and closer.

If she’s lucky the river will swallow her whole and she’ll be done with it.

—————————–

“Why did you want to be an actress?”

He’s forty-three and today is his older daughter’s birthday. He tells Ahra not to worry, his kids are used to him being gone, he’s a hard worker for his family. One more absence won’t be noticed.

When he gets home there will be a slice of cake on the counter for him and he’ll kiss his daughter on her forehead as she sleeps; nothing to worry about.

“I’ve always wanted to be someone else as long as I can remember. Being an actress just seemed like the easiest way to go about it.”

His hand feels uncomfortable as it trails along the bare expanse of her back. If she plays her cards right this will all pay off in the end, and besides all the other girls in her company do this sort of thing to further their careers.

Choi Ahra is not so special.

“You pretty girls,” a noise trails his words, something between a laugh and a sound of contempt. “You’ve always got some sad shit to say. Why not tell the truth. You’re beautiful and you’re vain and you wanted the world to know how lovely you really are.”

She rolls over and looks him in the eyes.

He’s not the ugliest man she’s ever fucked. She’s sure when he was twenty-seven he was handsome and girls he worked with pursued him and swooned over him. But forty-three isn’t twenty-seven and Ahra’s eyes trace the wrinkles that form on his brow as he looks at her in confusion.

“Okay you’re right.”

The lines in his forehead grow deeper and she can tell he’s thinking of a way to excuse the comment. Maybe he’ll call it a joke, maybe he’ll say he didn’t mean it. The truth is too sacred in a place like this, he’ll find a lie to cover the whole thing up. But it’s too late, the truth is out in the open and Ahra’s tired of pretending.

Besides, there’s a girl in Cheongdam wondering why her father hasn’t come home for her birthday dinner yet.

“You’re right, I’m a beautiful girl and I’m vain and I wanted the world to know how lovely I really am. So I packed up and left my shithole village and came to Seoul to be famous. It’s the same reason I’m fucking you, right now, in your work studio. I want to be famous and adored.”

A week later her manager calls her and tells her the company has decided not to renew her contract. Don’t take it too hard he says, there’s always other entertainment companies.

Ahra can’t think of any that would take her though.

—————————–

Ilmyo looks the same way it did in a rearview mirror nearly a decade ago.

A time capsule, pathetic and sullen with a fine layer of dust coating every building and every citizen.

She hates it. She really fucking hates it.

Only this time around people smile at her and tell her how much they loved the two-bit role she had in that one drama. As if playing a second female lead that goes nowhere, in the end, is something worthy of remembering.

“Thank you.” She tells everyone with the same sort of plastic practiced smile she’s practiced a million times in her little apartment in Seoul.

She never bothers to tell anyone why she’s back, why she left, and no one seems to care anyway. Having a celebrity or something like it is too good of an illusion to ruin, no one cares to iron out the details, least of all Ahra.

She’s back and people love her and no one cares to seek the truth. Life plays out just like television.

—————————–

Chaekyung goes up to the mountain and disappears in the fog the same day Ahra makes up her mind to leave Ilmyo and never come back.

She steals the money from the loose floorboard in her parent’s room and takes a bottle of beer and coaxes a boy who likes her well enough to drive her as far as his gas tank can go.

Chaekyung will understand, Goeun too.

Everyone talks about getting away, about leaving and never coming back. But Ahra is sick of words that mean nothing. Inaction is a sin in itself, the pastor says so on the pulpit one Sunday morning and for once his words resonate.

She leaves a letter for her parents and another for Goeun, hugs Chaekyung and leaves out.

“Don’t worry,” Ahra says, “we’ll see one another again soon.”

“Yeah,” The corners of Chaekyung’s mouth pull into a smile that’s small and sad. “Soon.”

—————————–

She used to think mermaids lived in the river.

It was an adventure for her and Chaekyung, jumping from the tree limb above into the river, looking for life unknown to them.

She used to want to live in the river with them, and swim as far away as she could.

There’s more to life than sleepy small towns where time stops. She knew it as a girl, and she knows it as a woman.

There’s more in the world than the borders of Ilmyo.

—————————–

Her feet break the water first and make a spectacular sort of splash she would’ve been proud of years ago.

(Everything and then Nothing.)

The water doesn’t sting her eyes when she opens them, the river bed is silent and devoid of anything.

No mermaids. No fish. Nothing.

Goeun’s life ended here. And Donghyun’s. Maybe Jungsoo’s. Maybe Chaekyung’s too.

All gone in an instant in the depths of a lifeless river.

(Everything and then Nothing.)

She pretends not to notice the panic that settles in her heart when she swims back up to the surface.

—————————–

Auntie still looks through her, sees Ahra for the piece of shit she always has been.

“What do you plan to do now?” Her voice is harsh from years of smoking and her looks fail her now too. Her bitterness writes itself on her face.

“I don’t know,” Ahra takes a drag off of her cigarette and looks at Auntie with the same blank expression she’s always given her niece. “become a magician.

There’s a hoarseness to Auntie’s laugh, a stark reminder that says “this too could be you one day.” Ahra holds the smoke in her lungs all the same, only exhales when the burn becomes unbearable.

“A magician?”

“Mm-hmm,” she turns her face to the patio and looks at the dark shadow of the mountain before them. “I’ll be a magician next. And my signature trick will be how to disappear and never be found again.”

The laughter dies in an instant.