I have never been in the practice of considering what my epitaph might be, but I think I would accept, “Too stubborn to quit.”\u00a0 It is a thousand times more flattering than the truth.\u00a0 “Spiked like a sad football through the gates of Purgatory,” is evocative but not quite right.\u00a0 “Pulled by the ear by women into the depths,” isn’t an epitaph, it’s my life’s story.<\/p>\n
(And yet, if they hadn’t pulled my ear, I’d probably follow of my own accord.\u00a0 It’s not sad.\u00a0 I love women.\u00a0 I just have bad judgment when it comes to choosing the right ones to follow.\u00a0 I like them self-assured and talented, with great legs.\u00a0 I can’t see what’s inherently wrong with that.\u00a0 Those three qualities are all fine in and of themselves.\u00a0 It’s got to be what I’m not specifying.\u00a0 How do you add, “and not insane?” to the list without somehow making the whole gender angry?)<\/p>\n
I decided to ignore Doloise’s comment.\u00a0 This whole venture was madness, so what’s one more invocation of doom offhandedly mentioned by a practitioner who lives in this psychedelic mist?\u00a0 Despite being a fervent believer that words can mean things, I chose to switch my faith to “and some are just social noise” for the moment.<\/p>\n
Some snarky part of me, however, hadn’t gotten the systems change memo and was already talking back to her.\u00a0 “So, having failed your inspection, can you put me back safe, sound, and pretty much the original way you found me?”<\/p>\n
“I did not say you failed.”\u00a0 Something about the way she spoke always made me feel like she was translating from some dictionary and then putting the words back together in some way she thought fit.\u00a0 What do they normally speak?\u00a0 I tried to think of a name without making any offensive sign-language jokes.\u00a0 Her pause gave me not quite enough time before she spoke again.\u00a0 “You make noises like you are not committed to your contract.\u00a0 Did I not provide you with the simulacrum you requested?”<\/p>\n
I tried to take that to mean that I had put her out a little in creating it, so as to make myself feel better.\u00a0 “I am concerned for my life, comfort, and well-being, like any sentient.”\u00a0 That’s it.\u00a0 Treat it like a science fiction story.\u00a0 The word “sentient” always conjured up scenes from Star Trek in my head.\u00a0 This could be a set on some planet in Next Generation.\u00a0 Totally.<\/p>\n
“I am not concerned with your comfort. You are not some suckling attached to its host, ignorant of the dangers of the independent breath.\u00a0 You are a specialist of skills necessary for this one task.”<\/p>\n
Way to tell me off, baby.\u00a0 Yeah, yeah, I’m your McMuffin.\u00a0 Um.\u00a0 Sorry.\u00a0 My snarky brain had quit for the moment leaving only the one capable of handing the surreality of the scene.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the wan stepped near me and sniffed as it went by, all in the world like some butler from a British television show.\u00a0 Over the top, I thought.\u00a0 I’d had a shower.\u00a0 Oh, and several moments of being drenched in cold fear to improve my natural aroma.\u00a0 I resolved to buy one of those little cologne sprays they advertise on television as being fairly irresistable to girls.\u00a0 Maybe they work on the fey, too.<\/p>\n
I bit my mental tongue, and went back to the conversation at hand.\u00a0 “I would like it if you took into consideration what I consider a natural aversion to pain.”<\/p>\n
She seemed to do just that: consider.\u00a0 Maybe it was the word “natural” that threw her.\u00a0 I didn’t know how fey were wired, except that, well, as noted above, some of them did interbreed with humans, so hopefully it wasn’t from eating our livers or something.<\/p>\n
“I could make you numb to the consequences, but I am concerned as to how that would affect the working.\u00a0 Similarly, I believe it would be more interference than I am allowed in your life.\u00a0 It is bad manners to break a guest.”<\/p>\n
I was hoping to ask, “But what about leaving them bleeding?” but that also seemed like bad manners.\u00a0\u00a0 “What kind of portal is it, anyway?” I asked, on a sudden hunch.<\/p>\n
I had discomfited her.\u00a0 That was not good.\u00a0 This was not good.\u00a0 Oh, did I have a bad feeling about this… and no R2-D2 to save me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maybe it was the word “natural” that threw her. I didn’t know how fey were wired, except that, well, as noted above, some of them did interbreed with humans, so hopefully it wasn’t from eating our livers or something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-two"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}